There were two brothers living in our town – both married with children.  For some time they had been putting pressure on their widowed elderly mother to move down from Sydney so that she could be closer to her children and grandchildren.  Since she was getting very frail it made good sense and they did promise often that they would look after her.  It took them some time to convince Mum that moving would be a good idea and that leaving her friends behind would be more than compensated for by being with the only family she had in Australia.  So eventually she moved and bought a small unit not too far from her grandchildren.

Fast forward two years and the elder of her two sons took off with the wife of the other son.  That blew both families out of the water.  I can’t even begin to describe the trauma and pain that this caused.  Three children had to come to terms with their uncle now being their step-father.  Four other children had to grapple with being deserted by a Dad who had gone to live with their aunt.  It won’t be hard for you to imagine the fallout that always follows these affairs... the wrangles that follow about property settlement and custody.

But the ripples spread much wider than just the family.  Friends were expected to take sides in the disputes.  Most of them refused and the two families soon felt isolated from the community.  Before long both brothers had moved away from town in opposite directions.  So, widowed Mum was left with her children and grandchildren more than an hour’s drive away.  She often told me that she wished she had stayed in Sydney.

Why am I telling you this sad tale of two brothers?  Well, because I’m curious to know what you think of the Ten Commandments.  What’s your opinion of the law of God?  Did God give us some commandments just to make life tough and restrictive?  Is God’s moral law onerous and burdensome?

I can imagine you asking: What’s that got to do with the story of the two brothers?  Well, a great deal actually.  You see, one of those Ten Commandments is that we should not commit adultery.  If only that brother and sister-in-law had heeded that commandment a heap of misery would have been avoided.  Okay, I understand that we sometimes make bad choices when it comes to marriage.  I also understand that not everybody realises that relationships are hard work and that sometimes it seems so very attractive to just walk out and start again.  But the misery created is so often far worse than the original problem that motivated us to step over the boundaries.  It tell you the story of these two wrecked families to highlight the fact that God gave us his moral law for our own good and for the good of society.  There weren’t any winners in that story of those two families.

What made me think of all this was a recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald.  You’ll recall that some time ago there was a certain senior politician who also left his family – in this instance for a female staff worker who had become pregnant by him.  He lost his senior cabinet position over it.  More than that, the then Prime Minister put a ban on government ministers having affairs with their staff.  It became known as Malcolm Turnbull’s bonking ban.  Well, apparently someone has called for companies and businesses to impose a similar ban since such affairs have often caused havoc in commerce and industry.  The headline of the article read, “Why would businesses need a bonking ban?”  Well, the author gave many reasons that all boiled down to saving a lot of unhappiness in the workplace.  However I’d like to answer that question for the author in a far simpler fashion.  Businesses and industry need these kinds of regulations because our society by-and-large has ignored God’s moral law.  In the Ten Commandments we have a four-thousand year old, God-given commandment, which was designed to protect marriage and save us from the mess that affairs so often create.  God has never revoked His moral law which states: “You shall not commit adultery”.

John Westendorp