Not Obsolete. Absolute.

One-fourth of Americans today can name what’s in a Big Mac, and one in three people can name all the kids from The Brady Bunch. But only 14 percent of Americans can name the Ten Commandments.

The Ten Commandments are at the heart of Western civilization and form the foundation of our legal system. God has given us the solutions to all of our problems right here in the Scriptures. And they’re broken out for us in the Ten Commandments, which we find in Exodus 20 (nkjv):

1. “You shall have no other gods before Me” (verse 3).

2. “You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them” (verses 4–5).

3. “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain” (verse 7).

4. “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy” (verse 8).

5. “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you” (verse 12).

6. “You shall not murder” (verse 13).

7. “You shall not commit adultery” (verse 14).

8. “You shall not steal” (verse 15).

9. “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” (verse 16).

10. “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s” (verse 17).

God gave us the Ten Commandments for our own good so that we can go from hopelessness to happiness. But we need to do more than just memorize them. We need to internalize them because they’re not obsolete; they’re absolute.