Live | Thou Shalt Not Murder

Four words can expose a whole culture. “You shall not murder” sounds like a command most of us can breeze past, but when violence is everywhere and anger simmers under the surface, God’s sixth commandment lands with weight.

We walk through Exodus 20:13 and ask the questions people avoid: Why is murder wrong to God? What does it reveal about the sanctity of life and the value of a human soul? Dr. J. Perry Fowler connects the commandment to God as the author of life, showing how Scripture speaks about physical life, spiritual life, and eternal life. We also talk about what it means to be made in the image of God and why Christians are called to reflect Jesus by becoming people who protect and “breathe life” into others.

Then we get specific. The sermon explains the biblical difference between killing and murder and addresses what the commandment does not forbid, including animals for food, self-defense, and government-sanctioned justice. It also names what is forbidden and speaks directly to real-world pain and controversy, including suicide, abortion, and euthanasia, with a strong warning against false doctrine and a clear push to hold truth and love together.

We close at the cross with a question that surprises people: was Jesus murdered? The answer points straight to the gospel, where innocent blood was shed, yet Jesus willingly laid His life down so sinners can be forgiven. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs hope, and leave a review telling us what part challenged you most.

Transcript

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Welcome

Welcome And A Bible Church

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to the Kid Us Out First Podcast, where we're building transformed lives one message at a time. Each week you'll hear Christ-centered sermons from Dr. J. Perry Fowler, rooted in the truth of God's word. This is where real faith meets real life, because a life built on truth is a life that lasts.

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He is so good. He is so good. Take your Bible, turn to Exodus. One of the things I need to explain here is this we at our church, what we do is we do several things. First off, we have two services. One, we have a service before this at 9:30, that's our traditional service, which is uh music that is pretty much the way uh you would expect for hymns and that kind of thing, kind of the way I grew up. And then you can come in here and we have a different type of music that's as well in here. And uh it's just it's just wonderful. The Bible says, sing to me a new song. And so I I get both experiences. It's been uh really a blessing uh to me every single time I worship. But one of the things that we do is we always are, of course, going through the Bible verse to verse to verse. And the reason why that is, is because not only are we uh just simply a church, but we are a Bible church. And as a Bible church, one of the things we do is we go through God's word, and God is faithful. And one of the things that God does is God will always kind of surprise us with some of the things that we read. Uh, and there's some things that we read, and we think, okay, this applies to me or this doesn't apply to me.

Four Words With A Deeper Edge

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For example, today, our sermon, we come to Exodus chapter 20, verse 13. And Exodus 24, verse 13 says this, You shall not murder. Four words. How many of you came in today and said, I've been thinking about murdering somebody? Anybody thought about that today? Probably most of you are saying, okay, I can sit back and I can slide. This is not gonna be one of those sermons. I can sit back and get a little nap because I haven't thought about murdering anybody anytime soon. But when we read God's word, there's usually a whole lot more to it than what we see with eyeshot. And so this morning, what we're gonna do is we're gonna just go through God's word. And we go through this to the Ten Commandments. And one of the things that's very intriguing to me about this particular commandment is that when God came down on Mount Sinai, he came down on Mount Sinai and he etched these words with the finger that he had, with the finger of God etched in these words, you shall not commit murder. And what's interesting about that is Moses, who was there with him, was a murderer. As a matter of fact, not only was he a murderer, but the one that wrote most of the New Testament, Paul, he was a murderer. So when we read God's word, we recognize that God is a God who is a God of grace. He's a God of goodness, he's a God that straight up tells us the truth, but yet thank God he sent Jesus. Amen? Thank God he sent Jesus so that Jesus could give us forgiveness of our sins. And so this morning, let's just look at this verse. I'm gonna read it straight up. It says this you shall not murder. I read a story about a lady who had gone to the doctor, and when she went to the doctor, she found out that she had a disease and it's called hydrophobia. And hydrophobia simply is this hydrophobia is rabies. And she had rabies, and and she took out a notepad out of her purse and she began to write just frantically. And as she was writing frantically, she wrote down some things that she really thought were really important. Well, the doctor looked at her, and the doctor thought, well, she must be writing down things thinking she's about to die. Maybe writing down her last will and testament. Maybe that's what she's doing. So he interrupted her and he said, Listen, I want you to know that you're not gonna die. I don't know what you're writing, but if you're not gonna die, I can cure you of this. You're going to be okay. And she said, Yeah, I know. I have 100% faith in you, doctor. To which he said, Well, then what are you writing down? And she said, I'm writing down the names of everybody I'm going to bite. That's what she said. So, you know, we we read things like that, of course, that's a joke, but in our world today, let's just get down to where real culture meets the Bible. That's

Violence Rising And The Enemy’s Aim

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where we're going to be today. I promise you, that's where we're going to be today. And we live in a world that is full of violence. As a matter of fact, it's very disconcerting. The Department of Justice is venturing into this and talking about why is there so much violence? Did you know that hate crimes have doubled since 1990? Not only that, but is the number of crimes and the number of homicides that have taken place between 1990 and now, it's very disconcerting because a lot of those homicides, many of those homicides, there's a rise on those who are committing those homicides. They're 17 years old and younger. Of course, we've seen the school shootings, we've seen a lot of things that makes us realize okay, there is a lot of concern about the safety of people when it comes to violence in our world today. And the the Department of Justice is talking about this a lot. And recently they were asked, why is this happening in our society, in our culture? And they said it's because of the number of violent crimes that children are seeing now that they never saw before. For example, one of the things they said is they said a lot of the kids are on gaming, a lot of the kids are on screens, a lot of the kids not only just watching television, but just for television alone. Did you know that there are about 20 acts of violence every hour on television? And with the television on about seven hours a day, and that's just one means of media, about seven hours a day. If they watch that seven hours a day, they would see over 980 acts of violence every single week. And they're saying we believe that's what's going on. But this morning, when we look at this passage where it says, you shall not murder, when we look at our culture and society, you may say, well, this isn't something I'm tempted to do, or this is not something that I'm really, you know, tempted by or to think about. I don't even think about that. But yet when we live in a violent world, we need to recognize that violence is on the rise and there is a major concern. We all have concern about that, to the point where every police officer knows now, hey, listen, I gotta be on the lookout because that somebody may be taking, trying to take my life. But not only that, but even in large venues like churches, schools, we see police officers there. Why is this happening? Why is it there's there's so much security required for meeting of large groups of people today? The reason why is simply this violence is on the rise. And as violence is on the rise, we need to remember you shall not murder. That is a simple statement, four words that God says as he comes down on Sinai, he writes it in stone, and he simply says this, you shall not murder. Now, as we see that, we're reminded of something that God wants us to remember. The Bible says, the thief, speaking of the devil, say the devil. The devil, the devil, the thief comes not but to, let's read it, kill, steal, and what? Devour. That's what he wants. He wants to destroy. Kill, steal, and divorce and destroy. But God says this. Jesus says this. He says, I come that you might have life. Now listen to that. Let that just ring in your ears for a minute. I come that you might have life and have it more abundantly. Why is there violence in the world? There's the reason why is because there is an enemy on the prow seeking who he may devour. He is one that loves to shed innocent blood.

Why Murder Is Wrong To God

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Now, with that, I want us to ask some questions because we have these four words that say you shall not or you shall not commit murder. When we read that, there's some questions that that that really surfaces as we read those those words. And one of the questions is simply is what's wrong with murder? What is wrong with murder? Now you say, well, it's just wrong. It's obvious a murder is wrong. But you know why it is wrong? Have you ever stopped to think about why murder is wrong? The reason why murder is wrong is because God is all about life. Jesus said, I come that you might have, say it with me, life and have it more abundantly. And when we think about God, God is a God of life. When we begin in the pages of Genesis, if all you do is just pick up the Bible, read the first chapter of the Bible, one of the things that you're gonna know, the impression you will have from God, the knowledge you'll have from God is that God is about life. The Bible says, in the beginning, God, here it is, created. God created. And what's this tell us? This tells us that life is not accidental, it's not meaningless, it's not empty. And from the opening words of the Bible, God gives humanity dignity, design, purpose, and value. So God loves life. That's what we know about God. God is a God of life. And so when we begin to recognize this, we have to pause and say, no wonder God comes down and says, You shall not murder. It makes all the sense in the world. But let me kind of venture in a little deeper. When we venture in a little deeper, I want you to see the types of life that God gives. The first type of life God gives is physical life. By the way, the Bible says all things were made by him. All things, say that with me, were made by him. All things, and that includes you. You say, well, you know, the Bible teaches that male and female created he them. But yes, where was the source? Who was the one that began life? And where does that life come from? The Bible even says, when you in your mother's womb, God fashions and knit you. God went to great lengths for you to come into this world. God loves your life, and you should love your life. You should say, Thank you, God, for the life you've given me, because he has given to us this gift of life. In Genesis 2, 7, it says, God created man, he breathed into his nostrils the breath of, what's it say? Life, and man became a living soul. That's God, he gave physical life, but he also gives spiritual life. You know, God breathed in the nostrils of man the breath of life, and man became a living soul. You are a soul. Every person that comes into this world has a soul. Every human being is different than any other creation in the world. We'll look at that deeper in just a moment. But the reason why we're so different is because we have been given a soul. And in that soul, what we know is that the Bible says he can rejuvenate, he can regenerate that soul. In Exodus, uh, we read that we should honor our father and mother. Why? So that our days will be long on the land. What does this tell us? God loves life, he gives us life, but he also does this. The Bible says that he supernaturally does this. He says, I will give you a new spirit, and I will give you a new heart. What's this mean? This means that when Jesus comes to live on the inside of us, he gives us a new heart. He changes us from the inside out. We're not the way we used to be, because Jesus Christ not only believes and loves our physical life, but he wants to give us spiritual life. And in that, what we find is Christians are not just good people who follow a code of ethics. What we see, what we are is we are ones as followers of Jesus supernaturally, you are changed and transformed by God's Spirit and by His renewing of your mind. Jesus will change you radically because He is the one that wants to give you life. And He wants to give you abundant life, not just physical life, but an abundant spiritual life. And then also He gives us eternal life. Jesus said this. And they shall never perish. You know what this tells us? This tells us there's life beyond this life. So there's physical life that God gives us, there's a spiritual life that God gives us, and then there's an eternal life through Jesus Christ that we get. Now let's talk a little bit about who we are. We are people with a soul. We are created for eternity. We are created to have our spirits renewed. We are created for God's Holy Spirit to live on the inside of us. We're not just created as physical beings, we're created as spiritual beings with an eternal purpose. Now, with that known, what we know is that God has put us here on this earth. And the question is, is why? When we learn a little bit about that, when we read these words, God says, Let us, he uses a plural pronoun in talking about creating this. He says, Let us make man in our own image. Who is that? That's God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, plural pronoun he uses when he says, thus, let us make man in our own image. So what makes us different than any other creation is that we ourselves, we ourselves have been created in the image of God. We have been created to reflect God. And one of the ways we do that is by our triunature. Did you know that today probably the best way to describe God is to look at God and say, well, he's three in one, but yet also we're three in one. We're body, we're spirit, and we are also soul. God created us body, spirit, and soul to reflect him as God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. We glorify God in creation because we are created with a triune nature. And I believe this is one of the reasons why the enemy hates us so much. When he sees us, he sees something that reflects the person of God. But also we're different because of the fact that we have a, we mirror God in a kingly nature. For example, in Genesis chapter 1, 26, God says this let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the fowl of the air, over the cattle, and over all the earth. And Psalms chapter 8 tells us this it says, you make him, speaking of man, ruler over the works of your hands. What's God saying? He's saying, Listen, I've not only made you in with the triune nature, but I've also made you with a kingly nature. So in turn, as you rule and as you have dominion over nature, you reflect me in my image. Furthermore, we reflect his joyful nature. Did you know God's a joyful God? He's not some cosmic killjoy. The Bible teaches us that when he saw that everything was created, he said, it is very good. And what we know is this we see things and we say, Oh, that's really good. I had a lady this week that was down, her and her husband had gone down to uh Florida and they they sent back this beautiful sunshine set to me, and I saw it and I thought, that is absolutely beautiful. It's amazing. But how many of you have looked at a mountain and you've paused and said, Man, that is gorgeous? How can anyone not believe in God when you see that? See, all of us see these things, but God loves it too. God loves his creation. And so the reason why is because God is a God who loves life and he created it. So when you think about God, you have to think about life because he is the author of life and he absolutely loves it. And among those lives, he loves your life. You know, it's like this when you think about God, you often say, Well, I wonder what God looks like. There was a little girl in Sunday school one day, and she was sitting down and she began to color, and as she was coloring, her Sunday school teacher looked at her and said, What are you coloring? She says, Well, I'm drawing a picture of God. Well, the teacher thought, Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna kind of, you know, I'm gonna kind of deal with that. I'm gonna kind of deal with that theologically. And she said, You know, sweetheart, the Bible says no, no one has seen God at any time. And she said, How can you know what God looks like? No one knows what God looks like. To which she said, Well, they will after I finish my picture. They'll know. You know, but when if you want to know what God is like, do you know what God did for us? Because God loves life so much, because God knows that we have a physical life and we have a spiritual life and we have an eternal life, we have an eternal future. God said, I want you to know what I am like, so he sent Jesus. If you want to know what God is like, just look at Jesus. You want to know how God deals with people who are maybe uh children? Look at how Jesus dealt with children. If you want to see how God deals with women, you can see how Jesus deals with women. If you want to see how Jesus deals with wrongdoing in our world, just look and see how Jesus deals with long wrongdoing. And so when we see Jesus, we see life, we see God. And when we see ourselves, listen, God's goal, God's desire is that people would see Jesus in us. So in order for us to be like Jesus, we have to love life. There's no exception. We have to be people of life. We have to be people who look at this particular, this particular command where it says, you shall not murder. And we should say, Yes, Lord, I agree with you, murder is absolutely wrong. We have to be people of life, and we breathe life into one another. And that's what the church does. We enhance one another's lives. We pray for each other's lives, we pray for all those that are here, and we pray for the world because you know what we're doing is we're saying we're about life. That's who the church is. Why? Because it reflects Jesus. And all of us are called to love life and to reflect Jesus.

Killing Versus Murder In Scripture

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Now, this brings us to the second question, and that second question is okay, uh then what is the difference between uh between killing and murder? Is there a difference? And actually there is. By the way, the Old Testament is written in Hebrew and the New Testament is written in Greek, and the Hebrew word for murder is different than the word for killing. And the the Hebrew word for murder means to dash to pieces, to dash to pieces, to destroy, or to unlawfully kill. That brings up all kinds of questions for us. And I want to just kind of explain to you that as we go down this path, my goal is to simply teach to you who God is, and to teach to you what God says, and to help you to know what God, God is teaching us about this wonderful thing called life that he created. Now, in this, what do we see? What do we see? We see that there are there are some things in this commandment that are not forbidden. Now, I want you to kind of go down that, and by the way, this will venture into a lot of social issues, a lot of questions people have. And again, my goal is to not tell you what the world believes, it's to tell you what God believes. Because what God believes, who is the author of life, really is who matters. And by the way, we will stand before God someday. And it won't matter what everybody else believes. What matters is what does God believe. So, because of that, that's why we teach through God's word here. That's why we're a Bible church and we look to deal with some of these questions in our social environment. We try to look at them and say, okay, what's not forbidden? Well, one of the things that's not forbidden is, according to the Bible, is God does not forbid the killing of animals for food, clothing, or proper purposes. And the reason why I say that is because the Bible backs it up in Genesis chapter 9, verse 3, God told Noah these words, every moving thing that lives shall be meat to you. In other words, here you go, Noah. If you want to uh and you need food, it's okay for you to go butcher a cow. It's okay for you to do these things. Why? Because that is not murder, that's killing, which is, of course, I gave you dominion. I gave you dominion over the animals, I gave you the ability to do this, and I did it so that you could be able to use these lives that are taken so that in turn it can serve the purposes necessary for your life. Now you say, well, how do I how do I know that? What what what proof? Well, the first thing you find God doing is when Adam and Eve sinned, they sowed fig leaves and they put them around them, right? To cover their nakedness. Do you know what God did? The Bible says that God did this. That God gave them garments of skin. Garments of skin. Genesis 3, 21, to replace the fig leaves that they had sown together. So what did God do? God took the life of an animal so that in turn he could clothe the body of Adam and Eve, and he used garments of skin. Not only that, but when Jesus fed the 5,000, he not he didn't just take barley loaves, but he fed them fish. Not only that, but after Jesus' resurrection, he had breakfast for the disciples on the shores of Galilee, and the Bible tells us that he had barley and uh he had bread and loaves and plus that fish. So God does not forbid us to take the life of an animal for the proper purposes of food, clothing, and uh and other things that we might need. That's the first thing that's not forbidden by this commandment. The second thing that's not forbidden is it does not forbid the killing to protect human life through self-defense. Now follow this in Exodus 22, verse 2. Again, I'm gonna give to you what the Bible says. The Bible says if a thief is caught while breaking in and destruct so that he dies, there will be no blood guiltness on his account. That's Exodus 22, verse 2. What does this say? It says if somebody comes into your house tonight and they try and they're seeking to harm you, they're seeking to take your life, that you, according to the Bible, if you take their life according to the scripture here, then you are not murdering them, even though they're losing their life. You have no blood guiltness on you. And that's what the Bible teaches. Furthermore, God says this isn't this is another thing. God does not forbid government-sanctioned killing for the sake of justice and justified military action. A lot of people look at wars and they say, okay, is God against that? Well, I'm gonna tell you, I don't think God is a warmonger God, but what we do know about God is God has used military in the past. By the way, Joshua was a military commander. And furthermore, the children of Israel had to go to battle. A lot of people struggle with that in the Old Testament. They don't understand that. But the reason why that is real is because God has taught us this one thing. He has taught us that we can use military and police action. By the way, if somebody breaks into my house tonight, you know what I'm gonna do first? I'm gonna call 911. You know why? Because I want somebody to come and do help me out here. I don't want to have to take somebody's life. I want a police officer to come and handle this. But yet, same thing with military. Military, there is there is not a sense of murder in military action, although it does take the lives of others. And some people ask questions like capital punishment. Is capital punishment wrong or right? All I know to tell you is this. What does the Bible say? Genesis 9, verse 6 says, Whoever sheds man's blood by man shall his blood be shed. Now I want to understand you to understand that's the Bible, that's what it teaches. And you say, well, thank God, thank God that Moses didn't have his life taken. Yeah, God is a God of grace, and we're gonna get to that in just a few minutes. But listen, that didn't negate the fact that he murdered the Egyptian. And listen, so often we are we're not willing to sit down and just be honest with Scripture and let the scripture just teach us what is not forbidden, not forbidden, and that brings us to the next point what is not forbidden as well as what is forbidden when it comes to this command.

What “You Shall Not Murder” Forbids

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Now stay with me. So what is forbidden? The first thing that's forbidden is obviously homicide. When you look at the scripture, it says you shall not kill. And what that means is that's that's premeditating a murder. And this is the first thing we happen to see in the Bible when we see a family formed. Here we have Cain and Abel, and what did Cain do? Cain committed homicide against his brother Abel. And God addressed it. God knew he had an option of doing right versus doing wrong. And God comes to Cain and he says, Sin crouches at the door, but you must master it. And that's what he says. So God says, Listen, it is wrong to take the life of another human being. And uh in the Old Testament, there were cities, by the way, that were set aside for someone that said, I didn't mean to murder them, I didn't mean to kill them. And there was proper trial. And what we find in Scripture is that when the after the proper trial was taken care of, then a sentence was passed down. And that would be what we would see when they had these cities of refuge. So the second thing that's forbidden is suicide. You say, well, homicide's wrong suicide. And by the way, my heart goes out to people today that struggle or maybe struggling with the contemplating suicide. And I've I've as a pastor, I've done funerals for people who have committed suicide. This is not foreign for me. I've I've sat down with people, and let me just say, people, the number one question they ask is if somebody commits suicide, do they automatically go to hell? Well, let me just explain to you. There's only one thing that will keep you, that will keep you from experiencing eternal life, and that is rejecting Jesus. So there's, but but maybe you're here today and maybe you're online and you're just saying, I'm struggling with those thoughts. I want Jesus know God wants you to have life. And God cares about you. And we as Christians, we ought to reach out to people who are struggling with mental health issues and are in deep depression and struggling with these kinds of things. And what we ought to do is do everything in our power to get them the help that they need. Because the reality is that a lot of people go through a lot of stuff. But when we see in the Bible, we see the first person that we that we often think about when we think about suicide, we think about Judas. And it's one of the saddest stories of the Bible because even after he betrayed Jesus, he could have come to Jesus and received forgiveness and grace. But instead, he took things into his own hands. Let me just say, if you're struggling with things in your life today, don't take these things and don't deal with them with your own hands. Bring them to Jesus. Let us help you. Listen, let Jesus change your situation. Listen, there's nothing in this world. There's nothing in this world that belongs to God that would tell you that taking your old life is right. It's never right. God has better for you. So the fourth, the third thing actually is infantide. And I want to get to this because I believe this is one of those things in our social world, and I'm going to talk straightforward about it. But in our social world, a lot of people there they say, well, you can't talk about that as a Christian because as a Christian, you know, that'll turn people off to the gospel. I've heard that so many times. Well, you can't talk about that from the pulpit. Well, let me just ask you a really simple question. Are you telling me I can't talk about somebody taking the life of another person because if I happen to say something about it, it'll keep them from experiencing life in Jesus. Do you realize how insane that is? I'm just calling it out. That's insane. Here's one of the things that we have to understand abortion is wrong. And the Bible says it's wrong. Now stay with me because I'm going to get to this because this is a really important thing for me to say to the church. If this is the last thing, I mean, if you guys are just kick me out on a rail from this, which you won't because you love God's word, but I have to say this. One of the things that we as Christians have been taught by the world is that when you teach that that infantide is wrong, that sometimes how you're a hater, somehow you're you're you're you're a judger, somehow, and and what we have going on in our world is an attempt, is an attempt to feed the church and to feed Christians with false doctrine. The whole New Testament, people, the whole New Testament, all the books of the New Testament, except for the book of Philemon, deal with false doctrine, with false teaching. And in that, listen, what really matters is you know what God feels about this. And shedding blood of an innocent person is called murder. Now understand this, follow me this. You say, well, you know what we have in our world, we have a searing of the conscious in our world today. And in the searing of the conscious, what you'll do is you'll hear somebody talk about abortion, and what they'll say is they'll say something like, Well, I believe in this. I believe in reproductive health care. You know what they're saying? They're saying, I don't want to call it what it is. What they're saying is this, I don't want to call it what it is. And this is the way Satan works. He loves to package evil with what he thinks sounds good, like women health care, stuff like that. But I want you to know, I want you to know, I've known many women that have committed to sin. And many men. You think men, you're you're just as we're all involved in this thing. Many men that have encouraged this. And I want to tell you, I found many of them that have come and got honest about this and said this is a false doctrine, that listen, this is not a fetus, this is not a mask, this is a human being. How do I know that? And they recognized it because they recognized things like this. Here's the facts. At two and a half weeks, probably before your mother even knew she was pregnant, you had a heartbeat. Furthermore, in the fifth week of pregnancy, you had brain activity. And do you know when the most uh when abortions happen most often? The seventh week. Now, see, you can all day long say, well, that's a that's a political statement. You can do that. No, folks, this is an issue that is covered in scripture very clearly. And in that, what I want you to know is this the reason why when someone speaks about this from the pulpit, we get quiet. We use the church, we don't want to say anything, we just want to kind of sidestep it. You know why? Because we have accepted the impression of the world that they're trying to teach us something. They're trying to say, listen, this is what you ought to believe when in reality we are accepting false doctrine. God help us. You don't believe how many people have come to this church and will ask me, Do you ever talk about social issues? I'm like, I just preach the Bible. They're like, well, we don't hear that very much. And I'm not trying to up our church and down another one. I say everybody that preaches the gospel, go, man, you I'm on your team. I'm on a I'm on a thread with 26 pastors. This morning, we were texting each other, encouraging and praying for one another. But you know what I pray that we all do? That we preach the full counsel of God's word and we don't back off in this wicked, sinful generation. God help us. You know, I want you to know something, and this is personal. One of these days I will stand before God, and if I soft pedal the truth the gospel or the truth of God's word, I'm gonna answer for it. Because you know what? I am a representative of God, and I'm not perfect. You're not perfect. I've sinned. I need the same Jesus that you need, but we cannot be quiet when it comes to the truth of God's word. God help us. God help us. Another thing that we see is euthanasia. That's forbidden. When I was in Michigan, I was pastoring up there. I want to just tell you kind of a personal story to go with this. There was this guy named Jack Kavorkian that was going around and his his doctrine of death, which was what it was, it was a false doctrine. He would go out and he would talk about this, but guess where his favorite place to go was? His favorite place to give his speeches were in churches. I'm not kidding. In Michigan, all over the place. And this was what he said. He said, it is unkind to put a burden on your children. I'm not kidding. It's unkind, it's ungodly, more or less, is what he was teaching. And he was assisting people with suicide and telling them that this was the kind, godly thing to do. False doctrine, false teacher. About that time my son was born, he's about 32 years old now. He's a pastor down in Ruston, Louisiana. And uh he was a little big boy, he was a couple weeks old, and I wanted to take him down to see my grandpa and grandma. My grandpa was dying at that time. It makes me a little emotional, just stay with me. But he was dying at that time with stomach cancer. And I went to see, and what makes me emotional about it is not that he was dying because I knew he was going to heaven. But what makes me so emotional about it is how my grandma acted, how my grandma responded to him. He was a sick man. And he would get up out of bed and go to the bathroom and go back and lay down and go to sleep. He spent most of his time in bed. And you know, my grandmother and I sat down, and during that time it was the most meaningful conversation I can ever remember having with my grandmother. And uh I said, Grandma, are you gonna be okay? And he's she's she just was honest. She said, No, I don't think I'm gonna be okay. I said, Why, grandma? And she said, Well, I just don't know how I'm going to live without him. And it was just an honest statement. We all know what that feels like. I looked at her and I recognized something that God just showed me. He said, You know, she is he has nothing socially to give to her anymore. He has nothing financially he can give to her anymore. He doesn't even have anything spiritually he can give to her anymore. My grandfather was a pastor and was a preacher, preached in a lot of little churches all over Northeast Arkansas, and he preached God's word. It was Bible in my office. But he couldn't even stay awake to hold her hand for a few seconds to just have a prayer with her. And she looked at me and she said, I don't know how I'm gonna live without him. You know what that told me? That taught me something that drilled so deep into my heart, and it changed the way I live. It changed everything about me. Because you know what it taught me? It taught me something that my grandmother taught me, and that is that every single human being, every human being, their life, from the very beginning to the very last breath, that really matters to God. She preached a sermon to me about how to honor the elderly that I have never forgotten. No matter what their situation is, no matter what the background is, here's the reality: God loves their life. And taking away any part of that is simple in the eyes of God. And yes, I understand. When you're taking care of elderly parents, or you're dealing with things that are never ever easy. What really matters to God is how we show that respect and that love and that life that God created. The

Was Jesus Murdered Yes And No

SPEAKER_01 41:44

third question is a question that we'll just kind of light in the load here for a minute. But yet we'll also talk a little bit about something you've probably asked yourself before. And it's just a question, I've heard it, I've been as a pastor asked this question so many times. And the question is, was Jesus' death a murder? Now, what the reason why people ask that is because there's been books that have come out about the murder of Jesus. Matter of fact, um, John MacArthur put out a book called The Murder of Jesus. I respect John MacArthur, I really do. And others will look at it and they'll say, I mean, you can Google it today, and people say Jesus wasn't murdered, and others will say, Yes, Jesus was murdered. The question is, I'm gonna answer the question for you, was Jesus murdered? The answer is yes and no. You say, Well, that's a good fence straddle, Pastor. Well, let me just explain to you why I say yes. Without a doubt, religious leaders of Jesus' day sought to kill him. And what we know is from a legal and historical perspective, Jesus' death was a state-sanctioned execution ordered by Pontius Pilate, who was the governor of Judea. But you know what? Pontius Pilate gave him opportunity to come up, and Jesus Christ stood before Pilate. Pilate examined him, and Pilate handed down ultimately a sentence. But do you remember what he said about Jesus? He went and washed his hands and he said of Jesus, I find no fault in him. Now, can you imagine going to any judge and a judge saying, This person was innocent, but I'm gonna pass down a sentence of death, a death sentence on them, even though I find no fault in them. Do you know what that is? That is murder. That's shedding the blood of an innocent person. But you would say, well, okay, so yeah, it looks like he was murdered. But in the same way, also it was not. And do you know why I say that? It's because Jesus says it wasn't. Because Jesus said in John 10, no man takes my life from me, I lay it down by myself. Hebrews chapter 10, verse 7. Then said I, Lo, I come in the volume of the book. It is written of me to do your will, O God. You know what God's will was? For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Jesus came to do God's will. Nobody took his life away from him, he says. And then in Hebrews 10, 10, by that, by the by the which that we are sanctified, the Bible says, through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all for the just and get this, and the unjust, that he might bring us to God. So was Jesus murdered? Yes, people took his life. Was he innocently hung on the cross? A hundred percent. But in that murder, we received the grace. Because Jesus gave his life. Because he was God. He said, You know, I could call midreds of angels to take me down from this thing. But he did it willingly for you and me. Aren't you grateful? And you say, Well, who did he die for? Well, when God was on Mount Sinai, God wrote, You shall not murder. And looking forward to the cross, Moses knew when he heard those words, he was guilty. And looking back to the cross, people like Paul looked back to the cross and he recognized that he was also guilty. Both of them were murderers. But when you look at the Bible, this is mind-blowing. The law is written by Moses. Most of the New Testament is written by Paul. Do you know what their displays of? The grace of God. That's how much the power of the blood of Jesus is able to forgive. Now you may look at this and we'll conclude. You can say, well, some of those things we talked about today I'm guilty of, or some of the things I'm not guilty of. You know, the Bible says if you hold anger in your heart, you've already committed murder in your heart. So the reality is, is all of us need Jesus. Moses needed Jesus. Paul needed Jesus. You need Jesus. I need Jesus. Every man, every boy, every girl, everyone that's ever done anything. We all need Jesus. And that's the message that comes in four words. You shall not murder. That God brings to all of us today to say, listen, it was your sin that put him on the cross. It was my sin that put him on the cross. We are sinners, but praise be to God, we can be forgiven. No matter what we've done. But you know what we have to do? Admit it. Yes, this was a sin. Yes, this is a sin. Yes, this is the truth of God's word. And when we confess our sins, the Bible says He is faithful to forgive us of our sins and get this and cleanse us from all our unrighteousness. That's Jesus. So

Grace, Confession, And The Closing Prayer

SPEAKER_01 48:34

Lord, I praise you. I thank you for your word. I thank you for your grace. I thank you for watching over us this day in such a glorious way of giving us life and freedom to really venture into a lot of things that are kind of unmentionable in our society and our world today. But God, I praise you and thank you. That God, that your word is the standard of life. And while we look at your word, your word will never return void. Your word is a sharp, two-edged sword that divides us under the soul and the spirit. It lays us open in our soul and our spirit, and it puts seeds of truth and faith into our life so that we will ultimately see what the law has done for us and what all the Ten Commandments do for us, and that is to bring us to the reality that we all need Jesus. God help us to stand on the truth. Help us not to accept false doctrine. Help us to speak out the truth and help us to do it in love. And I pray that in every way, Lord, your word has been received like that today. As that has been my intention. But God, help us this day to embrace Jesus. Help us, Lord, in this invitation to come to this altar and really make things right with you. Help us, Lord, in this moment for those that need to receive your salvation. And we would call upon the name of the Lord and say, Jesus, I need your salvation. I need your forgiveness. I need your grace. And Lord, I believe you died on the cross for me. You died for me so I could be forgiven. I'm coming to you to be my Savior and Lord today. Lord, I pray for those that are looking for a church home where we where they know that your word will be taught, that Lord, they will come and join us in sharing the truth and love, that we would experience transformed life through the truth of your word together. And that Lord, we would offer that grace every invitation that we have to forgiveness. And Lord, we love you. We're honored to be your people. So now speak, Lord, because your sufficience is always so sufficient. In Jesus' name we pray.

SPEAKER_00 51:50

Amen.church. We'll see you next time. Keep building your life on truth.