SPEAKER_00: Well, good morning.
SPEAKER_00: Today is Sunday, the thirteenth of September, 2015, already, and God is still on the throne.
SPEAKER_00: I have no idea what your week was like, but I know for a fact God reigns and rules and is involved in the lives of men and women and children today.
SPEAKER_00: God is still on the throne.
SPEAKER_00: He was last week, he will be the week to come, and he is today.
SPEAKER_00: God is gracious.
SPEAKER_00: God is good.
SPEAKER_00: God is sovereign.
SPEAKER_00: God is patient.
SPEAKER_00: God is trustworthy.
SPEAKER_00: And God has spoken.
SPEAKER_00: He has spoken to us.
SPEAKER_00: And part of what he has said is in the tender commandments.
SPEAKER_00: These aren't harsh words of condemnation.
SPEAKER_00: They're tender words.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, Walt, oh Jane, oh put your own name in there.
SPEAKER_00: Go this way, don't go that way.
SPEAKER_00: This is the way of life.
SPEAKER_00: This is the way life was meant to work.
SPEAKER_00: And when God speaks, he neither misleads nor stutters.
SPEAKER_00: And he is not misleading and he is not stuttering when he says, My dear people, I want you to know, go this way, don't go that.
SPEAKER_00: And in particular, don't murder.
SPEAKER_00: Don't take life with hands or with our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Now, when God speaks, God's people, if they're wise, respond.
SPEAKER_00: We do not come and open the scriptures just to have our intellect enlarged.
SPEAKER_00: We don't come to the scriptures just to plummet the depths of profound theological truths, although they certainly are there and that's worth plummeting.
SPEAKER_00: We don't come to the scriptures in order to have our ego stroked or to feel good or to be entertained.
SPEAKER_00: If we come to the scriptures that way, we are fools.
SPEAKER_00: When God speaks, the question is not, do we like what he hears and do we like the way it's said?
SPEAKER_00: The question is, what do I do with what God is saying to me?
SPEAKER_00: And that's the question that I have for us.
SPEAKER_00: And it's always the question as we open up the scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: Today is the second Sunday of the month.
SPEAKER_00: It's our custom here, of course, on the second Sunday of the month to have communion.
SPEAKER_00: And today I've asked if we could do the communion at the end, and the orchestra is going to play, and I'm looking forward to that very much.
SPEAKER_00: You're going to have to hold your excitement for a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: Your excitement not for the orchestra.
SPEAKER_00: Your excitement for responding to God.
SPEAKER_00: So we'll be taking communion, and during communion, the orchestra will play not as a performance, but as an aid to us responding to Him.
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord's Supper is meant to be a response.
SPEAKER_00: So that will be our application of God's word this morning.
SPEAKER_00: So just uh just a heads up.
SPEAKER_00: Thou shalt not murder.
SPEAKER_00: I trust that by the time I'm done uh trying to unpack this a little bit, you will understand.
SPEAKER_00: No murder with hand or with heart.
SPEAKER_00: Alright?
SPEAKER_00: That's where we're going with this.
SPEAKER_00: I'd like to pray.
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, as we turn to your word, we don't just turn uh to just whatever.
SPEAKER_00: We turn to something that you have from foundations past, from eternity past.
SPEAKER_00: You have had words of truth for us.
SPEAKER_00: You are a God who speaks.
SPEAKER_00: You are there and you are not silent.
SPEAKER_00: You speak.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, it's my desire that I and this congregation this morning will respond to your words, not my words.
SPEAKER_00: My words at best will be an effort to bring your words to light.
SPEAKER_00: And they may confuse your word.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, we want to know what you have to say to us this day.
SPEAKER_00: And it is our heart's desire that we would respond to you in obedience and worship.
SPEAKER_00: So, Lord, we're listening.
SPEAKER_00: We're listening.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Well, our uh our passage is really pretty simple.
SPEAKER_00: Um murder.
SPEAKER_00: We saw last week and the week before that the first four of the tender commandments talk about the vertical, talk about our relationship with God, and then commandments five through ten talk about the horizontal, our relationships with one another.
SPEAKER_00: And God has direct things to say to us about our relationship with Him.
SPEAKER_00: He has direct and practical things to say to us about our relationship with one another.
SPEAKER_00: And the two are intimately intertwined.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot be rightly related to God and not be rightly related to one another.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot be rightly related to other people and not be rightly related to God.
SPEAKER_00: They inherently go together.
SPEAKER_00: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbors as yourself.
SPEAKER_00: So we're in that section of the tender commandments that cause us to look around and to reflect what's our action and what are our attitudes towards other people.
SPEAKER_00: This is an incredibly simple, direct command.
SPEAKER_00: Um I'm gonna make it more complicated with that next slide, but it's an incredibly simple and direct command.
SPEAKER_00: You shall not murder.
SPEAKER_00: Actually, since you are all, of course, great Hebrew scholars, you know there's really only two words in the original.
SPEAKER_00: No, I'm being facetious.
SPEAKER_00: But there are only two words.
SPEAKER_00: It's no murder, no stuttering there, no misleading there.
SPEAKER_00: And uh actually, we find three of the tender commandments in a row that contain just two words: no murder, no adultery, and no stealing.
SPEAKER_00: It really doesn't get any clearer or simpler than that.
SPEAKER_00: Now, we have to understand, uh, especially if you were raised maybe with the King James or some of the more traditional translations, you probably have floating around in your head, thou shalt not kill.
SPEAKER_00: And what I'm going to try to suggest to you is that although that is not a bad translation, in our thinking, that immediately takes us places that this command does not go.
SPEAKER_00: It's talking about the unauthorized and premeditated taking of human life by one person taking another person's life.
SPEAKER_00: That is what the words mean.
SPEAKER_00: That is clear if you examine the scriptures carefully.
SPEAKER_00: And in our ears, probably thou shalt not kill, becomes much more general than that.
SPEAKER_00: But what God is saying to his people Israel, and it was clearly understood with the words that he used in the original, no murder, no murder.
SPEAKER_00: So what we have is a question of unauthorized, because sometimes it is authorized to take life, unauthorized and premeditated with malice aforethought, taking of another human life.
SPEAKER_00: With hand, or as we shall see what Jesus said, it's with hand or with heart.
SPEAKER_00: So, just a couple of simple things.
SPEAKER_00: This is not a general term for killing.
SPEAKER_00: Our word for kill, uh, we use it for all kinds of things.
SPEAKER_00: You could kill a plant, you could kill an animal, you could kill the weeds in the garden, you could kill a good idea, you could kill initiative, you can kill time.
SPEAKER_00: There's all kinds of things that we kill.
SPEAKER_00: You can kill a party.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what this is talking about.
SPEAKER_00: This is very specifically the unauthorized and premeditated taking of another life of a human being.
SPEAKER_00: This relates to murder, pure and simple.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, it is not a prohibition against all taking of human life in any and every circumstance.
SPEAKER_00: Uh there are times when it is right and necessary to take human life.
SPEAKER_00: The scriptures make that very clear.
SPEAKER_00: For example, um in the matter of war, God has clear instructions for his chosen people Israel, which we find in Deuteronomy chapter 20, explicit instructions of how the nation Israel was to go to war, and that included taking life of the enemies at times.
SPEAKER_00: There is such a thing as an appropriate killing of human, taking of human life that is not automatically murder.
SPEAKER_00: There's a distinction in the scriptures between that.
SPEAKER_00: There is a just and a righteous and a necessary time and place to take human life.
SPEAKER_00: God is the author of life, and God is the only one who can authorize when it is right and when it is wrong.
SPEAKER_00: I just want to go on and make it very clear that God instructed his nation Israel to go to war multiple times, and God has not changed.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus' words did not change Moses' words.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus' words took them far deeper, not just with our hands, but also not with our heart.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the question of a war, what's a just war or a righteous war, that's an incredibly important subject.
SPEAKER_00: But just be aware, and I'm I'm not going to try to answer that this morning.
SPEAKER_00: We'd be here until tomorrow morning this time.
SPEAKER_00: All I want to point out is that God at times commanded his people to go to war.
SPEAKER_00: And there is such a thing.
SPEAKER_00: If God says do it, it is just and righteous.
SPEAKER_00: Now, it becomes very, very difficult and very existential, very personal.
SPEAKER_00: I grew up in the Vietnam era.
SPEAKER_00: I was 63 was my draft number, which meant uh I was going to be drafted.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't end up getting drafted, long story.
SPEAKER_00: But it became very personal.
SPEAKER_00: Is this a war that I am prepared to fight in and kill someone?
SPEAKER_00: Which is actually the wrong question, but I was just a dumb kid, and uh so I I had lots of wrong questions and wrong answers to the wrong questions.
SPEAKER_00: The real question is not do I want to do this, but is this a righteous and just war?
SPEAKER_00: That would take us places I have no time or no interest this morning in going.
SPEAKER_00: I just want to make clear that there is such a thing as an authorized war.
SPEAKER_00: Uh capital punishment is another expression of that.
SPEAKER_00: The Jewish people, in the laws and instructions that God gave, um, made a distinction between unintentional and premeditated acts of taking life.
SPEAKER_00: And uh the whole issue of capital punishment, which is of course a living issue, all of this stuff is very, very current stuff.
SPEAKER_00: But you can't read the scriptures clearly and simply, frankly, without recognizing that there is a time and a place as God has proscribed it for what we call capital punishment.
SPEAKER_00: The point is that not all taking of life is the same as murder, is what is being talked about here.
SPEAKER_00: Capital punishment was proscribed by God for a whole lot of things.
SPEAKER_00: It was prescribed for a whole lot of things.
SPEAKER_00: Uh for incest, child sacrifice, kidnapping, witchcraft, and a whole series of sexual sins, including homosexuality.
SPEAKER_00: The subject of capital punishment would also take us several days to go into.
SPEAKER_00: And that would be a good thing to do, maybe another time.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'll come up with the idea of doing a whole series of sermons on some of these incredibly current and uh very practical current issues.
SPEAKER_00: That's not where we're going this morning.
SPEAKER_00: I just want to underscore that this is not a prohibition, that the sixth commandment is not a prohibition against all taking of human life.
SPEAKER_00: And then you get to the matter of governments.
SPEAKER_00: If you read Romans chapter 13, the key passage, one of the key passages on government, God entrusts to human governments, not just so-called Christian governments.
SPEAKER_00: He entrusted to the Roman emperors who were anything but God followers, and the church suffered as a result.
SPEAKER_00: Just because the church might suffer under the role of a government that we're under really isn't the point.
SPEAKER_00: The point is how we respond as God's people.
SPEAKER_00: But the fact of the matter is that God gives to government what Romans 13 calls the sword.
SPEAKER_00: Says it's not for naught that the government has the sword, and that is clearly pointing to what we would call capital punishment.
SPEAKER_00: Governmental authority, however, is not absolute.
SPEAKER_00: Governmental authority, as all authority is, the authority of husbands in the family, leaders in the church, rulers over the affairs of men.
SPEAKER_00: Authority, if it's right, is always delegated by God and received under the instructions and delegation of God.
SPEAKER_00: God can authorize us to do things that we otherwise would not be allowed to do.
SPEAKER_00: God can do anything he wants, and unlike us, what he wants is always and only good.
SPEAKER_00: And if we would just bring ourselves, bring ourselves under the authority of God in practical ways, it would go a long way for us.
SPEAKER_00: The government must not declare as acceptable what God says is unacceptable, and the government may not prohibit things that God says is right and good.
SPEAKER_00: When the government does that, then it's stepping out from under the authority of God, and then there are times that we must suffer the consequences.
SPEAKER_00: Um the consequences not of rebelling against the government, but the consequences of having a government that is not following what God says, but we then must follow what God says, and that sometimes, and I can assure you in many places around the world, has very personal and very tragic circumstances, and we may very well find ourselves in the midst of that sooner than we think.
SPEAKER_00: There is nothing surprising about that, there's nothing in a certain sense wrong about that.
SPEAKER_00: If God wants us to live and function and serve Him with an oppressive regime that crushes the church, so be it.
SPEAKER_00: The church has thrived over the centuries in times of persecution and distress.
SPEAKER_00: A majority church, the moral majority, uh sorry, I want to get away from politics here.
SPEAKER_00: Um you can't fully get away from politics, but my friends, I will not use this pulpit as a political point of expression.
SPEAKER_00: Where the scriptures make it clear, biblical, moral, ethical issues will be loud and clear, but during next year's election, do not expect and do not ask me to preach politics.
SPEAKER_00: That is wrong, and I will refuse to do it.
SPEAKER_00: I will simply refuse to do it.
SPEAKER_00: We say what God says, and then it's up to us as individuals to respond in a democratic society according to our conscience.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, that was a bunny trail.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't have it in my notes, but all right.
SPEAKER_00: The point of all of this is that there are times where it's right and necessary to take human life, but what the sixth commandment is talking about is murder.
SPEAKER_00: Unauthorized by God and premeditated by our evil hearts, the taking of life of another human being.
SPEAKER_00: God is the one who determines what is authorized, not your orinary heart or mine.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: You didn't know I had an orinary heart?
SPEAKER_00: Talk to Jane.
SPEAKER_00: Talk to our kids.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: This command does not come to us without a context and without precedent.
SPEAKER_00: There is a basis for this.
SPEAKER_00: There is something that lies behind it, the limitations that we have as human beings.
SPEAKER_00: And it's found in what the Bible talks about.
SPEAKER_00: The scholars and the theologians, they get PhDs and write thousands of books.
SPEAKER_00: You could fill a whole library with questions of the image of man, but that's not, it should not be their thinking.
SPEAKER_00: God has been very clear that man is created in his image.
SPEAKER_00: In the image of God, he created him.
SPEAKER_00: And that we must see.
SPEAKER_00: We don't need to dwell on it this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but just turn, if you would, to Genesis chapter 9, just for a moment.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis chapter 9.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to move back towards uh towards creation, but a very interesting thing in Genesis chapter 9, we find ourselves uh at the time of Noah, and you know what happened at the time of Noah?
SPEAKER_00: God took his prerogative and destroyed the peoples of the earth, with the exception of Noah and his family.
SPEAKER_00: God has every right to do whatever he wants, including wiping out civilization.
SPEAKER_00: He preserved a few because he wasn't done with us.
SPEAKER_00: He's not done with us yet.
SPEAKER_00: But God took his prerogative and destroyed mankind with the exception of Noah's family.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis chapter 9, verses 1 through 6, and God blessed Noah, uh, this is after the flood, um, and said to him, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Does that sound familiar?
SPEAKER_00: Be fruitful and multiply?
SPEAKER_00: God had said that originally.
SPEAKER_00: It is man, God's intention for man to be fruitful and to multiply and to fulfill uh to fill the earth.
SPEAKER_00: The fear of you and dread shall be upon every beast of the earth and every bird of the heavens, everything that creeps in the ground and all the fish in the sea, into your hand they are delivered.
SPEAKER_00: We are not at the same level of the animal world.
SPEAKER_00: We are to rule over, steward uh the animal world, but we're not just another animal.
SPEAKER_00: Every moving thing that lives, verse 3, shall be food for you.
SPEAKER_00: As I have given you green plants, I give you everything.
SPEAKER_00: But you shall not eat of that which with its life, which is that is the blood.
SPEAKER_00: For your lifeblood I will require a reckoning from every beast I will require it, and from man, from his fellow man, I will require a reckoning for the life of man.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 6.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis 9, verse 6.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever sheds the blood of man shall uh his blood be shed.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's what we've been talking about.
SPEAKER_00: There's a place for taking life.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the root of it, the last phrase of verse 6.
SPEAKER_00: For God made man in his own image.
SPEAKER_00: Now he just kind of states that here.
SPEAKER_00: What does the image of God in man mean?
SPEAKER_00: We need to understand that.
SPEAKER_00: I'll try to help you.
SPEAKER_00: But what I'm suggesting is that that was the reason why unauthorized and premeditated taking of life is not allowed because God made man in his image.
SPEAKER_00: And God is the only one authorized to prescribe the times and places that human life can be taken.
SPEAKER_00: And so right here in Genesis chapter 9, we see that there is an authorized and an unauthorized taking of human life.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason, the rationale behind all of this, the explanation, is that we were made in the image and likeness of God.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this will take us back to Genesis chapter 1, verses 26 and 27.
SPEAKER_00: And we could spend weeks.
SPEAKER_00: In the image of God he created him.
SPEAKER_00: Male and female, he created them.
SPEAKER_00: Repeated in this, these two verses twice is reference to the image of God in which man was created, and that's the very same thing that was reached back to in Genesis chapter 9.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm not going to take very much time to talk about what the image of God is.
SPEAKER_00: I think there's lot, again, lots and lots of books that have been written, far too many doctors' theses written on it.
SPEAKER_00: But, and there's a certain variety of understandings, but here are at least three things that the image of God in man, by those who have given their lives studying it, tend to understand.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, there is such a thing as abstract thought, creativity, maybe even into the area of the arts, intellectual investigation.
SPEAKER_00: Adam and Eve were given the responsibility of naming the animals, which was not just sticking a label, that's going to be a hippopotamus and that's going to be a frog, but that investigation into the nature of things, of which in biblical times names were a reflection.
SPEAKER_00: There is something that separates us from all of the rest of creation, at least abstract thought, creativity, and art.
SPEAKER_00: Another thing that is generally understood is the moral nature of man, or what we might call conscience.
SPEAKER_00: Mark Twain had not only said, I think I quoted it last week, how dumb my father was when I was 17, and then I was astounded at how much he had learned by the time I got to be 21.
SPEAKER_00: Mark Twain, that great exegete of scripture, no, he was not.
SPEAKER_00: But he was an astute observer of man.
SPEAKER_00: Mark Twain said that man is the only animal that blushes or has reason to.
SPEAKER_00: Very profound observation.
SPEAKER_00: Man is the only animal that blushes or has reason to.
SPEAKER_00: There is a moral nature that separates us from the rest of creation, the rest of the animal world.
SPEAKER_00: We have a conscience.
SPEAKER_00: The conscience can be pressed down, the conscience can be seared, the conscience can be twisted.
SPEAKER_00: But there is a moral nature within every human being, and the blushing, the embarrassment is a poor shadow left after the fall of our moral nature.
SPEAKER_00: Just a mere shadow of the way things ought to work.
SPEAKER_00: We ought to do far more than just blush.
SPEAKER_00: We ought to run to Jesus and say, God help me, a sinner.
SPEAKER_00: But every blush, I don't mean the kind that you paint on your face, or you don't paint it, you brush it on, I guess.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: Anyway.
SPEAKER_00: Jane, you better help me with that.
SPEAKER_00: And don't just tell me to keep moving, Walt.
SPEAKER_00: Several implications of that.
SPEAKER_00: Man is not simply a higher animal.
SPEAKER_00: There is a crescendo in creation.
SPEAKER_00: The created realm.
SPEAKER_00: But man is set apart from the rest of creation.
SPEAKER_00: It is, we are the best.
SPEAKER_00: We've just really screwed up the best.
SPEAKER_00: But in the created order, we are the highest expression of God's creation.
SPEAKER_00: When we, without authorization and with malice of forethought, take the life of another human being, we are taking God's best and destroying it.
SPEAKER_00: And we have no authorization from God to do that.
SPEAKER_00: Now, there's a lot of attention given today, and rightly so, to environmental issues.
SPEAKER_00: We were not created to destroy the environment.
SPEAKER_00: We were created to rule over it and steward to tend and care for the garden.
SPEAKER_00: So there are real environmental concerns, and sometimes as Christians, we just let the liberals worry about that.
SPEAKER_00: And if to that extent, we're not understanding what God said.
SPEAKER_00: We are to be stewards of creation, but make no mistake about it.
SPEAKER_00: Man is not just another animal.
SPEAKER_00: We can be concerned about spotted owls, we can be concerned about Cecil the Lion.
SPEAKER_00: But what really matters, what really matters is man.
SPEAKER_00: Man, man.
SPEAKER_00: We must not, without authorization and with malice aforethought, take human life, with hand or heart.
SPEAKER_00: Saving the whales is great.
SPEAKER_00: It's just not as important as saving human life.
SPEAKER_00: This gets right to the matter of abortion.
SPEAKER_00: Even if you only assume that a fetus is a potential human being, I think it's a whole lot more than that, I personally believe from what my study of it is that it is a human life.
SPEAKER_00: But even if it is only a potential human life, it must not be discarded like an appendix or a tumor that is taken out and thrown away just because it's not convenient or it might be hazardous to us.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the nature of human life and the image of God in man gets into all kinds of practical things.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna have to keep going, otherwise I'm gonna get too excited here.
SPEAKER_00: Human life means more than the environment.
SPEAKER_00: And in other words, God is saying there's something you're to take your hands off of.
SPEAKER_00: You can tend the garden, you can rule over the animals, you can kill the other animals, but when it comes to other people, hands off.
SPEAKER_00: Hands off.
SPEAKER_00: It's not up to us.
SPEAKER_00: It's up to God.
SPEAKER_00: It's not our affair, it's not within our mandate, it's not within our job description.
SPEAKER_00: Who do we think we are?
SPEAKER_00: Who do we think God is?
SPEAKER_00: God can do anything he wants.
SPEAKER_00: And some of the things that he wants, I struggle with.
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm not sure how that all fits together.
SPEAKER_00: I get that.
SPEAKER_00: But I believe with every ounce of my body that God does whatever he pleases, and he pleases always and only that which is good.
SPEAKER_00: So when I'm confused about it, I just have to submit under the authority and the word of God because who do I think I am to question God?
SPEAKER_00: Job got in trouble with that.
SPEAKER_00: You remember what happened at the end of the book of Job?
SPEAKER_00: Job had lots of reasons for lots of questions.
SPEAKER_00: And so he finally went after God and he started asking God inappropriate questions.
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember what God said to him?
SPEAKER_00: Who do you think you are, Job?
SPEAKER_00: Were you there when I made Leviathan?
SPEAKER_00: Were you there when I threw the mountains into space into place?
SPEAKER_00: Were you there when I created the universes?
SPEAKER_00: Who do you think you are?
SPEAKER_00: And Job shut up.
SPEAKER_00: We must not find ourselves challenging God's good in perfect ways just because it hurts or just because we don't understand it.
SPEAKER_00: Complex moral issues here, every one of them.
SPEAKER_00: I am not talking about these things cheaply.
SPEAKER_00: But the root of solving the moral and ethical issues today can only be found in a biblical worldview, where we go back and we set aside our inner judge, that's not right, that's not right, that's not right, and we sit under the teaching of God's word.
SPEAKER_00: So we have all kinds we've already touched on war and just war or not, uh, capital punishment, the role of government, but it gets into all kinds of other ethical issues: abortion, artificial insemination, genetic manipulation, gender manipulation, cloning of humans, stem cell research, euthanasia, suicide, assisted suicide.
SPEAKER_00: All of those need to be explored by Christians and understood by Christians from a biblical theological worldview.
SPEAKER_00: None of those are my point this morning.
SPEAKER_00: But I do want to say that this issue of the nature of man as the highest of creation and having inherent value because we reflect the image and the likeness of God.
SPEAKER_00: We resemble God in certain ways.
SPEAKER_00: That's the likeness.
SPEAKER_00: The image of God, when when we see ourselves, we see something of God.
SPEAKER_00: And because of that, that has to be brought to bear on these ethical questions.
SPEAKER_00: We may find ourselves, unfortunately, as far as I'm concerned, having the technical ability to do things which we are not authorized to do.
SPEAKER_00: And that's not just taking a gun, that could be uh aborting a fetus or it could be manipulating DNA or whatever.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and all I'm saying is just because we have the technical ability to do something doesn't mean it's authorized for us to do it.
SPEAKER_00: Pure and simple.
SPEAKER_00: It's clear from what we are seeing.
SPEAKER_00: What are the limits?
SPEAKER_00: How do we decide?
SPEAKER_00: It's not a simple matter.
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's not just enough to say we're pro-life, but if we're not pro-life, we're not in touch with who God is and what God has said.
SPEAKER_00: But it's not just enough to be against abortion.
SPEAKER_00: We need to be stimulating a whole culture of life instead of a culture of death.
SPEAKER_00: And it's very interesting that the ethical issues in our age have to do with the early phases of life and the latter phases of life.
SPEAKER_00: But we need to have an understanding of God, man, life, and a culture of life.
SPEAKER_00: Death comes, the death rate is a hundred percent.
SPEAKER_00: How we approach death for ourselves, how we feel about that, the actions that are taken towards the end of our life, are every bit as important of the issues of abortion.
SPEAKER_00: They're essentially the same kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I can just picture somebody taking that out as a soundbite, and then I'd get in all kinds of trouble.
SPEAKER_00: Put it in the context of what I've been saying this morning.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: I want to have us look for a couple of minutes at uh the New Testament application of this.
SPEAKER_00: Uh you may be thinking to yourself, fine, uh, murder's wrong, and human life must not be, must be treated with utmost sanctity, but I don't kill, I don't promote abortion, I don't euthanetize, I've never taken a gun in my hand to kill someone.
SPEAKER_00: I don't pass out um Halloween candy with razor blades stuck in the middle.
SPEAKER_00: Finally, finally, we've going through, and I've been waiting for a commandment that I could get off the hook from.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, go all of the other ones?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I could say I haven't done those.
SPEAKER_00: My friends, if we understand the way Jesus explained the sixth commandment, we need the bread and we need the cup.
SPEAKER_00: The bread in the cup is for us.
SPEAKER_00: Because we may or may not take human life with our hands, but you have taken human life with your heart.
SPEAKER_00: Let's see what Jesus says about this.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew chapter 5, verses 21.
SPEAKER_00: Let's turn there for a moment.
SPEAKER_00: Not going to spend a lot of time here.
SPEAKER_00: It's too convicting.
SPEAKER_00: I don't need to spend a lot of time here.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Matthew chapter 5, verses 21 to 26.
SPEAKER_00: Let me just read it.
SPEAKER_00: Um, it's very interesting that this is in the context of Jesus interacting with the Pharisees who accused him of playing fast and free with the Old Testament law.
SPEAKER_00: And so he says just a few verses in before this in verse 17 of chapter 5 don't think that I have come to abolish the law and prophets.
SPEAKER_00: I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.
SPEAKER_00: And what he explains to us now is a deeper understanding than just the surface understanding of uh, in this case, uh the sixth commandment, and then verses 27 and following, which we'll see touch on next week, uh, the seventh commandment.
SPEAKER_00: So far from doing away with the law, he's showing us the inner meaning of it.
SPEAKER_00: One writer has correctly said uh Jesus sharpens the edge of every commandment.
SPEAKER_00: It penetrates and judges the thoughts and intentions of our heart.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, You have heard it said, and then he says, What is said actually is that murder is the root of which anger is the fruit.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 22 I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable for judgment.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone who insults his brother will be liable to the counsel.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever says you fool will be liable to the fire of hell.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're offering your gift at the altar, and remember that your brother has something against you, implied, you've done something against you, so he ha against him, so he has something against you, then leave your gift at the altar.
SPEAKER_00: First go be reconciled, your brother, and then come.
SPEAKER_00: Come to terms quickly with your accuser.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 26, I say to you, uh, there is real punishment to be meted out to those who murder with their hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Um I'd like to just have you think about what I call I don't think I stole this from somebody.
SPEAKER_00: I think I came up with it, but it doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_00: The anger, hatred, continuum, anger, murder continuum.
SPEAKER_00: It begins with anger.
SPEAKER_00: Um and and he begins talking about anyone who says raca, uh, translated here, I think you fool.
SPEAKER_00: Um have you ever said to somebody, have you ever I can't even how many times has somebody cut me off and I said, You idiot?
SPEAKER_00: How many times has somebody done something where I just begin to disdain them, begin to look down on them?
SPEAKER_00: You crazy, good for nothing idiot! Have you ever once had such thoughts about some other person?
SPEAKER_00: Don't raise your hand.
SPEAKER_00: You would think it would be a praise meeting in here, the hands would be up so high.
SPEAKER_00: So it begins with just really kind of anger that gets within us and it boils over to a disdain.
SPEAKER_00: Like you look at that lowlife.
SPEAKER_00: That low life.
SPEAKER_00: My friends, what are we saying about another human being?
SPEAKER_00: What's the attitude in our heart?
SPEAKER_00: Who is there in your world of experience and circle of relationships that you really can't stand?
SPEAKER_00: Please don't try to tell me that there's not somebody in your life that you really don't like.
SPEAKER_00: You would avoid them, you'd rather not talk with them, there's things about them that drive you nuts.
SPEAKER_00: You, in your mind, you're putting them down, you're scorning them, you're disdaining them, you're dishonoring them, and it's just part of the continuum.
SPEAKER_00: And then, if we're not careful, uh it becomes hatred, beginning to wish the ill of another person.
SPEAKER_00: Wishing, I just hope that person gets his.
SPEAKER_00: In a wide variety of ways, we begin not only to be angry and not only to have scorn, not be able to stand that person, but it becomes more than that.
SPEAKER_00: We begin to, we would be happy if they got their comeuppance.
SPEAKER_00: I hope he gets his or hers.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: And what Jesus is saying is that anger is the fruit of which verbal, mental, physical murder is the root.
SPEAKER_00: The difference between anger and murder is a matter of degrees, level of intensity, and physical harm actually are not actually being caused.
SPEAKER_00: Clearly, if you if you said, I could just kill that guy, okay, it's clearly better that you just say it than actually do it.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying the consequences don't vary significantly, but the attitude of our hearts is somewhere along that continuum.
SPEAKER_00: And murder is simply the fruit of which anger is the root.
SPEAKER_00: They are clearly tied in Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Genesis 4 verse 5 with Cain and Abel, where Cain killed Abel, it clearly says he became angry, and a couple of verses later, he takes Abel's life.
SPEAKER_00: Out of the overflow of our hearts, not only do our mouths speak, but our actions come to the fore.
SPEAKER_00: Um I don't say any of this lightly and pointing fingers at you.
SPEAKER_00: There's all kinds of fingers that point back at me in the mirror.
SPEAKER_00: I have a vivid recollection of myself as a teenager.
SPEAKER_00: Uh one of the problems with teenagers is you have all kinds of emotions you don't you don't quite know what to do with.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us are still emotional teenagers, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: All kinds of emotions you don't quite know what to do with.
SPEAKER_00: You don't handle them in the right way.
SPEAKER_00: But I have a vivid recollection.
SPEAKER_00: I must have been 13 or 14 years old, and I, my mother, I don't remember what she did, but I looked at that woman with hate in my heart, and then I said to her, I, this was right after I called her a dirty name and said, I hate you.
SPEAKER_00: I I don't know what the consequences for her of that are, how hard it is for your children to say things like that.
SPEAKER_00: But I know I have lived for decades with such sorrow.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I didn't really hate her, I just I didn't like her very much, but I I didn't like what she was doing, I didn't understand, I was just a dumb teenager, no offense intended.
SPEAKER_00: So when when the Bible, when Jesus makes it clear that That kind of reference to my mother is wrong.
SPEAKER_00: He's talking to me.
SPEAKER_00: Is he talking to you?
SPEAKER_00: I don't think I'm the only one here in this congregation to whom he's talking.
SPEAKER_00: I made a big mistake back there.
SPEAKER_00: Look, giving, calling her a dirty name, telling her I hated her, the first consequence of which is my father was within hearing.
SPEAKER_00: And he came after me and slapped me across the face.
SPEAKER_00: I deserved far more than that.
SPEAKER_00: He slapped me across the face, and the next day I went to school with three or four red marks on my cheek.
SPEAKER_00: And I deserved that and a whole lot more.
SPEAKER_00: Those were all the consequences I thought at the time.
SPEAKER_00: But now, and my mother, I buried her a couple of years ago, and I was pleading with her in various ways to come to faith.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't think there's a direct correlation between my calling her a name and treating her poorly and her not being a believer.
SPEAKER_00: It's just I looked back at that and and I just feel dirty.
SPEAKER_00: Don't you feel dirty when you despise and scorn and can't stand other people?
SPEAKER_00: You ought to.
SPEAKER_00: One other example for me, and then we're gonna uh no, we'll we'll do it now.
SPEAKER_00: Dishonoring people is deeply offensive to God because people, all people, lost people, despicable people in our eyes, are created in the image and likeness of God.
SPEAKER_00: It can be marred, it can be twisted.
SPEAKER_00: There's many of things about human beings today that are not the way they should be, but all human beings are to be treated with dignity, even those with whom we violently disagree and we despise the opinions that they hold, we despise their lifestyle, we must not despise them as people.
SPEAKER_00: They are image bearers of God, albeit broken, shattered to some extent, they are image bearers of God, and we must not with our heart or with our mouth or with our hands take human life.
SPEAKER_00: Now I hope you're somewhat touched by this yourself.
SPEAKER_00: If not, you haven't been listening.
SPEAKER_00: You might have been listening to me, but you haven't been listening to God.
SPEAKER_00: Because there is not a single one of us who has not broken the six commandments.
SPEAKER_00: Not a single one.
SPEAKER_00: The appropriate response is for us to worship and obey.
SPEAKER_00: And we come to him.
SPEAKER_00: We come to him, and that's what the Lord's Supper is all about.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna have the Lord's Supper now.
SPEAKER_00: That's gonna be the conclusion to this message.
SPEAKER_00: I'd like to have the orchestra come and uh the musicians, and we're going to, as they're getting uh settled in, they're going to be playing as um as we take the Lord's Supper.
SPEAKER_00: And I I simply want to say, the Lord's Supper is meant for us.
SPEAKER_00: It's meant for this.
SPEAKER_00: It's meant for us to say, Lord Jesus, I am sinful.
SPEAKER_00: I may have been saved, but I'm still sinful.
SPEAKER_00: I may not have been saved.
SPEAKER_00: I need to, Jesus, I need you.
SPEAKER_00: I need your death on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: I need you having taken my penalty upon yourself.
SPEAKER_00: I need the blood of Christ covering my sins.
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord's Supper is a time to remember that.
SPEAKER_00: Um, with the Lord's Supper, it's for believers.
SPEAKER_00: It's for people who have a relationship with Christ, not a perfect relationship.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to have a perfect, you don't have to have your life totally cleaned up to take the Lord's Supper, but it is for people who could say, Christ really is my Savior.
SPEAKER_00: Not just that I raised my hand at some point in the past, but my heart is responsive to God somewhat, and I want it to be more and more responsive.
SPEAKER_00: If that is the case with you, take the Lord's Supper.
SPEAKER_00: It's a remembrance of his broken body and his shed blood.
SPEAKER_00: Take this in remembrance of him.
SPEAKER_00: And let's get ourselves straightened out with God this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Uh so the ushers are going to come.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we're going to ask you to hold the elements uh until they have distributed this, until the orchestra is finished, and then I will be back and we'll take the Lord's Supper together.