Exodus 20 13
13 – You shall not murder.
Matthew 5 21
21 – “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgement.’
22 – But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgement.
Again, anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.”
Alexander M. Sanders, Jr., is the Chief Judge of the South Carolina Court of Appeals. He was asked to deliver the commencement address for the May, 1992 Graduating Class of the University of South Carolina. His daughter, Zoe was a member of that class….and in his speech Judge Sanders shared the following story from her life. When Zoe was three years old, Sanders came home from work to find a crisis in his household. Zoe’s pet turtle had died, and she was crying as if her heart would break. Her mother, having coped with the problems of the home all day, gladly turned this one over to the father to solve. At the time, Sanders was practicing law and serving in the state legislature. And…frankly, he felt it was a problem a lawyer/politician was not up to solving. The mysteries of life and death are difficult, if not impossible for the mature mind to fathom. The task of explaining them to a three-year-old was completely beyond either his confidence or experience. But he tried anyway.
FIRST, he made the obvious argument that they would get another turtle to replace the one that died. They would go down to the pet store and buy another one just like the one who was gone.
But, he got nowhere with that argument. Even at three years old, Zoe was smart enough to know that there is a certain non-transferability about living things. She knew that a turtle is not a toy and that there’s really no such thing as getting another one just like the one that died.
So Zoe’s tears continued.
Finally, in desperation, Sanders said, “I tell you what, we’ll have a funeral for the turtle.” Being three years old, she didn’t know what a funeral was.
So, he quickly proceeded to expand on the theme. He was employing the typical lawyer’s tactic of diversion. If you can’t win on the issue at hand, the best thing to do is to take off on something completely beside the point. “A funeral,” he explained, “is a great festival in HONOR of the turtle.” Well, she didn’t know what a festival was either so he quickly proceeded to explain further. And, as he did so, he began to depart from the lawyer’s tactic of diversion and began to engage in the politician’s prerogative of outright lying. “Actually,” he said, “a funeral is like a BIRTHDAY PARTY!
We’ll have ice cream and cake and lemonade and balloons, and all the children in the neighborhood will come over to our house to play.”
Well this tactic worked! Zoe’s tears began to dry, and she quickly returned to her happy, smiling self again. She was very excited at the prospect of all that was going to happen-a party with all the trimmings, all because the turtle had died. This was great! Then, an utterly unforeseen thing happened. They looked down, and lo and behold, the turtle began to move. He wasn’t dead after all! In a matter of seconds, he was crawling away as lively as ever. And for once, the politician was struck dumb. He didn’t know what to say. But Zoe appraised the situation perfectly. With all the innocence of her tender years, she looked up at her father and said, “Daddy, let’s kill it.”
We chuckle….but you know our society has come to respond to it’s troubles much like little Zoe did that day. When a life interferes with our pleasures and plans, the most popular solution these days is to simply end that life.
If a woman is pregnant and it is not convenient for her to give birth….our society says she can deal with that problem by killing the unborn child. In the nearly 27 years since ROW v. WADE legalized abortion in our country over 37 million unborn children have lost their lives in this manner. Their names would fill the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial wall over 700 times. And 97% of those 37 million lives were ended simply because they were an inconvenience to their parents. These children were not conceived as a result of incest or rape….they were perfectly healthy and the pregnancy did not threaten the life of the mother.
No, it was decided to end their lives simply because if they had lived it would have interfered with the plans of other people.
These days when people are frustrated with the way the world treats them, many decide to get even by purchasing a hand gun or assault weapon legally…and then they go on a shooting spree whether it be in a church or a post office or an office suite full of insider traders or even a school. If I counted right — in the past two years alone there have been eight separate incidents of children killing children in public schools. Yesterday’s news reported that police apprehended youth in two Midwestern cities who were ready and equipped to vent their frustrations over their problems by killing their peers.
More and more people these days say that, if life becomes too difficult to live they should be allowed to end it all through suicide or to have others do it through euthanasia. “HOW TO” manuals on suicide are readily available on cyberspace’s bookshelves. And, euthanasia laws are now in force in the state of Oregon making it legal to end the life of someone if it is too troublesome to let that person live.
All this goes to say that many people in our society are like little Zoe in that when a life becomes inconvenient they feel that the best thing to do is to end that life. And wherever we stand on the various complex issues relating to the sanctity of human life surely we would all agree that human life is not cherished in this country as it should be. It has even come to the point that ending human life has become entertainment in our culture. Did you realize that by the time a child grows up in America, he or she will have viewed tens of thousands of murders and acts of violence on television and in the movies? If that wasn’t enough children can now “act out” violent inclinations with a video game or on a computer screen. The goal of a new game called, Car-mageddon, is for players to operate cars and run over pedestrians-they even earn points by hitting little old ladies with walkers. In another game called Postal, players pretend to be berserk postal employees who get points for killing innocent bystanders, including women and children.
The promotion on their Web site says, “Listen to victims moan and beg for mercy. Execute them if they get on your nerves.” This past Wednesday night John Helsel told me that he heard of a teacher in the Midwest who is being reprimanded for giving his class an assignment. Apparently his students were to write an essay explaining who they would most want to kill….and they were to include details as to how they would do it.
Even this holiday….Halloween….seems to diminish human life with its focus on Satanism and the Occult. In scripture Satan is referred to as “the destroyer”…and Jesus may have been referring to him when He said in John 10, “The thief comes to steal and to destroy but I have come that you might have life in all its fulness.”
I don’t know about you but it scares me how much our culture has come to cheapen human life. I fear that the shakers and movers in our society may have forgotten how important this sixth commandment really is. You see no nation can function for long if the right to life of it’s citizens is not protected. If this sixth commandment were not enforced anarchy would reign.
No wonder every known civilization prohibits murder.
So it’s very important that we understand the principles behind this particular commandment. And I think a good place for us to begin our study of this text by looking at…
…..What it DOESN’T say.
1. First, it does not say, “You shall not KILL.” An accurate translation would be, “You shall not MURDER.”
The Hebrew word here is “tirtzach” and it refers to unauthorized and violent killing — or murder. And of course there is a vast difference between murder and killing.
If this commandment were to be taken as a blanket prohibition of all killing, then it would be wrong to kill dangerous animals, poisonous snakes, or even pesky insects. You may remember that one of the great missionaries to Africa was Dr. Albert Schweitzer who spent his life there spreading the gospel and built a great mission hospital in Lambarene, Africa.
Well, he took this command to mean that killing anything was forbidden so he strictly forbade the killing of even so much as a fly or a mosquito. Yet ironically the good doctor and his associates were there in part to save lives by destroying the lives of disease-bearing organisms and microbiological life forms.
Schweitzer was mistaken in his understanding of this commandment because…
2. …it does not forbid the taking of animal life.
Now, the Bible does teach the humane treatment of animals. Proverbs 12:10 says, “A righteous man cares for the needs of his animal…” But God’s word gives us the right to kill animals for food. Genesis 9:3 says, “Every thing that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.” Scripture records that Jesus ate fish on numerous occasions and as a good Jewish man He would also have eaten meat at Passover.
So this command does not forbid the killing of animals for food.
3. And neither is this commandment a prohibition against war.
God often called the people of Israel to war…..sadly enough in a sinful, fallen world, war is often necessary to insure that people will be treated justly by others. Since the days of Saint Augustine and Thomas Aquinas the church has worked to develop the concept of a “just war.” I remember the lecture on the just war theory in my ethics class in seminary…you may remember President Bush referring to this at the beginning of the Gulf War. And basically a just war is a war that is waged only as a last resort when all other efforts at diplomacy have failed. It is a war that defends that which is right or punishes that which is wrong. For a war to meet the “just war” criteria it must have a just cause…such as ending Hitler’s aggression. And it must also have a clear and just intent such as freeing the people of Kuwait from Hussein. The goal of a JUST war is to make things better for the nations involved. For this reason a nuclear would fail to meet the standards of the just war theory.
So this commandment is not a restriction against war.
4. We should also note that this commandment is not a prohibition against the death penalty.
Capitol punishment for the murder of an innocent person is mandated in the Bible. In fact this is the only law that is repeated in each and every one of the first five books of the Bible. (Genesis 9:3, Exodus 21, Leviticus 24:17, Numbers 35:31, Deuteronomy 19:21 ) It is first mentioned when Noah exited the ark and God said, “Whoever sheds the blood of a man, by man shall his blood be shed.” However we should also note that the Bible contains very careful guidelines to protect people who were wrongfully accused of murder. Cities of refuge were designated as safe places to which an individual could flee if he had accidentally ended the life of another. He would find protection there and be given a chance to explain what happened. Deuteronomy 19:15 says that at least two witnesses must see the crime before a person can be charged with murder. And circumstantial evidence was not valid in a Jewish court.. As it says in Exodus 23:7 steps were always taken NOT to “…execute the innocent or the righteous.” So this law does not refer to capitol punishment. And there is a great difference between the murder of an innocent person and society’s determination to end the life of the individual who has intentionally killed another human being. If anything, a capitol punishment law underscores how precious human life is. t is a necessary deterrent to protect life. It says that if an individual shows that he does not cherish human life he must forfeit his own so that others will not lose their right to life at his hands.
Okay,enough of what this command DOESN’T say….what DOES it say? What message or principle is God trying to get across to us in this text? Well, basically God is saying ONE THING here….and this is it: In giving us this law God is saying that human life is precious…it is unique….in fact, it is more valuable than any other life that He created.
Look at Genesis chapter one and you will see that humans were created in a the way that differed from the way all other things were created. In each OTHER creative act God said, “Let there be,” and it was so. God spoke and creation occurred. But the creation of human life begins differently. God says, “Let us MAKE man…” So God didn’t just speak us into existence as He did everything else…No…He MADE us. To create the first human, verse 7 of Genesis 2 says, “God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breathe of life, and man became a living being.” God did not “BREATHE the breathe of life” into any other creature.
So human life was made differently. Also, if you read the first chapter of Genesis you’ll note that after God made something, like the sun or the oceans, the scripture said, “And God saw that it was good.” But when He created HUMAN LIFE He said that it was not just “good” but “VERY good.” So, in God’s eyes human life IS more highly esteemed than any other form of life. You may remember that human life was created on the last day of God’s creative work. It was the climax — the apex — of all the rest of creation — as if everything else He created was made with us in mind. You know, most of the scientific community adhere to something called “THE ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE”. Simply stated, the Anthropic Principle implies that when we look at the world around us, it seems that the universe was somehow designed to support and nourish human life. Here are some facts that illustrate this principle:* Raise or lower the universe’s rate of expansion by even one part in a million and it would rule out the possibility of human life. If the average distance between stars were any greater, planets like the earth would not have been formed; any smaller, the planetary orbits necessary for life would not have occurred. If the ratio of carbon to oxygen had been slightly different than it is, none of us would have been here to breathe the air. Change the tilt of the earth’s axis slightly in one direction, and we would freeze. Change it the other direction and we’d burn up. Suppose the earth had been a bit closer or further from the sun, or just a little larger or smaller, or if it rotated at a speed any different from the one we’re spinning at right now.
Given any of these changes, the resulting temperature variations would be completely fatal to us.
So the lesson we can draw from the Anthropic Principle is this: SOMEONE must have gone to a lot of effort to make things just right so that you and I could be here to enjoy life. In short, even modern science points to the fact that human life is very important to God….that WE ARE VERY GOOD in His sight. And this is the message of this sixth commandment. Human life is a precious gift. Both our lives and the lives of others are our sacred trust.
Now….What is it that is so special about human beings? Why is human life sacred?
I want to suggest three reasons. And the first is this:
5. Human life is sacred because only humans are made in the image of God.
Now,“Image” refers to someone who resembles someone else — like a son who is the image of his father. Since God is spirit, this doesn’t mean we are physically like God.
No the fact that we are made in the image of God means we have similar inner qualities…..the ability to reason….to enter into relationships…especially to relate to God.
No other created thing has the ability to relate to our Creator as we do. Do you realize that human beings are the closest thing in all creation to God? Psalm 8:5 says that man is “a little lower than heavenly beings” Some translations say “a little lower than angels” but the word translated “angels” or “heavenly beings” is “ELOHIM” so the verse actually says that we are created “a little lower than ELOHIM — God Himself.” The ranking order in creation is not GOD, angels, humans. It is God, humans, angels. In God’s sight angels aren’t of greater value than human beings; in fact the reverse is true. Angels are never said to be created in God’s image. Only man is given this distinction.
6. But you know the thing that most clearly shows the unique worth of human life is the fact that God sent His only Son to die for us.
This is an estimation of human worth beyond our comprehension. God treasures you and me more than any other thing He created and this is indicated by the fact that He not only loved us enough to create us in His image. He also loved us enough to pay the unbelievable cost of redeeming us.
Romans 5:8 says, “God demonstrates His own love — He shows how much He valued human life in this — while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
So, as C.S. Lewis once wrote, there is no such thing as a “mere mortal.” The words to that song we sang as children are so true, “Red and yellow, black and white, they ARE precious in His sight.” And then one other thing that shows the value of humans is that…
7. …..they can actually impact eternity.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God “….has planted eternity in the hearts of men…” We can effect much more than just our short lives. We can actually “lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven.” We can do things that have eternal significance. In the city of Chicago around the turn of the century, Edward Kimball was concerned about one of his young Sunday school students-a clerk in a shoe store. One day Kimball visited him at the store and found him in the back stocking shoes. He spent a great deal of time talking with him that day and as a result led him to Christ.
The young man’s name was Dwight L. Moody and he eventually left the shoe store to become one of the greatest preachers and evangelists of all time. God used Moody to bring hundreds of thousands of people to make the decision to accept the free gift of eternal life made possible by Jesus Christ. Moody, whose international speaking took him to the British Isles, once preached in a little chapel pastored by a young man with the imposing name of Frederic Brotherton Meyer.
In his sermon Moody told an emotionally charged story about a Sunday School teacher he had known in Chicago who personally went to every student in his class and led every one of them to Christ. That message changed Pastor Meyer’s entire ministry, inspiring him to become an evangelist much like Moody. Over the years Meyer came to America several times to preach. Once in Northfield, Massachusetts, a confused young preacher sitting in the back row heard Meyer ask, “If you are not willing to give up everything for Christ, are you willing to be made willing?” That remark led J. Wilbur Chapman to respond to the call of God in his life. Chapman went on to become one of the most effective evangelists of his time. A former professional baseball player by the name of Billy Sunday helped set up his crusades and learned how to preach by watching Chapman. Sunday eventually took over Chapman’s ministry, becoming one of the most dynamic evangelists of the 20th century sharing the secret of eternal life in Christ with over 100 million people. Inspired by a 1924 Billy Sunday crusade in Charlotte, North Carolina, a committee of Christians there dedicated themselves to reaching that city for Christ. The committee invited evangelist Mordecai Ham to hold a series of evangelistic meetings in 1932. A lanky 16-year-old sat in the huge crowd one evening of that crusade, spellbound by the message of the white-haired preacher, who seemed to be shouting and waving his finger at him.
Night after night the teen attended and finally went forward to give his life to Christ. The teenager’s name was Billy Graham-the man who has communicated the gospel of Christ to more people than any man in history. This all started with one human being: a Sunday School teacher named Kimball who by his faithful work affected the eternal destiny of countless millions of people. This is yet another reason that human beings are so special to God…for He knows the eternal potential of any life that is lived according to His purpose.
So all this means that if we want to see the true value of human beings we need to see them from God’s perspective.The only way to accurately cherish our lives and the lives of others is to see each person as God sees them: made in His image, capable of impacting eternity, worth more than the life of His only Son. A lighting expert was given the job of illuminating a statue of a boy. First, he put the lights on the floor shining upon the boy’s face. He stepped back and looked at it and was shocked-it made the boy look demented.
So He changed the lights. He tried every possible position. Finally he put the lights up above where they shone down on the boy’s face. Then he stood back and smiled, for the boy looked like an angel. There is truth for us in this story. When we look at people from the earthly level some look inferior, and it is easy to feel that “Those people don’t matter. They’re not really worth much.” But when we look at a person, any person, through the eyes of Christ with the light streaming down on him from God, then that life becomes sacred. Looking at humanity from this perspective shows us then that to murder another human is an unbelievably horrible sin. It is clearly wrong to cheapen human life in any way.
Now, maybe you hear all this and think. I never murdered anyone and am not planning on it. I’m in the clear here so why am I wasting my time listening to this bald guy preach on this text? Well don’t leave just yet because there is a good chance that you ARE guilty of breaking this law of God. You see, Jesus said even our anger directed at ourselves or other people can make us guilty of breaking this commandment. Our Savior taught that murder is more than an act. It is an attitude.
Do you remember the text from the sermon on the mount that [Susan-Gary] read earlier? This text records Jesus as saying that “anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgement. And anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the Sanhedrin or any one who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.” Now…“Raca” was really more of a sound than a word. It was a clearing of the throat as though to say, “I spit on you.”
And to call another person a “worthless fool” was the same as writing them off all together. Jesus said this was as bad as actually killing a person….for when we get this angry with someone then deep down inside we are thinking that this person doesn’t deserve to be alive. In this instant of anger we are saying, “I don’t want to have anything to do with this person….as far as I’m concerned my life would be better if his life would end.” If we are not careful anger can lead us to think in ways that devalue human life.
This past Friday Daniel had to ride the Metro into D.C. to tour the Smithsonian as a part of a field trip and his teacher required that he get his Metro pass the night before so as to save time.
So, Thursday night he and I pulled into the Metro parking lot at the Shady Grove station and while he circled in the parking lot I walked into the station and bought his ticket. Then I walked back out, he picked me up, and we headed home. As we exited the parking lot we came upon the toll booth-where people who actually PARK their cars pay for the privilege.
Well, the attendant opened the booth and stopped talking on the phone to a fried long enough to tell me that I would have to pay $2.25. I said, “You don’t understand-we didn’t park here. We just pulled in so I could buy my son a metro ticket to use tomorrow on a school field trip.” Well, she rudely ignored me and went back to talking to her friend on the phone and then she stopped long enough to say again, “You’ll still have to pay $2.25.” Daniel and I showed her the newly purchased Metro pass and explained again that we had not parked in the lot…and-in between sentences of her phone conversation she insisted, “You’ll still have to pay $2.25.” Now I was already frustrated to have to run this errand in the first place and I was more frustrated when I realized we had entered the parking area and not the “kiss and ride” area where I wouldn’t have had to walk so far to buy this already expensive ticket. And to think that I would have to pay an additional $2.25 of my hard earned money just to have the privilege of buying a Metro pass really angered me. And it didn’t help that the attendant cared more about her phone conversation than my plight.
So I was ANGRY! I shoved a five dollar bill in her direction and yelled, “This is a major rip off!” Of course she could have cared less.
Now, I wouldn’t really hurt that person but you know for an instant my anger made it easy to want to and if looks could kill I might have that night. In my mind, there was a moment that I wished she did not exist. In my heart I devalued her life. She and her insensitive attitude was an inconvenience to me. For an instant….just an instant…..she was worth less than $2.25 in my opinion.
So I broke this commandment and I bet there has been a time when everyone in this room broke it as well. We are all murderers deep down inside. You know, we are lot like the Pharisees of Jesus’ day in that we would rather deal with externals but Jesus is not satisfied with that. He wants to deal with INTERNAL things. He wants to talk about what is happening in our hearts. He knows that long before I would murder someone, I would begin the process with my thoughts. Ron Mehl writes, “Jesus deals with the ROOT of this commandment, not just it’s fruit. He’s not content to trim off the nettles and poison oak in our lives close to the ground.
No, He wants to uproot the whole poisonous weed.” Jesus taught that the root of murder is anger — hateful, people-dishonoring anger.
So all of us DO need to listen to the message of this 6th commandment. From our study of this text I believe God would want us to understand that there really IS a sanctity of human life. He would want us to realize that both our lives and the lives of others are our sacred trust. And God’s word clearly teaches that we must guard not only our actions toward others but also our thoughts. In short nothing we do or think should betray this sacred trust in any way because Human life is a very precious thing.
You know the One who understands how precious your life really is….is God. As your Creator….your Designer, He knows best how to live your life.
So the best way to show that you truly understand this commandment is to give your life to Him…to make your will His will. This morning as we sing I invite you to respond by doing just that. If you are not a Christian then we urge you to accept His gift of ETERNAL life…II Timothy 6:19 says that when we do that we, “…take hold of the life that really is life.” You may be here and believe that God’s will is that you join this church and in so doing ask Him to use your life in helping us minister to this community. Whatever your decision I would urge you to leave your seat and come and share it with me or Steve as we stand now and sing…