What If They’re Wrong Series Exodus 20:13 One Life To Live
In Chicago a few years ago, 2 boys, ages 9 and 11, held a 5 year old boy out of a 5th story apartment window.
They told him that they would drop him if he didn’t give them his candy.
He didn’t - they did.
He fell 5 stories to his death.
In May of this year a 20 year old honor student by the name of Kelly Angell delivered a healthy baby in a ladies room stall at Boston’s Logan Airport.
She left her baby floating in a toilet and returned to the terminal area to wait for a flight to London. (World, June 24, 2000 page 20)
On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold gunned down 12 classmates and a teacher, then shot themselves at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.
In 1997, physician assisted suicide officially became legal in Oregon.
In 1973 Roe vs Wade taught society a lethal lesson: that personal autonomy outweighed absolute moral values including the value of human life.
We’ve been looking at the Ten Commandments for the past few weeks in a series called "What If They’re Wrong."
We’ve been making a comparison between what God says and what our culture says.
What we’ve found so far is that our culture isn’t always truthful with us.
Today we’re looking at the 6th Commandment "You shall not murder."
This is a commandment that we often overlook because most of us have never murdered anyone, at least not in the sense that we interpret it.
As a matter of fact, we often use this commandment to rationalize our "goodness."
Our culture lets us say things like, "I’m a pretty good person...I’ve never killed anyone."
But this commandment transcends the traditional wisdom of our culture.
At the heart of this commandment is the principle that God values human life.
Our culture does not.
If you read much in the Old Testament you’ll see that this commandment was written during a time when people regularly sacrificed other people, sometimes even their own children, to their idols and false gods.
That would be unthinkable for us today.
We just can’t imagine how intelligent human beings could possibly sacrifice another person, especially one of their own children.
Could you imagine picking up the newspaper one morning and reading about some woman sacrificing her baby to some unknown god?
We would be appalled!
When we read those horror stories about women like the young teenager who delivered her baby in a bathroom and left it to die while she went back to dancing at her prom we are outraged!
How could a woman do that to her poor, innocent baby?
But women do that very thing every day!
Our culture calls it abortion - God calls it murder.
And the god to which that baby is sacrificed is the god of self.
It gets in our way.
It’s an inconvenience.
“I’m not ready to be a parent yet.”
“It will cramp my lifestyle.”
Don’t you find it just a little bit odd that we can be outraged over a woman leaving her baby in a toilet or in a dumpster but it’s life as usual when we hear about a woman having her baby almost completely delivered then killed by a physician?
Fact is, we don’t even hear about women having abortions these days unless the abortion is botched.
Then we are outraged that a doctor could do such a thing to a woman and get away with it.
No mention of the dead baby.
But let a woman deliver a baby herself then kill it and she’s in jail!
Somewhat of a double standard, don’t you think?
“It’s O.K. for you to kill my baby...why isn’t it O.K. for me? “
If human life has no value to a physician who takes an oath to protect and preserve human life, or to parents who make the life possible, then why should human life have value to me?
Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide also fit into this commandment.
These are nothing more than "assisted murders."
The thinking behind physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia is that sometimes people are suffering so much that it is better to "end it" than to let that horrible suffering continue.
There must be a horrific obsession with the taking of human life that runs deep within the thought processes of our culture that says it’s O.K. to murder if you have a professional license.
You need a hunting license to kill animals;
a fishing license to kill fish; and a medical license to kill human beings.
• Several years ago a man who had been married to his wife for 75 years shot her in the head. Why? She was in constant pain because of the cancer that had been eating her up for years. They talked about it and she asked him to "end it" for her. He did in the most compassionate way he knew.
The law didn’t agree.
He was sentenced to life in prison.
Had he gone to a physician in Oregon or Jack Kevorkian he wouldn’t have gone to jail.
If human life has no value to a physician who takes an oath to protect and preserve human life, then why should human life have value to me?
What about suicide?
If we don’t buy into the world’s lie that "it’s our life, we can do what we want", then where should we stand on this issue?
The Bible is pretty clear: You shall not murder.
What is suicide?
It’s "self-murder."
Plain and simple.
Suicide is really a selfish attempt at taking the easy way out.
Sad thing is that it’s permanent.
There’s no hope for reconciliation when you’ve committed suicide.
No way to work things out.
You can’t go back and say, "I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that."
You’ve put yourself and your problems ahead of your family, your friends, your God.
All you do is leave your family wondering "why?"
If human life has no value to an entire culture, then why should human life have value to me?
Now, suppose that none of the implications of this Commandment that I’ve mentioned so far apply to you.
You’ve never considered suicide, you don’t support abortion, you won’t ask a physician to kill your wife, and you’ll never murder your neighbor in a fit of rage no matter how much his dog barks.
Does this mean that this commandment is irrelevant for you?
We all might like to think so.
But, Jesus made it clear that we violate this commandment when we violate spirit of it, and not just when we murder in a literal sense.
"You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ’Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment" (Matthew 5:21-22a NIV).
Do you realize what this means?
It means that we violate the spirit of this commandment merely by having "murderous" thoughts of anger towards people.
• There’s an old story about a man who spread gossip, who bad-mouthed and told nasty lies about an elder in the village where he lived. After a time he realized how wrong it was to do this, so he went to the village elder and repented, confessing his wrongdoing and asking forgiveness. The village elder agreed to forgive him, but first assigned him the task of taking a feather pillow to the top of a windy hill and releasing all feathers. The man was relieved that forgiveness could be obtained so easily. He went out and fulfilled the assignment. When he got back he went to the elder to be forgiven. The village elder told him that he had just one more assignment for the offender. The man was somewhat annoyed at having another condition added to the forgiveness, but he was anxious for absolution. Being truly repentant, he agreed. The village elder told him to go back up the hill and retrieve all feathers from the pillow. The man said that would be impossible. The elder explained that each feather represented a lie the man spread about him that had gone on to do damage to his reputation and to his very life. Then he asked, "How can that damage be repaired?"
Just as it is irreversible when someone’s life is taken by another person,
Jesus makes the point that the violence done to a person when angry words are spoken is also irreversible.
It’s the same as murder.
This means that when we gossip about someone, when we "blow off steam" at someone because we’re angry, when we calculate our cutting words to have the maximum effect on a temporary object of wrath, when we run down people who are unable speak up for themselves, when we holler at people who are driving like idiots around us - when do all these things; we’re not merely being rude, unkind, or insensitive to them; but we’re actually buying into the cultural lie: Human life has no value to my culture, why should human life have value to me?
We devalue their lives, lowering their worth in someone’s eyes.
We’re forgetting that they were also created by God
We’re forgetting they were also made in His image.
You see, if we respect human life in general because God created us all, then we’ll also respect their life in particular for the same reason.
Human life is valuable - it is given to us by God Himself.
We exist because God has willed it so.
Now, the world tells us we exist because of chance and therefore we can do whatever want with our lives.
But that’s an entirely different picture of life than the picture the Bible presents to us.
The command for us not to murder isn’t just about killing.
It’s a command for us to value human life - every human life - just as God does.
You have one life to live - live it for God.
