Contrary to many people’s thoughts that civilization is more civilized, evidence suggests that murder is on the increase. In 1963, in Scotland, two people were convicted of murder. In 2000, there were 128 reported homicides in Scotland. In 1960, the District of Columbia reported 81 murders. In 1991 there were 482, and in 2000 the figure was 230. These figures are only indicative of the magnitude of death over the past century. In the twentieth century, murder was accomplished on a massive scale. The national security director for the Carter Administration characterized the century with the word “mega-death.” If you just accounted for four human beings alone, you could count as many as 175 million deaths: Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. Even today, we have people with tattooed numbers, etched on their forearms, numbers that marked them for death.
Yet, murder is not new. The Bible’s opening plotlines show the firstborn man, Cain, killing his brother Abel. Think of it: the firstborn person in the human race was a murderer. History’s firstborn killed history’s second-born in jealousy. And to prevent anyone from thinking there is such a thing as the perfect murder, God Himself says: “What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground” (Genesis 4:10). The taking of human life has always been viewed as a serious crime in every civilization. And yet today, the average eighteen-year-old has witnessed 80,000 murders via television, movies, and video games. Whether it is the Columbine massacre of 1999, Pan Am Flight 103, or the 9/11 terrorist attacks, our lives are interwoven with the fabric of murder. Whether it is ethnic cleansing in Darfur or brutal killers such as Jeffrey Dahmer or Charles Manson, murder has been a heinous crime.
Today’s Scripture
“You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13).
Unlike the fifth commandment, no reason is given for God’s order to avoid murder. Historically, this commandment has been thought to be embedded in the moral conscience of humans.
Two Quick Facts About the Ten
1. God’s Law Is Not Tailor-Made
When people browse through a magazine, they see much that is not necessarily relevant. Yet, this isn’t the same on the Internet. The web’s ads are personalized using algorithms. One lady in a NY Times article clicked on a pair of shoes on the website www.zappos.com. She decided against buying them but found the ad for the very same shoes on numerous websites she visited for the next several weeks. The same thing happens on the web when you voice your political views. Soon the Internet only populates your pages with websites you agree with. Try this: Google “Egypt” and have a friend who is of a different race or political view from you, Goggle the same term – “Egypt”. If look at the screenshots of the two searches, you’ll see different results for the same search. Why? Personalization. The site is personalized based on your web history.
The law of God is not like this. The law is not personalized based on our needs, likes, and dislikes. The law is what it is. God doesn’t personalize the law for everyone’s happiness. Instead, He commands you to fit into His mold.
2. You Cannot Have Just Five
The second five commandments will be negotiable without the first five. Our frame of reference is entirely different if we fail to have a transcendent God who speaks law.
So with the quick points out the way, let’s dig into “You shall not murder.”
1. You Must Respect Human Life
The sixth commandment comes to us in four simple words:
“You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13).
This commandment is one of the shortest as it is just two words in the original Hebrew language – “Don’t kill.” It’s the equivalent of “never murder.” The Hebrew word translated as “murder” is very specific. The word outlaws putting someone to death for selfish reasons. The language of this commandment is worded to distinguish murder from other forms of killing, which will cover in just a few moments. No one individual could decide that he had the right to end someone’s life. No private person or private group has the right to end a life. This commandment seeks to prevent any act of violence out of hatred or anger, malice, deceit, or personal gain.
The fundamental reason why murder is wrong is that God endowed humans with special honor and distinction. Humans were created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). To destroy human life is to rob God of HIS creation. Our creativity, our sense of justice and morality, our self-awareness, our ability to communicate and use the language, our minds, and our never-dying souls are all shreds of evidence that we are made in God’s image. A person may not be killed not because you are primarily robbing the person of their life but because you are robbing God of His praise. “I shall not die, but I shall live, and recount the deeds of the Lord” (Psalm 118:17). So when the policeman catches a criminal before he murders, the police are not only protecting human life the police are protecting God’s praise. God took great care to communicate to us how important life is.
Let me show you two ways, God acted to protect life.
1.1 God Commands Capital Punishment
“And 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. “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image. And you, be fruitful and multiply, teem on the earth and multiply in it” (Genesis 9:5-7) Genesis 9:5-7 provides an explanation for God’s order in Exodus 20:13. When God speaks in Genesis 9:5-7, He is speaking to the survivors of the flood in Noah’s day. God is speaking to only eight people. These eight people are progenitors of the entire human race (Genesis 8:18). God made sure to tell our ancestors His exact instructions on how to treat human life. In contrast to other ancient near eastern civilizations, the God of the Hebrews would not allow human life to be measured in monetary compensation. Human life was measured oftentimes in terms of economic value only. If families choose to do so, they could be paid a fine for the loss of their loved ones. This high view of life in Genesis 9:5-7 was unlike any other nation’s view in their day. Not so in the Bible as God required life for life. God alone reserves the right to terminate life.
Country Music singers, Willie Nelson and Tony Keith teamed up together in 2003 to write a country music hit, Beer for My Horses. Willie Nelson sings:
Grandpappy told my pappy, back in my day, son
A man had to answer for the wicked that he done
Take all the rope in Texas
Find a tall oak tree, round up all of them bad boys
Hang them high in the street for all the people to see that
The song spent six weeks at number one and it obviously advocates capital punishment. The story of the Wild West is in part the story of a developing society choosing either to exercise vigilante justice or justice through fair trials. We see also from the New Testament book of Romans that capital punishment has been annulled. “…But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer” (Romans 13:14). The sword refers to the power to take life and it is the designated instrument of capital punishment for those guilty of murder. Some oppose capital punishment because it is easy to make a mistake and execute the wrong person. Others see mistakes as capital punishment is unfairly applied among the races. God permits some forms of killing. He authorizes governments to kill for the preservation of human life and not its destruction. “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image” (Genesis 9:6). Certainly, the utmost care needs to be taken in ensuring justice is met and not the whims of the people.
The second way God communicates the importance of human life is through
1.2 Cities of Refuge
According to Arkansas Criminal Code, homicide into six categories including capital murder, murder in the first degree, murder in the second degree, manslaughter, negligent homicide, and physician-assisted suicide. While ancient Hebrew law did not differentiate murder to such a degree, it does recognize an accidental killing. God goes into great detail on what to do when a person is killed accidentally. For example, when a nurse misreads a label and accidentally causes the death of the patient. Moses gives an example when a person swings an ax to cut a tree. Only the ax head flies off the handle and kills someone (Deuteronomy 19:4-5).
Now the following the logic of the Bible on accidental killing. For an accidental killing, the death penalty was not applied (Exodus 21:13). The person who committed the manslaughter would flee to one (1) of six (6) designated cities of refuge in order to find sage haven (Numbers 35:9-34). The nearest male relative to the deceased person had the task of avenging his dead relative. But he was forbidden to enter the city of refuge where the killer had gone. The person who committed the accidental death could remain alive in a city of refuge only if he remained in the city. He had to remain there until the death of the high priest. It was only at the death of the high priest, that he could return home. If he left the city of refuge before the death of the high priest, his life could be taken by the blood avenger. If the man truly murdered someone (meaning it was accidental) and attempted to find sanctuary in a city of refuge, it was the city elders' responsibility to hand him over for execution.
Now, watch the logic of how God values life. Even if the death was accidental your life was disrupted. You could not remain with your family and in your preferred city. You had to uproot yourself to what the Bible calls a city of refuge. Because human life belonged to God, even accidental death caused a major disruption to the killer.
What About?
1.3 Euthanasia
When grandma becomes a hardship to care for or when a baby is born severely handicapped, or when more tax money is required to support the infirm and afflicted, many think the logical choice is obvious. Sometimes death carries a clipboard and wears a lab coat. God’s Word commands you not to murder. This includes ending someone else’s life for the purposes of “mercy”.
In April 2001, Holland became the first country to give legal status to doctor-assisted suicide. In contrast to the physicians of every other Nazi-occupied country, Dutch doctors never recommended or participated in single euthanasia during World War II, according to a 1949 New England Journal of Medicine article. Even Nazi orders not to treat the old or those with little chance of recovery were disobeyed. It only took a generation, essayist Malcolm Muggeridge noted, “to transform a war crime into an act of compassion.” One group, the Royal Dutch Society of Pharmacology, sends a book to doctors that include formulas on how to use poison for the purposes of euthanasia.
1.4 Abortion
This remains one of the hot-button issues of our time. The very word raises powerful emotions. Nevertheless, abortion is the defining moral issue of our day. Christians have historically understood abortion to be wrong. The Didache is a second-century teaching tool for Christians to teach the faith to new converts. The Didache states, “Do not murder a child by abortion or kill a newborn infant.” Medical science agrees: Professor Micheline Matthews-Roth of Harvard University Medical School argues, “It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception.”
“My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.?16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them” (Psalms 139:15-16).
The question is not when a fetus is viable. Instead, the question is: “Is the person inside of you made in the image of God?” The Bible places the force of the question on being made in His image rather than medical jargon.
I predict abortion will one day be overturned. Perhaps as early as my lifetime as abortion is becoming less and less popular in polls among Americans.
I invite you to volunteer by going to http://fortsmithpregnancyhelpcenter.org.
1.5 Suicide
The ban on murder includes the ban on taking one’s own life. From 1952 to 1992, the incidence of suicide among teens and young adults tripled. Today it is the eleventh leading cause of death as more than 34,000 people shot, suffocated, or poisoned themselves in 2007. In 2008, more than 376,000 people were treated for self-inflicted injuries at emergency rooms across the United States. In committing suicide, perhaps more than in any other act, we defiantly say, “I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.”
1. You Must Respect Human Life.
2. God is Not a Pacifist.
We need to approach the subject of murder with candor and honesty. We must admit that any fair reading of the Bible, sees that there is a great deal of killing inside the pages of the Bible. We also must admit that God Himself did a great deal of killing in the Bible. This is a blood-drenched book. Inside its pages is killing by war and killing by execution. Among the many descriptions of God in the Old Testament, we find that He is a God of war. God commands killing in the OT. He commands killing in war and capital punishment. Here you face a question that will test your spiritual courage and Christian integrity. You either believe in the inspiration and inerrancy of the Old Testament text, or you believe that this is merely a corruption of some ancient people’s understanding of a violent and cruel God.
God planned for the conquest of the Holy Land. Many have proposed that the God of the OT is not the God of the NT. The God of the NT is a God of peace while the God of the OT is one of war. But to be honest, there is more death to come when you read the book of Revelation than anything accumulated in the OT.
God is not a pacifist. There is such a thing as a just war. No Christian can take the position, “My country, right or wrong.” We should recognize that war is an evil thing. Yet, a Just War is simply this: All previous things having been tried, war becomes the only option that will actually save more lives than it takes. Whether it is an “asymmetrical war” as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld called the war on terror or a more traditional war such a WWI, WWI, and Vietnam, war is a dirty but sometimes necessary business. War is horrible and should be fought rarely, and only to avoid greater horrors.
1. You Must Respect Human Life.
2. God is Not a Pacifist.
3. Jesus Takes the Command Inside of Us.
“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ 22 But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire. 23 So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. 25 Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. 26 Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny” (Matthew 5:21-26).
Serial killing and terrorism are a part of our nightly news, but anger is nothing special. “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him” (1 John 3:15). We often say, “If looks could kill…”
Jesus died for murderers – “Father, forgive them…” (Luke 23:34).
