One Life To Live Series

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.