THE PASTOR’S POINTS
sermon ministry of
CEDAR LODGE BAPTIST CHURCH
Thomasville, NC
a fellowship of faith, family and friendships
May 16, 2004
“You shall not murder.
Exodus 20:13 (NASB)
Pillar #2. Respecting Human Life
Human life is a gift from God and is of transcendent worth. It is to be treasured, protected, encouraged, and loved from the moment of conception until the moment of death. I know that each member of my family must ultimately give an account to God, and forgiveness and eternal life in Heaven require personal repentance of sin and faith in Christ. I will honor God by expressing self-sacrificial love to each of my family members throughout the entirety of their lives.
Here we are, enjoying the shade of a shelter in the middle of a park, surrounded by the beauty of God’s natural creation. Squirrels are running, birds are chirping in the trees; God’s created world suggests that life is a gift.
However, not every setting is so serene and pastoral. In many places this very day there will be murders of every kind. There are many faces to the violation of the sixth commandment:
This commandment is to do no murder. The question would seem to present itself quickly – does this congregation really need a sermon on murder? After all, the last time I checked the membership roles, we only had a small percentage of Mafia bosses and just slightly more than a dozen or so professional assassins in our church family. And none of them are Sunday School teachers. So, as the lady said, Where’s the beef?
Well, certainly this is a word the world needs to hear at a time like this. Life is treated as a cheap commodity these days. And many people don’t care what happens to the other guy. A doting mother sent the following note to her son’s teacher: Dear Teacher, If my Archibald is naughty -- and he sometimes is -- just whip the boy next to him. This will frighten Archibald and make him behave.
We used to live in a shooting gallery named Jacksonville. Shots were regularly fired in our neighborhood (and there is no quail hunting allowed there!). One of our deacons went for a brief stroll on a Sunday evening and was shot twice, drive-by style. The police said it was a gang initiation ritual.
Nine year old James Darby wrote to President Clinton on April 29, 1994, Dear Mr. Clinton, I want you to stop the killing in the city. People is dead and I think that somebody might kill me. So would you please stop the people from deading. I’m asking you nicely to stop it. I know you can do it. Do it. Your friend, James. Before he could get an answer to his letter, James Darby was gunned down in New Orleans in a drive-by shooting.[1]
The Russians have a word, translated agitation in English. The word applies to old peasant log houses. These log houses are constructed around a key beam, running under the center of the house. To pull the house down a tractor simply had to jerk back and forth on this key log until the entire structure collapses. Literally, the word means, to shake to pieces from underneath.
American society is being shaken by forces pulling at our key logs. One of these forces is a lack of respect for life. This is then the positive principle of the sixth commandment, Life is sacred, preserve it!
What is the Argument against Murder?
The question is really, what is wrong about murder? The answer comes from the Bible, or it has no authority. Life and death are prerogatives of God alone. He is the Creator and giver of life -- only He can take it away. Adam and Eve were only piles of dust before God Himself breathed the breath of life in them. Then they became living creatures.
Murder treats what God has created in His own image (Genesis 1:26) as cheap. C.S. Lewis once said:
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations; these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit. -- C.S. Lewis[2]
When we murder, we usurp the authority of God. God will not accept that from any body. Created beings are to respond to the creator, not rebel against Him.
What is the Action of Murder?
HOMICIDE...is the hands on act which ends another person’s life. It first happened with Cain and Abel. There are many examples in Scripture, including some of the heroes; Moses and David were both murderers.
In our culture some forms of murder are never prosecuted. Abortion is one. Despite the controversial nature of this subject, as well as the socio-economic views on either side – the fact is that the Bible states it is wrong. Somewhere in this country yesterday, a woman found out she was pregnant. The chances that baby will ever be born are no better than 50/50. For varied reasons and circumstances, nearly 1/3 of all pregnancies terminate by choice of the adult.
Only 1% of abortions performed are for the medical safety of the mother. In the year our Lord was born Herod tried to kill all the Jewish babies in Palestine. He had heard about a possible ruler who would take his place. Like Hitler, Herod tried to abort all challenges to his power. Killing is killing. Homicide takes place, no matter the location -- in or out of the mother’s womb.
CONSPIRACY...is participation, even if there’s no hands-on. David conspired to have Bathsheba’s husband killed. He never laid a hand on him, but it was David’s plans that did it.
In the movie Schindler’s List, the main character in this true story is a manufacturer who uses his wealth to save more than 500 Jews from the gas chambers. However, before his heart changes, all he can do is think about money and the power it affords him. At one very dramatic point in the picture, Schindler is discussing his past business failures, compared to his current success. He tells his dinner partner that nothing could have made the difference in those past failures -- not influence, harder work, even luck. The missing ingredient was...war! Men kill for profit. That’s how wars start.
RECKLESSNESS...includes anything that endangers other lives. In our country some 50,000 people will die on the highways this year. More than half of those deaths will be caused by alcohol and/or drugs.
Our first pastorate out of seminary was in the little village of McIntosh, Florida. There is a cemetery with three little gravestones. Those markers have pictures of three blonde-haired, smiling, freckle-faced children. The Walkup children were being driven home from a matinee show. A judge’s son, tanked up on liquor plowed into them at high speed, traveling the wrong way on a divided highway. The mother, Kathy Walkup sang Jesus Loves the Little Children at the funeral; it was a wonderful display of Christian forgiveness. But, how many times after she buried her three children did she bury her head in the pillow and scream during those long nights of grief? Would we dare use a different word than murder for that?
SUICIDE...is the ultimate recklessness with your own life. It is not (as some have said) the unpardonable sin. It is, however a sin against God. I was offered as a joke (hopefully) a gift certificate, good for one visit to Dr. Kevorkian. That would be funny if self-murder were not the third leading cause of death for people age 15-25. Before this sermon is done someone in our country will end his life.
A woman from California wrote out of her suicide attempt experience, No matter how bad the pain is, it’s never so bad that suicide is the only answer...suicide doesn’t end pain. It only lays it on the broken shoulders of the survivors. To all the doctors, nurses and psychiatrists who forced me to live when I didn’t want to -- thank you for keeping breath in my lungs and my heart beating and encouraging hope in me when I didn’t have any hope.[3]
Suicide includes many implements of death. For some it is a pill, exhaust pipe, lake, or gun. Others use drugs or alcohol. Some use mashed potatoes and ice cream by the truckload. Some tools of death are smoked, others are more subtle. Sometimes it is just drawing up my knees in a corner and refusing to have any part in life. It’s all murder -- Thou shalt not kill! Rather, preserve life!
What Kind of Problem are we Facing?
The problem we are facing is a spiritual-moral turning-away from God. Moral erosion continues in America, according to James Patterson and Peter Kim. They report that…
74 percent of Americans will steal from those who won’t miss it, and 64 percent will lie for convenience as long as no one is hurt.
Most Americans (93 percent) say they alone decide moral issues, basing their decisions on their own experience or whims.[4]
To spend the next few minutes giving examples of the scope and depth of this problem is only scraping the very tip of the iceberg. However, consider just how far-advanced the disease of turning away from God has progressed. When it comes to our moral health and national viability, it is certain America is in the advanced stages of terminal spiritual cancer.
Last year Alabama’s Supreme Court justice Roy Moore was ordered to remove a monument displaying the Ten Commandments from his courtroom entrance. Moore refused, and the ensuing legal battle culminated not only in removing the statue, but Judge Moore from the bench.
Ironic how the Ten Commandments were given by Almighty God, and vetoed by the Alabama court system. (I would not want to sign that document!).
Here are just a few of the “signs” that we have turned down the wrong fork in the road in America:
Euthanasia
· 11% of U.S. doctors would be willing to hasten a patient’s death by prescribing medication.
· 7% would provide a lethal injection if asked.
· 6% have already done one or the other.[5]
Eugenics (the idea of “engineering” new births favorably)
A recent [1993] poll of couples in New England revealed that 11 percent would abort a child predisposed to obesity.[6]
Infanticide
Peter Singer, an Australian bioethicist maintains, ‘When the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed.’[7]
To show you how far this can go, there are even some abortion rights proponents who claim that children aren’t fully human until around the age of two. Therefore we should be able to terminate them up to that age if they don’t suit us. When will it end?[8]
Fence-blurring
Many well-intentioned, but ill-conceived attempts are made to try to make sense of both sides of issues. Instead of bringing people together, it divides with confusion and darkness. There is a group with a name called “Respect for Life” which has the logo showing a handshake, pro-choice with anti-abortion.
They try to make the case that abortion, while not a good thing, is still someone’s rightful choice because the courts have said so. But, we can lessen the number of abortions by making contraception more available to avoid unwanted pregnancies/births.
Many of the European nations sat idly by while Hitler took Poland in the 1930’s. They assumed if he got that much he would stop and let them alone. They were wrong! Any time you make room for evil at the table, supper is over!
America is in a moral crisis, the like of which we have never known. Many of us would prefer to pretend that it is still 1950 and we have won the war…Dad will go off to work, the kids to school, and Mom will bake cookies until the kids get back just so she can help them with their homework, send them out to play and finish getting a healthy meal on the table for 5pm when Dad gets home. Then there will be Ozzie and Harriet, Leave It To Beaver and I Love Lucy on TV while the American Dream just keeps getting better and better.
How Can We Overcome the Crisis?
The Bible tells us that all of life is God’s. He made it, and therefore it is subject to His will. To be certain God has given us the exercise of free will. However, to go along with free will, God has shown us that we should walk with Him, not strive against Him.
He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God? Micah 6:8 (NASB)
The way for America to overcome the moral and spiritual turning away we have done is to turn back to God in repentance.
Where Should it Begin?
For it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God; 1 Peter 4:17a (NASB)
Judgment, confession and restoration always begins with God’s people getting their house in order. Those of us who name Jesus Christ as our Master are responsible to lead those who are blinded out of the darkness.
How Can it Begin?
It begins with a decision to stop “going-along to get-along”. Too long the church has attempted to see just how comfortably we can co-exist with the darkness. Jesus told us we don’t have any business participating with evil. We don’t need to curse the darkness, but we do need to start driving it out with some light!
Here are a few ways you can hold up a candle:
Vote. If you are a believer, and you don’t do the simplest legal thing you can do, vote for people who will honor the Lord with the way they govern, there is little hope for you in the day of final judgment to receive anything close to a “well-done good and faithful servant.”
Speak-up. Hold your elected officials accountable for preserving and protecting life. Every time you contact a U.S. Senator or Congressman by letter, email or phone they count your effort as representing 100 constituents. Say a word for preserving life and 99 other voices say “amen”.
Behave. There are nut cases running around shooting abortion doctors. Christians are to be the models of society. Get as informed as you can on the issues and get involved. Remember what’s at stake:
15‘I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. 16‘So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth. Revelation 3:15-16 (NASB)
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[1]USA Today, 7/14/94, 3a
[2] James Emery White, You Can Experience an Authentic Life, p. 75
[3]Newsweek, 2/7/1983, 13
[4] The Day America Told the Truth (Prentice Hall, 1991).
[5] From a survey of 3,102 doctors in 10 specialties that care for the dying, published in New England Journal of Medicine.
[6] Joel Smith, SermonCentral.com, The Utne Reader, quoted in Signs of the Times, January, 1993, p. 6
[7] James Emery White, You Can Experience an Authentic Life, p. 79
[8] Joel Smith, Respecting Life, SermonCentral.com
