The Big Ten: Don’t Kill Me!
Well Happy Mother’s Day to all of you
young ladies out there! I know that today’s sermon topic doesn’t really seem to
mesh well with Mother’s Day, but if you’ll trust me on this one and follow
along, I think that there is a correlation between today’s commandment “Thou
Shall Not Murder,” and today’s celebration in honor of our mothers. I know you
are thinking, “This is going to be a stretch,” but really, not as big of a
stretch as you might think.
The verse as it was read for us, the
commandment for today is “You shall not murder.” Four little words, pretty easy
to remember. And really, it’s almost like an unnecessary commandment, right?
Like who doesn’t know that it isn’t nice to kill people? I think everyone knows
that. It’s kind of born into us. That’s why right after Cain committed the firs
murder when he killed his brother Abel, and God came looking for him, he tried
to cover his tracks. God asks where Abel is, and Cain says, “Am I my brother’s
keeper?” He didn’t have to be taught that murder was wrong, he knew it was
wrong. It is common sense.
I was talking to someone at the
beginning of our series on the Ten Commandments, and they said, “I don’t think
I’ll need to show up for that sermon. I don’t think I’ll have any trouble with
that commandment.” And hopefully for all of us in this room, that is true, and
we never have trouble with killing people.
However, if I didn’t think that this
commandment applied to us somehow today, beyond just not killing people, then I
wouldn’t bother preaching on the topic. But I do think that it applies to all
of us, in a couple of different ways. First, I want to look at the reason God
has told us not to murder, not to kill people. Why does anyone ever commit
murder? Apart from a few whacko serial killers out there about 99% of murders
happen along with some other crime or problem or situation. They are rarely
random, almost always a part of something larger. A cheating spouse, or fear
that some dark part of your past is going to surface, or as a part of a
burglary or something. And when murders happen in these situations, I think
there are two general truths that follow: one, the person does not trust God to
be just, so they take matters into their own hands. Or two: the person values
their comfort and quality of their own life over the existence of the life of
another. So misguidedly, they use the tool of murder, thinking that things will
be made better. Either that justice will be served, or that a hindrance to
their own lives will be removed. Neither thing ever happens. Murder is not true
justice, and even if a hindrance to your life is removed, killing somebody
brings about a pretty big hindrance of its own in your own justice.
But what I really want to look at is
this second reason for murder, not valuing someone else’s life as much as your
own. You know, the Ten Commandments are often looked upon as a big list of
“Thou Shall Not’s.” But if we but a positive spin on it, there are some
important lessons. Like the positive of “Do not lie,” would be, “Tell the
truth.” “Do not commit adultery” would be “love your spouse.” And the positive
of “Do not murder,” would be “Respect Life.”
And I think this is what Jesus was really speaking to
in Matthew chapter 5, when he gives us some really hard teachings. He says,
“You have heard that it was said in ancient times, ‘You shall not murder,’ but
I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you are liable to
judgment; and if you insult your brother or sister, you are liable, and if you
say, ‘You fool,’ you are liable to the hell of fire.” Or the Aramaic term Jesus
used for “You fool” was “Raca,” which is a term of contempt and disrespect,
like, “I spit on you.”
Anybody feel convicted at all? Jesus is trying to show
us what the true spirit of this commandment is. It is about more than just
avoiding killing people. The commandment doesn’t say, “Do not murder, but it’s
ok to torture someone to within an inch of their life.” Or “Do not murder, but
you can enslave them and devalue their lives.” Or “Do not murder, but you can
hate their guts and make their lives miserable.”
The purpose behind this commandment is so much more
than just not killing people. The reason we don’t murder, besides the fact that
everyone knows it’s not nice, the reason we don’t murder is that every human
life is valuable, every human life is precious, and every human life has worth.
And here’s where the mother’s day aspect of it comes in, right? Every mom knows
that their child, imperfect though they may be, is priceless. Every mom loves
their child. Why? Because she has given them life. Her children are a part of
her. She has helped to create them. So regardless of what anyone thinks, she
knows her children are precious, and their lives should be respected.
And we are all some mother’s child. And we are all
God’s children. He has given us life. That life is precious and that life
should be respected, no matter what. It doesn’t matter how rotten a person may
seem, their life has been given to them by God, and therefore is precious and
should be respected.
So when I insult someone, when I let
my anger burn against someone, when I hold a grudge against someone or I ream
them out and tell them what I really think of them and just rip them up one
side and down the other, what have I done? I have disrespected someone who was
made in God’s image, and I have devalued their God-given life.
Anybody else guilty of that one?
Because I don’t know about you, but for me, there are certain people who just
get under my skin. Like maybe we have clashing personalities or just totally
different views on things. And that’s ok, you know, not everyone is going to
agree with me on everything. They’re wrong, but, they have a right to be wrong.
But you know there is a difference between disagreeing with a person, and hating
that person. I have some relatives that I disagree with on just about
everything. We have very little in common. But I respect and value them because
their life is God-given and they have been created in his image. And there is a
big difference between me saying to them, “I disagree with you,” or “well, if
you think that, then you’re a…” fill in the blank.
Jesus also goes on to say, “If you are going to give an
offering, and you remember that your brother or sister has something against
you, leave your gift there and go and be reconciled to them, then give your
gift.” In the Jewish tradition, you could not offer your offering until you
were ritually clean. Here, it seems as if Jesus is saying, “Look, as long as
you’ve got a grudge going on with someone, you know you aren’t clean inside.
You need to make it right and be clean before you bring you offering to me.”
Like you can’t offer a gift to cleanse you from sin if you are in the midst of
sinning! If you are in the midst of devaluing human life and harboring hatred
in your heart towards them, then you need to make that right.
Because that type of hatred and anger is like a virus.
And it spreads to other aspects of our lives. And when it gets triggered, it
can cause us to lash out at others and do other things that we regret. All
human life has value, and our anger or hatred towards them devalues their life.
Apart from harboring anger and hatred towards a person,
there is another way that devalue other lives that is just as bad, and maybe
even more dangerous: apathy. Like, when we just don’t care. When we turn a
blind eye to people who need our help, and we just let them die.
Today is Mother’s Day, right? Around the world on this
Mother’s Day, 6000 mothers will have to watch their children die of thirst.
3000 mothers will watch their children die of malaria. Today, 40,000 mothers
will see their children die of starvation. And this one maybe gets me most of
all: today, 90 mothers will watch their children die of polio.
No mother should ever have to witness those things
happen. But today mothers around the world will be grieving. And across the
ocean…do we care? I heard a man say, “If a Christian eats well while another
man starves, the Christian is guilty of murder.” Now, I’m not sure I totally
buy his logic. I wish it was as easy and just cutting my sandwich in half and
giving it to a hungry person in
Granted, it is a way more comfortable way to live when
you don’t have to think about people dying of preventable causes in other parts
of the world. It’s a lot easier to say, “Their governments should take care of
it. It isn’t our problem. We can’t be fixing everyone else’s mistakes all the
time.” That’s easy. That’s comfortable. But didn’t we say at the beginning that
one of the reasons that people murder…or maybe we could say, “let someone else
die,”…is so that their own life would be more comfortable?
I know this is a tough teaching, and it’s an
uncomfortable teaching, but guess what: Christianity is uncomfortable. Because
as Christians, we discern between what is right and what is wrong. And when we
are confronted with something that is wrong, we know that we have to do
something to make it right. As is says in the book of James, “Anyone then who
knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin.” Christianity is
about more than just avoiding doing things that are bad. Christianity is about
doing what is right, even when it is hard, even when it is uncomfortable.
And you know, I think that most Christians want to
right these wrongs that we see in the world, right? It’s not like we are
totally heartless and were just letting people die because we don’t care. But
we don’t know where to start, it’s such a big task, we don’t know how to even
begin. Well one place to start is with the nothing but nets offering. It’s not
too late to give. Remember one of the stats I mentioned: today, 3000 children
will die of malaria in
That’s a start. It won’t solve everything, but like the
story of the man who saw a child walking along a beach throwing starfish back
in the ocean, and he said to the child, “You are wasting your time! You’ll
never be able to save all the starfish. What difference will it make?” And the
boy looked at the starfish in his hand and said, “It will make a difference to
this one.” If we can keep one mother from losing her child, we’ve made a
difference.
In some ways, “Do not murder” is a commandment that
kind of summarizes the rest of them. If we are respecting life, and the lives
of others, then it is almost like the rest of the commandments just fall into
place. And like I’ve said every week, these commandments are all about
revealing to us just how much God loves us. This commandment to not murder is
about more than just being nice to one another. It says to us that God loves
us…each and every single one of us…no matter who you are…and your life has
value to him. And if the life of another is valuable to God, then it should be
valuable to you, too.
Pastor
Dan Metzger
Van
Buren United