February 26 Sermon: God is Life

So, as we've been making our way through the Ten Commandments, we find ourselves now to the Sixth Commandment. Now, each of the commandments are very serious, very serious, because if we violate them, we are violating the commands of a holy God. We're acting in rebellion against Him. But as we come to the Six Commandment, there's almost a new gravity to it, isn't there? Because the first table of the law, the first four commandments are very much something that we don't physically see the results of our breaking them. As serious as it is, the most serious commandment is to only serve the Lord God. The first commandment. That is the most serious commandment. But if I don't do that, I'm not really seeing my disobedience and my rebellion in a way that manifests itself. And, even as we were in the first table of the law two weeks ago, and we had honor your father and your mother, definitely a command directed toward somebody. My lack of honor toward somebody is more an internal thing. 

I can manifest that in a physical way, but it's more of an internal thing. It isn't seen. But now we are seeing in the sixth commandment, a commandment that is serious. This is the first commandment where we're commanded against serious physical harm against somebody. And it's important that we remember that all of these commandments are serious, as I've said. But here we're starting to get a sense in the second table of the law, just how our disobedience against God not only harms God, but can also harm others. And we see this here with this command to not murder, which is something that we can really understand in a tangible way. And so we've taken some time here to think about how easy it is to keep the different commandments. I brought that up about the sheet that I give to catechism students, and I've actually had some conversations with some of you who have said, Yeah, I've been thinking about that. How would I have ranked those? Well, I don't remember the exact results of when I've done this with students or what other people have said to me. But I'm guessing you shall not murder is probably one of the easiest ones to keep because no matter how mad we get, most of us aren't going to get to the point where we're going to take someone else's life. 

We're just not going to. And we're going to talk about that here in just a little bit where the commandment does hit home for us. But my wife likes shows about crime and shows about how these cases are solved. Well, a few weeks back, she discovered that on the free streaming service, Pluto TV is this old show called Forensic files. And she's been watching it. Now, I don't like those shows. This is not who I am, and I don't take the time to sit down for stuff like that. But if we're in the same room, we're around or whatever, that stuff is pretty intriguing, right? What the crimes happen or how the crimes happen and how they solve them. So you get sucked in. Even if you don't want to watch a story like that, you get sucked in. And I have to say that probably the number one conversation that she and I have had as we've been watching that over however many weeks it's been that she's been going through this is, what happens that people do this? What happens that makes somebody flip their moral system and being willing to take the life of somebody else to actually do that? 

And I think you and I probably feel the same, or you probably feel the same as I do about that. I would never do this. What happens in somebody that causes this to happen where even if I was in a fit of rage, of jealousy, no matter how angry it would get, I cannot fathom that I would take the life of another fellow image bearer. I just can't see that. So as we start out here, I want to acknowledge that there's no murderers here and none of you are going to, more than likely, Lord willing. So where does this command strike us? Where is it difficult for us? I'm not going to say you're not going to murder anybody. You haven't murdered anybody. Let's go home. As much as you might want to do that, there is something for us here in this commandment that we need to deeply consider. Now, the commandment here is simple. As Amy said, it's pretty straightforward. It's you shall not murder. Four words. We understand each and every one of these words. We get it. But as we try to recall this commandment, I'm guessing you're like me. If you're going through the commandments, you might render it as you shall not kill. 

But the commandment actually is you shall not murder. And I want to talk about that a little bit, educate us here on the difference. The reason we struggle with that, with saying you shall not kill, is because in the King James version it is, you shall not kill. Translated in 1611, that was how it was rendered. And let's be honest, so much of what we know from the Bible is informed by the King James version. It was basically uncontested in the English language for three and a half centuries. So much of what we know, even if we've never even read the King James version in English, the King James version not only has had an influence on our religious thought, it has had a dramatic influence on our language as a whole. But at the same time, even though we would render it like this, and the King James version has rendered it like this, the word there in the original language is murder. It's tersa. It is you shall not murder. It's a different sense than to kill. And we understand this, right? Because you and I would never really say that somebody who, say, accidentally ended the life of somebody in some an accident or was fighting in a war, we would not say that person was a murderer. 

We would never use the word kill in that way or murder in that way. Now, we could, in the context of English, say that so and so killed someone and imply murder, but we would never go the other way. And this word tersaw has this idea of premeditation, of planning and plotting out to end this person's life. And we can see that this isn't just me saying this here. This is a screenshot I took from my Bible software. At the ESV, you have the top, you shall not murder. Then you get down to the King James version, and GB is the Geneva Bible, which was translated into English just a little bit before the King James. They have thou shalt not kill. But the rest of the modern translations here get this difference. The command is, You shall not murder. There is malicious intent in what God is commanding here. This is not a commandment that says you should never be involved in an army or never be involved in a war or anything like that, or defend yourself. No, it's not you shall not kill, it's you shall not murder. It's about intent. And when I teach this to students, I'm pretty deliberate to make sure they understand this. 

And while my focus here has been on the word murder, I want to bring something else up about the idea of this commandment. Notice what it says at the beginning, you, you. This is about the individual. And so even though we've been focusing on the difference between kill and murder, there's also this part at the beginning, you shall not do this. This is something to an individual here. And we understand that this is also an important thing for us to understand, right? Because if someone was, say, an executioner and they threw the order of the state, end of the life of somebody, we would not call them a murderer. We would say that they killed them, perhaps, but we would not say that they're a murderer. But if that same person, on their own volition, without the state, without a jury, without anything, decided to just walk into a room and end the life of somebody that they thought deserved it? What's the word we'd use for them in a second? That person is a murderer. To kill is not up to the individual. You and I do not bear the sword. The state bears the sword. 

The Scripture is very clear about that, that God uses the state, uses government for a particular purpose to have justice. And that means it's not about the individual. That's why we are very adamant about a jury trial, right? Nobody has the right to be judged, jury, and executioner. And so we see this sense in what God is saying here. You shall not do this. You shall not do this with malicious intent. You shall not rule over somebody and decide whether or not they live or die. That's not up to you as an individual. And so it's absolutely important that we have these distinctions as we go forward here. But at the same time, I feel as though I've dwelled on this a little bit too much. Because again, none of you here, unless you have a secret job, I don't know, none of you is an executioner, and none of you are going to as I said before, it's very unlikely that any of you are going to actually murder. But it's important that we get these distinctions about the physical act of murder because we want to understand the commandment, and we're going to get to later in the application, the importance of how this helps us to understand the character of God. 

But again, I felt I'd dwell too much on the actual physical act of murder because I think we know this stuff. It's some important distinctions we need to have, but it's important that we think about the ramifications of this command for you and I, what it means for us. And so two weeks ago, when we were looking at the fifth commandment, I said to you, you're going to get sick of me as we're looking at the second tale of the law, going back to the sermon on the Mount. I'm going to do it every week. I'm going to remind us what Jesus has to say in the sermon on the Mount. Remember what he has to say about murder and about adultery and how it's the state of our hearts. I thought, being I'm going to do this every week, and I'm going to allude to it. We're going to look at it word for word because it's important to understand what Jesus is saying here and see it in the context of murder. So we go to Matthew 521 in verse 22, and we see what Jesus has to say. You have heard that it was said to those of old, You shall not murder, and whoever murders shall be liable to judgment. 

But I say to you, everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the counsel. And whoever says you fool will be liable to the hell of fire. Now, that takes this from being about the physical act of murder to being about the condition of our hearts. Where are we? This makes it very clear that what God requires of his people is more than just an outward adherence to the commandments. The condition of our hearts is what's important. This is what God wants from his people. It's not enough for us just to restrain ourselves from taking the life of another person. God wants us to honor life. God wants us to love others. We are to value those who bear his image like we do. And this is where the commandment has to hit home for us because I'm extremely unlikely to physically harm another person. I'm extremely unlikely to do that. I am very likely to harbor resentment in my heart towards somebody. Yeah, this commandment is hard because we want to make it easy, but it's actually difficult. And the problem with all of this, as we think about how we can harbor resentment against somebody, is that it builds up in us. 

It can consume us. It becomes the focus. This other person and our resentment towards them, our anger towards them, can become what we think about? And not only is that toxic for us, but what are we not thinking about when we're focusing on our resentment? We're not thinking about God and what he has done. We're not thinking about loving others. It's very difficult for us to love God and love our neighbor when we have resentment towards somebody. It's very difficult to love God and our neighbor when we're angry. We don't do it. We're just not going to do it. It consumes our thoughts. Our thoughts are far from God. And so we understand this. We understand why it's bad for us. But these statements here from Jesus not only let us know the miserable condition of our hearts, that we are actually guilty of all this, but it also shows us the way in which we can so easily forget who God is, forget what He has done and how much He values life. And so as we confess together in a few minutes from the Heidelberg Catechism, we're going to see that there is some really helpful work that is done by the Heidelberg Catechism for us here. 

So I want to look at it now, not just as we confess it today. The Heidelberg Catechism asked, What is God's will for you in the Six Commandment? And there's some great stuff here. I am not to belittle, hate, insult, or kill my neighbor, not by my thoughts, my words, my look, or gesture, and certainly not by actual deeds. And I am not to be party to this in others. Rather, I am to put away all desire for revenge. Now, as I said, this is really helpful. There's times where we belittle people and we can understand why that is. We understand why hate is bad. I've already mentioned how it can consume us, insulting. But the Heidelberg Catechism seems to really understand human nature here. It's almost like reformed people understand total depravity really well because it goes so far here. Not by my thoughts. Man, that rings true. My words, oh boy, what have I said this past week to insult a fellow image bear, even if it wasn't to their face, but to somebody else or under my breath or in my thoughts. And then this is the one that I get a kick out of, my look or gesture. 

Now, I know what a gesture of hate looks like in the 21st century. We all know what that looks like. What did they do in the 16th century? Not trying to take your imagination anywhere or whatever, but it's just interesting to me that making gestures towards somebody or having a dirty look towards somebody isn't a 21st or a 20th century problem. This has always been a thing. This is human nature. Regardless of if it's this week or 500 years ago, we understand these type of things, that we have this tendency to be angry towards people. We have this tendency to not love our neighbor as we ought. And while it can be difficult for us to hear that all of these things, these things that we've probably, maybe not all of them, but we've done a lot of these things in the past week or in the past few days, it can be difficult for us to hear this. This is a good thing. It's a reminder for us that we need Christ, that we need forgiveness. Nothing that I've said today about these thoughts and these gestures, these thoughts, these words that we might say, none of this is new information to you. 

None of you are going, Gosh, I never thought it was wrong to give an inappropriate gesture to somebody, or to think bad thoughts about somebody, or to be angry with somebody. We know this. But here Scripture comes to us, and it does its good work in us. And we're going to see that as we think about our application in a little bit, but it does this good work in us to convict us of sin and to help us to remember that if we're going to love God and love our neighbor, we need to put this out of our minds. We need to be focusing on loving our fellow image bearers. But before we move on to our application for today, I want to think about something else. Why is this command here? It's a very obvious command. Murder is not just something that is wrong in Christian and Jewish cultures. Even in the ancient world, this was looked down upon in every culture. There is not a culture that doesn't get why murder is bad. But why does God spell this out for us? Why is he wanting us to understand this command so deeply? 

Well, it's because God is life. He is the one that brings life to his people. And this life that we're talking about is specifically those of us human beings, so all of us, who are made in the image of God. We are not just creatures walking around who are random accidents. God made us and he put His image in us, and we bear that image and we have that as a blessing. God is life. He created this life. And so we're to honor life. Now, in this commandment, I think we see how this rings true so deeply in a culture that's continually becoming more and more pagan in the way it thinks. Remember, I've been bringing up how the Ten Commandments show us the difference between the Christian way of thinking and the pagan way of thinking. In the pagan way of thinking, all is one. There's no distinction between the creator and the creation. There is no creator. Everything rises up out from this eternal matter. But in the Christian way of viewing the world, there is a distinction between the creator and his creation. And so we're called to value what he values. 

We're called to see what he has to say about it. Paganism sums everything together into one. And so taking the life of another person, while it's not looked down upon well, there is no moral foundation for saying it's wrong. How is this different than taking the life of an animal? How is it different than cutting down a tree? When everything is one, there's no distinction in what has value. And so in the Christian way of viewing the world, we understand that God is life, and that this person in front of me, whether I would physically take their life or whether I would hate them and insult them or put a gesture towards them, that is an image bearer of God. That is somebody that Christ died for. I should value them. I should value their life. We want to keep this commandment because it shows us the nature of God. And when we love others, when we value our fellow image bearers, we are reflecting the nature of God. We are doing a good and holy thing. So as we move on to our application today, I want us to understand the actually of maybe all of the commandments, the three uses of the law here are probably the easiest to understand. 

I mean, we get as we come to the first use of the law, which remember, the first use of the law is as a curb to give order to society, this is really easy to understand. This commandment provides order in society and culture. Without this commandment, without this idea of murder being wrong, any person could be judged, jury, and executioner. There's a reason that this law, and several other of the commandments as well in the second table, are understood in the culture, even if people don't understand who God is. Our consciousness bear witness to the fact that it's wrong to take the life of another person. We get this. But it's important that we don't just stop with this straightforward prohibition of taking another person's life. This isn't just about murder. We also want to be sure to advocate against any violence done against another image bearer of God. So this includes advocating for the unborn, the handicped, standing against euthanasia. It matters that we remember that life is valuable, that these are image bearers of God, and we want to protect that. And again, when there is no distinction between the creator and the creation, anything can be on the table. 

And so that's why as believers, we need to stand up for the strong principle of this command. And because as culture slips into a more deeply pagan way of seeing the world, we need to be standing in contrast and valuing life and saying, that person is made in the image of God, and they have value, and we love them and we care for them. And so the second use of the law is also easy for us to see. Because as we think about this command, and the second use of the law is as a mirror to see our sinfulness, when we look in the mirror and we think about this command, chances are we don't like what we see in the mirror because we acknowledge how often we have resentment in our hearts towards people, how often we have anger. It's so easy to do. So easy to do because our hearts reveal our sinful attitude towards our fellow image bearers. We understand that God is life and we don't value life as we ought. This is our rebellion against God. We fail to value life the way that he does. And so we deserve his wrath for the way in which our hearts reveal this anger that we have. 

And, the second use of the law as a mirror shows us our sin. And when I stop and I think about this, as I said, we don't like what we see in the mirror. I don't, and I know you don't. And so it's important that we seriously consider this command because this is a good way for God to do his good work in us. There are plenty of ways in which we can look at this and say, This is where I need to amend my life. I need to value life as God does. So may God use this commandment, may the application for us in the second use of law, may God use this commandment to drive us to repentance. But may he also assure us of the forgiveness that we have been given because we've been united to Christ. And so as we come to the third use of the law, which is a map for holy living, I think that there are some really practical ways in which we can use this conviction of sin that we have to move towards holiness. And that is to pray for those that we find this resentment in our hearts for. 

Because it's really, really difficult to stay angry at somebody when you're praying for them on a regular basis. Really hard. And I've learned this from other people in my life. They've told me that they've done this. This is a really practical thing, but we also get it from Jesus, right? What did Jesus have to say further on after he gave this instruction on murder in the summer of the Mount? He says this, But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecuted you, so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same. Jesus gives us this instruction here to pray for those that we harbor resentment to in our heart. And not only does he give this instruction, he really quite honestly lets us have it here pretty good, doesn't he? Because if you see here, for if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? 

Oh, that gets me. It's really easy to love the people who love us. If we were graded on how we love the people who like us, A plus is every time, right? But this rings true here for us. We're called to love those that we struggle with loving because anybody can like somebody that likes them. We're called to do this. And by doing this prayer for them, we're going to find two things are happening. Either we're going to realize that these people are fellow believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. And how can I stay angry at somebody that Christ is forgiven? How can I do that? Or we're going to be praying for them and we're going to start praying for their salvation. And we're going to understand that I can't be angry with somebody and at the same time desire that God love them in a way that I don't. The guy show his love to them and bringing them to faith. This is why it's important to pray for those that we hold this resentment in our hearts towards. So whether we come to this realization that they're a brother and sister in Christ who has been forgiven, or whether we realize we need to pray for their salvation, this prayer for those that we struggle to love is going to bless us. 

God is going to use it. And as we finish up here, I had a few thoughts as I was processing through. I got two weeks to think about this one because it's a classical assignment. So I really have appreciated my thoughts here. And what I came to, how did Jesus end up at the cross? Yes, it was our sin that made him go there and put him there. But what in those moments, what put him there? The resentment that the pharisees and the religious leaders had in their hearts towards him. What caused him to die? An unjust trial made the Lord of glory suffer. His suffering was because of the violation of the Six Commandment, not only in a physical way, but in the way that he was talking about in the sermon on the Mount. That's what put him there at the end of the day. God values life. God values life so much that Jesus took on our very own flesh. He took on our life to suffer by those who would break the sixth commandment to kill him. And he did it for you. He did it for me. And so as we consider this commandment and we realize our failure with it, may we remember the grace that God has shown us. 

And, it was the result. The sixth commandment itself is the reason he was able to show us that grace. And so as we think about those that we resent, those that we harbor these thoughts towards, may we go to the cross and we remember the Grace that God has shown us in Christ. And may we desire to show that same love and mercy to those around us. May we pray for our enemies. May we love our neighbor. That the grace that God has shown us in Christ might be visibly there to see so that others might be either built up in faith or might desire to come to the Lord themselves. Let us pray. Almighty and ever lasting God, we thank you for the gift of your word. We thank you that your Word makes it clear that this commandment goes beyond the physical act of murder, but it gets down to the root of us and it shows us our sin. But we also thank you that it was you who came, that you suffered because of people violating this commandment, and yet you did it for those people who would break it. And so we pray, Lord, that as we are drawn to repentance, we would desire to keep this command because you kept it for us. 

May we live in holiness, that you might be glorified, that we might honor life, that we might love our fellow image bearers, that you might receive each and every last bit of the glory for it. It's in the name of Jesus that we pray, Amen.

This message was delivered on February 26, 2023 by Pastor Mark Groen at First Reformed Church in Edgerton, MN. First Reformed is a congregation in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.