Summary 

The sixth commandment goes far beyond simply avoiding murder. The Hebrew word 'ratsak' specifically refers to unlawful killing, emphasizing that human life is sacred because every person bears God's image. Jesus expanded this understanding to include our words and attitudes, showing that murder begins in the heart with anger and contempt. This commandment calls us not just to avoid taking life, but to actively promote and protect it. We're challenged to speak words that build up rather than tear down, seek the wellbeing of our neighbors, and treat every person with dignity and respect. When Christians have truly lived out this principle throughout history, it has transformed entire communities through love and charity.

Transcript

Let's pray again. Lord, we pray that your words this morning for us would bring life where so often our words are used to bring death, to cut down, to destroy, to deface. God, I pray that your words to us would bring life in us and that we would be those who love life, who cherish it, who delight in the life of others, the life of your world, that we would see that you're the one who spoke goodness over the world. And you said, it's very good when you made mankind humankind, male and female, in your image, to bear your likeness into the world. And so I pray, Lord, that we would be people that love life, that cherish the life of others.
And you'd speak to us this morning, Lord, through this commandment that we would find your commands to be those that give life to our bones, that we speak of them on the way, that we teach them to our children, that we live into them. For your words are life. Pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Right there, there's a cartoon.
And in this cartoon there are two school administrators. And what they're doing is they are watching as children are entering the school. Kids are entering the school. And as they're having to enter the school through a metal detector, some of you likely went to schools that had those kind of devices where you had to go in and you had to walk through something. And one of these school administrators is talking to the other and he says it's the latest school safety device.
That light and that horn will go off as students try to smuggle in a gun or a knife or a bomb or the Ten Commandments.
Which is to say that some people think the Ten Commandments are dangerous, of course. Right. Many people think religion is very dangerous. Sure, you've heard that. It's one of the great sort of objections to Christianity, how violent religions are in general.
They promote violence and it's even worse than promoting it. They do it in the name of God, a divine sanction for it.
You can think of how people think of the Ten Commandments as dangerous. The first commandment rules out other gods. How can that be used right for violence? It has been. People are confused maybe about the day of rest, but we certainly want to indulge a little bit here and there sexually.
Not like people to tell us what to do, God included, with our bodies.
But most people, interestingly, I think most people agree with the sixth commandment. Most cultures have laws against taking of the another's life, murder.
David Palson, some of you are familiar with his work. He Wrote a book called Good and Angry. Good and Angry. And he has a chapter in that book. It's titled, do you have a serious problem with anger?
Y' all thought about that? Probably. Some of you. It's the shortest chapter in his book. It is one word.
Yes.
It's kind of simple. Yes. Now, I've suggested that part of what we do with the Commandments is we simplify them. We simplify them so that we can check them off. Right?
We want to define them in such a way that we can meet them. Check. And this is the way of the human heart. But Paulson's answer, his long chapter doesn't really give room for that, doesn't allow for that kind of simplicity. A few weeks back, about a month ago, I said that we ought to do this approach.
Take this approach to the Ten Commandments as sort of a checklist so that we can hang our heads high and we can look down our noses at others. We can say, I am among the righteous.
Of course, this often leads to a kind of hypocrisy that invites so many others to dismiss Christian faith. Engaging with the law of God in a way that is for them and not for us.
Because as soon as we see the Commandments, as soon as we see us as the one who keep the Commandments and others as the one that we don't, we often inflate ourselves and deflate the image of God in others. We live life properly, so we think. And so we can diminish others who do not. We can deface them. Now, here's an odd thing.
So this morning, I actually want to start with the idea that there is a simplicity to this command.
I said our inclination is to simplify them. But in a way, this is actually kind of a simple command. Partly it's simple because if you were listening, as Chuck read it, the first five commands are. They're not long, but they're more than two words. And you're like, well, maybe this is this.
You shall not murder. It's actually. That's just two words in the Hebrew. Lo ratsak. No, murder, don't murder.
Don't do it. Now, that's kind of simple. Let me say this. There's actually eight words in Hebrew that we might transkill. Okay?
There's quite a few words that talk about this idea of killing in the Bible, in the Hebrew Bible. And this word is not one of the ones that's used a lot. It's used a number of times. It's used here. It has a specific meaning.
This Word is not the one that is used for hunting or for killing animals. It's actually not the one that for the vast majority of the time is used. When you talk about the law of God, when there's certain types of killing that happens, or even in the context of war, it's not one of the ones that's used in the context of the military. Now, this is a malicious. This is an unlawful taking of the life of another.
It's talking about the taking of a life of another whom God has given life and who God is sustaining life in them is saying, it is not yours to take. It is unjust to take another's life. It is wrong. No, Ratzak, manslaughter.
Now, this is kind of. So there's a way that we can kind of. What does this mean? Right. Well, one thing that it doesn't necessarily mean is that this is a prohibition against self defense.
Okay. Just a few chapters later, actually, like, you know, we're in Exodus 20. If you just go two chapters later in Exodus 22, you can read in verse two, if a thief is found breaking in and is struck, meaning actually somebody strikes him because he's breaking in and he dies. There shall be no blood guilt, meaning the blood is not on your hands and you actually won't be liable to judgment. Your life will not be demanded.
This is something I have to skirt very carefully around because it's very complicated, which I'm going to kind of get to that a little bit. But it's also not a complete prohibition against capital punishment, meaning that one's life is not taken when they take another's life. It's not at least an outright command against that. Genesis 9, verse 6. Maybe some of you remember this.
We went through Genesis, the beginning of Genesis of a couple years back. Genesis 9, 6 says, Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed. Why?
For God made man in his own image.
The command is actually an upholding of the reality of the sanctity, the beauty, the gift of God making humankind in this image. It's precisely because murder is an assault on the image of God that some forms of punishment are properly administered. It's actually a defense of the image of God. In Genesis 9, human life is so precious that taking it was to be severely punished cannot take human life and think that it is just something easily done and to be dismissed and to be sort of let go. In some ways, this is what's at play actually, in the famous principle of the lex talionis, which is the law of retaliation, which is actually in the very next chapter in Exodus 21, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
A wound for a wound, which is the principle that the punishment actually must fit the crime.
Something that we still uphold to today. But we also have to admit that to a degree, Gandhi was absolutely right that an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. Right. If we keep gouging out each other's eyes, nobody's going to see. But here's what you have to understand.
In the ancient near east, when that was written in Exodus 21, the law of the world was not eye for an eye. It wasn't actually a proper judgment on the deed done.
Instead, it was your head for my eye, your family for my tooth. Retribution.
The command also doesn't prohibit all war. Once again, I actually think we need to be extremely careful here. Peace is always the goal. To live at peace is always the goal. But God does send Israel to battle.
That's hard. Romans 13 tells us that the state does not bear the sword in vain, which means it does bear the sword. And also it actually says, more specifically, it is not a, quote, terror to good conduct, but to bad. The state actually has a level of terror to bad conduct.
When Jesus met the centurion, he did not say, go and sin no more. And part of your sinning is that you are a centurion and you must exit the Roman army. John the Baptist would have the same thing. You know, he had soldiers that came to him and because he was calling to repentance, and they were like, what do we have to do?
And he says, don't extort. What he doesn't say is, leave. This whole sordid army thing doesn't tell them they must resign. Which say, in a way, this is. There's a simplicity, this kind of.
And that this is focused on manslaughter, the intentional, premeditated taking of a human life that God has given into the world.
My mother's womb, you formed me, my inmost being, that the image of God is always given by God into the world.
But what's interesting is this command also does seem to include a sort of a negligent homicide. Deuteronomy 22, the guilt of blood was upon your house. The same kind of idea, the guilt of blood. So you. You were going to be liable for shedding blood if you didn't put a parapet around the roof of your house.
Here's what would happen is the people would. Often, in the cool of the evening, they would Go outside and they would hang out on the roof of their house, kind of like another room. And if you didn't put a fence around it so that your neighbor wouldn't fall over and die, you would be blood guilty. If your neighbor fell off that negligent homicide, you'd be bled guilty in Exodus 21, again, the very next chapter from what we're looking at. If your ox was known for being violent and you did nothing about it, you would be blood guilty.
What I'm saying is that in a way, there is a simplicity of this command. Say, all human life is sacred, all of human life is sacred. And no human life, not one single human life is exempt from that. All are made in the image of God. Therefore murder is prohibited.
Here's the thing is that at this point you're looking at the checklist and you're going to, right, I don't have a parapet around my roof. I don't need one. I don't have any ox.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, you make your list, but do not be so quick because the parapet and the ox may be far from our experience. But the principle is that we must do all that we can to. For the well being of others lives. All that we can to protect the life of another.
To protect. To love the life of your neighbor. You cannot just look at this command and see it as a prohibition to cold blooded premeditated murder. That can't be allowed from the Old Testament itself.
You cannot just look at this command and look at those who practice suicide or euthanasia or abortion and feel good about yourself. You can't. You also can't just look at this and say I get a stamp on state violence. You can't. You cannot look at this command and say I get a stamp on capital punishment.
You can't.
Why do I say that? If I start out with the idea of it's sort of simple, you're like, well, it's getting a little more complex. It is simple because it's a rather specific word in a way. But how the Bible applies it is so vast.
For the one. Let me give you a few examples. For the one who committed unintentional murder, for the one who had blood guilt because of their unintentional murder, meaning that their life could have been demanded of them. There were six cities of refuge throughout Israel, strategically placed geographically, spread out so that you could flee there and you would not die. It was not just the case that.
Look at what you did. You allowed your ox to gore people we're going to take your life.
Your life could be preserved because the desire was always peace. The desire is always well being of our neighbors. Passage that I read from Exodus 22 about self defense, right? And how it said, and you will have blood guilt on your. You know, you won't have blood guilt if you're acting in self defense.
That's verse two of that chapter. The next verse says, but if the son has risen on him, meaning the one who you acted against in self defense, the son came up and he's still living, there shall be blood guilt, meaning if you didn't do all you could to actually spare the life of the one who was coming into your house, you were not loving your neighbor, you were not promoting life. And even for war, the Israelites were commanded to offer sacrifices before going to war. Partly they were seeking God's blessing, but also it is a truth that we find all throughout in the wars of the Bible that so often the innocent blood is shed, so often, and it's actually something that happens quite a bit in the Bible to Israel, that they are punished because of how they enacted wars. It is not so easy.
Murder may be a fact of life, war is a reality of life. Jesus says in Matthew 24 that we will always have wars and rumors of wars until the end has come.
But let's not pretend that the difference between murder and war can at times be paper thin.
And the Bible I think seems to make this rather clear. The truth is that untold multitudes of human beings have had their, their lives taken away from them by crimes or war.
And sometimes this difference seems, we're not sure always where the difference is. Let me give you an example. A few decades before the birth of Jesus, Julius Caesar spent 10 years in Gaul, modern day France. He made a great name for himself. He became famously wealthy during those 10 years.
What did he do? Well, estimates is that he killed upwards of a million people in this conquest.
People against whom the Roman Empire had no specific grievances.
He killed because by killing them he gained power, he gained wealth.
People, people don't really think back on Julius Caesar as the mass murder. We might put Nero in that category, but he was. Murder always seems to be this selfish action. And here's the thing, Christians, isn't it sort of easy for us to look at the massive bloodshed that happened with the rejection of God and the communist revolutions? And by the way, there actually is something really important to hear in this.
If you get rid of religion, it does not mean you get rid of Violence, part of the hope that many have, ah, do away with religion. It's a violent thing. What we have seen is when that happens is that violence seems to skyrocket. But it may be easy to kind of look upon those. We think of the 2160 million people who died under Stalin, the 40 to 80 million under Mao Zedong, the 1 1/2 to 2 million who died in the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge.
And we may go look at all that, those people out there.
But Christians, we have to actually also say if we are going to tell history well, we have to also recount the wars of religion in France in the 16th century. They did their own killings, 2 to 4 million people. The French Huguenots, the Protestants against the French Catholics in the name of Christ.
There's a book that I read about, I did not read, titled A Distant Mirror of the calamities, 14th century. And it recounts how noblemen fought untold wars to gain land against each other. How they sent their men into others lands to gain power and to gain wealth. How they taxed, taxed their citizens beyond their livelihood so they were dying so they could pay for their war, to gain power and to gain wealth. And this was done by one Christian nobleman against another.
It's titled A Distant Mirror. Why? Because we need these mirrors to see what would we do if we had this kind of power. What could we do if we ordered people around and they did what we said? And the truth of history seems to be that we diminish, we deface, we take the lives of others made in the very image of God.
This is what we do, what we do with power.
What I'm saying is that this may be a simple command in some regards, and in some regards it is. But it is far from simple. Which is why one of the things that our Lord is saying is that we all break it.
What Jesus is saying there in Matthew 5 is that murder is just the most obvious violation of something that is so all encompassing, so much bigger. And partly that's because the thou shalt nots in the Commandments are always accompanied by the thou shalls, the thou shalts. And the command throughout the Bible is always to seek the well being of your neighbor, to love, to act for the good of, to love your neighbor as yourself.
If you found your neighbor's lost animal in the Old Testament, you were to return it. There were no finders, keepers, losers, weepers. If you plowed your field, you were commanded to leave some of it for those who did not have food. Why so they could live, they could have life. They wouldn't starve.
Get this. If you gained a slave because a man had debts that he could not pay, there are a number of specific ways that you had to look out for the interest of that person and actually went beyond this. Because when he was able to gain freedom, you were actually supposed to set him up so that he was financially better off than when he had to go into that kind of slavery. Why? Because you were to love your neighbor as yourself.
You were to lift up the image of God and others.
You had to be generous. Not just fair, you had to be generous.
Life from conception to the grave. Life to be loved and delighted in and cherished, protected. The prohibition of murder was not just the prohibition to not harm, but to love, to protect, to care for, to tend, to feed, to nourish, to seek life, to love others as you love yourself. Listen to some of the passages from the New Testament that were commanded. This is from Romans 15.
We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak. I mean, if you look at history, for the most part, the strong have abused the weak. Romans tells us, you have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. That's what it says, not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up.
That's what we're commanded to do. First Corinthians 10. Let no one seek his own good but the good of his neighbor. Philippians. Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourself.
It's not just fair, but generous.
Titus, show perfect courtesy towards all people.
We still want that. To say people that look like me and vote like me and all the rest. All people. But the consistent thing of the Bible is that life is given by God, that there's no one who does not bear his image, and there is no one for whom you are not to lift up, to care for, to tend to. Of course, Jesus own words, which may be the hardest.
Matthew, chapter 5. Farther along than what we read.
Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Love your enemies.
And none of this is in contrast to the words of the Old Testament that Jesus is expounding upon in there in Matthew, chapter five. None of this is sort of fighting against what we had in the Old Testament. When Jesus says, you've heard that it said, thou shall not murder. What people were doing is they were trying to take that command and say, well, if you just do these things, then you're fine. No, his words are not against the Old Testament.
Not against it when he says that if you harbor anger against your brother, you'll be liable to judgment and to the council. Or when he says that when you call somebody fools, you'll be liable to the hells of fire. It's not against this command when Jesus tells us that we ought to actually go and be reconciled to our brother when we're going to offer gifts, stop if you have something against your brother, make amends, live into peace. None of that's opposed to this command. This is actually the right outflow of this command.
Because your brother, the one that you are tempted to say, you fool, use your words to cut down, is made in the very image of God.
No, this is a command to live in peace, to seek life, to love life, to cherish it. There's a kind of simplicity of this command that you might use to let yourself off the hook. I think if you simplify it too much, actually what you may be able to do is write others off, because that's what we can do. When we can check it off, we can say, I can check this off and you can't. And then I can begin to actually look down on you and write you off, I did not commit manslaughter.
We can simplify others. We simply others all the time, right? We put people into categories, racial categories, of course, age categories. These people are too old. They're a strain financially, on society.
Maybe we can decide when they live or when they don't. These people are so young, they're strain on society. And we can decide when they live and when they don't.
These people vote that way. I can use my words however I want.
There's a simplicity to this command. If you take it that way. You can speak to your wife in that tone of voice, those harsh words. You can tweet and post and say whatever you will about those people, those political enemies. But there's another kind of simplicity of this command, I think, that invites us into this all encompassing thing.
And the simplicity of this command is the dignity of every single human being and the call for every single one of us to love life, to pursue the well being of our neighbors, that we are to actually love them, as Jesus says, as ourselves.
And if we look at it like this, it's almost impossible to not see that each one of us is blood guilty, right? That each one of us breaks this, that each one of us should actually, that it could demand our life if we understand this command rightly, we may want to be the ones who bar it from the entry of schools and of our houses and of our hearts. Because what if it demands our life? What if it makes us blood guilty because we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves Confess us all.
Because the real right answer to the question of do you have a serious problem with anger? Is what? Yes.
Yes, we do.
And I've got to tell you about good news. Right? I've got to tell you about good news. It's been mentioned. This is Trinity Sunday.
One of the things that we see when we reflect on the Trinity is that the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit is the God who loves life. Just consistently, God loves life. We can read of God the Father, that he gives everyone life and breath and everything else. In Acts 17 we can read there in that same passage, but also elsewhere in him we live and we move and we have our being. But there is no life that does not exist without the will of God.
We can read Jesus say in John, chapter five, for just as the Father raises the dead and gives life to them, so also the Son gives life. That's what it says. That's what Jesus does. That's what the Father does. Gives life, loves life.
Of course, we can recount, as we have so many times, the Nicene Creed. And the very first thing it says about the Holy Spirit is that the Holy Spirit is the Lord and giver of life.
It is who God is, the one who loves life. Of course, when we look at the life of Jesus, we see that the command of Jesus is also. It's not just his command, it is his character. Right? If we look at the Gospels, we don't just see that Jesus commands us these things, but he lives them.
It's his character. It's who God is. Incarnate, shall not kill. God does not assault the image of God. What does Jesus do?
He doesn't assault it, he restores it. He doesn't take life. Jesus doesn't take life. What does he do? He gives life.
Jesus doesn't wound, he heals, Gives life. Not only generally, but he says he gives it abundantly. He just loves it. He's always promoting life, life to the fullest. Jesus does not oppress others, but he liberates them.
His words, even his harsh words, which are harsh at times, are words for life. And repentance does not will that any should perish, but that all should come through to life, everlasting life.
Friends, Jesus had all the reason in the world to seek Vengeance to seek retribution. Right. Blood guilty. He had all the reason in the world to exercise ultimate judgment to say, you're liable, you're liable to the council and to the judgment and to the Hells of Fire, as he says.
But what does he do?
Said he suffers.
Instead, he is murdered. His life is taken unjustly.
He dies that we who murder might live.
Murder in our hearts, murder in our words, murder in our writing, sometimes murder in our hands.
He dies that we might live. He doesn't murder, but he dies the victim of murder. So that we who are the murderers might actually have some life. Because why? He loves it.
He loves life. He's restoring the image of God in the world. That is all. Throughout the Bible it is central to the scriptures that God loves life.
The lover of life is who our triune God is from beginning of the Bible to the end of the Bible. This is who he is. It's also who he calls his people to be. What he's doing in Christ and through the work of the Holy Spirit is he is recreating us into his image. What happens when we reject his image in the garden?
The first sin after they are expelled from God's presence. Murder.
And Jesus comes to restore this reality of the fullness of the image of God and his creation.
This is who we are called to be. And as sordid as Christian history has been, the truth is there has also been vast multitudes of Christianity who have sought to love life and to do it in the name of Jesus. And as they have done that, a cruel and a violent and a murderous world has seen it and has given their life to Jesus or has at least questioned what's going on.
Let me give you a couple examples. Julian the Apostate. Some of you are familiar with that name. No friend to Christianity writing in the fourth century said, let us consider that nothing has so much contributed to the progress of the superstition which is what he called Christianity now. Nothing has so much contributed to the progress of the superstition of Christians as their charity love to strangers.
And he didn't like it. But people came to know Jesus because they loved their strangers, people that weren't like them.
The 4th century church father Basil said that nothing had rendered the Christian faith more famous in those early times and had made for more followers of Christ than the bounty of Christian charity. Let's fast forward a bit to the 19th century. Charles Darwin. No friend to Christianity. Again, he observed the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, which is on the far southern Pacific coast.
Of South America. So they were a degraded people, violent and miserable. And then some years later, he came back after some missionary work had been done there, after Christians went there to love them and to tell them about Jesus. And some of those missionaries gave their life to do so. So he stops again on one of his expeditions, sees how completely changed these people are from their violent ways to living a life of love for others.
And so he actually writes to the missions agency that was caring for these people. And he says, the success of the Tierra del Fuego mission is most wonderful and charms me, as I always prophesied, an utter failure. I always prophesied to be utter failure to go and work with that violent people. He says, it's a great success. I shall feel proud if your committee think it fit to elect me an honorary member of your society.
He wanted to be an honorary member of the mission society because God's people went and loved life and brought peace into a violent world.
Is that not beautiful? It is. It is lovely.
So what should we do?
Will we find, as so many Christians have, that this command is just the beginning of loving your neighbors as yourself, seeking the life of others?
Will we find that our neighbor's well being is our concern?
Will we find that our words, spoken and written, our actions, our hands and our feet, our bodies are not made for cutting down, saying, you fool, but that God made us to reflect him, to create beauty and goodness, truth in the world, to lift up life rather than to tear it down. Will we find that this command is sweeter than honey and more to be desired than gold?
I think that if we do this, if we do this, the Julian apostates and the Charles Darwin's might go, I want to be a part of that. There is something lovely there.
May it be true of us. Amen. Lord God, may we never use your law to beat down. May we see it as a lovely call to love you with our whole heart, mind and soul and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. May we see the sanctity, the holiness of you when we are called to love first and of those made in your image, our neighbors, who we are called to love as ourselves.
God, I pray this would start in our homes, with our friends, with our children. May it start in our church and may it overflow into the world, a world that is so fraught with violence, so fraught with power grabbing, pushing others down, angry words.
Would your beauty extend through us? And as you are the Lord and the giver of life, as you're the one who authors it, who perfects it, the one in whom we live and move and have our being. Lord, would we live into your way of loving life. Amen.

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