Turn with me this morning to Exodus chapter 20 in your Bible. I'm going to read verse 13 today. We had the context set there in Exodus 19 as to the place, the voice. Of course, God is speaking. He had prepared the people After declaring the word of his grace and giving the first five commandments, he then says, verse 13, you shall not murder. Thou shalt not kill. Just a short, very short, Hebrew sentence. but a command of great significance, a command that is elaborated on within the Word of God, a command, of course, the principle of which was enforced prior to the giving of this command. God had already judged the world for disobedience to this commandment He had already punished Cain for his murdering of his brother. But I trust as we look at this command today, and we look at other passages that relate to it, that we'll see the breadth of it. There's a breadth to this command. It seems sort of narrow for it to say, you shall not murder, but the word that is used is broader than killing with malice aforethought. I think we'll see that as we look at other passages of Scripture. I think there's a challenge to even just translate this word. But if we were to just restrict it to murder, as you watch the news, as you look out in the world, what kind of a world do you see? What kind of a nation do you see with regard to this commandment? And I would suggest that we live in a nation that has absolutely shattered this commandment. Even if you were just to look at Akron, and I realize we're in Cuyahoga Falls, but if you were to look at the area, I think the numbers here would even increase. But in 2020, 47 murders, 23.8 for every 100,000 people. One person said that's well above the national homicide rate of 6.5 murders per 100,000. There were 42 in 2021. And that's to say nothing of abortion. Local abortion statistics are difficult We've just been through a study on the subject of abortion and looked at some of those statistics. But I say we live in a nation that has shattered the Sixth Commandment because if we look back just to 1973, just to legal abortions, not including murders within this total, although it would increase if we were to include murders, 62 million legal abortions five times more than the population of Ohio as a state. In our nation in 2021, 19,600 murders. And concern is that it's on the rise, that it was at the same level as it was, it had been decreasing, but it's now rising again. Thou shalt not kill, God said to His people. You must not murder. It tells us that God is a God of life. He guards the sanctity of life made in His image. This commandment, particularly even that statement, Thou shalt not kill, coming from the King James Version, is widely misunderstood. becomes evident when lost people, and even people who know the Lord, talk about it and don't study the Bible. And this commandment, of course, prohibits the unlawful taking of human life, but biblically there is much more as we look at the application of this commandment. And so the first point I'd like to just put before us today is the sixth word of the Decalogue guards the sanctity of life made in the image of God. God made man in His image. It's clear from the book of Genesis. Throughout the Word of God, man bears the image of his Maker. And God did guard the sanctity of human life made in His image from His punishment of Cain for the murder of Abel. to sending the flood to a world filled with violence, and how did he follow the flood? Of course, he made a covenant not to destroy the earth again with water, but he also gave a commandment that whoever sheds man's blood, that by man shall his blood be shed, and that's an establishment of human government. It's a handing of the sword, so to speak, to human government to then use that sword to punish evil, particularly bloodshed. I do think it's interesting to just read through the pages of Exodus as we have and see that the same man who ordered that children be cast into the Nile, that male children cast into the Nile to be drowned, that same one was drowned in the waters of the Red Sea by God Himself. God gave this commandment, you shall not murder. Now, how does this command guard the sanctity of life? Well, God commands it. He also reinforces that with punishment for disobedience. But this word, as it's used, translated here, murder, is translated in other places with the word manslayer in a noun form. and it's used without distinction between intentional killing and unintentional killing. Of course in our legal system there's a difference between manslaughter and murder. Both are illegal. This commandment covers both of them. Murder is the unlawful taking of the life of another human being in premeditated fashion. We would say, even make distinctions of murder in the first degree or the second degree and so forth. And there's also voluntary or involuntary manslaughter, and this command covers both of those, both murder as well as manslaughter. So this word that's used, you shall not murder, indicates unlawful killing of any kind, not simply what we tend to define as murder. And we also don't have an object here. When it says, you shall not murder, there's no statement that that has to do, there's no additional word that indicates human beings. And that's led some people to interpret wrongly that any kind of killing is wrong. In other words, thou shall not kill applies not just to man, but it applies to animals and plants and all sorts of things that people imagine. But this word, it's the Hebrew word ratzak, one person said, and I just did a Bible study to look at this word through scripture to verify this statement, and it's true. Every time this word is used, a person, not an animal, is the understood object. It never refers to killing in war. And with one possible exception, it never denotes capital punishment. In other words, it's not used to describe the execution of someone because of the court's jurisdiction and judgment. Now, I want to ask you to turn to Numbers chapter 35, and we'll see that exception. Numbers 35. It's an interesting verse, verse 30. And there's more in this chapter on the subject of murder. Cities of refuge is the topic of the chapter. But look at verse 30. If anyone kills a person, the murderer shall be put to death at the evidence of witnesses, but no person shall be put to death on the testimony of one witness. And if you're reading in English, of course, we have the word kill, murderer, put to death, and again, put to death. Four occurrences of the same concept. But if you were to look at the original language, it's if anyone kills, naka, which means to strike. The murderer, ratzak, that's the same word that's used in the commandment, the murderer, shall be put to death. That's the word ratzak again. The one who slays shall be slain. But, end of the verse, no person shall be put to death. That's a different Hebrew word on the testimony of one witness. So we have Moses here, and of course it's not just Moses, it's the Holy Spirit, who is using different words to indicate the type of action or the type of person that is involved in this commandment, you must not kill or you must not murder. So it's important to understand the word, and as the law lays it out, if we were to look at that word and see how it's applied, we would come to chapters like Numbers 35, which is a chapter that deals with cities of refuge. What was the purpose of a city of refuge? A purpose of a city of refuge was if someone killed someone unintentionally. They didn't do it on purpose. Perhaps there was a fight and something happened during the course of the fight, the person didn't actually intend in a premeditated way to kill this person but that's what happened, then the person could go to a city of refuge and ask the judges to make a judgment regarding the case. Now if he didn't go to the city of refuge, the law was in Israel that the person who was killed, the redeemer or the blood avenger as the scripture often times, as it's translated in English, could come and take the life of the one who had taken life. That was the system of justice in Israel according to God's command. So when it says you shall not murder, you must not kill, again there's a breadth of that word that encompasses yes, premeditated murder, malice of forethought, but it also involves those cases in which someone did not intentionally kill someone else. So this commandment actually guards the sanctity of life not just against someone who would, in a premeditated way, take another person's life, but it guards the sanctity of life in saying that even life that we would say was accidentally taken still has great value and there ought to be consequences for taking that life because human beings are made in God's image. Now I said earlier on that this sixth word of the Decalogue is widely misunderstood. I do think it's important to study out and consider some of the questions that people pose or sometimes they don't even pose the question, they just say this is what it means. Does this apply to taking animal life? I think a study of that word, as it's shown in the Decalogue in particular, but throughout the Law and then throughout the Word of God, you'd see that this really doesn't have anything to do with taking animal life. The same God who commanded, you must not kill, was receiving sacrifices at the base of the mountain. and commanding sacrifices. So PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, when it said in 2021 through a marketing campaign, thou shalt not kill, and it had Moses holding a staff in one hand and a handful of carrots in the other. And you say, well that's ridiculous. Yeah, it's ridiculous. And so was the one that read WWJD, thou shalt not kill, go vegan. That's a misinterpretation of the command. They were trying to, in their own words, shine a spotlight on the hypocrisy of Chick-fil-A, a purportedly Christian company that profits from the mass slaughter of animals. That's not what this command is about. If they were looking for the ethical treatment of animals, there are other passages actually in God's word that teach that. That doesn't mean that animals cannot be killed. In Genesis 4 there are animal sacrifices that received a sanction by God himself as Abel offered them. Noah's sacrifice after the flood. And the very sacrificial system assumes the killing of animals. The shedding of their blood, the pouring out of their blood. But if you were to go to some portions of the Word of God, you would say, yes, man is to be a steward of God's creation. Man is not to be cruel to the creation that God has made. It's the righteous man, Proverbs 12, that has regard for the life of his animal. And God Himself said in Jonah 4, should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals? Why did God not want to slaughter Nineveh, remember he said 40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown, included in that destruction would have been the animals, and God had regard for the people. He also had a regard for the animals that were there, that He had made. And what does Matthew say? That God even cares for the sparrows? So, if we're going to look at that subject of taking animal life, we have a bigger picture of the Word of God to look at, and we would see that yes, man is a steward, but man can kill and eat meat. We see that after the flood is authorized according to 1 Timothy chapter 4 as well. Paul wrote, the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron. Men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods which God has created to be gratefully shared by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude, for it is sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer." And we could take more time. I trust just a little bit of time considering that helps us to think rightly about that commandment. It doesn't have to do with animals. It also doesn't have to do with self-defense. Turn over to Exodus 22. taking life in self-defense, and I'll say sometimes. Look at verse 2 of Exodus 22. It says, if the thief, the context here is theft, There's to be restitution, verse 1, for what he has stolen. Verse 2, if the thief is caught while breaking in and is struck so that he dies, there will be no blood guiltiness on his account. But, verse 3, if the sun has risen upon him, there will be blood guiltiness on his account. He shall surely make restitution. If he owns nothing, then he shall be sold for his theft. And it goes on. Well, what's the point here? if someone is breaking in, verse 2, and is struck so that he dies, there's no blood guiltiness. Now, some would interpret, verse 3, if the sun has risen upon him, that the thief has come at night, and that because of the inability to see that the owner of the possessions or the household doesn't know what this person is doing in the house. And so he has no idea of the intention. And it could be deadly threat. And so to take his life would be because there was a threat. I don't know that the passage necessarily has to be interpreted that way. But the point here is that if a person breaks in stealing someone else's possessions and is struck That act and the response of self-defense, God looks upon that and he does not judge the person who was defending themselves and their property. He does not judge them for murder. He doesn't judge them for having taken the life. But if the thief gets away, has the stuff, the owner can't just go and murder that person and take the stuff back. There has to be restitution. God is making distinctions in the law. Another thought that sometimes is connected with this commandment, thou shalt not kill, is the thought of war. And if we were to survey the Word of God for the wars that take place, we could see that God sometimes commands war, that sometimes God stops war from happening. He orders people not to to take up arms against a brother or against a neighboring nation, and this is not time to look into all the biblical teaching about war, but this command, you must not kill, cannot apply to every case of war. In some cases, I think you'd have to say that the biblical teaching would prohibit the actual engagement of war at all, but even within war, there's to be a carefulness with which life is taken, if it is taken. If you were to think in terms of self-defense, if your home was invaded, and based on what we read in Exodus 22, not knowing the reason, defending yourself, There wouldn't be blood guiltiness based upon your response if you struck the person breaking in, but if the person had deadly intent, of course the same would be the case. But if a nation was invaded and there was deadly intent on the part of the nation invading, it would be like that. It would be defending ourselves. It would be protecting ourselves. If it came down to it and there was a covenant that one nation had with another, and the nation, not our nation, but that other nation was attacked, that covenant that those two nations held together would be considered as a part of the response if this nation was attacked. Why do I say that? Well, you can just look at the case of Gibeon in the Old Testament when the children of Israel had a covenant with Gibeon. Remember the Gibeonites? They came to Israel They pretended as if they were from very far away. They were actually very close. They made a covenant with Israel. When Gibeon went away and the other kings of Canaan attacked Gibeon, Gibeon appealed and then Israel entered into defending Gibeon, which actually was also the nations of Canaan. But that was right for them to do because of the obligation that they made. They made a covenant with Gibeon. Again, we could take more time to consider this matter of war, you must not kill. Certainly you can break this commandment in the context of war, but the big picture of saying all war is wrong because of this commandment just does not fit with the biblical picture. This commandment also does not apply to capital punishment. There are many Christian denominations, many Christian organizations that believe that capital punishment is evil. The argument goes, how can the taking of the life of one who murdered by execution do anything but add to the death toll? One life has already been taken and why should you make it two? One writer in the New York Times back in 2018 title of the article was There's a Lot of Killing and Thou Shalt Not Kill States and she argued that life is sacred. She said the real problem with the death penalty can't be summed up by setting pros and cons on different sides of a balance to see which carries more weight. The real problem of the death penalty is its human face. A person on death row is a person. No matter how ungrieved he may be once he's gone, he's still a human being, and it is not our right to take his life any more than it was his right to take another's. And there's something right about what she said, and that is, it's not our right. It's not my right. I can't be a vigilante. and go and with justice in my own hands take the life of someone who's taken the life of another. God hasn't given me or you that sword, but he has given human government that sword. And if you're to read Romans chapter 13, you see that God has given human government as one who punishes evil. And the punishment of evil includes, yes, capital punishment, yes, execution. It's interesting, if you look back at chapter 21, Exodus 21, so the law is given in Exodus 20, and those who claim thou shalt not kill or you shall not murder, Exodus 20.13, just need to keep on reading Because in verse 12 of chapter 21, the same God, the same self-existent Yahweh, God of the Bible says, he who strikes a man so that he dies shall surely be put to death. But if he did not lie in wait for him, but God let him fall into his hand, then I will appoint you a place to which he may flee. a man acts presumptuously toward his neighbor so as to kill him craftily, you are to take him even from my altar that he may die." And the idea of taking him from my altar, there was a place that you could appeal for the mercy of God and for the justice of God and that was to go to the altar, to take the horns of the altar and ask the judge or the priest to make a judgment. And some did. But God says, if a person has acted, verse 14, presumptuously toward his neighbor so as to kill him craftily, in other words, this is with malice aforethought, intentional murder, that person is to be taken even from the altar and executed. Now, God makes distinctions with regard to the penalty. even in those statements in verses 12 through 14. And you can see throughout the law that he makes distinctions when human life is taken. And so a justice system that distinguishes between murder and manslaughter and voluntary manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter, all of that is I think a mirror of the distinctions that ought to be made, that are made in the law. That's not to say that in the country that we live in or countries around the world that the distinctions that are made and the judgments that are given are always right. Some of the argument against capital punishment is that sometimes the wrong person is caught or charged and sentenced. And so to take the life of that innocent person is wrong. And yes, it would be. It's important that the judges who judge, judge justly. But the fact that sometimes they judge unjustly doesn't undo the rest of God's law, doesn't undo the commandment. It's interesting as well, if you read through the law, capital punishment goes beyond just murder. Did you ever notice that? In fact, look at the next verse there in Exodus 21. He who strikes his father or his mother shall surely be put to death. Verse 16, he who kidnaps a man, whether he sells him or he is found in his possession, shall surely be put to death. He who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death. That ought to put us on notice that God regards sins not just murder but other sins as well, even sins in relationship to father and mother, parents, and other things as very serious sins worthy of death. Murder, kidnapping, adultery, homosexuality, bestiality, persistent disobedience to parents, striking or cursing parents, which we just read, human sacrifice, intentional breaking of the Sabbath, sacrificing to false gods, using magic or divination, and idolatry. All of those were capital crimes. All of those deserving of death. This is God's law. This is what he commanded for his nation. You could certainly say that until Christ comes and establishes righteousness on the earth, that mankind in his sinfulness is just going to continue on sometimes making judgments that are right, but oftentimes making judgments that are wrong, that are sinful, Even with regard to the death penalty, I don't know how much influence this had around the world, but I do think it's significant that in May 2018 there was a new draft of part of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Pope Francis authorized this change. The change was that the death penalty should be abolished. It says recourse to the death penalty on the part of a legitimate authority following a fair trial was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good. Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of a person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. In addition, A new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the states, a state rather. Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed which ensure the due protection of citizens but at the same time do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption. Consequently, the church teaches in light of the gospel that the death penalty is inadmissible because it is intact on the inviolability and dignity of the person. and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide. I say, I don't know what influence it had around the world, but in 2018, 121 nations signed a resolution on a moratorium of the death penalty. The argument is that the death penalty does not deter crime. The argument is that it's killing another person. You know what? As you look at God's Word, there's much more of a concern for how that sin relates to God and how it relates to the purity of the nation in which that sin is committed. Turn over to Numbers chapter 33 for a moment. I think I have the wrong passage. Deuteronomy 19. Deuteronomy 19. The context of Deuteronomy is given when Moses is about to die, when the children of Israel are on the verge of the promised land. Deuteronomy 19, when the Lord your God cuts off nations whose land the Lord your God gives you, and you dispossess them and settle in their cities and in their houses, you shall set aside three cities for yourself in the midst of your land, which the Lord your God gives you to possess. you shall prepare roads for yourself, and divide into three parts the territory of your land, which the Lord your God will give you as a possession, so that any manslayer may flee there." So God is providing again for the cases in which someone has killed someone, but not intentionally so. and the manslayer can go to one of those cities. Verse 4, now this is the case of the manslayer who may flee there and live when he kills his friend unintentionally not hating him previously as when a man goes into the forest with his friend to cut wood and his hand swings the axe to cut down the tree and the iron head slips off the handle and strikes his friend so that he dies. He may flee to one of these cities and live. Now you just think about the context of verse 5. These are two people working together, there's no other witness, perhaps, and this is an accidental death. But from the outside it could look like he went out in the woods and he intentionally sought to kill this other person. Look at verse 6. So the person is to go to one of those cities, verse 6, otherwise the avenger of blood might pursue the manslayer in the heat of his anger and overtake him because the way is long and take his life though he was not deserving of death since he had not hated him previously. Now what does that statement indicate about the nature of what is going on when someone's life is taken? That there's another element that hatred in the heart is an element in what happens. Let's keep on going. Verse 7, Therefore I command you, saying, You shall set aside three cities for yourself, if the Lord your God enlarges your territory, just as He has sworn to your fathers, and gives you all the land which He promised to give your fathers, if you carefully observe all this commandment which I command you today, to love the Lord your God, and to walk in His ways always, then you shall add three more cities for yourself besides these three. So innocent blood will not be shed in the midst of your land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance and blood guiltiness be on you. In other words, it's possible that in the response to that accident that someone would respond with killing the person who accidentally killed and then that would be a problem. Look at verse 11. But if there is a man who hates his neighbor and lies in wait for him and rises up against him and strikes him so that he dies, there it is again, hatred in the heart, and he flees to one of these cities, then the elders of his cities shall send and take him from there and deliver him to the hand of the avenger of blood, that he may die. You shall not pity him, but you shall purge the blood of the innocent from Israel, that it may go well with you. You shall purge the blood of the innocent from Israel, that it may go well with you." Well, who's looking at the blood? God is. What did he say to Cain? The blood of your brother is crying out from the ground. God saw what he did. And God sees when any blood is shed, and of course He can distinguish between. We can't always distinguish between, but that was the reason for the cities of refuge. Look over at Deuteronomy 21. This is an interesting passage. I'm not going to read all the way through it. Basically what happens is someone has been killed near a city. the elders closest of the city, closest to the place where the person dies, are to offer a sacrifice to the Lord. There to, verse 6, It says, All the elders of the city which is nearest to the slain man shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley, and they shall answer and say, Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it. Forgive your people Israel, whom you have redeemed, O Lord, and do not place the guilt of the innocent blood in the midst of your people Israel. And the bloodguiltiness shall be forgiven them, so you shall remove the guilt of innocent blood from your midst, when you do what is right in the eyes of the Lord." In other words, even for a death where they did not know the cause, but it looked like a murder, something was to be done. Otherwise, the guilt of that remained on the nation. God is looking at a nation, and he's judging a nation in part for the blood that has been spilled in that nation. Why do I say The orientation of the Word of God has a lot more to do with when a murder takes place. It doesn't have to do with just relationships between other people. It's between the person who sinned and God. It's because of passages like this. And it's not just between an individual and God. We tend to individualize sin as if that sin just had to do with that person. But you can see here that God is holding corporate responsibility for what is taking place. One more passage, 1 Kings chapter 2. 1 Kings chapter 2, David has just died. As he gives his final instructions to Solomon, he tells him to deal with Joab, who was always a problem to David. And in this chapter that records the beginnings of Solomon's reign, we find Joab being executed. Look at verse 28. Now the news came to Joab, for Joab had followed Adonijah, although he had not followed Absalom. And Joab fled to the tent of the LORD, and took hold of the horns of the altar. It was told King Solomon that Joab had fled to the tent of the LORD, and behold, he is beside the altar. Then Solomon sent Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, saying, Go, fall on him. So Benaiah came to the tent of the Lord, and said to him, Thus the king has said, Come out. But he said, No, for I will die here. And Benaiah brought the king word again, saying, Thus spoke Joab. And thus he answered me. The king said to him, Do as he has spoken, and fall upon him, and bury him. Notice this. That you may remove from me, this is Solomon speaking, and from my father's house, that's David's house, the blood which Joab shed without cause." Joab had murdered more than one person. Sometimes it was in the context of war that was going on. but what Joab did was not consistent with the war, it was something else and so there were all kinds of questions you might say. But look at what he says in verse 32, the Lord will return his blood on his own head because he fell upon two men more righteous and better than he and killed them with the sword while my father David did not know it. Abner the son of Ner, commander of the army of Israel, and Amasa the son of Jether, commander of the army of Judah, so that shall their blood return on the head of Joab and on the head of his descendants forever. But to David and his descendants in his house and his throne, there may be peace from the Lord forever.' Then Benaiah son of Jehoiada went up and fell upon him and put him to death, and he was buried at his own house in the wilderness." What's the point? The point is that as Solomon is giving not just the order, but the explanation for the order, the reason was that Joab had killed people under David's reign. And that blood, that innocent blood that had been shed, was the responsibility of the nation and the king of the nation. So what does it mean if our nation, and I'm talking about the United States of America, what does it mean that we've shed so much blood, that so many murders have taken place, that so much abortion has taken place, and that wrong in the majority has not been righted. God is a God of justice. Payday someday. Payday someday. Innocent blood, and I'm not just talking about murders that are unsolved, but innocent blood, abortions that have been performed, Is God going to hold our nation to account for that? Yes. Yes. And every other nation as well. It's no wonder that in Revelation, the water, just like it was in Egypt, in the rivers, is turned to blood, because the people so much desired blood, that he gives them blood to drink. And lest we only look at the nation and not look at ourselves, we also need to look at the statements of Jesus. And I want to ask you to turn to Matthew chapter 5. I'm just going to briefly look at this and we'll look at it, Lord willing, next week. But Matthew chapter 5. How does Jesus interpret this commandment? Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount here begins to apply the law. Here He refers to the sixth commandment in verse 21. He says, You have heard that the ancients were told, You shall not commit murder, and whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court. That would be to the civil court. So that's what you've heard, that's what the ancients were told, that was the command. And the commandment of course dealt with the actual premeditated killing of another person. But what does Jesus say? But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court. And whoever says to his brother, Raka, or as it's translated here, you good-for-nothing, you empty head, shall be guilty before the Sanhedrin. Sanhedrin was the ruling body of Israel. It would have dealt with the most serious cases. So to have anger in your heart towards a brother, you are guilty enough to come before a court of law. And if you call your brother worthless or empty head, you give him an unjustified insult, you attack your fellow image bearer with those words that are unjustified, you abuse him with those words, notice the next statement, and whoever says you fool shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell. That's Gehenna. The immediate image for people would be the Valley of Hinnom, where garbage was, where it was burning all the time. And it was their place to take their refuse. It was burning there, it was a stench, there was smoke coming up and flames there. It was not a nice place to be, but God here, the person of Christ, is saying, if you say in an abusive way to someone you fool, that that breaks and shatters this command as well. To just give you a sense of the shock value, we can hear the word court and Sanhedrin and certainly I hope that Hell, Gehenna gets our attention. But to give you something of the shock value here, if you're driving down the road, somebody cuts you off, and you get angry, and you say some choice words, and that person goes on their way. And suddenly, you see the blue lights in your mirror. And you're kind of confounded because you weren't speeding. Somebody else had cut you off, and you stop. And what seems to be the problem, officer? I don't think I was speeding. No, you weren't speeding. Did you see what happened? Yeah, I saw that. Well, what's the issue? The issue is you got angry with him. And you called him all kinds of names. That's why I'm issuing an arrest for you. You would say, that's ridiculous. That's a parallel to what we see in Matthew 5. The law is spiritual. It deals with hatred in the heart that issues forth in anger resentment, bitterness, abusive words, whether that's to your neighbor, the person who cuts you off in the car, or your spouse, or your child, or the other person at work. Jesus is not intensifying, he's not changing anything here. He's saying that that commandment deals with those issues too. And so if I have anger in my heart, if I have resentment, bitterness, hatred for someone else, and then that issues forth in abusive speech and words, that's the beginnings of murder. And God's word calls us to repent of that. You say, is anger, that serious, his abusive speech that serious? Yes, it is. Remember what Paul said in Galatians 5? Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God." Now you say, that puts a pretty high bar. God hates anger. Yes, He does. And He hates bitterness. He hates anything that would lead to murder. All of it is sin, and God says, I'm against it. There was a night when I was newly married. I had had a experience for a few months working with a person who was a very bitter person. I felt like mistreated me. They were in a position of authority over me. Over time, that relationship affected my heart, my pride, my arrogance. I started to get bitter at that person. And that relationship, that circumstance sort of ended, but what continued was the bitterness and anger in my heart. And I remember getting upset with my wife, who probably hadn't done anything. Just kind of my immediate reaction, because that anger was just burning, seething, and it would lash out. And it did so frequently, just in small ways, but observable ways. And I realized one night that that was going on. I didn't necessarily take stock, but Eventually, I realize I'm just kind of angry. And I'm just lashing out in bitterness for lots of silly things. And I remember I sat up in bed, and I said, I hate, and I said the person's name that I'd had the bad relationship with before. I just said, I hate her. And as soon as I said that, something snapped. Because God's word says that if you hate your brother in your heart, you're a what? You're a murderer. You're a killer. I hope that for each of us it doesn't come to the point where we say that out loud, but we have to analyze and specifically look at our lives and say, is that what's going on? That should have no part in the life of a Christian. And I don't know all the application God has for the message. today, but I trust that from looking at this commandment, looking at Jesus' words, and we'll look at them again, that God would confront not just our thoughts about what's going on in our nation, but in our own hearts as to where we may be actually shattering God's Word and bring us to a place of repentance. Let's pray. Many times, Lord, I have broken this commandment. And if we're honest with ourselves, we all have. We thank you for the cross of Jesus Christ. We thank you that he took upon himself our sins, bore them on the tree. He paid the penalty which was due to us, something we could not do for ourselves. And for that, Lord, we bless you. And Father, we pray that you would change us, that we would be sobered. Our world glorifies anger, insults, abusive speech, but we know it has no place in the life of a Christian. And so we ask, Lord, that you'd help us not to conform to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our mind. Grant us grace. Thank you, Lord, that if we confess our sins, that you're faithful and just to forgive us, to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And we pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.