Two weeks ago we looked at the fifth commandment of Moses, honor thy father and mother. Last week we looked at the sixth commandment of Moses, thou shall not kill. We didn't get very far in that particular study as we were trying to relate to our day and age with the questioning of capital punishment, abortion, whether we should or should not pull life-supporting equipment, euthanasia, some of those questions, capital punishment, some of those questions, what the Bible says, what God says is changing over time. And the question is, is just, Lord, what do you have to say on the matter? And where would you have us be thinking? Where would you have us be acting? And just one quick passage, let's go to Romans 1, Romans 1. Just take a couple minutes to review last week and then we'll move on. This topic, I was surprised, actually generated quite a few questions and comments from you, so I think I'm heading in the right direction, trying to feed some of your questions, answer them. In Romans 1, verse 28, It says, and even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind to do those things which are not convenient, being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetous, maliciousness, full of envy, murder. And there's a list of sins there. Let's go down to verse 32. It says, who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death. So here is a statement by God. He says, one of my sins is murder. And if you commit such this along with some of these other sins, these are sins that are worthy of death. And on the surface, that seems like a contradiction. But last week when we looked at scripture, we see that when God uses the word kill and he uses the word murder, He's talking, you almost have to look at it from the point of innocent blood and guilty blood. If I was in self-defense, that certainly would be not murder, but it would be killing. But if I was in an act of war, that certainly would be killing, but it wouldn't be murder. So it turns out murder is killing, but not all killing is murder. And when you go to scripture and you look at some of these Old Testament passages, like Numbers 35, in Deuteronomy 21, God gave a whole list of scenarios. If we were to break out in a fight and it was preplanned and I came mad, that would be one thing. But if I came and it was spontaneous, that would be another. If I reached down and picked up a rock, that would be another case or a weapon. If I was accidental death, if I had an ox that gored someone, that would be one thing. If it was an ox that I knew was ornery and gored someone, that would be a completely another. And all this stuff was covered by God's word. And as we go through scripture, it turns out that God actually looks at the heart. And basically that was very consistent with Jesus taught in Matthew 25. If you're angry, without a cause, you're guilty of murder even though you haven't had opportunity. And that's kind of where we left off last week. We covered that and we covered, how God looks at the difference between killing and murder, and that's about as far as we got. Now, some of you have had some questions, and I'm going to try to answer some of those questions about what's murder and what's not. And one of the subjects I'd like to probably tackle first is the case of suicide. I don't know if you've ever heard a message on suicide or not, but God has a lot to say about it. There's a lot of folks in Scripture that did kill themselves. There's also several other folks that tried to kill themselves. and there's a whole bunch of folks that had a death wish. Now you're probably thinking, okay, what does that have to do with me? Well, I don't know about you, but it has touched my life. I have a biological grandfather that took his life when my mom was only 13 years old. and I've heard the stories and evidently it was depression. Deborah has an uncle that came back from Vietnam that was very mentally troubled and ended up taking his life. And I can tell you last year about this time, I was in the hospital with a young lady that tried to take her life. So it does happen to be touching different families and I think all of you look back and you look far enough in your families, you probably know of a case or two where suicide has been an issue. If you go to public high school, my guess is you don't have to look too far and you will see, you certainly read about them, about bullying and different cases in the newspapers of students who get to a point and take their life. So what I'd like to do is I'd like to look at the case of suicide from what God does have to say, and there are a cures, and just how should we go? How should we proceed? Let's say it's not us, and let's suppose we are into a place where we're really, really depressed, even though we might not be depressed about thinking about taking our lives, this same instruction still will apply to us to how to kick yourself out of that depression sometimes, okay? So as you go through scripture, I'm actually going to look at some of these cases that you're probably not familiar with. Now, when we think of suicide, we think of the Bible. I think most everybody will come to mind, they'll say, aha, Judas. Judas tried to take his life. And he did take his life, and he was successful, and that seemed to be guilt-driven. Well, we can think of the time when the apostles were in jail, and there was an earthquake, and they escaped, and the jailer wanted to run himself through, and I think it was Paul that yelled out, stop, don't do it! And they had a conversation, and he didn't take his life. I think we're familiar with those cases, but let's go to a couple cases where maybe you're not so familiar. The first one is a man named Ahithophel. Let's go to 2 Samuel 16 and verse 20. we're looking at the very serious subject of suicide as it relates to thou shall not kill. And don't get me wrong when I'm talking about it, when God says thou shall not kill, he does say thou shall not kill and that includes yourself. We do know folks that are to the point where they're very depressed and we do feel sorry for them, but it's still wrong, it's still a sin. Now let me stay this out of the shoe. I've heard some people say that suicide is an unpardonable sin. I don't see that in scripture. I think Jesus' blood is strong enough to cover any sin and this is definitely one of them, okay? But nevertheless, we may run into people, whether they be family or distant relatives or coworkers or maybe even a student that you don't know that well. I do remember a student that took his life when I was in high school. I remember meeting him in 10th grade. He dropped out, and I heard somewhere around 11th or 12th grade he took his life. So I never stepped up to him. I didn't have the strength. I didn't have the knowledge. I wouldn't have known what to say. Maybe this will be the encouragement or not. Okay, let's go to 2 Samuel, and we want to go to 16 and verse 20. 2 Samuel 16 and 20. Now this was a man named Ahithophel, And I guess the best way to say it, this was a man that was just, the reason behind it wasn't depression, it was pride. It was pride. Now the actual act takes in 1723, but I want to kind of set the stage of, suicidal thought, 99.9% of the time, doesn't happen just overnight. You just wake up in the morning and say, hey, I'm gonna do this. Usually it's a process of a slow period of time, where you get to this point. So what I'm trying to do is build a case of what this man that we probably don't know too much about, or if we had a Bible conversation, probably he'd be one of the last guys you'd bring up. We just don't talk about this guy that often. But let's kind of lay the groundwork of how this guy got to a point where he wanted to hang himself. 2 Samuel 16 and verse 20, it says, then said Absalom to Ahithophel, give counsel among you what we shall do. So it turns out we find out who he was. Remember Absalom? Absalom was that rascal king that tried to take the throne away from David. And he set himself up with some counselors. And this man named Ahithophel was one of his counselors. And he turns and he says, Ahithophel, David's over here. I want to kill him. And what's the best way to do it? And he goes to Ahithophel. And he says, Ahithophel, how should I do it? And the next four or five verses, basically, he gives a game plan. We come down to chapter 17 and verse 3, actually verse 4, 2 Samuel 17 and verse 4, and the saying, pleased Absalom well and all the elders of Israel. So Ahithophel was a counselor. He was getting answer for counsel. He gave his advice. Absalom, the king that was trying to take over, says, good, I like it. And as long as his counsel was being paid attention to, he was happy. But we come forward and let's go all the way to chapter 17 and verse 23. And it says, And when Ahithophel saw that his counsel was not followed, he saddled his ass, and arose, and got him home to his house, to his city, and put his household in order, and hanged himself, and died, and was buried in the sepulcher of his father. In other words, there was a counseling disagreement. Let's suppose I was pastoring a church, and we had two or three deacons, and I said, what do you think we should do in this? And one deacon said this advice, one deacon said that advice, another deacon said this advice, and I said, I'm going this way. And the one that I said, no, I don't think I want to go that way, He got mad and took off and went and killed himself. Do you understand how full of a person he is? How much pride a person has? He said, they didn't take my counsel. That was the reason behind it. It was pride. It was pride that got him to a place. You're thinking, boy, oh boy. I give my advice all the time. No one ever listens to me. I preach all the time. People, you know, they come to me for advice and they don't even listen to it. Just think of every time that someone ignored my advice, I wouldn't have thought like that. How is that right to us? My friends, the Lord would have us tell the things of Christ. And to do it in this world, you're gonna get a lot of rejection. People are gonna say, no way. Oh, you're just a preacher. You're only going by the Bible. we're gonna get rejected a lot. We need to get ourselves to a point that when we give advice, even if it's my own wife, or even if it's my own sons, my sons are getting to the point where they don't always take my advice. Yeah, and I get discouraged, and I know some of the pitfalls they'll have one and two or three years down the road, but should I get so self-consumed, this suicide was a man that was so involved and so caught up in himself. But you know what? There's signals. There's little trigger points that say, listen, this brother's in trouble, okay? Now let's just put the FFL on hold for a second and let's go look at one more case, okay? Let's look at a man named Zimri. Let's go to 1 Kings 16. 1 Kings 16. Now I'm just putting out a couple of case studies for you, a couple of men, what's recorded in scripture, and then we'll make some summaries here in a second. 1 Kings 16 and verse eight. I hear the Bible or two flipping, I'll wait till you get there. 1 Kings 16 and verse eight. In the 26th year of Asa, King of Judah began Elah, the son of Beahashah, to reign over Israel, Terzah, two years. Okay, now remember back at this point in time, Israel was a split kingdom. There was Judah over here, and they had a king, and that king was Asa, and Israel was a king, and it was this fellow named Elah, and he was king. Israel was a split nation, and each nation, or each half of the nation had a different king, okay? And his servant, Zimri, captain of half his chariots, conspired against him as he was in Tirzah, drinking himself drunk in the house of Arzah, steward of his house in Tirzah. And Zimri went in and smote him and killed him in the 27th year of Asa, king of Judah, and reigned in his stead." I guess the best way to put this is this guy was a ladder climber, and he went to an extreme to get the king's spot. He waited to a point when the king was drinking, he conspired against him, he killed the king, and he took over his office. He was an advisor of sorts. He was kind of one of his generals. Okay? Let's skip down here now to verse 11. And it came to pass when he began to reign, as soon as he sat on his throne, that he slew all the house of Baal-shah, and left him not one epistle against the wall, Neither of his kin's folks nor his friends. Now that's a crude way of saying all the male heirs, okay? So what happened was Zimron, not only did he kill the king, he looked around and he got all his offspring to make sure none of those people would sit in the throne. And he killed them all. Wow, this Zimron sounds like a pretty powerful, power-hungry guy, doesn't he? All right, let's skip down to where he kills himself and let's figure out why. Chapter 16 and verse 16. And the people that were encamped heard say, Zimri hath conspired, and hath also slain the king, wherefore all Israel made Amri, the captain of the host, king over Israel, the day in the camp. And Omri went up from Gibethon, and all Israel with him, and they besieged Tirzah. And it came to pass when Zimri saw that the city was taken, that he went into the palace of the king's house, and burnt the king's house over him with fire, and died." Here's another guy that committed suicide, and here's a guy that wanted to be king. He killed the king in all his errors. He sat on the throne. The people says, uh-uh, we don't want you to be king. They picked the other leader and they came up and surrounded him and he went into a house and lit it on fire and he stayed in there and he consumed himself. Pretty depressing stuff. But how does it get to a point where a guy named Zimri gets to a point where he actually kills himself? Sounds like he was pretty full of himself too. Well, if I can't be king and they're surrounding me, my end is pretty much doom. He says, I'm going to beat him to the punch and I'm going to kill myself. Hmm. Well, the people I know, classmates didn't want to be king and it wasn't that necessary. Counsel wasn't done. They were being bullied or they were depressed. Well, let's look at one more. Let's look at a man named Samson. Samson. Let's go to the book of Judges. Judges 14. Now the suicidal act happens in 16 but we want to lay some groundwork here. We're looking at some of the folks in the Bible who actually killed themselves and how did this happen? Chapter 14, Judges 14 and verse 1. This is kind of a long history. I'm going to go through it pretty quick. Samson. Let's start off here in chapter 14, verse 1. And Samson went down to Timnath and saw a woman of Timnath of the daughters of the Philistines. And he came up and told his father and his mother and said, I have seen a woman in Timnath of the daughters of the Philistines. Now, therefore, get her for me to wife. Then his father and his mother said unto him, Is there never a woman among the daughters of thy brethren, or among all thy people, that thou goest to make a wife of the uncircumcised Philistines? And Samson said unto his father, Get her for me, for she pleaseth me well." It turns out that as we go through this man's life, we find out that Samson had a woman problem. He had a lust problem. Let's go to chapter 16 in verse 1. 16 in verse 1. Then Samson went to Gaza and saw there an harlot and went in unto her. Chapter 16 in verse 4. And it came to pass afterward that he loved a woman in the valley of Soret whose name was Delilah. What happened was that Samson had a sin problem. He had a love problem. He had a lust problem. And all during this time, what did he do to the godly counsel? He ignored it. He isolated himself from it. My friends, not only is it true of people that are getting to a point where they might want to kill themselves, it's also true of a person that's starting to get depression. How many times is a person, you look at a person, whether it be a friend or maybe even a spouse or a child that was just really depressed, and you talk to them and you said, you gave them some advice. Usually you get the stiff arm right in the middle of the forehead, don't you? Isn't that right? And then just the opposite, instead of getting involved in people, usually that depressed person does the opposite and isolates themselves. That's what we're going to find out in most of these cases. People would not only ignore the counsel, but they would start isolating themselves. Remember King Saul? King Saul fell on his own sword. He tried to kill himself. How many times did his son Jonathan said, Dad, you're wrong. He got mad at his son. He isolated himself. All the goodly, all the godly counselors, he pushed away. Just let me be. So when we look at this and we look at this man named Samson, yeah, he had sin and the sins were getting wider and wider and wider. He was given counsel, but he ignored them, give him the old stiff arm. He pushed himself away and he started isolating himself. The exact opposite thing we should be doing when we're depressed. Let's go to chapter 16 now. I'm skipping over a lot of the detail here. 16 in verse 25. And it came to pass, well, I'm assuming you know the story of Samson. Let me kind of paraphrase it for you. Samson goes to this Delilah and she wore him down. She said, tell me where your strength comes from. He spun a lie. The Philistines descended on him, and he whipped him. Delilah comes again. Tell me where your strength comes from. He tells another story. Philistines descend on him, and Samson whipped him. The third time, she's crying the big crocodile tears. Oh, you don't love me. That's when he needed a buddy. He needed a buddy with a two-by-four, clunk him upside the head. You don't love her. She tried to kill you twice. And finally, he said, it comes from my hair. So they sleep, and they cut his hair off. And then the Philistines just descend on him. They poke his eyes out. They put him in a dungeon. Terrible, terrible outcome. And there he is in this dungeon. Boy, I'd be depressed, too. Can't see. Used to be a mighty judge, don't have any strength back. Women that you love spurned you. That'd be a pretty depressing place, huh? But notice what he says, verse 25. And it came to pass, when the hearts were married, this is all the Philistines, they were having a great big party, that they call, that they said, call for Samson, that he may make us sport. And they called for Samson out of the prison house, and he made them sport, and they set him between the pillars. And Samson, here he is between the pillars. And while he was in dungeon, it turned out his hair grew back. And some of the strength returned. And there he is with his hands on the pillars. And he prays this prayer up here in verse 28. Now my friends, this is a very ungodly prayer. You know, anytime you go through scripture and you see a passage loaded with me, myself, and I, you know the guy's on solid ground. Look at this prayer. This is not for God's glory. This is to revenge me. Look at the words. And Samson called unto the Lord, and said, O Lord God, remember me. I pray thee, and strengthen me. I pray thee, only this once, O God, and I may be once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes. This is a prayer of revenge, and yes, Samson pushes the things down. He dies, and a lot of Philistines die with him. Now, I want to reason with you. I know of a couple of other blind leaders that led Israel for a long time. One was Isaac. I think it was for 15 years, he was a patriarch and led, unable to see. There was a prophet named Eli that also could not see and led for a while. Simply because you don't have eyes doesn't mean God's done with you. And he says, they took out my eyes, I want to kill myself. How about the prayer, Lord, what would you have me to do in your state? Now, as I go through this and I look at all the men in the Bible that killed themselves, Saul and Judas, the Philippian jailer, This is what I come up. I find men that isolated themselves from other saints. I find men that were far from God. I find men that ignored good counsel. I find men that thought everything depended on them. Did you ever get to a point where you thought everything depends on you? I guarantee you're gonna be depressed. Now, sometimes they lacked a basic need. One of the guys that was suicidal, well, let's go look at a couple of men that were suicidal. Here's a couple of guys that were suicidal that you probably don't think of. First guy was Moses, Moses. Let's read about Moses. Let's go to Numbers 11 and verse 10. Numbers 11 and verse 10. Now, we just read about three men that took their own lives. Now, I'm going to tell you about five men that thought about it. They had a death wish. But they didn't do it. They didn't try. And one of the reasons they didn't try is, you know what? They were communicating with God. When you're getting to that depressed state, that's a good person to talk to. They were reaching out and talking to God, okay? But he sure wanted to. Numbers 11 and verse 10. Numbers 11 and verse 10. Moses. Wait, Moses in the hall of faith. There's about eight or nine verses in Hebrews 11 written about Moses. And he had a death wish. Yeah, let's read it. But there was a difference here. Notice what the difference is. Then Moses heard the people weep throughout their families. Numbers 11 and verse 10. Then Moses heard the people weep throughout their families, every man in the door of his tent, and the anger of the Lord was kindled greatly. Moses also was displeased. And Moses said unto the Lord, wherefore hast thou afflicted thy servant? And wherefore have I not found favor in thy sight, that thou layest the burden of all this people upon me? Have I conceived all this people? Have I begotten them, that thou shouldest say unto me, carry them in thy bosom, as a nursing father beareth the suckling child unto the land which thou swearest unto thy fathers? Now, what does this speech sound like so far? Sounds like a poor me speech, right? You've given me a job to do and it's too hard. Hmm. Sounds like he thinks everything depends on him, doesn't it? Is anything too hard for the Lord? If the Lord's helping him, do you think he can get it done? He kind of forgot that, didn't he? Let's go. Whence should I have flesh to give unto all these people? For they weep unto me, saying, give us flesh that we may eat. I am not able to bear all the people alone, because it is too heavy for me. And if thou deal thus with me, kill me, I pray thee, out of hand, if I have found favor in thy sight, and let me not see my wretchedness. Moses said, God, I can't do it. Kill me. It's too heavy. I didn't ask for these people, but I got them. They're complaining. I'm tired of it. Take me out. What did Moses do? Well, the good thing is, compared to those other men, he was talking to God. That's a good place to go. That's one thing he was doing. He was talking to God. He said, Lord, I'm in a bad fix. Guess what God did? If you read the rest of the passage, you know what God did? He gave him about 70 helpers, and then he said, get to work, buddy. Doesn't sound like the response you expected, right? Expected to get a little bit of coddling? Oh, that's all right, Moses. Yeah, he did put a little bit on you too much. Okay, here's some helpers, now get to work. You know, whenever you're depressed, one of the best things to do is get to work. and get to work helping somebody else. That's the number one cure. Okay? Let's go read of another man that felt the same way, a man named Elijah. Let's go to 1 Kings 19. 1 Kings 19. 1 Kings 19 verse 4 through 8. Now, here's a man, he's different from the first men we read, the ones that actually took their lives or tried to take their lives. He's kinda like Moses, he wanted to die, but before he got to that point, he reached out and he says, God, we need to talk. I'm down, I wanna be dead. 1 Kings 19 and verse four, but he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness and came and sat down on a juniper tree, and he requested for himself that he might die. He said, Lord, just take me out. and said, It is enough now, O Lord. Take away my father, for I am not better than my father's. And as he lay and slept under a juniper tree, behold, then an angel touched him and said unto him, Arise and eat. And he looked, and behold, there was a cake. bacon on the colts, and a cruise of water at his head, and he did eat and drink, and laid him down again. And the angel of the Lord came again a second time, and touched him, and said, Arise, eat, because the journey is too great for thee." Verse 8, And he arose and did eat and drink, and went in the strength of the meat forty days and forty nights unto the Horeb, the mount of God. Elijah was in a tough spot, but he had a physical problem. You know what his problem was? He was food deprivation and sleep deprivation. He didn't have enough food and nutrition, and he didn't have enough sleep. And he got himself to a place where he was so worn down and so physically frazzled, he was beside himself, and he reached out to God, and he says, God, take me out. So what did God do? God fed him. He gave him some sleep. He fed him again. 40 days he nurtured to him. And guess what he said after he fed him and he gave him sleep? He said, get to work. He said, get to work. And if you read the rest of this passage, he put himself forth ministering. Now, I want to tell you a story of my late wife. I shared this with Deborah. She gave me the okay. It was okay to tell this story. But it was actually long, my first wife was a physician's assistant, a PA. And when going through her school, she had to do some rotations, very similar to what a doctor did, but she had to go through some rotations. And she was in the middle of going through these rotations. I think she just worked a 36-hour shift. And she called her father. Her father told me the story. kind of giving advice to the future son-in-law. This was actually before he got married. She was just out of herself. Oh, Dad, I don't, you know, just, you can imagine the scene. And you know what he did? He was a wise man. He said, when was the last time you ate? I don't know. When was the last time you slept? 36 hours ago. Go get yourself some food, go to bed, and call me in the morning. And she did, and everything was okay. Sometimes we have physical needs. Sometimes we have friends that have physical needs. We take care of those physical needs. Now, don't get me wrong. Sometimes there's receptors that don't make the connections, and the electrons aren't firing, and sometimes we do need medicine. I do believe doctors over-prescribe the medicine for depression. But sometimes there's an actual physical need for that depression, okay? I'm not gonna rule that out, I'm not stupid. I know there's cases where that's the case. But I think we do over-prescribe it. So sometimes we need to take care of the physical, but once we take care of the physical, okay, get to work. Start serving others. And that was the case with Elijah, okay? Take care of the physical. Take a big step back and say, okay, what's lacking? You're wearing yourself out. I know a church, and now you're going to think I'm asking for this as a pastor. I'm not to this point, okay? But I know a church that makes their pastor take four or five days off every quarter. just get away. Now it's a lot bigger church and they've got a lot more services than we have and he actually just wears them out and what they do is they just make them. They said it's time for you to go. We can tell it in your preaching. It's time for you to go. And you're laughing. Maybe you're doing that today. It's time for you to go. Okay? But the point is, when he comes back, they know that if they don't do this, it's just going to get worse and worse. But they know when he gets back, he's going to be revived. But every quarter, they just send him off. Go. You and your wife just take off. They make arrangements to watch kids and all that kind of stuff. There's a point where we need to do that. And we, as friends, we can look and see. Wow. Now, I haven't noticed this, but let's just say it's Melanie and Danny right there. And we're looking at this and, wow, they look frazzled. OK. Drop your kids off and go. Go. Go out to dinner. Go get a bedroom breakfast. 24 hours. I can't give you four or five days, but maybe I can do a day. Just go. Just take care of the physical. But then when you get back, get to work and start working on other people. OK? That's how you break out of the funk. OK? All right. So what I found is when we get into that font, now those were some of the people I looked at. We looked at Moses, we looked at Elijah. Job was a good one. He had a death wish. Let's read that. Brother Richard mentioned him a little earlier. He'll be the last one I look at. But I'll just tell you about the others. Jeremiah got to that place in Jeremiah 20 and 14. And Jonah got to that place in Jonah 4 and verse 1. But Job got to that place in Job 3. Let me read verse 11 and 12. Now, Job got himself to a place, and he did not isolate him from counselors, but what do you think of those three counselors that he had? He probably better have been off isolating himself in this case, right? But then we get around to chapter 32, 33, and that young guy came forward and gave him some good advice. But here was a point where he got, and remember even his wife, first guy to die. What kind of advice is that? That's terrible advice, right? So he was surrounded, but it wasn't by very good counselors. But look what he says here in chapter 3 and verse 11. Why died I not from the womb? Why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly? Why did the knees prevent me? or why the breasts that I should suck. In other words, he says, Lord, why did you let me live? Why didn't you just take me out in the womb when I was born? Why didn't you just take me then? He got pretty depressed place. And he was looking at his surroundings. He was looking around the events and he got a met. I've never suffered anything even close. He lost 10 children. He lost all his stuff and even had a terrible disease. Now he didn't take his life, but the boils were so bad he busted up pots and he was scraping the stuff off of him just to give him relief. Terrible place. I'd be pretty depressed too. He got to a point where he says, God, why was I even born? Why was I born? Why didn't you just take me out in the womb so I didn't have to endure all this? But what did Job do? He was talking to God. Unlike the first fellows, at least he was talking to God. That's the place you start talking to God. And then you surround yourself with the counselors. Jeremiah got there. He was saying very similar things in chapter 20. And Jonah, let's look at Jonah. I gotta look at him. He's a character. Let's go to the book of Jonah. He's one of the minor prophets. Amos, and then it goes Obadiah, then Jonah. Jonah 4. You know what Jonah's problem was? It wasn't pride. It wasn't depression. It wasn't ego. You know what it was? It was just mad. He didn't get his way. Jonah 4 and verse 1, but it displeased Jonah exceedingly And he was angry. He says, you want me to preach to who? I don't want to go there and preach. And he ended up in a whale's belly, and he ended up getting put out on the land. And God says, go preach to him. He says, I don't want to preach to him. You're just going to go forgive him. And he preaches to him. And they repent, and God forgives him. And he says, see, I told you so. Just kill me. Man, oh man, what kind of preacher is that? I think I've counseled people about that in Rational before. And I've got to admit in my mind, I've probably been there too. Okay? Let's keep on reading. And he prayed unto the Lord, at least he's talking to God. Even in his illogical, miserable thinking, he's still praying to God. Oh Lord, was not this my saying when I was yet in a country, therefore I fled before unto Tarshish, for I knew thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil. Therefore now, O Lord, take, I beseech thee, my life from thee, for it is better for me to die than live." Who says? Who says it's better for you to die than live? You preach God's word, people listen to it, God forgives them, and they're acting godly, and you want to die? Isn't that craziness? Think of some of the deals we've made with God. Think of some of the reasoning and the rationale that you've heard from people that are dealing with God that way. What do you do? Well, the first thing is you get them talking to God. Then you get him surrounded by people with good counsel, and then you put him to work. And you know what he did? He said, Joe, verse four, then said the Lord, doest thou well to be angry? And he sent him to preach, go work. So what's my conclusion to suicide? It's a sin. Thou shall not kill, thou shall not kill includes thou shall not kill thyself. Yes, people get to very miserable states and sometimes it's physical. It's up to us to look and figure out what that physical is, address the physical if we can, food, sleep deprivation, give them a break, give them relief, send them help. Moses needed help, he got 70 helpers. Go out and bless them in any way you can, take the load off of them, but then put them to work. but I've met folks that refuse to go to work. I met folks that refuse godly counsel. I met folks that are mad at God and will not talk to God and push themselves and find themselves a long ways from God. My friends, all those things are sin. All those are sin. But they're not sins to the point where Jesus' blood cannot cover that. Don't get me wrong there, okay? So we covered a touchy subject of suicide. Last week we touched on euthanasia. Remember euthanasia? We talked about pulling life support. There's one more I want to talk about. I want to talk about capital punishment. Time's going by very quickly. Let's read two passages. Let's go to Leviticus 24 and 17. We're switching gears. We're still talking about thou shall not kill. We've just switched off of suicide, and we talk about capital punishment just for a second. Let's go to Leviticus 24 and 17. Leviticus 24 and 17. Here's what God says. He that killeth any man shall surely be put to death. Now, on the surface, that sounds like a contradiction, an oxymoron, right? Remember like the bumper sticker I told you about last week? I was driving down the road, had a red light, the car in front of me on the back says, why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people's wrong? Something's wrong with that logic. Something's backwards. The words aren't lining up. Sister Susan shared with me something on the internet. I think I can do this. It was a public forum. But she was questioned about a syllogism of a person used. And there was a reasoning this person used, and they said, the Bible says, fear God, right? And then below that it said, God is love. And below that, there's a verse that says, there's no fear in love, or love casted out fear, right? Doesn't that sound like? But the problem is, and Susan picked up on it right away, those are two different kind of fears. We're taking one word, and we're lining it up, and it's not going together. One fear is a reverential awe, and the other fear is I'm scared, and they're not the same, and you can't line them up in a syllogism that way. Well, it's the same thing with the word kill. You almost have to assert there killing innocent blood and killing guilty blood, two completely different things. Now, let's read this verse again. And he that killeth any innocent man, the guilty shall surely be put to death. When you read it that way and you take in all of God's word, it drives. Let's go to Deuteronomy 19 and verse 11. Deuteronomy 19 and verse 11. 19 and 11. I'll read 11 through 13. But if any man hate his neighbor and lie in wait for him and rise up against him and smite him mortally that he die and fleeth into one of these cities, then the elders of the cities shall send and fetch him thence, and deliver him into the hand of the avenger of blood, that he may die." Here's another case where we're talking about a person that had committed murder. It was guilty. It was a murder, not an accidental killing. With this murder, the perpetrator is killed. It's not a contradiction when you keep in mind God doesn't like the slang of innocent blood. But he demands the slaying of guilty blood. That's the way he says it. Here's a couple that'll make you wonder. Did you realize God actually got mad at a couple kings for letting people go that he should have executed? I find two cases in the Bible where God said, kill them. The king didn't do it, released him and let him go, and God got angry at the king for not obeying him. One was King Saul, I'll not turn there. One was King Saul in 1 Samuel 15 verse 8, and the other one was King Ahab in 1 Kings 42. You can look those up later on, but God said, I put them into your hands. You need to execute them. And these two kings didn't do it. And God got mad at them. He said, you needed to kill them. All right. The Bible says, thou shall not kill. You know, it's interesting. We talked a little bit about this last week, about the cities of refuge. That's just a tremendous concept. Let me kind of give you that scenario. That scenario will kind of give you a good backdrop of maybe how we should know. You know, our legal system really isn't that far off from what God's is, the way our legal system was intended. When you look at God and you look at all his scenarios, it's kind of like he had a first degree murder, a second degree murder. He also had negligent homicide, right? That's right. He also asked for motive. One of the things we were determining, whether things are murder or not, is what did the man gain, right? He asked for motive. So there's a lot of similar areas where this country's legal system was set up. But then as time went by, we went and messed it all up by redefining life. You know what our definition of life is? It's what science or medicine can cure or allowed to survive. Science cannot do anything for an embryo or a fetus less than 24 weeks. Therefore, it's not a life. But after 24 weeks, science can do it. Therefore, it is a life. Unless you have a Dow's baby. We can't fix a Dow's baby. Therefore, after 24 weeks, it's not a life. Some of these court rulings are incredible. So it was set up pretty good, but then we start going back and redefining what life is and what life is not. And that's when we get into trouble. There was a, this is back in my banking days. And when I was in the begging days, I used to have to go to Chicago a lot. I was working in Detroit, but we had to go to Chicago a lot. And the way you go to Chicago is you fly into O'Hare Airport, and there's a train that takes you into downtown. It's about an hour train ride. So I'd fly into O'Hare Airport, get on the train, and go. And one of these times, I was sitting there, and I saw an anti-abortion thing on there that I thought was fantastic. They said three times in the history of our country has life not been defined as a life? Really? I looked at that thing and one of them was slavery. The black race will never achieve what the white race is, therefore it is not a life. And therefore we bought and sold property and did different things like that. The second time was during World War II. It wasn't us, but it was during the history of our nation. where the Aryan race, or the Jewish race, was not as profitable as the Aryan race, therefore it is not a life. And now we're into our third sequence. A fetus, less than 24 weeks, is not a life, because it cannot be stained by medicine, therefore it is not a life, and it is not murder to kill. I got into town, I asked him, wow, that's a great advertising campaign. That was on a Thursday or Friday. By Monday, they said they were all taken down. They were all taken down. They got people too mad. I thought it was, I thought it was fantastic. But that's what they did, okay? All right, so our court systems in a lot of ways mimic what God had, but God had something in the Old Testament that we never even had, and it's called these cities of refuge. Now, I want to kind of give you a great big picture of what it is. Now at the time Israel was divided, there was some land on the east side and the west side of the Jordan River, and they had three cities of refuge on each side. They had one on each side of the north, two in the central, and then two in the southern part. And they had all these rules about a city of refuge. If I would have committed an accident and someone was killed or my ox killed someone or I got in a fist fight and we got really mad and someone died, I would take off and I would run to one of these cities of refuge. It's kind of like a, you know how you play tag and kind of have a ghoul, okay, or what do you call it, a ghoul? You'd run to those cities because no one could get you and they would wait and do an investigation and they would have a trial and they would take care of all that. Now it's really neat. Of these six cities of refuge, they always had a highway detail that always made the roads passable. They always had a highway detail that made sure there was always great big signs that said city of refuge that way. And they had them centrally located so everybody could always get to one in a day's journey. Now this was all set up in the Old Testament where you could run and you could go there and you could wait for your tribe. And when you got there, whoever was mad, if it was, let's say someone killed my brother in a fight, and I said, I'm going to get you, and he would take off to the city of refuge. When I got to the city of refuge, I couldn't do anything. All I could do is go to the elders and say, I'm mad at this guy. I want to have a trial. And they would have this trial. And if the people found him innocent, he would abide there. And if the people would find him guilty, they would turn him out, and he would be executed. But what's really interesting about those cities of refuge is let's suppose we were out in the woods, and I was chopping woods, and there I am, chopping the woods, and in my backstroke, the axe head flies off, and it hits Brother Richard, and it kills him. Totally accident, incidental, all the witnesses around, but what God's law said is, we happen to have an investigation, so as soon as that happened, I go, uh-oh, and I would run to one of these cities of refuge, and they would have a trial. And when they had this trial, and they said, nope, we got all the witnesses. He didn't strike them. He was in a backstroke. It absolutely just flew off there. He didn't know it was a little banded axe or anything was going on. He was completely innocent. Guess what happened? I had to live in that city of refuge for a certain point in time, even though I was 100% innocent. I sat there scratching my head, and I said, God, why would you do that? Well, unlike the city of refuge made a place where an innocent person could hide or it could be safe until an investigation was done, that part seemed just right. But why make that innocent person live there? Don't you know my wife and kids and my family and my dad's there and there's the family farm and I work that thing and it's really important for me to be there. Why make me be away? You know what God was doing? He was protecting the family from revenge. He said, we need a buffer. We need a buffer. Dolph, I know you're innocent, but you got to stay in this city because if you just sit there and start going to work and those family members are around and seeing you're in proximity, you got to stay there because they're going to get mad and they're going to strike out and kill you. And then we're going to have a Hatfield and McCoys going on. So God created this system Not only to protect the person during the trial period, but to protect families from coming together and having fights. I think, boy, Lord, that's kind of extreme. What about that poor family? Well, what about the poor family of the victim of the accident? God was far-reaching in the way he looked at that. So we look at this thing and we're looking at scripture and we say, thou shall not kill. God was even taking measures to make sure things didn't even flare up. I got one more thought. I think I can finish it in a couple seconds. Let's go to Matthew 26. This is kind of like the icing on the cake. There's basically some questions, if you're looking at abortion, if you're looking at euthanasia, suicide, capital punishment, do not resuscitate, bullying life support equipment, and all those questions, you've got to ask these questions. Is it innocent blood or is it guilty blood? Is it premeditated or is it spontaneous? Is someone gaining from it or someone not? And is death being hurried up or is there simply medicine delaying it and you're just letting God take over? Those are all the questions you've got to ask. But to top it all off, God makes one more statement. There's one more principle to be done. Matthew 26 and verse 52, Peter is completely innocent. Let's start up here at verse 51. And when behold, one of them which were with Jesus, this is Peter, out of his hand drew his sword and struck a servant of the high priest and smote off his ear. Then said Jesus unto him, put up again thy sword into his place, for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Hmm. This is an act of self-defense. They were going after Jesus and Peter was protecting Jesus. And he pulled out his sword and he swings at that servant and he got his ear. I think he was going for his head, and the guy ducked, and he just got an ear. I think that's what happened. He missed, and he got an ear. And Jesus turns to Peter and says, you know what? You had a right to defend yourself. But when you take that line, you're setting yourself life up for a life of hardship. You live by the sword. I'm sorry, you use this word, you're gonna live by this word. You know, one of the things I see interesting with David, David wanted to build a house, a temple for God. And God says, uh-uh, I can't let you do it. You've got too much blood on your hands. And all the blood that he had was what? It was in wartime. But he says, uh-uh, nope, nope, nope, you're not the guy. Think about our revenge. Even if you have the right, even if you are perfectly lawful and you execute your revenge, God says, the way, you know, like kind of what goes around comes around. He's saying the way you live your life, the way you retaliate is the way that's gonna work. I find it really interesting. Now, when I was gone on Wednesday, I gave a little study, and I understand that Brother Richard did a great job of doing that and presenting that on Wednesday night. But one of the things that, what we did on Wednesday night, I guess what you all did on Wednesday night, I wasn't here, but the way we did it, is Saul trying to kill David on eight different occasions. And what I was trying to teach with that lesson was, yeah, God delivered David a lot of different ways. Sometimes he used a deep sleep. Sometimes he used an invading army. Sometimes he used David's nimbleness to be able to just to duck. And his brother Wayne says, jump out the window, right? But whatever it is, God used a lot of different means to deliver David, which is really neat. The thing I see amazing is, not once did David ever try to retaliate and strike Saul back. He had every right to do it, but he never did it. There was even one time, I know you had a discussion on this, this is my take on it. This is the seventh time Saul tried to kill David. David and his men were in a cave, plastered up against the wall. Shh, be quiet. Hiding from Saul and his soldiers. And I believe Saul went in the cave to go potty. And while Saul was in there going potty, his soldiers are going, David, God's given him to you on a silver plate, kill him. This is God's will. And David says, uh-uh, I'm not going to do it. So when I look at David's life, you know what happens? He did a lot of things as king that were pretty bad. He could have got killed. But I believe because he was so faithful to his king, that God protected him and allowed him a lot of longevity. That's just speculation and you can take it or leave it. But I think it's this principle here of what goes around comes around. God gave David a lot of mercy because David gave Saul a lot of mercy. And I think it's the same with Peter, what Jesus was trying to teach. You show mercy and you're going to experience a lot of mercy. might have to go through a lot of anger and knuckle-headed things that I do. Not her anger, my anger. Or my impatience. And she continues to show me mercy. You know what goes around comes around? God will bless her. Even if I do deserve to be teed off into, and she still shows me mercy, that's the principle. I think God is going to show her mercy for being that long-suffering with me. God was long-suffering with David because David was long-suffering with King Saul. Friends, when it says, thou shall not kill, even if someone does something, and I can work it in a way, I'm telling you what, I know this is recorded, but I've got a couple pistols at home, and if I see my girls in danger, I'm not going to think twice.