Worship & Murder

Always trying to improve and do the best we can, and I think that less up and down is actually nice personally, but I think just in general it's a better way to do things, so it was nice. If you want to turn to Matthew chapter 5, I'm going to read a few verses for you as we continue to look over the sixth commandment of the Ten Commandments. So I'm in verse 21.

You have heard that the ancients were told, you shall not murder. and whoever murders shall be guilty before the court. 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 shall be guilty before the Sanhedrin. And whoever says, you fool, shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.

Therefore, if you are presenting your offering at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering there before the altar and go first. Be reconciled to your brother and then come and present your offering. Make friends quickly with your opponent at law while you are with him on the way, so that your opponent may not hand you over to the judge and the judge to the officer and you be thrown into prison. truly I say to you you will not come out of there until you have paid up the last quadrants this is a reading of God's word from the legacy standard bible very different from the ESV in some areas which I have committed to memory so it is hard to read actually at times so we're looking at the sixth commandment thou shall not murder and as we should do with anything we're studying in Scripture, we would want to look at as many Scriptures as possible to understand it.

And the Holy Spirit, having inspired all of Scripture, always infallibly interprets any other Scripture. So as Jason just read, the only infallible interpreter of Scripture is the Scripture itself. And so you can look in the book of Hebrews to understand the book of Exodus better, for example, right? Because the author of Hebrews was inspired by the author of the, of who inspired the author of Exodus, the Holy Spirit in both cases.

Now, we don't give extra weight to the things Jesus said. So it's not like because Jesus said this and maybe in your Bible, the letters are read. it's not like oh now this is really important or this is really what God wanted us to know but at the same time we don't want to discount the fact that Jesus himself interpreted the sixth commandment for us so we looked at thou shall not murder as a command and when you murder in the Old Testament when you broke the Old Testament law when you were found guilty of having shed the blood of another having taken the life of someone else we reviewed this last week that there were these sanctuary cities where people could go if they weren't truly murderers right? and one of the main factors was determining if they had any enmity in their heart, if they had any anger toward the person or hatred previous to the killing of them we tried to figure out if it was an accident or not and so what you end up with though by the time you get to the time of Jesus and I don't have time to exegete the whole sermon on the mountain if I was going to preach through Matthew I'd have had several sermons already leading up to this moment but at the time of Jesus there were people in this world where Jesus was walking, who were utterly concerned with the outward actions of not only others, but themselves as well, as it relates to God's law. So this was not a pagan society.

This wasn't some group of jungle heathen that didn't know anything about God, and they were eating their own children and doing all sorts of abominable things and experiencing polyamory and all the other stuff. This was the Jewish culture where Jesus was speaking. This was a group of people who had the Ten Commandments written for them in stone at one point and still passed down to them at this time in the scrolls.

And these people who had the Ten Commandments were doing exactly what a non-believing person who wanted to earn their own salvation would do having known what God's law is, they were attempting, they thought, to obey it. They were seeking to earn salvation through their own righteousness. And so they looked at the law of God, and the law of God said, you shall not murder.

And so they would say, well, I guess I can't kill anybody. I can't murder anybody. And as long as I don't personally take somebody else's life, or as long as probably they would understand like hiring someone else to do it was still wrong, as long as I wasn't responsible for murdering somebody else, they going to believe I pretty good And if you don believe that that happens you can go evangelize with me sometime And almost everybody you talk to if you try to tell them that they're really not a good person, the first thing out of their mouth will be, well, I've never killed anybody.

Which tells you a little bit about people's standard of righteousness out there. but notwithstanding that Jesus wants us to understand something that was always true about God's law in the sixth commandment Jesus wants us to understand that the commandment thou shall not murder has always meant more than don't be personally responsible for the taking of somebody else's life it always meant more, Jesus isn't changing the law he's not expanding the law Jesus is explaining the law. And so a lot of people will try to pit Jesus against the Old Testament and say Jesus is somehow changing it and making it more expansive. Jesus is just explaining what people were always guilty of.

And it's actually an act of grace for anyone but God himself to appear to explain his law in such great detail that now you know what you're required to do before God. You also know how guilty you are before God that you might flee to a Savior. If your only standard for righteousness is, I've never actually touched another guy's wife, I never killed anybody, and I try not to steal or lie, then you're probably going to go to hell. and most people in the world will die having kept most of those things I just said.

But if your standard of righteousness is I cannot even for a single moment have had hatred in my heart for someone or God will punish me as if I'm a murderer, that should cause you pretty quickly to flee to the Savior. So let's look at the passage and we'll make a few applications. Jesus says you have heard that it was said to those of old or you have heard that the ancients were told in this version you shall not murder and whoever murders shall be guilty before the court when Jesus says you have heard that it was said to those of old some people have argued that that was Jesus' way of saying this isn't what was necessarily written this is just what you've heard and I don't necessarily agree with that statement I think it was written you shall not murder and I don't think Jesus is trying to say this isn't what was written I think he's trying to say that it means more than you've made it mean turn to Matthew chapter 7 very end of the chapter we're going to see what I'll call a bit of an interpretive key to this whole passage so Jesus is preaching from Matthew 5 verse 3 to Matthew 7, what, 27.

And the first two verses just tell you where he was and to whom he was speaking. And then the last two give us what I think is the interpretive key to the whole passage. And you need to understand this. He said, now it happened when Jesus had finished these words, the crowds were astonished at his teaching. They were shocked. This wasn't like he spoke and everyone just walked by and ignored him like what happens when we go to Ohio State or Planned Parenthood a lot.

It wasn't like what probably happened to Jesus a lot too, where they ignored him. They were astonished. This shocked people. Why? For he was teaching them, verse 28, as one having authority. Jesus spoke about the law of God as if he was the author of it.

He got up and he told them what the law of God really means. As if he was the one who had written it. And he could do that because he is the author of it. He had written it. And listen, he says, and not as their scribes, Matthew tells us. So they had these scribes, right?

There were lawyers and scribes and Pharisees and all these different people. But the idea being that there were people of the day who were teachers of the law. There were people who tried to tell others, hey, here's what you got to do. You want to go to heaven? Here's how much of your mint, dill, and cumin you need to tithe. Here's how you're supposed to act here.

And you know what? As long as you don't kill anybody, you're good on the sixth commandment. Right? So that's what they would do. They would tell people, obey the ten commandments. Here's how you obey them.

And the problem was, is they were falling short of what was necessary to truly be obeying the commandment. But Jesus says, you've heard that they were told, you shall not murder and whoever murders shall be guilty before the court. So the point is this, that they knew if they murdered someone, they would go before the congregation. Remember we even read it last week in Numbers 35, that if you killed someone, there'd be a congregation, the people of your city, basically a jury of your peers, who would judge you and decide.

Based on the witness testimony and based on the due process that any society has, Every society has some form of process. It's just they're not all good ones. They don't all protect the innocent. They don't all serve justice properly. But everyone knew that if they murdered someone, they would stand before the court. But Jesus wants them to understand not that there's more laws than they understood before.

He wants them to understand that the law is deeper and it's more penetrating into their very heart than they ever understood. Just a brief example You could do something to someone that was very harmful and you could actually be very careful not to kill them in order to make yourself feel good about your obedience to the Sixth Commandment. That's not what Jesus is advocating here.

But Jesus says, everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court. if you are angry with your brother you're guilty isn't that what Numbers 35 told us last week that a man would be judged for murder based on his anger he says whoever says to his brother Raka shall be guilty before the Sanhedrin or the council so you go before the religious council and if you simply called someone a fool Well, that's the next one. But raka was an insult. If you insulted your brother, anybody here guilty of that?

Maybe even today? Name-calling is one of the words we use for it. This doesn't mean that you can't identify someone's behavior as foolish. You may even look at someone and say, you are a fool, or you're acting like a fool. if you're doing that in what I'll call a forensic sense where you're actually declaring them guilty before God's law and you're trying to say you're foolish or you're a murderer or you're an adulterer or you're dishonoring your parents.

I don't even know if we have a word for that exactly. Incorrigible. We don't use it much. So this is not an admonition that you never tell somebody hey you're doing something wrong and here's what it's called. And here's what you're called if you do it. Guess what?

If you lie, you're a liar. This is about making fun of people and mocking them and calling them names without any reason like that. Or even doing it with wrong motives in your heart. You can call someone a name that's accurate and you can do it with a heart that is full of hate. You can also call someone a name that's accurate and you can be doing it simply out of accuracy. maybe to help them, lead them to Christ.

And so then Jesus says, whoever says you fool will be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell or whoever says you fool will go into the hell of fire. Now there's a lot of talk about what this Gehenna thing was and there was like a trash heap somewhere where they would burn things and that's where the very worst things would go. It was a horrible place.

But Jesus is obviously speaking about the fact that in each case you're guilty of murder before God. Jesus is not trying to say, well, there's these different levels of things you can do. He's using something that's sometimes called synecdoche, where you use a term that describes a part of something to describe the whole thing, or you use the term that describes the whole thing to describe a part of something.

So when Jesus would say the law and the prophets or Moses and the prophets. He didn't literally just mean Moses and a few prophets. He meant the Old Testament. Sometimes we use these phrases to describe something. Jesus is telling us that anger, the hatred that would call someone a name even, these things are worthy of the same punishment as murder before God.

Now in this world, we're not going to execute you. if you didn't shed someone's blood just because you hated them. It's almost a disservice in a sense that we don't take it more seriously. Because we have learned in this world not to be concerned with how we act because we don't have the consequences that we deserve. This is why parents, you should be teaching your children about name-calling.

And you should watch your name-calling as well. sometimes like I said you may accurately call someone something and your kid may not know the difference between your heart that maybe is actually trying to be pure and a hateful heart and so we need to be able to explain these things to our children so that they will know that hatred will get them into the fiery hell if no murderer will have eternal life and Jesus said anyone who says you fool shall be guilty enough to go to fiery hell you should be concerned if you even think those thoughts about other people human beings made in the image of God are worthy of your respect they have inherent dignity not because of who they are or because everyone is special or any of these kinds of things but because God made them in his image that's why you don't shed their blood that's why we're to love people Jesus said in Matthew 22 the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength he said in a second is like it to love your neighbor as yourself I submit to you that just not murdering your neighbor is not even the minimum qualification for loving him you are called to do far more than just not murder him. Even if you don't hate your neighbor, your indifference toward his difficulties and his plight, at least at different times, qualify as a lack of love. So moving on.

Jesus is going to not change the subject, but he's going to change the direction a little bit here. and he's going to heighten our awareness of our difficulty with others so that we understand the seriousness with which we are to love others He says therefore so because of what I just told you I'm going to tell you something else that is a consequence or a result of it, alright? He says, therefore, if you're presenting your gift at the altar, your offering at the altar, So you're going to God to worship. You're coming to God and you have the gift you're supposed to bring to God.

You have your offering. You have your sacrifice. Whatever it happens to be and you're bringing it to God. In 2022, you're coming to church. Your offering at an altar was already made. It's Jesus Christ.

So you're not bringing a new one. You're bringing your body as a living sacrifice before God. Holy and acceptable to Him. so you're coming to God to worship you're doing the first commandment the most important one we'll say you're coming to God and you've got your spotless lamb if you're in Jesus' day you've meticulously tried to decide is this the right one to bring I've brought my very best I've done everything I'm supposed to do so that I can be obeying God's law and making a sacrifice and I bring it to God and Jesus says and there you're already there you're not at home still you're not thinking about it you have come to the altar you are at the place where your atonement in the Old Testament is going to be made through this sacrifice the typified atonement Jesus would make and you're ready to do it you're ready to worship God it's time, it's 3 o'clock on Sunday you're supposed to be worshiping right now at least in our context he says and there you remember that your brother has something against you what does this mean that your brother has something against you just that some guy doesn't like you if that was the case Christians everywhere would never be able to continue in worship Jesus' point here is when you get to the altar and there at that point you realize, I have sinned against my brother.

It doesn't say anything about hatred here. It doesn't say anything about anger here. It doesn't say anything about murder. Jesus has now tied you sinning against your brother in literally any general fashion to hatred for him. And let's think about it for a moment. let's think about that statement that you are hating your brother actively when you have any unrepentant sin against him at all, say.

Now let's think about it. We'll use an obvious example. Do you think that it's loving to your neighbor or your brother to take his wife? So if you break the seventh commandment against your neighbor, you're breaking the sixth also. Because the sixth commandment is really the only commandment that we can trace back to where we have to love people with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Or love our neighbors ourself. The sixth commandment will entail obeying the rest of the commandments toward your neighbor. If you steal from your neighbor, can you honestly say that you are harboring love for him? So the moment you break the eighth commandment against your neighbor, you've now broken the sixth commandment against him too. Because if you really loved your neighbor as yourself, you wouldn't steal from him.

If you lie to your neighbor, bear false witness, bear false testimony against him. Can you say at the same time, yeah, but I really love him? I'm really obeying the sixth commandment toward him. My disposition towards my neighbor is one of loving him like I love myself while I'm simultaneously assassinating his character? You can't do it. It's impossible.

Can you even covet your neighbor's stuff? And somehow maintain that you're not breaking the sixth commandment? You can't. This is very similar to the first commandments, right? You can't worship idols, blaspheme God's name, or disobey his Sabbath, and at the same time say you're maintaining the first commandment. There's sort of a bit of a domino effect.

And James tells us this in James 2.10, right? For anyone that breaks the law in one point is guilty of all. It wasn't a general statement like, oh yeah, everyone's bad. This is like, I think, quite literally saying, if you're breaking the law in one point, the chances are you're almost breaking every commandment at that moment. you're certainly breaking all the commandments about worshipping the one true God as soon as you commit any sin whatsoever and so Jesus speaking to people has now turned this from hey just don't kill people which like if there was a bumper sticker for these guys that's what it would have said hey just don't kill people you'll be a good person right it's amazing it's amazing to me that people think that as long as they're not murdering you they're somehow doing you good I know it's in the Bible so we believe it's true and people are crazy like that I know we live in a culture right now where actually this doesn't seem so crazy but I'm old enough to say when I grew up it seemed like people at least outwardly just tried to be kinder and I was a bad person but today the justifications people use for evil.

But so Jesus is telling them, though, if you get to the altar, remember, remember the context, and there you remember that your brother has something against you. So now there we are. We've sinned against our brother. Now we're in the context of the sixth commandment, we're guilty of hatred toward our brother. There's not really a neutrality thing here.

You're either loving your neighbor as yourself, or you hate him. There's not a lot of indifference going on. Now I realize that every moment of every day you can't be giving money to every single possible charity. You can't feed every homeless, starving child out there. you could have a neighbor one day that needs help and you can't help them. I get that.

This is not about unreasonable beliefs that you should somehow be taking care of everybody in every possible way that they ever perceive you should. But you know in your heart if you're loving someone is you love yourself. But if you've sinned against them, Jesus sees you as guilty of murder in God's eyes. And what he tells you that as you're before the altar with your gift, in verse 24 now, he says, leave your offering there before the altar and go.

And I'll tell you what, when Jesus says go, you should do it. If I tell you to go, you should probably think, well, okay, he's a pastor guy, or I like him, he's a good brother, maybe I'll listen to him. Jesus says go, you go. You understand me? This isn't a suggestion. It's not a wish.

This isn't Jesus giving you a guideline for your behavior. This isn't Jesus begging you or pleading you to do anything. He's the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He gives commands and you either obey His commands and show that you're one of His subjects or ultimately you're going to go to hell. You understand? It's serious.

He says, go. First be reconciled to your brother and then come and present your offering. God finds your worship putrefying and stinky, to use a modern term, when you come to Him, particularly with known unrepentant sin. And in particular, when you come to Him with sin between you and your brother. And when I say brother, I'm talking about brothers in the Lord most likely, but I think this extends even to anyone that you have sinned against. you cannot come to God and say that you're presenting your body as a living sacrifice to him while simultaneously existing in a state of unrepentant hatred toward your neighbor or brother it's that simple you can't do it if it's well it's okay if it's me and my wife had a fight no that's not okay either well I'm mad at my kids so I was mean to them no it's not okay so Jesus takes the highest thing that we're called to do which is our worship before God the thing most people in the world abandoned completely before they abandoned the other commandments and we think we're pretty good because on Sundays we're going to show up and if the government says hey you have to wear a mask and you have to social distance and you can't get together Sunday we're still going to get together Sunday and we're still going to worship and we're still going to hug and shake hands and we think we're all proud of ourselves for that.

But God sees your heart. And God knows if your worship is actually wicked. And God's the only one who knows, a lot of times. I've said this before, and as long as I get to keep preaching, I'll probably say it over and over, you can fool me. And chances are, Lord willing, I'm going to get to heaven, and there's going to be some people I expected to see there that I don't see. there were probably people that knew the disciples for a few years before Judas betrayed Jesus.

But just some of them wondered, why isn't he here yet? He should have died by now, you know. God knows your heart. God knows what you have done that you need to repent of. And he says, effectively, this is even more important than your worship. It's not that it's more important than your worship.

It's that you cannot properly worship if you don't handle these other things. You can't be in an adulterous relationship and show up at church and get your forgiveness you need that week. That's Roman Catholicism for you. If you like that idea, go to a Roman Catholic church. You can run into church every Sunday. You go through the motions.

Walk out forgiven. and you can go back and do whatever you want. And 99.99% of Roman Catholics are going to end up in hell. And the few that won't are the ones that don't seem to understand what's going on very well, and God saved them and hopefully calls them out of that wicked harlot of a church. Your worship before God, which is of primary importance in your life, is utterly affected by all of your other actions.

So much so that Jesus transitions from, you shall not murder, and have hatred in your heart and anger for someone to even tell you that if you are existing in that state, your worship is unacceptable to him. So leave your gift at the altar and take care of this. Now, this is not an exhortation for you at three o'clock on Sunday to get up and run out of here and call your sister.

The point is, take care of it before you get here, please. All right? I mean, if right now you realized it, I guess I be glad to preach and cut you and go take care of something But the point is is you know we have church at 3 o on Sunday So if you show up at 3 o Sunday and that when you got to call your brother and apologize we have a problem. Because you're not preparing your heart for worship.

We have a 3 in the afternoon Sabbath service. So assuming you don't start the Sabbath until Sunday morning, which some people I know do Saturday night, you've had several hours to figure this stuff out before you're called to self-examine. So do it. Final part of this passage, make friends quickly with your opponent at law while you are with him on the way.

So that your opponent may not hand you over to the judge and the judge to the officer and you be thrown into prison. He says, truly I say to you, you will not come out of there until you have paid up the last penny or the last quadrants. Earlier in the passage, Jesus says not to call your brother a fool and somebody could argue, well, he just meant any other Israelite.

And then we could say, well, that just meant any other person in the church. Or we could say, well, it probably means anybody. But here it becomes a little more obvious that Jesus is saying we're to have a kind and loving disposition towards everyone. Here you're going to court. And somebody's basically suing you. You either owe them money and they want it immediately. whatever the situation is it's not like you're going to court for murder he says try to work things out before you get there because well let me back up not because well practically speaking it's just a nice idea I don't think Jesus is trying to say hey you're going to get a lot of heartache if you go to court so maybe just avoid it if you can even if it costs you a bunch I don't think this is an exhortation that you should never defend yourself if you need to.

I understand that those situations can arise. But the principle Jesus wants us to understand is that we should have such a care and a love, even for our enemies, that it may mean that we would acquiesce to some unreasonable demands. that maybe things would be easier for you to just pay the fine that maybe you shouldn't pay lest something worse happen to you, right? And sometimes the mercilessness even of pagans it'd be better to deal with them on the way there than to let the judge decide.

And I think part of this is having that heart of love towards people and I think part of the goal that Jesus would have in mind for you is that the person may even notice that you're awful meek. You could have destroyed him in court. You could have made an example out of him. You could have found a way to not pay the money you really owed or maybe even in the case where you owed the money or didn't owe the money, you ended up paying it anyway.

That's a testimony to people that you trust the sovereign God. I wouldn't call any of that part a hard and fast rule if you need to deal with something in court and somebody owes you money and you gotta collect it I understand that the passage is about your heart's disposition though towards them, do you hate them? are you angry with them? Ephesians 4.

I'm just going to bounce around now for a minute. If you want to turn with me to Ephesians 4. Well, real quick, Galatians 5. I'll just kind of bounce a few of these. Galatians 5, 19. The deeds of the flesh are evident.

Sexual morality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery. Listen, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition dissensions factions and actually in one of the versions it says murders in verse 21 in Ephesians 4 speaking of those who experience the new birth Ephesians 4 we see in verse 26 be angry and do not sin do not let the sun go down on your anger for those people who are of the mindset that God has eliminated the Ten Commandments in Christ Jesus so that we can be free to do whatever it is people must think we're free to do in the New Testament without the Ten Commandments, which is absurd. But for those people that say that, there's actually an awful lot of commands in the New Testament.

In fact, I heard a New Covenant theologian, And that's one of the people that thinks there's no like Ten Commandments or whatever in the New Testament. I heard one say once that there's like actually 300 commands in the New Testament we're to obey. So I don't know. Don't quote me on that. It was a big number. I don't even remember.

And it was so many commands that I think you'd go bonkers trying to write them all, let alone memorize them, which would be pretty helpful if you wanted to try to live a righteous life. Right. I mean I want to live the way God has said we ought to live Even if it just because I know it will prosper me right But if we understand the Bible the way that Jesus has taught us to understand it even in the passage, we understand that when Paul says, Be angry and do not sin, first of all, he's quoting Psalm 4, which we looked at in our songs, but But what be angry and do not sin is just a form of the sixth commandment.

He's not giving you hundreds of new commands to try to figure out and obey. It's a reminder that, hey, when you love your neighbor as yourself, when you actually have regard for his life and his person and his property and his wife and his kids and his male servant and female servant and everything that's your neighbor's, when you actually have regard for those things, you not only won't not murder him, you not only won't murder him, but you'll also try to do good to him. You'll want to protect his life and preserve his life.

That's one of the actual, not horrific arguments about the whole COVID situation, was if you love your neighbor, you're going to do some things a little different to protect your neighbor from this thing. Now, when we were told at the very beginning that COVID was a deadly disease that was going to kill everyone that came near and all that kind of stuff, that was actually thoughtful advice. And if you have COVID right now, or if you end up with COVID, I don't want you to come and cough on me or hang out in my house that day, okay?

I don't want to have you have a cold either, you know, a flu. So that's part of loving people is trying to protect them. And also, like I said earlier, there's a reasonability factor. and so we think about those kinds of things Colossians 3 another passage telling us what the new birth will do to us verse 12 so as the elect of God holy and beloved put on a heart of compassion kindness humility, gentleness and patience these words are all just fancy words that give us different facets of the Christian life that all are related to loving your neighbor as yourself and they're all related to not hating your neighbor.

Verse 5 of Colossians 3. He says, Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to the following things. Sexual morality, impurity, now listen, passion. Well, what's passion? Just feeling, right? Feeling something.

So you've got a couple different kinds of passion, right? You could be passionate, you could do the sexual immorality thing, but you could also just get passionate and be angry. Oh, it overtook me. I lost control. We always have these excuses, right? He says, evil desire and greed, which is idolatry, but including passion.

He says, on account of these things, the wrath of God is coming the sons of disobedience. Don't be identified with those who the wrath of God is coming by being a person who's controlled by your passions. I'm not going to say that I think in the Christian life I expect you to someday get to the point where you're where you have no passion. We say God is impassable.

I'm not going to tell you that you should never have strong feelings. I actually think that's part of our life is we're going to have strong feelings we're going to have things that fire us up and it's whether you exercise the self control that is the fruit of the spirit when that happens that is going to make the biggest difference in fact I expect you to be very angry about some things I hope you can think about what that must mean. I'm not telling you, hey, if Christian burns a steak, make sure you're angry, Jeremy.

That's not what I'm saying. I'm not saying you're thinking that either. That's just an easy example. You sit close enough, I'll get you. You should be very angry about the things God's angry about, right? You hear about little children being kidnapped and raped around the world, and if that doesn't stir you up a little bit, I think you have a different problem than the one that gets too stirred up over minor things.

Learn to major in the majors and minor in the minors. Don't sweat the small stuff. And learn how to properly be able to look at what's going on around you and apply the thoughts of Christ to them that you may have the types of reactions to those that God would want you to have. And I'll tell you what, God wants you to hate some things. He hates some things.

But what God doesn't want you to do is to hate your neighbor because he's got a nicer car. Romans 13, verse 8 and 9, Paul says, He says, owe nothing to anyone except to love one another. For he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. And then he says for this you shall not commit adultery you shall not murder You shall not steal You shall not covet He says if there is any other commandment it is summed up in this word You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

If you evaluate yourself according to the standard of God's law, especially now as not expanded but exhibited by Jesus Christ when he explains to us the sixth commandment in more detail. If you stand before the mirror of God's law and what you see is a person who just hasn't murdered anyone so you're looking pretty good. You're using a mirror that's been blurred and smeared with all sorts of human ideas.

You stand before the mirrors of God's law and you let it pierce your heart and you let it show you where you have failed to love your neighbor's life, to care for it, and to do whatever is necessary to preserve it, not only his, but your own. And you will find yourself guilty before a holy God of murder. If you've ever committed, excuse me, if you've ever considered committing suicide.

You're a murderer in God's eyes. You understand that? We always feel sorry for people that think about suicide because they're usually depressed and it's sad when people are that depressed. But literally, we read it today though, it brought it to my mind. You're a murderer in God's eyes for thinking about it as an option when God did not give it as an option.

And so if you're guilty before God of murder, you're like I am. I've hated people. But you know who didn't? Go ahead, you can say it. Jesus didn't. Jesus always had the exact correct way of dealing with each person.

And when Jesus Christ was murdered, He was murdered so that murderers could go free. Do you realize that at the time of His crucifixion, a literal murderer was set free and Jesus went to the cross? God is in the business of saving even murderers. Even the thing we think of as the worst thing that could happen. Right? You hear about a guy that lies his whole life and gets a gambling problem and then dies.

We don't think of him anywhere like we think of serial killers. Okay? I get it. but Jesus Christ died for even those of us that couldn't just love people from the heart, people that God made and told us to love Jesus died for all of us hypocrites who have showed up at a house of worship and worship him while harboring sin in our hearts and resentment in our hearts and things of that sort Jesus paid the stripes for those and if that's you today then you should be grateful and you should recognize that you have new life because He rose.

And you don't have to live that way anymore. As hard as it is, as hard as it sounds, as bad as the things that somebody did to you were, you don't have to live that way anymore. Jesus rose again so that you have some power over sin today. And He enables you by His grace to repent. And I don't know what repentance will always look like individually. There may be people in your life you can't call. and receive forgiveness from.

There may be people who won't grant it. But God will make a way for you to have the peace in your heart to know that you've done what He would have you do before Him. I'd be happy to talk to anybody about those things if you have a situation. And you kids, you're going to go to hell if you don't turn to Christ. and you will suffer for sins that you didn't think were that bad because God knows your heart.

But today, Jesus Christ is still risen. He still lives and He makes intercession for all those who come to Him. So today is a day to come to Christ. Believe that He died on your behalf. Pray with me. Father, You are so gracious to give us Your Word and to give us your son and to give us your teaching.

May your word be used to effect worship in our hearts, to convert us into Christians, and to cause us to be repentant, even loathing ourselves that we might run to Christ for more grace. Forgive us for each time we have worshipped you on the outside while on the inside being guilty of breaking your sixth commandment and help us to go forward as people who will repent. We don't expect to be perfect, Lord, but we ask that you would help us to be repentant.

Keep your law before our eyes that we may constantly see our need for the Christ, Jesus. Amen.