DM 620455

Alright, we'll remain standing. I'll read a few verses of Scripture. Matthew 27. Now, when morning came, all the chief priests and the elders of the people took counsel together against Jesus to put Him to death. And they bound Him and led Him away and delivered Him to Pilate the governor. Then when Judas, who had betrayed Him, saw that He had been condemned, he felt remorse and returned the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.

But they said, What is that to us? See to that yourself. And he threw the pieces of silver into the sanctuary and departed. And he went away and hanged himself. It's a reading of God's holy word. You may be seated.

Last week Jeremy and Jason agreed with me that I was finished with the sixth commandment. And so in complete violation of what you would consider to be the collective good ideas of the men of the church at that point, I felt it necessary to preach one more time on the sixth commandment being the topic. this week is going to be slightly different from the other weeks. So I've tried to explain to you that I actually prefer to simply start with a scripture and just do the scripture, then the next scripture, and the next verse, and the next verse.

And that's actually a lot easier to do than jumping around topically. But as I'm going through Exodus 20, and we're technically right now in verse 13, you shall not kill, you shall not murder. We are using that as the jumping off point, though, to look at what the rest of Scripture says about this. So last week we talked about Jesus' Sermon on the Mount and how he explained that commandment for us.

And we looked at the sanctuary cities in Numbers, I think, 35. And we looked at Cain and Abel and the first recorded murder in history. and in each of those weeks I had sort of one topic though that I was working from the whole time and usually it was a section of scripture that I was able to at least somewhat exegete even if it wasn't verse by verse week to week but this week what I have for you and I'm taking the liberty to do so I think because it's part of what you do in a local church is I have four applications of the sixth commandment and our obedience to it that I think are probably four of the ones that are we'll say most misunderstood or violated maybe within the church. And there were things that I'll just say, God put it on my heart through my desire to try to teach the scripture to you that I think are important things that we should understand as applications of the Sixth Commandment.

So what that means is that we understand what the Sixth Commandment is saying. You shouldn't murder, you shouldn't kill. When we talk about application, what we're saying is, well, what does that mean? What are the ways we apply that truth to our daily life, to our regular life? so knowing that you shouldn't kill is important knowing all of the different situations in your life that that principle should be applied to that you might live differently than you live now because you repent of something you realize violates the spirit of that command is the goal today and so the four topics that I'll talk about So I'll give you an outline.

I rarely give you an outline. So here's an outline for you. Ready? The first topic is going to be racism. I'm going to talk about racism and I'm going to say that racism is a product of violating the Sixth Commandment. The second topic is gossip.

Or some people would use words like slander as well. They are distinct. The third topic is abortion, which I've already preached on. I won't say exhaustively, but sufficiently that I'm not going to spend a lot of time on that one. And the last topic is suicide. And so these are topics that I want people to be able to hear about from a Christian perspective, but particularly I think they all have application of the Sixth Commandment involved in our understanding what we should not only do with them, but even think about them.

So it's important that you know that your thoughts about a topic can be evil. So you know I'm just gonna hope and I guess you know don't confess now you can tell me at the fellowship but that nobody in here has murdered somebody that literally that you're not actually guilty of bloodshed but in some ways in your mind you can be as guilty of it simply because you don't even oppose it like you ought to and so we should think about these kinds of things. So topic number one.

We're going to jump around a little bit, and I'm going to be really happy when it's over. And I could have skipped it. I could have just gone to the seventh commandment. That's my fault. But I want to get to more of a verse by verse thing. But topic one, racism.

Most people think they know what racism is. I think most of us do kind of inherently understand conceptually what it is. So a couple definitions for you. Racism is the belief. Okay, so this is built into the definition now. The belief that one race is superior to another Or similarly the belief that some virtues or evils are inherent to a given race So built into the definition of racism is the belief that there is actually such a thing as race.

So just so you understand this, what I would argue with you about with racism is that in some sense the existence of racism is the problem, but it's born out of defining things by race in the first place. So now God does in fact separate people into nations and people groups in his scripture, and that's well understood. But the Bible teaches us in the book of Genesis that Eve was the mother of all the living. and even if you and I want to talk about the other ones a little more so I'm going to skip around here on the racism one but if you go through the Genesis account Eve's the mother of all the living but by the time you get to the flood there's still Noah, his wife Noah's three sons and their three wives so there's only the eight people remaining on the earth after the flood and we're all related to one of them.

Or I'll say two of them. But in some way we're related to all of them because they were all cousins, basically. We're all distant cousins, eventually. And hopefully you can see from a mathematical standpoint that we're all very distant cousins after even just a few decades. Most of you could go online and find out that you're tangentially related to some president because there's really just that much connection going on.

But for you to believe that somebody has an inherent trait that makes them worse than you or that you're better than they are because of this trait, for example, skin color, which is generally the basis by which we understand racism, that's a denial on your part of the account of creation in God's infallible scripture so just just to use where and of course I could get in a lot of trouble because because part of the problem with racism is there certain words you shouldn't even use because that word bothers somebody or somebody's decided that word's offensive or vulgar at this point so you have to be careful but if you're a white person and there's a black person all right so those two words offend you, you already, I think you have a problem, frankly. But if there's a white person and a black person, and one or the other simply despises the other because of the color of their skin. Now, of course, we know nobody's actually white, except maybe Wesley, and nobody's actually black.

You know, people have shades of, we're all some shade of brown, technically, if we look at a color spectrum. But you know what I mean when I say that if you hate somebody because of their skin color, you're the one who's denying the fact that they're actually related to you. That there's nothing distinct about them. Racism and the definition of people in the category of races, hear me on this because you might not know it, actually comes from Charles Darwin's evolution of the species.

So Charles Darwin, a scientist in the 19th century, wrote a book where he theorized that people evolved from animals and black people evolved differently from white people in his view. And he decided that black people weren't as evolved as white people, basically. There's more to it all. And that fueled people's ability to go ahead and have what's natural in them, which is a hatred for another image bearer.

So if the sixth commandment tells you you're not to hate anyone, and you decide that you hate somebody because of their skin color, you are a racist in our contemporary definition of the word. But what you are is you are a murderer in God's eyes. You are despising someone who God created and gave his image to, and is redeemable. every single human being that you meet has a soul that Jesus may have paid the penalty for that soul's sins.

And for you to hate somebody is violating God's six commandments. For you to do it for that reason is violating the creation account. It's frankly foolish. And it's actually one of the few sins that God actually calls sin that our culture still kind of hates. Now, what's really interesting, and I don't want to get into this too much, there's a book on social justice back there, but now what we have come to in our world that we have now is we have people actually being racist to try to overcome racism.

And if you don't know what I'm talking about, there's ample videos and books about it, But there's Christian people who are professors at universities, they're pastors, they're teachers, and they are promoting the segregation of people by being black or white in the spirit of equality. And so a lot of people call it social justice. There's a discipline out there called critical race theory, which is the theoretical teaching of it all that helps people to define this. and it all starts with categorizing people.

And so if you want to avoid racism, you don't want to participate in that either, even though their stated goal is actually to end racism and to make things right with people who have suffered racism So I not going to say if somebody has suffered from racism that the only answer is well just don be racist toward them You may need to help somebody in a different way than somebody else, that's fine. But we treat people as individuals. And we treat people as image bearers of God.

But I'm concerned about the social justice thing, But what I'm more concerned about is that I do believe racism still exists in the hearts of people. And I do believe it probably exists in practical ways that some of us maybe don't see as much. Because we're being told it's everywhere. So it's now making you think it's nowhere. And that's all part of Satan's plan, I think.

I think there's still a lot of people who are very racist. And I can tell you from personal experience, God can forgive a sinner of that and change them. Second topic. The point I want to make about each of these is our culture has given us euphemisms for these sins. And they've given us other ways to phrase things to hide what we're doing. And so a lot of people say racism, but some people under the guise of racism, they say other words.

And so just listen to the words people say and try to figure out what they mean. So when people talk about equity and equality, sometimes you've got to ask yourself, well, what do they really mean by that? Do they mean separating people by their skin colors and judging them without even knowing them? Okay, second topic, gossip. Turn to Romans 1. There's a bunch of verses on gossip.

And gossip's an interesting topic. You know, the old joke is, if you want to know who the gossips are, come and ask me. I'll tell you, you know, like it's kind of a joke. But gossip is used in the New Testament a number of times. And if you take a look at the words in the original language, they're sometimes different words, which is mildly frustrating to a group of people like we are who don't know Greek.

And at least in my case, I don't know if I'll ever learn it. and so what you hope for in a Bible translation is that the same Greek word being used over and over you'd see the same English word over and over and that helps you because when you see the same word over and over you're going to think it's the same concept so if one passage says gossip and another passage says gossip and you think well it just means the same thing you have to be careful because in this case it didn't also you have to be careful that it doesn't necessarily mean what the dictionary says it means What the Bible meant by a term might not be what Merriam-Webster has decided it means by 2022. The other thing is, is you should go to half-price books and you should buy a couple old dictionaries, maybe one from even just 30 years ago and maybe a hundred-year-old one if you can, because the dictionaries that you use online are subject to change any moment. And they have changed.

And when you're doing your homeschool and even looking stuff up for yourself, you should be able to see what words meant historically rather than just what the powers that be want them to mean today, if you know what I'm saying. So gossip, generally speaking, is the unnecessary discussion about somebody else. It could be positive. It could be negative.

So if I'm sitting around a table and I said, hey, Mr. Roberts is one of the most helpful people a church could ever have. And he wasn't there. Well, that's technically gossip by definition, right? It's also true, I mean that. But the connotation behind gossip is rarely someone who's busy saying nice things about people.

You understand? Usually gossip is classified as something negative, something you wouldn't say if the person heard you. I'll also add that even if you're so bold that you would say it in front of them, it's not necessarily appropriate to speak about somebody negatively when they're not there. Now, in Romans 1, when God is describing all of the wickedness that people partake in, that finally causes, and I say causes God, I mean that in a historical sense, to just turn them over to the grossest sins possible.

He says in verse 29, having been filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and then malice. He says they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, violent, arrogant. Gossips is just mixed in with all these other sins that we call really terrible. And I would submit to you that God thinks gossip is really terrible.

I think it's a violation of the sixth commandment. You ultimately are assassinating someone's character. It's character assassination. And you have no business talking about somebody behind their back. Now, there are times we will talk about someone, and that's where it gets a little bit, we'll call it a gray area. Because there's times you might have a discussion, and it's for an important reason.

Or maybe your heart is pure at the time and you actually are just saying something that you don't even think is negative. And the person you're talking to has a gossiping heart. There's a lot of ways this can happen, so you have to be careful. I actually, several years ago, ended up having this no-gossip policy for myself. And it was, I literally wouldn't talk about anyone.

And it actually started to get a little weird because there were times it was like, I could say something nice about something, you know what I mean? but I had someone in my life who was such a Horrific gossip to me that I didn't even want to talk to that person anymore about things But in Romans 1 the word for they are gossips is they are whispers I Think the connotation here is that you not out there just boldly speaking your mind and talking about things with confidence and any kind of assurance. You're whispering. You don't want people to hear what you're saying because you know it's wrong.

And that's the kind of person you are. The same word is used in 2 Corinthians 12.20. You want to turn there. 1220 in 2 Corinthians. Paul, when he's getting ready to visit the Corinthians, now remember, like listen, there's a reason why, listen, if any of you guys ever go on to plant another church, you're not going to name your church like the 2 Corinthians church of whatever city, okay?

And if you think you're gonna, give me a call, I'm gonna talk you out of it. The Corinthian church is kind of like our counter example of what a church should be, alright? Paul loved them, but they really were doing a lot of things wrong. And Paul says, I'm afraid that perhaps when I come, I may find you to be not what I wish. And may be found by you to be not what you wish.

And I may not be, right? But then he says that perhaps, when I come to see you, he says, perhaps there will be strife. Okay, that's a sixth commandment violation. Jealousy. This is the tenth commandment, maybe sixth. Outbursts of anger.

Selfish ambition. Then he says, Slanders and he says gossip. He says a couple other things. That's the word whisperings. So again, Paul's just saying there's these whisperings going on that Paul had put in the Romans letter as well. And so Paul was familiar with the damage this could do, even to a church.

Whisperings about one another. And I'm going to tell you, there is a difference between adults constructively having a conversation or maybe they are talking about a situation. And that's what makes it hard. It's not always gossip to have a conversation about something. At the same time, if you in your heart have convinced yourself that you never gossip, you should pray that the Lord would reveal to you if you do.

We should all be open to the fact that we are, by nature, gossipers. so those are the two verses that said gossip where the word was whispering so now if you look at 1st Timothy 5.13 who wrote 1st Timothy who Paul I always ask the kids who wrote 1st John they're like John who wrote Jude who wrote 1st Timothy Paul yeah it gets a little confusing there's no pattern there but 1 Timothy 5.13, the word for gossip here in verse 13, this is speaking about widows. And this is really neat teaching on widows. And if you read through it, there's a lot of real sense in here that maybe we'll go through it sometime.

But he says, at the same time, they also learn to be idle. So these widows, they learn to be idle. And he says, as they go around from house to house, when he says they go around from house to house, He's not talking about, yeah, they're always helping others and cleaning and things. He's talking about the fact that they're not actually taking care of the things they should take care of.

And he says, and not merely idle, he says, but also gossips. He says, and busybodies. Talking about things not proper to mention. In that verse, the word is tattlers. So it's a different Greek word. And I'm not going to do the in-depth Greek thing with all of it.

But it's different from whisperings. It's tattlers. It's like they're going around and they want to be the one with the information. And then people want to talk to them. And people know what's going on. And I'll tell you something.

This is not a secret, but you should remember this. If someone will gossip with you, they'll gossip about you. Alright? Same is true with you ladies and boys too. But we usually say to the girls, if a man will cheat with you, he'll cheat on you. That's okay. don't think that you're somehow going to be the one that they don't gossip about because you talk to them and you eat their little morsels.

That's how Proverbs talks about it, right? You eat their morsels. It's going to make you sick is what it's going to do. In 1 Timothy 3, if you turn back a page or two, Paul's talking about, well, if we were a progressive church, I'd say, Paul's talking about female pastors here. We're not a progressive church. We're a confessional church, and we believe what the Bible says.

And we believe that when it says the woman's overseer is a husband of one wife, that that excludes anyone who wouldn't be able to be a husband. But in this passage, it says in verse 11, women must likewise be dignified, not malicious gossips, but temperate, faithful in all things. that's arguably about wives of deacons or it's arguably about wives of elders and deacons that this is part of the qualification to become these positions. I tend to think that it's a good qualification for both if you're wondering what I think and I've heard a good argument for why that's just referring to the wives of deacons and I'm okay with people having disagreement there.

But there it says malicious gossip, so that's interesting. And the word in that case, let's see if this word sounds familiar to anybody, the Greek word, is diabolos. Does anybody know who Diablo is? Right? Diablo? You ever have chicken Diablo, a real fiery chicken?

What's Diablo? Anybody know? what if I told you that Diabolos is used all throughout the New Testament and way more times than it's called Malicious gossip, it's actually just the devil. So, it's a devilish way of speaking about others. And that's why you will see the consistency in the Legacy Standard Bible, at least, that it's translated malicious gossips.

It's translated there in 2 Timothy 3, 2-5, and that's in reference to men and teachers. It says, But know this, in the last days difficult times will come. and then in verse 2 says there'll be malicious gossips. Men will come. But in Titus 2, once again, warning women. I'm not saying, but maybe God's saying that women are a little more sensitive to the sin of malicious gossip.

And I will also argue that men have some things that seem to be harder battles for men that they need to focus on more and be preached at more too about. But in Titus 2, older women, likewise, are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips. Well, in some ways it should be obvious. We shouldn't want to hurt others with what we say about them.

Your goal, if you do have to talk about someone, and that person is in some situation, this literally happened at fellowship last week, That person's in a situation where you do have a concern about what's going on in their life. And it wasn't you. You weren't here. I don't want you to think we're talking about you, Elijah. But it should always be tempered with, we're actually out of love, trying to understand something.

We're trying to see how we can help. Or sometimes I need to warn you, hey, stay away from Rod Parsley, the pastor over at World Harvest Church. Don't go there. Don't listen to his stuff. Don't follow him. I'm not gossiping about Rod Parsley if I'm warning you there's a false teacher literally a couple miles from our church and where most of us live or at least in the vicinity right so we have to be discerning there is there's always a difficulty when there's a sin where the sin has to do with the excess of doing something that is legal or with the heart attitude behind doing the same action that you could do in a wicked way.

So you can talk about a person in a way that is God-honoring and loving to that person and reverent, and you can also say almost virtually the same exact things, even with the same tone, and have a heart that is violating the sixth commandment and gossiping about them. That's what makes it difficult. It also makes it difficult when you're on the receiving end. it's very hard to say to someone hey are you sure this isn't gossip because you might feel like you'll offend them and then they'll be mad at you and then we don't want that and so we have to be able to I think be humble about it or someone can say how is this not gossip and I'll tell you something else your kids hear it when you gossip and it just becomes normal for them that's how we talk about people because that's what I hear my parents do the other example I gave was things that are legal but excess is bad alcohol is a good example if alcohol is legal and we can drink some alcohol and God gave it as a good gift but you have to limit it there's always a difficulty because what's the limit what if someone sees you and they don't know what the limit is and those things.

It's a lot easier for us if it's just don't touch, don't taste, don't do, right? And unfortunately for our sinful selves, but fortunately because God's perfect, the design is that we're supposed to grow in wisdom as we learn these things. And the whole book of Colossians will tell you that we have to be careful trying to lay down too many laws. Gossip is often euphemized by calling it a prayer request.

Hey, pray for Joe's porn addiction. There's no Joe in here. Good. Pray for Joe's porn addiction, you know. And all of a sudden, you just made sure the whole church knew. Right?

You're the guy with the info, or you're the girl with the info, and now everybody knows the thing about Joe that you want them to know for whatever devious reason in your heart, but you've disguised it as something you did for a godly reason. And that's even more wicked than I think the widows going house to house and just being busybodies talking about people. Abortion.

Abortion is euphemized now by people as reproductive rights. And if you think that it's the pagans that did that, you're mistaken. Christians have been, and I say Christians with quotation marks, Christians though and people who are part of Christianity are almost as zealous to make abortion allowable and okay, at least in some situations, as the pagans.

Christians are the ones that buy into the lies that, well, we have to honor people's reproductive rights, for example. One of the signs you'll see on billboards when you're thinking about abortion. We've gone over abortion. I could prove it to you. Exodus 21, if two men are fighting and they hit a pregnant lady, eye for eye, tooth for tooth comes right out of that.

And it's not, hey, if you hit a pregnant lady and she dies, it's eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life. It's if the baby dies. God's trying to let us know the baby has a life in the womb, which we see over and over in scripture. Proverbs 24, 11, rescue those who are perishing. but the idea behind some of the abortion ministries out there and you guys know where I stand in here is that many of them are actually very wicked And they not wicked in the sense that they bloodthirsty like some abortionists would be And they're not depraved and different like a lot of the people that go and get their abortions.

And we've watched one girl that proclaimed she was going to go get some chicken wings afterwards, you know, and just dancing outside an abortion clinic. But some Christians are wicked in the sense that they're willing to sacrifice God's truth for the sake of what they think is a little success in an abortion battle. And I understand the temptation. And there's all sorts of hypotheticals you could give.

Well, if you ran in a house and the house was on fire and you could only save one kid, would you just save that one kid? Or would you just say, well, if I can't save them all, I don't save any of them. And it's like, well, yeah, we just saved one kid for sure. And if I'm at an abortion clinic, I try to save that one that's being carried in right then.

But when it comes to the way we think about laws, the way we think about how a just society should function, we need to think about it the way God thinks about it. And one of the billboards you'll see, though, it'll say something like, it'll have a picture of a mom and a baby. or maybe she'll be pregnant and you'll have like the belly and she'll be holding it and it'll say we love them both. And that's their little trite way of trying to say hey we're not going to tell a woman what she has to do with her body.

We might tell her we don't think you should get an abortion but we would never tell her it's not a viable option or we would certainly not look at her and say if you kill your child you're a murderer and in fact the fact that you're actually contemplating it already makes you a murderer in the eyes of God you think Jesus for like a couple moments ever thought of killing children? I mean like think about it like not even a moment it would have disgusted him and so when you have these discussions with your pro-life friends. So my concern isn't that you guys are all going to run out and slaughter children.

I'm not worried about that. My concern is you're going to be in a conversation with somebody who says they don't think children should be slaughtered and you're going to get on board with something completely ungodly that they propose as a means to fight the battle. You understand what I'm saying? You don't fight abortion by saying, well, a few of them are okay.

I'll give you a quick example. They have the heartbeat bill in Ohio. It's been almost a decade now that they've been trying to get the thing to actually be in any type of effect, which alone, that alone makes it worthless, other than the fact that the heartbeat bill explicitly grants the right to murder some children's people. I don't know how a Christian could put their name on it.

I don't know how you could vote for somebody that would put their name on it. I don't know how we can promote things like that, or think we're standing in agreement with people like that. If I told you that we were going to, that little area right there with the stripes in the parking lot, that we were going to make that a rape zone. And if a guy could get a girl in there, boom.

Have at it. No penalty. I'm going to tell you, that's a perfect analogy to the heartbeat bill, except the heartbeat bill can't even be enforced because inside the abortion clinic, guess who's looking for the heartbeat? The person who gets paid to not find it. And I'll tell you something, a person who's willing to tear babies apart or burn them alive in their mother's womb, they're not above lying about whether they saw a heartbeat, okay?

And so we need to think rightly about these things and part of thinking rightly about it is knowing how to respond to these things people say. Well, we love them both. Well, you know what I think is loving to a woman who's headed to hell? I think telling her she's headed to hell and explaining to her her sin and her violation of the sixth commandment and even desiring to possibly kill her child is punishable by death for all eternity.

And that because of her murderous heart, she has no hope and then presenting to her the gospel of Jesus Christ but Jesus Christ can save even murderers I think that's loving an abortion minded mother not telling her oh I'm really sorry about your tough situation it must be really hard for you it's hard for every parent I've been a pastor for a year and a half and I just watch these pregnant women come in it's difficult you get sick easier and it's harder to carry at the end. I mean, it's just, and I had a wife that gave birth. I mean, I understand.

It's a cursed thing. You know what I'm saying? It's going to be hard. Yeah, being poor is hard. Having a kid while poor is actually a blessing. Maybe that kid will help a woman out of poverty.

But murder is never the answer. In Proverbs 24, though, for your exhortation, In verse 11, God says, deliver those who are being taken away to death and those who are stumbling to the slaughter. And says, oh, hold them back. I think there's an analogy here to salvation and eternal death, but also literal death. But listen to verse 12. This is the one that gets me.

If you say, behold, we did not know this. Does not he who weighs the hearts understand? And does not he who guards your soul know? God knows that you know that around you right now gross evils happening and then he says and will not he rendered a man according to his work part of how you work out your salvation with fear and trembling is growing in your hatred for evil and actually getting up off the couch and doing something about it and I preaching to the choir here we have a church full of people who serve at places like Planned Parenthood and wives and children that help out and things like that So check your heart about it, though.

Finally, suicide. Suicide's an interesting one. Suicide is the only sin you cannot repent of. If you successfully commit suicide, there will be no opportunity for you in this life to actually repent and show others oh I am sorry for that thing I did so suicide is kind of a final deal you could murder people and then you could live another 50 years yourself the way our justice system works now and you could actually show your repentance we know murderers who have repented and trusted Jesus Christ.

I know a couple people on Facebook, one guy who is a pretty well-known abortion evangelist guy, who helped murder somebody when he was a young boy himself. And he has totally repented and trusted Christ. So even though he murdered somebody, we actually believe he was forgiven, because we've seen that. And I have friends that before they were Christian, actually did abortions.

Paid for an abortion, they did it themselves. But suicide, you cannot actually repent. So one of the questions always is, well, if a person commits suicide, do they just go straight to hell? And I've got a whole teaching on that, but I'll just quickly tell you that a person who commits suicide should have no assurance that they're not going to hell. If you premeditatively murder anyone, I'm not going to say, well, in your current state, I actually think you're probably a forgiven sinner who loves Jesus and is pursuing righteousness and is eagerly awaiting his coming.

I'm not going to tell you that if you're intent on murder. At the same time, I do believe Christians can sin quite grievously. Last year, less than a year ago, we talked about David murdering Uriah, right? Bathsheba's husband. And David was forgiven afterwards, but I think, if I remember correctly, I even taught you that I believe Jesus was a Christian at the time it happened.

Or that David was already a Christian. He was already a believer. And he failed. And he failed miserably, just like every one of us would if it wasn't for stories like David that help us. But in suicide's case, I think it's... We want to be very careful.

I want to warn you that if you ever think about suicide, what you need to think to yourself is, if I'm successful I'm going to go straight to eternal torment. That's what you need to think in your mind. I want you to have that burned in your mind. If you love somebody that you know that was a Christian and for whatever reason that happened and you want to hold to the belief that maybe they just had a bad moment I understand that.

I have multiple friends like that actually. Or former friends I'll say. But in our century, in the previous century, though, we have seen an increase in suicide. One of the things that's being pushed right now, another euphemism, though, is something called dying with dignity. So God's plan for us is to live our life until he takes it. And he may take it any number of ways. and that may include suffering, may include difficulty, it may include healing, following that difficulty and suffering.

So a couple quick notes on that. There was a woman that became famous years ago named Brittany Maynard. She was 29 years old. She was a mom. She had some kind of incurable cancer, according to the doctors in an area where they actually want to promote physician-assisted suicide. One of the concerns about ever having a situation where you can be told you don't have time to live and then you can commit suicide legally is, well, what if they're wrong?

Or what if they're motivated to actually decrease the population? Brittany Maynard, the 29-year-old who sparked California's Dying with Dignity Amendment or Act Well, preparing for her own physician-assisted suicide, said in her CNN op-ed, she said, I would not tell anyone else that he or she should choose death with dignity. So she wouldn't tell anyone else they have to.

She said, who has the right to tell me that I don't deserve this choice? That I deserve to suffer for weeks or months in tremendous amounts of physical and emotional pain? She said, why should anyone have the right to make that choice for me? And in her case, it's an obvious rhetorical question, and she thinks the answer is nobody does. But whenever a foolish heathen asks rhetorical questions, there's often an answer, and the answer is God has that right. this man named Brian Simmons was arguing about physician assisted suicide in an article and part of his arguments were we have all these limits on it and his point was one of the limits that they did in California was you could get a physician assisted suicide that's basically when a doctor decides to break his oath and murder you okay or watch you murder yourself while he prepares the the potion for you and the argument was well you have to have less than six months to live and then you can do it that the law That was the bill that was going on And this guy was writing and he said why this arbitrary limit?

If people should be, because the argument was, people should be free to make the choice they want. And then it was, and here's the restrictions. And this ethicist guy, his point was, well, if there's going to be the right of autonomy over yourself to do that, if you want to do it, why does the state have any right to limit you? Why do you have to, why does a person with only seven months to live not have the autonomy to make that choice, but a person with five months and 30 days left does?

That was his point of the argument, and I actually thought he was going in a good direction when he said it, and then he went way in the wrong direction, this guy. But listen to his final quote. So if you're wondering if dying with dignity and letting people not suffer is the answer to things, listen to this guy's quote that's arguing for it. Ethical and legal opprobrium, I don't even know what that word means, for suicide in the USA are relics of Christian theology. when society used to hold that God created life and directed all things by his will suicide was a final terrible and irredeemable rejection of God as both creator and Lord and he finishes his quote with in our secular society why does he remain even partially throned Now this guy is a wicked pagan, arguing for less restriction, but his point stands.

God should be on the throne, and if there's any allowance whatsoever for this, particularly in the medical community, he is now partially throned. You don't want a dethroned God. If you side with that crowd, you're arguing for the dethronement of our Lord. In Proverbs 31, many of you will know that that's the chapter that supposedly tells women how to live.

In verse 6 it says, Give strong drink to him who is perishing, and wine to those whose soul is bitter. Let him drink and forget his poverty, and he will not remember his trouble any longer. God actually gives us some permission here to palliate people at the end, to help them to feel better when they are suffering at the end. And that's the kind of care we should give people.

And it's a society that actually hates... Our society hates babies and old people, right? Until we become them, and then the people regret that. But our society just hates old people. They require care. They require help.

They cost money. In the Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan, Giant Despair, that's the guy's name, he urged Christian to kill himself because of the hopelessness he was in in this doubting castle. So metaphorically, Christian's in a big depression. He's gone the wrong way. He didn't stay on the path God told him to stay on. and now he's suffering for it.

And it's horrible. So people commit suicide because they're suffering and they think they're going to die anyway. Another reason is just people get depressed. Things get hard. In a Christian life in particular, they could be very hard. Christians are not immune to depression and things like that.

But Hopeful, Christian's companion at the time, not faithful from the musical movie, but Hopeful was actually the one with him. hopeful let out a thoughtful sigh. Listen to what he says to Christians, and this applies to all different forms of suicide. It is true that our present condition is dreadful, and death would be far more welcome to me than to live in this continual misery.

So he acknowledges, like, yeah, especially as believers, death would be better. I mean, let me tell you something. Dying and spending one moment in the presence of Christ in heaven will be better than the best thing that could happen to you here. Forget about the hardest stuff, alright? But listen to Hopeful. He says this better than I could.

However, let us consider what the Lord of the country to which we are going has said. He declares, you shall not commit murder. Not just to another man's person, but we are forbidden to take the giant's advice to kill ourselves as well. also let us consider again that giant despair does not have authority over the law of our Lord as far as I can understand others have been captured by him just like we have and yet they have escaped out of his hands who knows if perhaps God who made the world might cause the giant despair to die this guy is really hopeful aptly named or everyone in that book is, right?

Or that perhaps at some time or another in the future, he may forget to lock us in. So basically, your despair might die. You might not be locked in anymore at one point. You have to be hopeful. Or that he may in the near future have another paralyzing fit while he is here with us in the dungeon and then lose the use of his limbs. He said, Let us be patient and continue to endure.

The opportunity may come that could provide us with a happy release, but it shall not be done by our own murders. Even suicide can be kind of a euphemism, right? It's murder. And thou shall not murder. We need to use the right words. so Christian so hopeful helped Christian out with these words and even later hopeful reminded Christian of how far he's already come and that Christian had suffered great things already and for whatever reason he hadn't been so despairing at those times so it's important to us that we understand what's really going on and again just like the abortion argument I don't think that you can be neutral on these topics I don't think you can say well you know it's up to some if Brittany Maynard wants to kill herself which she did she actually deceived the world by saying she changed her mind one day to get people's mind off it and then she was dead and if she wants to do that you can say well that's her business and it's not mine but it's our business as people who love other image bearers of God.

As people who love Brittany Maynard's family. Her children were taught that that's an acceptable thing by their mother. That's the last thing they remember of her. Do you know how hard it'll be for those kids to believe in Jesus Christ, knowing that their mom willingly murdered herself at the end and really had no Christian testimony for them to have thought was valid? so in Matthew 27 the verses I read and then never exegeted Judas threw the pieces of silver into the sanctuary after having remorse In some versions of your Bible it says Judas had repentance What Judas had that was different in the original language from the repentance that Peter had after he denied Christ, is Judas had a bad feeling.

Peter had a change of thinking, metanoia, repentance. Judas had remorse. He felt bad. He felt bad for what he did. He confessed that he had basically sinned against an innocent man. He knows it.

But he felt bad about it. He wasn't repentant. He didn't seek forgiveness from God. He just felt bad. And the guilt overwhelmed him. And I have no doubt Judas was a severely depressed person at this point in time. the devil probably having left him to himself at this point, the devil, you know, possessed him, if you didn't know that.

Judas, I'm sure, was quite depressed. I'm sure he was in despair. I'm sure he felt hopeless. And although I understand how election works and all that, Judas' command at that point was to get on his knees and to beg God for mercy. And had Judas asked the Lord Jesus Christ to forgive him for his sins and truly meant it, which we know wouldn't have happened at this point.

God is ready to forgive. But Judas instead took matters into his own hands and hanged himself. I leave you with that just to say, maybe the things that we think about doing and the way we counsel others, maybe doing the same thing that Judas did for his last act isn't... I don't know if I imitate Judas much at all, but do you want your last act to be how Judas finished This wasn an example of how to get out of a problem Actually Judas who was suffering greatly most likely from the guilt and remorse for having done something horrible, plunged himself into worse torment than he was in on this earth.

And so, our thinking about racism must be one of loving others, and we must be cautious to check our own heart for how we judge others for their outward appearance. It might not be black, white. It might be somebody with a different kind of thing than you. It could be all sorts of stuff, right? We judge people by their outward appearances. Part of obeying the sixth commandment is watching your speech, but watching your heart behind your speech.

Why you whisper about others. why you find yourself listening to whispers about others. Part of obeying the sixth commandment is not only not killing people, which I hope is the bare minimum, but loving people enough that you would want to go stand up for little children that are being killed. You realize people say they kill children because they might have Down syndrome. this is like the most beautiful people you've ever met like Down Syndrome people and I've known a few that were Christian too and they were just fantastic to talk to people kill children because well the child might be poor because I'm poor can you imagine if we just killed poor people it's unthinkable but people justify their political positions by these things so we should not only not kill children we should oppose it We should actually be actively opposing it speaking against it when we hearing about it And finally we should be utterly convinced in our own mind suicide is not a viable option There may be someone in this room who will get to a point where that feels like the only way out.

That feels like the solution to the pain you're feeling. I want you to hear me say that. It's not an option. There's always hope. As hopeful said the Christian. And even if you don't get out of the difficult situation, and obeying God and getting the benefit of the assurance that comes from being His child is what might come to you in that moment.

And so think rightly about the sixth commandment. Apply it to more things than just literally throwing a hatchet at somebody and killing them. And try to have your daily life governed by the fact that the antithesis of murder murder is really love. Loving others, loving life, and wanting to help preserve that. Father, please bless us as we explore your word and as we try to apply it.

I thank you that your word does speak on every topic that we need to know about. That there is not a single thing that goes on in this world where we have to think you have left us without advice. forgive us for how often we have neglected the study of your word which would have enabled us in so many situations to make better choices forgive us for the foolishness of gossip and slander for the wickedness of racism or even dividing people in groups like that and forgive us for not standing up enough against some of the evils in our society that desire to promote murder under another name. Amen.