TEN 6: The Sixth Commandment

Bookmarks & Needs:

B: Exo 20:13; Matthew 5:21-24

N:

Opening

Good morning, and welcome to Family Worship at Eastern Hills Baptist Church, whether you are here in the room or online! I’m pastor Bill Connors, and it’s great to be back with the church family today after a couple of weeks off for a family vacation up to Oregon. We had a lot of fun and really had a great opportunity to recharge and refresh a little bit, and I’m blessed to have been able to take the time. Thanks for being here this morning to join with this wonderful church family to praise and worship our Lord today. Thanks, praise band for leading us in that this morning.

I only have one announcement this morning: I just want to let everyone know where we landed on our annual July offering for World Hunger/Disaster Relief. Our church goal was $5,500, and we received $5,838.24! That is something to celebrate! Thanks for your always faithful giving to both the church budget and our special offerings as they come up. You are such a generous group of people.

Thanks to our Associate Pastor to Children and Families, Joe Vivian, for filling in at the pulpit for me the past two Sundays. I really appreciate his being willing to continue on with the series that we’re in, and I was blessed and challenged by both messages that Joe brought.

We are on our seventh message on the Ten Commandments, what the Hebrew people refer to as the “Ten Words,” our series that we are calling “TEN: A Look at God’s Unwavering Commands.” We went a little out of order last week, in that it just really felt like the Seventh Commandment was more Joe’s “sweet spot” in ministry given the biblical counseling that he and Kerry do on marriage, and so we decided to flip-flop the Sixth and Seventh Words.

So our focal passage this morning is the Sixth Word, which is just three words in the Christian Standard Bible in English, and only two words long in Hebrew. We aren’t going to stand just yet as we look at this focal passage:

Exodus 20:13 CSB

13 Do not murder.

We didn’t stand yet because there’s more to our focus this morning. Basically, we read the Sixth Word and we think it’s pretty simple. Pretty cut and dried. Easy to keep. I mean, just based on those words we just read, nearly all of us would say we meet the standard, so we can just move on. We’ve got this one down, and very likely will continue to have it down for the rest of our lives, if we can just manage to go through life without murdering someone in cold blood. Right? Well, for the remainder of our focal passage this morning, we turn to the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus takes this Word one giant step further. So let’s stand in honor of the Word of the Lord as we read Matthew 5:21-24 together, which includes a quotation of the Sixth Commandment:

Matthew 5:21–24 CSB

21 “You have heard that it was said to our ancestors, Do not murder, and whoever murders will be subject to judgment. 22 But I tell you, everyone who is angry with his brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Whoever insults his brother or sister, will be subject to the court. Whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be subject to hellfire. 23 So if you are offering your gift on the altar, and there you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24 leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled with your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.

PRAYER

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard a movie or television character use the Sixth Commandment as kind of the pinnacle of evil, the worst that we can do, and thus compare their seemingly less severe sins to it as if that makes it ok: “It’s not like I killed someone!” As if this is the standard that we should measure our actions against: “as long as no one dies, then whatever action I take is basically acceptable.” This is utterly ridiculous nonsense, but there’s a reason for it. It’s that every culture, in every time, has had some sort of law against murder. We all understand that there should be some kind of limit on intentionally killing another human being for our own personal benefit or preference. Even people who might claim that this is relative: that they should be able to kill people if they want to, would have a problem if you tried to kill them.

As I said earlier, this Commandment is almost a no-brainer. Murder is certainly wrong.

Unfortunately, our English language tends to muddy the waters here a little bit, however. The King James, for example, renders the Sixth Word as “Thou shalt not kill,” which probably worked rather well in the King’s English of the seventeenth century, when there were many other terms that were common for killing someone in a non-murderous way… such as “put to death,” “fall upon,” or my personal favorite, “smite” or its really cool past tense, “smote.” But in our more modern sense of the word “kill,” while we would certainly take it in the sense of not committing murder, we could also misunderstand and decide that the Sixth Commandment tells us we cannot kill to defend our own lives or loved ones against an imminent threat, serve in the military or law enforcement, or even kill an animal for meat. This isn’t what the Sixth Word is saying at all.

So we must understand that in ancient Hebrew, there are eight different words for killing someone or something. The word here for “murder” in the CSB is specifically referring to putting someone to death improperly, for selfish reasons rather than with authorization (such as the death penalty or in war).

So given this fact, and given what Jesus brought out about this in the Sermon on the Mount, how are we to consider the Sixth Commandment? Well, we need to start with an understanding of humanity:

1) All human beings bear the image of God.

Every human being who has ever walked or will ever walk the earth is a bearer of the Imago Dei (the fancy Latin term for “image of God”). This does not mean that we look like God physically, for God is Spirit. It means that humans are different from every other creature on the planet. We are special and set apart. For example, we have the ability to be rational, to think abstractly, to make moral and ethical decisions, to create and appreciate beauty. We all bear this image. We see this at the end of creation week:

Genesis 1:27 CSB

27 So God created man in his own image; he created him in the image of God; he created them male and female.

This statement was made before the Fall, so at the time it was made, 100% of humanity was morally perfect. So when sin entered the world, didn’t the image of God get shattered? Not exactly. Consider Genesis 9:6:

Genesis 9:6 CSB

6 Whoever sheds human blood, by humans his blood will be shed, for God made humans in his image.

This is after the Fall. The divine image of God is still there. It has been marred, yes, but it’s not gone.

This is the landing point for the “escalator” that Joe mentioned in his message on the 5th commandment two weeks ago, when he explained that the command to honor our father and mother was kind of transitional: that the command to obey our parents connects the authority of God to the earthly authority that He has instituted, and thus obeying that command taught us to obey the commands that followed. For us to decide individually to take the life of another divine image bearer into our hands puts us into a position that none of us deserves to stand in: the position of God. And thus, we place ourselves above Him in authority, and become our own “gods” in direct violation of the First Word: “Do not have other gods besides Me.”

Furthermore, God’s prohibition against murder reveals to us that as fellow bearers of the image of God, God has declared that ALL people have inherent value and worth, and thus are worthy of dignity and respect. There is no one who doesn’t fit in this category.

Including the unborn humans who bear God’s image. Including the infirm. Including the one with a physical or mental disability. Including the person with a different color of skin than you have. Including the person on the other side of the aisle politically. Including the person who doesn’t believe in God. Including the person who lives a morally debased life. If the person you’re looking at is a human being, then they bear God’s image, and should be treated with respect and honor.

The problem is that we have lost this fact, especially in our culture today. We’ve decided that how we feel about something is what is true about it. And if someone disagrees with me or just doesn’t think like me, then they have somehow disrespected me, which means that they hate me, which means I certainly must hate them, and so I will give them no respect, no dignity, no honor. I will deny the existence of the Imago Dei in them. In short, I will treat them like they aren’t human. That’s what Jesus was getting at in the Sermon on the Mount:

2) Murder begins in the angry heart.

Like the sin of adultery, which Joe spoke about last week with the Seventh Commandment, murder starts with a different emotion: anger. But saying that murder begins in the angry heart isn’t to say that all anger ends in murder. However, it is the length that anger would be willing to go to if left completely unrestrained. This is why Jesus took the Sixth Word and showed us the spirit of the commandment, revealing a much more expansive standard to use than just “not murdering”:

Matthew 5:21–22 CSB

21 “You have heard that it was said to our ancestors, Do not murder, and whoever murders will be subject to judgment. 22 But I tell you, everyone who is angry with his brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Whoever insults his brother or sister, will be subject to the court. Whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be subject to hellfire.

Ouch. See the parallel here? Murdering subjects you to judgment. And harboring anger in your heart against your brother, you’ve mentally, emotionally, spiritually murdered him, because you are subject to the same judgment. If you insult him, you should be brought before the court for the crime. To call someone what was in the Greek moros (from which we get our word “moron”) was more than to say that they were not intelligent. It was to say that they were worthless, useless, sinful, and good for nothing but hell. Jesus says that to treat an image bearer in that way was essentially to set yourself up for that very punishment you were saying that they deserve.

In his commentary on this passage, Tony Merida wrote: “Jesus’ words would have sounded extreme to His listeners. They certainly do to us. Don’t give in to the temptation to water them down. He meant to shock our dull sensibilities.” Jesus speaks in the extreme so that we can see that the standards for how we consider fellow image-bearers go way beyond just not killing them. The issue begins in the heart, as He would later say in Mark:

Mark 7:20–23 CSB

20 And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. 21 For from within, out of people’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immoralities, thefts, murders, 22 adulteries, greed, evil actions, deceit, self-indulgence, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. 23 All these evil things come from within and defile a person.”

Like every sin that we face, the issue isn’t simply an issue of actions that we take. The Pharisees thought that they were great at the practice of righteousness. They could cross their T’s and dot their I’s and look on the outside like they had it all together. The problem was what was on the inside: the sins that they harbored in their hearts: their anger, their pride, their arrogance, their self-sufficiency. This is why Jesus called them whitewashed tombs in Matthew 23. What is inside our hearts will eventually come out.

In her book, Ten Words to Live By, Jen Wilkin uses the story of Cain and Abel to paint this picture extremely well. I won’t quote it directly other than a couple of sentences. But consider the passage about the first siblings and the first murder:

Genesis 4:1–5 CSB

1 The man was intimate with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain. She said, “I have had a male child with the Lord’s help.” 2 She also gave birth to his brother Abel. Now Abel became a shepherd of flocks, but Cain worked the ground. 3 In the course of time Cain presented some of the land’s produce as an offering to the Lord. 4 And Abel also presented an offering—some of the firstborn of his flock and their fat portions. The Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, 5 but he did not have regard for Cain and his offering. Cain was furious, and he looked despondent.

God had promised the serpent that Eve’s offspring would crush the serpent’s head, and we know that God was referring to Jesus, but Eve didn’t know that. She praises God for her son, whom she likely believed would fulfill the promise of setting everything right. But instead, it all goes wrong. Cain doesn’t see Abel as his brother, a fellow bearer of the divine image. He sees him as his rival. He takes silver in the offering competition, and Cain can’t stand it. He’s furious and disheartened. Notice the Lord’s warning to Cain:

Genesis 4:6–7 CSB

6 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you furious? And why do you look despondent? 7 If you do what is right, won’t you be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.”

God doesn’t just want Cain to master “not killing” his brother. He wants him to take a look at his heart, and know that murder is right there inside because his heart was full of anger. He was to take control of his heart and submit it to God’s will, God’s plan, God’s law. But Cain didn’t do so, and we see the consequence:

Genesis 4:8–9 CSB

8 Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let’s go out to the field.” And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. 9 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” “I don’t know,” he replied. “Am I my brother’s guardian?”

Here’s how Jen Wilkin summarized it:

“Cain does not heed the warning, or master the temptation. He cannot strike down God, so he strikes down the one who resembles Him.”

Jen Wilkin, Ten Words to Live By, p. 91

The thing that’s really interesting about Cain’s response to God is that the answer to Cain’s question is “yes.” Because we all bear the image of God, we are called to be preservers of that image, so in that way, we are our brother’s or sister’s keeper.

So murder begins in the angry heart. So does this mean that we can never be angry? We can never get upset about anything? This takes us to our third point.

3) MOST of our expressions of anger are sinful.

To be completely fair, anger all by itself, the mere emotion of anger, is not sinful in and of itself. If simply getting angry were sinful, then we would have to accuse God of sinning, because God gets angry. Jesus got angry. No, the emotion of anger is actually a part of bearing God’s image that can be very useful when we must take a decisive action or stand against sin or injustice. Also, the moment that the feeling of anger arises is not sinful. It’s a temptation, just like it was in Cain’s case, and we have a choice in how that anger is expressed. This is where we run into problems. This is because most of our anger is expressed, either internally or externally, in ways that are sinful. Consider what James said about anger:

James 1:19–20 CSB

19 My dear brothers and sisters, understand this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger, 20 for human anger does not accomplish God’s righteousness.

See, we are to be “slow to anger,” not “never angered.” But notice the expression: “human anger” doesn’t accomplish God’s righteousness. Paul also said that anger itself was not the sin, but the expression of it in Ephesians 4:

Ephesians 4:26–27 CSB

26 Be angry and do not sin. Don’t let the sun go down on your anger, 27 and don’t give the devil an opportunity.

These passages show us that it’s how we express our anger that is at issue, including both internal expressions like holding on to it and dwelling on it, forming a grudge or hatred against someone else, and external expressions like blowing up or abusing someone either verbally or physically. These are the things that are the sin, and the things that give the devil an opportunity or a foothold in our hearts.

In the reference book “Biblical Counseling Keys” on the topic of anger, they refer to four kind of “main reasons” that are at the root of our anger:

Hurt: We all want to be loved. But sometimes, we feel unloved, our hearts are wounded, and we might respond in anger.

Injustice: We also all have a concept of right and wrong (not necessarily a correct concept, but a concept nonetheless). When that framework is violated, we might respond in anger.

Fear: We all want to feel safe and secure. When we don’t, we might lash out in anger in order to take control of the situation that’s making us afraid.

and, Frustration: We might have expectations about something that go unfulfilled, and frustration about that might cause use to get angry.

Can we identify? Spouses: hurt. Parents: Frustration. Driving: maybe all of them? How much murder have we committed while driving?

The reason that we are so bad at expressing our anger is that the vast majority of our anger is human anger: we aren’t ordinarily hurt because someone violated the image of God, but because our pride has been wounded or our weaknesses brought to light. While we might be angry about the injustices that God is angry about, many times we’re angry because we think that our rights are being violated somehow, and rather than remembering that we’ve surrendered all of our rights to God, we demand that we have our say in our anger. Some fear is good and healthy, but sometimes our fear is irrational and not based in truth, so we get angry and we might not even know exactly why. We have expectations that we’ve created in our minds, some of which are completely reasonable. But some of our expectations are never going to be fulfilled because they’re never actually expressed, and so we hold a grudge against those who have let us down, even though they didn’t even know they were doing so. Do you see how the devil can use these things to harm our walks, damage our witness, and injure our relationships?

Brothers and sisters, we need to take stock of our hearts and where our anger is coming from. Is it human anger? Or is it God’s righteous anger? If it’s human anger, it won’t bring about God’s righteousness, even if we’re “right.”

Instead, we need to hear the warning that God gave to Cain, or the instruction given by Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes:

Ecclesiastes 7:9 CSB

9 Don’t let your spirit rush to be angry, for anger abides in the heart of fools.

Again: don’t be quick to anger, because it is foolish. But there is something about anger that we should be quick about. And that’s dealing with it.

4) Deal with anger as quickly as possible.

The right time to start dealing with our feelings of anger is as soon as they show up. As Joe mentioned last week with dealing with lust from 2 Cor. 10, we need to take every thought captive and make each one obedient to Christ. I know that I can play anger back in my head over and over and over, and I never get calmer as I do so… I only get more angry. I come up with things I should have said, or arguments to give in preparation for the battle which may or may not come. These things are unhealthy and sinful.

The right time to deal with anger is right away, as we just saw in Ephesians: that we not let the sun go down on our anger. This doesn’t mean, husbands and wives, that you have to work out every disagreement before you go to sleep. But it does mean that you are not to keep your anger, your unforgiveness, for a long time. You can’t hold on to it. Deal with it quickly. Why?

Well, first because our anger gets in the way of our worship. Notice how quickly Jesus instructs His followers to go and be reconciled to their brother.

Matthew 5:23–24 CSB

23 So if you are offering your gift on the altar, and there you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24 leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled with your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.

If someone has something against you, you have a responsibility, if at all possible, to go and be reconciled to that brother. Your sin against your brother is a point of contention in your relationship with God as well. God would rather have your confession of sin and correction of your fault with your fellow image bearer before He has whatever offering you were going to give Him. We really are our brother’s keeper, and if we are causing our brother to stumble by provoking him to anger against us intentionally, then we need to make that right.

Also, we need to deal with our anger quickly because not doing so doesn’t do us or anyone around us any good. Look at what David said in Psalm 37:

Psalm 37:8 CSB

8 Refrain from anger and give up your rage; do not be agitated—it can only bring harm.

Holding on to things just brings harm. It harms us physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It harms our relationships with others. It hinders our relationship with God. There’s nothing good that comes from holding a grudge. So don’t.

Well, Bill that’s really easy to say, but how do we manage to deal with it? It’s simple (not easy, but simple). We choose to forgive. We consciously decide that we will no longer hold onto our anger. We will no longer hold the offense we have against the other person in their account. We will not seek revenge, we will not seek recourse. This doesn’t mean that we will necessarily trust them in that same way in the future, but we will no longer demand payment (either internally or externally) from them for the wrong that they have done. And this is something that we might have to do over and over and over again. But it’s something we are commanded to do.

Joe referenced this passage in Ephesians last week, but it bears looking at again:

Ephesians 4:31–32 CSB

31 Let all bitterness, anger and wrath, shouting and slander be removed from you, along with all malice. 32 And be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ.

We are called to forgive as God has forgiven us in Christ. Jesus died on the cross to take our place in the punishment that we deserve because of our sin. God is a God of love and forgiveness, yes… but He is also a just God and a God of wrath. In His perfection, He can hold both of those positions, because it is His character that determines what is right and wrong, what injustice looks like. We can never make atonement for our own sins. We can never get back to perfect, so we needed God to make us clean or we would never be clean. And because God loves us, that’s exactly what He did—He poured His wrath out completely on His Son who didn’t owe a debt of sin. This is good news, because only Jesus’ perfect sacrifice could have provided us with a clean slate, a right standing before God. So in Christ, God offers us forgiveness of every sin. Jesus modeled this kind of forgiveness for us Himself while He was on the cross:

Luke 23:34 CSB

34 Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing.” And they divided his clothes and cast lots.

Realize that we deserve God’s truly righteous anger, God’s wrath, God’s punishment, and that there is no way we can make ourselves NOT deserve it. So all we can do is come to Him in faith, trusting in the work that He’s already done in Christ, asking Him to forgive us, and surrendering ourselves to Him in trust. And He will forgive us. And because Jesus defeated death and rose again, if we are His by faith in surrender, then we also will live forever with Him because of His grace.

And once we are forgiven, we are given a new way of interacting with our fellow image-bearers, especially those who are also in Christ, so that those who don’t yet know Christ may see how we treat one another and be able to tell there is something different about us.

Closing

So how is your heart today? Is there some anger that you’re carrying, an issue that you are refusing to let go of, a grudge that you’re holding? Maybe there’s even just kind of an underlying sense of anger that you’re feeling, and you’re not even sure where it’s coming from. Now is the time to deal with those things. Confess your anger to God and ask Him to reveal what you’ve hidden in your heart by the light of His Spirit within you.

If you have never trusted in Christ, then you don’t have the Spirit to point those things out to you. And the Scripture says that anyone who believes in the Son has eternal life, but those who do not believe in Christ still have the wrath of God on them. This morning, right where you are, you can surrender to God through faith in what Christ has done. Trust in His sacrifice for your forgiveness and eternal life. Let me know.

Church membership.

Confession of anger or bitterness.

Band come down. Joe and Trevor?

PRAYER

Closing Remarks

Bible reading: Galatians 2 today. Read Galatians each day through Thursday, then start Ephesians on Friday.

Instructions

Benediction:

Hebrews 12:14–15 CSB

14 Pursue peace with everyone, and holiness—without it no one will see the Lord. 15 Make sure that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no root of bitterness springs up, causing trouble and defiling many.