Hi, I'm Robert Jeffress, and I'm glad to serve as your Bible teacher every day on this great radio station. On today's edition of Pathway to Victory. You can't separate these mass killings in schools that are so horrific from the lack of a knowledge of God.
The two are tied together. Thank God for a Texas legislature that is willing to say we're going to start posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms. Why shouldn't our students see the words, Thou shalt not kill? Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor Dr. Robert Jeffress. Tragic stories of homicide often dominate the news cycle these days, but in reality, murder is quite rare.
So does that mean that most of us have never broken the Sixth Commandment? Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress exposes dangerous attitudes that, when allowed to fester, can lead us down a path of destruction. Now here's our Bible teacher to introduce today's message.
Dr. Jeffress? Thanks, David, and welcome again to Pathway to Victory. Travel is a powerful way to deepen your relationships, and I can't think of a better way to strengthen your bond as a couple or as a family than by joining us on the 2024 Pathway to Victory Cruise to Alaska. The dates are June 15th through 22nd. Along the way, you'll share fabulous new experiences together that include spectacular views of God's awesome creation.
And, of course, you can choose to add other adventures, such as a hike in the wilderness or taking a relaxing stroll through the quaint shops and villages. We'll enjoy the great Christian music of Rebecca St. James and Michael O'Brien. We'll enjoy the comedy of Dennis Swanberg, and I'll be opening God's Word to us most evenings.
So go to ptv.org, look at the itinerary, and most importantly, reserve your spot today while there's still room. Critics often point to the Bible's Ten Commandments as an archaic list of unwanted rules and regulations. But in reality, these simple codes have served our country as the underpinning of civility. God provided the Ten Commandments to bless us, not to repress us. Well, I've written a brand new book for you and your family about the Ten Commandments.
It's called The Ten. How to live and love in a world that has lost its way. In my book, I show you how this timeless wisdom will infuse happiness, freedom, and blessing into your life.
And a hardcover copy of The Ten will be sent to your home when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory. It seems like every day the headlines are filled with reports about violent crimes. The Bible teaches that preventing these tragedies begins with implementing God's sixth commandment. With this in mind, I titled today's message Preserve Life. A key indicator of whether a society is healthy or not is whether that society is just.
And a key indicator of whether a society is just is how it values human life. I'm reminded of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Cormac McCarthy entitled The Road. It's the story of a father and son trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world as a result of a nuclear holocaust. All the animals, birds, fish have been destroyed.
The little boy has never seen a blue sky or green grass before. Human beings roam around like packs of dogs in search of food, which means because the animals are gone, other human beings. They resort to cannibalism. And in a particularly bleak moment, the father says to his son, you must carry the fire. What did he mean by that? He meant you're to do more than just survive. To carry the fire means to value human life, not to fall into the trap of thinking it's worthless like those around you. You must carry the fire. That reminds me of another story.
This one happens to be true. It's found in the Bible in Genesis 6. The world was filled with violence, the Bible says.
Every thought of man was only evil continually, God said. And because of that, because of the disregard for human life, God said he was sorry he ever created man, and he would blot him off the face of the earth, save one man and his family. You know his name, Noah. And after Noah and his family spent over a year on that ark, they finally emerged into the world that God had saved. And the very first command that God gave to Noah and his family in this post-slood world was this one.
Carry the fire. But he didn't exactly say it that way. But that's what he meant in Genesis 9, 6. The very first command to Noah and his family was this. Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God, God made man. Human life is so valuable, God said, that anybody who takes it presumptuously shall have his life taken. Many years afterwards, that same principle was enshrined in what we call the Ten Commandments. In Exodus 20, 13, God said, you shall not kill. You shall not kill. And that's where we are in our study of the ten.
How to live and love in a world that has lost its way. We've come to the sixth commandment, you shall not kill. It's interesting that Commandments 6, 7, and 8 are all three in the same form.
Two short words. Commandment number 6, no killing. Commandment number 7, no adultery.
Commandment number 8, no theft. In other words, all three deal with the value of human life. Human life is so important that you're to value life, you're to value a person's marriage, and you're to value a person's possessions. This is all about the dignity, the value of human life. Today we're going to look at the first of that triplet of commands. Thou shall not kill. And today we're going to answer three important questions to help us apply this commandment. Now, I know what you're probably thinking. It's what I thought when I began studying this message. At least this is one commandment I haven't broken. Well, two, okay? We figured that one out.
But, you know, I felt like I was in pretty good shape until I started studying the implications this has for all of us. There's more than one way to take a person's life, as we'll see in just a moment. So we're going to answer three key questions about this commandment. First of all, what does the commandment say?
What does it say? Now, the King James Version translates the word kill, ratza, as kill. Thou shalt not kill.
We learned that as children, didn't we? One of the Ten Commandments, thou shalt not kill. But any student of the Bible knows there is no absolute prohibition against killing. There is some killing that is actually sanctioned by God.
For example, God gives the state, government, the power to take a life. In Genesis 9, 6, again, the first command was for capital punishment. People who said, well, that's just the Old Testament law. This came hundreds of years before the law. Whoever sheds man's blood by man, his blood shall be shed. In the New Testament, that's repeated in Romans 13. Paul said, for government does not bear the sword for nothing.
It is an avenger bringing wrath against those who do evil. God has given government the right to take a life. There's another form of sanctioned killing, and that is a just war.
Sometimes war is not only allowed, it's commanded by God. Do you remember a few years ago when North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un was threatening the world with a nuclear holocaust, and I made the comment to the Washington Post that I thought the President at that time had the power, the moral authority to take out, assassinate Kim Jong-un. People went ballistic over that. In fact, I pulled up last night, when I said that, the comedian Stephen Colbert on his program The Late Show did a whole skit about me receiving a message from God to kill Kim Jong-un. They thought that was just unbelievable.
People went ballistic. I didn't get that message directly from God. I got it from God's Word. The Bible says there's a time that you need to get rid of the evildoers. Deuteronomy 20 verses 10 to 18 says there is such a thing as a just war. Here's one other occurrence where killing is allowed in the Bible. Exodus 22 verse 2 says that if somebody breaks into your house at night and threatens your life, you have a right to take their life. When we talk about the sanctity of human life, it's not just life in the womb, all life is sacred.
And if somebody is threatening your life or the life of a loved one, you have the right to take their life as well. That's why kill is not the best translation of this verse. The better translation is you shall not murder. What God is talking about is premeditated murder that comes out of anger.
And that leads to a second question to answer. What does the sixth commandment cover? What's encompassed in thou shall not murder? Three things. First of all, overt acts of murder.
That's the most obvious. Acts of murder. There are several kinds of murder. First of all, there's homicide. That is, taking another person's life out of anger. We'll talk about that in a moment in the first murder in Genesis 4 when Cain killed his brother Abel.
But since that time, people have been killing one another. The book of Hosea contains this lament from the Lord himself to the people of Israel. He said in Hosea 4, beginning with verse 1, the Lord has a case against the inhabitants of the land because there is no faithfulness or kindness or knowledge of God in the land.
Notice the reason for the killing and the violence. There is no knowledge of God. Thank God for a Texas legislature that is willing to say, we're going to start posting the 10 commandments in classrooms. Why shouldn't our students see the words, thou shalt not kill? There's no knowledge of God. Hosea goes on to say, by the way, he said, because you have forgotten the law of your God, I shall forget your children. You can't separate these mass killings in schools that are so horrific from the lack of a knowledge of God.
The two are tied together. Notice verse 2, there is swearing, deception, murder, stealing, and adultery. They employ violence so that bloodshed follows bloodshed. Therefore, the land mourns and everyone who lives in it languishes. Isn't that a great description of America right now? Bloodshed follows bloodshed and the land mourns.
People take life without even thinking about it now. Have you been keeping up in the news what's happened? These horrific shootings? A group of cheerleaders outside of Austin stop at an HEB grocery store. Coming out of the grocery store, one starts to get into the wrong car. She apologizes, goes and gets in her car with the other girls, and the passenger inside that car gets out and opens fire on those cheerleaders.
Her little six-year-old girl and her father are shot because her soccer ball went into the wrong yard. We read even on our roads here in Texas, road rage, people taking the life of another person because they got cut off. That's the land in which we live. And, you know, the fact is you say, well, why is this increasing? Well, there are 330 million guns, and there's nothing you're going to do about those guns.
They're in circulation. You can try to. God bless you if you can do something about it. But the fact is it's a heart problem. We have an all-time high in mental illness in our country right now. You look at the stats, whether it is anxiety, anger, loneliness, all of these things are at an all-time high, and when people feel desperate, they do desperate things. The Bible says we have to change hearts before we can change behavior. The fact is homicide is rampant in our land right now, but that's not the only way to kill a person.
Secondly, I think this law includes suicide, not just the taking of another life, but even the taking of our own life. You know, one of the saddest experiences I ever have as a pastor is talking to families who have lost a loved one through suicide. And when I do so, I remember an experience I had many years ago in this church when I was the youth minister here back in the dark ages. I remember being over in the old sanctuary and going to a funeral that Dr. Crystal conducted. It was of one of our deacons who had taken his own life, and I'll never forget what Dr. Crystal said to that family. He said, when people become ill physically, we don't damn them because they are physically ill. We show compassion toward them. But just as people get sick in their bodies, they get sick in their minds. We don't damn a person for that.
We deal compassionately with them. And he said, I disagree with those who say suicide is the unpardonable sin. Any sin can be forgiven. Those who succumbed to suicide have become a victim of Satan. In John 8, Jesus said Satan is a murderer. He is a deceiver. He is a liar.
He is the father of all lies. The person who takes his own life has succumbed to the lies of Satan who says your life is worthless. You become a burden to other people.
Your struggle will never end. You're better off dead than you are alive. No, suicide is not the unpardonable sin, but we have to be clear, it is a sin. It is wrong for you to take any life, including your own, that you didn't create. The Bible says, for we are not our own.
We are the sheep of his pastures. It is he who has made us, not we ourselves. And that's why we need to say that suicide is wrong. Julie Gosick is a Christian writer who suffered through the suicides of five of her family members. She wrote, suicide is not a genetic trait, nor is it a family curse. Suicide is a sinful choice made by an individual. This statement is neither unloving nor disrespectful.
It is the truth. I dearly loved my family members that committed suicide, but their choices were sinful and not righteous. You know, that word sin, the most common word is harmartia in Greek. It means to miss the mark. When somebody takes their own life, they have fallen short of God's standard.
They have missed the mark. And we need to be compassionate, but we need to be very clear that no one has the right to take a life, including his own life. A third overt act of murder would be euthanasia, sometimes referred to as assisted suicide. Did you know that nine states right now, along with the District of Columbia, have laws permitting assisted suicide? Let's be clear, we're not talking about just the cessation of treatment. That's a prayerful choice that an individual and family have to make to cease certain treatments. But this is proactively working to take another life.
The problem with that is those who are affected by these laws, that sphere tends to grow, as it has in the Netherlands, to include people who are elderly, people who are hopelessly infirmed, those who have become a burden to insurance companies or to the state itself. We have no right to take another life, no matter what name we put on it. Another application of overt murders, of course, is abortion. You know, people ask me all the time, where does the Bible address abortion? Well, the obvious place we talk about often is Psalm 139, verses 13 through 16, in which the psalmist talks about how intricately we have been woven together in our mother's womb, how our days were written in God's book before there was one of them that we lived. But there's another passage that is equally strong about this, and that is in Exodus 21, verses 22 to 23.
Listen to this law. If men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child, and there is injury to the child, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life. God's word says that fetus, that unborn baby, is a life.
In fact, it's such a valuable life that if it's lost, the penalty is another life be exchanged for that life. Have you heard, you're hearing it right now, that this concept of life begins at conception, that's a new idea. The religious people haven't believed that all the time. Christians haven't believed that.
That is just something new by the right wing to take control of the government and so forth, not at all. For hundreds of years, Christians have believed that life begins at conception, that that fetus is an actual life. Listen to the words of John Calvin. Now, some of you are going to get all upset about me quoting John Calvin. Oh, our pastor's turned into a Calvinist, blah, blah, blah. Just because I quote from somebody doesn't mean I agree with everything they say. You know, just because somebody's not right about everything doesn't mean they're not right about anything. Calvin was right.
Listen to what he wrote. The fetus, though enclosed in the womb of its mother, is already a human being. And it is almost as monstrous a crime to rob it of the life which it has not yet begun to enjoy. Life begins at conception.
We have no right to take the life of the most helpless in our society, the unborn child. I think this command certainly commands or includes acts of murder itself, and it also includes attitudes that lead to murder. We talked about that at length in our series 18 Minutes with Jesus. In Matthew 5, Jesus talks about certain attitudes that lead to murder that we need to be on guard against. Certainly, anger is one. Ralph Waldo Emerson said that anger like fire eventually dies out after leaving a path of destruction. Somebody has compared anger to an acid that is stored in a container. It's an acid that destroys not only the container in which it's stored, it destroys the object on which it is poured.
You know, I saw that vividly illustrated one time. One time, my brother, sister, and I inherited rent houses. One of our relatives died and left each one of us a rent house. I quickly learned why my grandfather once said, if you really hate somebody and want to get even with them, give them a rent house.
Because you're always worried about keeping it filled, you know, and keeping it maintained. I had this rent house, I had a couple living in it, and I was trying to unload it on, I mean, sell it to them at a reasonable price. Thought we had it all worked out, had the contract signed. On a Monday morning, the realtor called me and said, Robert, that contract fell through.
I said, well, what happened? She said, well, that couple signed that contract on Saturday afternoon. Saturday night, the husband bludgeoned his wife to death. And left her unrecognizable remains in the back bedroom. Now, if that were not creepy enough, a few days later, I received in the mail that signed contract from that husband and wife.
And I thought as I looked at that contract, this couple were unified at least enough to agree on a major purchase in the afternoon. But by evening, anger had injured that relationship and caused that husband to extinguish the life of his life partner. That is the power of unresolved anger. And that's why Jesus said in Matthew 5-22, but I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court.
God hates every act of murder because all life is a precious gift from our Creator. There's much more I need to share with you about the sixth commandment, so please join me again next time for part two of my message. To have a permanent record of this teaching series, I'm pleased to tell you that Pathway to Victory has produced a complete collection of all eleven sermons on the Ten Commandments on both audio CD and video DVD.
In a moment, David will explain how to receive these sets so that you can listen to the unedited teaching series at your own pace. By the way, this would make a great series for your small group Bible study or your Sunday school class. Plus, I've written a brand new book for you and your family as well.
It's called The Ten. How to live and love in a world that has lost its way. I've written this bestselling book so that readers of all ages and stages of life will be able to see how God's Ten Commandments, when followed, will bring blessings and happiness. And a hardcover copy of The Ten is yours when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory. At Pathway to Victory, it's our mandate to teach the clear truth of the Bible.
Yes, even controversial topics like preserving the lives of unborn babies. Gratefully, we have a growing circle of supporters who have come alongside Pathway to Victory as faithful partners in this important mission. And if you're among those who support us, I want to share my sincere thanks. You have become a channel of blessing for people who need to hear these daily Bible studies.
David? Thanks, Dr. Jeffress. When you give a generous gift to Pathway to Victory, you're invited to request a copy of the brand-new book from Dr. Jeffress called The Ten, How to Live and Love in a World That Has Lost Its Way. Here's our toll-free phone number, 866-999-2965, or visit online at ptv.org. Now, when your gift is $100 or more, you'll receive not only the book, but also the complete collection of audio and video discs for The Ten teaching series.
Plus, we'll also include the study guide, and that's perfect for Sunday school class or a small group Bible study. One more time, call 866-999-2965, or find us online at ptv.org. You could write to us if you'd like. Here's that mailing address, P.O. Box 223-609, Dallas, Texas, 75222. Again, that's P.O. Box 223-609, Dallas, Texas, 75222. I'm David J. Mullins. Join us again next time when Dr. Jeffress concludes this message on the Sixth Commandment, Preserve Life. That's Thursday, here on Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas.
