Life Is Sacred (Part 2 of 2)

Music playing Well, at least I've managed to keep that one. But today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg shows us the many ways we actually commit what he calls hidden murder. We're in Exodus chapter 20 and verse 13. We need to be able to articulate to our agnostic friends that we are not simply about crusades for certain slogans and ideas. But the reason that we uphold the sixth commandment and the sanctity of human life is because, unlike them, we believe that there was a moment in time, a millisecond, in which a creator God who has always existed made creation. And as a result of that, he established in the creation of man morality, a sense of right and wrong, dignity as having been made in his image, personality as distinct from the rest, and intrinsic value because of who he is. Now, we then need to go on, as they will say, Well, how in the world did we get in the predicament in which we find ourselves? Then we will move from Genesis chapter 1 and chapter 2 into Genesis chapter 3, and we will show how the fall of man leaves men and women today in a world not the way that God created it, not the world that God intended, but the world in the way in which man has spoiled it. Now, if this is too philosophical for us this morning—this is philosophical theology or theological philosophy—I want you to know that I'm looking forward this afternoon to talking to some fourth- and fifth-grade children here in the church.

And the kind of questions that they have asked me—I'm supposed to answer all these questions between 5.30 and 6.30—are questions like, Who created God? Who created God? Why was God never born? Did God really die? Does God love Satan?

When Jesus died, if Jesus is God, why didn't everything go crazy and out of control? So, for those of you who want to have a Christian experience that can be reduced to seven little slogans to make you happy, five verses that you learned and carry on your way, but I've got to tell you that the kids at your house are asking more sensible questions than many of us are even thinking about. And they are our tomorrow. They are our children.

And they are on the forefront of these issues. Now, the authority matter, the hostility matter, and the sanctity matter. Let's come to the issue then of the sanctity of life. The sanctity of life is underpinned by this view of the world, by the fact that God is creator, that he is personally involved, that man is hostile to that truth, but it doesn't alter the fact of the sanctity of life. Human life is sacred, says the Bible, first, because it is God's gift, and secondly, because man bears God's image.

You can read of this in Genesis 1 and Genesis 9. Human life is the most precious and sacred thing in all the world, and to end it or to direct its ending is God's prerogative alone. So we honor God by respecting his image in each other, which means consistently preserving and furthering the welfare of one another, especially as it relates to life. Well then, how is this commandment broken? Let me suggest four ways in which the commandment is broken.

Number one, it is broken by homicide. Consider how little regard there is for human personhood when daily in each of our cities, men and women are blown away, drugged out, dragged out, drowned, destroyed, simply as a matter of course. The meaningless absurdity of life without God leads to the tragic destruction of human existence. Once you break the link between a personal creator God and his creation, once you dismantle the first eleven chapters of Genesis, you are left with the most unbelievable implications.

And that's where we're living our lives. So homicide reveals it. Secondly, suicide reveals the breaking of the sixth commandment. The act of willfully causing one's own death, the suicide in making himself the object of murder, still remains the subject of it. Suicide offends against community, in that we don't have the right to deprive others of us. That's not pride to say that.

That's just true. We don't have the right to deprive our families of us or our friends of us. That is not our right. Suicide offends against human dignity. Because if you think it out, if sin is to do what we please, to decide the purpose of our lives without rendering account to anyone else, then suicide is the ultimate realization of that dream. Because in suicide, more than in any other act, we defiantly say, I am the master of my own destiny. It is the ultimate expression of freedom from one perspective, selfishness on the other, and futility at the end of the line. Where does that come from?

How do people process information? That is a mind that is hostile to God. That is a Romans 8-7 mind. The mind is hostile to the authority of God. It rejects the authority of God.

It rejects the notion that God personally created, that he is interested in his creation. And every one of us reacts to say it disgusts and disappoints us to see a man so abjectly suffering that he blows his own life into oblivion. We agree with that. We agree with the problem of a lack of care. We agree with the issue of emptiness and loneliness and a sense of alienation. But the answer of the Christian is not, here, wear the mask.

The answer of the Christian is, here, meet the Christ, the one who is touched with the feelings of our infirmities, the one who is the answer to the deepest longings of our lives, the one who endured death in order that we might discover life. And yet, suicide and the destruction of life is on the ascendancy. This is not going to go away.

And bar a revival in our country, this will get worse. The American Hospital Association says seventy percent of the six thousand deaths in hospitals every day are a result of some decision such as halting or withholding of treatment. And some doctors say they routinely give their dying patients the means to take their own lives, but only after determining a patient isn't just depressed or in need of new medicine. Dr. John Flexner, a Vanderbilt Medical School professor who teaches death, dying, and bereavement courses—he teaches death, dying, and bereavement courses—says, if a terminal patient wants to die, there is a way he can help. Quotes, I say, I am giving you this prescription medicine and this sleeping pill.

And for God's sake, don't ever take them together, and never take too many of them, because that would kill you. And so the person walks out the door, and as soon as the will of the wisps fancy comes across the computer screen of their mind, having been provided by the doctor who teaches death, dying, and bereavement courses, they slip one of the pills, the rest of the medication, and then what happens? They stand before the bar of God's judgment. See, they don't believe that. They believe that they go to oblivion. It is appointed man to man wants to die, and after this comes nothing. See? Now, that's their worldview.

So they are consistent with their worldview. I don't like it here. I'm unhappy here. Nobody cares for me here. There is no purpose in my existence.

There is no fear in my going. Therefore, final exit. Do you understand why I belabored the first point?

Because until we understand these things and engage our neighbors and our friends in that kind of dialogue, they will continue to live with their rhetoric which is foolish and devastating. Now, I need to say this before I move on and draw this to a close. Some of you are sitting out there saying, Well, you know, I remember some years ago when I sat with my loved one in the hospital, and it became clear to all of us that there was no possibility of there being any restoration in this individual's life. We were guided by a caring physician who said that as long as we kept that gadgetry up there, all that technical medical wizardry, all that we were doing was prolonging the experience of dying, we were certainly not extending the reality and sanctity of life. The physician said that if we were to withdraw the extraordinary means, then we would allow nature to take its course, and that's what you did, and that's right.

Physicians, all down through the years, have done that. And that is death with dignity. It's not a euphemism for euthanasia. Thirdly, abortion breaks the sixth commandment. The raging debate over the beginning of life should not be viewed as a matter of scientific or technical judgment.

That's the first thing you need to say. It is a moral issue. The reason that our godless friends are so concerned to say that a fetus is not a human being in any realistic sense is because they are still unprepared to say that it is wrong to murder children. Believe me, the day will come when they will decide it is okay to murder children. And on that day, the debate will be over about when human life begins.

Because people will be honest enough to say, we don't care. We know it's a child, we don't want a child, and we are in control of things. There is no authority over us, there is no God who reigns, there is no personal Creator. We were born without reason, we prolong our lives by chance, and we die in oblivion.

Sartre. Therefore, to be consistent within the framework of this worldview, there is no reason in the world why we ought not to go and take these intervention methods. The fact is, you and I know today that from any realistic objective perspective, we have to conclude that the fetus in the womb is from the moment of conception a human being in the process of arriving. The fact that for several months that fetus cannot survive outside the womb does not affect its right to the same protection which other human beings merit and which it will itself immediately merit as soon as it slips from the womb.

Dr. Jerome Lejeune, the professor of genetics at the University of René Descartes in Paris, the guy who discovered the genetic basis for Down syndrome, says, Life has a very, very long history, but each individual has a very neat beginning, and that beginning is the moment of conception. Despite the fact that we are apparently wiser, better educated, and free, no previous generation has ever been as guilty of the wholesale rejection of the sixth commandment as ours. Finally, the sixth commandment is broken by hidden murder. Turn to Matthew chapter 5, and with this we conclude.

Some of us feel such a rising tide of moral indignation about the things that we've been studying that we're about to go out and go crazy. We're already applying this commandment to everyone else except us. Jesus knew that would happen. That's why in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5 verse 21, he said, You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment. He says, Well, listen, I've got something to lay on you. Anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment.

Anyone who says to his brother, Rakah, is answerable to the Sanhedrin, but anyone who says, You fool, will be in danger of the fire of hell. Do you see what he's saying there? He's saying, You think because you managed to walk away from it in terms of any physical involvement, you're clear. He says, Half of you are filthy adulterers in your mind, and you stand in face of judgment.

You think because you have not been guilty of any of these things. And may I say in passing, there will be some who are here this morning, and you have been guilty of this. You have faced the issue of abortion.

And I want to say this to you. God is merciful in relation to that as he is in relationship to everything else. And especially if your perspective was a worldview that was so warped before you came to faith in Christ, God understands that too. So I don't want you to go out under any manmade burden of your own past. Don't allow the devil to rummage around in your own areas of sin that has already been forgiven.

If it has not been forgiven, then let's talk and let's pray. But some of us are so proud of the fact that, Well, we never did that, and we never considered suicide, and I never shot anybody, I never banged anyone over the head. Well, so what? Have you ever had a murderous thought? Did you ever drive away from a business meeting and say, I'd like to kill that sucker? Did you? You ever? Say, You know what?

I wish he would drop off the side of a cliff. You know what? The guy is a total empty head.

That's what raka means. Empty head. Nincompoop.

Dog brain. Anyone who says to his brother, You are an empty-headed nobody, answers to the Sanhedrin as guilty of judgment, and anyone who calls in question the morality and the character of an individual by saying, You fool, namely you moral moron, will be in danger of the fires of hell. So just because I haven't shed someone's blood, I'm not innocent. My heart has known murder. I've harbored thoughts that are as foul as a murder. Contemptuous anger has ugly bedfellows, animosity and malice and hostility, and our old favorite, gossip, whereby we kill people all the time from great distances. We spread the news out of the same mouth, as James says, comes the blessing of God and the cursing of our neighbors.

And every time I gossip, what I'm saying is, This person did something or said something that I'm incapable of. And so I put them down, and I elevate myself, and I face the fire of hell. And as hard as it is for us conservative evangelicals to understand and accept this, in the economy of God, nobody will go to a deeper hell as a result of a thing had an abortion than will the person who called his brother a moral moron or an empty-headed dog-brain idiot that he wished would die. Sin is sin. And we have our little evangelical cozy ones, none better than gossip, whereby we malign and we criticize and we disfigure and we desecrate and we diminish the relevance and status and stature of our friends and our brothers and our sisters and even our family. Jesus said, Hey, smart guys, hey, Pharisees, when you'd finish your talk on suicide, abortion, and homicide, remember Matthew 5 21. If you want to play that game, he says, by dealing down one another in the realm of gossip and harmful words, then you're as guilty as the fires of hell. Concluding comment, those of us who are trying so hard to be good in studying these 10 commandments must be just about out of our brains by now, right?

Those of us who are somehow continued to believe that we are able to conform to God's righteous demands. We've been thinking this. I didn't do well on the first. Second, not so good. Third, bad. Fourth, horrendous. Fifth, my mother, I never called her. Sixth, I'm in deep trouble now.

Okay? So some of us are sitting here. It's like we're sitting on a gigantic nail about seven inches long. And this idea of making ourselves satisfactory to God is an impossible dream. These commands make us squirm in our seats. And what they do to us is they say, I'm not even gonna try this anymore.

I hate this stuff. I messed up so bad, I'm not even going to try and make myself acceptable and pleasing to God. And that's the end of the line. But listen, those of us who have given up on the idea of using these demands as a means of making ourselves acceptable to God, as a means of achieving a right standing before God, we now recognize that it is the ministry of the Holy Spirit within our lives to conform us to the will of God so that in obeying these commands we're not seeking peace with him, but we are finding pleasure in him.

And there's all the difference in the world. Although we fail, although we will never conform to the law perfectly and hard on mind and action, the new life that God has secured for us and given to us in Christ will enable us not only to tell our neighbors about this transformation, but to show our neighbors the transformation. This law is not a ladder up which we claim to forgiveness, but it is a mirror in which we see ourselves in need of a Savior. Have you ever come to Christ and turned over your life to him as Savior and Lord and King?

You may today. Let us pray. May the grace, mercy, and peace that comes from Father, Son, and Holy Spirit rest upon and remain with each one today and forevermore. Amen. We are quickly finding out how impossible it is for any of us to keep even one of God's 10 commandments, but thankfully God never meant them to be a means of achieving our own salvation.

Instead, he has given them to us to point us to our need for a Savior. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. As we move toward a new year, I want to ask you to please remember Truth for Life in whatever year-end giving plans you have. Truth for Life is entirely funded by listeners like you. Beyond supporting this daily program, your giving enables so much more. Your generous support makes Alistair's entire library of sermons completely free for anyone to listen to or to download or to share.

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