10c No.6 Murder Most Foul

Genesis chapter 4. Adam lay with his wife Eve and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, with the help of the Lord I have brought forth a man. Later she gave birth to his brother Abel.

Now Abel kept flocks and Cain worked the soil. In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock.

The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry and his face was downcast. Then the Lord said to Cain, why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not, if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door.

It desires to have you, but you must master it. Then 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.

Then the Lord said to Cain, where is your brother Abel? I don't know, he replied. Am I my brother's keeper? The Lord said, what have you done? Listen, your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand.

When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth. Cain said to the Lord, my punishment is more than I can bear.

Today you are driving me from the land and I will be hidden from your presence. I will be a restless wanderer on the earth and whoever finds me will kill me. But the Lord said to him, not so.

If anyone kills Cain, he will suffer vengeance seven times over. Then the Lord put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. So Cain went out from the Lord's presence and lived in the land of Nod east of Eden.

May God add that blessing and the message behind it to us as we consider it later together. Well let's go to Scripture and a little selection of Scriptures for us to consider again as we set up the back cloth for this somber subject. It's not one which I was a chosen to have spoken on but the syllabus is dictated by the fact that centuries ago we were given by God ten commandments, not suggestions, ten commandments and not one of them has been rescinded.

In other words they're all for us to obey to this day and we're told that we are not to murder. Verse 13 of Exodus chapter 20. You shall not murder.

Let's go to the New Testament for a further endorsement and an application of this in the teaching of our blessed Lord. Matthew's Gospel in chapter 5 verse 21. Matthew 5 21.

You have heard that it was said to the people long ago do not murder and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment but I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again anyone who says to his brother Raka worthless fellow is answerable to the Sanhedrin. Anyone who says you fool will be in danger of the fire of hell.

Therefore if you're offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you leave your gift there in front of the altar first go and be reconciled to your brother then come and offer your gift. Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you're still with him on the way or he may hand you over to the judge and the judge may hand you over to the officer and you may be thrown into prison.

I tell you the truth you will not get out until you've paid the last penny. Our Lord being particularly blunt there. And now the final reading not the final reading that we could have had on this subject but you've got to draw the line somewhere Luke 23 murder most foul verse 20 Luke 23 20 wanting to release Jesus Pilate appealed to them again but they kept shouting crucify him crucify him for the third time he spoke to them why what crime has this man committed I have found in him no grounds for the death penalty therefore I will have him punished and then release him but with loud shouts they insistently demanded that he be crucified and their shouts prevailed so Pilate decided to grant their demand he released the man who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder the one they asked for and surrendered Jesus to their will I mentioned that one would not opt to speak on this particular subject I am aware I'm taking it for granted that we do not have a congregation of ex-murderers and even with the input of some of our American friends we don't have anyone here who managed to escape from death row so couldn't we sort of pass this one over you know give it a miss this is one of the easy ones we could vault over it and go straight on to the next one and well yes it might seem as though we could dismiss it in such a summary fashion apart from the fact that our blessed Lord Jesus indicated that when the Bible speaks of murder it doesn't just refer to literal murder murder in the sense of taking someone's life there are several ways in which you can actually murder someone did you know without necessarily causing them to have a loss of heartbeat and requiring the services of an undertaker you don't go very far in Scripture do you before you realize that man isn't a very pleasant species I mean Alan took us to the third fourth chapter of Genesis and there we find described the first bloody murder that this world knew and by the time you get to the end of that chapter you've got a little song that's being sung about another murder and by the time you get to the end of the book of Genesis you find that the men who actually were used mysteriously in one sense because you would have chosen them and neither would I to found the Jewish nation I refer to the sons of Jacob they came together on one day and they decided that they would snuff out the life of Joseph because well they didn't like him and you move through the pages of the Old Testament and you find the tragic story of man shedding the blood of his fellow time and time again so it was a brutal world in the Old Testament we all know of course that when you moved into the 20th century we were singing lovely hymns basically ascribed to the God of science and knowledge men will be bold and brave with light of science in their eyes we learn the lessons of the First World War there'd never be another one and then a few years afterwards we had a bout of hiccups and found ourselves baptized in the Second World War and just in case we get a little bit too optimistic about the way things are in the 20th century you've no need to have recourse to your history books you just shake your head and you get those little cogs working at the back of your memory and you remember that it wasn't very long ago when bombs and shrapnel and all the bag of tricks of warfare were directed at Kuwait and Iraq and although we've forgotten a little bit about the devastation there there are still kids in Iraq who are dying because well the infrastructure of their freshwater supply system was taken out and has not been replaced and you know that on the streets of London there are no-go areas and some of us don't even feel that safe in some parts of Worthing so we can't just brush things off and suggest well man has become a little bit kinder and more sensitive in the 20th century than in Old Testament times.

The blood that was on Cain's hands is on our hands and most of us are not too happy about our football supporters at least quite a number of them who always seem to have the money to go abroad and disgrace the nation and though I'm not suggesting that they engage in murder they certainly do not make us feel very proud of their activities. It's not often that I go into virgin stores you'll be glad to know but I did some while ago when I was in London simply because I heard they got some cheap classical records so I had a look at the classical records and then I was attracted to a group of kids I say a group there must have been 30 or 40 and they're all over on one side of the store this is on Oxford Street in London and I wondered just why they were like flies around meat and when I saw the stuff that they were buying I mean I have heard of video nasties I've never seen a video nasty but it seemed to me that what they had on display just the sheer publicity ought to have caused a normal human being to want to vomit and run out of the shop instead of which we gather that the video nasty business which is not exploiting sex so much as violence is a multi-million pound profitable industry and isn't it interesting those of you who check the papers that a lot of the stuff that's put on television even though as a society we are against violence as far as many of the late-night films are concerned exploit the very thing that we're against I do find that somewhat illogical you know that program which is now shot right out of my mind in terms of its title this consumer program where there's a lady in her fifties who's in charge of the thing and she tends to Esther Ransom what's the name of the show may be forgiven that you know it so well how to catch a congregation out when she set up the child abuse line on the other channel they were depicting a prime time the rape of a mother under the surveillance of her children that was just drama it wasn't a documentary at all we see the contradiction so we do live in a society which still knows perversion and the problem of men taking the lives of other men the exploitation of bodies and so forth you know when I was a schoolteacher back in the sixties we used to sing a song in our school assembly in fact he was rather a hit at that time it was really a folk song more than a school assembly him it had this little haunting refrain where have all the flowers gone remember it long time passing gone to graveyards everyone long time ago do you remember the punchline when will they ever learn and the answers they haven't we haven't and now not in the 60s but in the 90s we have problems in this whole area of the taking of life and the exploitation of the human body there are so many aspects into which this particular subject could be developed and if I went down them all then we would be here for quite a long time we could talk about abortion because that's one of the sort of indirect measures of removing life by indirect I mean because it's not so obvious but it does happen and a pace and now we're talking in terms of millions and the Christian position must be without qualification that abortion is wrong that's not to say that you can impose it by law a woman must have a right to do what she wishes with her own body but that woman must be told that she has to live with her conscience and one day she has to face her God the taking of the life of a fetus the taking of a life of an unborn child more accurately described has got to be wrong euthanasia we have no right to artificially prolong life neither have we the right to take life that will still be supported by the own natural resources of the body suicide will a person who commits suicide go to heaven the blood of Jesus Christ God's Son can cleanse every sin the church has taken a hard line on suicide historically it is wrong to take your life but most people who so do have cried for help to a society that has put fingers in its ears what about the man who kills his imbecile child gotta be wrong but you treat the man you treat the woman with compassion those perhaps are the obvious areas into which we could go but we won't go any further than having made that comment which I think has biblical justification what we're going to do is perhaps the more difficult task of looking at the way in which our blessed Lord interpreted Moses's law you see the problem with Jesus is he's a radical just when you think you've hopped over that commandment and you're not in trouble you get to Matthew's gospel and Jesus causes you to see that you're in a load of trouble because he interprets murder not just in terms of the act and only that is what you are responsible for in respect of coming before a British judicial authority Jesus says that the man who never murders but engages in the thought is culpable that means is blamable before God so although I could have evacuated the church by asking all those who have never committed murder to leave on the tests of Jesus we would probably still have a fairly large congregation if I invited those who had never had anger in their hearts towards anyone to leave how do you kill with a gun with a knife well yes but that's the obvious answer and that's not the one I'm going for I've listed helped by a Puritan preacher actually Thomas Watson several ways in which you can kill you can kill with a hand Cain killed Abel that way you can kill with the mind the Bible says 1 John 3 15 whoever hates his brother is a murderer you can kill with a tongue our Lord was done to death because people accused him falsely of things that he never committed you can kill with a pen renewal magazine is one that circulates particularly amongst Anglicans though not just among our Anglican friends it's its editor is a man I know well he used to be my Sunday school teacher and he sent me a copy of the last magazine it's got one of the most moving stories one of the most tragic stories I've ever read in my life of a good and godly man who was working amongst children with a female colleague and one of the children accused him of abuse the police messed it up all the way down the line the fellow found himself in jail for a while he's now been absolutely clear the whole was was fabricated by the child the sort of newspaper that I hope you don't take got hold of the story and the headlines were outrageous some of these newspaper editors have got a lot to answer for you can use the ink a Fleet Street or wherever your paper is published and you can assassinate a person if I had been that brother even though innocent I think I would have been contemplating throw myself off the end of the pavilion on the basis that when that sort of slander is level even though you're as innocent as a newborn baby there are always some who will feel there must be smoke where there's fire you can kill a man with a pen you can kill a man with a typewriter you can kill a person with your tongue you can kill by malintention Herod he says to the wise men if you find the Christ child tell me where he is so well I might come and worship him what a whopping lie he wants to have him done to death killing by malintention killing by consenting to another's death you remember Saul better known as Paul prior to him becoming a Christian he wanted to see Stephen and the rest of the Christian community either converting back to Judaism or else annihilated and the Bible says he was consenting to the death of Stephen he didn't pick up a stone but he agreed with those who did and therefore he's guilty of murder by not hindering others who are going to take life when it is in our power to raise a protest some of you have written to the Egyptian embassy on many an occasion because of the maltreatment dished out to Christian converts in that land Pontius Pilate had the power to stop at the human level our Lord being executed he didn't put the nails in the hands of Jesus he didn't thrust up the spear into the side of Jesus but his failure to use the authority that he had meant that Pontius Pilate is culpable along with others for the death of our Lord the Bible says that we contribute towards the death of others by taking away from them their livelihood the Pentateuch if thou dost not feed the man who is starving thou art killing him if you have the ability to give the utensils so that people can work and produce their own food and you refuse to be engaged in that philanthropic activity then there is a sense in which you are responsible and this is the reason why we should be behind Tearfund and the cross and all the other relief organizations that there are there are three sins that the Bible says speak one is a sin of oppression the other is the sin of sodomy and the other is bloodshed which cries louder than all the others back to the words of our Lord our Savior here is addressing those who will be members of his kingdom and he says don't murder and with that we'll agree and we feel somewhat comfortable but then he he goes on as I suggested to make us feel a little bit disturbed in fact more than a little bit because Jesus says that if you have in your psyche in your behavior patterns at any time a response to someone that can be described in terms of unnecessary unlawful anger and bitterness then you are guilty of committing murder more words more ways to murder a person than to use a knife or a gun our Lord says this anyone who says to his brother Raka is answerable to the Sanhedrin I gave you the translation the English equivalent of the Aramaic Raka worthless fellow look but why is the Bible so concerned about listing murder in any of its forms as being such a serious crime for this reason men and women young people boys and girls we are born in the image of God ideally we are the greatest of all the handiwork that God engaged in in creation he breathes upon men the spirit of life he puts upon them his image there is not about man potentially that is noble I will risk saying there is not about man that is potentially divine he can be a partaker of the divine nature and when you look at man and woman and you don't recognize the sovereignty of life the value of life if you snuff it out if you contribute directly or indirectly then in one sense you're insulting Almighty God no one has the right to remove another person's life outside of the judicial process apart from God himself no man has the right to treat his brother to treat his sister as though they are worthless to say Raka is to use an insulting Aramaic expression we are not to think this way we believe in the communion of the Saints we are called into a family that recognizes the fatherhood of God and therefore by extension the brotherhood the sisterhood of mankind this is our Christian people those who've entered into the kingdom are to live out their lives these are the relationships into which we are to bind ourselves anyone says our Lord increasing in the intensity of his argument anyone who says you fool will be in the danger will be in danger of the fire of hell by the word fool there he is concentrating all the bitterness all the venom all the spite all the murderous intention that a man is capable of and Jesus says you don't go to the point perhaps of pulling the trigger or pushing the knife into the heart but if you feel that way you have become guilty of murderous intent and in the sight of God you need to find forgiveness our Lord didn't just hook on what follows from verse 23 to 26 because he'd run out of material you see here our Lord is suggesting the scene of people coming to church let's try and modernize the illustration and make it easy he's talking about people involved in religious practices and he's saying this that there's not one wit of good in you coming to church offering your prayers bringing your money singing your songs listening to the Bible if you have something against your brother if there's a broken relationship if in some way you have used slander if you have caused somebody else to die then you need to go back to the person you have injured and put it to rights because if I regard iniquity in my heart and I come before this great God he will not hear me you say what do you mean if I have caused somebody to die think through very carefully what I'm next saying I have counseled many dead people I don't mean I've engaged in a seance I'm not into that area and suggest that you don't get into that area I've known dead women come into my vestry they're dead as far as their emotions are concerned I've seen dead mothers and fathers who have been crippled by the way their children have behaved when they became mature you see in one sense it's easier to die physically than what it is to have a sort of death sentence leveled at you because of the treatment meted out some of you kids may find that hard to understand there's not anyone above 20 years of age who does not grasp now I believe what I'm saying isn't it so you can die within yourself you're physically alive but you've been so hurt your emotions have been so numb that actually you would have preferred physical death to what you've gone through now Jesus says that if you're responsible in any way to inflict that sort of injury upon a person then forget about your hymn singing forget about your evangelism forget about contributing to what the work of the Lord the first thing you need to do is to go back to the area where you inflicted the damage sort the person out and to be reconciled and then when there has been forgiveness when there has been apology come back and engage in your praising and you're praying and you're giving and your evangelism and just in case you happen to be one of the injured party and you find it difficult to forgive then our Lord will make us feel a little uncomfortable because he will tell us not so much here though it's implicit here he'll tell us elsewhere that those who have received the largest of God's forgiveness which is infinite are called upon to forgive those who have injured them however much they may have died as a result of the process I once had to tell someone who had been impregnated with a sexually transmitted disease that the only way forward was to forgive the partner or else I predicted they would die in bitterness and in sorrow the advice I gave I tell you was with tears in my own eyes and with a crack in my own throat but it is true the foulest murder that ever occurred in history was when they pinned Jesus Christ to the cross of Calvary and almost the last thing he said was father forgive them for they know not what they're doing and through that death and that mighty resurrection Jesus has released into this world the power of healing the power of absolution it is possible for people who have been dealt with so damnably nonetheless to rediscover the reason for living as they come to the Lord and they have their own sins forgiven forgiven and as they go back to their society and they preach this gospel the only answer to those who have murderous intent whatever facets that intent may take is to take this this gospel and for it to be applied to every situation you may be guilty of some of these secondary offenses that the Bible actually figures in the last analysis is act is murder but I want to say this that there is no sin but the blood of Jesus Christ cannot forgive there is nothing that you have done that cannot be undone by the grace of God there is no relationship that is so complicated that cannot be repaired by the grace of God the Lord Jesus who takes the commandment of Moses and broadens it out and makes us all feel uncomfortable is not the one who wants to condemn the world but the one who wants to save the world and he says if you look at your sickness and your sin and you bring it to me then it can be dealt with and the flash of anger that seems to control you at times and your lower self the personality that you don't want to be that you find so difficult to discipline that can be dealt with as the harness of the Spirit falls upon you so that the man of murderous intention the woman with a slanderous tongue the person who has been hurt and hurt and hurt until they feel they're almost a walking corpse can be renewed forgiven helped restored by the grace of our Lord Jesus and this my dear friends is the glory of this great gospel Moses sets up the law the Savior applies the law and when we all feel undone and uncomfortable Jesus has come to me let's have a new start come into my kingdom live with my power and my pardon and you'll discover as you submit your laws by my your life to these laws by my grace that your life will know a joy and a peace and the society in which you live as this message permeates and infiltrates will be so improved that people shall realize that the church is a salt that savors and the light that illuminates and when the church to use my off employed expression behaves as the church then the world is improved as a result let us pray father we come to you and we think of a sin sick world think of our own country with all its problems we think of people who are out on the streets in London and some of our big cities some not as a result of their own negligence but sucked into a vortex of circumstances that they can't get out of people who've lost their pensions because of embezzlement in so called high places we think of some who've been savaged by the tongues of others and some who feel numb because of the way that they've been treated some were among the walking dead Oh Lord we bring such and maybe quite a number here at the tab to you we bless you for the love of God and for the power of the gospel do we ask Oh Lord for healing for our land and healing for ourselves and healing for our world and we pray Lord that we might live lives that have no murderous intent at all lives like the one of our blessed Lord who came not to minute to be minister to but to minister not to save his life but to give it as a ransom for others Lord have mercy upon us Lord hear our prayer and bless all here who are in any way hurt or wounded and forgive all of us who have contributed to the wounding and the hurt of others grant your absolution Oh God as we confess our sins I don't think we selected a closing him so let's go to assuming it's in this new book restore Oh Lord the honor of your name 579 it's really a prayer for the for the country it's a prayer for the church restore Oh Lord the honor of your name in works of sovereign power come shake the earth again that men may see and come with reverent fear to the Living God let's sing this sensitively and with dedication Father we commit ourselves to you discipline our tongues soften our hearts we do believe in the communion of the Saints help us to present worship that's acceptable to you because behind the scenes we've been making some adjustments bless our nation forgive us for the statute book entries which are a contradiction to the Ten Commandments get this country back on its right course we pray and for those to whom Brian's made mention earlier on the underprivileged in our world help us Lord by pressure by prayer and by pounds to change their circumstances now may the grace of Almighty God Father Son and Holy Spirit rest and remain with each one of us now and always and the people of God said