Who Is a Murderer?
Matthew 5:21‑26
I want to share with you tonight from Matthew chapter five, the next in our sections of the study of the Sermon on the Mount. And I want to spend as much time as I can in really looking at the text, so without any preliminaries we'll just dive right in.
Matthew chapter 5 and verse 21, and I'd like to read through verse 26. "Ye have heard that it was said by them of old, Thou shalt not kill and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of judgment; But I say unto you that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of judgment; and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council; but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. Therefore, if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath anything against thee, Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. Agree with thine adversary quickly, while thou art in the way with him, lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out from there, until thou hast paid the uttermost farthing."
Let's pray together and ask God's blessing on our study. Father right now I pray that You will open our minds and hearts to comprehend and understand what it is that our Lord Jesus meant in this passage. Give us insight, help us to see beyond our own minds, beyond what we can perceive in and of ourselves as the Spirit of God is our teacher may we see the deep spiritual realities behind those things on the surface. And may the Spirit of God speak to my heart and the heart of everyone here in convicting us to be obedient to that which our Lord says. We thank You for this time and we offer it to You to be used to Your praise in Christ's name, Amen.
I've titled this passage tonight, "Who is a Murderer," because I really think that's what our Lord is talking about. This week I noticed, well actually last week, that the Los Angeles Police Department had done a preliminary indictment on a man who they say had murdered at least 10 young girls, whom he apparently assaulted and then murdered and this seems to be the man who was known as the Hillside Strangler. It wasn't very long ago that we remember the Skid Row Slasher, a man who went along with a knife cutting up derelicts on Skid Row. I just returned from Chicago where a man by the name of John, I think his name is Gacey assaulted homosexually little boys and young boys and then murdered them, stuffed them in plastic bags and buried them under his house, and at this point they've dug up thirty-three such bodies. We all remember the Manson murders, we all remember the thirty-five or so people killed by Juan Corona and buried in the ground in places in Central California. I vividly remember reading the account of a mass murder in an Arizona beauty shop. Not just a day ago we read in the newspapers about a man in San Antonio, Texas who decided to take out a rifle and just start shooting people and he wounded at least forty-four and killed at least 2. Not too many days ago I picked up the newspaper and I read that a 15-year-old boy waited until his father had come home from work, gotten comfortable in his easy chair and then took out a gun and pumped a bullet through his brain, killed him. Some months before that, I remember a couple of teenage kids who hired a hit man to murder both their parents. And the police files can go on and on like this, that's just rather current, and they tell us that at least twenty-five thousand murders occurred last year, and those are the ones they know about. It took a long time to discover the thirty-three bodies buried under the ground in plastic bags, and who knows but what other victims may lie in other places undiscovered.
Now if there are twenty-five thousand murders that's got to be nearly a hundred murders, at least seventy to a hundred murders everyday in our country. Last year in the city of Los Angeles we had 421 murders, the last recorded year, and in the first nine months of the next period of time 460 murders, it's on the increase. Richard Hines told me today that in the last two days he has had to inform prisoners at the prison where he is of five family members that have died, and out of the five two of them were murder victims. Murders come in all kinds of ways, they come through violent crimes, they come through domestic squabbles, they come through homosexual love triangles as well as heterosexual love triangles, they come through gang warfares, they come as a result of arguments and fights and conflicts and misunderstandings. They go on all the time, in fact murders are so commonplace in our city that they don't always make the newspapers, unless they're bizarre or multiple.
Murder is really a very serious problem in our world, getting worse all the time. And that doesn't say anything about another form of murder which is suicide. Recently in our own church within the last year and even within the last month two young men killed themselves--that's a form of murder, taking a life. That doesn't account for abortion either and since abortion was legalized there have been at least six million babies murdered.
Now notice what our Lord says in verse 21, "Ye have heard it said by them of old, Thou shalt not kill." Where did that come from? Well if you know anything about the Revelation of God you know it came basically from Exodus chapter 20, verse 14 when God gave the Decalogue and said, "Thou shalt not kill." But scripture has a lot more to say about murder than just that. In fact if we go back even in the Book of Genesis we find in the 9th chapter and the 6th verse this statement, "Who so sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." Genesis 9:6 instituted capital punishment as a penalty for murder. And the reason is given in the same verse, "For in the image of God made he man." To take the life of a human being is to assault the image of God He created in man and that brings about serious penalty. And so Genesis 9 authorizes capital punishment for those who shed blood because man is made in the image of God.
Now if you were to study Acts...Exodus 20:14 you would find that the word "thou shalt not kill," means murder, it means murder; it does not refer to capital punishment, that is taking a life under divine allowance. It does not refer to a just war. Or there were times in God's economy of Israel, there are times in God's plan for history when there are conflicts on a national level, carrying out certain exercises of the will of God in judgment upon some nations where there might be an allowance for killing and it would not be considered murder. I do not believe that the text of Exodus 20:14 has anything to do with self‑defense, I think that we have the right to protect the image of God in our lives and the lives of our families and those about us when they are assaulted and attacked by those who would kill us. I don't believe it means accidental deaths. For in Deuteronomy for example, chapter 19 it says that if a man takes a life of someone inadvertently, by accident, without pre‑meditating it that man is not to forfeit his life because there was no pre‑meditation.
So accidental death and death in terms of capital punishment and death in terms of a just war and death that might come in self‑defense or death that might come in divine judgment or in fact as Romans 13 says, remember that the officers of the law, or the police do not bear the sword in vain. And when they take the, the exercise of putting out a life to defend others, that's not forbidden in the scripture either, because they do not bear the sword in vain.
But what the Bible is talking about is murder, murder, planned, plotted to some degree murder. In Exodus 21 and verse 14 we read this, "But if a man come presumptuously upon his neighbor, to slay him with guile (or deceit), thou shalt take him from mine altar, that he may die." Again God reiterates the punishment of capital punishment or death for the one who presumptuously comes in a pre‑meditative way to take the life of his neighbor.
In Numbers chapter 35 we have some further word from God about this, says, "If he smite him with an instrument of iron, so that he die, he is a murderer: the murderer shall surely be put to death." In other words if a man takes an instrument of iron and crushes the skull of another he's a murderer, he is to die. "And if he smite him with throwing a stone, wherewith he may die, and he die, he is a murderer: the murderer shall surely be put to death. or if he smite him with a hand weapon of wood, wherewith he may die, and he die, he is a murderer: the murderer shall surely be put to death. The avenger of blood himself shall slay the murderer." In other words the, the society was to protect itself by taking the life of the one who indiscriminately, premeditatively took the life of another. And it goes on in Deuteronomy chapter 35 to discuss other such situations, where murder occurs.
Now if you know anything about the Bible you know that this was the very first human crime. In Genesis chapter 4 it says this, "And Cain talked with Abel his brother: it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and murdered him." And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel, your brother? And he said, I know not: I am my brother's keeper." The second crime was a lie, the first one was a murder. First he killed somebody then he perjured himself. And of course God said, "What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother's blood cries unto me from the ground. And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand."
And so it is that from the first human crime, murder, on through the Revelation of God murder is a Biblical issue. Now if we study the scripture we know how God feels about it, it is forbidden. It is punishable by death. We learn other things about murder in the Bible for example we learn that murder is a crime authored by the devil himself. John 8:44 says the devil is a murderer. And murder is basically authored by Satan. We find something else about murder in Matthew chapter 15 for example and verse 19 we find that murder is a manifestation of an evil human heart. Matthew 15:19 says, "For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies."
Now listen to me, murders, thefts and all that other stuff do not happen because of social deprivation, they happen because of a degenerated human heart. Murder does not happen because of stressful situations it happens because it's authored by Satan himself. In Romans chapter 1 and verse 29 it says that man has been given over to a reprobate mind, and as a result of a reprobate mind, "He is filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit," etc. Man is a murderer because he has a reprobate mind that has been given over to evil because he rejects God. So that murder is a crime authored by the devil, it is a crime that comes out of the evil human heart.
In Galatians 5:21 Paul tells us that murder is an act of the flesh, it is a deed done by unregenerated human nature. We learn also in the Bible that murder is an abomination to God. In Proverbs 6 verses 16 and 17 the Bible says there are six things that the