Killing and Mental Murder

Have you had your cholesterol level checked recently?

You have probably heard a lot about cholesterol, although I’m sure none of you has actually seen it. We all carry cholesterol around in our bloodstream. It is in every cell of our body. But it is invisible to us.

Cholesterol is an organic compound. Each molecule of cholesterol contains 27 atoms of carbon, 46 atoms of hydrogen, and one atom of oxygen. In its pure state, it is a waxy, white, crystalline substance. It is odorless and tasteless.

Cholesterol is a primary component of each cell membrane in your body. In also helps your body to synthesize bile acid, steroid hormones, and process vitamin D. Your liver produces cholesterol, but you also ingest a lot of it in the food that you eat.

Cholesterol goes into your bloodstream, and hooks up with a special protein, called lipoproteins. There are two kinds of lipoproteins. Low density lipoprotein carries cholesterol to your body tissues and deposits it there; high density lipoprotein takes excess cholesterol away from your body tissues and disposes of it.

How many of these two kinds of lipoprotein you have in your blood is important. If you have a lot of low density lipoprotein, and not as much high density lipoprotein in your blood, you will probably end up with a cholesterol problem.

Too much cholesterol will begin to build up on the walls of your arteries. Deposits of cholesterol narrow the channels of the blood vessels. They restrict the blood flow, and make your heart work harder on every beat. High levels of cholesterol in the blood are a major cause of atherosclerosis and coronary heart disease.

Sometimes, these deposits of cholesterol, or plaque, as they are called, can break away and travel to the heart, causing a heart attack, or to the brain, causing a stroke. We hear a lot about AIDS, and we hear a lot about cancer, but heart disease is the number one killer in America today. It kills almost as many Americans as all other causes of death combined. And that innocent little substance called cholesterol is a major reason for that.

Cholesterol may be invisible, but ultimately it has very visible results.

The Bible talks about something else that affects us the same way in our spiritual life. It is called sin. Much of the time, sin is invisible. It does its work out of sight, in our heart. It poisons our attitudes. It corrupts our thinking.

It blocks the flow of the Holy Spirit in our lives. It squeezes the joy right out of us. It slowly strangles us spiritually. Sin is a killer, but most of the time, it’s killing us softly.

The last five commandments are about major sins - very visible sins:

- killing

- adultery

- stealing

- lying

- coveting

You may hear that list and think, “Wow. I’m sure glad that I’m not doing any of those things. I haven’t killed anybody. I’m faithful to my wife or my husband. I haven’t robbed a bank, or even shoplifted anything. So I’ve got nothing to worry about.”

But I want you to know something: when God gave us that list - the Big Five - he was talking about the secret sins of our heart just as much as He was talking about any outward action. You see, it’s on the heart level that sin begins. Action begins with attitude.

Jesus said “Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.” He mentions every one of the Big Five. Those sins start in your heart.

You may think that everything is ok with your Christian life on the outside. You go to church, you teach S.S., you sing in the choir. You smile and say “Praise the Lord” to people on Sunday. But inwardly, your spiritual arteries may be clogged with sin. On the outside, you look healthy, but on the inside, you’ve got heart disease. And the secret sin in your heart is sucking the spiritual life right out of you.

That’s why you’re defeated. That’s why you’re not making progress spiritually. That’s why you feel like God is a million miles away.

God desires truth in the inward parts. So, over the next few weeks, we’re going to ask Him to do open heart surgery on us. We’re going to ask God to show us the condition of our heart in relation to each one of these last five commandments.

Commandment #6, which is found in Exodus 20:13 says: “You shall not murder” KJV says “Thou shalt not kill.”

Let’s look first at what this commandment doesn’t mean:

1. It doesn’t mean that you can’t hunt or fish or eat meat.

- the Lord killed animals in the Garden of Eden to provide clothes for A. & E.

- God said to Noah: “Everything that lives and moves will be food for you.”

- the Lord instituted the sacrificial system for the Jews.

- Jesus fed the five thousand with fish - fish that had been caught and killed.

- God gave Peter a vision of a sheet with animals in it. He said “Get up Peter. Kill and eat.”

- you can be a vegetarian if you want to. But don’t go around telling everybody that the Bible commands it. It doesn’t.

2. It doesn’t mean that we should do away with capital punishment.

- the chapter right after Exodus 20 commands capital punishment.

Exodus 21:12 “Anyone who strikes a man and kills him shall surely be put to death.

Exodus 21:14 if a man schemes and kills another man deliberately, take him away … and put him to death.

Acts 25:11 Paul, on trial before Festus: “If, however, I am guilty of doing anything deserving death, I do not refuse to die.” Paul didn’t preach a sermon on the immorality of capital punishment.

Reason for capital punishment:

Genesis 9:6 “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.

Capital punishment is the penalty for deliberately killing a creature who is made in the image of God. So this commandment does not mean that we should do away with capital punishment.

3. It doesn’t mean that Christians should never fight in a war.

- in the OT, God commanded his people to go to war

- God used war as a judgment against the sin of men and nations.

- Samuel told King Saul to totally destroy the Amalekites.

- Psalm 144 - David said “Praise be to the Lord my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle.”

- Rom. 13 - human government is God’s instrument to promote what is good and punish what is evil, and it bears the sword in order to do that.

So what does this commandment mean?

The word that is used in Exodus 20:13 is a word in Hebrew that means something very specific. It means deliberate murder. Murder in the 1st degree. Vengeful, violent, intentional killing of a personal enemy with malice aforethought. That’s what it means. It means “Do not murder”.

So. You’ve never murdered anyone. Or have you? Let’s look at 2 NT passages:

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, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.

1 John 3:15 Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.

In God’s view, murder is not limited to the physical act. Murder begins with the heart attitude that gives rise to the physical act. Murder is a sin of the heart before it becomes an act of the hands. And it may never become an act of the hands, but it is still a sin of the heart, and according to the Word of God, you are just as guilty in God’s sight.

Have you ever committed mental murder against someone? You hate them, you wish they were dead. You wish they had never come into your life. You wish they just didn’t exist. You wish you could just flip a switch, or pull a trigger, and that person would be gone forever. Hasta la vista baby! If you’ve ever felt that way about anyone, you’re a murderer in God’s sight. You’ve committed mental murder.

Now you may be saying, “Wait a minute. That’s a little harsh. Let’s not go overboard on this. Which one of us hasn’t felt that way about somebody at one time or another? Just as long as you don’t go out and do anything about it! What harm can there be if you just keep your feelings to yourself?”

What harm can there be? When you harbor venom, poison, toward another person, God’s spirit can’t flow in your life. That secret sin grieves the Spirit (Eph. 4:30). It quenches the Spirit’s fire in your life (1Thes. 5:19). It cuts you off from the power of God.

The reason so many Christians aren’t going anywhere spiritually is that they are harboring secret sin in their life. Many of them are breaking the sixth commandment.

How do you know if you are committing mental murder? Three symptoms:

1. You want to see harm come to that person that you can’t stand.

- You’d really enjoy seeing them get hit by a truck.

- oh, you might feign concern and grief on the outside, but inside, you’re going “YES!!! He got what he deserved.”

If, when somebody’s hurting, you’re rejoicing, that’s a pretty good indication that you are committing mental murder against that person.

2. You’re bitter about what that person has done to you.

- have you ever watched a beekeeper handling bees?

- there are enough bees crawling on him that if they all decided to sting him at once, they could kill him.

- so he handles them very carefully, very deliberately, very gently

- that’s the way we need to handle those people who hurt us.

- getting hurt by other people is part of life

- how you handle it is key

- offences will not kill you unless you handle them wrong

- but if you handle them wrong, they will kill you

- if, instead of forgiving that person who hurt you, you harbor a grudge toward him, you will begin to build up a reservoir of hostility toward that person, you’ll wither up and die spiritually. Ultimately, your heart becomes a well of hatred and loathing toward that person - all because of an offense that you didn’t forgive. That’s mental murder.

3. You’re envious, or jealous of someone

- a fellow worker who got the promotion instead of you

- a colleague who was honored instead of you

- a student in your class who got a higher mark than you

- a brother or a sister who’s more successful, or more attractive, or more wealthy than you.

Whoever it is…

- you’re carrying a whole truckload of sour grapes toward that person

- you can’t stand it when something else good happens to them

- you can’t bring yourself to say anything nice about them

- you take delight in running them down to other people

- you look for their weaknesses and their failures, and you make sure everyone else knows

The Bible tells us that this is what brought tragedy to the first family in human history - Genesis 4. This is what made Cain kill Abel. God accepted Abel’s sacrifice, but he didn’t accept Cain’s. So Cain hated his brother. And ultimately, he killed him.

When did Cain become a murderer? Was it the day they went out into the field and he attacked Abel and violently killed him? Or was it the day he began to nurse a resentment and hatred toward his brother?

.

Mental murder tears families apart. It sets brother against brother, and sister against sister. It spoils friendships; it ruins relationships; it builds walls between people. It divides churches.

Who is it in your life?

- a brother or sister who always seems to be ahead of you?

- a co-worker who really drives you up a wall?

- that neighbor who is so difficult to get along with?

- a parent who failed you?

- a spouse who hurt you?

And you’ve committed mental murder against them.

That’s the bad news. But I have good news for you this morning.

God isn’t mad at you for feeling this way. When you sin, God doesn’t get all upset, or frustrated. He doesn’t wring his hands in anguish. He just reaches down in love and offers you His grace to deliver you. He wants to free you from this bondage that you’re in.

You see, sin enslaves us. When we let sin take hold in our lives, we think that we can control it; we can manage it, we can keep it under wraps, but it always ends up controlling us. It grows like cancer, and it saps our spiritual strength. How can you get rid of it?

1. You have to be honest and admit that you’ve got a problem.

- e.g. cancer patient in denial

- you can’t try to rationalize sin away.

- you can’t try to excuse your attitude; saying “Yes… but.”

- pop psychology today tries to justify sin by making you out to be a victim - just watch Oprah Winfrey and Phil Donahue, etc.

- Jesus said “I came to heal the sick. It’s the sick who need a doctor.”

- You’ve got to acknowledge you’re sick before you can take the cure.

2. You need to be willing to repent of the sin of mental murder.

- you need to get so sick of your sin that you’ll be willing to do anything to be rid of it.

- you need to realize that it’s sucking the life right out of you - spiritually and physically

- doctors are finding that more and more of our physical ailments stem from our mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being.

- sin takes a toll on you physically as well as spiritually.

- you need to decide that no cost is too great to be free.

3. You need to rely on God to free you.

- when we talk about mental murder, we’re talking about a sin that’s entangled itself around your heart

- it’s like a tumor that has its tendrils into every area of our life

- there’s no way that you’re going to be able to root it out on your own.

- it’s too deep for that. Only the divine surgeon can remove it.

- you need to cry out to God “Help me. I can’t love that person.”

4. You need to be willing to obey God’s Word.

- You need to be reconciled to that person

Matthew 18:15 “If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over.

In other words, if he wrongs you, you go to him to be reconciled.

Matthew 5:23 “Therefore, if you are 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.

In other words, if you have wronged him, you go to him to be reconciled.

- in either case, it’s your move!

- and if you move in obedience to the will of God, good things will happen.

- remember, no cost is too great to get rid of the sin that is blocking the blessing of God from flowing into your life.

So now, it’s decision time. What are you going to do with the truth you’ve heard here today?