sliding down the podium. Good to see you all here this morning, shall we pray. Father, it's been a privilege to sing your praises this morning and to remember your son, the person of the Lord Jesus Christ and what he has done for us. May our hearts be attuned to your word this morning to take in these things which you have intended for us, each according to his own need.
We thank you, Father, that you are aware of our needs, you are aware of our individual difficulties. We thank you that your word gives light and life and that the Lord Jesus has through the Spirit guided us, that he has guided us in the past week. May he guide us right now. We look forward to the coming week.
This is the spiritual optimism of the children of God. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. The sixth commandment, it's a very sobering commandment. It is simply this, in the original Hebrew, verse 13 says, "'Kill not,' 14 says, "'Adultery not,' and then the eighth commandment, steel not.' All of the other commandments, the other seven commandments, the other seven commandments have some, you might say, exposition that goes along with them.
But these three commandments are simply two words. Kill not, number six, adultery not, steel not. We have it in English as thou shalt not kill. Murder killing violates everything that we consider to be fundamental to our understanding of the created world and its created beings in which we live.
It violates all of these axioms. Our personhood comes from God. God's is not. God is the original person with a capital P.
It violates bodily integrity and autonomy. No one has the right to cause your soul and spirit to leave your body. That decision as to when that happens is left to God. It violates a sanctity revealed by a holy God, the sanctity of life.
Fourthly, the concepts of honor and respect come into play. One might say that murder is the ultimate expression of disrespect, that I will cause your spirit and soul to be separated from your body according to my own will. And often, as you know, that would be associated with violence. Your 10 commandments have other sanctity, sanctity of time, sanctity of property, sanctity of human relationships.
But murder violates all of these fundamental sanctities. As to the subject of capital punishment, which I'm sure someone could give a week's worth of seminars on, it's interesting that once the ark had stopped floating, and Noah and his sons looked out upon the earth and were told to fill it. They're in chapter 9 in the same chapter where the rainbow is given as the sign. It says, whoever sheds human blood by man, his blood shall be shed for the image of God.
He made mankind. So this predates Abraham. It predates Moses. It's a principle that God put in place and foresaw as the human race moved forward.
For the Christian in the New Testament, there is a difficult chapter, chapter 13. And it says that the government, whatever form it may be, is the servant of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil be afraid for it, does not bear the sword for nothing, for it is a servant of God and a vendor who brings wrath on the one who practices evil. Now my view of this, chapter, with regard to government, which is a touchy subject, is that governments are indeed part of the plan of God.
In engineering, we often think about analyzing things in terms of how we discretize things in time and in space. It may be steel. It may be concrete. It may be a wave in an estuary.
And a very important question is, how fine do you want to cut it? It can affect the results, irrespective of the physics. And I always think that we talk about delta x, delta y, delta z, and delta t, the increment of time being delta t. And I like to think that in this context, that God's delta t is on the scale of 1,000 years.
You and I live week by week. And we think about this government and that government and this party's up and that party's down. God's plan is on the scale of 1,000 years, and his purposes will be achieved. Governments will come and go, but God's purposes will be achieved irrespective of what government happens to be in power for a short period of time.
And so we should take these things seriously. And as we know in our own legal system, we have three degrees, or kinds of murder, premeditated, un, premeditated, and manslaughter. I find it interesting that your Bible knows about these kinds of murder. The worst one being, of course, where the Bible would say, lie in ambush, that you hate someone.
And because you hate them, you lie in wait. You are going to ambush them and kill them. And you wait until the right moment, and you jump out and kill them. That is the most heinous kind of murder that is premeditated murder.
Second degree murder is sometimes referred to as a crime of passion, that you might get into an argument with someone who gets, and that argument gets completely out of control, and you strike them in anger, and it didn't mean to kill them, but you did kill them. Un-premeditated murder. Third degree murder is more commonly referred to as manslaughter. And the Bible uses the example of going out in the woods with your friend, with your friend.
And the axe head, you swing the axe, and the axe head comes off and flies at your friend and kills him. Bible uses that exact example of manslaughter. And that, of course, is a serious thing. And the Bible does address it.
It addresses it in quite some detail, with quite a lot of provision. I don't want to spend too much time on these aspects of murder. And so I have text here that I'm going to have to go through fairly quickly. It's too much really text to read, I admit.
But I want you to know that they are there, that the texts are there, and Deuteronomy 17 and 19 and Exodus 20. I want you to know that they're there, and you may like to spend some time reading these texts on your own. And should you ever want me to send you this PowerPoint presentation, I would really do that. Deuteronomy 17 relates to the more detailed explanation in 19, in which the courts, you would have, I'm sorry, the arrow key, and then there.
Now we are on the same page as they say. And the court is described here in Deuteronomy 17, such that if you were to find it difficult as a people to sort out the intent with regard to the murder, references made then to your courts and priests and judges in offices whose job it is to sort out and to have discernment about these things. And if you go to that recourse, you must live with it. That's a serious business.
In terms of manslaughter beginning with third degree murder, you have the setting aside of both the Levitical and non-Levitical cities of refuge. So with the axe head that you accidentally killed your friend, there may be a brother of that friend, a blood brother. And he says, I'm going to set up the camp, and I have access in my tool shed. And he says, David, you idiot.
The axe head was not on the axe handle. I'm coming to get you. I don't care about the details. You killed my brother in the woods.
So under the Levitical system, the Pentateuch system, I can run to a city of refuge. And I will be protected there by that town. And I can flee there. And note that it says in the last line that part of the evidentiary situation is, did I hate him beforehand?
Interesting hatred is brought up. In fact, as I said, I went in the woods, as it says, with my friend. Or did he just seem to be my friend? I went in the woods with my friend.
And I killed him unintentionally. And I may flee to a city of refuge. So it's interesting that your Bible and the Pentateuch law, that Torah law, understands these things and makes allowance for these things. And a judgment shall be made now an encouragement for me to make sure that my accent is properly attached to my axe handle.
Is that? Once I'm in that city of refuge, I can't leave until the high priest dies. I could be there for 20 years. Make sure your axe head is attached to your axe handle.
Don't be a careless person. And here we have, again, the verses pertaining to that accident. And there are different categories. And now we come to crimes of passion.
I am advancing on the computer with this. That's not what happens. City of refuge. Yes, now we're on the same page.
I apologize. He who strikes someone so that he dies shall certainly be put to death. Yet if he did not lie and wait for him, there's no ambush. But God caused him to fall into his hand after a manner of speaking.
Then I will appoint you a place to which he may flee. If, however, someone is enraged with his neighbor, so as to kill him in a cunning way, you are to take him even from my altar. He is out of fellowship to be put to death. Now we come to the perchidence of Exodus 2013, repeated in Deuter 25 of first degree murder.
Person who hates his neighbor, waits in ambush for him, and rises up and strikes him so that he dies. And he thinks, what choice do I have? I'm going to go to a city of refuge. It's not going to work.
He'll be handed over so that he may die, capital punishment. There shall be no pity for him. You shall eliminate the guilt for the bloodshed of the innocent from the people of God, the earthly children of God, so that it may go well for you. The Ten Commandments have formed a backdrop, a basis, an ideological, textual, and philosophical basis for law, all over the world, English, common law, Napoleonic law, which has affected the law in the province of Quebec, by the way.
And in the United States, it is not uncommon for the state courthouse, the highest court in the capital of the state, to have the Ten Commandments on the courthouse. And there are those, afoot, who say, take it down. Take those commandments off that building. This is a secular state.
And when people like Thomas Jefferson founded the United States, it is true that they desired that we would have freedom of religion, freedom of conscience with respect to spiritual beliefs. But that was within a theistic context of faith in God, how you practice that faith in God, the government shall not get involved. We agree on the Ten Commandments, that the government shall not get involved in the details of the practice of your faith. And so the United States, of course, in Western world, has many Christian denominations coming from that fundamentally Christian, theistic background.
And that is denied. That is actively denied by many university professors and people who would like to see those Ten Commandments taken down. Now, you may sort of say, you know, it has never even crossed my mind to kill someone. Not even crossed my mind.
Never got it. Never thought about doing it. Never going to do it. This is going to be a boring sermon today, May 21.
I don't know how it applies to me. Well, the Lord Jesus opened up your heart. He opened up my heart. And he said, you know, it was said by them or of them all time, oh, is this thou shalt not kill?
And whoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment of the judgment. But I say unto you that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whosoever shall say to his brother raka shall be in danger of the council. But whosoever shall say thou fool shall be in danger of hell fire.
Oh, have I ever in my life looked at someone and go and went, that guy is a great big fool. I hold him in contempt. I tell you to my shame, I have done that. Jesus says, watch out.
That is the beginning of murder. And God saw that. And that is the beginning of hatred. And hatred is the source of murder.
My heart is a sinner's heart. And it is great to know the Lord. They have my sins washed away. And to confess to know that as per First John 1 9, we heard from First John this morning in multiple places, wonderful letter that he can cleanse my heart when I sin.
And if I have that hard feeling toward a man or a brother, the Lord knows to the point that the Lord would say, don't come to me and pray. Get this sorted out. Leave your gift there at the altar. Get right with your brother.
That's a very strong statement, isn't it? That last line, in danger of hell fire. I don't often read from a book. But I've been reading a book by the former dean of theology at the University of Edinburgh.
And I take it everywhere with me. It's 749 pages, so it's sort of a price to carrying that thing around. But it's very good. It's very good.
I can really recommend that book to you. With a mature believer who is looking for deeper truths, you will find many deeper truths there from Alexander White. White's built with a Y. However, he writes in the style of a Scottish professor from 1890.
So that's a little rough. But as I said, I rarely do this. I rarely read from a book. But I find that he's expounding upon this principle of how do these things get started, how did Raka come into being?
Where did that come from? The Apostle Paul also has this on this same parable, the parable under discussion in White's book being the parable of the little bit of leaven that spread through the whole. Paul writes, purge out therefore the old leaven. No, you not.
That a little leaven, leaventh the whole lump. Hmm. Let us be careful. Therefore, let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
Now what is malice and wickedness? We have seen what self-esteem is. He has written on the past three pages about how self-esteem turns into something else. And how it works till it leavens the whole lump.
But what is the leaven of malice? You may be old enough to know without being told. You may have enough of it in yourself. And you may have suffered enough from it in others.
But there are new beginners in self-esteem, yours, and in malice. And the word must be rightly divided to meet their case as well as yours. And when you are new beginners in morals and in religion, what think you is malice? For you cannot purge it out, nor keep it purged out.
If you do not know it when you see it, well, malice also is like leaven in this. Its first beginning is so small as to not be worth speaking about in a dignified pulpit. You do not like some. Nothing is so common surely as that.
Already at school, at college, in the office, in the workshop, in the house. You do not like someone. Well, that is your first half ounce of leaven of malice. And your feelings toward that man and your thoughts about him and your words about him and your actions toward him are like the three measures of meal with a little leaven at its heart.
You just dislike the man. That is all as yet. But then full-grown men are so leavened with that same dislike that they actually come to hate one another. So we have that parable that occurs in the gospels as well as with Paul about how a very small beginning, add a dash of pride, and grow into something which is very ungodly and dangerous.
And there is the Matthew 13 reference to the leaven. But you know, I want to point out to you that as I have spoken on before about the Messiah a month ago, the opposite of hatred is love. And to get love sorted out, the first thing to sort out is to love God. Now you should know, if you don't already, that the idea of loving God is very facily kicked around.
You hear people, you know, these people can spout this. These Pharisees can spout this. They were very sure that they loved God. And Jesus knew what kind of so-called love they loved God with.
And he knew what kind of so-called love they loved their neighbor with. But isn't it interesting that he did not contradict those things? We are like as them to say, yeah, I love God, sure. Yeah, good.
Love my neighbor sounds good. Yeah, sure. OK. Really?
Is that as far as we've gone? That isn't much. It doesn't withstand much. It doesn't lead to good things when we are so facile in our love toward God and toward our neighbor.
But then as I was speaking to you a month ago, you know what needs to pre-exist in order for you and I to have the kind of love, which is the perfect antidote for hatred and malice. We have to acknowledge that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Messiah and take him as our own. That is what is necessary to know, to believe, that he is the Son of God, he is God the Son, and that he is ours. That is the beginning of knowing the love of God, by which we then love God and by which we then love our neighbor.
Now I'm going to come to something which is uncomfortable for me. I have prayed about how to do this. And it is the subject of abortion. I believe that abortion is murder.
I believe that abortion is a direct contravention of the sixth commandment. A precious verse to me is Psalm 139. David is marveling at the various aspects of human, what it is to be human. And in verse 13, you really do want to read the whole Psalm.
But in verse 13, he says this, for you have created me, in my inmost parts, you wove me in my mother's womb. You wove me in my mother's womb. I will give thanks to you because I am awesomely and wonderfully made. Amen to that.
Wonderful are your works. And my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in secret and skillfully formed in the depths of the earth, so to speak. Your eyes have seen my formless substance.
And in your book were written all of the days that were ordained for me. When as yet, there was not one of them. How precious also are your thoughts for me, oh God. How vast is the sum of them?
You know, I am a, like everybody, I guess, a soft-hearted guy. I see that little baby over there. And I think it's that child is absolutely awesome. And I have a certain sense of speechlessness.
I saw Michael and Michelle's beautiful child. And they're all beautiful, aren't they? Sometimes I can't help it. And we walk past a baby and I go, it's so cute.
My wife goes, they're all cute. Come on. Really? There's a movie in which a well-known Hollywood movie star used the expression cute as a Chinese baby.
Yeah, I guess Chinese babies are cute. And so are black babies and so are Scottish babies with their wispy red hair. And they're all cute, aren't they? And they're all precious.
And they all had a beginning. And this is in the womb. It is a very appalling thing to me that there is a very strong movement, which is, as you know, very pro-abortion. That is evil.
And we as Christians, if we're going to be, you know, worth our salt and being salt and light, we need to understand what kind of evil that is and what's going on. I want to relate to you now an interaction that actually took place at the University of British Columbia. And I will preface my remarks by saying, this idea and this analogy, I will have to explain to you the analogy, was put forward by a professor of philosophy and is now in textbooks. Now, if I'm thinking of the average 22-year-old university student or 20-year-old university student sitting in class, who's a Christian, and all the most of the people in that classroom are pro-abortion.
And the professor is selling this idea using this analogy. I also happen to know that if I submit a paper on this subject, which flies in the face of everybody in the room, probably, what are the chances of me getting a good mark? Maybe not so great. So here is the analogy.
A woman is kidnapped. And she wakes up in a bed, and she finds that she has various tubes connecting her to somebody else who's in the bed. What's going on? So she recovers her consciousness more fully, and a doctor comes in the room and says, what we have done is to save the life of the greatest violinist in the world.
I think of this as the violinist analogy. Now, this greatest violinist in the world turns out to have a DNA makeup that only you can help. That is why your bloodstream is hooked up to that violinist. You are the only person on the planet that can save the life of this great violinist.
And it's only for nine months. You only have to be keeping that man alive for nine months. So the philosopher says, I can give you the name of the philosopher who came up with this analogy, doesn't the woman have the right to say, I had nothing to do with this? I reserved the right to unplug the violinist.
I was not consulted. What responsibility do I have to keep that violinist alive? I have been made the person upon which his life is dependent, and I don't happen to want that. And so I reserved the right to unplug him and let him die.
And that is put forward as an argument for the unborn child to be removed from the womb. Now, you're sitting there, and you're thinking, what would I have said? What would I have perhaps put on my paper that I submit to that professor? It's good for you to think about that for a few minutes.
You may find that your own daughter or son is in that class, exactly that kind of discussion. And with all of those people around in the room, and the fancy professor with the fancy PhD up there spouting this stuff, and everybody going, yeah, yeah. You're sitting there going, no, no. But what's the basis for your no?
Well, it has at least three. First of all, you're wondering what I'm going to say. That's good. It makes a, there's some smoke coming out of some of your ears.
First of all, a marriage union between a man and a woman is done consciously. It is a conscious decision to enter into that union. That analogy has the woman unconscious and kidnapped. That's a breakdown in the analogy.
Secondly, one might say everybody knows that a sexual union can result in a pregnancy. Obviously, not 100 out of 100 times, but obviously a possibility. So the analogy again breaks down. Where is that consensual union?
And it is consensual, at least for the Christian it is. You see the world says, move the boundaries, throw down the fences, destroy the barriers. We want promiscuity everywhere all the time for everyone. Well, that's where they're coming from.
And the Christian says, no, no. Sexual union has a context, and the context is marriage. Marriage between a man and his wife. And they are engaged in something that can and does produce children.
So again, it's very unlike the analogy. That is now in philosophy textbooks. What would you say to a little boy? I did this once.
I did an incredibly stupid thing, more stupid than this. I had an argument with my friend. I said, my DB gun cannot break her window. It's not powerful enough.
I pointed the BB gun at the neighbor behind the backyard. And you know what? The BB put a hole in her window. And I was scared.
Anyway, I could tell you more about that story and how it panned out and how I earned money to come back to her front door and contribute toward that window. I was 14 years old. I wasn't sure how much window was worth. But this is going in the direction that's brought up in the discussions that if somebody says, let's play baseball in the cul-de-sac.
Does it work to say, oh, I didn't mean to break your window. Really? Didn't you think that playing baseball in the cul-de-sac could conceivably result in a broken window? Obviously, sexual union can result in pregnancy.
This is a biological fact. Or do you get away with it if you're the boy that says, well, I don't want to pay for it, because I didn't intend to. So it's interesting. Now here's a legal point.
A man and a woman have a union and a woman becomes pregnant. And the relationship falls apart. And the guy moves out of town. And the baby is born.
And the woman goes to the court in Canada and says, I know who the father is. I want child support. The government will make him pay child support if they can. It's his.
So how is it that they can support abortion and have the child destroyed? And at the same breath, say that the man must be responsible for that union. It doesn't make any sense. Furthermore, with regard to one might say the biology of this, the organs involved in this, because sometimes they say, well, would we have forced kidney transplants from parent to child?
Variation on a theme, I suppose. The moral responsibility comes from the biological reality. The what if this analogy is made? What if a woman or you, a man, found yourself in a cabin with a wee baby?
You're supposed to take care of it. And you look around the cabin, you say, oh, good. There's formula. This is a two month old baby.
I can't nurse it if I'm a man. But look, there's formula in the cupboard. There's water. There's everything you need to keep the child alive.
What would the court say if you said no? You'd be charged with criminal negligence for letting that child die in Canada. But a woman who has all the biological ability to take care of that child, it's built in. And a parent has a moral obligation to care for their offspring.
A special moral obligation to care for their offspring. An adult has a moral obligation to look out for children. Not to do so is criminal negligence. So all of these things point to the fact that abortion is very wrong and that our own Canadian legal system has built in contradictions within it.
I really love the words that are used when you think of the hand of God and you think of this, the hand of God covering and David writes in that song. You knew me then. This has become a battleground. This place where the hand of God covered that unborn child at the point at which it just started to fold over, that covering with the Hebrew connotations of protection, of a barrier, a natural barrier designed by God to protect that unborn child.
That's the sense of the Hebrew word if you look it up. That's a beautiful thing to think about God knowing you when you were nothing more than that. He knew you. He knew me.
I am comforted and strengthened when I think about that. And that is a sanctified place. That place where that child is growing is a holy place. An unborn child is precious.
And what happens, thousands of times a year in Canada is murder and darkness and horror at that very place. And that is a terrible thing. Some research on Tesucchini. And so as I draw to a close, I think about the other end of life.
You think about the beginning of life. You think about the preciousness of that unborn child. And then you think about all the seniors. And recently, if you look in yesterday's National Post, even as it happens, they're talking about the results of a survey asking Canadians how they feel about assisted suicide without using the words assisted suicide.
Of course, medical assistance and dying. And as one of the commentators pointed out, when you are at the end of your life, do you like the idea of medical assistance? I do. And so by framing it in those words, you soften it.
And that's, of course, very deliberate. But what did they find out when they looked into this? It is actually become an industry. It's a growing industry.
It is that people are being done in and are asking for death because they are lonely, because they are in poverty. How horrible. How absolutely horrible. And of course, as with other things that we have seen in the past three years, the opinion of the doctor, the doctor who is a doctor of that patient, that lady, not interested, you shall comply with this policy.
And that is a frightening place to be for this country. We are coming up to this slide. I do believe that the night has far spent. I do believe that the poll could write that.
If you say 6,000 years of human history, and after about 4,000 years, this was written, we do need to put on the armor of light. We do need to be enlightened people in the best sense of the word in the Christian sense. I do believe that the wrath of God is coming against all of this kind of thing. And in the middle of that, as it says in Ephesians 5, 8, you are light in the Lord.
You need to be salt and light. And we need to walk as children of light. And we need discernment. We need the ability to make good judgments.
But I put it to you that the main thing that we need is courage. Christians need courage to be Christians. And that comes from God. We are in, I believe, perilous times, as it says, well, I will go back to perilous times in 2 Timothy 2.
These are perilous times. There is every kind of sin. And every kind of sin is justified by people with PhDs and everybody else. These are perilous times.
And in order to be salt and light, we need the grace of God. We need to be discerning people. And we need to pray for the courage to stand up and be Christians. Shall we pray?
Father, we thank you that we have your word to go by, that it guides us, that it speaks to us. We do indeed pray for courage to be your people, to be evidently your people to this dark world. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Thank you for your attention.