Sermon originally preached on August 15, 2011 at Garden Valley Chapel and again preached on December 11, 2011; Matthew 5:21-26.

Take your Bible if you will and open it to the book of Matthew chapter five – where we continue in the exposition of the Sermon on the Mount.

Man’s first crime was homicide. This is recorded in Genesis 4:8 –

8 … it came about when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.

Genesis 3 was the turning point. Before that, God looked at creation and pronounced everything “very good” (cf. Gen 1:31).

But after Genesis 3, all human history has been colored by that which is very bad.

So bad that a man would kill his own brother! Scripture is not silent about man’s utter moral degradation and so records the numerous other forms of wickedness.

For instance, we read that a man [i.e. Lamech – an angry man who loved vengeance] from Cain’s line commits the same crime (cf. Gen 4:23).

Since that first recorded act of murder in Genesis 4, murder has been a constant part of human society.

It has been said that 25,000 known murders are committed in the US every year. That figure does not include the suicides (i.e. self-murder) and abortions (i.e. prebirth murder). The numbers would be staggering!

This topic of murder is our Lord’s first of six illustrations of heart-righteousness in this section of Matthew 5:21-48.

You might recall that He will use these six illustrations to drive the point home: RIGHTEOUSNESS IS A MATTER OF THE HEART.

This basic and foundational truth was not what the scribes and Pharisees taught. Theirs was a religion of externalism, not of the heart.

Their rabbis and scribes of old had devised so many traditions that “completely inverted the order of things” – placing Scripture into the background and human tradition to the foreground.

The result was that they had replaced authority of the Scriptures.

What mattered was their interpretation of the Scriptures. What mattered was how “the ancients of old” viewed murder.

They were convinced in themselves that they had kept God’s law looking at the letter of the law and not the spirit of the law.

Now, Jesus here in vv. 21-26 refers to that specific commandment found in Exodus 20:13 [part of the Decalogue] –

13 “You shall not murder.

Earlier, God had told Noah the penalty for murder and the reason for such a sever punishment in Genesis 9:6 –

6 “Whoever sheds man’s blood, By man his blood shall be shed, For in the image of God He made man.

The penalty: death for the killer.

The reason for such a severe punishment: man is made in God’s image.

The reason that murder is here said to be such a heinous crime that it must be punished by death is that the man who has been murdered is “someone who imaged God, reflected God, was like, and represented God.”

Not only do you take a person’s life when you commit murder, but you do violence to the image of God and to do that is to do violence to God himself.

Now, this specific commandment (i.e. “you shall not murder”) is speaking of intentional killing of another human being – criminal killing.

It is killing for purely personal reasons, whatever those reasons might be.

That is why “murder” is a correct translation of the Hebrew word רָצַח – which means “to slay” or “to assassinate.”

“To kill” is misleading because the Bible speaks of other forms of killing (e.g. the killing of animals for food and sacrifice, just warfare, and those guilty of capital offenses by judicial process).

Both the Old and New Testament are filled with the names of murderers:

•OT – Cain, Lamech, Pharoah, Abimelech, Joab, the Amelakites, David, Absalom, Zimri, Jezebel, Haziel, Jehu, Athaliah, Joash, Manasseh.
•NT – Herod, Judas, the high priests, Barabbas, Herodias and her dauther.

Just so that you know the seriousness of this sin, listen to what God’s Word says in the following two passages:

Prov 6:16-19 says –

16 There are six things which the LORD hates, Yes, seven which are an abomination to Him:
17 Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, And hands that shed innocent blood,
18 A heart that devises wicked plans, Feet that run rapidly to evil,
19 A false witness who utters lies, And one who spreads strife among brothers.

Rev 22:15 says –

15 Outside are the dogs and the sorcerers and the immoral persons and the murderers and the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices lying.

To be “outside” means to be outside the wall of God’s Holy city which means that you are a part of those whose final destiny is in the lake of fire (cf. Rev 20:15; 21:8).

Jesus’ hearers were well aware of the prevalence and seriousness of this sin. But they had not realized that it was the spirit of the law that mattered as well as the actual doing of the deed itself.

If my hands have not “shed innocent blood” then I am good. If I have not murdered someone then I have kept this particular law.

The problem lies in the false interpretation of Scripture. This is where the religious leaders of Jesus’ day were guilty.

In Jesus’ day and for many years before that, murder had been defined by the leaders of Israel as merely the external act, and they had taught that the commandment refers to nothing more than such an act.

Jesus comes into the scene and attacks self-confidence by charging that no one is truly innocent of murder, because the first step in murder is anger.

So if you are here asking yourself, “what does an exposition on murder have to do with me?” The answer is: EVERYTHING!