LAW HOMILY: Life Preservers

We look at the law of God because we want to understand what God has to say to his people. We want to understand what obedience is.

We are not what's called antinomian. The Greek word antinomian comes from two

Greek words, anti and namos, which means against the law. We're not against the law.

We don't believe that the law doesn't matter. We don't throw it away. We don't say that Christ has died for us and rose from the graves.

Therefore I can do whatever I want. My job is to be a sinner, his job is to be a savior, and we are a great team.

That is not what we do. Now because we've been saved, now we grow through the

Spirit's power and obedience, and we look at the law of God differently in that way. Today we're going to be in the sixth commandment, which is you shall not murder, which is just two words in the original language.

Now when that commandment is read, often we don't flinch. It's not because we're innocent, but it's because we've learned how to hear that command in a way that keeps it safely external to us, as though it belongs with other kinds of people and other kinds of moments.

I remember I used to work in a jail. My very first person that I booked in was a murderer, and I remember thinking to myself,

I'm glad I'm not that guy. And yet, we're all that guy.

We quietly tell ourselves things like, that's not me. We become comfortable in a kind of blindness, because the law of God does not work by mere avoidance, and when the

Lord forbids something, he also requires the opposite. That's a principle. So when I say to you, you shall not murder, he's not only forbidding the taking of life, he's also forbidding not maintaining life, not keeping of life.

He's commanding us to preserve life. He's calling us not only to keep our hands clean of other people's blood, but also to act actively and sacrificially for other people's good, for the flourishing of life, and for the peace of every person within our reach.

Which means that the commandment is not just tested in the rare, dramatic moments and crimes of passion.

But in the quiet patterns of our life. Let me explain it this way. Jesus talks about it in the negative.

You've heard it said that if, that you're not to kill your brother, and therefore I say if you're angry with your brother, you've committed murder in your heart.

Jesus shows us how to interpret this passage from the negative. It's not just about shedding of blood.

It's not just about machine guns and, and swords. It's about even what we do in our heart.

Well, think about it from the positive. If the command not to murder is a command to preserve life, then it does not just happen in the operating rooms.

And it does not just happen when the paddles are held and we save someone, or the compressions are given and we save someone.

It happens in the preservation of the totality of life. If murder happens in the heart, then preservation does as well.

So think about this. How have I preserved the life of my family? Physically?

Have I worked hard to provide for them? Yeah, that's certainly applicable. Emotionally?

How have I preserved the life of my children? Have I in a moment of frustration, because I saw something in them that I see in myself, have

I torn them down? And have I not preserved the life, the heart, the affections for God in them?

What about my spouse? How have I turned, instead of being side to side in war with my spouse, how have

I turned to face to face in war with my spouse? What about in our work?

Our work was created by God before the fall, which means our work was created for good and not as a result of sin.

We look at work and we say, ah, 6 a .m. came too early,

I don't want to go. This futility, I can't wait to be in eternity, no more work. Really? Seems to me that God said work was very good.

He gave Adam work to keep and to till and to produce life. In his keeping the garden and in his tilling the garden and as his multiplication happens in the garden, what's he doing but making more life?

If they wouldn't have sinned, they'd have had more children, more life. Those children would have had more children, more life.

Then what would have they had? They would have had to invent a backhoe and start making the garden boundaries bigger, more life, more trees, more fruit.

The command to humans at the very central purpose of who we were created to be was to be life givers, life bringers, multiplying life.

So when you think about this commandment, thou shalt not murder, what we're also looking at is that thou shalt be life bringers and life multipliers and life keepers.

And whether it's on the continuum of saving someone from a dramatic near -death experience or whether it's on the continuum of looking at someone and wounding them with callous, thoughtless words, all of us have failed in the preservation of life.

If it's at work, maybe you've literally saved someone from dying or maybe you have literally saved someone from thinking a certain way and helping them see that God's in control.

Whether it be in your marriage with your children, whether it be at your dinner table, whether it be at your job, whether it be in your neighbor's home, whether it be in the world, we're supposed to be life keepers, life makers, life preservers, and life multipliers.

So to the degree that you have not been that, to the degree that you've fallen short in that, to the degree that your actions have caused death not life, disease and decay not flourishing, ask the

Lord to forgive you, ask the Holy Spirit to be at work in you, and be about the work that Jesus called us to do, the

Redeemer who called us to redeem things, the Restorer who called us to be about the work of restoration.

Amen. Let's pray. Lord, you are so kind. You not only give us the negative command, but Lord, you also intend for us to understand the positive command as well, the negative being do not murder, the positive being preserve life, fight for life, multiply life.

And Lord, in just the same way that you gave us the hermeneutic for how to interpret that, if you've thought something or said something with anger, you've murdered someone in your heart, then

Lord, help us to also remember that that same hermeneutic applies to the preservation of life.

Lord, I pray that you would help us in every interaction that we have, in every conflict that we have, in every hurt feeling that we have, in every moment where we're offended, in every moment where we want to respond with malice, where we want to go tit for tat and bring vengeance upon the person, whether it be in small ways or large ways, help us to remember that that's not our job.

Vengeance is yours, says the Lord. Our job is not to get even.

Our job is not to respond with the same malice that we perceived was responded to with us.

Our job is to bring life because the spirit of life has came into us and given us life so that we can be life bringers instead of life takers.

Lord, help us in every situation to do that. And Lord, help the world around us to see that we are not takers, we're bringers.

And Lord, give us courage and give us strength because we are frail and we like to respond in hurt ways and broken ways and we like to cut and wound and we like to when we're cut and wounded to respond with knives and blades.

Lord, please help us. Please help us to follow after your example, who while they were accusing you and blindfolding you and spitting in your face and punching you and laughing at you and mocking you, you returned not a single word of malice on them.

You even said, Father, forgive them. They do not know what they do. You loved and you brought life even in the moment of greatest death so that now we and our continual dying to ourselves can be people who bring life.