Defense of Capital Punishment

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Hello, welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.
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This is a daily conversation about scripture, culture and media from a Reformed perspective.
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Get your Bible and coffee ready and prepare to engage today's topic.
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Here's your host, Pastor Keith Foskey.
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Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist, I'm Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.
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As most of our listeners know, along with being the host of this program, I am also the pastor of Sovereign Grace Family Church of Jacksonville, Florida.
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On today's program, I'm going to feature a portion of a recent sermon from SGFC.
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If this portion of the sermon is of interest to you and you decide you'd like to hear the full message or others like it, please go to our website and you will find a library of over 1,000 sermons on a variety of topics.
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These include messages from me, our other elders and from special guests who have visited our church over the years.
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Now, without further delay, here is a clip from a recent message.
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I hope you enjoy.
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In the command about the lifeblood of the animal, God now switches to talk about man in verse 5 and he uses the same principle.
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Look at verse 5.
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And for your lifeblood, I will require a reckoning.
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So the context is still blood, but now he's gone from the lifeblood of the animals, which is important, but to the biblical model of going from the lesser to the greater, he goes from the lifeblood of the animals, which is important, to the lifeblood of man, which is way more important.
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So now he says, and for your lifeblood, I will require a reckoning.
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So here's the reckoning.
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I will, excuse me, from every beast, I will require it and from man, from his fellow man, I will require a reckoning for the life of man.
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This text, verses 5 and 6 specifically, mark a major shift in human relations with other humans because from now on, from this text forward, not only would there be an eternal consequence for the taking of life, men's life, not only would there be an eternal consequence for taking the life of a man, now there will be a temporal consequence for taking the life of man.
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From now on, taking the life of man would carry a worldly, earthly penalty.
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Now were there penalties before this? Were there social penalties before this? Possibly, because Cain, when he killed Abel, he was afraid that he might suffer a penalty.
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That's why he cried out to God.
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He says, the people are going to kill me, right? And later Lamech, who is the descendant of Cain, he bragged about the people he had killed and how he was ready for all comers.
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You know, if anybody wanted to come and attack him, he was ready to fight back, right? Because of the idea of there being some sort of retributive justice.
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Somebody might come looking for me.
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But now, we have the establishment, essentially, of a rule of law.
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That if someone, even an animal, takes the life of a man, that there must be reckoning for that life.
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And he tells us why in verse 6.
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Because in verse 6, it says, because he's made in the image of God.
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Why is it that man is so valuable? Because man's made in the image of God.
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Therefore, if an animal takes the life of the man, the animal is to be punished.
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His life is to be taken.
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By the way, I shouldn't have to say this, but I will.
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And if this offends you, I hope that you would understand that's not my intention.
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But understand this, animal life is not as valuable as human life.
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Because everybody misses this, we mix it up, we get so upset about Harambe and all that stuff.
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But listen, if it's a choice between a little boy and a gorilla, you kill the gorilla.
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And the fact that we even have to debate that is like, we don't even understand the image of God, we don't understand human beings.
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I didn't want to see the gorilla get shot, but honestly, if it's between a kid and a gorilla, you kill the gorilla.
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Animals are not human.
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And I know people that, well, my dog, I love my dog.
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You can love your dog, but it's not a human being.
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You know, it's not human.
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It's just not.
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And so we have to understand here, it says, if an animal hurts a human, if it kills a human, that animal's life is going to have to have a reckoning.
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But he also says it about people.
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It's not just animals that attack human beings that the animal will be punished, but people who attack human beings.
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A man who kills another man by man shall his blood be shed.
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Verse 6 is the foundation for capital punishment.
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I was recently in a, I was at a question and answer night.
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I was one of three pastors who was receiving questions.
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Mike, you were there.
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And one of the questions that came up, directed at me, because everybody knows I teach shooting classes and I teach self-defense classes.
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What about the death penalty? What do you think about the death penalty? And I just went back to Genesis 9, 6.
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I said, Genesis 9, 6 tells us that there is a consequence for shedding man's blood.
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Now, the Bible will later describe exceptions.
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For instance, the exception of self-defense, Genesis or Exodus 22, 2 talks about a man being in your house at night and being struck that he dies.
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And there's no punishment for that because that guy was in your house and he got struck so that he dies.
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There's an act of self-defense that happens there.
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And there's other passages that talk about unintentional killing.
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You understand under the Mosaic law, they had things called cities of refuge, which was if you killed a man unintentionally, you could run to safety so that his family wouldn't exercise retributive justice against you.
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You had a place where you could go and be safe.
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So, the Bible does understand that there are things like unintentional killing, what we would call manslaughter.
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And there are things like self-defense.
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But when it comes to the intentional, and I would even go as far as to say premeditated murder of another human being, there is one consequence that is the highest consequence of all, and that is life for life.
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That the life is to be forfeited.
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And people say, well the Ten Commandments say thou shall not kill.
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No they don't.
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The Ten Commandments say thou shall not commit murder.
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And that lines up with this text.
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And if you commit murder, what do you deserve? Death.
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That is the command.
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And this is, by the way, we're going to talk about this next week when we get into the covenant.
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This is universal, because later we're going to see when God makes His covenant with Noah, it's with Him and His descendants, and the animals, and the earth.
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Like everybody's a part of this.
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So it's not as if there are some exempted people.
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This is universal.
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And the command is simple.
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If a man sheds the blood of another man, so too shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made he him.
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And somebody says, well wait a minute, who gets to decide? Who gets to decide who's right? Who gets to decide who's wrong? Who gets to carry out justice? And I do agree with many commentators that what we have in Genesis 9 is not only the establishment of a penalty, but we have establishment of the rule of law.
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That there will be those who have the responsibility to enact these rules and carry out these laws.
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So in a sense, human government can be traced back to Genesis chapter 9.
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Because someone has to be rightfully carrying out the standard.
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I know, especially over the last year, we have experienced a lot of negative in our government.
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We have seen grabs for power.
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We have seen people over-exercise their authority.
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We have seen people mistreated.
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Right now, Pastor James Coates in Canada is behind bars for preaching the gospel.
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Yes, we have seen the government go too far.
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We have seen the government overreach.
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We have seen terrible things happen.
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But I will remind you that even in the midst of corruption, government itself is put in place by God for a purpose.
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And if we say we don't want any authority, then we are denying what God has established.
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Because Romans 13 clearly says God does establish the state for the purpose of exercising its mission, its purpose of being a blessing to those who do good and a punishment for those who do evil.
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In fact, what does Romans 13 tell us? The government does not bear the what? The sword in vain.
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The government has the sword for a purpose.
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What is the purpose of the government having the sword? To strike fear in the heart of the evildoer.
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The government has the right to exercise capital punishment.
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Do they always do it right? No, they often do it wrong.
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And so we should stand for righteousness in law and righteousness in government, but I have to remind you that does not mean that we call for the abolishing of the death penalty because the death penalty was created by God.
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Therefore there's a right way to do it.
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You'll hear these arguments sometime.
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They'll say, well, it's been proven that the death penalty is not a thing that's going to cause people not to do it.
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The death penalty is not a deterrent.
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Thank you.
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I had a word in my head and a word in my mouth.
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I walked away from my notes.
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I get in trouble.
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They'll say the death penalty is not a deterrent.
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You know what you say to that? Who cares? Because that's not what the Bible says.
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The Bible doesn't say God established a death penalty to make it a deterrent.
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He says he established a death penalty because man is made in the image of God.
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That's the reason.
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The death penalty is not, and by the way, it is a deterrent for the guy who killed because he's not here anymore.
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So it is a deterrent for at least one.
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The idea that it's not a deterrent, well, let's define what that means.
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But even if it's not a deterrent, that's not what it was put there for.
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It was put there to honor the image of God in man.
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Because when you attack an image bearer of God, you are attacking God himself.
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James tells us this.
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He says, be careful how you use your tongue because when you use your tongue to curse people made in the image of God, there's danger in that.
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Because what are you doing? You're cursing God, the one whom they're made in his image.
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People say, well, the death penalty is barbaric and primitive.
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Well, so is substitutionary atonement on the cross.
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God is not above using the simple things to confound the wise.
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God in fact does use those things which we might call barbaric to make his points.
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I hope you enjoyed that short sermon clip from Sovereign Grace Family Church.
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Again, if you're interested in hearing more or you would like more information about SGFC, please go to our website at sgfcjax.org, that's Sovereign Grace Family Church of Jacksonville.
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And if you're in the Jacksonville area, please come visit us on an upcoming Lord's Day.
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Thank you for listening today to Coffee with a Calvinist.
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I'm Keith Foskey and I have been your Calvinist.
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May God bless you.
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As you go about your day, remember this, Jesus Christ came to save sinners.
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All who come to Him in repentance and faith will find Him to be a perfect Savior.
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He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him.
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May God be with you.