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Aug 21, 2022

What’s a Life Worth?

What’s a Life Worth?

Passage: Deuteronomy 5:17

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: Life in Ten Words

Following the killing of tens of millions in WWII, the United Nations, under the strong influence of a Lebane Christian named Dr Charles Habib Malik, formulated what came to be known as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Something had to be said and spread to prevent another mass tragedy. The sixth commandment speaks to that same fundamental regard for life. We’ll consider the truth that’s in its background, the words that are made of the same stuff and often precede what the commandment prohibits, and, finally, the only way forward when the violence has been done.

Readings & Scripture

PREPARATION: Psalm 8:1, 3-5, 9
LEADER: O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens. . . .When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,

ALL: what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor. O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH/SCRIPTURE READING/CORPORATE PRAYER:) Romans 13:8-10
LEADER: Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

ALL: Thanks be to God.

CENTRAL TEXT: Deuteronomy 5:17 / Matthew 5:21-26
Deut. 5:17 “ ‘You shall not murder.

Matt. 5:21 “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ 22 But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire. 23 So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. 25 Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. 26 Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

CONFESSION OF SIN:
ALL: You have made us for yourself, and shown us the highest compliment of making us in your own image. But we so easily forget that– first about ourselves and then about others. Thoughts become words, words become actions–until we have made a mockery of your compliment and a mess of our relationships. We need your pardon. We also need your vision–of how you see us in your Son, so that we might see one another as far more than what our angry moments obscure.

ASSURANCE OF PARDON: 2 Corinthians 5:16-19
LEADER: From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

ALL: Thanks be to God.

Additional Resources

RELATED SCRIPTURES:

  • Psalm 8:1-6
  • Isaiah 6:3-7
  • Mark 7:21
  • Luke 6:43-45
  • John 8:44
  • Romans 13:9
  • James 2:11
  • James 3:1-12
  • 1 John 2:9, 11; 3:15, 4:20

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

  1. Can you remember a time when a word really stung? Maybe you want to share what that word was (or not). Regardless, why did it sting? How did you respond?
  2. Why does Jesus draw such a strong connection between hateful words (and the thoughts behind them) and actual murder? 
  3. How would you define “dignity”? What is it? On what basis does one have it, if it exists? 
  4. Follow-up: Jews and Christians base the idea of human dignity in being made in the image of God (Gen 1:26-27). How do those without belief in a transcendent order arrive at something like a basis for believing in dignity? What is that basis? How sound is it?
  5. Why do you think Jesus made such a priority of reconciliation between people estranged? Why is that so hard? What does it take? How is Jesus’s work to reconcile us to God means to assist, and like a midwife, birth reconciliation? Ever seen it happen, or experienced it?

ILLUSTRATIONS:

QUOTES:

  • A man who has no assured and ever present belief in the existence of a personal God or of future existence with retribution and reward, can have for his rule of life, as far as I can see, only to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest or which seem to him the best ones. Charles Darwin
  • Hate is always tragic. It is as injurious to the hater as it is to the hated. It distorts the personality and scars the soul. . . . and every time I see it, I say to myself, hate is too great a burden to bear. Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • Restoring honor to the enemy is an essential step in recovery from combat PTSD. . . .the veteran's self-respect never fully recovers so long as he is unable to see the enemy as worthy. In the words of one of our patients, a war against subhuman vermin "has no honor." This in true even in victory; in defeat, the dishonoring makes life unendurable. Jonathan Shay, M.D., Ph.D.., Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character
  • This Eichmann was an ordinary man. I was afraid about myself. . . I saw that I am capable to do this. I am . . . exactly like he…Eichmann is in all of us. Yehiel Dinur
  • Do not be wedded forever
    To fear, yoked eternally
    To brutishness. . . .
    You may shoot me with your words
    You may cut me with your eyes
    You may kill me with your hatefulness
    But still, like air, I’ll rise
    - “Pulse of the Morning,” Maya Angelou

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