Loving Our God-given Neighbor's Life
Minister: | Rev. Ronald Van Overloop |
Date: | 9/20/2009 AM |
Text: | I John 3, 4; Lord's Day 40 |
Psalters: | 227, 341, 305, 371 |
- The duty.
- My neighbor is anyone placed by God in the path of my life. Whose neighbor am I?
- Life (mine and my neighbor?s) is a gift of God.
- Life is a most precious gift from God, in which what He gives is Himself (He is life).
- Anyone who kills another is destroying God?s gift (whether regenerated or not).
- More, in forbidding the taking of our neighbor?s life, God commands us to love our neighbor, especially our brother.
- If we love not the brother, then we abide in death!
- God?s love, shed abroad in our hearts (Rom. 5:5) is the power and experience to love Him, myself, and each other.
- This command forbids taking life and everything that leads to killing.
- To kill is to take life without having the authority to do so.
- It is to be as a child of the devil, who is a murderer from the beginning (John 8:44).
- This includes plotting and consenting to a killing, even when it is ?accidental,? or by negligence (Ex. 21:29,30).
- Realize that we also can wound a soul.
- Murder is very wrong because we touch God in three ways.
- First, it is rebellion against God?s all-wise providence, which put him/her in my path.
- Second, it is to take what God has given.
- Third, we touch God Himself, Who created that human in His own image (Gen. 9:6).
- This command teaches us that God also abhors all that leads to killing: envy, hatred, anger, desire of revenge.
- God forbids the endangering of our lives.
- That which God requires is the preserving of our neighbor?s life in love - not just the not taking of his life.
- God commands capital punishment to show the seriousness of this sin and to show how much He values life.
- God calls us to control our anger and to restrain our natures.
- Pray for and work to develop a meek and humble spirit, for contention comes from pride (Prov. 13:10).
- Consider often the infinite patience of God for us, and His forbearance of the reprobate.
- Shun angry persons, for anger spreads quickly from one to another (Prov. 22:24,25).
- See love for the neighbor and the brother as a calling (not an option) arising out of gratitude.