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Nanosermon Script:
Let’s look at the death penalty. We’ll turn to Genesis chapter nine and see if we can understand what God is saying for us in our time.
Genesis 9:6 Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.
The first thing we notice is, it’s a command, not an option. The second thing we see is the reason given. The death penalty for murder is there because each one of us, however lowly, is made in the image of God. Thirdly, The sons of Noah would repopulate the earth, so when God says in verse nine:
Genesis 9:9 And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you;
We see his command forms part of an agreement between God and the whole of mankind. Fourthly, this isn’t a transient law, like the temple sacrifices, which became redundant when Christ was crucified. It’s for then, now and for ever.
Rainbow confirms death penalty
In return, God promised never again to send a flood over all the earth, and he gave a confirming sign:
Genesis 9:12 And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations:
Genesis 9:13 I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.
As long as somewhere on earth the sun is shining through rain onto some clouds and making a rainbow, the death penalty is still in force. The Apostle Paul spoke under the New Covenant when he confirmed the death penalty in Acts chapter twenty-five. In verse eleven he said:
Acts 25:11 For if I be an offender, or have committed any thing worthy of death, I refuse not to die: …
Institution of Nation State
Here’s my fifth and final point: This command marks God’s institution of the nation state. We see this a few verses on:
Genesis 9:18 And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan.
Genesis 9:19 These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread.
In Genesis chapter ten we read of the formation of those nations whose legal system God established right here in Genesis chapter nine. As God loves peace and justice, the death penalty is there to make human society function peacefully and equitably.
Look, when Cain murdered Abel in Genesis chapter four, he was banished by God. God did not slay him, and nor was anyone else allowed to. Why? Because the only people alive at that time were Cain’s family. The family is the first social institution God put in place, but family members may not execute each other.
A macabre trick
Only the state has been mandated by God’s authority to put offenders to death, after due process of law including hearing two or three witnesses to the actual event. Not ‘beyond reasonable doubt’. Two or three actual witnesses. I do believe forensics could be a witness, but not the mere opinion of some so-called expert in cot death, for example.
So you can see that legislators in Britain in the nineteen-sixties played a macabre trick when they first abolished capital punishment and then passed the Abortion Act. They took the death penalty away from the state, on the guilty, where it belongs, and placed it on the innocent, in the family, where it does not.
Satan must rub his hands in glee at the shedding of innocent blood which today goes unpunished from both sides of that evil equation. The Bible says innocent blood defiles the land and I believe Satan derives power from it as well.
I don’t like the death penalty. Maybe you don’t either. But every time I see that bow in the cloud I have to remember that it is a righteous act, for all people and for all time, and that its absence in our nation means our land is defiled. And that brings God’s judgment on us all.
SCRIPT ENDS
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