“… [Judas] went and hanged himself.”

— Matthew 27:5

Yesterday we looked at murder; today we look at suicide . . . a leading cause of death among young people in America today.

Suicide is the murder of ourselves, and since murder is wrong according to the Sixth Commandment, suicide is wrong. The Bible makes it plain that we have no more right to take our own lives than to take the life of another. Scripture mentions the sin of suicide just five times. In over four thousand years of Biblical history, only five people took their lives. All five were wicked men such as Judas, who sold the Savior for thirty pieces of silver.

Those who commit suicide take the precious gift of life that God has given them and fling it back in His face. They demonstrate their lack of faith in God’s existence and in the fact that God will work all things together for good.

William Cowper, a young Englishman who lived in eighteenth-century London, was so filled with hopelessness that he decided to take his own life. He bought some poison and ate it, but it only made him sick. Then he bought a gun, but it was defective and did not fire. Cowper subsequently tried to hang himself, but the rope broke. Finally he decided he would take a cab to the River Thames and drown himself, but it was so foggy that his cabdriver could not find the river. After two hours, the cabby drove Cowper home. In his room, Cowper opened his Bible and read about how much God loved him. Then and there, he asked Jesus into his heart and wrote the great hymn, “God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform; He plants His footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm.”

Jesus can turn even the bleakest circumstances into something beautiful. He not only gives new hope, He is the Way, the truth, and the life.

“Life is worth the living, just because He lives.”
“Because He Lives” By Bill and Gloria Gaither