Andy Davis preaches an expository sermon on John 8. The main subject of the sermon is how Christ’s incarnation refutes the wicked lies of pro-abortionists.
Andy Davis preaches an expository sermon on John 8. The main subject of the sermon is how Christ’s incarnation refutes the wicked lies of pro-abortionists.
– SERMON TRANSCRIPT –
So we’re looking this morning at John, chapter 8. You can turn in your Bibles there. From the very beginning, from the Garden of Eden it has always been a battle for truth. There in the Garden of Eden, Satan lied to Adam and Eve, he brought up questions of truth. “Did God really say you will…” “You must not eat from any tree in the garden.” “Did God really say that?” and interjecting that seed of doubt. Or then just flat out lying with murderous intent, “You shall not surely die!” saying that kind of lie. From the very beginning then, it’s been a battle for the mind… a battle for truth. We’re surrounded by people who are confused in their minds. They don’t think rightly. Paul speaks of this in Ephesians where he says, “So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They’re darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that’s in them due to the hardening of their hearts.” It’s lots of mental words there, a lot of mind words, it’s about the thinking, they’re just not thinking clearly.
But we have been given, dear friends, the mind of Christ, and we are called on to think rightly in this day and age, to understand our times, to know what we’re facing, to understand the spirit of the age. And one label that we can put on the spirit of the age here is this question of postmodernism. We’re told we live in the postmodern era, and that specifically comes down to the issue of truth. Josh McDowell said postmodernism is a worldview characterized by the belief that truth doesn’t exist in any objective sense, but is created rather than discovered, and so we make up truth for ourselves. So there’s confusion on this. And sadly, McDowell tells us by his research that this kind of mentality is settling into the church, so that we are thinking like the world does on this issue. In 1991, he said, McDowell, Josh McDowell said 52% of kids in churches who claim to be born again, 52%, 1991, said there was no absolute truth. In 1994, the number had risen to 62% that said that there was no absolute truth. In ’99, five years later, 78% of the church kids he was polling said, there is no absolute truth. The year 2002, the number had risen to 91%, nine out of 10 church kids, claim to be born again, say there really is no absolute truth.
Now you can just see the confusion, and therefore I feel a responsibility as a pastor to stand here and say, there is absolute truth, and His name is Jesus. And so today, we’re going to have truth incarnate, Jesus, taking on the spirit of the age, which is postmodernism, and also the abortion mentality: the abortion lie meets truth incarnate. And so people, our neighbors, our co-workers, the non-Christians that are around us, they speak of truth for you and truth for me, “your truth,” “my truth,” this kind of thing. This kind of language, and where the rubber meets the road here, I think in our nation is on this abortion issue. This is where the mental confusion reaches its peak. In ’92, there was a research poll that said that 73% that they polled stated they believe that the fetus is truly a human baby, and they also believe that killing is wrong. However, nearly three-quarters of those people, those same people, said that society should not have a say in any way, whether a woman terminates an abortion or terminate a pregnancy, an abortion. No, say at all. Three quarters, that’s just mental confusion, friends.
Or this one: 37 states in our nation have fetal homicide laws. You know what that is? Basically, if a pregnant woman meets with some kind of attack and she loses her baby, the man who attacked is charged with fetal homicide in 37 states. The core legal issue there is the personhood of the unborn., right? She lost her baby, he stands, or whoever attacked her stands, in judgment under those fetal homicide laws. But all 37 of those states allow abortion. Just mental confusion. What that means then is, legally, personhood is ascribed by the woman carrying the baby. It’s not intrinsic, of course. After birth, it’s intrinsic. So it changes at birth at that point, then you become a person because you’re now born… It makes no sense at all. It’s just mental confusion. In the same hospital, you can have some doctors, in a NICU, a neo-natal intensive care unit, just laboring with great skill to rescue a baby whose viability and fetal weight is less than an aborted baby in the same hospital. It just makes no sense. You could even see some doctors whose consciences have been seared doing one one day in the next one, or even on the same day.
It just makes no sense. It’s just confusion. Legislators can speak of being personally opposed to abortion and that they personally believe that the baby, that the pre-born is truly a human baby and ought to be protected, but at the same time in their public duty say they have to uphold the laws as they are written and go ahead and use this kind of language of a woman’s right to choose. Back in the Clinton days, I remember when he was running for office, he said his goal was to make abortion safe, legal, funded and rare. That one always bothered me. Makes no sense at all. Why rare? Why rare and safe? Safe for who? I understand legal and funded, I get that, but I don’t understand this at all. Why should it be rare? Talk to me, President Clinton. Why should it be rare? ‘Cause it makes you feel uncomfortable ’cause there’s something going here? Yes, because maybe there’s still some conscience that says it’s truly a human person. Or this one: women having crisis pregnancies, they go to these pregnancy centers, and GE sometime ago came out with an incredible ultrasound where you can actually see in living time the face of your baby, and the statistics are that I don’t know what it is, a high…like in the 90% or above, of those that are willing to look at the pictures, they decide not to have an abortion. It must be especially when the baby looks like them and they see that resemblance that sweet little face, but if they choose not to look, then the percentage goes way up on abortion, so I guess this is how it works.
I remember when I was a little kid, I thought something doesn’t exist if I don’t look at it. If I cover my face, you’re gone. You’re not there. If I can’t see you, you can’t see me. I remember thinking that nothing existed until I looked and if I look, then it suddenly exists so I’d like, there it is. Suddenly, now it’s gone. And you could tell me it’s behind me, those chairs, all those empty chairs, but I don’t believe it until I turn and to see it. My mother talked me out of that way of thinking. She said it was very self-centered. “I was here before you were born, and the world was here before you were born.” It helped me, things don’t exist because you suddenly look at them. Friends, this is mental confusion. May everyone look at the ultrasound. May they all look at the faces and find out the truth, and the truth is this little baby is created in the image of God, and it ought to be protected by the laws of our country, dear friends, it ought to be protected by the laws of America.
And so we’re speaking about…Some people talk about a culture war. I think here, it’s a clash of worldviews, is what it is, and so I wanna bring you face-to-face with truth. I have a lot to say about worldviews. I have a lot to say about other things, but I just wanna get to the Scripture, so I’m pitching page two, page three and page four… Basically, all of these are saying, if you follow the worldview that leads to abortion, you end up with chaos. Truth for me, and truth for you ends up with chaos. Well, guess what we’re having increasingly? Chaos. No, no, no Christians, we need to stand up and say, “There is absolute truth.” And I want to, again, introduce you to him, not to it. I want to introduce you to absolute truth incarnate and his name is Jesus. So we’re looking this morning at John, chapter 8. Now, before Jesus was incarnate, God had already revealed himself to be the God of truth. In Isaiah 65:16, this is what he calls himself twice, the God of truth. Deuteronomy 32:4 says, “He is the Rock, His work is perfect. For all his ways are judgment, a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.”
Psalm 51:6 says, “Behold, you delight in truth in the inner portions or parts.” Psalm 119:116, “All your words are true, all your righteous laws are eternal.” Isaiah 45:19, “I, the Lord, speak truth. I declare what is right.” So God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is truth and the absolute standard of truth, and He speaks always the truth. So what is the truth? It’s that which corresponds to what really is, to reality. That’s what it is, everything opposite from God, who is the ultimate reality in the universe, is a lie. Everything opposite from what he asserts is a lie. John 8 teaches us that Satan is a liar and the father of lies. And so also all non-Christians have accepted his lies and have become liars themselves, and all of us would be liars if it weren’t for the grace of God saving us from it. Because it says right here in Psalm 116:11, “In my dismay, I said, All men are liars.” That’s our native state. But Jesus is truth incarnate. And so it says in John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The Word is God communicating truth to us.
“And the Word was God,” verse 14 of that same chapter. The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.” So that’s truth incarnate, dear friends. It’s truth incarnate, and his name is Jesus. John 1:17 says, “For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” So we have the Gospel of John. What I’m going to designate for us this morning, the gospel of truth. Why do I call it that? Well, the Greek word for truth, alethinos, that’s the Greek root — over one quarter of all of its uses in the Bible, in the New Testament, is in one book, the Gospel of John. Forty-seven times this Greek word appears in the Gospel of John. No other book uses the word “true” or “truth” or something like that, anywhere near as frequently. The second most frequent is 1 John, and that’s 12 times. Romans, at ten. And so this is a gospel saturated in the truth, and it’s truth covering every topic of life, like Judgment Day, for example. John 3:21, “Whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what He has done has been done through God, those that live by the truth comes into the light.”
Or worship John, chapter 4, Jesus with the Samaritan woman. He says this in verses 23 and 24, “The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” Or again, concerning our spiritual nourishment, the ongoing nourishment of our souls, John, chapter 6, “Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gives you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives his life to the world.’” So Jesus has come to be the bread of life, the true bread. Or again, Jesus’s own role as life-giver to His disciples. John 15:1, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser, or the Holy Spirit’s future role. He’s called there the Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit is just one of the names for him. Here in John 16:13, he’s called the Spirit of truth. “When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth.”
Dear friends, where is postmodernism there? The Holy Spirit is going to guide you into spiritual, metaphysical, invisible truth. The very thing postmodernism says, we can never know. But we Christians know the opposite, don’t we? We can know the truth through the ministry of the spirit of truth. And then the definition of eternal life. Jesus praying to his Heavenly Father in John 17:3, he says, “This is eternal life, that they may know you the only…” what? “true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Later in that same chapter, he says in John 17:17, “Sanctify them by the truth, your Word is truth.” We’re getting a strong dose of truth this morning, do you sense that? That’s what it’s all about. If you wonder what the pastor is about, wonder no longer. It’s about truth. There is truth. Dear friends, feed on it. Just let it flow through you. Read the whole gospel of John this week. Just feed on truth. The most significant assertion of all though, I think, concerning this is John 14 in verse 6, in which Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Can I tell you that I don’t really think it’s gonna be abortion in the 21st century that’s really going to bring us into conflict with the world? It’s Jesus’s assertion there, that He is the only way to God. And that you have to believe that he is the only way to God and is truth incarnate or you will go to hell. That is where the rubber will meet the road in the 21st century. We’re gonna waffle on that, we must not… they will not have life. If we don’t tell them the truth on that Jesus, Jesus doesn’t merely know the truth, he doesn’t merely just assert the truth or teach the truth or exemplify the truth, or point the way to the truth, he is in fact, truth incarnate himself. He is the truth. And so he gives us all, I think, not just Pontius Pilate, but he gives us all an invitation to truth. You remember on trial? He stands before Pilate. Pilate says, “You are a King, then.” Jesus says, “You are right in saying that I’m a king. In fact, for this, I was born. And for this reason, I came into the world to testify to the truth.”
Everyone on the side of truth listens to me. And just so you know, there’s nothing new under the sun, postmodernism spoke at that moment, saying, what is truth? Now, it wouldn’t bother me if Pilate said, “What is truth? I really wanna know, I’ve been searching all my life. If you would just tell me, then we could have a conversation.” He goes and says, “What is truth?” And goes out the door. There is postmodernism 20 centuries ago. Dear friends, we encounter truth, and in John 8, a saturation of truth.
I just wanna bring you through eight assertions very quickly that Jesus makes, each one of them would be worthy of an hour, but I just wanna bring you just face-to-face with the truth and just apply it to this abortion question that’s just tormenting my soul and our nation. Oh, for the day when we’ll be done with it. Amen? I hope we’re done forever with institutional racism. I assume we’re done forever with chattel slavery. This can happen, too, friends, it can. So why don’t we pray for it, why don’t we pray for it.
Assertion number one, look at verse 12, John 8:12, and the assertion here is Jesus is the only escape from darkness. He’s the only way to get out of darkness. You wanna get out of darkness? Jesus is the way, verse 12, “And Jesus again spoke to them, saying, ‘l am the light of the world. Whoever follows Me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’” Our postmodern mishmash is a valley of darkness, and walking in a valley of darkness is inherently dangerous. Now, here I liken or I equate light and truth, I link them together. Psalm 43:3 says, “Send forth your light and your truth. Let them lead me, let them bring me to your holy hill and into your dwelling.” So God sends forth His light and this truth. They’re really just the same thing, I think, in that case. Or again, Ephesians 5:13 and 14, everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for it is light that makes everything visible. So by a light, we can see that that person over there is a woman holding a little baby, not three guys wearing baseball hats. It’s good to know the difference. Or by light, we can see that it’s raining and the roads are slick, rather than it’s really hot and there’s heat patterns coming off, like in August. It’s good to know the difference. Or by light, we can see that the police officer is beckoning for us to go into the intersection, not putting his hand up to stop.
Is that important? I think that’s important to know the difference, and he will not say, Hey, if he goes like that and you go and you get in an accident, he’s gonna come over on the basis of truth and say, “I told you to stop.” You say, “But we live in a postmodern age. That was your truth. My truth is, I wanted to go…” Well, see how well that works in a court of law. We’ll see if that continues. What a schizophrenic age we live in. We know very well when the police officer puts his hands up, stop and our eyes tell us the truth. That’s what he’s doing. By light, we can see the cat is sleeping on the floor in the walk space. All right, in the dark, you might not see her. You find out when you step on her neck. All right, the bottom line is, it’s good to know what’s in front of you as you walk, so by light, you can see the truth, you can see reality as the… Let me tell you something, God is reality, whether you believe in him or not, and some day you’ll see it with your own eyes, that day will be Judgment Day. it’s good to know now by faith what the truth is, amen?
So there is a truth though, whether you think it or not. Now only by following Christ can we escape the darkness of confusion that Satan put around us. He’s blinded the minds of unbelievers, it says. Now we must follow Jesus and this following of Christ is costly, wholeheartedly obedience. Look at verses 30 and 31, “As he was saying these things, many believed in him. So Jesus said to the Jews who believed in him, ‘If you abide in My word, you are truly my disciples.’” So it’s a continual following of Jesus, not a sampling of Jesus. We’re not sampling his teachings, but it’s abiding in his word. Dear friends, it is not enough to be merely a nominal Christian. Do you realize it’s nominal Christianity that’s led to these weird poll numbers? People asserting certain things about their spiritual state and then saying other things by how they vote and by how they live? That’s nominal Christianity. It will not save anybody on Judgment Day. We’re talking about if you wanna be truly Jesus’s disciple, you have to abide in his word.
All right, assertion number two. Unless you believe that Christ is God, you will perish eternally.
Look at John 8:24, this is an incredibly important verse and frequently overlooked. This is what I call my Jehovah’s Witness verse. You want one single verse for the Jehovah’s Witnesses? This is your verse. Don’t try John 1, believe it or not, they’ve heard it. All right, John 1:1, they’ve heard it, it should be good enough, but bring them over to something unfamiliar. John 8:24, and what does it say? “I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.” That’s what the Greek says, friends. Now, the NIV and all the other translators stick some italicized words in there, and at least the NASB is honest enough to put it in italics, I am he but it’s not there in the Greek, friends. It just says, unless you believe that ego eimi, “I am,” you will die in your sins. Now, what does that mean? Well, the Jews knew what it meant. Just the verse before that in verse 13, sorry, verse 23, he had said, “You were from below, I am from above. You are of this world, I am not of this world.”
He’s already kind of making a claim to the point, which is deity, I’m from above, but at the end of the chapter, he will make it very plain and clear, and the Jews will prove they knew exactly what he meant. Look at verse 56, “‘Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day, he saw it and was glad,’ and so the Jews said to him, ‘You’re not yet 50 years old, and have you seen Abraham?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.’ The discussion over. They picked up stones to stone him. They knew he was claiming to be God. Why? Because that’s what God, that’s how God designated himself from the flames of the burning bush. The angel of the Lord appeared to Moses from the flames of the burning bush, and the Lord spoke to him from the bush saying, “Then God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites, I am has sent me to you.’” So what Jesus is saying in John 8:24 is, you must believe that I am God in the flesh, or you will go to Hell.
Our neighbors need to hear that. Our lost neighbors need to hear this truth, and we have to be courageous enough to tell them the truth. This is the truth that I think America hates more than any other truth. You’ll have actually, I think, an easier time on abortion than on this one, these days, that Jesus isn’t merely a good moral teacher, he was not a religious leader, he wasn’t merely a prophet, is not enough to believe, even with the JWs, the Jehovah’s Witnesses believe, that he is a god, but not the God. A powerful created spiritual being. No, no, Jesus is claiming absolute deity here and said, “You must believe it or you will die in your sin.” That means go to Hell. Recently, you know that Brit Hume committed a terrible societal guff by telling the truth. I think about what it says in Galatians, “Have I become your enemy by telling you the truth?” He was speaking of Tiger Woods, and he was saying that if Tiger Woods wanted to find forgiveness and redemption, he needed to turn to Christ. Do you all think that’s true? If he needs forgiveness and redemption, if that’s… if he wants a good hamburger, you can give advice, if he wants some good clothes, you can give some…
No, no, we’re talking about forgiveness and redemption. Where is he gonna find those? I tell you, he finds them in Jesus Christ and nowhere else. But look at the pounding he’s taken. I read it on a Washington Post website, and the responses… The 346 responses, very interesting topic to the Washington Post readers. I didn’t find one positive statement in a 100, the vitriol that was poured on this man for speaking the truth. And they were mocking Christ. One writer said, No wonder they threw the Christians to the lions. I wish we could do it again. Dear friends, that’s a heart of murder, I’ll get more back to that later, ’cause it’s also in our text, it’s a heart of murder is what it is.
Number three, assertion number three. Judgment is coming, even if it doesn’t seem so. Let me say that again. Judgment is coming even if it doesn’t seem so. Look at verse 26, these ominous words, it’s really just a statement you could just look right over it but Jesus said this to his enemies, “I have much to say in judgment concerning you.” That is terrifying. Very soon in our study in Matthew we’ll go to Matthew 23, when Jesus gives the 7 woes, “Woe to you…” Well, this is in effect, the same thing. I have things to say about you. I have things to say in judgment about you. There is a day coming, a day of reckoning when we’ll have to give an account for our lives, and Jesus says, I will speak in judgment. Now, notice that Jesus doesn’t say them there in John 8, not yet. The day is coming when I will unburden my mind concerning your case and your situation. He will speak those words and he will speak according to the truth, because in Revelation 20:12, it says, “The court will be seated, the books will be opened and everyone will be judged according to what they had done as written in the books,” there’s no escaping it. And the judgment will be based on truth. We really did those things, really thought those thoughts, it’s really true. And so it is with abortion. People think that because the judgment isn’t coming now, that it’ll never come at all.
Jesus didn’t come into the world to destroy people’s lives. He didn’t come into the world to condemn people and to send them to Hell. He could have done that from Heaven. He entered the world to save people, and so he wasn’t bringing judgment and wrath at that moment, he was just saying, it is coming. I have much to say in judgment concerning you, but it’s going to be deferred. And so Jesus has much to say in judgment on this whole abortion issue. Dear friends, he has much to say in judgment against Planned Parenthood for opening, soon to be opened, a 78,000 square foot abortion facility, a super hospital, so to speak, in Houston, which will have the largest late-term abortion wing in the world. I have decided to spare you the details of how those abortions are actually done, I frequently review actually the procedures by which babies are killed up to 12 weeks, how they’re killed toward the end of the first trimester. How they’re killed early in the second trimester, I’ve decided to spare you the details, but they’d be true if I told you, and if we’re just cringing back and saying, I don’t wanna know how they’re actually killed, I would urge you to go to websites and find out how they actually are killed.
And then after you’re done being nauseous and after you’re done weeping, then there’ll be some steel in your soul concerning this issue. It is a grievous thing. But Planned Parenthood will have much… Jesus will have much to say against them for what they’re doing in Houston, or on doctors and nurses that willingly do abortions hardening their own hearts when they know the truth, or legislators and politicians, government officials that defend abortion rights and neglect the cause of the poorest and neediest people in our nation. On medical equipment manufacturers. I worked for a surgical equipment provider for eye surgery once. Well, there are those for abortion tools too. There are designers that actually design them. A curse on them. I was a mechanical engineer for 10 years. Why take all that training, apply it to that, quit the job, get another job. And then the executives that make all the money on the sales.
Jesus has much to say in judgment on pro-abortion protesters that stand outside abortion places and yell and scream at pro-life demonstrators. Some of the most hate-filled and scary people I’ve ever seen in my life. He has much to say in judgment on men who father babies and then force the women to bear the pain of either raising that child alone or the abortion. He has much to say in judgment on men who should care for their daughters when they’re in the dire situations of their lives, they should stand by them with everything they need to keep their baby. And he has much to say in judgment on women themselves who harden their hearts and get the abortions. On all the sins connected with this horror of abortion, Jesus has much to say in judgment, if they will not repent. God’s apparent silence on abortion is temporary. I’m gonna say that again, God’s apparent silence and abortion is temporary. He will speak his mind when the time comes.
Assertion number four, the ultimate proof of Christ’s deity is the cross and the empty tomb. Look at verse 28, “So Jesus said to them, ‘When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am. Same Greek — you will know that I am — and that I do nothing on my own authority but speak just as the Father has taught me. The lifting up the Son of Man is his crucifixion. Therefore, I can’t hear this apart from also the emptying of the tomb, amen? The two of them go together. This is our only hope. And this is the sure and certain hope Jesus died for sins. His blood was shed on the cross for sinners like you and me. There is forgiveness, and it flows from the cross. There is forgiveness for all of those people. There’s forgiveness for Planned Parenthood executives, if they will just repent and turn to Christ, it could all be forgiven. There’s forgiveness for medical professionals who participated in abortions, if they’ll just turn and repent and turn to Christ. All of their sins will be forgiven, and the righteousness of Christ will be imputed to them.
There’s forgiveness for medical equipment manufacturers who take their skills and use them in such wicked ways, if they’ll just repent and turn away and say, “I’m not doing that anymore.” They can be forgiven through faith in Christ. Forgiveness for the pro-abortion demonstrators and the politicians and government policymakers, for those men who in the past perhaps have forced women to get abortions through neglecting their manly duties, responsibilities, there’s forgiveness, if they’ll just repent and turn to Christ. There’s forgiveness for women who get abortions, if they just repent and turn to Christ. 1 Timothy 1:15, “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the worst.” If you’re a true Christian, you just know what Paul means when he says, I’m the worst. There’s no self-righteousness, it’s gone, the cross just drives it away, and we have lifted up the son of man, the human race, lifted him up, that’s done. We killed him. Then we will know that he is who he claimed to be. He is God when he rose from the dead. That’s all the evidence we need.
Assertion number five. Sin enslaves but Jesus, the truth, emancipate or sets you free. 31-36 teaches this, look at verse 32, “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” With pride his enemies answered, “‘We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?’ Jesus replied, ‘I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.’” And then in verse 36, “So if the Son sets you free, you’ll be truly free.” Or free indeed, O sing it, I am free at last, free from sin. If you’re a Christian, you’re free. Isn’t that a wonderful feeling, just to run in the path of God’s commands because he set our hearts free, free to love, free to obey, free to follow, free from guilt. There is no tyrant. There’s no enslaving power like sin. Sin is a vicious tyrant that wants your very soul, your eternal soul. It wants to keep you under its vicious boot.
And abortion is tied to sin, it’s so clearly tied to the yearning for sexual immorality and freedom from consequences and all of that sexual revolution that happened in the ’60s and then ’73 came the abortion ruling. They’re just linked together. I just wanna be free to do whatever I wanna do, I don’t want any consequences in my life, I want freedom from judgment. I just wanna do whatever I wanna do. No, no, no, the true freedom is found in Jesus, freedom from the drive toward materialism that leads somebody to get an abortion for career reasons, or at least these doctors or the clinic side or the business side, to keep making lots of money on this. There’s freedom from that, from that enslavement to materialism, there’s freedom from enslavement to lust that leads to fornication. I was thinking this morning in the shower, and as I was just thinking about abortion, I wonder what percentages of the babies conceived that are eventually aborted are conceived in the following categories: adultery, fornication, marriage and rape. Just pie chart. I’m thinking the overwhelming majority are in adultery and fornication, and if those sins were wiped out, then abortion would just disappear, it wouldn’t be necessary. It’s because of adultery and fornication, these things happen, but if you’re enslaved into lust, Jesus can set you free. You don’t have to do those things and get into those binds.
Assertion number six, the devil is a murderous liar, and so are his children. Verse 44, Jesus again, speaking to his enemies, “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” So the devil was a liar and a murderer at the beginning of human history, and his lies at the tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, served his purpose, namely to kill us. He wanted to kill us. And so he lied to Eve and Adam and they bought the lie and they died. So he’s a murderer, he is a murderer, but he’s also the father of lies, so he sets up systems of lies, worldview systems, in other words, he just sets up lies. And his children are the unbelievers, the non-Christians. You know, you either have God as your adoptive Father or you have Satan as your spiritual father. Those are your options. There’s not a third option. And so when Jesus says, Your Father, the devil. That’s very strong language. But that’s the way Jesus was. He just told the truth.
And so, non-Christians are serving Satan and serving lies, and more than that, both Satan and his children have murder in their hearts. Jesus said to his enemies, you are trying to kill me. A man who told you the truth I heard from God. You want to kill me? So that comment, the Washington Post, “No wonder, they threw the Christians to the lions. I wish we could do it again.” Freeze frame, that is murder. Why? Brit Hume, should be murdered? He should be thrown to the lions for saying that if Tiger Woods wants to find forgiveness and redemption he should turn to Christ, he should be thrown to the lions for saying that? My friends, is that where we’re heading as a nation?
Assertion number seven. People would rather believe the devil’s lies than Jesus’s truth. Look at verse 45, and look at it carefully. “Yet because I tell you the truth, you do not believe me.” Look at the word “because.” The reason you don’t believe me is that I’m speaking the truth. If I would just lie, you’d believe me. That’s the implication, right? If I could just stand up and sing from the same piece of sheet music as everyone else is singing, you would love it and you’d sing along, but if I come and tell you the truth, you won’t believe it. People would rather believe in the devil’s lies than Jesus’s truth. With the abortion machine, the lies that we can have sexual freedom, the ability to do anything we want, any time we want sexually and be completely free from any consequences whatsoever, that is a lie, and it will be clear on Judgment Day what a lie that was. And because we tell the truth, people reject us.
And finally assertion number eight, only the children of God can recognize the truth. Verse 47, “He who belongs to God, hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.” The only ultimate answer to abortion is people repenting and turning to Christ, repenting and turning to Christ.
And so we come to application. What’s the application for you? I don’t know your spiritual state. You alone know your spiritual state. Are you a Christian? Have you come to Christ already? Have you already come to the cross? Has the blood of Jesus cleansed you? Are you covered in the righteousness of Christ? Will you be fine on Judgment Day, ’cause you have trusted in Christ as your only Savior. You’ve turned away from your good works. If not, repent and come to Christ now. You may not have even done anything concerning the abortion issue, but if you don’t know Jesus, you’re in danger. Unless you believe that he is the I am, you’ll die in your sins. So come to Christ. Christ has been raised up from the ground on the cross, and now he’s been raised to life by the Spirit of God, come to Christ. And then if I can just urge you in detail, repent of sins as needed concerning the abortion issue, there are two categories of sin in this. Sins of commission and sins of omission. There are some that have committed sin and the issue of abortion. Repent, you know what they are. I’ve already listed them many times, I won’t go through it again, but if you need to repent, I’m begging you. As though God Himself were making his appeal. Repent of that sin. Repent of the abortion. If you’re the man, repent of forcing her in that direction. If you have committed sin in this area, a doctor, a legislator, a judge, and you’ve done things, you know are wrong concerning abortion, repent and come to Christ and let him cleanse you of all that, and then there are those grievous sins of omission, things you should have done and didn’t. Are you in that category? I am. Has the Lord ever led you to do anything in this and you put it off or didn’t do anything, giving money to PSS or to any pregnancy support service, or any crisis pregnancy center may be volunteering your time. Maybe you were in a conversation and you knew what you wanted to say, but you just didn’t do it. You held your tongue because three or four of them were there and they might kill you, you know, if you said something, they might just go ahead and murder you, they might follow you home and kill you in your bed. And so you held back and you didn’t say something. I’m just urging you to repent and say, “Lord, give me another chance.”
Give me another chance. I wanna say something about the humanity of the pre-born, I wanna talk about how John the Baptist leapt for joy in his mother’s womb, there’s a person, he’s not even born yet but he lept for joy. I wanna talk about these things. And then, if I can urge you, thirdly, to just swim in the ocean of grace. One of the dangers of preaching every year on this is people just… they just don’t understand grace. They don’t understand the grace of God and what an ocean it is, and how in Romans 5:20, “where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more,” just swim in it. If you have confessed your sin, you’re free from the guilt, you are free from it, and God sees you as though you’ve never done it at all, you’re free. It’s so hard for us to believe that. And so when Satan comes around like in Zechariah 3 to accuse you, just let the Lord rebuke Satan. “Who can bring any charge against those whom God has chosen?” You’re free from it.
Ocean of grace, but also the grace of God as an educator to teach you not to do it in the future. It could be that somebody here today is listening to me and three years from now, you’ll reach a crisis in your life, and then all these cultural voices will come in on postmodernism, shove it aside and say the grace of God has taught me to say no to ungodliness and wickedness and lead a blameless, self-controlled life, whatever the consequences. Be courageous friends, and let’s embrace this absolute truth that we’ve seen here in John chapter 8. Let’s start thinking clearly, let’s start refuting the errors of our age. Let’s be warriors, worldview warriors and stand up for Jesus, stand up for truth incarnate and speak the truth in love. Close with me in prayer.
Andy Davis preaches an expository sermon on John 8. The main subject of the sermon is how Christ’s incarnation refutes the wicked lies of pro-abortionists.
– SERMON TRANSCRIPT –
So we’re looking this morning at John, chapter 8. You can turn in your Bibles there. From the very beginning, from the Garden of Eden it has always been a battle for truth. There in the Garden of Eden, Satan lied to Adam and Eve, he brought up questions of truth. “Did God really say you will…” “You must not eat from any tree in the garden.” “Did God really say that?” and interjecting that seed of doubt. Or then just flat out lying with murderous intent, “You shall not surely die!” saying that kind of lie. From the very beginning then, it’s been a battle for the mind… a battle for truth. We’re surrounded by people who are confused in their minds. They don’t think rightly. Paul speaks of this in Ephesians where he says, “So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They’re darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that’s in them due to the hardening of their hearts.” It’s lots of mental words there, a lot of mind words, it’s about the thinking, they’re just not thinking clearly.
But we have been given, dear friends, the mind of Christ, and we are called on to think rightly in this day and age, to understand our times, to know what we’re facing, to understand the spirit of the age. And one label that we can put on the spirit of the age here is this question of postmodernism. We’re told we live in the postmodern era, and that specifically comes down to the issue of truth. Josh McDowell said postmodernism is a worldview characterized by the belief that truth doesn’t exist in any objective sense, but is created rather than discovered, and so we make up truth for ourselves. So there’s confusion on this. And sadly, McDowell tells us by his research that this kind of mentality is settling into the church, so that we are thinking like the world does on this issue. In 1991, he said, McDowell, Josh McDowell said 52% of kids in churches who claim to be born again, 52%, 1991, said there was no absolute truth. In 1994, the number had risen to 62% that said that there was no absolute truth. In ’99, five years later, 78% of the church kids he was polling said, there is no absolute truth. The year 2002, the number had risen to 91%, nine out of 10 church kids, claim to be born again, say there really is no absolute truth.
Now you can just see the confusion, and therefore I feel a responsibility as a pastor to stand here and say, there is absolute truth, and His name is Jesus. And so today, we’re going to have truth incarnate, Jesus, taking on the spirit of the age, which is postmodernism, and also the abortion mentality: the abortion lie meets truth incarnate. And so people, our neighbors, our co-workers, the non-Christians that are around us, they speak of truth for you and truth for me, “your truth,” “my truth,” this kind of thing. This kind of language, and where the rubber meets the road here, I think in our nation is on this abortion issue. This is where the mental confusion reaches its peak. In ’92, there was a research poll that said that 73% that they polled stated they believe that the fetus is truly a human baby, and they also believe that killing is wrong. However, nearly three-quarters of those people, those same people, said that society should not have a say in any way, whether a woman terminates an abortion or terminate a pregnancy, an abortion. No, say at all. Three quarters, that’s just mental confusion, friends.
Or this one: 37 states in our nation have fetal homicide laws. You know what that is? Basically, if a pregnant woman meets with some kind of attack and she loses her baby, the man who attacked is charged with fetal homicide in 37 states. The core legal issue there is the personhood of the unborn., right? She lost her baby, he stands, or whoever attacked her stands, in judgment under those fetal homicide laws. But all 37 of those states allow abortion. Just mental confusion. What that means then is, legally, personhood is ascribed by the woman carrying the baby. It’s not intrinsic, of course. After birth, it’s intrinsic. So it changes at birth at that point, then you become a person because you’re now born… It makes no sense at all. It’s just mental confusion. In the same hospital, you can have some doctors, in a NICU, a neo-natal intensive care unit, just laboring with great skill to rescue a baby whose viability and fetal weight is less than an aborted baby in the same hospital. It just makes no sense. You could even see some doctors whose consciences have been seared doing one one day in the next one, or even on the same day.
It just makes no sense. It’s just confusion. Legislators can speak of being personally opposed to abortion and that they personally believe that the baby, that the pre-born is truly a human baby and ought to be protected, but at the same time in their public duty say they have to uphold the laws as they are written and go ahead and use this kind of language of a woman’s right to choose. Back in the Clinton days, I remember when he was running for office, he said his goal was to make abortion safe, legal, funded and rare. That one always bothered me. Makes no sense at all. Why rare? Why rare and safe? Safe for who? I understand legal and funded, I get that, but I don’t understand this at all. Why should it be rare? Talk to me, President Clinton. Why should it be rare? ‘Cause it makes you feel uncomfortable ’cause there’s something going here? Yes, because maybe there’s still some conscience that says it’s truly a human person. Or this one: women having crisis pregnancies, they go to these pregnancy centers, and GE sometime ago came out with an incredible ultrasound where you can actually see in living time the face of your baby, and the statistics are that I don’t know what it is, a high…like in the 90% or above, of those that are willing to look at the pictures, they decide not to have an abortion. It must be especially when the baby looks like them and they see that resemblance that sweet little face, but if they choose not to look, then the percentage goes way up on abortion, so I guess this is how it works.
I remember when I was a little kid, I thought something doesn’t exist if I don’t look at it. If I cover my face, you’re gone. You’re not there. If I can’t see you, you can’t see me. I remember thinking that nothing existed until I looked and if I look, then it suddenly exists so I’d like, there it is. Suddenly, now it’s gone. And you could tell me it’s behind me, those chairs, all those empty chairs, but I don’t believe it until I turn and to see it. My mother talked me out of that way of thinking. She said it was very self-centered. “I was here before you were born, and the world was here before you were born.” It helped me, things don’t exist because you suddenly look at them. Friends, this is mental confusion. May everyone look at the ultrasound. May they all look at the faces and find out the truth, and the truth is this little baby is created in the image of God, and it ought to be protected by the laws of our country, dear friends, it ought to be protected by the laws of America.
And so we’re speaking about…Some people talk about a culture war. I think here, it’s a clash of worldviews, is what it is, and so I wanna bring you face-to-face with truth. I have a lot to say about worldviews. I have a lot to say about other things, but I just wanna get to the Scripture, so I’m pitching page two, page three and page four… Basically, all of these are saying, if you follow the worldview that leads to abortion, you end up with chaos. Truth for me, and truth for you ends up with chaos. Well, guess what we’re having increasingly? Chaos. No, no, no Christians, we need to stand up and say, “There is absolute truth.” And I want to, again, introduce you to him, not to it. I want to introduce you to absolute truth incarnate and his name is Jesus. So we’re looking this morning at John, chapter 8. Now, before Jesus was incarnate, God had already revealed himself to be the God of truth. In Isaiah 65:16, this is what he calls himself twice, the God of truth. Deuteronomy 32:4 says, “He is the Rock, His work is perfect. For all his ways are judgment, a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.”
Psalm 51:6 says, “Behold, you delight in truth in the inner portions or parts.” Psalm 119:116, “All your words are true, all your righteous laws are eternal.” Isaiah 45:19, “I, the Lord, speak truth. I declare what is right.” So God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is truth and the absolute standard of truth, and He speaks always the truth. So what is the truth? It’s that which corresponds to what really is, to reality. That’s what it is, everything opposite from God, who is the ultimate reality in the universe, is a lie. Everything opposite from what he asserts is a lie. John 8 teaches us that Satan is a liar and the father of lies. And so also all non-Christians have accepted his lies and have become liars themselves, and all of us would be liars if it weren’t for the grace of God saving us from it. Because it says right here in Psalm 116:11, “In my dismay, I said, All men are liars.” That’s our native state. But Jesus is truth incarnate. And so it says in John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The Word is God communicating truth to us.
“And the Word was God,” verse 14 of that same chapter. The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.” So that’s truth incarnate, dear friends. It’s truth incarnate, and his name is Jesus. John 1:17 says, “For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” So we have the Gospel of John. What I’m going to designate for us this morning, the gospel of truth. Why do I call it that? Well, the Greek word for truth, alethinos, that’s the Greek root — over one quarter of all of its uses in the Bible, in the New Testament, is in one book, the Gospel of John. Forty-seven times this Greek word appears in the Gospel of John. No other book uses the word “true” or “truth” or something like that, anywhere near as frequently. The second most frequent is 1 John, and that’s 12 times. Romans, at ten. And so this is a gospel saturated in the truth, and it’s truth covering every topic of life, like Judgment Day, for example. John 3:21, “Whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what He has done has been done through God, those that live by the truth comes into the light.”
Or worship John, chapter 4, Jesus with the Samaritan woman. He says this in verses 23 and 24, “The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” Or again, concerning our spiritual nourishment, the ongoing nourishment of our souls, John, chapter 6, “Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gives you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives his life to the world.’” So Jesus has come to be the bread of life, the true bread. Or again, Jesus’s own role as life-giver to His disciples. John 15:1, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser, or the Holy Spirit’s future role. He’s called there the Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit is just one of the names for him. Here in John 16:13, he’s called the Spirit of truth. “When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth.”
Dear friends, where is postmodernism there? The Holy Spirit is going to guide you into spiritual, metaphysical, invisible truth. The very thing postmodernism says, we can never know. But we Christians know the opposite, don’t we? We can know the truth through the ministry of the spirit of truth. And then the definition of eternal life. Jesus praying to his Heavenly Father in John 17:3, he says, “This is eternal life, that they may know you the only…” what? “true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Later in that same chapter, he says in John 17:17, “Sanctify them by the truth, your Word is truth.” We’re getting a strong dose of truth this morning, do you sense that? That’s what it’s all about. If you wonder what the pastor is about, wonder no longer. It’s about truth. There is truth. Dear friends, feed on it. Just let it flow through you. Read the whole gospel of John this week. Just feed on truth. The most significant assertion of all though, I think, concerning this is John 14 in verse 6, in which Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Can I tell you that I don’t really think it’s gonna be abortion in the 21st century that’s really going to bring us into conflict with the world? It’s Jesus’s assertion there, that He is the only way to God. And that you have to believe that he is the only way to God and is truth incarnate or you will go to hell. That is where the rubber will meet the road in the 21st century. We’re gonna waffle on that, we must not… they will not have life. If we don’t tell them the truth on that Jesus, Jesus doesn’t merely know the truth, he doesn’t merely just assert the truth or teach the truth or exemplify the truth, or point the way to the truth, he is in fact, truth incarnate himself. He is the truth. And so he gives us all, I think, not just Pontius Pilate, but he gives us all an invitation to truth. You remember on trial? He stands before Pilate. Pilate says, “You are a King, then.” Jesus says, “You are right in saying that I’m a king. In fact, for this, I was born. And for this reason, I came into the world to testify to the truth.”
Everyone on the side of truth listens to me. And just so you know, there’s nothing new under the sun, postmodernism spoke at that moment, saying, what is truth? Now, it wouldn’t bother me if Pilate said, “What is truth? I really wanna know, I’ve been searching all my life. If you would just tell me, then we could have a conversation.” He goes and says, “What is truth?” And goes out the door. There is postmodernism 20 centuries ago. Dear friends, we encounter truth, and in John 8, a saturation of truth.
I just wanna bring you through eight assertions very quickly that Jesus makes, each one of them would be worthy of an hour, but I just wanna bring you just face-to-face with the truth and just apply it to this abortion question that’s just tormenting my soul and our nation. Oh, for the day when we’ll be done with it. Amen? I hope we’re done forever with institutional racism. I assume we’re done forever with chattel slavery. This can happen, too, friends, it can. So why don’t we pray for it, why don’t we pray for it.
Assertion number one, look at verse 12, John 8:12, and the assertion here is Jesus is the only escape from darkness. He’s the only way to get out of darkness. You wanna get out of darkness? Jesus is the way, verse 12, “And Jesus again spoke to them, saying, ‘l am the light of the world. Whoever follows Me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’” Our postmodern mishmash is a valley of darkness, and walking in a valley of darkness is inherently dangerous. Now, here I liken or I equate light and truth, I link them together. Psalm 43:3 says, “Send forth your light and your truth. Let them lead me, let them bring me to your holy hill and into your dwelling.” So God sends forth His light and this truth. They’re really just the same thing, I think, in that case. Or again, Ephesians 5:13 and 14, everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for it is light that makes everything visible. So by a light, we can see that that person over there is a woman holding a little baby, not three guys wearing baseball hats. It’s good to know the difference. Or by light, we can see that it’s raining and the roads are slick, rather than it’s really hot and there’s heat patterns coming off, like in August. It’s good to know the difference. Or by light, we can see that the police officer is beckoning for us to go into the intersection, not putting his hand up to stop.
Is that important? I think that’s important to know the difference, and he will not say, Hey, if he goes like that and you go and you get in an accident, he’s gonna come over on the basis of truth and say, “I told you to stop.” You say, “But we live in a postmodern age. That was your truth. My truth is, I wanted to go…” Well, see how well that works in a court of law. We’ll see if that continues. What a schizophrenic age we live in. We know very well when the police officer puts his hands up, stop and our eyes tell us the truth. That’s what he’s doing. By light, we can see the cat is sleeping on the floor in the walk space. All right, in the dark, you might not see her. You find out when you step on her neck. All right, the bottom line is, it’s good to know what’s in front of you as you walk, so by light, you can see the truth, you can see reality as the… Let me tell you something, God is reality, whether you believe in him or not, and some day you’ll see it with your own eyes, that day will be Judgment Day. it’s good to know now by faith what the truth is, amen?
So there is a truth though, whether you think it or not. Now only by following Christ can we escape the darkness of confusion that Satan put around us. He’s blinded the minds of unbelievers, it says. Now we must follow Jesus and this following of Christ is costly, wholeheartedly obedience. Look at verses 30 and 31, “As he was saying these things, many believed in him. So Jesus said to the Jews who believed in him, ‘If you abide in My word, you are truly my disciples.’” So it’s a continual following of Jesus, not a sampling of Jesus. We’re not sampling his teachings, but it’s abiding in his word. Dear friends, it is not enough to be merely a nominal Christian. Do you realize it’s nominal Christianity that’s led to these weird poll numbers? People asserting certain things about their spiritual state and then saying other things by how they vote and by how they live? That’s nominal Christianity. It will not save anybody on Judgment Day. We’re talking about if you wanna be truly Jesus’s disciple, you have to abide in his word.
All right, assertion number two. Unless you believe that Christ is God, you will perish eternally.
Look at John 8:24, this is an incredibly important verse and frequently overlooked. This is what I call my Jehovah’s Witness verse. You want one single verse for the Jehovah’s Witnesses? This is your verse. Don’t try John 1, believe it or not, they’ve heard it. All right, John 1:1, they’ve heard it, it should be good enough, but bring them over to something unfamiliar. John 8:24, and what does it say? “I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.” That’s what the Greek says, friends. Now, the NIV and all the other translators stick some italicized words in there, and at least the NASB is honest enough to put it in italics, I am he but it’s not there in the Greek, friends. It just says, unless you believe that ego eimi, “I am,” you will die in your sins. Now, what does that mean? Well, the Jews knew what it meant. Just the verse before that in verse 13, sorry, verse 23, he had said, “You were from below, I am from above. You are of this world, I am not of this world.”
He’s already kind of making a claim to the point, which is deity, I’m from above, but at the end of the chapter, he will make it very plain and clear, and the Jews will prove they knew exactly what he meant. Look at verse 56, “‘Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day, he saw it and was glad,’ and so the Jews said to him, ‘You’re not yet 50 years old, and have you seen Abraham?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.’ The discussion over. They picked up stones to stone him. They knew he was claiming to be God. Why? Because that’s what God, that’s how God designated himself from the flames of the burning bush. The angel of the Lord appeared to Moses from the flames of the burning bush, and the Lord spoke to him from the bush saying, “Then God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites, I am has sent me to you.’” So what Jesus is saying in John 8:24 is, you must believe that I am God in the flesh, or you will go to Hell.
Our neighbors need to hear that. Our lost neighbors need to hear this truth, and we have to be courageous enough to tell them the truth. This is the truth that I think America hates more than any other truth. You’ll have actually, I think, an easier time on abortion than on this one, these days, that Jesus isn’t merely a good moral teacher, he was not a religious leader, he wasn’t merely a prophet, is not enough to believe, even with the JWs, the Jehovah’s Witnesses believe, that he is a god, but not the God. A powerful created spiritual being. No, no, Jesus is claiming absolute deity here and said, “You must believe it or you will die in your sin.” That means go to Hell. Recently, you know that Brit Hume committed a terrible societal guff by telling the truth. I think about what it says in Galatians, “Have I become your enemy by telling you the truth?” He was speaking of Tiger Woods, and he was saying that if Tiger Woods wanted to find forgiveness and redemption, he needed to turn to Christ. Do you all think that’s true? If he needs forgiveness and redemption, if that’s… if he wants a good hamburger, you can give advice, if he wants some good clothes, you can give some…
No, no, we’re talking about forgiveness and redemption. Where is he gonna find those? I tell you, he finds them in Jesus Christ and nowhere else. But look at the pounding he’s taken. I read it on a Washington Post website, and the responses… The 346 responses, very interesting topic to the Washington Post readers. I didn’t find one positive statement in a 100, the vitriol that was poured on this man for speaking the truth. And they were mocking Christ. One writer said, No wonder they threw the Christians to the lions. I wish we could do it again. Dear friends, that’s a heart of murder, I’ll get more back to that later, ’cause it’s also in our text, it’s a heart of murder is what it is.
Number three, assertion number three. Judgment is coming, even if it doesn’t seem so. Let me say that again. Judgment is coming even if it doesn’t seem so. Look at verse 26, these ominous words, it’s really just a statement you could just look right over it but Jesus said this to his enemies, “I have much to say in judgment concerning you.” That is terrifying. Very soon in our study in Matthew we’ll go to Matthew 23, when Jesus gives the 7 woes, “Woe to you…” Well, this is in effect, the same thing. I have things to say about you. I have things to say in judgment about you. There is a day coming, a day of reckoning when we’ll have to give an account for our lives, and Jesus says, I will speak in judgment. Now, notice that Jesus doesn’t say them there in John 8, not yet. The day is coming when I will unburden my mind concerning your case and your situation. He will speak those words and he will speak according to the truth, because in Revelation 20:12, it says, “The court will be seated, the books will be opened and everyone will be judged according to what they had done as written in the books,” there’s no escaping it. And the judgment will be based on truth. We really did those things, really thought those thoughts, it’s really true. And so it is with abortion. People think that because the judgment isn’t coming now, that it’ll never come at all.
Jesus didn’t come into the world to destroy people’s lives. He didn’t come into the world to condemn people and to send them to Hell. He could have done that from Heaven. He entered the world to save people, and so he wasn’t bringing judgment and wrath at that moment, he was just saying, it is coming. I have much to say in judgment concerning you, but it’s going to be deferred. And so Jesus has much to say in judgment on this whole abortion issue. Dear friends, he has much to say in judgment against Planned Parenthood for opening, soon to be opened, a 78,000 square foot abortion facility, a super hospital, so to speak, in Houston, which will have the largest late-term abortion wing in the world. I have decided to spare you the details of how those abortions are actually done, I frequently review actually the procedures by which babies are killed up to 12 weeks, how they’re killed toward the end of the first trimester. How they’re killed early in the second trimester, I’ve decided to spare you the details, but they’d be true if I told you, and if we’re just cringing back and saying, I don’t wanna know how they’re actually killed, I would urge you to go to websites and find out how they actually are killed.
And then after you’re done being nauseous and after you’re done weeping, then there’ll be some steel in your soul concerning this issue. It is a grievous thing. But Planned Parenthood will have much… Jesus will have much to say against them for what they’re doing in Houston, or on doctors and nurses that willingly do abortions hardening their own hearts when they know the truth, or legislators and politicians, government officials that defend abortion rights and neglect the cause of the poorest and neediest people in our nation. On medical equipment manufacturers. I worked for a surgical equipment provider for eye surgery once. Well, there are those for abortion tools too. There are designers that actually design them. A curse on them. I was a mechanical engineer for 10 years. Why take all that training, apply it to that, quit the job, get another job. And then the executives that make all the money on the sales.
Jesus has much to say in judgment on pro-abortion protesters that stand outside abortion places and yell and scream at pro-life demonstrators. Some of the most hate-filled and scary people I’ve ever seen in my life. He has much to say in judgment on men who father babies and then force the women to bear the pain of either raising that child alone or the abortion. He has much to say in judgment on men who should care for their daughters when they’re in the dire situations of their lives, they should stand by them with everything they need to keep their baby. And he has much to say in judgment on women themselves who harden their hearts and get the abortions. On all the sins connected with this horror of abortion, Jesus has much to say in judgment, if they will not repent. God’s apparent silence on abortion is temporary. I’m gonna say that again, God’s apparent silence and abortion is temporary. He will speak his mind when the time comes.
Assertion number four, the ultimate proof of Christ’s deity is the cross and the empty tomb. Look at verse 28, “So Jesus said to them, ‘When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am. Same Greek — you will know that I am — and that I do nothing on my own authority but speak just as the Father has taught me. The lifting up the Son of Man is his crucifixion. Therefore, I can’t hear this apart from also the emptying of the tomb, amen? The two of them go together. This is our only hope. And this is the sure and certain hope Jesus died for sins. His blood was shed on the cross for sinners like you and me. There is forgiveness, and it flows from the cross. There is forgiveness for all of those people. There’s forgiveness for Planned Parenthood executives, if they will just repent and turn to Christ, it could all be forgiven. There’s forgiveness for medical professionals who participated in abortions, if they’ll just turn and repent and turn to Christ. All of their sins will be forgiven, and the righteousness of Christ will be imputed to them.
There’s forgiveness for medical equipment manufacturers who take their skills and use them in such wicked ways, if they’ll just repent and turn away and say, “I’m not doing that anymore.” They can be forgiven through faith in Christ. Forgiveness for the pro-abortion demonstrators and the politicians and government policymakers, for those men who in the past perhaps have forced women to get abortions through neglecting their manly duties, responsibilities, there’s forgiveness, if they’ll just repent and turn to Christ. There’s forgiveness for women who get abortions, if they just repent and turn to Christ. 1 Timothy 1:15, “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the worst.” If you’re a true Christian, you just know what Paul means when he says, I’m the worst. There’s no self-righteousness, it’s gone, the cross just drives it away, and we have lifted up the son of man, the human race, lifted him up, that’s done. We killed him. Then we will know that he is who he claimed to be. He is God when he rose from the dead. That’s all the evidence we need.
Assertion number five. Sin enslaves but Jesus, the truth, emancipate or sets you free. 31-36 teaches this, look at verse 32, “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” With pride his enemies answered, “‘We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?’ Jesus replied, ‘I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.’” And then in verse 36, “So if the Son sets you free, you’ll be truly free.” Or free indeed, O sing it, I am free at last, free from sin. If you’re a Christian, you’re free. Isn’t that a wonderful feeling, just to run in the path of God’s commands because he set our hearts free, free to love, free to obey, free to follow, free from guilt. There is no tyrant. There’s no enslaving power like sin. Sin is a vicious tyrant that wants your very soul, your eternal soul. It wants to keep you under its vicious boot.
And abortion is tied to sin, it’s so clearly tied to the yearning for sexual immorality and freedom from consequences and all of that sexual revolution that happened in the ’60s and then ’73 came the abortion ruling. They’re just linked together. I just wanna be free to do whatever I wanna do, I don’t want any consequences in my life, I want freedom from judgment. I just wanna do whatever I wanna do. No, no, no, the true freedom is found in Jesus, freedom from the drive toward materialism that leads somebody to get an abortion for career reasons, or at least these doctors or the clinic side or the business side, to keep making lots of money on this. There’s freedom from that, from that enslavement to materialism, there’s freedom from enslavement to lust that leads to fornication. I was thinking this morning in the shower, and as I was just thinking about abortion, I wonder what percentages of the babies conceived that are eventually aborted are conceived in the following categories: adultery, fornication, marriage and rape. Just pie chart. I’m thinking the overwhelming majority are in adultery and fornication, and if those sins were wiped out, then abortion would just disappear, it wouldn’t be necessary. It’s because of adultery and fornication, these things happen, but if you’re enslaved into lust, Jesus can set you free. You don’t have to do those things and get into those binds.
Assertion number six, the devil is a murderous liar, and so are his children. Verse 44, Jesus again, speaking to his enemies, “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” So the devil was a liar and a murderer at the beginning of human history, and his lies at the tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, served his purpose, namely to kill us. He wanted to kill us. And so he lied to Eve and Adam and they bought the lie and they died. So he’s a murderer, he is a murderer, but he’s also the father of lies, so he sets up systems of lies, worldview systems, in other words, he just sets up lies. And his children are the unbelievers, the non-Christians. You know, you either have God as your adoptive Father or you have Satan as your spiritual father. Those are your options. There’s not a third option. And so when Jesus says, Your Father, the devil. That’s very strong language. But that’s the way Jesus was. He just told the truth.
And so, non-Christians are serving Satan and serving lies, and more than that, both Satan and his children have murder in their hearts. Jesus said to his enemies, you are trying to kill me. A man who told you the truth I heard from God. You want to kill me? So that comment, the Washington Post, “No wonder, they threw the Christians to the lions. I wish we could do it again.” Freeze frame, that is murder. Why? Brit Hume, should be murdered? He should be thrown to the lions for saying that if Tiger Woods wants to find forgiveness and redemption he should turn to Christ, he should be thrown to the lions for saying that? My friends, is that where we’re heading as a nation?
Assertion number seven. People would rather believe the devil’s lies than Jesus’s truth. Look at verse 45, and look at it carefully. “Yet because I tell you the truth, you do not believe me.” Look at the word “because.” The reason you don’t believe me is that I’m speaking the truth. If I would just lie, you’d believe me. That’s the implication, right? If I could just stand up and sing from the same piece of sheet music as everyone else is singing, you would love it and you’d sing along, but if I come and tell you the truth, you won’t believe it. People would rather believe in the devil’s lies than Jesus’s truth. With the abortion machine, the lies that we can have sexual freedom, the ability to do anything we want, any time we want sexually and be completely free from any consequences whatsoever, that is a lie, and it will be clear on Judgment Day what a lie that was. And because we tell the truth, people reject us.
And finally assertion number eight, only the children of God can recognize the truth. Verse 47, “He who belongs to God, hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.” The only ultimate answer to abortion is people repenting and turning to Christ, repenting and turning to Christ.
And so we come to application. What’s the application for you? I don’t know your spiritual state. You alone know your spiritual state. Are you a Christian? Have you come to Christ already? Have you already come to the cross? Has the blood of Jesus cleansed you? Are you covered in the righteousness of Christ? Will you be fine on Judgment Day, ’cause you have trusted in Christ as your only Savior. You’ve turned away from your good works. If not, repent and come to Christ now. You may not have even done anything concerning the abortion issue, but if you don’t know Jesus, you’re in danger. Unless you believe that he is the I am, you’ll die in your sins. So come to Christ. Christ has been raised up from the ground on the cross, and now he’s been raised to life by the Spirit of God, come to Christ. And then if I can just urge you in detail, repent of sins as needed concerning the abortion issue, there are two categories of sin in this. Sins of commission and sins of omission. There are some that have committed sin and the issue of abortion. Repent, you know what they are. I’ve already listed them many times, I won’t go through it again, but if you need to repent, I’m begging you. As though God Himself were making his appeal. Repent of that sin. Repent of the abortion. If you’re the man, repent of forcing her in that direction. If you have committed sin in this area, a doctor, a legislator, a judge, and you’ve done things, you know are wrong concerning abortion, repent and come to Christ and let him cleanse you of all that, and then there are those grievous sins of omission, things you should have done and didn’t. Are you in that category? I am. Has the Lord ever led you to do anything in this and you put it off or didn’t do anything, giving money to PSS or to any pregnancy support service, or any crisis pregnancy center may be volunteering your time. Maybe you were in a conversation and you knew what you wanted to say, but you just didn’t do it. You held your tongue because three or four of them were there and they might kill you, you know, if you said something, they might just go ahead and murder you, they might follow you home and kill you in your bed. And so you held back and you didn’t say something. I’m just urging you to repent and say, “Lord, give me another chance.”
Give me another chance. I wanna say something about the humanity of the pre-born, I wanna talk about how John the Baptist leapt for joy in his mother’s womb, there’s a person, he’s not even born yet but he lept for joy. I wanna talk about these things. And then, if I can urge you, thirdly, to just swim in the ocean of grace. One of the dangers of preaching every year on this is people just… they just don’t understand grace. They don’t understand the grace of God and what an ocean it is, and how in Romans 5:20, “where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more,” just swim in it. If you have confessed your sin, you’re free from the guilt, you are free from it, and God sees you as though you’ve never done it at all, you’re free. It’s so hard for us to believe that. And so when Satan comes around like in Zechariah 3 to accuse you, just let the Lord rebuke Satan. “Who can bring any charge against those whom God has chosen?” You’re free from it.
Ocean of grace, but also the grace of God as an educator to teach you not to do it in the future. It could be that somebody here today is listening to me and three years from now, you’ll reach a crisis in your life, and then all these cultural voices will come in on postmodernism, shove it aside and say the grace of God has taught me to say no to ungodliness and wickedness and lead a blameless, self-controlled life, whatever the consequences. Be courageous friends, and let’s embrace this absolute truth that we’ve seen here in John chapter 8. Let’s start thinking clearly, let’s start refuting the errors of our age. Let’s be warriors, worldview warriors and stand up for Jesus, stand up for truth incarnate and speak the truth in love. Close with me in prayer.
