Pastor Andy Davis preaches an expository sermon on Psalm 139. The main subject of the sermon is how human life should be understood to be sacred.
Pastor Andy Davis preaches an expository sermon on Psalm 139. The main subject of the sermon is how human life should be understood to be sacred.
This Sunday, this morning is Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. The word sanctity means sacredness. It means that human life, we believe is set apart, is unique and sacred and special by God. We, having been created in the image of God, we are in his likeness, and therefore we are precious to Him. Human life is sacred. This is the world view that the Bible presents to us. This is biblical truth, that we are in the image of God, and that means accountability and blessing. So we celebrate human life today. And I must tell you that life at its heart, for me at least, and probably for you too, is unpredictable. I’m never quite sure what’s going to happen on any given day. I have a good idea. I thought probably I would come to church today, I thought probably I would preach today and some other things, but the sermon that I expected to preach to you, I’m not going to preach. I’m going to preach a different Sanctity of Human Life sermon, one that some of you have heard before, changed a little bit. The sermon that’s in your outline is a good sermon, maybe I’ll preach it in the future, but not today.
Okay? I put all that work into it. But the Lord said, “No, a different one.” And so I said, “Yes, Lord.”, and so we’re doing something else today.
I. Another Year
We have gone through another year. And in that year, abortion has remained the law of the land. That means, if statistics hold true, probably somewhere between 1.3 and 1.6 million babies were killed, legally, in our country this past year. Legally killed in our country. Is that acceptable to you? It’s not acceptable to me. And so that’s the bad news, abortion is still, as many politicians remind us, the law of the land, that is true. What that means is that the initiative must rest with us. Do you see that? If we do nothing, it will continue to be the law of the land, and millions of babies will continue to be killed, legally, in our country. And so the initiative must rest with us. So another year has passed, but it’s not all been darkness, we know that in this past year, in 2003, we saw the Partial Birth Abortion Act passed on November 5, 2003. George Bush signed into law this Partial Birth Abortion Act of 2003, making illegal that hideous practice of killing babies that are almost born.
That anyone would not see the wisdom to that is shocking to me, but immediately, a federal judge overturned it or put an injunction against it, and the ACLU and many other lawyers are determined to fight this unjust law, so they believe, and bring back some sanity in their way of thinking to abortion. They are concerned about the so called slippery slope, that once you give up a little bit, its gonna go all the way, and there will be no freedom for abortion in our country. Oh may it happen. May it happen. I want that slippery slope. You know why? Because there is no difference between life outside the womb and life inside the womb in God’s eyes. And there is no philosophical barrier you can hold up, as we’ll talk about later in this message, it just doesn’t hold up. And they know it. And so its even got to the point where some ethicists are willing to say, “We acknowledge its human life, but it should be legal to kill anyway for the following reasons.” Isn’t that shocking? At Princeton…ethicists are saying those kinds of things? But that’s where we’re at.
“There is no difference between life outside the womb and life inside the womb in God’s eyes”
And we’re in a kind of a legal schizophrenia now, as you know. The Scott Peterson murder trial where he can be held possibly for the murder of his pre-born child. This is schizophrenic, you understand that? How it could be legal in California to abort the baby, but if there’s no indication whatsoever that the mother doesn’t want the child, its assumed that she does want the child, and so therefore he can be held for the murder of a pre-born child. This is unbelievable to me. I don’t understand how you can have the one and not the other, I don’t. It is schizophrenic and more and more people are seeing it this way. Polls are showing that more and more people, young people entering college students and others are not seeing the logic of abortion, they don’t see it, they don’t understand it. And so that whole base is eroding and that is good news, is it not? But our work isn’t finished yet. Because abortion is still the law of the land. The church is still, in 1 Timothy 3:15, the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth. And so what we have to do is we have to refute satanic lies that the devil is telling and has told. The devil is telling lies, and we must get out there and refute them.
II. Satan’s Web of Lies
Now, I preached this sermon a year ago, and I’d like to ask, as you think about this sermon, have you told the truth to anybody this past year on these issues? That’ all. Basically, you have an opportunity here from the word of God, again, a refutation of six lies that the devil has been telling. But what I want you to do is ask yourself, have you spoken these truths to anybody who needs to hear them? See, we must take the initiative. It’s up to us to change things. If things remain the same, if we do nothing, if we remain comfortable and think its too difficult to challenge minds and hearts on this issue, if we’re going to pay a price relationally with relatives or friends, acquaintances, co-workers, then nothing will change, and it will continue.
We must agitate. We must be willing to pay the price. We must refute Satan’s web of lies. Jesus said in John 8:44 of the devil. “When the devil lies, he speaks his native tongue…,”. Isn’t that wonderful? “For he is a liar and the father of lies.” Now, Father of lies means that he begets, he gives birth to lies. He speaks lies, its what he does. And so therefore, these lies, we can trace back to their satanic origin. And therefore, he tells I think three great lies to society which we must refute. First is that the pre-born is not truly a human person. Secondly, that the child is a burden and not a blessing. Third, abortion is beneficial to the life of the mother. He also is telling two lies to the church. Number one, abortion is so entrenched as the law of the land that nothing you can do will make any difference whatsoever. Secondly, he tells this lie, simply changing the law to make abortion illegal will completely solve this problem.
Thirdly, He tells lies to individuals, to guilty sinners, specifically in this matter. Your sin is so great that nothing can take it away. There can be no forgiveness for you in the area of abortion. Let’s start to dispel each of these lies with truth, shall we? The word of God refutes each of these six lives.
III. Dispelling the Lies With Pure Truth
Satan’s Lie #1
Let’s look at the first, namely that the preborn is not truly a human person. Now, I could speak from the language and findings of biology, and it would be right for a Christian to do so, because we believe that God created everything. And so, there is ample biological evidence of the uniqueness and personhood of the child from the moment of conception. I know that there are some dehumanizing terms used of the pre-born such as fetus or even worse, product of conception. They are put in place…these words…to separate us somewhat from the personhood, that we’re dealing with a genuine human being in the womb. But let me ask you a question. Any mother who is excited, looking forward to the birth of their baby, when they feel the fetus…the product of conception kick their womb inside, do they say, “Oh, my fetus just kicked me. Oh, come and feel.” They say to the husband, “Come and feel the fetus as it moves around, the product of conception. Oh, listen, can you listen to it’s heart beat?” No, no one talks like that, do they? They say my baby, don’t they? It’s just the way it is. It’s a baby. And that’s the way we think. You have to be trained out to think a different way. And the training is available. It’s out there. We’re being trained to call it a fetus, so I could speak of the genetic uniqueness of the child from conception. Its it’s own person from the moment of conception. I could speak about the development, which is getting easier and easier to see with the 4D ultrasound that GE came up with. Have you seen on the internet? You can look and see some of the… A rendition of what you’ll see through the GE 4D thing. What it is, you can actually see a real time moving like motion picture of your baby. Isn’t that exciting? And more and more clinics are using these. Pro-life, pregnancy support type clinics are using this very expensive equipment to show women who are wrestling with the issue of what’ going on in their lives, to see their babies. And this is amazing, something like more than 60% of those women who come in, determined to get abortions decide not to after seeing that evidence.
That’s those that are convinced they’re going to get an abortion. How about those that aren’t sure or even those that are excited about the baby? There’s no doubt in their mind, this is a baby, and they can watch it, they can see. So we could speak at the biological level, but you know me, I would rather speak scripturally. Does the Bible give us any indication that the pre-born is a human person? And the answer is overwhelmingly yes! From Psalm 39, we have great evidence. Turn in your Bible is Psalm 139 and take a look with me, and you will see some of this incredible evidence. Now the context of the specific statements we’re gonna look at this morning, of Psalm 139, the overall message is of an omniscient, omnipresent God in intimate, personal relationship with David. And omniscient, omnipresent God in intimate, personal relationship with David. You could sum it up into this little phrase, “You and me, O God, you and me”. Now, as I read over the first few verses of Psalm 139, see if you can hear that you and the me. You and me. “O Lord, You have searched me, and You know me. You know when I sit and when I rise. You perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down. You are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, you know it completely, O Lord, you hem me in behind, and before you have laid your hand upon me, such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. Where can I go from Your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you were there. If I make my bed in the depths, you were there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn and settle on the far side of the sea, even there, your hand will will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me, even the darkness will not be dark to you, the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you,”
“Does the Bible give us any indication that the pre-born is a human person? And the answer is overwhelmingly yes!”
I’ll stop there. Do you see the you and me dynamic there in those first 12 verses? Very much the intense relationship between a sovereign, powerful, omniscient God, omnipresent. No matter where you go, there is God. And David says, I can’t get away from you. Not that he would want to, but it’s an incredible thing to be so thoroughly known and loved by God. He feels hemmed in, as it were, behind and before by God’s omniscience and omnipresence. Even David’s secret actions in the dark are fully open and they bear before God, who sees all things.
Now, that’s the context, look at verses 13 through 16, and we get to some relevant verses to the issue. We see, in verses 13 through 16, that this intense relationship began while God was knitting David together in his mother’s womb. Even at that point, David was being formed to have a relationship with God. Look at verse 13 and the following. “For you created my in most being, you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”
Studies show that newborn infants can recognize their mother’s voice. Now, how is that? Well, because they’ve been hearing it for months and months. And so they recognize Mom’s voice and in like manner, David’s relationship with God began inside the womb. Thats where it started. David didn’t fully know that, eventually, he would come to know it, but knowledge was being built up piece by piece, beginning inside the womb, not beginning when he was born, but beginning even before he was born. The pieces of his relationship with God were being put into place even at that point. Now, look at Verse 13, it says, “You created my in most being, you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” Now, I appreciate Dr. Walker being with us to help us with translation. And this morning, those of you that heard him, heard him talk about kidneys and livers and other things like that, and we’re gonna see that right in this verse. In Psalm 139, verse 13, the King James Version gives us this. “For thou hast possessed my reins. Thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.” Now, reins is related to renal, like kidney, and that’s where it is.
It’s…definitely, the translation would come out of the word kidneys, its the same thing we see in the sacrificial passages, for example, in Exodus 29:13, it says, “Take all the fat around the inner parts, the covering of the liver and both kidneys with the fat on them and burn them on the altar.” Okay, so it means physical kidneys there, no doubt about it. But here, it has a more metaphorical sense, like we would use the word heart. We use the word heart to mean if somebody has heart catheterization or some kind of heart trouble, it means that they’re having problems with the muscle that pumps the blood through their body. But when we say how my heart yearns within me, we’re talking about the immaterial nature of us, which relates to God and which thinks and feels and decides. And there’s a molding together of those. We are spirits in bodies, are we not? And that gets knit together in the mother’s womb, it gets woven together. The immaterial and the material, just getting formed by God, only he can do that. And so we have this word, the kidneys, used in this way, Psalm 7, verse 9, “O righteous God who searches minds and hearts.”
When was the last time you had your kidney searched? But that’s what it says, “God searches your kidneys.” What does it mean? He searches your heart, your immaterial nature, your mind, your heart, your thoughts, your passions, your aspirations. He searches them, he knows them completely. Psalm 16:7, I will bless the Lord who gives me counsel. In the night, also my kidneys instruct me. I think you ought to listen to your kidneys, I really believe that when at night your kidneys are instructing you, I think you should listen to them. But I think what it means is that immaterial nature of you is speaking to you, and it’s speaking wisdom to you through the Word of God. Best of all, I think in Job 19:25 and following, I love this, “I know that my redeemer lives and that in the end, He will take his stand on the Earth.” That’s Jesus Christ, Jobs’ redeemer is Christ. Who else could it be? And in the end, Christ is gonna take His stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh, I will see God resurrection. I myself will see him with my own eyes. I am not another. How my heart yearns within me, there are those kidneys again, my heart, my kidneys are yearning for that day, when I can see Jesus take His stand on the Earth. My heart is yearning for the day when I will be in my resurrection body. Oh, I look forward to that.
Well, that’s what God was knitting together inside David’s mother’s womb. His heart was being… His kidneys, knit together, physically and spiritually, just put together as only God can do. But what is more? The Hebrew word is not actually “create”, but “qanah”. Which usually means to acquire by purchase, to possess or to come into ownership of. In short, God came to own or possess David’s kidneys, his in most being inside the womb. He said, “This is mine because I made it”. It’s mine because I made it. And just because you have the technology to seize it from me does not make it right. It is mine, you possess my in most being.
You created it and it is mine. And so we see this intense personal activity, verse 14-16. “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my inner most body.” Now, don’t let the poetic language put you off, there’s a highly technical thing going on here. Now we can speak of technical things in poetic language, it doesn’t take away the truth of the matter itself. God made David and did it skillfully inside his mother’s womb. Now, if we’re gonna go into the hidden places of the earth and all that kind of thing, that’s poetry, and we all acknowledge that. But he’s saying what happened inside his mother’s womb. David was skillfully woven together. I’m gonna use a little more poetic imagery. Like The skillfully woven sash of the high priest was woven together. That’s the same verb. And so it’s the art of a weaver. That’s what God did to David inside the womb. And why did God do all this? So that someday, David would come to know Him and believe in Him.
Some day he would come to trust in God. That’s the whole reason. Oh Lord you and me, you and me, God, You have searched me and You know me. I want to know you too. God knew us before we knew him, and so it was that we might come into a relationship, and so even inside the womb, David’s getting prepared for that, isn’t he? God is shaping him. And so it says, even out of the womb, when he’s nursing at his mother’s breast, it says in Psalm 22:9, “You brought me out of the womb, you made me trust in You, even when I was nursing.” How did David trust in God while he was nursing? Well, the phrase in God or in you isn’t in the original, but it’s well in the context in Psalm 22. In other words, he learned how to trust at his mother’s breast at some point it got transferred to God and he trusted God the way he used to trust his mother. Do you see that? And so the whole relationship was getting prepared from inside the mother’s womb, and we have no right to stop that, clearly. Who are we to interfere with that process? We have no rights. There’s also evidence in Luke 1, look over there if you would with me, Luke 1:41 and following.
Of the six lies, I’m spending the most on this one, if we can nail this one down, namely that the pre-born is a human person. Do you see that everything else fits into place? Even some of the toughest ethical issues don’t become tough anymore, when you start to realize this is a human person we’re dealing with. Look at Luke 41, it says, “When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with Holy Spirit. In a loud voice, she exclaimed, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear. But why am I so favored that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.” Leaped for joy. Isn’t that wonderful? There are two great evidences here of the personhood of the pre-born, the first is that filled with the Spirit, Elizabeth calls Mary, the mother of her Lord. Now, Jesus is, I would measure just a few weeks after having been conceived, I mean, just a few weeks, she is into her pregnancy, she’s already a mother, and not just the mother of anybody, she’s the mother of Elizabeth’s Lord. That’s evidence number one.
And then there’s John the Baptist, who just seemed to leap for joy, any time Jesus was around, the Holy Spirit would come on him and he would just be filled with the Spirit, there was just like a prophetic magnetic attraction there, there’s Jesus. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He was just filled with the spirit from his mother’s womb even. And so when Mary’s voice enters Elizabeth’s ears, John the Baptist leaps for joy. I don’t know any product of conception that’s going to rejoice, but I do know people rejoice. People rejoice. John the Baptist was a person, and he’s inside his mother’s womb. And so the Bible speaks very clearly an unmistakable refutation of The Devil’s foundational lie that it’s telling to society, namely, the pre-born is not a person, he most certainly is, the second lie, the child is a burden and not a blessing, I think the general goal here is for a… Satan’s goal is to cause us to hate children as much as he does. I think that’s what’s going on here, but just take it a step back and look at it, you know why because he just hates the image of God.
Satan’s Lie #2
He just does, he hates God and he hates anything in his image, Sanctity of Human Life, he hates it. And so He wants us to join him in that attitude and that rebellion, and part of that is to resent children, to look on them as essentially a burden to cause the parents to despise the child, to despise its personhood, calling it an it and not a baby. To despise the effect the child will have on their life financially in lifestyle, in career, in plans, in comforts, who knows, but to despise the child, that’s the goal. And so, abortion gives us the evil sense of ownership over children as though they are ours to assess and debate over, such as Planned Parenthood’s motto, “Every child’s a wanted child.” Who are you to want or not want the child? Think about it now, suppose I came up to one of you and said, I don’t want you. That’ an odd idea, isn’t it, when you stop and think about it? If I were to just come up to any church member or a visitor, that’d be a bad way for a pastor to try to build a church, “I want you to know I don’t want you.”
Well, I don’t have a right to want or not want the person in an absolute sense. It’s not my place. God wanted the person, you see. And so what ends up happening is a creeping despising of children that comes in, and we’ve got to speak biblical truth on this, nowadays, even children think of… Even Christians think of children essentially negatively, how much money they cost to raise, how much of an interference they are on your plans, your careers, your pleasures. Planned Parenthood told us that if every child was a wanted child, child abuse would go down, actually the numbers have absolutely skyrocketed because these mentalities come in essentially despising children. We have to speak biblical truth on this matter. Every child is a blessing from God, every child’s a blessing from God. And someone once said, too many children, that’s like too many flowers, think about that. There’s just too many flowers in the world. Psalm 127:3-5, “Behold, children are a gift of the Lord. Children are a gift of the Lord. The fruit of the womb is a reward like arrows in the hand of a quiver. So are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies of the gate,” Children are a blessing.
I can’t imagine my life without my kids, look at the cover of the book’s in_____. Just take a minute, look. Have you seen it? I’m not going to embarrass the father and mother of this child by saying who it is, but somebody who’s near and dear to me, this is not my child, I did not do that, but I was tempted. My kids can look kind of cute, but that’s little Isaac right there with the beast of some sort in his mouth, I don’t know what it is. Is it a rabbit? I haven’t looked at…is it a rabbit? Here it is. What a blessing. What an incredible blessing? Any parents whose kids are fully grown, can you imagine your life without your kids, all those experiences, all the things you went through, your memory, the hard times too, all of it, its life. Children are essential blessings from God. Now we have to speak another word of truth, and that is that children are hard to raise, they do come into the world as sinners and it’s hard to train them, it’s not easy. And so God gave provision, a father and a mother married to each other in covenant relationship, surrounded by godly people, a church. All of that is needed but primarily father, mother together, married foundation for the child’s growth, right?
If you have a child born in a different situation like that, you will have incredible difficulties, but God is gracious, he is gracious and he is able to overcome those difficulties, just like for a widow and for orphans, he’s able to make up the difference. He is gracious, and we need to speak that word of hope into very hopeless situations, say God is able and God’s people are able, we better be able. We better be willing to step up and speak the truth, the children are a blessing.
“He is gracious, and we need to speak that word of hope into very hopeless situations, say God is able and God’s people are able, we better be able. We better be willing to step up and speak the truth, the children are a blessing.”
Satan’s Lie #3
The third lie is that abortion is beneficial to the life of the mother. Now, a greatly concealed factor are the incredible risks to a woman of abortion. They don’t want you to know, as a matter of fact, so much that they don’t want you to know that they’re starting to be legal rumblings about consent, informed consent concerning abortions. Many times people, women are not told the full medical story the way they are for another kind of surgery like LASIK or some other things where you’re told all the things that might happen, you’re not told in the matter of abortion, and there are some lawyers, pro-life lawyers that are starting to look at that and say, “Is there informed consent here?”. But there are serious dangers, physical, psychological, emotional and definitely spiritual to abortion. Psychologically, Isaiah 49:15 says, “Can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the son of her womb, even these may forget, but I will not you,” Just built into a woman is a yearning for her children, she just loves them, and there’s a connection there. You have to repress that and squelch it and it comes at a cost, it damages, psychologically. Comes with the cost of a seared conscience. Really, I think 1st Timothy 4:2. Now, I know that sometimes, sadly, some therapeutic abortions have to be done to spare the life of the mother, but we know in those cases the baby would have died too, and it’s just part of the problem of this sin cursed world that we have difficulties like that. But we have to speak the truth. Abortion is not a benefit to the life of the mother; it is greatly damaging and greatly dangerous. There’s an increased risk of breast cancer that’s been linked, it’s been proven, they want to refute it, they want to deny it, but its there, and there is certainly a spiritual risk because people are turning away from God, and they don’t feel that they can come back to God and believe in him and trust in him because of what they’ve done. We’ll get to that in a moment, because you can, they can. We need to speak the truth of the church as well.
Satan’s Lie #4
Satan’s fourth lie is that abortion is too entrenched to overthrow. So let’s just give up. Let’s just give up. Its too tough. We’re not making any progress. Well, that’s false. We are making progress. Lets just give up, you know why? The devil wants you to believe that because he knows very well better than you do, the power of your offensive weaponry and the strength of your defensive shielding. He knows it better than you do. He knows offensively that our weapons are not the weapons of this world. They have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we’re ready to take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. That is the power of the Word of God, it’s powerful and strong. It is able to pull down satanic bad ideas, bad thoughts, he knows that, he knows. He also knows that your defensive shielding is more powerful than anything he can throw at it. Ephesians chapter 6 says, “Put on the full armor of God so that you may be able to stand your ground, and after you’ve done everything to stand, you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one,” and the devil knows it very well. So what is he gonna do? Well, first of all, he’s going to get you to not trust in the power of your offensive and defensive weaponry and stay at home, just stay at home, be defeated, be deflated, be weak, be supine, lay on the couch and lament that there’s nothing you can do.
Just like the spies, when they came back and spoke of the promised land, and it was a good land, but 10 of them spread a bad report saying, “Oh, the cities with walls up to the sky, and we appeared like grasshoppers in our own eyes.” [Number 13:31-33] And God raised up Joshua and Caleb to say, “Oh, with God’s strength and power. We can do it. We can take the promised land.” A year ago, I talked to about two witnesses from church history, and I think were very encouraging William Wilberforce and William Lloyd Garrison on the issue of slavery, Wilberforce for 40 years fought the slave trade and slavery in England, 40 years. The gentle firm consistent patience of a marathoner, that’s what we need here. He labored for 20 years to stop the British slave trade, and then for 20 more years to get rid of slavery altogether. An enemy of Wilberforce said this, “It is necessary to watch him”, you gotta be careful about this guy because, “he is blessed with a very sufficient quantity of that enthusiastic spirit, which so far yielding that it actually grows more vigorous with blows”.The harder you hit him, the more he comes at you, he just doesn’t go away, but he’s so friendly. He’s so positive, he’s so optimistic, I don’t know what we’re gonna do about this guy, he just won’t go away.”
And he was a little too, he was like a little guy, a little lightweight guy, but he became…becomes like a monster when speaking the truth, and they couldn’t get rid of him, he’s like a big block of cork and you push him down and he pops right back up. He just doesnt give up. Just don’t…..we don’t give up. And then there’s William Lloyd Garrison, fearless fiery preacher of righteousness through journalism. I don’t really know if he was born again, I hope so, but I do know this, his cause was just…as he fought against slavery in America for decades, fiery zeal as a journalist and this is what he wrote, he said, “I need…I need to be all on fire for I am surrounded by mountains of ice. I need to be all on fire for I’m surrounded by mountains of ice.” You gotta deal. You can’t just be winsome and positive, like a big piece of cork, but you have to have a fiery zeal, a willingness to tell the truth. His most famous declaration on abolition was this, “I am an earnest, I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not retreat a single inch and I will be heard.”
Can we say that? Can we do that? Can we not play games? Can we not retreat a single inch? Can we make ourselves heard? I just wanna encourage you, our weapons are strong and they’re effective. Let’s not be intimidated. Let’s take the field. Now, on simply changing the laws, you know, that’s not going to be enough.
Satan’s Lie #5
Lie number five is, abortion will be defeated if we merely changed the laws. Well, that’s not gonna be good enough. When I started in the abortion fight back in 1980, it was ‘88 or ‘89, Operation Rescue was really involved at that point, and what they did was they would blockade clinics, they would physically chain themselves so that you couldn’t get in, and their enemies mocked them by calling them operation reschedule, because they hadn’t convinced anybody of anything, they just made it physically impossible, that’s human nature, when you wanna do something and you’re not persuaded but just blocked, you’re gonna try even harder to do it. There has to be a persuasion going on, there has to be… There has to be, there has to be reasoning with people’s hearts, and I gotta win hearts and minds on this, it’s not enough to just blockade, I don’t believe in it.
Also we have to realize there are reasons that women get abortions, there are reasons, economic reasons, they might feel themselves to be too poor to raise another child, there are family reasons, bad family situation, abusive husband and unsupportive parents, or maybe a young teen girl gets herself into difficulties, spiritual reasons, no convictions whatsoever in the matter, selfishness or ignorance, there are philosophical reasons, dislike of or children are seen to be an interruptional lifestyle, etcetera. The church must respond to these reasons, the church must transform the situation, the church must speak peace and hope and not just with words into the situation.
Satan’s Lie #6
And lie number six, your sin is too great for God to forgive. I think we’re all guilty in this matter, to a greater less degree, you could be guilty of sins of omission, or you may be guilty of sins of commission, but either way, we need to repent. And either way, we need God’s grace and mercy and forgiveness. And the great, glorious, good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that that grace, that mercy, that forgiveness is abundantly available through Jesus Christ, I mean, abundantly available. There is no sin you can commit, that God’s grace cannot cover through the blood of Christ.
Here is a trustworthy saying, worthy of full acceptance. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the worst. 1st Timothy 1:50, its trustworthy. And so the devil wants to lie you and tell you there’s no grace and no forgiveness, but there is. The spirit of abortion says to the abortionist doctor, there is so much blood on your hands that God can never accept you, your soul is lost forever. The spirit of abortion says to pregnant women, whether… Or a pregnant woman with a child conceived out of wedlock, you’re pregnant through sin and God has abandoned you, there can be no forgiveness for you, there’s no hope, you might as will abort that baby. The spirit of abortion says to the woman who’s already had an abortion, you’ve killed your own baby, and now God will reject you forever, there can be no mercy and no grace for you. That is a lie, that is a lie. The spirit of abortion says to the man who abdicated his responsibility to care for the child he fathered, you’re a poor excuse for a man, and there can be no forgiven for you.
It says to the pastor who’s neglected personal involvement and the abortion issue because of fear or desire for a quiet, simple, comfortable life,God will not forgive you, you’re a hypocrite and a coward. Says to the politician who’s hardened his heart and seared conscience by advocating a woman’s right to choose in order to get an elected to an office that he coveted, you can’t be forgiven. There’s no mercy for you. It says to a Supreme Court Justice who votes a certain way on certain cases, violating their own conscience, there can be no forgiveness for you, you’re responsible for millions and millions of deaths, and there can be no forgiveness for you. This is all the devil’s lie. We must come to the cross of Jesus Christ with repentance, with broken-hearted submission and with glad acceptance of his mercy and his grace and his forgiveness, he is tender-hearted and compassionate to the broken-hearted sinner.
“We must come to the cross of Jesus Christ with repentance, with broken-hearted submission and with glad acceptance of his mercy and his grace and his forgiveness, he is tender-hearted and compassionate to the broken-hearted sinner.”
VI. Application
Now, what application can we take from this? Well very simply, first of all, believe the Bible, the pre-born are truly persons. I was reading in World Magazine recently, an acronym that stuck with me partially, and I forgot to bring it with me this morning, so I’m gonna do my best at giving you the acronym, and if the world has a different one, all the better, and you can have even more truth. But it’s talking about the person who are the unbeliever and uses the acronym, I think it was sled, S-L-E-D, talking about how there is no difference between the infant in the pre-born philosophically, S size, are you more of a person because you’re bigger and less of a person cause you’re little? L Location, are you more of a person on a mountain top than you are in a cave? Is personhood dependent on your location. E experience, is personhood dependent on your life experiences? The more you experience, the more of a person you’ll be. How about D dependence, is personhood diminished if you’re dependent on a heart lung machine?
And if you answer, “No” its not dependent on any of those things, then how can you refute the personhood of the pre-born? On what grounds? Science, location, experience dependence, doesn’t work. Take that to them. Talk to them. Be courageous and communicate. Ask questions. If you see a bumper sticker that says something like this, “Don’t like abortion, then don’t have one”. Ask this question, can I do that with genocide? Don’t believe in genocide, then don’t do it. Or rape, don’t believe in rape, then don’t do it. But leave us alone we who want to rape or want to commit genocide. It doesn’t make any sense. Please refute these things with truth. When politicians say silly things like, “We need to keep abortion safe, legal, funded and rare”. Say, “Wait a minute, please, I’m confused. Just a moment, please. Okay. If the pre-born is a person, then why should abortions be legal, and if the pre-born is not a person, then why should they be rare? Talk to me, politician, tell me why?” That’s just politician speak. It doesn’t mean anything. Refute it with truth. Thirdly, persevere in prayer and action to abolish abortion, let’s be all in fire like William Lloyd Garrison. Let’s not go away. Let’s look and see what we can do better in the year 2004, let’s find out more about what pregnancy support services there are. There’s an insert in your bulletin what they need financially for volunteer hours. There were a few pro-life things that happened in our church this year, I’d like to see more this year.
Number four, radiate hope. Shine as a beacon of hope and grace and faith for the desperate. They need the word of hope. Christian, give it to them. Speak hope into their situation. And then finally come to Christ if you’re listening to me today and you don’t know Jesus as your Lord and Savior don’t leave this room without trusting in him and if you’re already a Christian but you’ve committed some sin in this area or any other area come to Christ again for forgiveness and healing and cleansing and he will take your sins and the scripture says in Micah, throw them into the depths of the sea, covered by a sea of his grace through the blood of Christ.
“Shine as a beacon of hope and grace and faith for the desperate. They need the word of hope. Christian, give it to them. Speak hope into their situation.”
Pastor Andy Davis preaches an expository sermon on Psalm 139. The main subject of the sermon is how human life should be understood to be sacred.
This Sunday, this morning is Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. The word sanctity means sacredness. It means that human life, we believe is set apart, is unique and sacred and special by God. We, having been created in the image of God, we are in his likeness, and therefore we are precious to Him. Human life is sacred. This is the world view that the Bible presents to us. This is biblical truth, that we are in the image of God, and that means accountability and blessing. So we celebrate human life today. And I must tell you that life at its heart, for me at least, and probably for you too, is unpredictable. I’m never quite sure what’s going to happen on any given day. I have a good idea. I thought probably I would come to church today, I thought probably I would preach today and some other things, but the sermon that I expected to preach to you, I’m not going to preach. I’m going to preach a different Sanctity of Human Life sermon, one that some of you have heard before, changed a little bit. The sermon that’s in your outline is a good sermon, maybe I’ll preach it in the future, but not today.
Okay? I put all that work into it. But the Lord said, “No, a different one.” And so I said, “Yes, Lord.”, and so we’re doing something else today.
I. Another Year
We have gone through another year. And in that year, abortion has remained the law of the land. That means, if statistics hold true, probably somewhere between 1.3 and 1.6 million babies were killed, legally, in our country this past year. Legally killed in our country. Is that acceptable to you? It’s not acceptable to me. And so that’s the bad news, abortion is still, as many politicians remind us, the law of the land, that is true. What that means is that the initiative must rest with us. Do you see that? If we do nothing, it will continue to be the law of the land, and millions of babies will continue to be killed, legally, in our country. And so the initiative must rest with us. So another year has passed, but it’s not all been darkness, we know that in this past year, in 2003, we saw the Partial Birth Abortion Act passed on November 5, 2003. George Bush signed into law this Partial Birth Abortion Act of 2003, making illegal that hideous practice of killing babies that are almost born.
That anyone would not see the wisdom to that is shocking to me, but immediately, a federal judge overturned it or put an injunction against it, and the ACLU and many other lawyers are determined to fight this unjust law, so they believe, and bring back some sanity in their way of thinking to abortion. They are concerned about the so called slippery slope, that once you give up a little bit, its gonna go all the way, and there will be no freedom for abortion in our country. Oh may it happen. May it happen. I want that slippery slope. You know why? Because there is no difference between life outside the womb and life inside the womb in God’s eyes. And there is no philosophical barrier you can hold up, as we’ll talk about later in this message, it just doesn’t hold up. And they know it. And so its even got to the point where some ethicists are willing to say, “We acknowledge its human life, but it should be legal to kill anyway for the following reasons.” Isn’t that shocking? At Princeton…ethicists are saying those kinds of things? But that’s where we’re at.
“There is no difference between life outside the womb and life inside the womb in God’s eyes”
And we’re in a kind of a legal schizophrenia now, as you know. The Scott Peterson murder trial where he can be held possibly for the murder of his pre-born child. This is schizophrenic, you understand that? How it could be legal in California to abort the baby, but if there’s no indication whatsoever that the mother doesn’t want the child, its assumed that she does want the child, and so therefore he can be held for the murder of a pre-born child. This is unbelievable to me. I don’t understand how you can have the one and not the other, I don’t. It is schizophrenic and more and more people are seeing it this way. Polls are showing that more and more people, young people entering college students and others are not seeing the logic of abortion, they don’t see it, they don’t understand it. And so that whole base is eroding and that is good news, is it not? But our work isn’t finished yet. Because abortion is still the law of the land. The church is still, in 1 Timothy 3:15, the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth. And so what we have to do is we have to refute satanic lies that the devil is telling and has told. The devil is telling lies, and we must get out there and refute them.
II. Satan’s Web of Lies
Now, I preached this sermon a year ago, and I’d like to ask, as you think about this sermon, have you told the truth to anybody this past year on these issues? That’ all. Basically, you have an opportunity here from the word of God, again, a refutation of six lies that the devil has been telling. But what I want you to do is ask yourself, have you spoken these truths to anybody who needs to hear them? See, we must take the initiative. It’s up to us to change things. If things remain the same, if we do nothing, if we remain comfortable and think its too difficult to challenge minds and hearts on this issue, if we’re going to pay a price relationally with relatives or friends, acquaintances, co-workers, then nothing will change, and it will continue.
We must agitate. We must be willing to pay the price. We must refute Satan’s web of lies. Jesus said in John 8:44 of the devil. “When the devil lies, he speaks his native tongue…,”. Isn’t that wonderful? “For he is a liar and the father of lies.” Now, Father of lies means that he begets, he gives birth to lies. He speaks lies, its what he does. And so therefore, these lies, we can trace back to their satanic origin. And therefore, he tells I think three great lies to society which we must refute. First is that the pre-born is not truly a human person. Secondly, that the child is a burden and not a blessing. Third, abortion is beneficial to the life of the mother. He also is telling two lies to the church. Number one, abortion is so entrenched as the law of the land that nothing you can do will make any difference whatsoever. Secondly, he tells this lie, simply changing the law to make abortion illegal will completely solve this problem.
Thirdly, He tells lies to individuals, to guilty sinners, specifically in this matter. Your sin is so great that nothing can take it away. There can be no forgiveness for you in the area of abortion. Let’s start to dispel each of these lies with truth, shall we? The word of God refutes each of these six lives.
III. Dispelling the Lies With Pure Truth
Satan’s Lie #1
Let’s look at the first, namely that the preborn is not truly a human person. Now, I could speak from the language and findings of biology, and it would be right for a Christian to do so, because we believe that God created everything. And so, there is ample biological evidence of the uniqueness and personhood of the child from the moment of conception. I know that there are some dehumanizing terms used of the pre-born such as fetus or even worse, product of conception. They are put in place…these words…to separate us somewhat from the personhood, that we’re dealing with a genuine human being in the womb. But let me ask you a question. Any mother who is excited, looking forward to the birth of their baby, when they feel the fetus…the product of conception kick their womb inside, do they say, “Oh, my fetus just kicked me. Oh, come and feel.” They say to the husband, “Come and feel the fetus as it moves around, the product of conception. Oh, listen, can you listen to it’s heart beat?” No, no one talks like that, do they? They say my baby, don’t they? It’s just the way it is. It’s a baby. And that’s the way we think. You have to be trained out to think a different way. And the training is available. It’s out there. We’re being trained to call it a fetus, so I could speak of the genetic uniqueness of the child from conception. Its it’s own person from the moment of conception. I could speak about the development, which is getting easier and easier to see with the 4D ultrasound that GE came up with. Have you seen on the internet? You can look and see some of the… A rendition of what you’ll see through the GE 4D thing. What it is, you can actually see a real time moving like motion picture of your baby. Isn’t that exciting? And more and more clinics are using these. Pro-life, pregnancy support type clinics are using this very expensive equipment to show women who are wrestling with the issue of what’ going on in their lives, to see their babies. And this is amazing, something like more than 60% of those women who come in, determined to get abortions decide not to after seeing that evidence.
That’s those that are convinced they’re going to get an abortion. How about those that aren’t sure or even those that are excited about the baby? There’s no doubt in their mind, this is a baby, and they can watch it, they can see. So we could speak at the biological level, but you know me, I would rather speak scripturally. Does the Bible give us any indication that the pre-born is a human person? And the answer is overwhelmingly yes! From Psalm 39, we have great evidence. Turn in your Bible is Psalm 139 and take a look with me, and you will see some of this incredible evidence. Now the context of the specific statements we’re gonna look at this morning, of Psalm 139, the overall message is of an omniscient, omnipresent God in intimate, personal relationship with David. And omniscient, omnipresent God in intimate, personal relationship with David. You could sum it up into this little phrase, “You and me, O God, you and me”. Now, as I read over the first few verses of Psalm 139, see if you can hear that you and the me. You and me. “O Lord, You have searched me, and You know me. You know when I sit and when I rise. You perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down. You are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, you know it completely, O Lord, you hem me in behind, and before you have laid your hand upon me, such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. Where can I go from Your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you were there. If I make my bed in the depths, you were there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn and settle on the far side of the sea, even there, your hand will will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me, even the darkness will not be dark to you, the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you,”
“Does the Bible give us any indication that the pre-born is a human person? And the answer is overwhelmingly yes!”
I’ll stop there. Do you see the you and me dynamic there in those first 12 verses? Very much the intense relationship between a sovereign, powerful, omniscient God, omnipresent. No matter where you go, there is God. And David says, I can’t get away from you. Not that he would want to, but it’s an incredible thing to be so thoroughly known and loved by God. He feels hemmed in, as it were, behind and before by God’s omniscience and omnipresence. Even David’s secret actions in the dark are fully open and they bear before God, who sees all things.
Now, that’s the context, look at verses 13 through 16, and we get to some relevant verses to the issue. We see, in verses 13 through 16, that this intense relationship began while God was knitting David together in his mother’s womb. Even at that point, David was being formed to have a relationship with God. Look at verse 13 and the following. “For you created my in most being, you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”
Studies show that newborn infants can recognize their mother’s voice. Now, how is that? Well, because they’ve been hearing it for months and months. And so they recognize Mom’s voice and in like manner, David’s relationship with God began inside the womb. Thats where it started. David didn’t fully know that, eventually, he would come to know it, but knowledge was being built up piece by piece, beginning inside the womb, not beginning when he was born, but beginning even before he was born. The pieces of his relationship with God were being put into place even at that point. Now, look at Verse 13, it says, “You created my in most being, you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” Now, I appreciate Dr. Walker being with us to help us with translation. And this morning, those of you that heard him, heard him talk about kidneys and livers and other things like that, and we’re gonna see that right in this verse. In Psalm 139, verse 13, the King James Version gives us this. “For thou hast possessed my reins. Thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.” Now, reins is related to renal, like kidney, and that’s where it is.
It’s…definitely, the translation would come out of the word kidneys, its the same thing we see in the sacrificial passages, for example, in Exodus 29:13, it says, “Take all the fat around the inner parts, the covering of the liver and both kidneys with the fat on them and burn them on the altar.” Okay, so it means physical kidneys there, no doubt about it. But here, it has a more metaphorical sense, like we would use the word heart. We use the word heart to mean if somebody has heart catheterization or some kind of heart trouble, it means that they’re having problems with the muscle that pumps the blood through their body. But when we say how my heart yearns within me, we’re talking about the immaterial nature of us, which relates to God and which thinks and feels and decides. And there’s a molding together of those. We are spirits in bodies, are we not? And that gets knit together in the mother’s womb, it gets woven together. The immaterial and the material, just getting formed by God, only he can do that. And so we have this word, the kidneys, used in this way, Psalm 7, verse 9, “O righteous God who searches minds and hearts.”
When was the last time you had your kidney searched? But that’s what it says, “God searches your kidneys.” What does it mean? He searches your heart, your immaterial nature, your mind, your heart, your thoughts, your passions, your aspirations. He searches them, he knows them completely. Psalm 16:7, I will bless the Lord who gives me counsel. In the night, also my kidneys instruct me. I think you ought to listen to your kidneys, I really believe that when at night your kidneys are instructing you, I think you should listen to them. But I think what it means is that immaterial nature of you is speaking to you, and it’s speaking wisdom to you through the Word of God. Best of all, I think in Job 19:25 and following, I love this, “I know that my redeemer lives and that in the end, He will take his stand on the Earth.” That’s Jesus Christ, Jobs’ redeemer is Christ. Who else could it be? And in the end, Christ is gonna take His stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh, I will see God resurrection. I myself will see him with my own eyes. I am not another. How my heart yearns within me, there are those kidneys again, my heart, my kidneys are yearning for that day, when I can see Jesus take His stand on the Earth. My heart is yearning for the day when I will be in my resurrection body. Oh, I look forward to that.
Well, that’s what God was knitting together inside David’s mother’s womb. His heart was being… His kidneys, knit together, physically and spiritually, just put together as only God can do. But what is more? The Hebrew word is not actually “create”, but “qanah”. Which usually means to acquire by purchase, to possess or to come into ownership of. In short, God came to own or possess David’s kidneys, his in most being inside the womb. He said, “This is mine because I made it”. It’s mine because I made it. And just because you have the technology to seize it from me does not make it right. It is mine, you possess my in most being.
You created it and it is mine. And so we see this intense personal activity, verse 14-16. “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my inner most body.” Now, don’t let the poetic language put you off, there’s a highly technical thing going on here. Now we can speak of technical things in poetic language, it doesn’t take away the truth of the matter itself. God made David and did it skillfully inside his mother’s womb. Now, if we’re gonna go into the hidden places of the earth and all that kind of thing, that’s poetry, and we all acknowledge that. But he’s saying what happened inside his mother’s womb. David was skillfully woven together. I’m gonna use a little more poetic imagery. Like The skillfully woven sash of the high priest was woven together. That’s the same verb. And so it’s the art of a weaver. That’s what God did to David inside the womb. And why did God do all this? So that someday, David would come to know Him and believe in Him.
Some day he would come to trust in God. That’s the whole reason. Oh Lord you and me, you and me, God, You have searched me and You know me. I want to know you too. God knew us before we knew him, and so it was that we might come into a relationship, and so even inside the womb, David’s getting prepared for that, isn’t he? God is shaping him. And so it says, even out of the womb, when he’s nursing at his mother’s breast, it says in Psalm 22:9, “You brought me out of the womb, you made me trust in You, even when I was nursing.” How did David trust in God while he was nursing? Well, the phrase in God or in you isn’t in the original, but it’s well in the context in Psalm 22. In other words, he learned how to trust at his mother’s breast at some point it got transferred to God and he trusted God the way he used to trust his mother. Do you see that? And so the whole relationship was getting prepared from inside the mother’s womb, and we have no right to stop that, clearly. Who are we to interfere with that process? We have no rights. There’s also evidence in Luke 1, look over there if you would with me, Luke 1:41 and following.
Of the six lies, I’m spending the most on this one, if we can nail this one down, namely that the pre-born is a human person. Do you see that everything else fits into place? Even some of the toughest ethical issues don’t become tough anymore, when you start to realize this is a human person we’re dealing with. Look at Luke 41, it says, “When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with Holy Spirit. In a loud voice, she exclaimed, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear. But why am I so favored that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.” Leaped for joy. Isn’t that wonderful? There are two great evidences here of the personhood of the pre-born, the first is that filled with the Spirit, Elizabeth calls Mary, the mother of her Lord. Now, Jesus is, I would measure just a few weeks after having been conceived, I mean, just a few weeks, she is into her pregnancy, she’s already a mother, and not just the mother of anybody, she’s the mother of Elizabeth’s Lord. That’s evidence number one.
And then there’s John the Baptist, who just seemed to leap for joy, any time Jesus was around, the Holy Spirit would come on him and he would just be filled with the Spirit, there was just like a prophetic magnetic attraction there, there’s Jesus. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He was just filled with the spirit from his mother’s womb even. And so when Mary’s voice enters Elizabeth’s ears, John the Baptist leaps for joy. I don’t know any product of conception that’s going to rejoice, but I do know people rejoice. People rejoice. John the Baptist was a person, and he’s inside his mother’s womb. And so the Bible speaks very clearly an unmistakable refutation of The Devil’s foundational lie that it’s telling to society, namely, the pre-born is not a person, he most certainly is, the second lie, the child is a burden and not a blessing, I think the general goal here is for a… Satan’s goal is to cause us to hate children as much as he does. I think that’s what’s going on here, but just take it a step back and look at it, you know why because he just hates the image of God.
Satan’s Lie #2
He just does, he hates God and he hates anything in his image, Sanctity of Human Life, he hates it. And so He wants us to join him in that attitude and that rebellion, and part of that is to resent children, to look on them as essentially a burden to cause the parents to despise the child, to despise its personhood, calling it an it and not a baby. To despise the effect the child will have on their life financially in lifestyle, in career, in plans, in comforts, who knows, but to despise the child, that’s the goal. And so, abortion gives us the evil sense of ownership over children as though they are ours to assess and debate over, such as Planned Parenthood’s motto, “Every child’s a wanted child.” Who are you to want or not want the child? Think about it now, suppose I came up to one of you and said, I don’t want you. That’ an odd idea, isn’t it, when you stop and think about it? If I were to just come up to any church member or a visitor, that’d be a bad way for a pastor to try to build a church, “I want you to know I don’t want you.”
Well, I don’t have a right to want or not want the person in an absolute sense. It’s not my place. God wanted the person, you see. And so what ends up happening is a creeping despising of children that comes in, and we’ve got to speak biblical truth on this, nowadays, even children think of… Even Christians think of children essentially negatively, how much money they cost to raise, how much of an interference they are on your plans, your careers, your pleasures. Planned Parenthood told us that if every child was a wanted child, child abuse would go down, actually the numbers have absolutely skyrocketed because these mentalities come in essentially despising children. We have to speak biblical truth on this matter. Every child is a blessing from God, every child’s a blessing from God. And someone once said, too many children, that’s like too many flowers, think about that. There’s just too many flowers in the world. Psalm 127:3-5, “Behold, children are a gift of the Lord. Children are a gift of the Lord. The fruit of the womb is a reward like arrows in the hand of a quiver. So are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies of the gate,” Children are a blessing.
I can’t imagine my life without my kids, look at the cover of the book’s in_____. Just take a minute, look. Have you seen it? I’m not going to embarrass the father and mother of this child by saying who it is, but somebody who’s near and dear to me, this is not my child, I did not do that, but I was tempted. My kids can look kind of cute, but that’s little Isaac right there with the beast of some sort in his mouth, I don’t know what it is. Is it a rabbit? I haven’t looked at…is it a rabbit? Here it is. What a blessing. What an incredible blessing? Any parents whose kids are fully grown, can you imagine your life without your kids, all those experiences, all the things you went through, your memory, the hard times too, all of it, its life. Children are essential blessings from God. Now we have to speak another word of truth, and that is that children are hard to raise, they do come into the world as sinners and it’s hard to train them, it’s not easy. And so God gave provision, a father and a mother married to each other in covenant relationship, surrounded by godly people, a church. All of that is needed but primarily father, mother together, married foundation for the child’s growth, right?
If you have a child born in a different situation like that, you will have incredible difficulties, but God is gracious, he is gracious and he is able to overcome those difficulties, just like for a widow and for orphans, he’s able to make up the difference. He is gracious, and we need to speak that word of hope into very hopeless situations, say God is able and God’s people are able, we better be able. We better be willing to step up and speak the truth, the children are a blessing.
“He is gracious, and we need to speak that word of hope into very hopeless situations, say God is able and God’s people are able, we better be able. We better be willing to step up and speak the truth, the children are a blessing.”
Satan’s Lie #3
The third lie is that abortion is beneficial to the life of the mother. Now, a greatly concealed factor are the incredible risks to a woman of abortion. They don’t want you to know, as a matter of fact, so much that they don’t want you to know that they’re starting to be legal rumblings about consent, informed consent concerning abortions. Many times people, women are not told the full medical story the way they are for another kind of surgery like LASIK or some other things where you’re told all the things that might happen, you’re not told in the matter of abortion, and there are some lawyers, pro-life lawyers that are starting to look at that and say, “Is there informed consent here?”. But there are serious dangers, physical, psychological, emotional and definitely spiritual to abortion. Psychologically, Isaiah 49:15 says, “Can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the son of her womb, even these may forget, but I will not you,” Just built into a woman is a yearning for her children, she just loves them, and there’s a connection there. You have to repress that and squelch it and it comes at a cost, it damages, psychologically. Comes with the cost of a seared conscience. Really, I think 1st Timothy 4:2. Now, I know that sometimes, sadly, some therapeutic abortions have to be done to spare the life of the mother, but we know in those cases the baby would have died too, and it’s just part of the problem of this sin cursed world that we have difficulties like that. But we have to speak the truth. Abortion is not a benefit to the life of the mother; it is greatly damaging and greatly dangerous. There’s an increased risk of breast cancer that’s been linked, it’s been proven, they want to refute it, they want to deny it, but its there, and there is certainly a spiritual risk because people are turning away from God, and they don’t feel that they can come back to God and believe in him and trust in him because of what they’ve done. We’ll get to that in a moment, because you can, they can. We need to speak the truth of the church as well.
Satan’s Lie #4
Satan’s fourth lie is that abortion is too entrenched to overthrow. So let’s just give up. Let’s just give up. Its too tough. We’re not making any progress. Well, that’s false. We are making progress. Lets just give up, you know why? The devil wants you to believe that because he knows very well better than you do, the power of your offensive weaponry and the strength of your defensive shielding. He knows it better than you do. He knows offensively that our weapons are not the weapons of this world. They have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we’re ready to take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. That is the power of the Word of God, it’s powerful and strong. It is able to pull down satanic bad ideas, bad thoughts, he knows that, he knows. He also knows that your defensive shielding is more powerful than anything he can throw at it. Ephesians chapter 6 says, “Put on the full armor of God so that you may be able to stand your ground, and after you’ve done everything to stand, you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one,” and the devil knows it very well. So what is he gonna do? Well, first of all, he’s going to get you to not trust in the power of your offensive and defensive weaponry and stay at home, just stay at home, be defeated, be deflated, be weak, be supine, lay on the couch and lament that there’s nothing you can do.
Just like the spies, when they came back and spoke of the promised land, and it was a good land, but 10 of them spread a bad report saying, “Oh, the cities with walls up to the sky, and we appeared like grasshoppers in our own eyes.” [Number 13:31-33] And God raised up Joshua and Caleb to say, “Oh, with God’s strength and power. We can do it. We can take the promised land.” A year ago, I talked to about two witnesses from church history, and I think were very encouraging William Wilberforce and William Lloyd Garrison on the issue of slavery, Wilberforce for 40 years fought the slave trade and slavery in England, 40 years. The gentle firm consistent patience of a marathoner, that’s what we need here. He labored for 20 years to stop the British slave trade, and then for 20 more years to get rid of slavery altogether. An enemy of Wilberforce said this, “It is necessary to watch him”, you gotta be careful about this guy because, “he is blessed with a very sufficient quantity of that enthusiastic spirit, which so far yielding that it actually grows more vigorous with blows”.The harder you hit him, the more he comes at you, he just doesn’t go away, but he’s so friendly. He’s so positive, he’s so optimistic, I don’t know what we’re gonna do about this guy, he just won’t go away.”
And he was a little too, he was like a little guy, a little lightweight guy, but he became…becomes like a monster when speaking the truth, and they couldn’t get rid of him, he’s like a big block of cork and you push him down and he pops right back up. He just doesnt give up. Just don’t…..we don’t give up. And then there’s William Lloyd Garrison, fearless fiery preacher of righteousness through journalism. I don’t really know if he was born again, I hope so, but I do know this, his cause was just…as he fought against slavery in America for decades, fiery zeal as a journalist and this is what he wrote, he said, “I need…I need to be all on fire for I am surrounded by mountains of ice. I need to be all on fire for I’m surrounded by mountains of ice.” You gotta deal. You can’t just be winsome and positive, like a big piece of cork, but you have to have a fiery zeal, a willingness to tell the truth. His most famous declaration on abolition was this, “I am an earnest, I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not retreat a single inch and I will be heard.”
Can we say that? Can we do that? Can we not play games? Can we not retreat a single inch? Can we make ourselves heard? I just wanna encourage you, our weapons are strong and they’re effective. Let’s not be intimidated. Let’s take the field. Now, on simply changing the laws, you know, that’s not going to be enough.
Satan’s Lie #5
Lie number five is, abortion will be defeated if we merely changed the laws. Well, that’s not gonna be good enough. When I started in the abortion fight back in 1980, it was ‘88 or ‘89, Operation Rescue was really involved at that point, and what they did was they would blockade clinics, they would physically chain themselves so that you couldn’t get in, and their enemies mocked them by calling them operation reschedule, because they hadn’t convinced anybody of anything, they just made it physically impossible, that’s human nature, when you wanna do something and you’re not persuaded but just blocked, you’re gonna try even harder to do it. There has to be a persuasion going on, there has to be… There has to be, there has to be reasoning with people’s hearts, and I gotta win hearts and minds on this, it’s not enough to just blockade, I don’t believe in it.
Also we have to realize there are reasons that women get abortions, there are reasons, economic reasons, they might feel themselves to be too poor to raise another child, there are family reasons, bad family situation, abusive husband and unsupportive parents, or maybe a young teen girl gets herself into difficulties, spiritual reasons, no convictions whatsoever in the matter, selfishness or ignorance, there are philosophical reasons, dislike of or children are seen to be an interruptional lifestyle, etcetera. The church must respond to these reasons, the church must transform the situation, the church must speak peace and hope and not just with words into the situation.
Satan’s Lie #6
And lie number six, your sin is too great for God to forgive. I think we’re all guilty in this matter, to a greater less degree, you could be guilty of sins of omission, or you may be guilty of sins of commission, but either way, we need to repent. And either way, we need God’s grace and mercy and forgiveness. And the great, glorious, good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that that grace, that mercy, that forgiveness is abundantly available through Jesus Christ, I mean, abundantly available. There is no sin you can commit, that God’s grace cannot cover through the blood of Christ.
Here is a trustworthy saying, worthy of full acceptance. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the worst. 1st Timothy 1:50, its trustworthy. And so the devil wants to lie you and tell you there’s no grace and no forgiveness, but there is. The spirit of abortion says to the abortionist doctor, there is so much blood on your hands that God can never accept you, your soul is lost forever. The spirit of abortion says to pregnant women, whether… Or a pregnant woman with a child conceived out of wedlock, you’re pregnant through sin and God has abandoned you, there can be no forgiveness for you, there’s no hope, you might as will abort that baby. The spirit of abortion says to the woman who’s already had an abortion, you’ve killed your own baby, and now God will reject you forever, there can be no mercy and no grace for you. That is a lie, that is a lie. The spirit of abortion says to the man who abdicated his responsibility to care for the child he fathered, you’re a poor excuse for a man, and there can be no forgiven for you.
It says to the pastor who’s neglected personal involvement and the abortion issue because of fear or desire for a quiet, simple, comfortable life,God will not forgive you, you’re a hypocrite and a coward. Says to the politician who’s hardened his heart and seared conscience by advocating a woman’s right to choose in order to get an elected to an office that he coveted, you can’t be forgiven. There’s no mercy for you. It says to a Supreme Court Justice who votes a certain way on certain cases, violating their own conscience, there can be no forgiveness for you, you’re responsible for millions and millions of deaths, and there can be no forgiveness for you. This is all the devil’s lie. We must come to the cross of Jesus Christ with repentance, with broken-hearted submission and with glad acceptance of his mercy and his grace and his forgiveness, he is tender-hearted and compassionate to the broken-hearted sinner.
“We must come to the cross of Jesus Christ with repentance, with broken-hearted submission and with glad acceptance of his mercy and his grace and his forgiveness, he is tender-hearted and compassionate to the broken-hearted sinner.”
VI. Application
Now, what application can we take from this? Well very simply, first of all, believe the Bible, the pre-born are truly persons. I was reading in World Magazine recently, an acronym that stuck with me partially, and I forgot to bring it with me this morning, so I’m gonna do my best at giving you the acronym, and if the world has a different one, all the better, and you can have even more truth. But it’s talking about the person who are the unbeliever and uses the acronym, I think it was sled, S-L-E-D, talking about how there is no difference between the infant in the pre-born philosophically, S size, are you more of a person because you’re bigger and less of a person cause you’re little? L Location, are you more of a person on a mountain top than you are in a cave? Is personhood dependent on your location. E experience, is personhood dependent on your life experiences? The more you experience, the more of a person you’ll be. How about D dependence, is personhood diminished if you’re dependent on a heart lung machine?
And if you answer, “No” its not dependent on any of those things, then how can you refute the personhood of the pre-born? On what grounds? Science, location, experience dependence, doesn’t work. Take that to them. Talk to them. Be courageous and communicate. Ask questions. If you see a bumper sticker that says something like this, “Don’t like abortion, then don’t have one”. Ask this question, can I do that with genocide? Don’t believe in genocide, then don’t do it. Or rape, don’t believe in rape, then don’t do it. But leave us alone we who want to rape or want to commit genocide. It doesn’t make any sense. Please refute these things with truth. When politicians say silly things like, “We need to keep abortion safe, legal, funded and rare”. Say, “Wait a minute, please, I’m confused. Just a moment, please. Okay. If the pre-born is a person, then why should abortions be legal, and if the pre-born is not a person, then why should they be rare? Talk to me, politician, tell me why?” That’s just politician speak. It doesn’t mean anything. Refute it with truth. Thirdly, persevere in prayer and action to abolish abortion, let’s be all in fire like William Lloyd Garrison. Let’s not go away. Let’s look and see what we can do better in the year 2004, let’s find out more about what pregnancy support services there are. There’s an insert in your bulletin what they need financially for volunteer hours. There were a few pro-life things that happened in our church this year, I’d like to see more this year.
Number four, radiate hope. Shine as a beacon of hope and grace and faith for the desperate. They need the word of hope. Christian, give it to them. Speak hope into their situation. And then finally come to Christ if you’re listening to me today and you don’t know Jesus as your Lord and Savior don’t leave this room without trusting in him and if you’re already a Christian but you’ve committed some sin in this area or any other area come to Christ again for forgiveness and healing and cleansing and he will take your sins and the scripture says in Micah, throw them into the depths of the sea, covered by a sea of his grace through the blood of Christ.
“Shine as a beacon of hope and grace and faith for the desperate. They need the word of hope. Christian, give it to them. Speak hope into their situation.”
