"Sanctity of Life Sunday”, Will DuVal | 11/10/24
11/10/24 | Will DuVal
If you check your weekly e-newsletters, or if you’ve glanced at the back of your bulletin yet, you’ve noticed that we’re calling a bit of an audible this morning. We have been studying (and worshiping!) together through the book of Ephesians this fall, and God willing, we’ll return to it next Sunday. But as I tried to prepare for it this week, I could not shake the feeling - the BURDEN - that God was laying on my heart to go in a different direction this morning. It just felt IMPOSSIBLE to me to simply go on with business as usual, without pausing to collectively acknowledge, and process, and GRIEVE the news of this past week, namely, that Amendment 3 - the bill that we’ve been warning and praying against for months now as a church - officially passed on Tuesday. Meaning that effective December 5th, abortion will once again be LEGAL in the state of Missouri.
Amendment 3 legalizes abortion all the way up through the third trimester of pregnancy, and paves the way for tax-payer funded abortions - soon, our state taxes will be PAYING for them.
Now, before some of you get upset and leave, please give me a chance to try and explain why I feel such a burden to address this issue this morning. We are an expositional church, meaning we believe the Bible is God’s word, and therefore what people need to hear on Sundays MORE than the pastor’s opinions on whatever his particular hobbyhorse topics might be is SCRIPTURE - we need to hear from GOD. “Just open the Bible, Pastor, and let GOD speak to us.”
And Church, I assure you: that is exactly what I plan to DO this morning. But listen: when God DOES speak to us - SO loudly, so PASSIONATELY, so CLEARLY - about something that is so CLOSE to his heart, and yet we FAIL to listen and HEED his words, we have to take a serious step back, a long hard look in the mirror, lest Jesus’s rebuke in Luke 6:46 be true of us: “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?”.
God has TOLD us what to think and what to DO when it comes to abortion.
I also wanna say up front: I’m gonna try and be really careful with my TONE in this sermon. I had Polly look this one over in advance for me, cuz I really wanna strike the right balance here. And her biggest thing was: “It’s okay to be MAD; we SHOULD be mad. Remember, that was Ephesians 4:26 a couple weeks ago - “Be RIGHTEOUSLY angry; and if there’s EVER a time for it, legalized abortion is the time! But she said, “I think people are gonna hear this sermon so much better if more than hearing you MAD, they hear you SAD.” And I AM, church; I am SAD too. And I hope you are as well; our hearts ought to BREAK for the things that break GOD’S heart.
Now, some of you are thinking: “Pastor, you’re preaching to the CHOIR here; don’t blame ME - I voted AGAINST the amendment.” But church: voting is not ENOUGH.
Some of you will say: “ENOUGH with the POLITICS! I’ve been bombarded for the past 6 months - LONGER! - and I was really hoping to come to church this morning and get a BREAK from it…” - Well, you’re in luck: because I have no interest in being POLITICAL this morning; my only interest is in being BIBLICAL. Abortion ISN’T a political issue; not primarily. At its core, this is a BIBLICAL, a SPIRITUAL issue.
Speaking of things abortion is NOT - it’s also not a super complicated issue. Many would have us believe this is one of those ethically GRAY areas, that is just too complex and thorny to be dogmatic about. They try and reframe the conversation as being about “women’s rights” or “reproductive freedom”. But no one I’VE ever heard advocating for the rights of the UNBORN has any desire to tell a woman what can she can and can’t do with her OWN body; RATHER, we’re just concerned with what women are doing to the bodies of the BABIES who are temporarily located INSIDE of them.
And THAT’s what this issue really boils DOWN to, isn’t it? The ONLY question that really matters, is the one abortion advocates DESPERATELY want to distract us from: “Is the LIFE inside a mother’s womb… a HUMAN BEING?”
Cuz I’ll be the first to admit: if a fetus… an embryo… a ZYGOTEISN’T a humanbeing, then no justification for abortion is even NEEDED. If it’s just an inanimate cluster of cells, a “potential”-but-not-YET human being, then abortion is really no different than getting an unwanted tumor removed.
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But friends: if that life, that living, growing thing inside of her is in FACT a human being, then no justification for abortion is ADEQUATE. No defense for abortion can be ACCEPTABLE. With the ONLY possible exception being the tragic but less than 1% of pregnancies where the mother’s OWN life is at risk; most will argue that 2 deaths are worse than one; but even in those cases, a few will argue that abortion is still unjustifiable. That is a matter of Christian conscience.
But in the other 99% of cases, including the 95% where the reason for abortion is simply, “I don’t want this baby”, this is NOT a complicated, gray area. (https://lozierinstitute.org/fact-sheet-reasons-for-abortion/)
Lastly, before we open God’s word together, some of you may be wondering: “Why this issue? We didn’t interrupt past sermon series to spend a week on the war in Gaza, or Ukraine… or when Hurricane Helene killed 233 people just weeks ago.”
And my answer is THREE-fold:
First, abortion is more personally relevant to us. Gaza and Ukraine are halfway around the world from us; abortion is about to be right back in our backyards. We of course still care about ALL human tragedies, in ALL places. But ESPECIALLY so when they hit so close to home.
Second, abortion is more PRACTICALLY pertinent for us to address. In part because of the proximate nature of this particular tragedy, we can (and MUST!) actually do something ABOUT it, as I hope to show you this morning.
And third, as I ALSO hope to convince you, abortion is not only more personal and more practical, it’s also more PERNICIOUS… more unspeakably WICKED.
All sins are evil, but they are NOT all EQUAL. 1 John 5:17 says, “All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that [leads to death, and sin that] doesn’t.” Jesus singled out ONE sin in particular as “unforgivable” (Mk 3:29), namely, rejecting HIM - Jesus - when the Holy Spirit is PROMPTING you, to repent and RECEIVE Him. So if you’re here this morning and you CHOSE abortion, or (men) you encouraged, even COERCED someone into an abortion, or perhaps you even just considered it, and the fact that it even crossed your MIND, as an OPTION for you, still plagues you with GUILT to this day… hear the good news of the gospel this morning: Abortion is NOT the unforgivable sin. You CAN repent and receive Christ’s forgiveness this morning. There is now NO condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:1).
But none of that DETRACTS from how distinctly EVIL this sin, abortion, really is. As I was praying this week, trying to discern whether or not Amendment 3 was just too big, too heinously EVIL… NOT to interrupt Ephesians, God put it in perspective for me this way: if Missourians had just voted to reinstitute SLAVERY, such that on December 5th, white folks who wanted to were given the “right”, the “freedom”, to start rounding up their African American neighbors and subjugate them… start claiming them as property… I don’t think ANYONE here would take issue with me interrupting our regularly scheduled broadcasting of Ephesians to ADDRESS that, would you? Like: let’s talk about the elephant in the ROOM this morning… it would be beyond insensitive and tone-deaf, for me NOT to spend time addressing that, AGREED?
Now I ask you: IF abortion kills an innocent human being - I know I haven’t proven that to you yet, but IF - if it’s MURDER… and we just legalized the MURDER of untold thousands of innocent lives in our state in the coming years, how can we NOT address that?
Look: you may leave here unconvinced this morning. Because I’ll shoot you straight: I’m gonna hang my entire argument - my PLEA to you - this morning, on the word of God. I could appeal to the SCIENCE - if you just ask the question, “When does human life begin?” and simply “follow the science” like we’re so often told to do - any honest, intelligent observer HAS to conclude that abortion is DEEPLY problematic. But this isn’t biology class; it’s CHURCH. So we’re gonna look exclusively to God’s word, the Bible, as our source of authority. So if you are one of the 51.6% of Missourians who just proved last week that the Bible is NOT authoritative for you, then this sermon probably won’t convince you.
But I do hope you can at least respect my need to PREACH it, given what WE believe here, as a CHURCH. I think of that great Penn Jillette quote about evangelism - the famous magician and avowed ATHEIST who said, “I don’t respect [Christians] who don’t proselytize… If you believe that there’s a heaven and a hell, and people could be going to hell [and] it’s not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward… how much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize?”
Even if you DON’T believe in the Bible and you don’t therefore believe that “a person’s a person, no matter how small”, I hope you can at least respect that for those of us who DO believe it, we can’t just go on with business as usual after last Tuesday. We HAVE to respond.
And here’s how we’re gonna respond this morning: in points 1-3, we’ll consider the biblical case against abortion, and REMIND ourselves why this is such a big deal, to GOD; the ONLY one whose opinion on the subject really MATTERS. And then in point 4, we’ll consider God’s call to RESPOND: how does God expect US, as his people, to react… to ACT - “faith without WORKS is DEAD” - what does God want us to DO now, that Amendment 3 is the law of our land.
Review, then Respond.
So FIRST, we need to review what the Bible says about abortion. And while you won’t find “Thou shall not abort thy baby”, God’s outlook is nevertheless crystal clear in his word. And it begins with this first important premise, that…
1) Human life is SACRED. (Gen 1:26-28,31)
I’m gonna ground each of these doctrinal truths in one key passage of Scripture, but then we’ll look at a NUMBER of others - not ALL of the relevant texts; there are just too many. But hopefully enough to convince you that EACH of these four main bullet points is THOROUGHLY BIBLICAL.
And the FIRST is that human life is SACRED.
So would you STAND with me… I’m not gonna ask you stand for all FOUR of the passages we’ll read, but let’s at least honor God’s word by standing for this first one…
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Fast forward, and on the SIXTH day, we read THIS: “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth…
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it… And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.”
This is the word of God… You may be seated.
Now again, if this were a more expository message in a whole sermon series through the book of Genesis, there are LOTS of other questions we’d wanna stop and answer about that passage:
“Who is the “US” God addresses here? Is this evidence for the TRINITY?”
“What does it mean to be given DOMINION over the earth?”
“Are there distinct male vs. female “images” of God?”
“Are we STILL called to make lots of babies, or was that a calling unique to Adam & Eve as the world’s first people?”
That LAST one in particular is at least worth BRINGING UP in the context of God’s view on abortion: “Isn’t abortion a direct violation of God’s very first command in all of Scripture, to “Be fruitful and multiply”?!”
But the BROADER point for us to glean from Genesis 1 is that human life is SACRED.
What does is MEAN to be “created in the image of God”? Again, we could EASILY spend a whole sermon just answering THAT one! But one thing we can and MUST say for SURE, is that our being created in the image of God makes humankind SPECIAL - nothing else in all 6 days of creation is said to be made “after [God’s own] LIKENESS.” And if it is GOD’S likeness and image that we’re made after, then our lives aren’t just SPECIAL; they are SACRED: “entitled to special RESPECT by association with the DIVINE.”
We humans enjoy a special “association” - a RELATIONSHIP - with “the divine” - GOD - by virtue of our having been created “in his IMAGE”... SUCH THAT, for instance, God treats it as BAD to unjustifiably kill an ANIMAL, but it is UNTHINKABLE to unjustifiably kill another HUMAN. In fact we’ve got a whole different WORD for it: MURDER. And it’s on God’s top 10 list: “Thou shall not MURDER” (Ex 20:13).
“Whoever sheds the blood of man,” God declares in Genesis 9:6, “by man shall his blood be shed, [God says: “You gotta put that murderer to DEATH…] for [BECAUSE] God made man in his own image.”
In other words, the more PRECIOUS a thing IS to you, the more COSTLY and CONSEQUENTIAL its desecration - its destruction - will be to you. God says, “Because you are made in MY image, ANYONE who wrongfully takes a human life MUST be put to DEATH - no lesser punishment would fit the crime. Human life is TOO sacred.”
Our lives are INFINITELY inestimable to God, so much so that he sent his only Son Jesus to DIE for us - THAT’s how much God values human life, how high a price tag he puts on us.
ALL human life, by the way. The idea that somehow the larger, or more autonomous, more developmentally capable a person is, the more VALUABLE their life is - that idea is nothing short of DEMONIC. It’s the kind of idea that drives people to ENSLAVE others, to disregard and cast aside the elderly, the weak, the disabled. We believe that ALL human life is sacred, endowed with the eternally invaluable image of our Creator God.
And our lives belong to HIM - GOD - and him ALONE. NO ONE has the “right” to “choose” whether another person lives or dies “every living soul belongs to ME,” God declares in Ezekiel 18:4.
Again, this isn’t about a woman’s “right to choose”; if a fetus is a human being, she doesn’t have any more right to kill her 3 month old fetus than she does her 3-YEAR old TODDLER. “Every soul belongs to GOD”, and every life is SACRED.
Moreover, according to God’s word, children have a SPECIAL place in God’s heart. Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me… for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.” (Mt 19:14) God says, “Behold, children are a heritage from [ME,] the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward… Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them!” (Ps 127:3,5a)
Don’t you wanna be BLESSED?! “Be fruitful and MULTIPLY!”
I’ve never met a woman who chose life and REGRETTED it. Whether she kept the baby and life got tougher but surprisingly also more “blessed”, fuller, richer… OR she placed her baby for adoption, and blessed another couple who IS struggling to be fruitful and multiply; either way - she doesn’t regret it. But I’ve met MANY women who regret their abortion. And again, that is a guilt and shame that Jesus has already PAID for - “no condemnation in Christ” - but that doesn’t mean she won’t STILL wrestle with those feelings of REGRET, sometimes for the rest of her life.
The second Scriptural AXIOM we need to be reminded of is that: 2) An unborn baby is a HUMAN Life. (Ps 139:13-16)
Cuz some will say, “Sure, all life is sacred. But how do we know when a fetus becomes a BABY… a HUMAN BEING?” Is it with a heartbeat, around 5 weeks? Or at viability… or sentience, around 24 weeks? Or not until it’s on the OUTSIDE, at 40 weeks?
Fortunately, once again, God has not left us in the DARK on the matter. Psalm 139 is probably the most lengthy and unambiguous passage declaring the HUMANITY of the unborn, where King David prays and PRAISES God:
““You formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made…
15 My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.” (vv13-16).
God FORMED you… SAW you… KNEW you… knitted you together in your mother’s womb. Not the POTENTIALITY of you. Not the beginnings of what would EVENTUALLY, ONE day BECOME you…
But… YOU! You were ALREADY you, even when you were still an “UNFORMED substance”, barely even detectable under a microscope… yet GOD’S eyes SAW you.
David echoes this truth in Psalm 22:10 “from my mother's womb, you have been my God.”
God HIMSELF affirms as much of the preborn prophet Jeremiah: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, [God says] and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” (1:5)
Likewise, the prophet ISAIAH announces, “The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother [God] named my name.” (49:1b)
The apostle PAUL declares that God “set me apart before I was born, and called me by his grace…” (Gal 1:15)
If I asked you what Jesus’ first miracle was, MOST of you would say… [turning the water into wine at the wedding in Cana, in John ch2.] But you’d ARGUABLY be WRONG. Because before Jesus was even BORN, when Mary was still PREGNANT with him in Luke 1, she went to visit her cousin ELIZABETH, who was ALSO pregnant, with John the Baptist. And the mere PRESENCE of the unborn baby JESUS was exciting enough to make the unborn baby John jump for JOY! (vv41-44)
Lifeless balls of tissue don’t JUMP… don’t KICK… don’t suck their thumbs and respond to their mother’s voices and feel pain. But BABIES do. Human BEINGS… do.
That’s why - I know I said Psalm 139 is probably the clearest passage on this point, but Exodus 21 certainly gives it a run for its money: “When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined… But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.” (vv22-25)
In OTHER words, unborn babies enjoyed the exact same RIGHTS and PROTECTIONS under God’s Law in the OT as any other fully grown person outside the womb.
And here’s the craziest and most contradictory thing ABOUT abortion: so do unborn babies here in Missouri TODAY… but only under the certain CIRCUMSTANCES.
Admittedly, I’m no legal scholar, but as best I can tell under Missouri law, come December 5th, if you were 6 months pregnant and on your way to Planned Parenthood to get an abortion, and I run a red light and HIT you and you lose the baby as a result, I can be found guilty of MANSLAUGHTER. But if you make it there unscathed and PAY a doctor to kill the baby - that’s totally legal.
Now, that’s not 100% clear, because the wording of Amendment 3 was PURPOSELY vague enough on late-term abortions to get 52% of us to VOTE for it, but ALSO vague enough that abortion advocates will be able to stretch the language and interpret it however they WANT, when the court cases inevitably come.
But how is it possible that I kill her baby: MANSLAUGHTER; but SHE kills her baby: no problem.
You kill a baby bald eagle, smash an egg: you get fined $100,000 and go to JAIL for a year; but kill your own baby: no problem.
Church: we’re about to live in a state where you can get in bigger trouble for picking a Virginia SNEEZEweed plant than for killing an unborn BABY! A human BEING.
By the way, I know this sermon is probably also tough for many of you, like my wife and I, who have endured a miscarriage (or THREE, in our case). Because it’s a painful reminder that you didn’t just lose a POTENTIAL baby; you lost a BABY, whether he or she was 6 weeks or 26 weeks. And if that’s you, I just want to say: “I am so sorry. I know your pain. Your church family grieves with you. You’re not ALONE.”
And I’m not even gonna TRY and speculate about why God - the one to whom “EVERY living soul belongs” - why in his providence God takes some of our babies from us so early. Why God would allow such affliction; why He allowed Amendment THREE to pass, with all of the violent brutality that is sure to ENSUE in the years to come now. “WHY, God? How LONG, O Lord?”
That was David’s cry in Psalm 13. “How long must I… have sorrow in my heart, all the day?! How long shall my enemy be exalted OVER me?” Church: our enemy, Satan, was EXALTED last Tuesday. “Why… How LONG, Lord?!”
We cannot always… or really EVER… understand the mind, the will, the plans of God. But we CAN, as DAVID did, choose to TRUST him nonetheless: “my foes rejoice… I am shaken… But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.”
If it’s not good, then He’s not DONE yet. “For we know that God works ALL things together for good, for those who LOVE him, and are called according to his purpose” (Rom 8:28).
Today, we grieve. “But joy comes in the morning” (Ps 30:5); we SHALL rejoice in his salvation.
Truth #3 now: if human life is sacred… and if an unborn baby IS a human life… and if abortion by definition ENDS the life of an unborn baby… then it follows logically, and as we’ll see in just a moment, it also follows BIBLICALLY, that God HATES abortion. (Prov 6:16-19)
I don’t want to belabor the point, but I do want to at least consider a few additional passages that make this truth clear, starting with Proverbs 6:16-19:
“There are six things that the Lord hates,
seven that are an abomination to him:
17 haughty eyes, a lying tongue,
and hands that shed innocent blood,
18 a heart that devises wicked plans,
feet that make haste to run to evil,
19 a false witness who breathes out lies,
and one who sows discord among brothers.”
Now just consider with me briefly how each ONE of those sins is involved, implicated, in the sin of ABORTION.
“Hands that shed innocent blood” is pretty obvious. A majority - 60% - of abortions stop a beating heart. (https://abort73.com/abortion_facts/us_abortion_statistics/ )
But how about “HAUGHTY eyes”? The Hebrew phrase literally means “LIFTED, or EXALTED eyes”; presuming to stand in God’s place… PLAYING GOD. Isn’t that what abortion does? “My body, my choice.” God says, “First of all, it’s your BABY’s body that is in question here. And SECOND of all, it’s not YOUR body ANYWAY! “You are NOT your own,” God says, “every living soul belongs to ME” (1 Cor 6:18; Ez 18:4).
A LYING tongue? The whole INDUSTRY - Planned Parenthood alone is a 2 BILLION dollar company; abortion is BIG business! - and the entire thing is built on a LIE. LOTS of lies, really - that abortion is safe, painless, easy… that it’s REALLY about a woman’s freedom, or privacy… but at the heart of it, the biggest lie of all, is that abortion DOESN’T end an innocent human LIFE.
Speaking of lies - I GOOGLED this week, trying to make sure I had compiled all the most relevant passages, I GOOGLED for “The Bible says God hates abortion”, and the top THREE search results were all PRO-abortion websites (“What the Bible REALLY says about abortion may SURPRISE you…”). If you open “Maps” on your iPhone and search for “Pregnancy Help”, their algorithm is PROGRAMMED to highlight the nearest abortion clinics, and HIDE pro-life resource centers. And Planned Parenthood reinvests those $2 billion dollars to make sure it STAYS that way.
“A heart that devises WICKED plans”? You probably saw the undercover video a few years back of the Planned Parenthood executives trafficking in fetal tissue for profit in violation of federal law. I think of that movie “Unplanned”, which, if you HAVEN’T seen yet, you NEED to see. But the wickedness it exposes in abortion’s plans… the darkness in its leaders’ hearts… Planned Parenthood’s FOUNDER, Margaret Sanger, was a racist eugenicist who literally stated that her hope with abortion was to DECIMATE the African American population in this country. That’s the kind of heart abortion is derived from.
The kind of “feet that make haste to run to evil”. But we should recognize here: that’s not everyone who GETS an abortion. Most women don’t RUN JOYFULLY to the abortion clinic; they DRAG their feet there, remorsefully. They DON’T “shout their abortion” loud and proud from the rooftops like the activists WANT them to; they are afraid and ashamed. And Jesus looked on such people with COMPASSION, like sheep without a shepherd, who’ve been misled, deceived by the imposter shepherds of this world, those activists who DO “run to evil”.
They are “false witnesses who breathe out lies”. They “sow discord among brothers.” How SAD is it, that I even had to think TWICE about preaching this sermon, because of the DISCORD I knew it might sow here, with some who are still slow to accept GOD’S view on abortion… who have been SO steeped in, so indoctrinated by the world’s LIES on abortion.
And yet for ALL of the lies, we cannot avoid the TRUTH: that God HATES abortion.
“Do not kill the innocent,” he declares in Exodus 23:7, “for I will not acquit the wicked.”
It was for the sin of INFANTICIDE in particular that God said he judged and exiled his people Israel from the Promised Land. Because they adopted the insidious practices of the pagan nations surrounding them, who sacrificed their own children to their fake gods in hopes that it would please them into sending rain for their crops. And after years of watching on in HORROR, Israel HERSELF eventually began to join in.
Psalm 106: “They sacrificed their sons
and their daughters to the demons;
they poured out innocent blood…and the land was polluted with blood…
Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against his people,
and he abhorred his heritage” (vv37-40)Israel was led astray by their OWN imposter shepherds, like King Manasseh, who “burned his son as an offering and… shed very much innocent blood, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another… he did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger” (2 Kings 21:6,16).
Because God HATES infanticide… abortion.
So… what NOW? We prayed… we voted… but God did NOT answer our prayers the way we wanted. What do we do NOW? What CAN we do? What SHOULD we do?
I believe this morning, God is calling us - the Church - to respond in THREE ways.
First of all, we must LAMENT (Lk 19:41-44).
I thought of JESUS, WEEPING over the city of Jerusalem, after the crowds had been deceived, stirred up, and convinced to crucify him; Jesus WEPT at their misguided straying into SIN.
Church: we ought to WEEP for St. Louis, for Missouri, for AMERICA. “Would that [WE], even [we], had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from [our] eyes.” Abortion does NOT make for peace; it is VIOLENCE against babies AND against WOMEN (and MEN, for that matter too).
But the truth has been HIDDEN from our eyes; our society, our nation, is being led like lambs to the slaughter. And like JESUS, it ought to absolutely break our hearts. We ought to GRIEVE over the thousands - probably MILLIONS, if we include the OTHER 6 states that embraced abortion last Tuesday - millions of additional lives that will now be LOST in the coming years because of these nefarious laws.
But if we want to see others’ hearts CHANGED, it starts with OUR hearts BREAKING, like God’s does. How did the civil rights movement start? With Martin Luther King LAMENTING over Rosa Parks’ exile to the back of the bus. Why’d we send our soldiers over in World War 2, to help liberate the concentration camps? Because Americans started seeing the IMAGES coming out of those camps, and we were so deeply GRIEVED… so ENRAGED… and by the way, as hard as they ARE to see, if you haven’t seen the photos, the videos, of the carnage of abortion, you need to. Because we need to lament, to be MOVED into action.
But before that, we ALSO need to REPENT.
For not organizing 24 hrs of prayer last Tuesday, around the clock, specifically against Amendment 3.
For not advocating outside the polling stations. There were 3 women standing 100 ft. outside Parkway Central where I voted, holding “Vote YES on 3” signs, and trying to stop voters on the way in to convince them. I thought: “Why didn’t WE organize a campaign, as a church, to set up shop at as many polling stations as we could manage with “vote NO on 3 signs”?! Cuz I didn’t see any of THOSE at Parkway Central. We oughta REPENT…
For not raising even CLOSE to as much money - abortion activists poured $31 million dollars into the campaign FOR Amendment 3; wanna guess how much we spent to COMBAT it?
5.5 million. One-SIXTH the fundraising; friends: that’s game, set, MATCH; they BOUGHT this vote! They spent 6 times more and still just BARELY convinced enough people - 52% of the population; that’s how EVIL this law is!
But why couldn’t WE raise 30 million? Why DIDN’T we?
We have to REPENT.
Repent, as a CHURCH, for staying SILENT on this issue all too often, out of fear of offending or upsetting someone.
Repent for LETTING the culture reframe the issue as “reproductive rights… healthcare”... for not FORCING our politicians to answer the question: “When does human life begin?” That’s the ONLY question that really matters, so don’t even TALK to me about policy until you’re willing to go on record and ANSWER it.
But WE let ‘em off the hook.
“If my people”, God promises, “who are called by my name will humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways [REPENT!], then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” (2 Chr 7:13-14)
Lastly, once we have LAMENTED and REPENTED, Church, we have GOT to get ENGAGED. Roll up our sleeves and get to WORK.
God calls us in Proverbs 31:8 to
“Open your mouth for the mute, [those who CAN’T open THEIR OWN mouths; YOU speak up on THEIR behalf!]
for the rights of all who are destitute.
9 Open your mouth, judge righteously,
defend the rights of the poor and needy.”
Church: who is more POOR, NEEDY, VULNERABLE, at RISK these days, than the unborn?
I think of God’s word to Queen ESTHER, when her people, GOD’S people, the Jews were at risk of annihilation: “If you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom [as QUEEN, and been given a position of INFLUENCE] for such a time as this?”” (Esther 4:14)
Church: we HAVE influence; how are we stewarding it? God has promised to right EVERY wrong, including the most EGREGIOUS evil of ALL in our society today: abortion. God will do it WITH or WITHOUT us; deliverance - justice - WILL rise for the unborn. The only question is: will we “keep silent”, or will we SPEAK UP and be a PART of God’s deliverance? Will we be faithful “in such a time as this”?
What does that look like for US, specifically here at West Hills? I wish I had more practical answers ready for you this morning; I’m honestly still more in the lamenting and repenting phase right now, personally. I know the TIMING of this is TERRIBLE, with us just having DROPPED our biggest pro-life partner in ThriVe, due to corruption in their leadership. That’s still being sorted out in court; I’m HOPEFUL we’ll see justice done THERE, and maybe be able to RESUME our partnership with them eventually. But in the meantime, there are LOTS of other organizations out there fighting the good fight. And we don’t even HAVE to necessarily lean on THEM to help us get organized and resourced and engaged; there’s nothing stopping US from being there on the sidewalks on December 5th - praying and PLEADING with women - when Planned Parenthood reopens downtown. There’s nothing stopping US from throwing baby showers for mothers who DO choose life, to alleviate just ONE of the pressures toward abortion. There’s nothing stopping US from stepping up and FOSTERING, adopting these babies we’re begging them not to KILL, but they can’t afford.
Church: are we moved to ACTION? To ENGAGE, to get off the sidelines and get in the FIGHT. I talked with Pastor Austin about it this past week; he would LOVE to have someone join the missions team specifically to spearhead this effort. But listen: we’re not just looking for a person of PASSION; MANY of us are gonna hear this message and feel convicted, compelled to do more. Good. But it’s gonna take more than passion; we need a person of ACTION to lead this charge. What Austin DOESN’T need is more folks who may get really angry or sad about abortion, but who can’t manage to reply to his EMAILS to the team… much less pick up the phone THEMSELF and CALL Coalition for Life, spend the time it takes to MEET with their staff, then report back to the team here, help galvanize US here as a church - we need a LEADER.
But in closing: why do we do ANY of this? Why DO we get so fired up, so ENGAGED in the cause for LIFE?
Because friends: that’s EXACTLY what our Savior JESUS did for us. Jesus was so MOVED, so GRIEVED as he looked down on our spiritual, ETERNAL deaths, that he stepped off his throne in heaven to climb up a cross here on earth that he might save our LIVES. Jesus was pro-LIFE. The GOSPEL is the good news of LIFE - ETERNAL life - that Jesus brings to ALL who trust in Him. But the gospel beckons us - it DEMANDS us - to respond.
We love… we RESCUE, because HE first rescued US.
Amen.