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Our Father in heaven, Lord, we gather before you this morning,
mindful that life is transitory,
that this world views life as cheap and as
utterly meaningless, but Father, in spite of the fact that human life, mortality, is
transitory, is momentary, Lord, we know that our
souls will go on forever.
We are created in your image and you have placed eternity in the heart of man and
you have given us souls that will be somewhere for eternity.
Lord, as we look to your word, I pray that you would give us a greater sense of the
importance of human life, of the importance of valuing each and every
soul.
Lord, would you bless each soul here this morning in Jesus' name we pray, amen.
Well, it seems like a month ago, but it was really last Sunday.
It was a long week, what can I tell you?
We were discussing abortion and just to kind of
review a little bit, and then we have some more.
I gave this idea, and by the way, I didn't really complete this, but this idea
of murder being the taking of human life with malice aforethought, but it must be,
also to be technically, to be legally murder, I said it must be illegal.
And so when we talk about abortion, it's kind of an interesting conundrum because we
don't like abortion.
In fact, we hate abortion because God hates abortion.
But, and I would say it's the taking of a human life, and at the very least, even if we wouldn't say
necessarily in every case it's with malice aforethought, it's definitely not, I
wouldn't say it's with the greatest kindness, you know, certainly.
And I mean, if you study what abortion actually does to the baby, you would understand that this is not
typically kind.
But how do people justify abortion, by the way, with
regard to just looking at maybe the baby, and you know, I'll just give it away, and then
we'll take some comments.
But people look and they say, well, you know, the baby isn't developing properly.
The baby is going to be handicapped.
The baby is going to be this way.
So it's really not malice, it's kindness.
It's loving to put the child out of his or her misery.
We're going to talk some about, because Pastor Bob sent me an email this last week,
about eugenics.
Who's familiar with eugenics?
Would somebody care to describe what eugenics is?
Because I'd prefer that somebody else did it.
What is eugenics?
Yes.
Selective breeding.
To bring about an uber bench, a Superman, a superior
being.
You know, some people should be encouraged to breed.
Other people should be stopped from breeding.
We are, after all.
I mean, what does that sound like?
Sounds like horses, you know, or dogs, or something like that, you know.
You know, we want purebreds.
We want thoroughbreds.
We want, you know, dogs
that are healthier, that are stronger, that are faster, that are able to burrow underground.
So we're going to breed certain types of dogs together until we get that.
We want horses that run faster.
We want horses that are bigger.
So we're going to, you know, breed together horses that are bigger so that we get bigger and bigger and bigger horses.
When we start doing that with people, what are we doing?
We're playing God.
And this, it really is a horrific idea.
And you mentioned it really came to its culmination, its pinnacle, as it were,
or we could say it's nadir, under the Nazis.
But it was popular before that.
It was popular before that.
It was popular in the United States.
Popular with a lot of people.
What do you suppose might cause something like eugenics to be popular?
An evolutionary worldview.
Because what's at the baseline of evolution?
Survival of the fittest.
So how do you make sure that your kind is going to survive?
Make sure you have the fittest.
Get the best.
And so what do you then do?
You look at the weak, the diseased, the
genetically challenged, and you mark them for extinction.
Why?
Because they are dragging your race, your breed
down.
You have basically turned mankind into an animal.
Nothing more, nothing less.
It's an ugly, ugly thought.
But getting back to this, and we'll talk more about that, but getting back to this idea of murder, taking over human life,
malice aforethought, illegal.
A lot of people say that abortion is murder.
And biblically, I think that's true.
Legally, in this country, is it murder?
I mean, I can believe, I can proclaim that I think that abortion is murder, but
is it murder?
Legally, in the United States, the answer is no.
Does that change its moral dimension?
No.
Was it legal to gas Jews in Germany?
Did that make it moral?
Did that stop it from ultimately being murder?
But within the confines of Nazi Germany, that was perfectly acceptable,
as repugnant as that was.
We talked about many of the things that the Bible says about human life when it starts,
things of that nature.
I also mentioned, and I was reading about, R .C. Sproul has a book about abortion.
And it really is interesting, because I mentioned DNA, and how
a baby in the womb has a heartbeat at 22 days.
But he went on at some length because he has a cousin who's a doctor.
And I just found this interesting, that if you think about it, because I mentioned last week that some of the
abortion rights advocates will say that the baby in the
womb, or what they call the fetus, or whatever they want to call it, they will say that the baby
is a parasite.
And so R .C. is talking about this, and he says, now just think about this.
He says, they want to call it a parasite, but the truth is, that
parasite, if nobody does anything, is going to leave,
right?
And it's going to leave naturally, and it's going to leave behind no
negative consequences in all likelihood, right?
That's not what parasites do.
It doesn't even meet the definition of a parasite.
They just want it to be a parasite.
It doesn't matter that it has its own blood supply, all these other things.
And his point was, predominantly, with the argument for abortion, from the abortion rights advocate is,
a woman's body, a woman's right to choose.
Well, it's not her body.
And if you negate the premise, then it's pretty hard to get to the conclusion, right?
If you say, it's a woman's body, therefore it's a woman's right to choose.
Well, if it's not her body, I think it becomes a little more complicated.
So we looked at several passages, including John the Baptist leaping in the womb, David describing,
and the psalmist describing how created in his mother's womb, even
Isaac and Jacob wrestling, doing battle.
Not Isaac and Jacob, but Jacob and Esau, thank you.
Then we talked about two men striving together.
I don't even know what to call it.
They're fighting.
I mean, it reminds me of an old West bar scene.
I don't know why.
Maybe it's because it's the desert or whatever.
I don't know.
But I just picture these two guys kind of going at it after somebody spilled their beer on somebody else.
But that has nothing to do with this.
It just seems like it.
And the pregnant woman, loses her baby.
And then they, they talk about the penalties.
Even if she just has the baby early, there's a, there's a penalty to pay.
And if the baby dies, the penalty ultimately is death.
Because that was a human life that was ended.
And I wanted to, in our last little biblical argument for
birth in the earth, life in the womb, let's look at Isaiah chapter 49.
And I think there are a lot of
allusions to Jesus in this chapter.
There are several, what are called servant songs and Isaiah and Isaiah 49 is one of them.
And I'm going to read just a Isaiah 49 verses one and two.
Listen to me, O coastlands and give attention you peoples from afar.
The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my
mother.
He named my name
and look at verse five.
And now the Lord says he who formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring
Jacob back to him and that Israel might be gathered to him for, I am honored in the eyes of the Lord.
And my God has become my strength.
Now there are some disputes about who the servant is depends on
your political or your theological perspective.
But I think it's pretty clear.
A lot of the, a lot of the illusions there are certainly of Jesus, but just that
idea of being called from the womb will, how do you call an amorphous grouping of cells,
you know, from the womb?
How do you appoint that person to an important role?
The answer is you couldn't, because it wouldn't be a person.
I was reading, what's that this morning?
I think it was this morning.
It was this morning, a woman who has devoted her life to human rights
and worked in a number of countries.
And she says, there's a real problem in the United States.
She says, that problem is freedom of speech when it comes to being anti
-abortion.
You shouldn't be allowed, she says, to say anything against abortion because
it's a human right.
Women have a human right to have an abortion.
Therefore, any arguments against that should be outlawed.
And she says, it's just like you wouldn't permit racist language
in the same way you shouldn't allow anti -abortion language.
What's wrong with that line of thinking?
Okay, so a couple of things that Charlie said.
One is this idea of freedom of conscience.
I mean, just think about what she's saying that, you know, you ought not to be able, there are some laws that are so sacrosanct, you ought to be,
not be able to speak against them.
Well, there was a time in this country where the law was, for lack of a better word,
racist.
The Dred Scott decision, so not allowed to speak against those things, you know,
well, that was fine because she agrees with that, but she doesn't agree with this, so that kind of language should be
outlawed.
The other thing you mentioned was this idea of, well, I'll
just kind of merge it all together.
Here's the thing.
There was a time in, how many of you were alive in the 1970s?
I had a high school teacher who was a just, here, there's
liberal, there's communist, and then there was this woman, okay, and she
was one of my high school teachers, and she tried to get me to join the
ACLU, and I probably wasn't as conservative then as I am
now, but she said, I said, well,
that's a pretty radical organization, isn't it?
She goes, no, they're just about preserving, you know, the rights, the constitutional rights of Americans.
She says, for example, they just went to court to protect the right of the American
Nazi Party to march through the streets of Skokie, Illinois, which had a high concentration of Jewish
Americans in it, to protest, you know, to march and to do all their stuff, you know, their
Nazi stuff in Skokie, Illinois.
This is during the 70s, and I read that woman's
column this morning, and I just thought, okay, it used to be that the liberals in
this country were so concerned about free speech that they would even go to court to stop somebody from
preventing the Nazis from doing their Nazi -ist stuff,
and now they say, well, wait a minute, here's something way worse than Nazism.
It's called being against abortion.
It's being called, if you're pro -life, that's just terrible.
That is unacceptable.
That kind of speech must be muzzled.
It must be stopped, and, you know, you talk about conscience
and the right of conscience and how important that is, but what do we see now?
Even if you want to make, or you don't want to make a, not just make a cake, right,
they presented this whole homosexual marriage debate.
They presented it as if somebody walks, you know, I'll just say, sashays into your establishment,
and you say, I will not serve you a cake because you are a homosexual.
That's not exactly what's happening.
What actually is happening is, would you make this wedding cake for us, you know, and put
two guys on it, and will you put, you know, Brad and Steve forever, or whatever, you know,
two guys' names on there, and, you know, maybe even throw a Bible verse on it, you know, and how we're going
to be forever in wedded bliss, and, you know, if you could even put God loves us and has a wonderful plan on the cake, that
would make it just awesome, and you say, you know what, that is against my conscience.
I can't actually do that, because that is a matter of speech, and I don't agree with that.
It's a matter of my conscience, and I can't do that.
Well, now they're saying, you can't have that objection.
You can't believe that.
If you want to be in business, you know, being in business gives you certain obligations, and among those
things is the obligation to make that sort of cake, or to cater that sort of
wedding, even though you don't agree with it, and that's where society is right now.
It's not even a matter of, can you, you know, have a conscience, or whatever.
Your conscience, in their minds, doesn't matter at all, because you don't know what you're talking about, and
they do, and they do.
Tom's exactly right.
They do want to make, you know, an equivalence.
You know, it used to be in the 60s, you know, blacks and whites couldn't get married, and they go
back to, there's a court decision, Loving, the name of the person was Loving versus
Virginia.
It's kind of an odd name for a case, because it makes you think, you know, but the person's name was Loving
versus the state of Virginia, where the idea of interracial marriage, which
was against the law in some states, that was struck down, and I'm like, okay,
again, let's just, let's just get it out there.
As we've been studying what it means to be an image -bearer, there's nothing wrong with interracial
marriage.
Black, yellow, whatever color, white,
image -bearers, all the same.
But when it comes to activities, which is what we're talking about here,
homosexual activity, that is a different thing.
This would be like, you know, I have to make a case celebrating, or a cake celebrating fornication.
I have to make a cake celebrating, you know, bank robbery.
Congratulations on your 100th successful bank robbery.
No, I'm not going to do that, you know.
Congratulations on whatever, you know.
I mean, there are some things that are just wrong.
Congratulations on, you know, stealing from whatever, or I,
there are just some things that ought not to be celebrated, and homosexual marriage is one of those things.
First of all, it's not marriage, and secondly, it is a sin.
Let's, let's just briefly go over some of the political arguments for abortion.
And again, these have nothing to do with biblical arguments.
They have to do with political arguments.
First of all, that women have freedom.
They have the right to choose.
They have reproductive rights, is what they call, call it, and I agree that women have
a right to reproduce.
That has nothing, you know, that's just one of those euphemisms.
If you don't want to call it, we have the right to murder our child, what do you call it?
Reproductive rights.
I don't even want to discuss that one, but how about this one?
Here's another political argument for abortion.
All children should be wanted children.
Have you heard that one?
What does that mean?
It means if a child's not wanted, it's okay to
kill it.
Murder's okay if you don't want somebody around.
I thought that was the idea of murder, right?
Politicians say this sometimes, that they oppose abortion, but
they don't really support laws against abortion.
They're just personally opposed to it.
I have a variation on that where, and this is more typical, where they say, I'm personally
opposed to abortion, but I don't want to force my views
on other people.
Okay, let's reverse that a little bit.
I'm in favor of abortion.
I'm not, but let's just say I was.
I'm in favor of abortion, and I want to enforce my views on other people.
That's the truth, right?
That's what people want.
I want to, you have to accept my view.
This is what this country has come to.
You know, if you don't believe in homosexual marriage, you're wrong.
If you don't believe in a woman's right to end her pregnancy, you're wrong.
And you know, so much for freedom of conscience, so much for freedom of speech, so much for
freedom of religion.
Now, Pastor Bob sent me this email.
I'm going to read some of it here.
He says, the entire abortion issue is fundamentally Darwinism, evolution, gone to
seed.
It is the fruit of a view held by our culture, which developed beginning in 1859,
Darwin's books.
Darwin's work was seminal in putting the God is not necessary impulses of the
Enlightenment on the fast track.
What does he mean by that?
Because if you can find a way to either ignore God, or to kind of
push him out of the way, and say, well, that's not how life began at all.
Genesis is a myth.
It's a fable.
It's a poem.
What really happened is, you know, life began from a...
Sorry, I have to use this because it immediately springs in my mind.
I'm going to use a movie thing.
I can't help...
Sometimes you're at the movie, and you just feel like somebody in the movie screen has just reached
out and smacked you across the face.
You know, and it's like, can I have my money back?
I was at...
I don't even remember which movie it was, but it was a Star Trek movie years and years ago.
And they traveled back in time, and they were standing around this little mud puddle.
Anybody else see this?
And this is the moment when life began, you know?
So, I mean, I'm just like, I'm watching it, and I'm going, let's just think about the absurdity of this.
From nothing, life spontaneously began.
A one -cell organism just came into being.
And then that one -cell organism, I don't know how long it took, you know,
reproduced itself.
And then that one reproduced itself, and pretty soon there were a lot of one -cell organisms.
And then they started splitting up and getting bigger.
And then finally, you know, the time came where there were different...
What's the word I'm looking for?
I'll just say sexes, you know, male and female.
Now, I've always wondered if the idea, of course, behind there being different
genders, there's the word I was looking for, to be more kind and Sunday morning -like.
The idea behind the two genders is that there might be a more
of a variable, more variety to life and all that.
Then why did it stop at two?
Why aren't there three or four or five genders, you know, so we can have all kinds of variety of life?
Maybe it's because in the beginning, male and female created he, them.
It certainly seems like the Bible seems to know what it's talking about.
But anyway, he says, you know, the impulses of the Enlightenment will kind of push God out of the way.
Well, I would add, sadly, Sigmund Freud did this, the father of modern
psychology, because his whole message was what?
God is dead and you have all the information you need inside of you.
Darwin's message, I mean, he wasn't so much against God.
He was just a, he was a dopey scientist who, you know, or a biologist who came up with this
idea that, you know, that we don't see or that we
would see transitions in life forms over time.
But he goes, Pastor Bob goes on to say that survival of the
fittest and natural selection were perfect vehicles to create or to view the creation as chaotic,
without purpose and the product of chance.
And he says this, of course, while irrational, removes
accountability to the creator, which is at the root of rejecting the God of the Bible.
So, you know, if the purpose is to explain that life is random, life is chance,
life has no purpose or meaning, nothing really matters.
Anyone can see nothing really matters to me.
If that's the idea of life, then it's pretty much what?
What does that tell every unbeliever?
That you can do as you please.
If you are nothing but the product of billions and trillions of quadrillions of years
of chance and change and the wonder of life,
then you can do whatever you want.
I did like this part because I love it when people throw in words that I've never read before, as if I should
just know what they are.
You know, like when Pastor Mike said transchronological this morning, I know what that means.
But I thought, I wonder how many people have ever used the word transchronological in a daily conversation.
It means it spans.
It's a truth that spans all time, by the way, in case you were wondering.
But he says, let me see if I could find the word here.
Okay.
He says, he's been prophesying that evolution will one day
be taught as a theory of antiquity.
In other words, you know, and I argue this with my unbelieving friends all the time, do you suppose in a thousand years,
if we're still around, that mankind will be saying, you know what, evolution is the theory.
And I say, well, of course not.
You know, or it'll be so modified that it won't be recognizable by how they view it today.
And I'm like, so why are you staking everything on that?
You know, that's my argument.
But they say that evolution will be, or he says that one day it will be taught as a theory of
antiquity, like earth, water, fire, and air, you know, as the elements.
And then he says, here's the word, as Phlogiston, with a
PH at the beginning.
Phlogiston.
I don't even know if that's how you say it.
And I had to look it up.
I'm going, what in the world is that?
Here it is.
The Phlogiston theory is an obsolete scientific theory that postulated a fire -like
element called Phlogiston, contained within combustible bodies, fire, and
released during combustion.
The name comes from the ancient Greek word Phlogiston, burning up.
It was first stated in 1667, and it attempted to explain burning
processes such as combustion and rusting, which are now collectively known as oxidation.
But the theory remained settled science for 100 years.
And I'm like, okay, that Phlogiston was, you know, a great theory, taught in classrooms all
over the place for 100 years.
Settled science.
And I think that someday that's going to be what we think of evolution, that it will be as dopey as
But he goes on, and now we're going to get into the eugenics part.
He talks about Planned Parenthood and et cetera, et cetera, and Margaret
Sanger.
But it's interesting because eugenics started much earlier than even Planned Parenthood,
you know, really about the turn of the 20th century, with this idea of evolution kind of catching on.
And when you think about it, if we believe that the world goes from the
simple to the complex, and our idea then should be what?
To take the complex, mankind, and to make it better.
So eugenics is this idea of weeding out the weak and the negative traits in
mankind and working towards kind of a utopia.
Notice the same word, or the same beginning, utopia, eugenics.
Not really, but sounds good.
The temptation to manipulate science, that's what the, let me see,
see who that is.
Oh, this is a good quote here from Pastor Bobby.
He says, The temptation to manipulate science, to use aggressive propaganda in schools, and to
enact repugnant laws and the belief that technocrats can mold a perfect society is
something that will always linger in perfect form, or in different forms.
Americans should study the tactics and think of the eugenicists and some of the progressives from this period in
order to guard against acts of, future acts of collective tyranny.
Where they want to work for the collective good, in other words.
And I think this is what we hear all the time, we have to worry about the collective good.
Well, this nation was founded on what?
The idea of the individual and protection of the individual, that's what the Bill of Rights are.
He says, there's a definite connection between Darwinianism, evolution,
abortion, and collective tyranny.
That is,
well, he talks about the political correctness, the political correctness that's kind of coming into our country.
And he says, it is a cloud which may be the beginning of a storm.
This will most assuredly burst upon Christians.
We are all aware that presently, it is not politically correct to be a Christian.
If this cloud really bursts, it will be possible to trace that storm to Charles Darwin,
and what he started.
And then he quotes Alistair Begg, I really like this quote, he says, ideas have consequences.
Children cannot be taught at school that they were born without reason, that they prolong themselves by
chance, and that they die and they go into oblivion.
With that, it will make an impact.
Well, ultimately, it's going to have an impact on their lives and their minds.
You can't be taught that and believe that it's going to have no impact on you, in other words.
But Bob says, well, we ought not to despair because ultimately we win in Christ.
I found this, this is also out of R .C. Sproul's book.
How many of you remember Sandra Day O 'Connor, former
Justice on the Supreme Court?
Listen to what she says, because when we're talking about abortion, we're talking about the beginning of life.
She says this, the difficulty with this analysis is clear.
Potential life, that's what they want us to see, that this is not a person, it's a potential person.
Potential life is no less potential in the first weeks of pregnancy, three weeks,
eight weeks, than it is at viability or afterwards.
The choice of viability at that point, or as that point at which the state interest in potential
life becomes compelling.
In other words, where the state necessarily has to intervene to protect an actual life, not a
potential life.
She says, is no less arbitrary than choosing any point before viability or any point
afterwards.
In other words, you have a potential life right from the beginning.
And if you're going to say, well, now it's gone from the point of potential life to an actual life, she says that that's just arbitrary.
She says, accordingly, I believe that the state's interest in protecting potential human life exists
throughout the pregnancy.
Now, let's see, I have, I got my notes kind of out of order here, but talking
about political arguments for abortion.
And this maybe is the most serious one.
What about cases of rape, incest, or the mother's health?
Rape, incest, or the mother's health.
What would you say to someone who says, well, if I get raped, a woman who says, if I get raped, how can you
tell me that I can't have an abortion?
Well, and yeah, it is kind of a foot in the door, because even if, let's say, you know,
people who try to get pregnant, who try to have a baby, often are
unsuccessful.
So, you know, obviously in the case of a rape, you would not be trying, which, you know, maybe
you do, or maybe you don't get pregnant.
But, you know, rape, incest, these are horrible things.
And so here's what I would say generally.
Someone says they were raped, therefore, you know, they want to have an abortion, I'd say, rape is horrible.
I mean, I cannot imagine having to go through that.
And I certainly, I can't minimize that.
I cannot minimize that.
Listen, have you ever been the victim of a crime, period?
Any crime at all?
I remember, it doesn't matter where I was,
all right, I was at a bridge club.
And I came out, and my car stereo had been stolen.
I was a police officer, and I was like, I was mad.
My first response was, I'm driving a Toyota.
And I looked down the row of cars, and, you know, it's like Jaguar, Porsche, you know, and those were the
cheap cars.
And, you know, you just go, and I'm driving a Toyota, and they stole my car radio.
And I was like, I'm going people.
When I'm out there, you know, in the streets, I give rich people tickets, and I let the poor people go.
What is wrong with you guys?
It's like, don't you get it?
This is Robin Hood, we're in this together.
No, they didn't get it.
But I felt violated.
Somebody broke in my window, got under my car, and stole my radio.
That's a property issue.
You know, rape is, I mean, just how many times
worse?
It's your person.
And this individual is forcing themselves upon you.
It's a terrible crime.
Incest can be as terrible, I think, especially, you know, if it's a
father and a daughter, or an uncle and a daughter, or a grandfather and a daughter, something, granddaughter, that kind of thing.
Terrible.
How do we say, well, you know what, those things don't matter?
You can't say that.
So our first, I think our first obligation is to the person, right?
To their heart, to what's been done to them, and to kind of empathize.
But then ultimately we have to turn around and say, you know what, as much as I empathize with you, how else do I empathize with the
baby?
Because let's just think about this for a minute.
That baby didn't do anything.
It's the product of sin, but it hasn't done anything wrong.
The baby ought not to be punished for what that person did.
Let's go get that person.
I'm with you on that one.
Let's send them to jail.
And I'd do more than send them to jail if it were legal.
It's a terrible, terrible thing.
But that doesn't, you know, we can't, we cannot justify
taking revenge on an innocent person because some wrong was done to us.
This would be like, well, I mean, and this is a poor example, and I'll grant
you that.
But this would be like me saying, okay, my car stereo was stolen, therefore I'm going to go steal somebody else's.
I can't justify doing something to somebody else because something was done to me.
And these, again, I cannot fathom the horror of being
raped or being the victim of incest.
But I think ultimately we have to try to coach a woman through this to understand
that the image of God that she's bearing has value even if
she is crushed emotionally by what has happened to her.
But I think that, you know, babies typically, I would think that babies who are
created this way, who are conceived this way probably are aborted at a higher rate than
others because there's just so much emotional baggage with them.
And we'll spend more time on this, but I wanted to just say this about, you know, women who
have had abortions.
Maybe, you know, somebody says, well, I was the victim of rape or incest and therefore I had an abortion, or
I was too young, I didn't know what I was doing.
I knew, you know, I was 17, I was 19, I was 20 or whatever, and I knew I couldn't take care of a
child, therefore I had an abortion.
That's reality.
You know, I mean, millions and millions and millions of children have been aborted.
What do we say, what would you say to a woman who tells you that she's had an abortion?
Brian,
God can forgive that sin.
I mean, in a nutshell, that's exactly right.
I mean, it's a sin, but, you know, we act like it's just the unpardonable sin,
you know, that it's denying the Holy Spirit, it's blaspheming the Holy Spirit.
Paul was a murderer.
Matthew was a tax gatherer.
You know, those were two of the most heinous sins you could commit at the time
of Jesus, and yet those men were among the apostles, among the messengers of
Jesus Christ.
There is, I think, a certain sense in which we want to,
or which we do, stigmatize the women who have abortions in really an unfair
way.
They're just like anybody else.
They need salvation.
They need to hear the gospel.
They need to hear that whether, you know, it's abortion or homosexuality or stealing
candy bars, not that those three things are equivalent, but they're all sinful.
And every single sin, as I said, I think, on Wednesday, you know, creates a debt
with God that we can never pay.
We think, well, that sin wasn't that bad.
Well, then you've got a wrong view of sin.
Every sin condemns, and abortion being a sin is not.
It's a grave sin.
But we're not Roman Catholics.
We don't have mortal sins.
We don't have venial sins.
Any single sin, any single failure to love the Lord your God with all your
heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself has but one ultimate
punishment, and then that is eternity in hell apart from faith in the Lord
And we need to gently, kindly preach the gospel
and say, you know what?
I wish you hadn't done that.
You probably maybe wish you hadn't done that.
But here's the truth.
The truth is it's a sin, and it can be forgiven.
Do you want to be forgiven for your sins?
Let's pray.
Father, you are a loving and compassionate God.
If it were not for that, who could stand?
If you were not willing to forgive, if you were not willing to remove our sins
as far as the east is from the west, if you were not willing to cleanse us
entirely of our guiltiness before you, none of us,
none of us could go to heaven.
But thanks be to God, thanks be to you that you sent
your son, the Lord Christ Jesus, into this world to redeem sinners just like us,
just like those who have had abortions, those who have
practiced racism, those who have denied in any way, shape, or form
the truth that each and every person is an image -bearer, whether they
have an IQ like Einstein or whether they're born with certain defects.
It's interesting.
Well, mankind wants to strive for the perfect, to
make the perfect human, the perfect society.
Father, you have promised us that in glory we will be perfect.
We will have a perfect body.
We will live in a perfect society.
Father, let us anticipate heaven and not commit the sin of trying to create heaven on earth.
We pray in Jesus' name.