The Meaning Of Life (part 6)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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Father, thank you so much for this beautiful day, this wonderful opportunity to come and to worship you, to look to your word, to study a difficult topic this morning, a difficult thing to discuss.

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Father, pray that you would bless our time as we probably look at an issue that we are agreed on, but maybe look at it from a new perspective.

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Father, just pray that you'd bless our time. Bless each one here in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, we've been discussing,

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I think, some difficult issues, and this morning we come to one that, you know, if you want to go into a family dinner or something and start a discussion on this topic,

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I wish you well. Going to be talking about abortion. I think

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I put murder in the bulletin, but that's fine. As we'll see, they're really,

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I mean, abortion is murder. Murder is not necessarily abortion, but we'll discuss that a little bit. You know, I would have this quote from a politician who was recently asked whether a seven -pound -in -the -womb baby should be permitted to be aborted or not.

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And I think her answer is somewhat telling. She's a prominent politician. She said this. Here's an answer.

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I support letting women and their doctors make this decision without government getting involved.

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Period. End of story. Is that an answer?

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It's kind of a dodge, isn't it? Should a seven -pound baby, meaning a baby that's probably eight, maybe nine months along, should that baby be permitted to be killed?

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I support letting women and their doctors make this decision. We live in a time where a lot of people call evil good and good evil.

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I mean, the dividing line now on a lot of these social issues is so thin. If you are against homosexuals getting married, you're a bad person.

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You're intolerant. If you're against a woman having the right to murder her baby, you're a bad person.

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You're intolerant. You're judgmental. This is from the

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Washington Post, March 30th of this year. There's a new corporation called

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CaraFem. That sounds nice. They care about women.

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CaraFem. See how that works? It's a new abortion pill clinic in Montgomery County that's either

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Maryland or Virginia. One or the other. I think it sounds like Virginia. That promises a spa -like experience for women with an open and unabashed approach to pregnancy termination, what we would call abortion or killing your baby.

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With its natural wood floors and plush upholstery, CaraFem aims to feel more like a spa than a medical clinic.

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But the slick ads to go up in metro stations across the Washington region leave nothing to doubt.

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Here's their ad. Abortion? Yeah, we do that.

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Okay, it's in Maryland. It says the Maryland clinic specializes in the abortion pill. The advertising reflects its approach, a new push to de -stigmatize the nation's most controversial medical procedure.

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Now, there's a nice way to frame it, isn't it? It's just a controversial medical procedure. I was watching a crime show the other night and they were talking about how controversial getting, what do you call it?

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I want to say shots. Vaccines. Yeah. How controversial that can be, right?

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There are two sides to the issue and you can debate about whether you should get your child vaccinated or not.

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So I guess whether you should get your child murdered or not is equally politically something that you can talk about.

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But they talk about it openly and unapologetically. Plagued by political setbacks in recent years, abortion rights activists are seeking to normalize abortion, to put a human face on the women getting the procedure and in some cases even putting a positive spin on it.

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Putting a human face on the women getting the procedure. What about the babies who are suffering the results?

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In Los Angeles County, now this is amazing to me, in Los Angeles County groups recently sent women door -to -door in conservative neighborhoods to talk about their abortion experiences in the hope of changing minds.

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Hi, my name's Polly and I recently had an abortion. I wanted to tell you how great it was. Door -to -door, people knocking on your door and you think what?

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It's the Jehovah's Witnesses, it's the Mormons. No, we're here to talk about abortion and to convert you into believing abortion is a good thing.

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A number of democratic lawmakers have publicly acknowledged having undergone the procedure and new online projects solicit personal testimonials, including from women who have no regrets about terminating their pregnancies.

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I like to just change that for a minute, you know. We have a group that goes door -to -door and they talk about how they terminated their wives and they have no regrets.

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Of course the women are like, why does that have to be the wives? Why can't the wives? Okay. At CARIFEM, staff members plan to greet clients with warm teas, comfortable robes, and a matter -of -fact attitude.

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We don't want to talk in hushed tones, says the president. His name,

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I'm not making this up, is Christopher Purdy, CARIFEM president,

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Christopher Purdy. He says we use the A word, the A word being of course abortion. They don't talk in hushed tones.

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Why? Because they're out, they're loud, they're proud, and they're not going to be pushed into any closet just because they're murdering human beings.

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The campaign comes as the abortion rights movement has been struggling politically. Since 2010, states have enacted more than 200 laws restricting the procedure and dozens of clinics have closed their doors.

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Groups on both sides agree that anti -abortion activists have the momentum. With a simpler message, abortion kills.

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And a gut -level emotional appeal. Now keep in mind this is the Washington Post. A gut -level emotional appeal.

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I've mentioned this story before but I don't want to repeat it for those who maybe have either forgotten it because you don't remember everything

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I said. Shame on you. Or for those who've not heard it, I have a friend who

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I just I had lunch with him a month ago. He and his wife, in fact

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I remember the first time, I think it was the first time my wife met him. We were in Washington DC and that must have been 97 or something like that.

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He was working for a liberal congressman and he gave us a little tour of the facility, you know, the congressional building.

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And his wife also was a congressional aide. Well since then they've had, they now have a couple children, but they had many miscarriages.

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And I met with him a couple years ago and he told me, he said, you know what, every single time we cried.

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He goes, when we came to realize that we were losing a baby, that a baby had died, and he goes, it kind of changed our view about abortion.

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He's still not saved but there's hope, he's still alive, we'll see. But a gut -level emotional appeal, well it's not gut -level because when it's your baby you realize what you've lost.

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Of course now the idea is to desensitize women from thinking about the fact that this is a human life that has been taken, that has been ended.

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This article goes on to say, even Americans who support abortion rights are often deeply conflicted about the procedure.

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Why? Why would people be deeply conflicted about it? Let me just ask you, why would somebody be deeply,

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Russ? Well the barbarity of it, certainly,

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I mean if you watch the news over the last couple years you probably saw the Dr. Gosnell clinic, where was that,

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Philadelphia, I think, where they, you know, he had like baby parts and jars and all this kind of thing and the horror stories about what he was doing.

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Yeah, I mean there's a barbarity but why else do you suppose it would bother people,

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Brian? And that's exactly it. Listen, every single person has what?

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The law of God written in their hearts, they have a conscience, they know that what they're doing is wrong but here comes the culture to say, you know what?

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What you're doing is right. You have every right to do this, it's your choice.

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So there's the conflict, the conflict is between what you inherently know is right because God has implanted it in you and what the world says is right and you, you know, you're called to make that choice yourself according to the world.

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Here's what a spokesman for Planned Parenthood said, he said, we still have, this is a quote, we still have a lot of work to do with people who are less supportive of abortion and one way we need to communicate in a more empathetic framework that kind of says, oh, is in a more empathetic framework that kind of says, look, these are really complicated personal issues.

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They don't want to make it, you know, seem too easy but he goes on to say, but we also need to be unapologetic and bold.

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So it's complicated but we need to be unapologetic and bold. He says, why? Because they want to connect with young people who he says have flocked to Planned Parenthood.

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Since 2011, the number of college chapters of Planned Parenthood has gone from 70 to 250.

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That's pretty good if you're in favor of that kind of thing. Some of these younger activists have grown weary of what they see among their leaders as an overly apologetic attitude about abortion.

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This has led to some in -your -face tactics. Last year, Emily Letts, a 26 -year -old actress and clinic counselor, made waves after posting a

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YouTube video of her surgical abortion filmed from the waist up. Probably many of you remember that.

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I doubt that many of you watched it but remember the hubbub about it. She says, not everyone is sad about their abortion.

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We need to hear the full range of stories and the positive stories are not being conveyed appropriately.

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Her three -minute video went viral and was one of two winners in the first ever, now this is an actual title, abortion stigma busting video competition sponsored by the

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Abortion Care Network. I wonder if that's a television network. Abortion Care Network, a

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Washington group devoted to normalizing the abortion experience.

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This should just be run -of -the -mill. This is no different than getting an inoculation. This is no different than getting your temperature checked.

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Having your doctor say, open your mouth and say, ah, sticking a tongue depressor in your mouth. Some mainstream abortion rights supporters have turned to jaw -dropping tactics.

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One state representative from Ohio, her name is Teresa Fedor, in an emotional speech last week, well this is like the middle of March, she would have given this speech, on the

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Ohio state legislative floor, she revealed her decision to terminate a pregnancy that resulted from rape.

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She says, quote, you don't respect my reason, my rape, my abortion, and I guarantee you that there are other women who should stand up with me and be courageous enough to speak that voice.

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I don't know, when people pronounce themselves courageous, I always kind of think, I'm not really sure about that.

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But this was a video that she posted on the Toledo Blades website. She says, I've sat here too long, implying, you know, she's been silent too long.

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She has to stand up and make her voice heard. This article goes on to say that she is one of, um, well they estimate that one in three

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American women will have an abortion by the time they turn 45. I don't know if that's true or not, I tend to think it's less than that, and that some people are just repeat abortion practicers there.

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But listen to this, those statistics, the fact that there are one in three, they say, demand a more matter -of -fact approach.

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The feminist poet, Catha Pollitt, argues in her new book, Pro, reclaiming abortion rights.

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She says, we need to talk about ending a pregnancy as a common, even normal event in the reproductive lives of women.

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Well here, let's just think about that for a minute. Your reproductive life means what? Having babies.

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So if you're ending the life of babies, I don't know if that's reproductive life or not. I think it's kind of your,

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I guess you could call it your ending life practice there.

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She says, we need to talk about well that, and then she goes on, oh yeah, it needs to be, the decision to abort can be, quote, just as moral as the decision to have a child.

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Indeed, sometimes more moral. Because part of caring for children is knowing whether it's a good idea to bring them into the world or not.

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So you can justify an abortion, she says, based on your own subjective opinion about whether it's good to bring them into the world or not.

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The Planned Parenthood spokesman, Purdy, says he got the idea for Carefem two years ago after more than a decade with a non -profit group that promotes family planning and HIV prevention overseas in developing countries.

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He says, overseas, getting an abortion is often as simple as visiting a pharmacy. In the

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United States, however, some states strictly regulate the abortion pill, citing concerns about its safety.

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He says, I was flabbergasted to find out it was easier to get an abortion in Ethiopia compared with the

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United States. Which kind of lets you know how many abortions are going on overseas, right?

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Because Carefem will only offer the abortion pill, no other procedures. Prospective clients must be no more than 10 weeks pregnant.

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After receiving counseling and some basic tests, Carefem clients will take an initial pill, then they'll leave quickly within about 60 minutes.

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They will be sent home with a second set of pills to take the next day. Second dose induces the abortion, which resembles a miscarriage, typically within six hours.

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And by offering pharmaceutical abortions, Purdy says he can avoid purchasing expensive equipment, surgical equipment, and keep the prices low.

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The average pharmaceutical abortion costs about $500, and Purdy plans to charge about $400.

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And again, they just kind of stress the nice environment of it.

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Melissa Grant, the Vice President of Health Services for the clinic, says it was important for us to try to present an upgraded, almost spa -like feel.

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Purdy says if it's successful, he hopes to expand his model to other states. It's fresh, it's modern, it's clean, it's caring.

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That's the brand we are trying to create. This is the abortion movement.

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This is what they want. They want it to be normal. We hear sometimes people say that it should be rare and safe.

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That's kind of the cry of those who want it to remain legal. There are three things they say.

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Safe, legal, and rare. They don't want us going back to the days where women would go to back alley clinics to get an abortion.

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One pastor from the Disciples of Christ denomination says this.

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He says the Bible doesn't talk about abortion, but it does say when a human being's life begins,

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Genesis 2 -7 is clearest. The first human became a living being when

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God blew into its nostrils and started to breathe. Now listen to what he says here carefully.

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Human life begins when you start breathing, biblical writer's thought. It ends when you stop.

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Is that true? I mean, this would take us right back to nine months plus.

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You can abort that baby. It's between the woman and her doctor. That's not a person.

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More complications. The Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade created the trimester system to sort through the legal implications of the constitutional right to privacy.

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The justices ruled that the early and late stages of pregnancy are morally and legally distinct.

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Early on in the first trimester, the embryo undeniably, listen to this language, is human life, but it's not a human being in the normal sense of the term.

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At this stage of pregnancy, a woman's right to privacy trumps any responsibility the state might have to protect the embryo by interfering with the woman's decision to terminate the pregnancy.

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I'm going to kind of get ahead of myself a little bit, but why are words like embryo, fetus, why are those words so prominent when we talk about pregnancy,

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Charlie? If you can dehumanize it, you can exterminate it without making it feel bad, and Mengele said that about the

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Jews, but this is true about babies. There's a

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Princeton ethicist, I always laugh at this, that his job is to teach other people ethics, and he says it's okay to kill a baby after it's born.

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In fact, until it exhibits personhood and an ability to care for itself, it's fine to kill that baby.

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It's not really a person. Talk about dehumanizing. When I think, you know, through the history of the

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Bible, one of the more shocking things is when the Israelites were giving their babies to Molech, sacrificing their babies to Molech.

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You just think, how can anybody do that? You know, there's an inherent... I don't even care if the baby is related to me or not, there's something about all of us that just wants to protect babies.

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We see little babies, we don't think, get that thing away from me, right? We go, isn't that baby cute?

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I was just visiting my mom in Colorado, and my sister was trying to talk to my mom, and my 10 -month -old niece was with us, and she wants to do what?

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She wants to be out on the floor, running around, you know, I mean, crawling around, and my sister wasn't too wild about that, so she put her in a stroller.

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Well, you know, the baby's trying to get out of the stroller, so my job for about 45 minutes is walk the baby around, you know, in the stroller.

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And this woman, she doesn't speak any English, I think she's either from...

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she's from somewhere in Eastern Europe, I don't know if it's Serbia or someplace like that,

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Hungary maybe, and she was just mumbling something, she was just looking at the baby, trying to get, you know, baby to clap her hands, and, you know, all the...

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there's just something about us that is just drawn to babies. It doesn't matter whether we've ever seen...

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I mean, she'd never seen this, my niece, before, but there's something in us that is just drawn to babies, and it's a good thing that God designed us that way, because otherwise we'd go extinct, right?

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I mean, babies can't defend themselves. If we just had babies and just left them out on their own, we wouldn't last very long as a species.

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But in this whole Roe v. Wade thing, case, the third semester, third trimester, to protect the rights of the viable fetus, states can put serious limits on a woman's right to abortion, the so -called late -term abortion, though they must continue to respect her right to self -defense, which

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I thought, boy, that's... there's a term there, self -defense. I mean, if I really wanted to get graphic, you know, there...

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and I guess I will a little bit, there are abortion activists who say that a baby is what?

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Like, it's basically a leech, a parasite, that's the exact word

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I was looking for, that it's just sucking life force out of the mother, that it's the enemy.

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So this idea of self -defense kind of makes sense from that perspective. But in case you haven't figured it out, we ought to hate abortion as Christians.

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Why should we hate it? Because God hates it. Exodus 20, verse 13 says, you shall not murder.

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You shall not murder. What is murder? Taking of a life, okay?

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I mean, I'm going to get a little legalese on you here, Brian.

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Okay, desecrating an image -bearer, Charlie. Okay, the unwarranted taking of life through violence.

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Okay, I like that. The technical way to frame it, which

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I made up myself so you know it's right. Murder, murder is the unlawful taking of human life with malice aforethought.

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That's how you know it's right, because I threw in the fancy word So in our first step of examining this, is a baby human life?

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Is every baby as much a product of God's handiwork as we are as adults?

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We're going to look at a few passages here. Let's look at Psalm 139. Some of these will be familiar, but eventually we'll get to some that aren't.

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Psalm 139, and would somebody read verses 13 to 16, please? Psalm 139, verses 13 to 16.

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I see a hand burst. Now, I'm not going to do a massive exposition of this.

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I'm just going to read the MacArthur Study Bible and listen to what he says. He says, by virtue of the divinely designed period of pregnancy,

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God providentially watches over the development of the child while yet in the mother's womb. I mean, there's a little bit more to it, because look, he says, you knitted me together in my mother's womb.

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He's praising God because he understands the process of the creation of life.

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Van Gemeren said this, he says, the Lord has formed the individual as a spiritual and physical being.

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All beings owe their existence to the creator God. Okay, so what about murder?

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Is abortion murder? Taking of a human life with malice aforethought, and is it illegal?

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And the reason I have to say illegal is because there may be, although the malice aforethought kind of mediates against it, but it may be okay.

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You can certainly take a human life in self -defense. I mean, this all came to light in the last few days with this officer down in South Carolina, and if you saw the video, you'll understand the officer's in a lot of trouble.

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Why is he in a lot of trouble? Because he stopped somebody who ran away from him. He gave chase, stopped the guy.

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We don't know all the details, but we know the officer was lying, and there's a reason we know the officer was lying. I like police officers, but we know the officer was lying.

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Why? Because he said there was a struggle for the taser, and he was in fear for his life, so he shot the guy.

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There's a problem with that, and people said, well, you know what, if it wasn't for the videotape, the officer would get off scot -free.

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I don't know about that. Here's why, because there's this little tricky thing when they do a, what do you call it, when the body's on the slab, and autopsy, that's right.

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You ever seen an autopsy, by the way? You don't want to.

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So, I mean, if you see one done on TV, it's a lot worse in person.

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Just trust me on that. Here's the problem the officer would have. The guy is shot eight times in the back.

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There's really no getting around that. In the back. It's pretty rough. You know, and somebody said, well, you know what, he probably would have got away with it except for the video, and I say, no, and there's a reason for that, because one of the first things that you find out when you go through police training is that you can shoot somebody in the back, but there's a little asterisk there.

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You can't shoot somebody in the back, but they better present a clear and present danger to the public.

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In other words, if you don't have Charles Manson running away from you, you better not shoot him.

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That guy, you better be able to articulate that that guy represents a threat to everybody on the face of the planet.

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Otherwise, they're going to say, why did you shoot him in the back? Well, I was tired of chasing him.

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That's not a good, yeah. I was tired of chasing the suspect. He could run a lot better than I did, so I ventilated him.

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That doesn't work. Now they're talking about the second officer.

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You know, he's in trouble. Why? Because he lied in the report. You can't do that, and I could tell you exactly how it would have gone if I was there, you know, because here's the other thing.

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The officer was alone. He was a one -man unit, but somebody else writes the report. Why? Because the officer does not write his own report when he's involved in the shooting.

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The only officer -involved shooting I was ever at, I was actually outside when it took place, but I wound up writing the report, and it wrecked my dad's plans to watch a football game.

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There was no DVR back then, but I had to wait for hours to talk to the officer.

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I had no idea what happened other than the fact the suspect was shot in the head because I could see that when I walked in the building, but I had to wait to talk to the sergeant who shot the guy for hours while they did all this other stuff, and then

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I got to write the report, but when I talked to him, if he told me a story that didn't hold up, I wouldn't write that down.

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Why not? I'd be an accessory because I would be putting forth this report.

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It isn't just something that, you know, we just kind of keep in house and nobody looks at it. This is what goes to the DA. This is basically my sworn statement about what

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I believe happened. I'm not going to write something that I know didn't happen. That's just not going to happen because then

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I'm responsible. I'm accountable, and this guy's probably in a little bit of trouble himself. You can't do what this guy did.

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Why? Because there's, in our law, we have restraint on officers. We have, they don't have any special powers.

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Let me tell you all the powers that police officers have that you don't have. They can stop you while you're driving down the street, and they can arrest you for a felony that they didn't see take place.

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Those are the two powers that police officers have that nobody else has. You say, well, what about, you know, using deadly force?

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Well, you can use deadly force too. Really? Oh, yeah. You just have to be able to articulate the fact that it was absolutely necessary to prevent great bodily injury or death to somebody, maybe not even you.

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If I see somebody attacking Charlie with a two -by -four, I have, and, well, there are two options.

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One is I could just go, well, hey, Charlie had it coming. The other is

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I can intervene, and it doesn't matter if I'm a police officer, you know, if I'm Taylor. It doesn't matter who

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I am, okay? I have a right to protect human life, and if some police officer comes up and says, well, why'd you shoot that guy?

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Well, because he was taking a two -by -four to Charlie, and Charlie looked like he was about to, you know, die, or he reasonably,

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I was thinking he was either going to be substantially injured or maybe even killed, and I felt like I had to do something, and I yelled at the guy.

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I said, hey, stop, and he wouldn't, so I shot him, and guess what?

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That's perfectly legal. Now, that's not what happened there, but let's get back to abortion.

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Let's talk about it. Taking of a human life, malice aforethought, it has to be illegal. That's murder.

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Now, let's go to Genesis chapter 9. I mean, it's hard to imagine a situation,

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I don't know, maybe you could imagine a situation, but where you take the life of another human being without malice aforethought, and it's, what was it?

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Oh, no, with malice aforethought, and it's legal. I really can't imagine what that would be.

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I mean, but you need all three of those elements for it to be murder. Genesis 9 verse 6, whoever sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.

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That tells us the reason right there, right? As image bearers, there's a special class, you know, in the law, they talk about classes, you know, you're a particular class of individual.

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Well, here we have a particular class of individual as human beings generally. Every single person is made in the image of God.

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But look at that, it says, whoever sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed. And this is talking about killing, taking the life.

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And how do we know that? Well, listen to what Walt Kaiser says. He says, Hebrew possesses seven words for killing.

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The word here appears only 47 times in the Old Testament. If any of the seven words could signify murder, where the factors of premeditation and intentionality are present, this is the verb, when it says shed blood, carries the idea of murder with intentional violence.

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Every one of these instances, these 47 in the Old Testament, stresses the act or allegation of premeditation and deliberateness.

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And that is at the heart of this verb. Thus, this prohibition does not apply to beasts, to defend one's home from nighttime burglars, to accidental killings, to the execution of murderers by the state, or the involvement with one's nation in certain types of war.

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It does apply, however, to self -murder, i .e. suicide, to all accessories to murder, and to those who have authority but fail to use it to punish known murderers.

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So again, we're talking about whether or not abortion is murder.

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And again, I go back to the term fetus or embryo. What are they trying to do? Make it less than a human being so that you could say, well, it's not a person whose blood was shed.

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But what do we know about babies in the womb? Who is it that is in a woman's womb when she is pregnant?

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Baby has its own DNA, separate DNA. I mean, I always go, well, it's her body.

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Well, if it's her body, why does it have a separate DNA? Well, you know, cancer cells can have their own

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DNA. So are you saying a baby's cancer? Human beings, human babies have a heartbeat at 22 days and their own blood type, 22 days.

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And what else do we know? If the natural course of events takes place, it's uninterrupted, there's no abortion, then ultimately a human baby is delivered.

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It is a person. Back to the Bible. Let's look at Luke chapter 1, verses 41 through 44.

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And if somebody would read that, please. Now, there are a couple of interesting things here.

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Observations about why this would demonstrate that you have a human being in the womb.

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Anyone? Okay. She called it a baby, not a fetus.

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Okay. The baby responded. This is kind of a little off the wall because I just thought of it.

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But imagine if Elizabeth in verse 44 said, for behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the embryo in my womb leap for joy, but backing up even further into 43.

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And why is this granted to me that the carrier of the fetus that may or may not turn out to be my

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Lord should come to me? Well, I mean, it's laughable because it's so dumb.

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You know, the wrong response to finding out you're pregnant is, oh, you know,

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I can't believe I'm pregnant. What do we say? We say, congratulations. And we're excited.

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Why? Because that's a new life. We understand that. If somebody loses a baby, what do we say?

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I'm sorry. Why? Because we understand there's a loss. Psalm 51 verse five, psalmist writes, behold,

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I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me. Wasn't questioning the character of his mother.

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Right. He was talking about how he was sinful, even from the beginning. Nevertheless, he was created in there.

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He was a person. He did not become a person at birth when he started breathing or when he could recognize danger and defend himself, when he could feed himself, when he could walk.

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None of those things, you know, self -expression, all these other things that they try to make personhood into .

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Personhood begins at conception. Let's turn to Genesis chapter 25, verses 21 to 24, and I'll read those since we need to close here shortly.

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And Isaac prayed to the Lord for his wife because she was barren. And the

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Lord granted his prayer and Rebecca, his wife, conceived. The children struggled together within her.

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And she said, if it is thus, why is this happening to me?

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So she went to inquire of the Lord. And the Lord said to her, two nations are in your womb and two peoples from within you shall be divided.

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The one shall be stronger than the other. The older shall serve the younger. When her days to give birth were completed, behold, there were twins in her womb.

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There are two potential nations. If you decide you want them in your womb, it's your choice.

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I mean, the world looks at this, not surprisingly, 180 degrees from the wrong perspective.

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Exodus 21, verses 22 to 25. And I'll just read this and we'll probably need to close here shortly.

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When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman so that her children, her children come out, she's pregnant and the children are delivered early prematurely, but there is no harm.

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The one who hit her shall surely be fined as the woman's husband shall impose on him.

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Oh, shall be fined as the woman's husband shall impose on him. And he shall pay as the judges determine.

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But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life.

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Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

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So these two knuckleheads, I mean, I don't know what their problem is. It doesn't really matter. They're fighting.

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Maybe they're drunk or they're just dopey. They're not paying any attention to the fact that there's a pregnant woman nearby and they run into her.

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Well, if the baby's born prematurely, there's a penalty and that penalty is cash.

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If the baby though, and that's if the baby's fine, if there is damage to the baby, if the baby dies, if the baby suffers damage because of what took place, then what happens?

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The guy who hit her is responsible. If the baby dies, he dies.

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Why? Because they understood that this was a human life.

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This was to be protected. So what's the story here? The story is, listen, you guys want to fight, take it outside, go somewhere else, get away from her, you know, go have fun.

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But don't be anywhere near a pregnant woman. A pregnant woman is to be protected.

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Next week, briefly, we'll talk about the political arguments for abortion and all that.

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But I just wanted to get a clear view and we'll talk more about whether this is murder or not. But it's clearly a human life.

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It's clearly something the Bible speaks to. And there are penalties prescribed by the

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Bible for damaging a baby in the womb. This is human life wrought by God and to be protected by us.

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Let's pray. Father, we just come before you just acknowledging that what makes this difficult is not what your

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Bible, what your word says about it, not what the Bible says about it, but the hard hearts of man, how they long to be free of consequence, free of difficulty in life, free from the consequence of sin where they want to pretend like human life is not sacred, that it's not special, that you didn't create it because by suppressing that truth, they suppress the truth in their own minds that one day they will stand before you and have to give an answer for what they've done.

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Lord, we want to be kind and caring, but we must stand up for what's right.

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We must do what we can to protect human life, to value it, to show that we value it, to hate what you hate and to love what you love.

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Father, we pray for your blessing that we might be bold, that we might call these things what they are, and that we might respond appropriately.