Abortion & the Campaign for Immorality - John Macarthur — From the Pulpit & Classic Sermons

Welcome to From the Pulpit in Classic Sermons. Each week we bring you a different message from some of history's greatest speakers in the Christian faith, and powerful sermons from modern preachers, too.

This week we have John MacArthur with his message, Abortion and the Campaign for Immorality.

What a privilege and joy it is to worship the Lord here at Grace Church. A Christian and I miss it when we're not here, there's no place like this. Our hearts are full to overflowing to be back with you and celebrating the greatness of our God and the glory of Christ with you.

Political Platforms and Romans 1

What a blessing. While we were gone the last couple of weeks, we were exposed to the two conventions that were held, the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention. And I know that politics is the topic among many people today, and I suppose that's natural since it is such a huge part of media exposure.

And as you know, I'm not one to talk about politics as such. But I was essentially amazed that one of the historic parties here in the United States adopted the sins of Romans 1 as their platform. This is a new day in our country.

Parties which used to differ on economics now differ dramatically on issues that invade the realm of God's law and morality. And an ideal situation, their platform would mean that the government passes out condoms so people can fornicate at will.

For those who happen to get pregnant in the process, the platform advocates that you kill the baby at the will of the mother up and including the ninth month. At the same time, it advocates homosexual marriage which is an oxymoron, an utter impossibility and a gross violation of the law of God.

And then, to add to that, the murder of abortion and then a platform originally leaving God out. All of that's Romans 1. Romans 1 says God will judge, God has judged throughout human history nations that experience sexual freedom.

Romans chapter 1 lays that out clearly. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against those who advocate sexual freedom, sexual conduct outside of marriage. And that's an indication of the demise of a nation.

And then Romans 1 also says that God will judge those nations that advocate homosexual behavior, men with men, women with women doing what is unnatural. They are also haters of God, haters of God. Leaving God out, advocating abortion, advocating homosexuality, advocating free sexual conduct and government provided condoms so that everybody can do what they want.

That is literally creating a platform out of what God hates. This is not about politics, although there are things we could talk about. You're not voting for a pastor. You're not voting for a spiritual leader.

You're voting for someone who has some sense of morality. Since the Bible says that the role of government is to punish evildoers and protect the good, you better have somebody in power who understands what is good and what is evil.

And if you think homosexuality, abortion, sexual freedom, hating God are not evil, then you better go back and check your Bible again. How can people with that kind of agenda protect those who do good and punish those who do evil?

That's Romans 13's definition of the role of government. We could talk about foreign policy. Should we protect as many defenseless people from evil aggressors as possible? We could talk about economics.

Is it right to get into irreparable debt? Is that responsibility? We could talk about that. We could talk about the economics of if you don't work, you don't eat, which is what the Bible says. But those things are not what concern me.

I've seen something happen. In these conventions that is just stunning, the adaptation of a Romans 1 platform, sexual freedom, homosexuality on an equal level with marriage, the murder of infants, and the elimination of God.

And by the way, I didn't like it any better when they put God back in because that's blasphemy. To connect God with that agenda is a horror. It's a horror. It's taking His name in vain. In fact, I don't think God should be in either agenda.

But when you have an advocacy of support for the slaughter of infants and homosexuality and complete sexual freedom, you have a formula for divine judgment. If we have any sense of justice, if we have any sense of righteousness, if we want to make a little bit of a voice heard about what is right and about the role of government being to punish evildoers and protect the people who do right, then we better step up.

I'm not sure what God has in the future, but I do know we can take His side and give Him honor. To me, it is ironic that those who pride themselves on defending the rights of the weak murder them in the womb when they are the most weak.

What kind of hypocrisy is that? Self-congratulating pseudo-humanitarians advocate a deadly force of violence unleashed against infants that makes the Nazi holocaust look mild by comparison. In our world, we're slaughtering between 50 and 60 million babies a year.

The Scale and Consequences of Abortion

In the United States, on record, is 1 .5 million abortions a year. Every third baby conceived is murdered in the womb, 4 ,000 a day, plus 170 an hour. Planned Parenthood alone kills one every 95 seconds.

The Physicians' Association of Planned Parenthood released this statement, quote, "'Abortion is a treatment for unwanted pregnancy, the second sexually transmitted disease.'". Pregnancy is a sexually transmitted disease.

Our nation and others are murdering a whole generation of humans in mass infanticide that was legalized in January of 1973 by the Roe v. Wade decision made by an unrighteous group of people on the Supreme Court.

Now 43 percent of all women have an abortion and 47 percent of abortions are repeats. It's legal to do to a child what you might be arrested for doing to a cat, or a dog, or certainly an eagle. In fact, Massachusetts made it illegal to award a goldfish as a prize at a fair.

And the document from the Massachusetts law said that this is to protect the tendency to dull humanitarian feelings and corrupt the morals of those who abuse them. A law to prevent the abuse of goldfish.

In Asia, the trauma over abortion, just for an illustration, you could pick any place in the world, but the trauma in Asia over the tens of millions of abortions that are done there, and as you would know, China is a major leader in abortions.

They're the only nation probably in the world that has a more liberal approach to that than America does, has unleashed upon the Asian women a horror of guilt and suffering from having abortions. And so there have been temples erected, built literally in Asia with the express purpose of memorializing water babies.

They're Buddhist temples and the person who feels some need to memorialize the baby that they aborted can go to these temples and they can purchase for a large sum of money a small little Buddha as a memorial for the aborted child and that Buddha will be put on display there.

And there are temples that have, for example, ten thousand of these little Buddhas on display on the grounds. It becomes a commercial attraction where people come and take photographs of them. It costs many hundreds of dollars to get the supposed relief that comes from purchasing your little Buddha.

And then additionally, you can buy a prayer, the last prices I saw, you can buy a prayer for about $120 and they will pray for your water baby. And then if you have additional abortions, it's only $40 each additional abortion.

So the Buddhists have figured out a way to make money even after the abortion on the guilt and the sadness of people. Suicide rate among people who have had an abortion goes up between 400 and 800 percent.

Many studies starting in 1957, there have been about 30-some studies on the effect of having had an abortion on breast cancer. It greatly raises the risk. Twenty-seven out of about 35 studies indicate there's a significant increase in breast cancer risk for someone who has an abortion because it's such a terrible interruption of the normal cycle.

Say nothing of depression, withdrawal, guilt, shame, alcohol dependency, et cetera, et cetera. How did we ever get here where we just massacre infants in the safest place in the womb, where we literally go in there and kill them?

Satanic Opposition to Human Life

How did we get to this place? Well, you just have to go back and understand that Satan is a murderer from the beginning, right? This is satanic. This is a satanic thing. He is the father of lies and he's the father of murder.

He is the first murderer. He would have murdered God if he could have, deicide in heaven, and he was thrown out. And when he came down to earth, he moved Cain to kill Abel and unleashed on the world the whole array of murders that has characterized human existence.

It goes on relentlessly in everything from slaughtering little infants in the safest place in the womb to massacring people the way we're seeing it around the world and in the Middle East even now, and everything in between.

Satan particularly goes after babies. He did in Moses' day. He did in Jesus' day. He wanted to kill all the young children in Egypt because of the fear that a deliverer would come. He wanted to kill all of the two-year-old and under babies in and around Jerusalem for fear that the king was coming.

Satan is a murderer. However, all of this is reflective of satanic hatred of the purposes of God and the life that God creates. Any religion, I don't care what it is, that has as its objective and goal the killing of anybody is out of hell.

That's satanic. If you go back into philosophy, go back into Greek philosophy, ancient Greek philosophy, Plato and Aristotle recommended family growth limitation by abortion. If you go back into ancient Western civilization, you'll find that abortion was to conceal illicit sex so that you could be free to do whatever you wanted to do and nobody would know.

You would abort the life. Rich women, I read, didn't want to have to give their wealth to lower class children. They just wanted to have sex with lower class men. And so when children were conceived, they would kill them.

Now there are some indications that they did it to preserve their supposed sex appeal. One writer says not to trouble the womb with bouncing babies. These methods are very, very ancient that were used.

Sometimes come under the title pessaries, a technical word, which simply means they had learned that they could inject into a woman, right into the womb, they could inject something that killed the child.

By trial and error, they came up with that through the birth canal. They also found that there were poisons that could be taken orally that would kill the child. Mixtures that they had discerned would be fatal to unborn infants.

I could describe how they worked, but that wouldn't be purposeful or helpful. The pagan cultures accepted this. The Jews rejected it. And, interestingly enough, the Jews rejected it for two reasons. They rejected it because every life was created by God, and therefore to take a life was to strike a blow against God.

And therefore, to violate the first commandment, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, you don't violate God. The second reason they were against abortion was because of the second law, love your neighbor as yourself.

And they understood that when life begins, that then becomes your neighbor. And no one is more a neighbor than an infant in a mother's womb. If that's not that mother's neighbor, then there is no such thing as a neighbor.

So based upon loving God and honoring God, and loving and caring for your neighbor, they rejected it. And, of course, they rejected it because in Exodus, chapter 20, it says, thou shalt not murder, and that's how they saw it.

The Historical Christian Opposition to Abortion

The early church followed in that same stand. Christianity has always been against murder of any kind, especially against the murder of an unprotected infant in a womb. The Didache codification of early Christian writing said, you shall not murder a child by abortion.

That's how explicit it was. You shall not murder a child by abortion. Didache saw the way of death as full of cursing, murder, adulteries, murders of children, and abortion...abortion. The church has always said abortion brings the judgment of God because it is murder.

The Reformation didn't change that. Abortion has always been seen as violence, slaughter, and it brings divine judgment. The Jews who were against abortion fell into idolatry, as you know, and began to take their born children and incinerate them on an altar to Molech, burning them as human sacrifices.

That was the kind of sin that led to their destruction, their death, their judgment, and their captivity, brought their nation to an end. It isn't new, and the church's stance isn't new, and the Word of God is very clear.

But it's amazing in a so-called Judeo-Christian environment, which has been the kind of world view that America has been born in, that we have reached the point that we have where one of the two political parties in this country includes slaughtering innocent infants in the womb as a part of its platform which it advocates.

Arguments for Abortion and the Legal Debate

Why? The reasons they would give you are these. It's a matter of freedom. A woman has a right over her own body. That's not her body. That's somebody else's body. That's not her body. Oh, women shouldn't be victimized by men.

You're not a victim if you lie down with a man. Well the child may have some genetic defect or some issue. Look, we all are defective. It's only a question of degree. We have to do some eugenic abortions.

Eliminate birth defective children because of cost, trouble. Women need total reproductive freedom. One writer says women must have abortion as a backup to contraceptive failure, murder as a backup. And, by the way, in a perfect world, this would all be paid for by you, by you, your tax money.

It's good to do this because it kind of controls population, they say. Well, you know all those things. 1973, it was January 22 when this horrendous decision came out of a court that certainly should have known better.

Fourteenth Amendment, Constitution says, no person shall be deprived of life. No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law. What's the due process for an infant in the womb? Legalized murder.

The court ignored the reality of life beginning at conception, which is when life begins. And at that point, you have a person. Criminals in our history have been prosecuted successfully for killing unborn children in an attack on a pregnant woman.

A person can be prosecuted even today for killing an unborn infant in the womb of a mother, but a mother can't be prosecuted for killing that infant. There is an interesting statement that sort of sums up what I want you to understand, Jerome Lejeune, Professor of Fundamental Genetics in Paris, because I think it's important for you to have this information.

The Scientific Beginning of Human Life

Let me quote him. And he's not writing as a Christian, he's writing as a scientist in the area of genetics. He says, life has a very long history, but each individual has a very neat beginning, the moment of its conception.

The material link is the molecular thread of DNA. In each reproductive cell, this ribbon roughly one meter long is cut into pieces, 23 or chromosomes. As soon as the 23 paternally derived chromosomes are united through fertilization to the 23 maternal ones, the full genetic meeting necessary to express all the inborn qualities of the new individual is gathered and personal constitution takes place.

At two months of age, the human being is less than one thumb length from the head to the rump. He would fit at ease in a nutshell, but everything is there, hands, feet, head, organs, brain. In the fourth week, there is consciousness.

All are in place. His heart has been beating for a month. By the second month, his fingerprints can be detected. His heart is beating 150 to 170 beats a minute to accept the fact, he writes, that after fertilization has taken place, a new human being has come into being, is no longer a matter of taste or opinion, end quote.

It's a person. So there's the scene. So the bottom line is, you have persons being murdered. And now that's something you can vote for because you want to be a part of that. What does the Bible say about this?

I want to just give you a handful of things to think about, just some principles in the little time we have. Number one, conception is an act of God. Conception is an act of God. God creates personally every life.

Conception as an Act of God

Psalm 127 .3, Behold, children are a gift from the Lord. Children are a gift from the Lord, from the Lord. How more simply could it be said? Children are a gift from the Lord. To look at that negatively and some passages along that line, Genesis 20, the Lord had completely closed all the wombs of the house of Abimelech.

The Lord can close a womb so none can be born. But we find the same kind of thing in Genesis 16 .2, Sarah said to Abraham, the Lord has restrained me from bearing. Or 1 Samuel 1, and with regard to Hannah, the Lord had shut up her womb, and it says it two times in that chapter.

So on the negative side, the Lord closes the womb and children aren't conceived. On the positive side, Genesis 17 says in verse 16, God said to Abraham, I will bless her, I will give you a son also from her, and she shall be the mother of nations.

The Lord who closed Sarah's womb in His time opened it. Genesis 21 .2, Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the set time of which the Lord had spoken to him. The Lord made the promise, set the time, opened the womb.

Genesis 25 .21, Isaac entreated the Lord for his wife because she was barren, and the Lord was entreated by him and Rebekah, his wife, conceived. She conceived because the Lord allowed her to conceive.

The Lord created life in her. First Samuel 1 goes back to the story of Hannah and Samuel. The Lord remembered her, therefore it came to pass after she had conceived that she bore a son and called his name Samuel, saying, because I have asked him of the Lord.

She asked the Lord and the Lord answered and gave her a child. In Ruth chapter 4 verse 13, Boaz took Ruth, she was his wife, and when he went in unto her, the Lord gave her conception and she bore a son.

The Lord gave her conception. I mean, the Bible speaks about every conception as a work of the Lord. Back to Psalm 127 .3, children are a gift from the Lord. Conception is an act of God. Let me take you a little further than the Old Testament, go to the seventeenth chapter of Acts, and let's take a look at a very powerful set of statements by the Apostle Paul to the philosophers in Athens.

God as Creator and Giver of Life

As he's on the Areopagus on Mars Hill talking to the philosophers there, he identifies the fact that they have this sort of idol there to the unknown God, just to cover all their bases in case there's any God left out.

They don't want him to be angry, so they give him a space even though they don't know his name. So Paul uses that and says, let me tell you about the God you don't know, who just happens to be the only God.

And then he begins to describe God, starting in verse 24, and this is how he describes Him, the God who made the world and all things in it. Stop there. The God who made the world and all things in it, He is the Creator God.

That comes from Psalm 146, 5 and 6, God who made heaven and the earth, the sea and all that is in them. Zechariah 12, 1, God who forms the spirit of man within Him. Everything that is, God made. John 1, everything was made by Him and without Him was not anything made that was made.

God is the Creator and God continues to be the Creator. He is seen as the Creator and the ruler. He is Lord of heaven and earth, doesn't dwell in temples made with hands. He's not like your idols. And then this, He's not served by human hands as though He needed anything since He Himself gives to all life and breath.

To all who live, God has given life. That's the statement. He is the source of life to everyone who lives. He is the Creator of everything, nothing is in existence that He didn't create and everything that is in existence is in existence because He made it.

We live because He gave us life. In Psalm 104, verse 30, you send forth your spirit, they are created. You send forth your spirit, they are created. And by the way, in Psalm 104, that includes everything that has life, plants, animals, humans, all the creation of God.

Romans 11 in that great doxology, everything is by Him and for Him. So we see then that He gives life to all, life and breath. Verse 26, He made from one, that is from Adam, He started with Adam and took Eve out of Adam and everything came from there.

He made from one every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their inhabitation. Now in verse 25, He made every individual thing that lives.

In verse 26, He governs the collection of all that He has made. Verse 28, in Him we live and move and exist. And even some of your own poets, namely Epimenides and Eratus, said of God, He is our Father, we are also His children.

Being then the children of God. Every individual is talking to Greek philosophers, unbelievers, your children of God in the sense that God created you, God made you. Now this is not a distant activity on God's part.

Psalm 139 and God's Knowledge of the Unborn

And I'll show you that by taking you back to Psalm 139, which I read earlier. Go with me back to 139 quickly for the sake of time. And I want you to understand some very clear statements here. In the opening six verses, as we read, the psalmist talks about the omniscience of God, He knows everything.

This is a level of knowledge that the psalmist can't understand, neither can we. And then in verses 7 to 12, he talks about the omnipresence of God, He made everything, He knows everything, He is everywhere all the time.

You can't be out of His presence ever. And then in verse 13, he moves to where that all really began in a personal sense. "'For You formed my inward parts, You wove me in my mother's womb.'". Just take that first statement, "'You formed my inward parts.'".

Literally in Hebrew, my kidneys. You formed my kidneys, which was a term that was used to refer to the complex of organs that made up the human anatomy, or inside the human body. You, God, formed my inward parts.

You wove me in my mother's womb. The DNA strips that are woven together, You wove them together. You wove together the complex genetic plan that produced me. You were the weaver. Verse 14,. "'I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully.'".

That literally means awesomely, nareoth a Hebrew word, meaning a high level of reverential awe. It's a staggering thing to think of what You have done in fearfully and wonderfully making me. "'Wonderful are Your works, my soul knows it very well, I know that You made me.'".

And then it gets even more technical, "'My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in secret.'". You were making me and You framed me. What's that? Bones, muscles, sinews, ligaments, tendons, structure.

You were aware of all of it when I was made in secret and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth. The depths of the earth is a euphemism for the womb, the hidden place, the secret place. Verse 16, "'Your eyes have seen my unformed substance.'".

My unformed substance, what is that? It's a Hebrew word that means something rolled together, something balled up before it unfolded. When it was just a genetic mass, when it was just that embryo, it was just that ball before it began to unfold.

You framed it, You saw it, and You wrote in Your book everything that was going to take place for my days before any of them ever took place. This is God personally, intimately involved in the very first stages of life.

Life yet unfolded. God is intimately involved. Can I tell you that God is not looking at us like a map with red dots wherever there's a person? God sees deep into us and has known us intimately from conception, from conception.

And that's why He says in verse 17, "'How precious are such thoughts to Me.'". He says, "'You know so much about Me that I can't even count all your thoughts about Me. They would outnumber the sand of the sea.'".

An amazing statement. God knows intimately everything about you from the time of your conception because He made you and He made every person ever conceived. You're not an animal. You're not a biological accident.

You're not tissue at some point and then you become a person. You're a creation of God by God who weaves together the genetic code, who intimately sees the unformed fetus and who guides the entire process.

You're not immortal. No life is mortal. May I say this quickly? Every life conceived is immortal. Every single child conceived lives forever, forever. Manoah is the father of Samson. His wife in Judges 13 .3 had a visit from an angel and the angel said to her, you're barren and you can't have a child, but you will conceive and bear a son.

And that son was Samson. People have children because God creates them in their womb. It doesn't matter if you're married, if you're having sex with somebody you're not married to, if you were raped, if it was incest, it doesn't change the creation of God.

Still life is created by God. Job understood this. You go back into the most primitive time in history, that's the time of Job who lives at the time of the patriarchs. And he says in chapter 10, verse 8, your hands fashioned and made me altogether.

He says, you made me like clay. You clothed me with skin and flesh. Verse 11, you knit me with bones and sinew. You granted me life. Your care preserved my spirit. You kept me alive in the womb. You put me altogether.

Says it again in chapter 31, verse 15. He says it again in chapter 33, verse 4. You can read such testimonies in Ecclesiastes and Isaiah. And you do remember the words of Jeremiah, chapter 1, verse 5, I formed you in the womb, but before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.

Wow. God says, I formed you in the womb. In the New Testament, in the gospel of Matthew, in the gospel of Luke, we learn that the Holy Spirit created Christ in the womb of Mary without a human father.

When did Christ come into the world? Did He come into the world in His birth? Did Jesus come into the world in Bethlehem? No, Jesus came into the world in His conception, in His conception. You say, well, what about a deformed baby?

Are they a gift from the Lord? Yeah, well, as I said earlier, we're all deformed. It's only a question of degree. But in, listen to Exodus 4, 11, the Lord said to him, to Moses, who made man's mouth? Who makes him mute or deaf or seeing or blind?

Is it not I, the Lord? John chapter 9, Jesus actually said this man was born blind for the glory of God. People say, well, we can kill them if it was a rape, or we can kill them if it was incest, or we can kill them if they're defective.

Really? It doesn't change the fact that every creation is a creation of God. Abortion is an anti-God act. No wonder they didn't want God in their platform. Second thing I want to mention to you, every creation is an act of God.

Human Beings Made in the Image of God

And secondly, every person created is in the image of God. In the image of God. James 3, 9 would be sufficient. Genesis 1, He made man in His own image. But in James 3, 9, there's this statement I think that gets maybe overlooked that essentially seals this issue.

We bless the Lord and Father and we curse men who have been made in the likeness of God. Wow. Better be careful how you treat men, people, because they're made in the likeness of God. What does that mean?

Well, there are incommunicable attributes that we don't have, like eternality, we haven't always existed, like omniscience, we don't know everything, omnipresence, we can't be everywhere, omnipotence, we don't have all power, immutability, we're not changeless.

So there are incommunicable attributes, things that are true about the nature of God that we don't possess. But there are a whole realm of communicable attributes that have to do with personhood, relationship.

God is a trinity. In the image of God means we relate, we have the capability of relationships, and, of course, that's what makes life life. We can love and we can hate and we can understand and we can feel and we can think and we can choose and we can act.

All of those things that are given to us are part of the image of God. Why capital punishment, Genesis 9 .6? Why does the Bible advocate capital punishment? Because it says in Genesis 9 .6, for He is made in the image of God.

When you kill someone made in the image of God, Genesis 9 .6 says you lose your life. Capital punishment for murder. Jesus upheld that, by the way. In the New Testament when the Romans came to arrest Jesus, Peter grabbed his sword and he started to fight and Jesus said, put your sword away.

If you live by the sword, you die by the sword. In other words, He affirmed capital punishment. If you take somebody's life, Peter, they have a right to take yours. Why? Because of the sacredness of life, you're killing a person in the image of God.

You can look at that on the negative side if you look at Psalm 51 .5 where David says, In sin did my mother conceive me. What he means by that, it's not that he was illegitimate, but what he means by that is from the conception I was a sinner.

And by the way, only a person can be a sinner. Only a person can be a sinner. That's personhood. No baby is a mistake. No baby is a sexual accident or a biological accident. No baby is a pile of tissue.

And no baby is part of the mother's body. It is a person created by God. So every life is created by God and created in His image, to bear His image. Thirdly, every creation is the special object of God's loving care.

God's Care for Children and the Unborn

Every creation is the special object of God's loving care. Why do you think that they're in there for nine months? Why do you think that they're in that protected place, the most, the safest, it should be the safest place on the planet, right?

The womb of the mother. Imagine, imagine criminals invading the womb of the mother at the will of the mother to kill the creation of God. God doesn't even want you to mock the poor. God doesn't even want you to be indifferent toward the weak and the helpless.

Well there are the weakest and the most helpless. And Jesus Himself said, "'Permit the little ones to come to Me and forbid them not, for theirs is the kingdom of God.'. And He gathered them into His arms, it says, and He blessed them.".

You know, back in Exodus chapter 21, there's a scenario there where you attack a woman and she's pregnant. It doesn't result in any harm to her or the child in the womb. No punishment. But if harm comes to her or the infant, Exodus 21 says, it's the law of lextalionis like for like, an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, a life for a life.

So according to the law of Exodus, the killing of an infant was a murder, Exodus 21, 22 to 25. That's the protected place and they're the special care of God. Why is it these people that are pro-abortion are so worried about what happens to the birds and the bugs and the animals?