The Missing Theology in this Mission

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Okay Good morning to you all Well as Jeff was saying there truly is nothing like holding one of these children in your arms that have been moments away from death

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And they're alive because you were standing out there preaching the gospel Calling out to those going inside looking into the eyes of one of these children that have been saved will truly change you and We hope to be an encouragement and a blessing for your brothers and sisters today

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I'm very honored to be here speaking with you today as someone who has no earthly right to be standing in this pulpit today

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I come from a very small town in Arizona in the United States that people make jokes about But that's not so much of a favorable place to come from and yet here.

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I stand today as a Servant of Jesus Christ and of his gospel preaching his word to you, and I'm very grateful and honored to be here

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I hope that this talk will be a blessing to you The order of our talks today will come at you in that I want to open up and speaking about the theological foundations of this fight.

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I want to tell you what? Scripture what God's Word says about this issue how

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God talks about it because brothers and sisters one of the main failings in our nation

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Under the banner of the pro -life movement has really been not approaching this issue as Christians Not speaking towards it the way

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God speaks about it. We've fallen into this category of wanting our message to be palatable wanting to be liked by everybody and That simply will not end abortion.

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God will not honor a fight that does not honor his word and unfortunately our societies have deemed

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Scripture the truth of God's Word as hate speech But even more unfortunately many

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Christians act in such a way as to agree with that premise They are ashamed of God's Word.

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They're ashamed of how God speaks about this sin calling it an abomination They're ashamed to say these kinds of things because then the message will be deemed unpalatable to people's sensitivities and especially to the men and women and families that are committing and Considering committing this sin, but I do want to encourage you

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This is the way that we fight and I want to encourage you at consistently as Christians We must speak about this the way that God does and we must approach it with his word at our feet

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So I want to start today From a reading of Revelation the 12th chapter if you have your

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Bibles you can turn there I'm starting in verse 1 and I really want to read this text to you as a

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Foundation for how to consider both the cosmic nature of this conflict and the ancient nature of this conflict and that it's nothing new brothers and sisters and God's Word does give us all of the

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Foundation that we need in order to fight against this Revelation 12th chapter starting in verse 1 the

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Apostle John Writing his revelation as he is exiled on the island of Patmos we have this beautiful vision of the conflict the cosmic conflict that's taking place as God is divorcing

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Unfaithful apostate Israel and taking into himself his new bride the church of Jesus Christ and in this we get this

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Wonderful picture. I want to read it to you verse 1 Here the words of the living and true

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God and a great sign appeared in heaven a woman clothed with the

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Sun and The moon under her feet and on her head a crown of 12 stars she was pregnant and Was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth and another sign appeared in heaven

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Behold a great red dragon With seven heads and ten horns and on his head seven diadems his tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth and The dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth so that when she bore her child

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He might devour it She gave birth to a male child

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One who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron

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But her child was caught up to God and to his throne.

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Let's ask the Lord to bless this message in prayer Father I come before you now

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Truly humbled Lord to be in the presence of your people God half a world away From where you have placed us to fight against this in our nation and God I confess to you

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We confess to you our utter ineptitude God to fight against us in our own strength and our own giftings

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God we are in desperate need of the power of your Holy Spirit to awaken us to equip us

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To convict us of our own apathy of our own indifference towards the least of these

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Towards our smallest neighbors God. I cannot teach your people today I need you to speak to them through your word and to communicate clearly

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I only pray that We are forgotten that this message is remembered and carried to the ends of the earth

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Lord God, and I do pray that you receive all of the glory for it in Jesus name. We pray

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Amen So we see in that verse that the desire of The dragon is to abort the work of Christ and all throughout history if you look from Genesis to Revelation You see that this is the expression of the conflict between how the

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Bible phrases that the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent in Genesis chapter 3 when our first parents sinned and fell in the garden

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They partook of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil and sinned against God and the curse entered it corrupted everything about us

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The fall as theologians put it we see in that moment God do something unexpected

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We see the proclamation of the first evangel we see the good news that the seed of the woman

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Will crush the head of the serpent We see the promise even in our moment of greatest weakness and greatest helplessness

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Before God God rather than judge us and condemn us in that moment Proclaims a measure of his grace

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Promising that there will be in this hostility between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent a

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Cosmic victory and then all throughout Scripture you see the same theme appearing over and over again from Canes uprooting the first murder to ever take place of his brother

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Abel Asking God am I my brother's keeper? Abel's righteous seed and then the replacement of that lineage with Seth To the family of Noah and the preservation of the righteous from the flood the seed the righteous seed to Abraham and the patriarchs to the

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Exodus execution of the Israelite male firstborns in Which by the way the

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Hebrew midwives refused? To execute Pharaoh's decrees to have those babies destroyed standing against the magistrates of their time

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The Preservation of King David from Saul's murderous rage and the lineage of the king The constant temptation of God's covenant people

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Israel to murder their own children with sent them into exile To the jealous bloodthirsty

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King Herod and his desire to cut off the Messiah's entry into this world by slaughtering the children of Bethlehem Because there was another king coming and he will not share his throne with any earthly ruler or leader

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And in Satan's efforts to tempt Jesus even in the course of his earthly ministry Tempting him into killing himself subjecting his ministry to demonic oppression and in believing that he finally succeeded in Seeing Jesus nailed to the cross

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The conflict of the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpents all throughout history and bright and vivid living color in the scriptures

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That's the nature of the conflict that we're engaged in today the seed of the righteous the seed of those who have been born again

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Versus the seed of the serpent those who are of their father the devil who was a murderer from the beginning

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Socialist Karl Marx said that in order to destroy the holy family father

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Son and Holy Spirit the earthly family must first be destroyed

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Abortion is therefore a crime promoted by those who have a deep -seated hatred Toward the biblical family that is marriage between a man and a woman and the beginning of children offspring that come from that godly union

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We must realize that it is a tool of a radically secularized state that seeks to eliminate all rivals to its rule namely the human family

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Which is the building block of the church and subsequently any healthy nation? But before we engage in an understanding of the biblical response to the

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Holocaust of the unborn that we face I want to speak about the worldview that lies at the bottom of it for just a moment

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You see brothers and sisters one of our primary failures as I was saying as you'll hear us say a lot is to address this issue in what's called a

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Cosmological way that is with our worldview the order and structure of our worldview standing at our feet

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From the biblical worldview God's speaking to this rather We have elected to address this from a pragmatic consideration and when we speak to people about this issue

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What is our first? desire well It's to somehow engage in an evidentiary hearing that proves that an unborn child is a human being from the moment of conception it's to Demonstrate that life begins at that point.

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It's to appeal to the autonomous nature of a woman and saying yes You have a choice just don't choose this because it will lead to higher levels of depression and Increased likelihood of suicide and health effects of your body

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Rather than employing the use of Scripture and what God commands To change hearts and minds bringing the law of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ to bear on the conscience

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Rather than speaking to the intellect We must address this issue in a cosmological way with our worldview with the structure of how

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God says things are the way They are at our feet There has been a shift in the argumentation surrounding this area of abortion now, you will no longer hear pro -choice camps use argumentation and call children in the womb a clump of cells a

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Mass of tissue. We certainly don't hear those things outside of the abortion mills where we are anymore Sure, we may hear them every now and again

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But what you hear now and what I've heard for the past three years that I've been doing this ministry in Arizona You'll come into contact with a woman who's going into an abortion mill.

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You will say ma 'am, please don't murder your child Let us help you today. Let us provide for your needs.

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Let us care for you I want you to know that God commands you not to murder God says in his word that he hates the hands that shed innocent blood and you're gonna stand before him and be judged for what

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You're doing and I don't want that for you. I want you to know Jesus I want you to know the power of his forgiveness and his salvation and oh by the way

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We'll help you with anything that you need and you know what women say they say well, I Know it's a human being.

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I've tried many times to stand out there and I will employ evidences I will do those things.

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But do you know what we hear from the women going into these places? I know it's a baby but I ought to have the right to still kill it and This is the hard truth that we have to come into contact with brothers and sisters

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Camille Paglia a social commentator writes Quote, I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder the extermination of the powerless by the powerful

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Which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue pro -choice writer

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Antonio Senor a British journalist writes quote. My daughter was formed at conception

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Any other conclusion is a convenient lie that we on the pro -choice side of the debate tell ourselves to make us feel better about the action of taking life to defend women's rights

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You must be prepared to kill In a salon magazine article titled quote.

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So what if abortion ends a life? Mary Elizabeth Williams the author says that quote a fetus is indeed a life a

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Life that is worth sacrificing If I can impress one thing on your brothers and sisters

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It would be this reasoning on the basis of trying to prove that the unborn child is a human being in this fight is futile those

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Evidences are necessary to know But I assure you if the gospel is not at our feet if we are not preaching repentance

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If we are not preaching the turning away of sin to come to Jesus for forgiveness and salvation.

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We've already lost We've already lost this fight our societies

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Including the church within our societies have been deeply impacted by an increasingly secular worldview.

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We see it everywhere Which at bottom are really nothing more than ancient pagan beliefs that are simply dressed in new outfits

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Due to pro -choicers losing the biological and scientific grounds of this fight.

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They've resorted to something else So they're not denying anymore that an unborn child is human.

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They're saying yes. I know it's a human being We ought to have the right to kill it So how and where does this methodology in this worldview come from that they're using to justify it?

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Well, I want to inform you and hopefully equip and educate you just for a few moments on what that is. It's called personhood theory and it basically says this if I could sum it up and That is that the unborn child in the womb is certainly a human being it is a human being that the species

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There's certainly no disputing that it's not a giraffe. It's not a dog. It's a human being however

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That human being is not yet a person until sometime in a near or distant future in Which they obtain a certain level of consciousness awareness

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Autonomy it's a very arbitrary and it's completely nonsensical and its distinction to define when life begins

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So, please understand that the pro -choice side of the debate is not standing on anything biological or scientific

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They are standing on a religiously grounded worldview on a faith commitment and how they define

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When life begins and if they have the right or not to take it This Worldview though is known all throughout history as dualism or Gnosticism It was a heresy refuted in the early church when

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I'd like to just express for a few moments how it applies and drops down onto the worldview of abortion because we need to know in order to be equipped to dialogue with those who are

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Articulating it in our culture today Dualism is the division of reality into two stories where the upper story the higher realm deals with the spirit and the immaterial

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While the lower story deals with matter and the material universe This dualism sees no value in a living human body, but places all worth in the mind or the consciousness

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Rene Descartes put it this way. I think therefore I am personhood theory an

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Illustration is the driver of a car think about the car being a representation of a person's body

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But the true and authentic self is the driver of that car the immaterial essence of the person the consciousness

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If you will the body is not valuable nothing about the body or the frame of men and women made in the image of God warrants any kind of protection

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It's only the immaterial essence of the person that is valued and protected and this is common because in our nation

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Rovers's way of the infamous court decision that decided that mothers and fathers had the right to murder their children within the first 12 weeks of their pregnancies defined human beings as potential human life

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That was how they got around abortion and Pushing it into the public sector

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According to personhood theory the body is nothing more than raw material to be controlled and manipulated

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Subject to the true self the upper story Being a member of the human race is not enough to qualify for protection

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The baby in the womb has to earn their personhood by obtaining a certain level of cognition autonomy or self -awareness

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This Belief system really would gain traction under Charles Darwin the father of modern evolutionary theory

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Who believed that if the body is not the handiwork of God revealing his will

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Right. So if our biology does not tell us anything about who we are if my being a male

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Does not tell me how I'm supposed to live according to the dictates of God's Word if it's not

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Revealing God's will it is a morally neutral realm where human beings can impose their will and this is the worldview

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That gives us abortion homosexuality sodomy Transgenderism it is that the true and authentic self is contained

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Within the human person and thus there is a fragmentation of the human person between body and the immaterial essence the person

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Nancy Pearcey Puts it this way the key to understanding all the controversial issues of our day is that the concept of the human being has been

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Fragmented into an upper and lower story Secular thought today assumes a body person split with the body defined in the fact realm by empirical science yeah, it's a human being and The person defined in the values realm as the basis for rights

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But it's not a person this dualism has created a fractured and fragmented view of the human being in which the body is treated as Separate from the authentic self.

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So in our societies brothers and sisters, we've cut out a new category the human non -person

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The Bible on the other hand the biblical worldview does not separate the body into a lower story and make it a biochemical machine it's intrinsic to who we are and Thus it will be redeemed along with the entire human person.

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We are embodied spirits embodied souls Being made in the image of God includes

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Having a body God has a high view of the material realm and it's not a throwaway Unfortunately, we've adopted even this mindset in the church in which the desire has been to pull away to retreat inward and to escape upward and That was the goal of Gnosticism.

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It saw the created order as the evil creation of a demi -urge of God and Therefore the goal was to escape it

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Escape the created order and now as I said, these pagan beliefs are being transferred onto this and unfortunately, we in the church have adopted this escapist and Retreat us mentality in which the desire is to pull inward and to escape upward

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But the Christian faith the true biblical worldview is very very different God places such a high value on the body on the created order that the gospel message itself

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Is that the proclamation of the good news is not that we escape and leave this world and float away on clouds but rather that our whole bodies our persons are redeemed and the greatest evidence of this is seen in the

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Incarnation of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and his resurrection. That's why during the time of Jesus as the scriptures testified

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This would have been so offensive to Gnostics The fact that the

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God who spoke and all things came into existence took on flesh

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He took on a body No, the goal is to escape from the human body. It's dirty.

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It's wicked. It's fallen And of course the Bible teaches that we are stained by sin.

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We are fallen creatures But God is redeeming and restoring and making all things new that process begins now

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Think about the resurrection for a moment The proclamation of the new creation and the rising again from the dead of our

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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ God not escaping but being raised in the same body that he died in retaining the wounds of his crucifixion

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This would have been so offensive to Gnostics and it was The ethic of scripture is that we're made in God's image to reflect his character both in our minds and the actions of our body

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Our value is not derived from what we can do or earned at some arbitrary point in our development

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But derived instead from who we are. We are the Imago Dei We are made in the image of God and therefore that is all of the basis for the intrinsic worth that we need or require

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We don't earn our value our dignity at certain stages of our development when we can feel pain when we experience

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Consciousness or self -awareness or any of these arbitrary labels that are placed on life in the womb

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Psalm 139 I'm sure you're all very familiar with it. I just want to read it to you

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Psalm is speaking about the majesty of God and creation Psalm 139 starting in verse 13.

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Just listen and I pray that God helps you to hear this Maybe for the first time today in a way that Communicates the clear intention of the text for you formed my inward parts

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You knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made

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Wonderful are your works. My soul knows it very well My frame was not hidden from you when

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I was being made in secret Intricately woven in the depths of the earth your eyes saw my unformed substance in your book were written

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Every one of them the days that were formed for me when as yet there was none of them brothers and sisters if you listen To this you listen to God talking about the frame

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My frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret that word has to do with The structure of our bodies our bones that which holds us upright

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Our frame was not hidden from God He was there forming us in the womb and the picture that the scripture paints is that God is the

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Grand Weaver He's weaving together all the threads of our existence within the womb within your mother's womb

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You were fashioned and formed and intricately and intimately knit together Within your mother's womb as are we all?

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God creates our frame. It's not hidden from him as he says earlier Where can we go from your spirit or where can we flee from your presence?

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Nothing is hidden from the sight of God When I was being made in secret intricately woven in the depths of the earth your eyes saw my

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Unformed substance that word in the original language the unformed substance is the word that we use to get the word embryo in our

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English language God sees us as an incomplete vessel at the earliest stages of development.

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Why because he's there He has his hand upon us forming all the days of our lives before We even exit the womb

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He says as much in your book were written every one of them the days that were formed for me when as yet there was none of them

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God is already giving meaning to every breath and This of course is the basis the image of God for the prohibition of shedding

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The blood of man of murder that God gives in Genesis chapter 9 verse 6

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Whoever sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed for God made man in his own image in God's case law in the book of Exodus.

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He gets even more specific in Exodus chapter 21 If you'd like to turn there verses 22 through 25

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God's case law giving an example about a pregnant woman. I hear those pages turning.

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I'll give you a moment to get there powerful text

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When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman so that her children come out But there is no harm the one who hit her shall surely be fined as the woman's husband shall impose on him

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And he shall pay as the judges determined But if there is harm then you shall pay life for life eye for eye tooth for tooth hand for hand foot for foot burn for burn wound for wound

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Stripe for stripe this of course is what's been called in by theologians in the past is

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Lex Talionis It is The idea that the punishment ought to fit the crime

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God and his case law for unintentional accidental abortion

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Demands the surrendering of the life For the one who caused the crime how much more brothers and sisters?

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for those in our nations Who now have the liberty to kill? Intentionally and it will these image bearers in the world in God's law the value of the precept is

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Comprehended by the severity of the penalty How much does God value human life? He says if you shed man's blood unlawfully

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Then you'll have your blood shed not by Mob rule or mob justice, but by God's divinely appointed magistrates

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They're the ones that are to carry out God's justice in accordance with God's Word Everywhere we hear this spoken about abortion

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We hear it framed as a woman's rights issue a woman's health issue, and this is how we fought against it

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Regulating it as health care rather than working to criminalize it as murder

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God calls it murder It is child sacrifice and the shedding of innocent blood

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It is abhorrent to him and forbidden in his law. God hates the hands that shed innocent blood

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Proverbs chapter 6 in God's law. It's amazing if you look at the foundation of it if you were to sum it up What would it be it would be that the guilty?

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don't go free the guilty are punished in accordance with God's righteous and just sanctions and The innocent are not punished because they're innocent in our societies now we see the emergence of abortion on demand and we see

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Those that are innocent in the womb being punished while those that commit this are given every protection under the law as The prophet

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Isaiah says woe to those who call good evil and evil good Choice is just used as another euphemism for murder

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Employed by those who have divinized their own autonomy. They've made choice their God Well, it's not wrong as long as it's my choice

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It doesn't matter what I choose I can choose to keep this child I can choose to pay to have this child killed

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But either way, it's not wrong. It's the absolute and raw expression of my will who are you to tell me?

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Otherwise the God of the will false

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God of choice This was the lie of the serpent in the garden tempting our first parents who said when you eat of the fruit your eyes will

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Be open and you will be as gods Knowing and determining for yourselves between good and evil a task only

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For God, that's what mothers and fathers do in these killing places

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They decide in their own eyes between what's right and what's wrong by their own autonomy

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Taking it on themselves to play God and decide who lives and who dies the

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Bible speaks very clearly about a Theological concept called blood guilt and that is when

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Not just individuals commit this sin, but nations condone it and in our case as our nations are celebrating it blood guilt

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This principle is expressed in Leviticus chapter 18 If you'd like to look there in God's Word with me in Leviticus God has given his people that he has redeemed from slavery all of the

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Ceremonial cleanliness laws so that they will be holy for the other from the other nations so that they will be set apart a people for his possession that have his law and That are different.

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They're not like the other nations They don't do the same thing that these pagan nations around them have done case in point

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Here's what God tells them before they take possession of the land that they're going into in verse 21 you shall not give any of your children to offer them to Moloch and So profane the name of your

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God. I am the Lord. You shall not lie with a male as with a woman It is an abomination and you shall not lie with any animal and so make yourself unclean with it

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Neither shall any woman give herself to an animal to lie with it It is perversion do not make yourselves unclean by any of these things for by all these things

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All these excuse me all these nations the nations. I am driving out before you have become unclean and the land

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Became unclean so that I punished its iniquity and the land vomited out its inhabitants a few words about the worship of Moloch Moloch and they all false gods of these pagan nations

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Demanded ritual sacrifice child sacrifice Moloch worship was characterized by a large statue that was in the form of a man with a bull's head that had the arms

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Cradled out in front of this idol and there was a furnace located at the base of the idol and what had happened was the furnace was stoked with the fire and Then people would offer up their own sons and daughters into the arms of the statue as the furnace heated and their children would

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Be incinerated alive while screaming Moloch worship and the motivation for this was that They were to offer up their children that all would be well with them

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Can you hear that now in our societies? Can you hear it, sweetheart? You're too young You still have your college to think about you have to get that job.

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Don't you know, your parents will never accept this They're gonna throw you out of your house Give the child to me and all will be well with you

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Moloch worship 2 .0 in our culture resurrected that's a few words about the worship of Moloch and what it looked like a culture that sheds the blood of the innocent defiles the land

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Contaminates God's creation is in danger of having its inhabitants spewed out. Did you hear the text of God's Word brothers and sisters?

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Did you hear how God repays nations that practice the sin? He causes the land that they are abiding and to spew them out to vomit them out

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Because the shedding of innocent blood brings a curse upon the land The land is to be in holy and dwelt in by God's people who have his presence abiding with them eternally

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But the shedding of innocent blood and the murder of unborn children the murder of born children and infanticide

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Contaminates God's creation makes the created order profane and causes the land to vomit out its inhabitants

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For God's people to be dispossessed by their own enemies And if you don't believe that this happened look at the nation's before Israel entered the promised land

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God promised them I'm casting these nations out for committing these abominable things and if you do the same thing,

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I will spew you out Just like I'm doing to them Don't think for one moment

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It's so tempting brothers and sisters in my nation, especially in good old America We're so individualistic.

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We're so prideful in our national heritage and where we come from We believe that we're God's nation.

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God bless America. We don't believe that God would ever dispossess his baby

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The land of the free in the home of the brave, but God can and he will if we don't repent

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No nation has any bearing on God's favor. We have no reason when we allow this sin to demand or expect any blessing from God Israelites and the nation of Israel did not obey

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God Jeremiah chapter 32. I want to turn there so you can see that for a moment prophet

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Jeremiah prophesying in the context of this passage The prophet

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Jeremiah is prophesying to the nation of Israel when they're on the verge of going into exile

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All of the Covenantal promises to the nation of Israel and Deuteronomy chapter 28 are about to be invoked for Israel's violation of the

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Covenant and This is what God says Jeremiah chapter 32 the prophet

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Jeremiah prophesying Starting in verse 30 for the children of Israel and the children of Judah have done nothing but evil in my sight

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From their youth the children of Israel have done nothing but provoke me to anger By the work of their hands declares the

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Lord this city has aroused my anger and wrath from the day It was built to this day so that I will remove it from my sight because of all the evil of the children of Israel and the children of Judah that they did to provoke me to anger their kings and Officials priests and prophets men of Judah inhabitants of Jerusalem.

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They have turned to me They're back and not their face. They won't repent and though I have taught them persistently

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They have not listened to receive instruction. They set up their abominations in the house that is called by my name to defile it

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Listen to this They built the high places of Baal in the valley of the son of Hinnom to offer up their sons and their daughters to Moloch Though I did not command them nor did it enter into my mind that they should do this abomination

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To cause Judah to sin you see in Moloch worship another word about this in the valley of Hinnom in Jerusalem, which

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Jesus equates in the New Testament as Hell essentially yeah, henna or trash was burned

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So anytime you think about an abortion clinic or set foot around an area where they kill children

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Think about the fact that you're literally stepping into hell on earth Topheth Was the name of the place that was located in the valley of Hinnom outside of Jerusalem where child sacrifice altars were set up Topheth means drum because what they would do is they would beat the drums

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Well, the children were incinerated in the fire to drown out their cries And I think about this every time

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I stand outside of an abortion clinic and The Planned Parenthood of the Women's Center blaring music on the loudspeakers in front of the building

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One of the things that characterized Moloch worship was that the mothers and fathers that offered their children could offer no protest

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They had to approach the altar with straight faces with no emotion with no regret and with no

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Remorse as they offered their children. It had to be a love offering and if you're wondering why you have a law now in which abortion has been removed from the criminal code and your nation and Boundary markers placed around it that insulate women from hearing you

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That's why The reason that you have 150 meter safe zones so that women cannot hear your protest of their

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Moloch worship is because They will not feel the shame of their sin.

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They are to offer a love offering to this false God Without protests and what you're doing there is protesting the worship of a false

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God and so you must be stopped you must be silenced That's what our nation's have elected to do to silence the word of the cross to silence the gospel to silence any opposition to the contrary and provide

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Insulation from the shaming the righteous shaming the godly shaming. Can I talk about that with you for just a moment?

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We've been so convinced in our culture We hear it all the time outside the abortion clients. Are you here just to shame women?

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Is that what you want to do just shame them? Well, if I'm being honest, yes, I Do I want to shame them into seeing the horror of their sin so that they turn from it and they run to Jesus for forgiveness

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If you read the prophet Jeremiah in chapter 6, he says about the nation of Israel They were not ashamed in their abominations.

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They forgot how to blush over their sin Shame can be a righteous thing and we all need to be ashamed of our sin and run to the

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Savior The only one who can forgive us and cleanse us by his blood Malik worship requires no protest the nation of Israel Detailed in Psalm chapter 106 says they angered him at the waters of Meribah and it went ill with Moses on their account for they

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Made his spirit bitter and he spoke rashly with his lips They did not destroy the people's as the Lord commanded them

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But they mixed with the nation's and learned to do as they did they served their idols which became a snare to them

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They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons They poured out innocent blood the blood of their sons and daughters

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Whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan and the land was polluted with blood Thus they became unclean by their acts and played the whore in their deeds

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Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against the people and he abhorred his heritage He gave them into the hands of the nation's just a few words about this scripture brothers and sisters abortion is the fruit of a bitter root of religious apostasy in a nation

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It starts with Playing the whore spiritually speaking rejecting the

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God of Scripture rejecting his word embracing the gods of secularism the

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God of the consensus the God of my will The false gods and yes women are not bowing down towards statues in our present day, but they are worshiping idols as Are we all outside of the reign of King Jesus in our lives?

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child sacrifice and the shedding of innocent blood nourishes the demonic realm unless we be tempted to think that Abortion is somehow a them problem.

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It's a them problem It's not affecting people in the church not us not in our beautiful buildings with all of our liturgy and our proclamation of God's Word and our singing and our correct belief systems a lifeway study in my nation found out that 70 percent of abortion seeking women women that have had abortions identify as Christians 43 % went to church once a month or more when they killed their baby at the time they were getting an abortion

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They were attending church Let us not think at any point that this is a them problem people outside the church

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We must have reformation within the church. We must have repentance. We must have a change of mind

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About the way that we speak to this about the way that we address it Ultimately abortion is creature worship.

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The Apostle Paul tells us in the book of Romans chapter 1 I'm sure you're very familiar with the passage is one of our favorites at Apologia For although they knew

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God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him But they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were dark and claiming to be wise

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They became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images Resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things and we see in that passage that God gives us over to the desires and lust

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Of our hearts. He says have them you want him have them. We don't want the true God in our knowledge

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So we exchange him for a created thing a thing that he is made We don't want his law.

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We don't want what he says so we exchange him a culture that exchanges the truth about God for the lie and says that man can be as God is a

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Culture that worships and serves the creation not the creator and in the personification of nature with various gods of which man is apart

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He worships himself and his own will and idea The exchange of the truth of God for the lie of creature worship has seen its outworking in the overturning of the laws that protect

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Unborn children as the psalmist puts it those who frame injustice by statute

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That's what's happening in our nations. That's what's been going on in my nation now for the last 45 years How are we to understand this?

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Just a few words briefly on the concept of covenant Modern Evangelicalism has become so individualistic that it has not understood the doctrine of the covenant or that God Covenantally judges nations with either blessings or curses as we've already seen before God judging his own people even there were in covenant with him

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God judging unbelievers for them practicing the same things For which he punished his people

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Although God sets his particular covenant affections on the nation of Israel He deals covenantally with all nations in accordance with his revealed law

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Isaiah chapter 24 The earth lies defiled under its inhabitants for they have transgressed the laws violated the statutes

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Broken the everlasting covenant therefore a curse devours the earth and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt our

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Respective nations and those who founded them believed in the continuity of this covenant that extends back to God's people

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This is seen in the establishment of a nation for the advancement of Christ's kingdom of his gospel Just look at our original founding documents in our nation

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It's seen in our original documents practices of ordination for our royalty the swearing into office of our presidents the marriage of man and woman the partaking of communion in the church all of these are examples of covenant

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We are covenantally Bound to God and there is no escaping this we are obligated to obey him an example of God's judgment on An unrighteous nation the

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Ammonites in Amos chapter 1 Thus says the Lord for three transgressions of the Ammonites and for four.

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I will not revoke the punishment Because they have ripped open pregnant women in Gilead that they might enlarge

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Their border for three transgressions and for four the sin has become habitual

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It's a habitual sin and God says he will not revoke punishment He will kindle a fire to judge because those who have ripped open pregnant women in an unbelieving nation

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There is no abomination more likely to kindle the judgment of God against a nation than the murder of the unborn

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Child sacrifice and the shedding of innocent blood not only brings judgment. It is judgment brothers and sisters and National sins bring national judgment

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The only thing more terrifying than the modern -day Holocaust of abortion is the deafening silence of the

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Christian Church's witness in the midst of it Martin Luther said these words quote if I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition

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Every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment

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Attacking I am NOT confessing Christ However boldly I may be professing

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Christ where the battle rages There the loyalty of the soldier is proved and to be steady on all the battlefields

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Besides is merely flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point Francis Schaeffer said that every abortion clinic should have a sign over the door that says here by permission of the church

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We failed brothers and sisters to be salt and light in our nation Jesus says you are the salt of the earth.

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You are the light of the world What if salt if not a preservative to keep things from spoiling? What is light if not that which expels the darkness and drives it out of our lands?

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when we fail to do this our land spoils our society spoil our government spoil our culture spoil and God calls us to be the fragrance of the aroma of Christ to be

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Diffusing the aroma of Christ as we go forward and he leads us in triumphal procession over our enemies

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He promises that the gates of hell will not prevail against the church gates were a defensive posture in the scriptures

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Where does that place the church brothers and sisters it places us in an offensive position we need to be moving forward not retreating backwards

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Prophet Isaiah Says hear the word of the Lord you rulers of Sodom Give ear to the teaching of our

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God you people of Gomorrah What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices says the Lord? I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well -fed beasts

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I do not delight in the blood of bulls or of lambs or of goats when you come to appear before me

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Who is required of you this trembling of my courts bring no more vain offerings and senses an abomination to me

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New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates

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They've become a burden to me. I am weary of burying them when you spread out your hands. I will hide my eyes from you

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Even though you make many prayers. I will not listen your hands are full of blood Wash yourselves make yourselves clean remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes cease to do evil

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Learn to do good seek justice correct oppression bring justice to the fatherless pleads the widow's cause

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Friends of our hands are full of blood. God says something about our worship and our liturgy and our singing

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He hates it Because there's injustice in our hands. There's bloodshed in our midst and where we refuse to do anything about it

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Unless we turn from our sin and come back this great evil of our day and in order to do that We have to return to a prophetic witness

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And that doesn't mean Telling the future necessarily God's prophets were his legal emissaries and they were designated to bring

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Covenantal lawsuit against the nation's they were designed to be God's prosecuting attorneys

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They were to say to the nation's you must obey Jesus or you'll perish calling them back to the observation of God's covenant and A recovery of a prophetic witness carries with it the recovery of the biblical call the biblical gospel today

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We're told that for us to involve ourselves in this fight is to stage a politically motivated crusade

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Why do you Christians want to get involved with that? That's just a political issue. Why don't you just preach the gospel?

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Why don't you just stay in church preach the gospel do your thing? We'll do our thing Keep that Jesus talk away

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From us or as we've heard many times from pro -choicers. Keep your theology off of my biology

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Right, that's exactly where we need to place it God's standards are binding on you and everything that you do

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Just preach the gospel and by that what we mean is justification by faith and that is at the heart of the gospel that we can turn from our sin that we can come to Jesus and be forgiven and experience new life and peace with God and the

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Cleansing of our sin and forgiveness and salvation and the gift of eternal life and the infilling of the

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Holy Spirit Central to the gospel, but there's more to the gospel than just that friends and in my last few minutes

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I want to just take a few moments and extrapolate that a little bit Turn to Colossians chapter 1.

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I Want you to see this Colossians chapter 1 starting in verse 16

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Talking about Jesus For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth visible and invisible whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities all things were created through him and For him he is before all things and in him all things hold together

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He is the head of the body of the church the beginning the firstborn from the dead that in everything He might be preeminent for in him

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All the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and through him to reconcile to himself some things

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No all things Whether on earth or in heaven

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Making peace by the blood of his cross This verse brothers and sisters says that Jesus on that cross

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What he was doing there was more than just purchasing Individual sinners to be redeemed from every tribe tongue language and nation

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His blood was purchasing the cosmos it was purchasing the created order

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That's been corrupted by our sin the cosmos we talked about cosmology earlier Jesus and his sacrifice on that cross bought all things to be redeemed

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The message of the gospel the full orb good news of the kingdom is what we need to have a recovery of in our nations

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Not that just that Jesus saves individuals for heaven one day Not just that of course, that's a benefit.

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Of course. That's a glorious truth that we all marvel at but God in the person of Jesus Christ is

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Reconciling the world to himself Redeeming it Restoring it as far as the curse is found

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Do you know what's left outside the authority of Jesus if that is your proclamation of the gospel?

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nothing Nothing at all Here it is in a sentence

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God in the person of Jesus Christ bought all of this with his blood

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Deal with it. That's the message of the gospel the good news of the kingdom

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Repent and believe for the kingdom of heaven is at hand Abortion is a gospel issue and friends.

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We have to be accused of what the Apostles were accused of namely in Acts chapter 5

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We hear so much by opposition from the church. Well Christians would never do this kind of work today They would never speak prophetically to their magistrates.

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They would stay in the church But the most innocent blood ever shed the blood of our

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Savior Jesus Christ At the hands of his own people and lawless men, what was the

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Accusation that was leveled against the Apostles in Acts chapter 5. It was that you are bringing this man's blood upon us

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Peter says in his address in the book of Acts You killed the author of life but God has raised him from the dead and The accusation comes back.

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You're trying to bring this man's blood upon us That's what we need to be accused of today speaking prophetically to our magistrates and those in authorities to protect these children

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The blood of these children is also on your hands turn and govern justly do justice to the unborn the shedding of innocent blood brings a curse but the gospel is that Christ became a curse on our behalf and Becoming a curse the execution of Jesus on the cross is

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God's merciful and just declaration That that which defiles the land namely our sin is placed on the one in whom there was no sin that by faith in that Execution our hearts can be reoriented to God and the curse of our false worship lifted abortion is false worship

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It's a product of a fallen heart and the good news of the gospel is that the orientation of our hearts can be radically shifted towards worship of the

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Creator the true God What we say to these women who are going into these places is stop

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There has been an execution for he There has been an execution receive this execution receive the righteous ones blood who was shed for sinners in their place

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There need be no bloodshed today There need be no execution of your own child of your own son because God has offered up his own son in the place of sinners

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Our nation's sin of casting our seeds into the ground will lead us to being vomited out of our lands

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But the righteousness that comes from putting our faith into the seed of the woman that was buried in the ground

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Will once again bring forth righteousness and our nation's Christ became the curse that ought to have defiled the ground, but the land vomited him out

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Not for unrighteousness, but because of his resurrection from the dead the ground couldn't contain him

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His sacrifice is perfect and it brings about the new creation. God desires a godly seed

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He desires not just birth, but the new birth. That's why the enemy is attacked abortion was

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Vehemently because if there is no first birth, how can there be a second birth? How can what

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Jesus talks about you must be born again to inherit the kingdom of heaven. How can that happen? There's no first And this is why the enemy the accuser of the brethren the murderer who was a murderer from the beginning

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Has tried so hard to abort the work of Christ God's gift of children and birth is a portrait of the new birth.

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Do you know how God refers to his gospel? Especially if you're reformed

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This is a precious truth to you if you've seen this in the pages of Scripture that the concept of regeneration How God?

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changes the heart of a sinner from a heart of stone and gives them a heart of flesh the Bible tells us and makes us

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Sensitive to his commandments puts his laws within us that miracle of regeneration, which

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God changes us and raises us to life I Want to communicate this accurately that is what

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God is doing with everything The paragonesis is how scripture refers to it.

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The new creation the new Genesis is What God is doing not just in the hearts and minds of individuals

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But to the whole creation and this is the proclamation of the good news that we need to bring into the area of abortion

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God owns all of this. You're not going to escape his watch. You're accountable to him for everything that you're doing

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You profess not to know him God's word says that you do and you need him for forgiveness and salvation

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The good news of the kingdom that God is ruling and reigning now that he's on his throne

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That he's putting every enemy underneath his feet including the enemy of abortion The Apostle John says that Jesus Christ appeared to destroy the works of the devil

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To remove the curse and he will Any culture that tolerates?

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murder especially the murder of the unborn Contaminates God's creation and becomes a stench in his nostrils only by turning back to God.

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Can we abate? This judgment and that is the crux of my message today to you brothers and sisters is abating

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The sin of child sacrifice and the judgment that it brings on our nations

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That we love and we want to see come to Christ and I'll finish with this verse from the book of Ezekiel chapter 22

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Ezekiel chapter 22 Verse 30. I'll start in verse 27.

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Her princes in her midst are like wolves tearing the prey Shedding blood destroying lives to get dishonest gain.

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Those are the magistrates and Her prophets have smeared whitewash for them seeing false visions and divining lies for them saying

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Thus says the Lord when the Lord has not spoken. That's the church the people of the land of practice extortion and committed robbery

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It's the people the culture They have oppressed the poor and needy and have extorted from the sojourner without justice and here's what

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I want you to hear and I sought for a man among them who should build up the wall and stand in the breach before me before the land

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That I should not destroy it But I found none Therefore I have poured out my indignation upon them and I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath

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I have returned their way upon their heads declares the Lord brothers and sisters Who will stand in the gap for these children?

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Who will stand in the gap raise up the wall and abate the judgment of God in our nations?

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That's my question for you today you heard pastor Jeff allude to Not many people being in this room and I just want to leave you with this thought

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It has never in all of history been the majority that has seen radical change and a move back to the biblical worldview and the

01:00:23

Christian gospel it is always and always has been a Zealous and tenacious minority that is devoted to the obedience of God's Word Those are the ones that bring change and that's you today

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Be that zealous and tenacious minority Be brave be courageous.

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God is with you and you have the victory in Jesus already. Let's pray Father, thank you for the word that went forward today

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Only you can make the truths that were communicated today resonate in the hearts and minds of your people and Change them

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Lord God and encourage them and exhort them to good works and true law -keeping

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Lord we thank you for the good news of the kingdom the only way that any of us have been saved and know you and Have been forgiven and I thank you

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God that although I'm from a world half a world away today I stand in the presence of brothers and sisters

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Other tribes tongues and nations that have been united under your banner by the mercy and Grace of our

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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and we can fight together Alongside one another shoulder to shoulder in this battle as we seek to do justice and to uphold the cause of the unborn in our nations

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We praise you father. I pray that this day continues to be an act of worship to you Lord God and may you receive all of the glory in your name.