The Missing Theology in this Mission

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. 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.

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. 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. 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.

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. I want to tell you what?

Scripture what God's Word says about this issue how God talks about it because brothers and sisters one of the main failings in our nation Under the banner of the pro-life movement has really been not Approaching this issue as Christians not speaking towards it the way 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. God will not honor a fight that does not honor his word and unfortunately our societies have deemed Scripture the truth of God's Word as hate speech.

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

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. So I want to start today From a reading of Revelation the 12th chapter if you have your Bibles you can turn there.

I'm just starting in verse 1 and I really want to read this text to you as a 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 foundation that we need in order to fight against this Revelation 12th chapter starting in verse 1 the Apostle John Writing his revelation as he is exiled on the island of Patmos and we have this beautiful vision of the conflict the cosmic conflict that's taking place as God is divorcing Unfaithful apostate Israel and taking into himself his new bride the Church of Jesus Christ.

And in this we get this wonderful picture. I want to read it to you verse 1 hear the words of the living and true God and a great sign appeared in heaven a woman clothed with the 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. 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 He might devour it.

She gave birth to a male child One who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. But her child was caught up to God and to his throne. Let's ask the Lord to bless this message in prayer. Father I come before you now 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 we confess to you our utter ineptitude God to fight against this in our own strength and our own giftings God we are in desperate need of the power of your Holy Spirit to awaken us to equip us To convict us of our own apathy of our own indifference towards the least of these 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. I only pray that We are forgotten that this message is remembered and carried to the ends of the earth Lord God, and I do pray that you receive all of the glory for it in Jesus name.

We pray 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 Bible phrases that the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpents in Genesis chapter 3 when our first parents sinned and fell in the garden 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.

The fall as theologians put it we see in that moment God do something unexpected. We see the proclamation of the first evangel. We see the good news that the seed of the woman Will crush the head of the serpent.

We see the promise even in our moment of greatest weakness and greatest helplessness Before God God rather than judge us and condemn us in that moment Proclaims a measure of his grace promising that there will be in this hostility between The seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent a cosmic victory.

And then all throughout scripture you see the same theme appearing over and over again from Cain's uprooting the first murder to ever take place of his brother 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 Exodus execution of the Israelite male firstborns in Which by the way the Hebrew midwives refused To execute Pharaoh's decrees to have those babies destroyed Standing against the magistrates of their time.

The preservation of King David from Saul's murderous rage and the lineage of the king. The constant temptation of God's covenant people Israel to murder their own children with sent them into exile to the jealous bloodthirsty 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. 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.

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. 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. Versus the seed of the serpent those who are of their father the devil who was a murderer from the beginning. Socialist Karl Marx said that in order to destroy the holy family father Son and Holy Spirit the earthly family must first be destroyed.

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.

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

From the biblical worldview God speaking to this rather we have elected to address this from a pragmatic Consideration and when we speak to people about this issue. 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. 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.

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. Rather than speaking to the intellect we must address this issue in a Cosmological way with our worldview with the structure of how 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 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. 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. You will say ma 'am, please don't murder your child. Let us help you today. Let us provide for your needs. 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 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 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.

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

Camille Paglia a social commentator Writes Quote. I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder the extermination of the powerless by the powerful. Which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue.

Pro-choice writer Antonio Senor a British journalist writes quote. My daughter was formed at conception. 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. You must be prepared to kill. In a salon magazine article titled quote. So what if abortion ends a life? Mary Elizabeth Williams the author says that quote a fetus is indeed a life a Life that is worth sacrificing.

If I could impress one thing on your brothers and sisters 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 Evidences are necessary to know.

But I assure you if the gospel is not at our feet if we are not preaching Repentance if we are not preaching the turning away of sin to come to Jesus for forgiveness and salvation. We've already lost.

We've already lost this fight. Our societies Including the church within our societies have been deeply impacted by an increasingly secular worldview. We see it everywhere. Which at bottom are really nothing more than ancient pagan beliefs that are simply dressed in new outfits.

Due to pro-choicers losing the biological and scientific grounds of this fight. They've resorted to something else. So they're not denying anymore that an unborn child is human 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? 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 the species.

There's certainly no disputing that it's not a giraffe. It's not a dog. It's a human being however. That human being is not yet a person until sometime in the near or distant future in Which they obtain a certain level of consciousness awareness.

Autonomy it's a very arbitrary and it's completely nonsensical and its distinction to define when life begins. So, please understand that the pro-choice side of the debate is not standing on anything biological or scientific.

They are standing on a religiously grounded worldview on a faith commitment and how they define 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 and 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 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 spirits and the immaterial 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.

Rene Descartes put it this way. I think therefore I am personhood theory. An Illustration is the driver of a car think about the car being a representation of a person's body. But the true and authentic self is the driver of that car.

The Immaterial essence of the person the consciousness 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.

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

That was how they got around.

Abortion and.

Pushing it into the public sector. According to personhood theory the body is nothing more than raw material to be controlled and manipulated. Subject to the true self. The upper story. Being a member of the human race is not enough to qualify for protection.

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

This.

Belief system really would gain traction under Charles Darwin the father of modern evolutionary theory Who believed that if the body is not the handiwork of God revealing his will. Right. So if our biology does not tell us anything about who we are if my being a male Does not tell me how I'm supposed to live according to the dictates of God's Word if it's not Revealing God's will.

It is a morally neutral realm where human beings can impose their will and This is the worldview that gives us abortion homosexuality sodomy Transgenderism it is that the true and authentic self is contained within the human person and thus there is a fragmentation of the human person between body and the immaterial essence the person.

Nancy Piercy.

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 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.

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

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.

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

It saw the created order is the evil creation of a demi-urge of God and Therefore the goal was to escape it Escape the created order and now as I said these pagan beliefs are being transferred on to 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.

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 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 Incarnation of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and his resurrection.

That's why during the time of Jesus as The scriptures testified this would have been so offensive to Gnostics. The fact that the God who spoke and all things came into existence took on flesh He took on a body.

No, the goal is to escape from the human body. It's dirty. It's wicked. It's fallen. And of course the Bible teaches that we are stained by sin. We are fallen creatures. But God is redeeming and restoring and making all things new that process begins now.

Think about the resurrection for a moment. The proclamation of the new creation and the rising again from the dead of our 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. This would have been so offensive to Gnostics and it was. The ethic of scripture is that were made in God's image to reflect his character both in our minds and the actions of our body.

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

We don't earn our value our dignity at certain stages of our development when we can feel pain when we experience Consciousness or self-awareness or any of these arbitrary labels that are placed on life in the womb.

Psalm 139. I'm sure you're all very familiar with it. I just want to read it to you. Psalm is speaking about the majesty of God and creation. Psalm 139 starting in verse 13, 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. You knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

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

He's weaving together all the threads of our existence within the womb within your mother's womb. You were fashioned and formed and intricately and intimately knit together. Within your mother's womb as are we all?

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? Nothing is hidden from the side of God. When I was being made in secret intricately woven in the depths of the earth your eyes saw my Unformed substance.

That word in the original language the unformed substance is the word that we use to get the word embryo in our English language. God sees us as an incomplete vessel at the earliest stages of development.

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

God is already giving meaning to every breath and This of course is the basis the image of God for the prohibition of shedding The blood of man of murder that God gives in Genesis chapter 9 verse 6. 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. He gets even more specific in Exodus chapter 21. If you'd like to turn there verses 22 through 25 God's case law giving an example about a pregnant woman. I hear those pages turning.

I'll give you a moment to get there powerful text. 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 and he shall pay as the judge is 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.

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

It is.

The idea that the punishment ought to fit the crime. God and his case law for unintentional Accidental abortion. Demands the surrendering of the life. For the one who caused the crime. How much more brothers and sisters?

For those in our nations. Who now have the liberty to kill? Intentionally. And it will these image bearers in the womb in God's law. The value of the precept is comprehended by the severity of the penalty.

How much does God value human life. He says if you shed man's blood unlawfully. Then you'll have your bloodshed. Not by Mob rule or mob justice, but by God's divinely appointed magistrates. 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. We hear it framed as a woman's rights issue a woman's health issue, and this is how we fought against it regulating it as health care. Rather than working to criminalize it as murder God calls it murder.

It is child sacrifice and the shedding of innocent blood. It is abhorrent to him and forbidden in his law. God hates the hands that shed innocent blood. 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?

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

As the Prophet Isaiah says woe to those who call good evil and evil good. Choice is just used as another euphemism for murder. 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. It doesn't matter what I choose. I can choose to keep this child. I can choose to pay to have this child killed, but either way it's not wrong. It's the absolute and raw expression of my will.

Who are you to tell me otherwise? The God of the will.

False 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 Be open and you will be as God's Knowing and determining for yourselves between good and evil a task only.

For God, that's what mothers and fathers do in these killing places. They decide in their own eyes between what's right and what's wrong By their own autonomy Taking it on themselves to play God and decide who lives and who dies.

The Bible speaks very clearly about a theological concept called blood guilt and that is when Not just individuals commit this sin, but nations condone it and in our case as our nations are celebrating it.

Blood guilt.

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 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 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. 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 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. 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. All these excuse me all these nations the nations. I am driving out before you have become unclean and the land 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 Baal false gods of these pagan nations 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 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 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.

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 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. 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.

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? 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.

Because the shedding of innocent blood brings a curse upon the land. The land is to be unholy and dwelt in by God's people who have his presence abiding with them eternally. But the shedding of innocent blood and the murder of unborn children the murder of born children and infanticide contaminates God's creation makes the created order profane and causes the land to vomit out its Inhabitants 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. God promised them. I'm casting these nations out for committing these abominable things. And if you do the same thing, I will spew you out.

Just like I'm doing to them. Don't think for one moment. It's so tempting brothers and sisters in my nation, especially in good old America. We're so individualistic we're so prideful in our national heritage and where we come from we believe that we're God's nation.

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

Dispossess.

His baby. Land of the free in the home of the brave, but God can and he will if we don't repent. 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 God. Jeremiah chapter 32. I want to turn there so you can see that for a moment. Prophet Jeremiah prophesying in the context of this passage. The prophet Jeremiah is prophesying to the nation of Israel when they're on the verge of going into exile.

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 Covenant and This is what God says. Jeremiah chapter 32. The prophet Jeremiah prophesying.

Starting in verse 30. For the children of Israel and the children of Judah have done nothing but evil in my sight. From their youth the children of Israel have done nothing but provoke me to anger. By the work of their hands declares the 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.

They have turned to me their back and not their face. They won't repent and Though I have taught them persistently they have not listened to receive instruction. They set up their abominations in the house that is called by my name to defile it.

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. To cause Judah to sin you see in Moloch worship another word about this in the valley of Hinnom in Jerusalem, which Jesus equates in the New Testament as Hell essentially, Gehenna where trash was burned.

So anytime you think about an abortion clinic or set foot around an area where they kill children. 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. While the children were incinerated in the fire to drown out their cries. And I think about this every time I stand outside of an abortion clinic and The Planned Parenthood of the Women's Center or blaring music on the loudspeakers in front of the building.

One of the things that characterized Moloch worship was that the mothers and fathers that offered their children could offer no protest. They had to approach the altar with straight faces with no emotion with no regret.

And with no 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 in your nation.

And boundary markers placed around it that insulate women from hearing you. That's why. The reason that you have 150 meter safe zones. So that women cannot hear your protest of their Moloch worship is because They will not feel the shame of their sin.

They are to offer a love offering to this false god without protest. And what you're doing there is protesting the worship of a false god. And so you must be stopped. You must be silenced. That's what our nations have elected to do to silence the word of the cross to silence the gospel to silence any opposition to the contrary and provide Insulation.

From the shaming the righteous shaming the godly shaming. Can I talk about that with you for just a moment? We've been so convinced in our culture. We hear it all the time outside the abortion clinics.

Are you here just to shame women? 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. If you read the prophet jeremiah in chapter 6 He says about the nation of israel.