Is my Neighbor in the Womb more important than my Brother | The Rap Report | SFE | Andrew Rappaport

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Well, welcome to another WRAP Report. This is a ministry striving for eternity. This is where we give quick Biblical interpretation and application for all things culture and social media.

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We are again going to deal with this cultic group that has been out trying to protest churches and argue that all

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Christians must be about the business of ending abortion their way. And so with this they make an argument, a core argument actually in their system is to say that we must be about the business of loving our neighbor.

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This is what's called one of the two great commandments, love thy Lord your God with all your mind, heart, soul, and strength is the first, and the second being to love your neighbor as yourself.

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And they argue that the child in the womb is our neighbor. They will put up things that say, love your pre -born neighbor as yourself, or they'll have posters that say, love your neighbor, let your light shine.

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And so what you see there is they are arguing that part of the commandment to love your neighbor is to go out and end abortion.

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Now should we end abortion? Yes, we should do everything we can to end abortion. I'm totally for that. They argue the church is responsible though for abortion, totally different issue.

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The government is the one that legalized that. Churches don't vote to make it legal or illegal. But, they go outside of churches, people that they want to call brothers and sisters, and they want to argue and protest a church and cause a stumbling block before the church for the sake of the unborn neighbor in the womb.

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Now the real issue that we have to address is, does scripture speak to an issue where we might have to choose between an unsaved person, whether they be in the womb or not, and a believer?

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The core part of their argument is that we should be loving our unsaved neighbor in the womb.

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However, scripture is quite clear when we have an issue like this of who do we offend, we always side with our brother or sister in Christ.

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What we see in scripture is that if you're in a situation, whether it's this situation or what typically it is, an evangelism situation, where people have to make a choice between offending an unbeliever or offending a brother, causing a brother to stumble or causing an unbeliever to possibly stumble with sharing the gospel, the issue is always, you side with your brother.

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The issue is that if you're given a choice, as Paul uses the argument, you're invited to someone's house and you have meat that was offered unto idols.

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This is a practice that they would have back then where you'd get basically cheap meat if it was offered to the idols.

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So some people that didn't have a conscience issue would buy the cheaper meat, it wasn't a problem, some people knew it was offered to an idol, could not eat it, it was a sin against their conscience.

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And so Paul will say in 1 Corinthians 8, 12 and 13, thus sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ.

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Therefore, if food makes my brother to stumble, I will never eat meat lest I make my brother stumble.

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He also says later in 1 Corinthians 10, 27 -29, if one of you, if one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the grounds of conscience.

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But if someone says to you, this has been offered in sacrifice, then do not eat it for the sake of the one who informed you and for the sake of conscience.

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I do not mean your conscience, but his. For why should my liberty be determined against someone else's conscience?

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Now think back to what he said in 1 Corinthians 8, 12 and 13. If we cause our brother to stumble against their conscience, it's a sin against Christ.

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That's the issue that we see here. What we're seeing is that we have people that are standing outside of churches, protesting churches, trying to agitate churches, biblical preaching churches, and they're saying that we must be about the business of ending abortion their way.

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And their argument is that we're supposed to be loving our neighbor above our brother.

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That's not true. We love our brother before the unsaved, even the unsaved in the womb.

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Scripture is quite clear that when we have the choice between the saved, siding on the side of a saved person, or siding on the side of an unsaved person, we always defend the saved.

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We always defend our Christian brother. That's what we should be about them doing. So in the application of using it toward protesting churches and agitating churches to try to get them to be about the business of what one church's view, or one group's view is, when they're saying that we have a biblical responsibility because we're supposed to love our neighbor, the question is, do we love our neighbor over our brother?

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And Scripture says, no, no. Our brother in Christ comes first.

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And that's the issue. We must put our brother in Christ first, even before an unbeliever in the womb.

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And that's today's edition of the Wrap Report. Glad you're with us and go to strivingforeternity .org