Jeff Durbin - Anniversary of Tyranny: Roe & Dobbs

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If you would, open your Bibles and turn to the book of Proverbs, so technically we're still in Proverbs today,

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Proverbs chapter 24, Proverbs 24, starting in verse 10, a verse well known to our church body,

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Proverbs chapter 24, verse 10, hear now the word of the living and the true

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God. If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small.

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Rescue those who are being taken away to death. Hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.

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If you say, behold, we did not know this, does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?

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Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it? And will he not repay man according to his work?

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Thus far is the reading of God's holy and inspired word. Let's pray together as God's people. Lord, this is your word and it's spoken to your creatures who

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Lord are in so many ways not like you. Lord, you do not grow weary.

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You do not faint. Lord Jesus, you speak the truth.

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And in your life and ministry, we have Lord, an eye on what it looks like for God to walk among us in flesh.

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What it looks like to be a true image bearer that is pleasing to God.

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You are perfection. You always told the truth. You did not faint or grow weary.

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You kept all your word. Lord, even in the midst of danger and difficulty and hardship, you spoke the truth in love, but you spoke it boldly and you were always faithful.

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Help us to be that way, like you. Conform us in this body to your image.

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As we talk today, Lord, about the pre -born, these image bearers of God who have been slaughtered and are being slaughtered, ignite within us once again as a church a passion for your truth, a love for you, and a love for these children.

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Help us, Lord, to not faint in the day of adversity. Let our strength be big and not small.

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We pray, God, that you would open the eyes of this nation and especially your church in this nation and of course around the world.

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Help us to, Lord, be your help meat as you establish justice as you've promised on the earth.

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Help us, Lord, to be a part of that for your glory and not for ours. In Jesus' name, amen.

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So here we are. I didn't want to do this message, but considering the context of what's going on around us in our culture and all the conversation this past week over the overturning of Roe v.

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Wade and the Dobbs case, I thought it would be important for us to talk about it as a church body and to dig into the text of God's Word.

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How should we continue to face this down? And of course, as well, the context of how

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God has used our church body. God has used our church body in ways that we never really saw coming.

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We started this, as many of you guys know, you were there, you've been here since the beginning, we started this early on with just an eye on the deep conviction that God had put into us that we were not being faithful to God.

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We had abortion facilities surrounding us. They were killing babies daily around us.

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We knew the gospel. We knew the answer. We knew that we needed to be there. And so for us, it was if we do this entire ministry, and some of you guys know, you were there when we decided as a church body to do this,

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I said, you'll remember, if we did this ministry our entire lives out there in that heat, standing in front of an abortion facility, pleading for the lives of these children and preaching the gospel, if we did it our entire lives that God gave to us as a church to save even one baby, that's a life well lived and ministry well spent.

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I meant that. And I know that we all meant it and we all agreed with that.

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And so we didn't see what was coming, that the Lord was going to allow us to simply give testimony to the fact that we're a local church body, not very special.

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We're not superstars. We don't really know what we're doing. We're new to this. There are giants before us.

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We're standing on their shoulders. We're just going to preach the gospel and offer to save their lives, the lives of their children, and help them and serve them.

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And as we started talking about it and giving testimony, God gave us a platform and people were hearing.

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We saved a baby. We saved another baby. We saved another baby. We saved two babies. We saved twins. We're saving babies.

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And people were saying, how exactly are you doing that? And we were saying, what? We don't really know. It's through the power of God.

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We're just preaching the truth. We're just doing this to save lives at the abortion mill. What we didn't see coming was how

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God was going to use this small church in the desert to raise up, coming on nearly a thousand local churches, mostly across the

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U .S. and around the world, to go to the abortion facilities to save lives. We didn't see that God was going to use us as a church to be a testimony and encourage other

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Christians to do what we're doing, to simply get out there and to love these children enough to do something, to rescue them, to stop them from being slaughtered, to hold them back.

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That was the text. This is it. This is what we're standing on as a church.

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We didn't see that God was going to save tens of thousands of lives through the ministry started by this local body, who didn't really know what we were doing.

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We just knew the Gospel and we were passionate about obeying this verse. God used it to challenge us.

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He knows that we know that this is going on, and that's why we went.

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He knows that we heard the command, rescue those who are being taken away to death, hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.

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We knew where it was happening, and we were passionate to do something about it.

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We didn't know that God was going to use us and our testimony as a church to not only raise up churches to teach them to do the same thing, to save tens of thousands of lives, we didn't know that God was going to help us to establish in Northern Ireland and the

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Republic of Ireland and in Scotland the Christian church there to do exactly what we're doing here in the

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U .S. We didn't know that we're going to be the church, Lord willing, it's happening now, to start the fight, to actually be the ones to start the fight in Germany this year.

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We didn't see that coming. We didn't know that God was going to use our church body to work to get bills of equal protection and abolition into states across the entire

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United States. We didn't know we were going to have the privilege to work with other Christians and pastors to do the same thing.

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We didn't see it coming. All we knew was this. Proverbs chapter 10, or 24, verses 10 through 12.

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That's what we knew. We just wanted to be obedient to that. It was as simple as that. Deep conviction.

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We must love our neighbor. We must sacrifice for them. We must do everything we can to save their lives for the glory of God.

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And it was Proverbs 24. God impressed that upon us as a church body. It's what we were constantly talking about.

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And of course, you all know as God has used us, that was startling,

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God has used us even to help file with other ministries and organizations one of the briefs that was filed in the

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Dobbs case that ultimately overturned Roe versus Wade. Only the brief that we helped to file was different than the others, because ours had an opening table of authorities that named the word of the living

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God as the table of authorities, that called the court to repent, that talked about the authority of Jesus Christ over this issue, that pointed out the inconsistencies.

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We didn't know we'd be a part of that, and yet God used us. And so in the context that we're in, culturally, and in the context that God has given to us, in particular as a local church, we need to speak about this on the one -year anniversary of the

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Dobbs case. It's the one -year anniversary of the Mississippi case and Dobbs, the decision that overturned

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Roe v. Wade. Roe v. Wade, as you know, was the dark and wicked 1973 judicial opinion that led to the slaughter of over 60 million human beings in their mothers' wombs.

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Now, you've heard me. It's like a broken record. This is our family. This is our church body.

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I can't help but repeating myself, and we're all family here. You know what I'm already going to say. There's no way for us to comprehend that number.

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We can't. And I think that that's part of the problem for all of us, not just those who do nothing about this issue, except talking about it in coffee shops and in their church buildings, but it's also a problem for us in terms of how we can, even a church like us, become apathetic to this issue, to get into the mundane, into the machinery where it's just this machine moving forward that has no spirit, no passion, no real love for Christ in the midst of it.

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Sixty million human beings is incomprehensible. You can't calculate it.

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You can, as Sproul said, only think about it as one human being at a time.

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What we've done in our nation since 1973 dwarfs by the ton what took place in Nazi Germany.

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That Holocaust that took place that is behind us now and seen as such a dark period in Germany's history, that behind us, we have dwarfed by the ton what was done by Hitler and the

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SS in Germany. We call that the Holocaust. We build museums today, like the

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Holocaust Museum in Washington, D .C., to reflect on the unbelievable darkness and evil that took place in Germany.

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Do you know in Germany today, you can't actually get Nazi memorabilia in or out of Germany today because it is seen as such a dark spot in their history.

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They don't want to talk about it. They don't want to teach it. They don't want to remember it, and so it's difficult to even get items that are associated with the

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Nazi regime out of Germany in terms of if you wanted a document that was associated with it or if you wanted a little

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Nazi flag that was used somewhere in a concentration camp. It's such a dark part of their history and seen as such an evil atrocity.

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You can't even easily get these things in Germany today. We see it as dark, but we've dwarfed in comparison what they did then.

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It's hard to even imagine. It's unimaginable. And I'll just give this to you, too, because I think this is one of the things, even in my own heart,

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I'm just being honest, that we struggle with. You hear today that abortion is abolished nowhere.

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We've been deluded into thinking because Dobbs overturned Roe, we've been deluded into thinking that abortion is done.

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Some people are actually claiming, some politicians, that their state is an abortion -free state.

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Why? There are no abortion -free states in the United States of America because there is a protected class in every single state, and that is the mother and father who perpetrate the evil against their own child.

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There are no abortion -free states. Abortion is legal in every single state in our union, as long as it's done by the mother herself.

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She can kill her baby by the permission of the pro -life establishment. We have a long way to go.

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We are not even close to done. And I confess, I confess that when we think about the abortions that are taking place now across the

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U .S. via pill and potion, oftentimes we don't think about the weight of that in the same way we think about the abortionist who's pulling off the arms and the legs and the heads of little boys and girls in the womb.

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We think about the pill and potions differently, don't we? We do. The weight of it doesn't capture us as much as the bloodiness.

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And I think as believers, if we're ever going to glorify God and love our neighbor, we need to think about it in light of the mother who poisons her six -year -old child, or the mother who drowns her six -year -old child, or the mother who starves or exposes the child to where they die, because it's the same process.

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It's just done in an earlier time period. So Roe v. Wade was that dark judicial opinion, not law, from 1973 that led to the slaughter of over 60 million human beings.

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Our part, again, in the Dobbs decision as a church body was to help with an amicus brief to argue to the court that they needed to provide equal protection to all humans in this nation from the moment of fertilization.

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That was our part in that. Are we glad, are we grateful to God that Roe v.

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Wade was overturned? The answer is yes. One of the great difficulties that you know that we've had, as you've sent me out as your pastor to go fight this battle in the public square, you know that the battle that we've had with cowardly legislators is we would say, you know what you must do, and they would say,

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I agree. The problem is that Roe v. Wade is the law of the land, and that was fiction.

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Roe v. Wade was a judicial opinion. Our Constitution says that Congress creates law in our nation, not the

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Supreme Being, I mean court. And the Supreme Court has been wrong before, it has been resisted by the states before, and so we were arguing, ignore

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Roe, ignore Roe, do what they did with Dred Scott, that wicked decision of Dred Scott where they argued that the black brother and sister is not actually a person, and they must be returned to the slave states and slave owners.

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The states praised God, said to the Supreme Court, you pound sand. We will not bring that tyranny upon our black brothers and sisters.

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We reject your opinion. The states had the right and the duty before God to do so, and they ought to have done it every single second of Roe v.

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Wade's tyranny in this land. They never did. And so are we grateful to God that God removed

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Roe v. Wade? We're very grateful to God, but what we say is this, God sometimes strikes straight blows with crooked sticks.

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It's a fallen world, and in his providence he removed it. However, the problem is that the

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Dobbs case wasn't a righteous victory. The court did not repent.

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The court did not acknowledge the ultimate wrong in the slaughter of these children. The court did not provide equal protection.

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What did Dobbs do? It actually extended the tyranny of Roe v. Wade. Roe v.

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Wade essentially said to the states, you cannot prohibit people from getting abortions.

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And that was removed. Dobbs perpetrated this tyranny. They actually said in a cowardly way, states, you decide.

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They gave it back to the states and they said, you need to decide as to whether as a state you want to murder these children or not.

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It's up to you. What is that in the eyes of God? Pure cowardice. It was not a righteous victory.

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These judges who made that decision were not acting in a way that was glorifying to God. Their reasoning was futile and inconsistent, and ultimately it was a cowardly move to put it back upon the states, which has led to exactly what we said would happen, and that is states that were already for abortion radically are going to the extreme edge of it by saying, you can murder the child all nine months of the pregnancy, and they're even saying now, suggesting that you can even have that child born and determine for a period of time afterwards if you want to keep the child.

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Even post -birth abortions, they're calling it, radical. Why? Because of cowardice.

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See, Dobbs wasn't a righteous victory. We need to stop talking about Dobbs as though it abolished abortion in this nation.

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It did not. Or Dobbs was actually a righteous decision. It was not. They did not condemn the slaughter of the innocent, and they passed it off to the states for the states to decide themselves if they want to murder children.

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What was Dobbs? Well, it was kind of like many things that happen in the word of God and in redemptive history.

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It's kind of like Joseph in Egypt, right? You can say to the brothers, as for you, you meant evil against me.

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God meant it for good. That's how I see the Dobbs case. Praise God that it's out of the way.

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It can no longer be used as an excuse by politicians anymore to be acting cowardly, but it still was an evil decision that of course

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God has used to save at least some children. So I'll just say quickly, why?

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Why? Why are we doing this? The first thing, you already know a bit of our history.

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You all know it. You've been walking this with us, some of you since the very beginning. And some of you guys that are new to our body, you've stepped into our church body maybe in the last year or two in this moment of like great fruit that the

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Lord is delivering to us. I mean, in one year, 2023, the first session, over 15 bills of abolition and equal protection across the

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United States of America. Praise God. That is something to sincerely rejoice over.

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You know our history. You know what God used in his word to challenge us, to convict us.

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But why are we still talking about it? Can I just be honest with you? I hesitated doing this message, and I thought long and hard about it.

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I hesitated doing it, and shame on me, because I didn't want to weary you anymore with another message on abortion.

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That's what I thought. I thought we should just stay in the Proverbs, keep going.

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I have this message prepared I'm so passionate about. Let's do that. And I thought to myself, we need to do this.

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We need to have a voice in this. We need to speak rightly about this with the truth. And I didn't want to do this message because I didn't want to weigh you down with yet another message on abortion.

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Yet another. But then I was just hit over my sabbatical and my time of rest with just an onslaught of thinking about the issue of the heart of God on this issue, and challenging myself, do

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I even feel today the way that I did then when we first started this?

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Have I lost my first love, even as a pastor and as someone who's fighting this battle alongside you? Do I have the heart of God over this issue?

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Or am I burdened by the difficulties and the attacks and all the things? Have I lost my passion?

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Am I apathetic towards this? Is this just a machine now in motion, had to challenge myself?

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We must do this message, because we need to talk about this as a church body. Do we have the heart of God for these children?

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Or is it just something that we're doing? Is this just busyness of ministry? Is this just something that we're doing?

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We can say, oh yeah, we do that ministry or this ministry over there. Or is the heart behind it that we love

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Jesus and we love these children? You see, I was talking to my wife about this over our time of rest.

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I don't really have an answer for this. I don't. I don't really, I can't give you a certain answer on this.

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I can speculate on why this is the case in Scripture, because it is the case.

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And I don't really have an answer for certainty as to like, and this is why. I think I have a good speculation, but the heart of God in Scripture for fatherless children.

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Listen, you know this. God condemns in his word so many sins, so many sins.

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In his law, his perfect law, he condemns so much sinfulness, so much brokenness, so many crimes.

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He speaks on justice and righteousness. But you know what's very interesting is that throughout the

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Old Testament and it's in the New Testament, when God wants to, get this, please get it.

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Get this and you'll see exactly what I've been meditating on for the last couple of weeks. When God wants to summarize sinfulness in his people and what he calls them to turn from over and over and over again in his word, when he summarizes their sinfulness and their culture of sinfulness, what does he always go back to?

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He summarizes it with how they treat widows and orphans.

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And of course, so many sojourners are there, yes and amen, but it's widows and orphans, widows and orphans.

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You know what James says, you want to know what true religion is? What's true religion?

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It's caring for widows and orphans, that's fatherless children and their distress and keeping oneself unstained from evil.

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But what's it go back to? It's always summary and I need you to see it because I want us as a church to have our hearts worked on, let

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God work on us, me, us, all of us who have dedicated our lives to this. Do we have the heart of God in this or is it just something we're doing?

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Is it just activity? Is it just showing up or do we have the heart of God on this issue?

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Are we growing faint? Are we growing weary because when God wants to summarize their sin, he goes back to widows and orphans.

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Listen, I'm just going to give you a smattering of verses. You can go back and listen to this later and write this down. I am in no way tapping this out so please just hear the word of God.

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These are the words of God. Exodus 22, 22. You shall not mistreat any widow or fatherless child.

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Psalm 68, 5. God, father of the fatherless and protector of widows is

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God in his holy habitation. Deuteronomy 24, 19. When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it.

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It shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow that the Lord your

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God may bless you in all the work of your hands. Isaiah 1, 17. Learn to do good.

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Seek justice. Correct oppression. Bring justice to the fatherless.

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Plead the widow's cause. Malachi 3, 5. Then I will draw near to you for judgment.

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I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired worker in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner.

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And do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts. Psalm 146, 9. The Lord watches over the sojourners.

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He upholds the widow and the fatherless. But the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

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Deuteronomy 14, 29. And a Levite, because he has no portion or inheritance with you, and the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow who are within your towns shall come and eat and be filled that the

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Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands that you do. Psalm 82, verse 3.

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Give justice to the weak and the fatherless. Maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitutes.

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Exodus 22, 21 through 25. You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.

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You shall not mistreat any widow or fatherless child. If you do mistreat them and they cry out to me,

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I will surely hear their cry, and my wrath will burn, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall become widows, and your children fatherless.

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Deuteronomy 10, verse 18. He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing.

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Isaiah 10, 1 through 34. Woe to those who decree iniquitous decrees, and the writers who keep writing oppression.

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Turn aside the needy from justice, and to rob the poor of my people of their right, that widows may be their spoil, and that they may make the fatherless their prey.

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Zechariah 7, 9 through 10. Thus says the Lord of hosts, render true judgment, show kindness and mercy to one another.

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Do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor. Hosea 14, 3.

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Assyria shall not save us. We will not ride on horses, and we will say no more. Our God, to the work of our hands, in you the orphan finds mercy.

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We could go on for days. Do you think that expresses the heart of God for the orphan?

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You know, I think it's, I think for me reading

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James, it's always very interesting. James the

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Lord's brother. He writes James. I find it so interesting.

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I'm sure that James, who was in Jerusalem and he was martyred for his faith and his brother is

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God, thrown off the Temple Mount. I'm sure he had amazing theological discussions.

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I'm positive that he could probably outdo all of us in theological discussion.

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The nitty -gritty, the fine points. I think it's amazing though that when we get this letter from James, the whole focus on James is the reality of our profession.

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Wisdom. Your tongue, it's dangerous. It sets fire to things.

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Control it. Wisdom. Is your faith a profession of faith or is it a living faith?

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Is it fake faith? Is it just something you're saying or is it something that's real and alive and actually produces works?

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And I love how James checks all of us. I'm just going to read the text here.

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In James chapter one, it's a bit of a summary.

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After he tells the people of God how bad our tongues are and how we need to be doers of the word and not hearers only, he says in verse 26 of chapter one, listen, just hear it.

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Please just hear it and let the weight of it fall on us. Please God. If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless.

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Now don't think about the person out there that you can identify as that guy, right?

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Looks spiritual, sounds spiritual, can talk good theology, but has no real control of their tongue.

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They're arrogant. They're a back biter. They're a gossip. They're a slanderer. Whatever the case may be, they can't control their tongue.

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They're pompous. They love to brag. They're prideful. They're constantly contentious.

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Can't control your tongue. James says, you're not like my brother. You're not like Jesus.

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That's not real. That's not what my brother was like. That's not true religion. That's not the true practice of faith in the eyes of God.

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If you can't control your tongue, your religion is worthless. Let that set.

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We think that we're growing in our faith, we're being sanctified. If we're still talking trash about brothers and sisters, if we're still gossiping, if we're still trying to oppress our neighbor, if we're still trying to belittle our brother or sister, your religion is worthless.

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It's worthless. Stop pretending to be spiritual. Your religion is worthless if you can't control your tongue.

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So there's that spectrum. False religion right there. It is worthless. Stop investing.

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Then James says this. Ready? You want to know what true religion is? You know what it really is?

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Here it is. And I love the summary because it's the same story from the entire Old Testament. The summary is the same.

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It's every time. He says, verse 27, religion that is pure and undefiled before God the

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Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

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In the eyes of God, you're memorizing Berkhoff and Bovinck and Bettner and the doctrines of grace, all these things, not saying they're bad.

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They're necessary and good. But if you spend your life memorizing the fine points of theology and yet you don't care for the widows and the orphans, it's not true religion.

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Because James says that's what it looks like. You care for fatherless children. You care for the widows.

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Now listen. Here's what I said. Here's what I said. I said I don't really have an answer to give to you for certainty as to why

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God keeps summarizing that it's the widow and the orphan. It's this that angers me.

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If they cry out to me, I'm going to visit you with judgment. If the widow or the orphan cries out to me,

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I will punish you. You care for the widow and orphan. It's like Isaiah 1. Okay, turn from all that sin and then start taking care of the widow and the orphan, the fatherless child.

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I can only say that I think perhaps the reason why is because they are the most vulnerable of His image.

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They are people who have no father, no husband to protect them.

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You think about it. There's no one now standing next to them to stand for them, to advocate for them, to guard them, to protect them.

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They're gone. The widow, the fatherless child has been abandoned.

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There's no man there. So it's this vulnerable image of God, unprotected in this fallen world.

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And so God keeps identifying it's the widow and the orphan. It's the most vulnerable among you. Of course, there's the sojourner and the poor, yes, but God keeps coming back to widow, orphan.

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And so we're in this, God in this issue, or is this just something we do?

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Are all the machinery parts and pieces in place now and we're just rolling with it? Are we doing this because we actually have the heart of God for these orphans, these fatherless children?

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And I can't, brothers and sisters, I can't think. Yes, there's orphans in the system.

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Yes, those are fatherless children. Children need to be adopted, and we're working hard as a church on that.

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Even this very moment, we're working with women now. We've rescued babies from abortion. We're trying to work on adoption.

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We're trying to take care of the adoption issue. We're all a part of that. But I can't think of someone more classified or better classified as an orphan than that child in the womb.

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I can't, because what is it? It's a child. And what is it? It's a fatherless child.

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It's a child who doesn't have the protection of their father. They've been abandoned. And they're now set for destruction.

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It's the most vulnerable among us. And God's telling you, he says it, if you can't bribe her with your tongue, your religion's worthless.

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I don't care how much of Calvin you have memorized or your catechism. If you can't bribe her with your tongue, your religion is worthless.

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If you want to know what real religion is, true religion in the eyes of God, it's about the orphan and the widow.

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How do you care for them? That's challenging to me, personally, because I know that I grow faint.

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I know that I get weary. I'm just a creature. And I hope that we're challenged and convicted on why

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God has called us to this. We're not doing it as something just to do. We're doing it because this is the very heart of God.

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Now, what's wrong? What's wrong? When we move forward this next year, we've already had and worked with other ministries and pastors, 15, over 15 bills of abolition and equal protection going across this nation.

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First of all, thank you, God. Praise the Lord. We would have never imagined that 10 years ago.

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We were just asking God for one. So look what God has wrought. Praise God.

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But moving forward, we do not rejoice over the decision of Dobbs. It was unrighteous. It gave it back to the states.

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And I want you to know there is room right now, because of the Dobbs decision, because of its fallacious reasoning, because of its cowardice, because of its inconsistency, there is room right now, and some of it only turns on one person, to federalize and codify essentially

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Roe v. Wade as federal law, making it worse than it ever was before because of the unrighteous opinion of Dobbs and the cowardice in it.

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The fatal flaw is this. There is a protected class in our nation in the area of the slaughter of the pre -born.

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These fatherless children will continue to be murdered on our watch and in our streets.

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The blood will be in our streets because there is a fatal flaw, and that fatal flaw is a protected class of people that are being called victims.

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The mothers and the fathers who bring their children in their wombs to the abortionist, or the mothers carrying the child who take the pill or the potion to murder their child in the womb.

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There's a protected class, and that class is protected not because of the pro -choice movement, but because of the pro -life establishment that has a heretical teaching that says a mother who kills her child willfully in the womb is herself a victim like her child.

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As long as Christians believe that and the establishment teaches that, we will never, ever, ever end abortion in this nation.

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These orphans, these fatherless children will continue to be killed as long as that heretical teaching is taught in our lands.

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And the Christian church has a duty to do what? To correct oppression and to protect fatherless children, which means you must boldly speak the truth even when that truth goes against what everybody else accepts, even people within our own camp.

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You all know. You've sent me on mission. I've went representing

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Christ and our church body to legislatures across the country, and you know that I've returned home every single time to you telling you that the people who were standing against our bills of equal protection were the people that were supposed to be on our side.

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In Missouri, she sat next to me. A leader of the pro -life establishment in Missouri sat next to me in front of the legislators opposing our bill saying that the women who do this are victims themselves and they should be protected.

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Protected to do what? To continue to kill their children with impunity and immunity.

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What do we need to face down? The partiality and unequal weights and measures.

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The establishment continues to fight to this very day with partiality and unequal weights and measures that God says in Proverbs 20, 23 is an abomination in his sight.

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Why, brothers and sisters, do we as a church body fight against bills that say you can kill these children but not these children?

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Why? Because God says that kind of partiality is an abomination in his eyes.

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Brothers and sisters, we cannot stand before our father, and he is our father, we cannot stand before our father when we stand before him for reward or lack of reward saying

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I supported, I helped, I promoted this bill of partiality, a bill that God says he hates.

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You know, it's easy, isn't it? It's easy. It takes, really think about it, think about this.

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It takes no courage today to talk about the evil of slavery.

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Anybody worried? If you're in the public streets today in the public square, anybody worried today to condemn the slavery that occurred in this nation?

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I mean, think about, would I have any controversy surrounding me if I stand in the street corner out there and talk about the evil of this enslaving of our black brothers and sisters?

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Any controversy? What am I going to get? Thumbs up? Yes? Hurrah? You're right?

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Of course? Because it is easy, easy, when the Christian church in the name of Christ and for the glory of God and because of the word of God put that evil under Jesus' feet through the proclamation of the word of God, it's easy a hundred years later, two hundred years later to talk trash about that slavery.

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You know when it wasn't easy? When the Christian abolitionists were calling it evil, using

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God's word and condemning it, it wasn't easy then because you had organizations that were saying, oh, we know that it's evil, we've inherited the mess, but we cannot simply abolish slavery.

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Maybe we can say that you can't beat the slaves with certain devices. Wouldn't that be nice?

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Or maybe we can say make them more comfortable before you beat them. Or you can only beat them a certain way.

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Or how about we take a lot of time to release these slaves over time, and the

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Christian abolitionists were saying this is an abomination in God's eyes. This is my brother or sister in Christ. God condemns this.

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He says capital punishment for kidnapping and enslaving, and we're guilty of it. There's bloodshed in this land, and God's going to judge us as a nation.

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It took courage to say that. When my great, great, great grandfather,

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John Price Durbin, was preaching before the Pennsylvania legislature, he was calling it an evil and abomination at a time where he took heat for it.

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When William Wilberforce, listen to this, don't you love the movies today when they talk about history in the past?

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They always put like gold dust on it in a certain way, right? Not in every way, but you know you always have like the person coming in and preaching the thing.

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Or even like Martin Luther, like we have this whole portrait of like Martin Luther, the Diet of Worms. He comes in, he's like, here

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I stand. I can do no other. He was terrified. He asked for more time to think about what was going to happen.

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He's like, can I just have a day? Can I have a day? Like he was terrified. He knew the consequences.

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And with William Wilberforce, this man of God preaches the word of God, the word of Christ, 1789.

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He goes before Parliament, and he preaches against the evil of slavery, and you would think hurrah!

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He preaches, and they go oh, sackcloth and ashes. He preached against slavery in Parliament, and they said no!

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We will not. They rejected him with a great majority. 1789, he comes back again.

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He preaches a three hour message to Parliament, and they said no!

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Almost 20 years of going to Parliament, preaching the word of God, talking about the image of God, and that black man, and that black woman.

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It took almost 20 years for the abolition of slavery to take effect, and actually longer than that afterwards.

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It took work, but the issue was the word of God, and listen, it wasn't easy then. It can't be easy for us today.

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We need to speak against unequal weights and measures and partiality the way that God does. It's an abomination.

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We won't accept it. Stop killing these children, period. Stop killing them. We need to go against the fatal flaw of the pro -life establishment, where they acquit the guilty.

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In Proverbs 17, 15, God says that the one who acquits the guilty and the one that condemns the righteous are both alike, equally an abomination to God.

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If you say to somebody that is guilty, you are not guilty, God says that's an abomination.

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If you condemn somebody that is righteous, and you call them guilty, God says abomination, and God says you must have justice among you.

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Now, here's our word, the word to us. I know,

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I know for us as a body, where our hearts are in this issue, when you hear us saying partiality is an abomination, unequal weights and measures need to be done away with, we have to stop acquitting the guilty,

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I know that we feel the weight of that when it comes to the issue of abortion. We're committed to that.

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Amen? Are we committed to that? Are we going to fight that issue together? Yes? With the word of God?

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Here's the problem. We have to stop being hypocrites. We have to stop being hypocrites.

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And saying to legislators and judges and leaders out there, you must stop showing partiality, it's a sin against God, that's an abomination.

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You must stop acquitting the guilty. You must call it what it is and stop giving us a protected class in abortion.

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We can't be telling them out there what God's standards are in terms of unequal weights and measures and partiality and acquitting the guilty and condemning the righteous when amongst ourselves we're perfectly satisfied to be partial with one another, or to have unequal weights and measures with one another.

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What right do we have as the people of God, what right do we have before God in condemning injustice out there while we allow it among ourselves?

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We should have within our church body, with what God's called us to, the most rigorous commitment against belittling our neighbor, slandering our neighbor, spreading gossip, trying to take down someone's dignity within our body.

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We should have the most rigorous commitment in terms of receiving accusations, the most rigorous commitments.

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Did you know, and I've probably said this before but we need to keep talking about it, did you know that one of the ways that the

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Christian church overtook Rome, the Roman Empire, was of course through the proclamation of the gospel, but it was the

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Christian church that was actually establishing orphanages for children, that was rescuing the children.

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The Christian church that was establishing elderly homes for the elderly in Rome. The Christian church that actually established, believe this or not, a court system within Rome where they were adjudicating matters.

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Rome's system of justice, their court system, was so backed up and so untrustworthy that people realized, we can go to these

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Christians to adjudicate our disagreements. They actually do justice. They don't show partiality.

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They have really rigorous standards. They can mediate our conflict. Let's just go to the Christian church.

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These guys will mediate our conflict. Did you know that? That the Christian church was seen as the go -to place if you wanted mediation for conflict because they were just and wise.

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We have to stop being hypocrites and telling the world out there how they're supposed to live while amongst ourselves we're willing to spread stories and slander and gossip and belittle one another and not have the highest standards in terms of receiving accusations.

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Amen? Are we there as a body? Yes. Stop pretending to care so deeply for justice when you are not just with one another.

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Now, in the text, Proverbs 24, the text that God used in us, it says this, if you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small.

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If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small. So what's that say to us?

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If the command is to rescue them, and we know it's going to come with adversity, and God says you have little strength if you're going to faint when it gets hard, then what's the answer?

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Be strong in the Lord and the power of his might. Be strong in the

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Lord and the power of his might. One of my greatest anchors, just so you know what's going on in my own heart and mind, and I'm not the standard,

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Jesus is, but if you want to know what's going on in my heart and my mind when it gets hard, and it does get hard, leaving your family for four months as our team has done out of a single year to travel and to fight these battles, that's a lot of time away from family.

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That's a lot sacrificed, and it's a lot sacrificed that hurts when you get there to a place where God's given you this bill and it's being fought against by the people you thought were on your side.

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That's adversity, and it can wear on you. And my anchor, where I go, is the promises of God, Isaiah 9, 6 -7.

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This son is coming, this child, it is El Gabor, it is the mighty God. And it says that he is going to establish justice in the earth, and he, it is the zeal of the

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Lord of hosts that will accomplish this. It's God who's going to do this.

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God will not grow faint or weary until he's established justice in the earth, Isaiah 42. Remember that?

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The righteous servant, he's not like the others. He will not grow faint or weary until he's established justice in the earth.

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So we trust in him and the power of his might. He is going to do it. Abortion's going under the feet of Jesus.

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But it will go under there through the faithful proclamation of God's word by his people.

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Now here's my desire. My desire is that that faithful proclamation of the word of God in all of our effort will be coming from a heart that is truly in love with Jesus, and does this out of the right motivations.

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Remember we talked at the beginning of the message, at the beginning of the service today? I said like, here's the thing, I'm saved.

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I know Jesus. That's it. The ultimate thing has been answered. The creator of all things loved me, set his love upon me.

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I know him. He knows me. I have eternity with God. That is everything.

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Nothing's going to overcome that. And so my passion for the pre -born is coming from a passion for my savior, my

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God. And a love, of course, for the pre -born. You know,

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I was thinking, and we'll end here,

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Revelation 2. That message was profound because I felt in so many ways like that can connect with our church body, right?

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Like in so many ways. I've never been a part of a church like this. I haven't.

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I've never been a part of a church body like this. We don't do everything right. We have our own failures, and we have our own warts.

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Jesus saved sinners. This isn't a perfect church, and I'm not a perfect pastor. We're not perfect pastors. But I've never been a part of a church, ever, in my whole experience in the

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Christian church, with a body of believers so fiercely committed to loving one another, to showing hospitality, to fellowship, to unity.

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So fiercely committed to just sacrificing everything, even in ways that seem, on a human level, foolish, to go reach the world with the truth.

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I've never been a part of a church so fiercely committed to evangelism where you guys are just always wrapped up in it and sacrificing for it.

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A church that is so committed to doctrinal truth and to consistency, but at the same time, a fundamental unity and willingness to actually put up with differences among us.

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You know what I mean? Like, I actually brag, and I'm bragging on God, not me. I brag about the fact that our church has so many

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Presbyterians, and we're a Reformed Baptist church. I brag on God, because it can be done.

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There are Reformed Baptist churches that are like, how do you do that? You can't do that. They don't hold perfectly to your profession of faith.

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It's like, give me a break. These are the people of God. We're part of the body of Christ.

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If we can't get that right, and that kind of unity, then there's no Christians in history. Because there's differences amongst us in Christian history.

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We've got to at least get that right. I brag on that, so I can see in Revelation 2, as Pastor James brought to us, like, yeah, we fight the evil, we're doctrinally stable, we fight against heresy, and all these different things, but it was challenging to hear that.

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Like, have you left your first love? And really reflecting on that. Like, maybe it's not true in every way, but where is it true?

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In me, in us? How should we remember and repent, which is the call of Jesus there in Revelation 2?

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Remember and repent. Come back to your first love. And I've thought about that in terms of this message, because we could do it in a number of ways.

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We could do it in a million ways. But this message, remember and repent, if we've left our first love, and this issue of abortion, if we're apathetic now, if we're giving up, if we're discouraged, what do we need to remember?

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How do we need to repent? I don't really know.

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Well, listen, I'll confess this. I've been praying that God would, by His Spirit, speak to us as a church by His Word that it wouldn't be me, that He would do the convicting, that He would do the teaching, that He would, by His Spirit, move for the proclamation of His Word in your hearts and mine to have our heart aligned with His and to fight this fight for His glory and for the good of these children.

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I can't motivate you into it. If it's not the

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Lord that builds the house, then a labor in vain who build it. Amen? And I can't give you a motivational speech that will really have any effect to glorify

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God. It has to be because of His Word. So my question is, is this to us as a body in this issue, with so much work ahead of us, are we faint?

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Are we weary? Are we indifferent? Are we apathetic as a church?

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And I've thought of ways, like, how do I communicate that? Like, how do

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I challenge myself and you to actually make sense of it and to do it without manipulation?

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And so I thought the only way I could put a face on this is in my own life.

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You know, as a church body, the babies that we've held in our arms. Who was here?

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Can you just raise your hands here? I want this to be intensely personal. Who was here when

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Carmelo was brought to church? Who was here? Raise your hands high. Okay.

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Carmelo was, okay. That right there. Who was here when Carmelo wrecked us?

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Because we didn't have a clue what we were doing. And we go out to the abortion well, we go to Planned Parenthood.

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We're preaching the gospel. The story's amazing how God brought miracles to get this mother out.

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She was on the operating table in Planned Parenthood in Glendale. And Chris, the father, goes in because of our talking to him, threatens to kick down their door, drags his wife out.

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And that was one of the most amazing moments for us as a church. And we immediately poured into their lives.

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We paid. We didn't have any money as a church. We paid to get his business back online again so he could provide for his family because that was an excuse to kill the child.

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We have no money. We can't do this. We got his business back online. We cared for their needs. And then she brought

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Carmelo to church and we passed this little face around our church body and like for the first time,

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I think at Apologia, for the first time, it went from theory out there of like what's actually happening, what do we have to do, to like now we're looking at the face and he's alive because we simply went.

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And that's what I want to challenge you with. As I said at the very beginning, you cannot, you cannot, we can't comprehend the number of 60 million plus babies dead.

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And we can't comprehend the numbers tomorrow. Thousands will die tomorrow via abortion, mechanically, or the pill.

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We can't comprehend it. We can only think about it as one at a time. And you have often,

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God will bless us with this, in our body, moments where among us is the flesh and blood of why we're doing this.

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Right now, as Pastor Zach said, we are working as a church with a number of women right now through your work and your labor at the abortion mill.

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You've given the gospel. You've saved lives. Pastor Zach, what is it, five right now? We're working with six mothers right now through your work.

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Baby was saved and now we're caring for their needs. We're working to help them keep their baby or even adopt their baby.

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Six right now at our church. Did you know that some of these women, they may even be here today among us through your faithful work, that baby is alive in her belly right now in this room.

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Praise the Lord. I don't know how to convince you other than through God's word.

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I don't know how to challenge myself to consistently get out of the apathy and the weariness other than in my case,

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Candy and I have a really great way. See, I get to, when this gets hard and weary and I start to get indifferent or apathetic,

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I get to go home to an actual face. We have the benefit in my house of being able to look down and remember and repent.

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So if you ever struggle and don't get weird with it, but if you ever struggle in our body to remember why it is we sacrifice so much and we fight so hard, please look at my son.

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You'll have the same benefit I have because 60 million is incomprehensible, but Augustine is one that was saved because a

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Christian stood in the way and said, you will not murder your child.

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I will do everything I could possibly do to save that child and to give him a home.

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So our church body has a constant reminder in the providence of God, these babies are being brought into us.

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They're amongst us now. And like I said, if you need flesh and blood to look at, please take a look at August, because he's the example of one

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Christian standing in the way. He's one life, and God, I believe, planted him among us and with us as a constant reminder as to why we do what we do.

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And I'm grateful to God, I didn't see it coming, that he put him in my family. I don't deserve him.

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There are so many great fathers and mothers in this church, but he planted him in my family to constantly remind me, day in and day out, this is what you're fighting for.

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The orphans, God has called us to stand for, and he says, hold them back from the slaughter.

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Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word. I cannot, and I will not even attempt to convince people to sacrifice all of themselves for this, but I can't do it in my own might, and with my own words.

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And so God, pleased by your spirit, once again, plant Proverbs 24, 10 through 12, in the heart and mind of this church.

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For your glory and kingdom, put this evil under your feet. Help us have to have the heart that you have for the fatherless children in this world.

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We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Now we come to the table that the Lord commanded us to come to.