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Understanding Abortion, Part 2

From the series Caring Enough to Confront

Have you ever stopped and thought seriously about abortion? Forget what you have heard on the news or social media - what do you think about this critical issue and why? In this program, Chip will use various Bible passages to give us a firm foundation for what we believe. Discover what God says about the value of all human life and how He wants you to react when this issue crosses your path in real life.

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Message Transcript

Well what does God say? I mean, we’re followers of Jesus. What’s God say? I would say to you, will you please turn in the Old Testament to First Abortion 1:9? But that does not exist. The Bible, now I don’t have the eleventh commandment, “Thou shall not abort.” Although there’s one very close.

But what I will say is that there are two premises in Scripture that I think we can get God’s view on abortion. It’s by deduction.

And the first premise is this, all through Scripture. The first premise is that all of life is sacred and that human life is the most valuable, precious commodity in the world.

Value is determined by three things. Its creator and design, the protection afforded it, and by the value of its cost.

Who made us? The Bible says, “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created them, male and female.” He created them and God says, “You have infinite value and worth because I, the Creator of all things, made you and I made you in My image. You can think, you can feel, you can respond, you can create. You were made to have fellowship with Me.”

The second basis of value is the protection afforded something.

In Genesis 9:6 God says, “Whoever sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed for in the image of God has God made man.”

After all the violence in the world and God judged the world through the flood Noah comes out and God says, “There’s a new parameter in the progress of revelation. I’m going to put a box around human life and I’m going to protect it. You take human life and you’ll sacrifice your life.”

And God’s saying, “My mark, My image, is on the soul of every human being and so I’m going to protect it.”

The third value is by cost. The Scripture says in 1 Corinthians 6:20, “You were bought at a price, therefore honor God with your body.”

And if you ever wondered what that price is, how much did you cost? Mark 10:45 says, “For even the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto but to minister and give His life,” and here’s our financial term, “a ransom for many.”

What are you worth? What’s the life of every single person worth, in the eternal mind of God? You are worth the death of His Son, to pay for your sin, to allow relationship with Him. So pretty logical. We know that who designs something, how well it’s protected, and the cost of it, determines value.

What if we could go to Scripture and, by deduction, find out that all the same things are true of the pre-born child or in the old days, the fetus? And what you’re going to find is that’s premise number two.

Premise number two is: Scripture affords the same sacred value on the fetus, or the pre-born child, as it does all other human life.

Listen to Psalm 139. This is an amazing passage. Listen to this. This is early on. This is the embryo stage. This isn’t week six, week eight, week nine. This isn’t even fully bodily functioning.

And David would write, inspired by the Holy Spirit, speaking to God, “For You created my innermost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You because I’m fearfully and wonderfully made and Your works are wonderful; and I know it full well. My frame,” or literally, “my skeleton was not hidden from You, when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body,” or literally, “my unformed substance.”

Hebrew scholars say a good rendition of that, “my embryo.” “All the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be.”

See the Bible says is that the creation of who you were, and who I was, was taking place long before all the systems were on go, and long before the fingerprints were there, and long before in the womb you could suck your thumb.

A passage God is really speaking to me about right now is in Jeremiah. And as I was reading Jeremiah chapter 1 He calls Jeremiah, in the midst of a moral slide, totally away from God, to step up and make a real difference and take a very unpopular view.

And so Jeremiah is afraid. In fact, he says, “I’m a child. I can’t do it. I don’t have what it takes.” Listen to what God says to Jeremiah and think of the application for our subject.

God speaks to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you. Before you were born I set you apart. I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

Now most of all us are not going to be appointed as a prophet to the nations. But when someone is afraid and says, “I can’t do this,” God’s answer is, “Before you were ever born, I knew you. I appointed you. I wove you together. The DNA you have, the history you have, the family you were placed in, the baggage that you have, the color of your eyes, the gifts that you have – you are My masterpiece created,” Ephesians 2:10, “into Christ Jesus, for a good work that God, before the foundations of the earth wants you to walk in.” And so God says, “I’ve been creating and designing, not just full-fledged human beings at any week or stage, but even before conception.” It’s an amazing thought.

Notice the protection afforded the fetus. Remember Acts, Acts…Exodus 20? Ten Commandments, right? Well after the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 Moses comes down and gives them.

Well Exodus 21, and 22, and 23 begin to expound on the application of not stealing or don’t commit murder. And so as we pick up the story in Exodus we don’t know the details. But it says if two men are involved in fighting and we don’t know whether a woman comes to try and rescue her boyfriend or her husband, or why it would be. But if there gets to be violence between a man and a woman and the woman is pregnant, listen to, very carefully, the protection afforded both the woman and the unborn baby.

“If men are fighting and hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there’s no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows.

But if there is serious injury, the antecedent is, to the woman or the baby, you’re to take life for a life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for a hand, foot for a foot, burn for a burn, wound for a wound, bruise for bruise.”

And so God affords the same protection to a pre-born baby as He does to you and to me.

And finally Psalm 51:5, the price, the cost. David has found himself in a situation that probably some in this room are feeling right now.

And in Psalm 51 if you ever want to find a prayer of someone who is so broken and realizes. He was in denial for a year and God sends a prophet who tells him a story that brings him out of his denial.

And then Psalm 51 is David’s prayer of confession for murder and adultery. And when he gets to verse 5 he says this, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.”

See the false theology is thinking somehow that sin only occurs when we act and do a sinful act. The truth of the matter is we’re in Adam. And so we’re born in Adam. In the womb we’re in Adam.

And so the price of Christ’s blood paid for all people, of all time, those inside the womb and outside the womb. And so, again, value by design, value by protection, and value by cost. The Bible is real clear.

Now, to be fair, I think if I was at this point and I was having a debate I would ask someone from Planned Parenthood to come and say, “Okay, you’ve heard what I’ve said. There’s a very obvious bias. I believe the Bible. I’m a follower of Jesus. I would like you to give me the top three or four reasons why abortion on demand must not be made illegal. And then after you get done with yours I’m going to come over here and I’m going to ask someone from Right to Life to respond to you because all of these people in this room, they either have made, or are ready to make, or will make a decision about life itself.

“And now they know what accountability brings with knowledge. They know medically what’s inside the womb, they know historically where we’ve been, and they know what God says. So Planned Parenthood, give it your best shot.”

Planned Parenthood would say, “Here are the four reasons why we must have legal abortive options.

Number one, when the woman’s life is at stake with the baby. If we didn’t have abortion how could we save the woman’s life?”

Issue number two: rape and incest. “How can we punish a person for being violated by someone else? They should never have to live with the horror and the memories of this child because they were raped or incest.”

Number three: “If we abolish abortion then all the women will go like in the past and they’ll have butchers doing illegal abortions and they’ll be killed or maimed.”

And number four: We live in a day where we do realize now, that it is a baby. But there are times that it’s just impossible for a woman to be a good mother, or a future, or it would put so much stress on her life, and her family, we now have an abortion pill and it can be taken early on and it’s very simple, it’s not painful. If you eliminate abortion it would eliminate this new technology for those that have to have abortions.” And that would be what they’d say.

And so I would say to the Right to Life person, “Well how would you respond?”

They would respond by saying, “Well, number one, C. Everett Coop was a surgeon general, in pediatrics for thirty years, and his testimony is that in all of his time himself, his colleagues, or any medical understanding with the technology we have today there has never been a time where the life of the mother and the child had to be chosen between. So that’s a straw man.” That’s a very emotional argument it just doesn’t happen.

Secondly, of all the people that are raped not one percent but .06 of one percent of those who are raped ever get pregnant. But, you know, it doesn’t take meeting too many guys like I did named Don that whether his fourteen-year-old mother got raped or whether is was by incest he’s pretty happy that he’s here. So two wrongs can’t make a right.

Third, the thesis that back alley abortions are going to occur, eighty-five percent of all abortions were done legally before Roe versus Wade. Only fifteen percent were done illegally and in a given year it was recorded three hundred deaths of women. And three hundred a year would not begin to tip the scales of the hundreds of women, when you’re talking of that many, who’ve died in legal abortions.

Finally, this pill that sounds so easy and the new technology. It’s not like you get a pill, take it, and everything goes away.

You have one visit, to a doctor. And when you go through all that then you, as a woman, will find yourself alone in your bathroom aborting your little baby. And you will find yourself in one of the most traumatic situations in your bathroom you’ve ever had as this small, little child comes out of your human being and you live with the reality of that the rest of your life.

In fact, what this Right to Life person would say is, “What’s never mentioned is the trauma and the pain that women go through, years after sometimes, the post-abortive syndrome.”

Where do we go, church? Where do we go from here? Get your pens out. I want to give you four specific applications.

Number one, find forgiveness and healing. Find forgiveness and healing. It’s available, it’s available here, it’s available today.

The Psalmist would pray, “God, you are forgiving and good, O Lord, you’re abounding in love to all who call upon You.” And then he cries out, “Hear my prayer, O Lord. Listen to my cry for mercy. In the day of my trouble, I’ll call to You for You will answer me.”

And I would just, with all my heart, whether you’re a man, whether you’re a woman, if this is a part of your past, God brought you in this room, on this day, not to condemn but to forgive and to heal. But you have to cry out.

The Scripture is absolutely clear. If we confess. It means “agree with,” own our stuff, He is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Forgiveness is a step in time, healing is a journey and a process.

Second, we need to take responsibility. Proverbs 24:11 and 12 says, “Rescue those being led away to death. Hold back those staggering towards slaughter. If you say, ‘But we knew nothing about this,’ does not He who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not He who guards your life know it? Will He not repay each person according to what he’s done?”

We can’t be passive. This can’t be, “Oh, abortion, it’s political.” Abortion isn’t political. Abortion is moral. It’s just become political. We can’t know this is happening, first of all, we gotta model this in our church. And that means that there’s gotta be a safe place, in safe homes when people have unplanned pregnancy, even if it’s a result of sin where you say, “Yeah, that was wrong, but okay, we’re going to love you, we’re going to walk through this together.”

It needs to start in your homes, it needs to be taught in our youth groups, as it is, and then we have to be people who say, “We’re going to take responsibility.” If atheists are stepping up to the plate and saying, “Life matters!” shouldn’t the Church of Jesus Christ?

Whether you need to volunteer, or whether you need to pray, or whether you need to give money, I don’t know what you need to do but there’s probably nothing more important that you’ll do than stand for the cause of life.

The third application is setting limits and I’ve put a passage you can read carefully. Romans 13 says, “The government will enforce certain laws.” Violence, name calling, abusive speech, so much on the pro-life agenda has been done in ways – shooting doctors – we absolutely deplore all that. Absolutely deplore.

More wrongs don’t make a right. We need to be winsome, loving, bold, treat people with dignity and respect, though you may disagree with everything they believe. It’s love that never fails. The Bible says it’s the kindness of God that leads to repentance. It will be our bold, clear, “I totally disagree but I care and we’ll treat you with dignity,” not yelling, and screaming, or shooting, or bombing.

And finally, the last application is acting in love. Ephesians 4:15 says that we’re to speak the truth in love. And I would just encourage you that no matter what we do in this area, we must have our message and our methods tell the same story.