Introduction
Today is celebrated by us and many other Bible believing Churches as Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. Today many churches unite around the common cause of publicly addressing what is without exception the greatest ailment to our national soul and blemish upon our national character. Today Christians all across our land call upon God to forgive us for the horrific act of the wholesale slaughter innocent thousands and tens of thousands of innocent children while in the womb.
We cry out to God for forgiveness and healing for the terrible damage brought upon the family in our day because of this most ghastly of holocausts that has torn at the fabric of life and the family and leaves a trail of devastation in its wake. We ask God to bring an end to the cloud of delusion under which so many live that it is ok to murder an innocent child so long as we call it choice.
Make no mistake, my friend, you will find no one who hates abortion more than I. Oh, many of you and others may hate it as much but none more. This is a matter that I take very personally as should we all, especially those who worship the God of life. I was once a baby in the womb of a 15 year old girl who was advised that her life would be better off without me. Thankfully she chose life and a few people around her make it possible for her to do so. While I have a dog in this fight, this is something that we must all take a stand upon if it is to change.
I’m not so concerned today with government legislation, though if I had my way every form of abortion for convenience sake would be abolished immediately. I’m not so concerned with your or anyone else’s political leanings or motivations. What I am concerned with and what I’ll spend the bulk of my time this morning dealing with is what I believe plainly to be both a primary cause and a major consequence of the abortion epidemic – the breakdown of the family.
Transition
Even in this I’ll not address it negatively, that is, statement in negative terms how the family is broken, because obviously families are broken in our land. No, let us consider God’s heart for the family. Let’s build family not tear at broken society.
Let’s be like painters of God’s grand design, not mockers of sinful humanity.
CIT: The family is at the center of God’s plan and purpose for His people.
CIS: God hates abortion because He loves the family.
You and I cannot stop sinful people from sinning apart from being used by God to lead them to Christ. In other words, don’t be surprised that sinners sin. Be conformed and stop thinking, acting, and living like the world; especially when it comes to family because that is God’s primary instrument in the world.
Everything the Church does is supplemental to the home. God builds His kingdom through parents discipline their children. The Church’s role is to equip the family, serve the family, love the family, not to do the job of the family.
Exposition
To be clear at the outset, God hates abortion. The Bible takes a zero tolerance position in this area. There is no room for debate from the Scripture. This is not a matter of personal conscience. If you believe in, practice, support, or in any other way endorse the provision of or allowance of abortion you are just plain wrong.
I’m sorry but whether you or I like or it not abortion is entirely abhorrent to the record of Scripture. You can think what you what to think but if you think that you can in the same breath claim Christ and support the murder of innocent children you are just plain wrong. Any support of abortion is at war with the Bible. Period.
(Ten Reasons Abortion is Wrong, James L. Melton) God hates abortion because it is murder. In reference to pregnant women, the term "with child" occurs twenty-six times in the Bible. The term "with fetus" never occurs once.
In Luke chapter one, verses 36 and 41, we are told Elisabeth conceived a “son,” that the “babe” leaped in her womb. God does not say that a "fetus" leaped in her womb! He says THE BABE leaped. This is the exact same word that used to describe Christ in the manger AFTER He is born (Luke 2:12, 16). In God eyes, an unborn babe and a newborn babe are the same. They are both babies!
Proverbs 6:16-17 says that God HATES those who shed innocent blood! Deuteronomy 27:25 says, "Cursed be he that taketh reward to slay an innocent person.” Who could possibly be more innocent than an unborn baby?!
Yet, our society has become so wicked that it condones the slaying of 1.5 million innocent children every year. The Bible says that God HATES people who do this.
This nation needs to wake up! And every follower of Christ who has allowed him or herself to be spiritually asphyxiated by chocking on the enormous lie that abortion is essentially about personal freedom and choice needs to be spiritually resurrected and embrace the truth, regardless of its consequence.
We look at the Middle Ages as times of great barbarism because of the Churches spiteful and heinous interrogations in the inquisition, the famines and pestilences. What will future generations think of the Church’s silence on the monstrous crime of abortion? What will future generations think of the starvation of our minds from the Word of God and the sickness of our souls that it fostered so as to create a Church more concerned with potlucks than the slaughter of a generation?
This is the cultural spiritual malady of our day. Speaking of the struggle for civil rights of African Americans in his day Martin Luther King Jr. said “In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
Are you a silent friend to the unborn? Do you celebrate the birth of wanted child with a baby shower but look upon the plight of the undesirable unborn with indifference? What hypocrites and cowards we are who invoke the name of God in prayer for our new born babies but call the snuffing out of life personal choice.
God hates abortion because it attempts to destroy a work of God. “I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it: and God doeth it, that men should fear before him.” (Ecc. 3:14)
God is eternal, so His work is also eternal. Abortion is an attempt to do away with unwanted people – an attempt to make a liar out of God by bringing an end to His work. However, Jesus said you can destroy a person's BODY, but not their SOUL (Mat. 10:28). Friend, if you've had, encouraged, or enabled an abortion, that aborted child is in Heaven right now, because man can only destroy the body!
God hates abortion because it it brings shame, heartache, and deep regret. After his sin with Bathsheba, King David confessed these words to God: “For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me." (Psa. 51:3) David was living under constant conviction and regret for what he had done.
He couldn't get away from it! Most women who decide to have an abortion spend the rest of their lives regretting it. You should hear the painful stories of repentant women who have had abortions. Ask them if they would do it again or if they regret. In the book, The Christian and Social Issues, by Tom Wallace, a reference is made to a full page Washington Post ad, dated June 13, 1983.
A lady who had undergone a saline abortion six months earlier describes the mental torments that she now suffers every day. She speaks of her “...everyday hell of never hearing a baby cry without crying within myself; counting days to see how old the baby would have been; wondering what contributions my baby would have made to our desperate society; and wondering if there will ever be another chance for motherhood.”
Of the abortion itself, the lady recalls, “...sitting in a crowded waiting room studying each other’s fearful, anxious faces...signing death certificates for what is very much alive within you...seeing crying women given tranquilizers and sent home to recuperate and try to forget.”
There are still other women who cling to the social acceptance of abortion, never seeking repentance, convincing themselves that what they did was acceptable. For them there is perhaps a worse fate yet – living with indefinable anger and frustration – how dreadful is the poison of unrepentant undiagnosed regret?
God hates abortion most of all because He loves family. In order to see this plainly, let’s look at Psalm 127 for insight into God’s love for the family.
(Psalms 127:1 NIV84) Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain.
Are your plans for your house, your family, your life, are they rooted in your will, way, and wisdom or in Gods? While I respect and appreciate financial concerns, for example, is the common wisdom that we must have all of our financial affairs in order before starting a family biblical? Jesus was born in a barn to a poor young man and woman. Are we too consumed with wealth and security?
I know of no family that is without struggles; including my own. That seems to be the nature of maintain and building strong families. It takes work.
But are our priorities in line with those of the Scripture for family? I’m not going to say that family planning us unbiblical. I’m not going to deny that it may be wise to plan to have a family consistent with the size that a couple can manage and provide for. I’m not going to deny the potential wisdom of that.
What I will affirm however, is that the man who believes that children are a drain upon his wealth doesn’t understand what wealth is. I’m going to affirm that the man or woman who believes it foolish to fill their quiver with many arrows has never seen the nature of the conflict and battles of this life!
I’m going to affirm that God’s plan for the Church begins with the family. I’m going to affirm that the ministry of every church should be centered on nurturing families and that the focus of every Christian household should be ministry.
God is building His Kingdom one person, one family at a time. At the center of God’s plan for you and me is the family. In the Church today we pretty much do family things the same way the world does. We send our children away to be educated in Rome and then we wonder why they act like Romans.
We save, strive, and sacrifice money for McMansions instead of making time for our children and spouses. We put worldly possession before things that really matter. I heard it well said that the only things in life that matter have heart beats. The things that really matter aren’t things.
(Psalms 127:2 NIV84) “In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat – for he grants sleep to those he loves.” Peace is not the consequence of your hard work. It is the gift of God to those who serve Him.
(Psalms 127:3-5 NIV84) “Sons are a heritage from the LORD, children a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate.”
There is room for a lot of discussion with this final thought from Psalm 127.
Here are just a few. As the Church our priorities are out of sync with God’s. While the Muslim world out populates us, we don’t have any more children than for whom we can maintain a lifestyle of great comfort. In the old days children were seen as a great inheritance from God and in our day our culture sees them as a burden. It’s not just those who advocate abortion for whom this is true.
That is merely the logical outcome of a more pervasive attitude in our culture. When children are a liability we don’t want more than is necessary. When they are a trophy to dote upon we don’t usually want more than one. When they are too great an inconvenience we murder them in the womb. “The family circle is the supreme conductor of Christianity.” Families are not parts of the church; the Church exists to facilitate evangelism and strengthening of Christian homes.
God’s heart is for the family and ours should be too. Family is hard work and none are perfect but it is on the anvil of daily life in the family that Christian virtue is shaped and honed. Children not stuff is the real wealth of our lives.
Conclusion
For those women who have had abortions and for those men who have encouraged, facilitated, paid for, or otherwise enabled them, there is hope. The grace of God does not cease where you sin begins; that’s where it starts. For those who have stood on the fence on this matter, get off of the fence. The only thing worse than an opponent to the truth, is a coward who won’t choose a side.
And this is doesn’t begin at the voting booth. It begins in our attitudes about our homes and our families. I read a story of a family opened its heart and its home to a number of Cambodian refugees, taking them right in with their natural sons and daughters and sharing all they have. It makes a crowded house, yet these orphans from a distant land are happy. But there are many other orphans around these days. Some homes have become "orphanages," not because the father or mother is dead, but because they are too busy pursuing his own dreams and providing physical and material needs. This group of "spiritual" orphans is growing by leaps and bounds because of our wrongheaded focus. In the Church we look too much like the world. We desire the same things and we nurture the family only slightly better than the world. God’s heart is for the family. Let’s build stronger families. Let’s make it the bull’s-eye of our purpose. Let’s build stronger families. Amen.
