Sanctity of Human Life Sunday: Why Being Pro-Life Is So Important
1.21.24
Psalm 106:34-40 NASB They did not destroy the peoples as the Lord had commanded them, but they mingled with the nations and adopted their customs. They worshiped their idols, which became a snare to them. They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to false gods. They shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was desecrated by their blood. They defiled themselves by what they did; by their deeds they prostituted themselves. Therefore the Lord was angry with his people and abhorred his inheritance.

1. Potential Misconceptions

2. The Roots of Abortion

3. The Core Issue

4. The True Nature of Abortion and Infanticide


I. Let’s clear up potential misconceptions.

A. My passion

1. Not a fear of proclaiming truth

2. No embracing of compromise

3. Not overreaction to offending

4. Not fear of opposition

5. Rather it is compassion for the flock.

6. It is understanding how prone people are to resist and misunderstand. While I would never apologize for the message, I apologize if my delivery of the message isn’t perfect.


B. The victims are not our target of criticism. We want to comfort those who have been wounded and damaged.

1. We are not casting stones at those who have made mistakes and often still carry the wounds from previous actions.

2. Nor those who have been raped or molested.

3. Or those teenage girls who were little more than children themselves, and were manipulated by some relative, neighbor, or schoolmate.

4. Or those who are facing the possibility of giving birth to a child with serious health issues.


5. We believe Abortion is NOT the answer, but we extend mercy and God’s love to those who have faced such circumstances.

a. We want to assure you of God’s love and forgiveness.

b. Our sins are not “less” or in any way more “tolerable.”

c. 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 ESV Or do you not know that the unrighteouswill not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, 10nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.


C. The Politicians -to those who have allowed the sanctity of human life to degenerate into a political argument, I have no political argument to make. Not in this arena - not at this time. I do think that many politicians (NOT ALL) are either woefully ignorant or willfully ignorant, and they are as much a part of the problem as anything else.


D. Two distractions

1. The fanatical fringe -the craziness that seems to be coming out of Hollywood and other places, do not represent the majority of Americans.

2. Cause Christians - though I appreciate your passion, your anger usually does more harm than good. The efforts of a balanced church never seems to be enough to these congregants.


E. I do want to confront…

1. Those who scream for their right to abort.

2. Those who try to drown out and ridicule every voice that does not agree with their views.

3. Those who deny that life begins at conception.

4. Those who believe they have a right to abort because they want to set aside the consequences of casual sex, or view the unborn child as an intrusion, a tumor to be removed, or a mass of cells to be expelled.

5. I come against those who have embraced a baby-killing spirit and have made remarks so degenerate that they don’t deserve to be heard in our homes, in our social media, and certainly not in the house of God.


F. I hope to…

1. Heal the wounded.

2. Stir the Remnant.

3. Awaken compromised Christians.

4. Alert a generation that has been raised in a culture of deception, lies, and half-truths



II. The Roots of Abortion

A. It begins in Genesis 3.


B. In ancient times, idol worshippers (especially of Molech) sacrificed their babies on the altars of demonic deities.


C. Molech, or Moloch, was “made of brass; and they heated him from his lower parts, and his hands being stretched out, and made hot, they put the child between his hands, and it was burnt; when it vehemently cried out; but the priests beat a drum, that the father might not hear the voice of his son, and his heart might not be moved.” - from Rabbi Rashi (1040-1105), quoted in John Gill’s Exposition of the Whole Bible, commentary of Jeremiah 7:31


D. Rabbi Simeon describes another situation involving child sacrifice: “The idol was a hollow statue which contained seven apartments: in one there was offered to the god, flour. Turtledoves were offered in the second; sheep in the third; rams in the fourth; cakes in the fifth; and bulls in the sixth; as to the seventh cell, it was opened when they were going to sacrifice children.” (Yalkut Shimoni)


E. In the days of Alexander the Great, there was activity in North Africa (about 150 years before the birth of Jesus). “There stands in their midst a bronze statue of Kronos, its hands extended over a bronze brazier, the flames of which engulfed the child. When the flames fall upon the body, the limbs contract and the open mouth seems almost to be laughing, until the contracted body slips quietly into the brazier.” - from Scholia to Plato’s Republica 337A; quoted in Michael Brown’s book Jezebel’s War With America, page 59



III. The Core Issue - When does life begin?

A. “Momma, can I kill this?


B. Science sides with the idea of life at conception. Yet in our society, this fact is repeatedly questioned with no real support of science.


C. The argument of Charles Krauthammer - a building about to be demolished.

D. The Position of Scripture

1. “Brephos”

2. The Jewish Culture

3. Jewish commentary: “The Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides (written between 50 B.C. and A.D. 50): “A woman should not destroy the unborn babe in her belly, nor after its birth throw it before the dogs and vultures.” The Sibyline Oracles includes among the wicked those who “produce abortions and unlawfully cast their offspring away.” Also condemned are sorcerers who dispense abortifacients. First Enoch (first or second century B.C.) says that an evil angel taught humans how to “smash the embryo in the womb.” Josephus (first-century Jewish historian) wrote: “The law orders all the offspring be brought up, and forbids women either to cause abortion or to make away with the fetus.” A woman who did so was considered to have committed infanticide because she destroyed a “soul” and hence diminished the race.” — The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture by Scott Klusendorf


E. Next week: Making our case/Resources. What about rape and incest?


F. S.L.E.D.

“Philosophically, there is no morally significant difference between the embryo you once were and the adult you are today. As Stephen Schwarz points out using the acronym S.L.E.D., differences of size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency are not relevant in the way that abortion advocates need them to be:

Size: Yes, embryos are smaller than newborns and adults, but why is that relevant? Do we really want to say that large people are more human than small ones? Men are generally larger than women, but that doesn’t mean they deserve more rights. Size doesn’t equal value.

Level of development: True, embryos and fetuses are less developed than you and I. But again, why is this relevant? Four-year-old girls are less developed than fourteen-year-old ones. Should older children have more rights than their younger siblings? Some people say that self-awareness makes one human. But if that is true, newborns do not qualify as valuable human beings. Remember, six-week-old infants lack the immediate capacity for performing human mental functions, as do the reversibly comatose, the sleeping, and those with Alzheimer’s disease.

Environment:Where you are has no bearing on who you are. Does your value change when you cross the street or roll over in bed? If not, how can a journey of eight inches down the birth canal suddenly change the essential nature of the unborn from non-human to human? If the unborn are not already human, merely changing their location can’t make them valuable.



Degree of dependency: If viability makes us valuable human beings, then all those who depend on insulin or kidney medication are not valuable, and we may kill them. Conjoined twins who share blood type and bodily systems also have no right to life.”

— The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture by Scott Klusendorf


G. Writing on a pro-life website, Rachel Cox uses this example to open the eyes of people who “don’t think the unborn baby is a person.” She suggests: Let’s pretend a fetus is a non-human animal. Now that it’s settled, allow me [to] use an example to demonstrate why killing a non- human animal in a similar fashion as one used in a human abortion is still deplorable. Let’s say I have a puppy but I can’t afford one at this stage in my life (lack of money is a common reason for wanting to abort). What do I do with this puppy? Since it’s still small, I’m going to cram it in a blender while conscious and liquefy it to a bloody soup, disposing of the concoction in the trash. That might work for a small puppy, but what about an older dog? It won’t fit in a blender. How about this then: Without using anesthesia, I’m going to chop each of the dog’s legs off, one by one, with a pair of bolt cutters. But the dog is still alive at this point, so the job isn’t over yet. Now, I’m going to pick up a giant rock, slam it down on the dog’s head to crush it, and then throw the dog’s mangled body in a biohazard bag. Do you think the methods of getting rid of the dog were disturbing? Who wouldn’t? This is performed in the first trimester of pregnancy.” (Cox provides a clearly-illustrated diagram to make her point.) “The second method I described,” she writes, “was akin to a ‘dilation and evacuation’ abortion used in the second trimester” (again, backed by a diagram to prove her point). And, she notes, “There are other methods of abortion besides these. Not one of them could be described as non-violent, and they all obviously result in death. Almost equal to the combined populations of Peru and Venezuela and more than the population of England, and all by violent means. What kind of wickedness is this? Yet for many Americans this is a hidden sin, something done behind closed doors in a “women’s health clinic” or the like, out of sight and out of mind. As expressed by pro-life leader Eric Scheidler: “I think it’s extremely pleasing to the devil when an abortion takes place. This wickedness happens in the dark. The womb is an invisible place. We don’t see the abortion happening. Even those photographs we have [of aborted babies] are very rare. They are hard to come by. This is a hidden evil. It’s one that digs its roots so deeply in our society because it happens in secret.”—Jezebel's War With America: The Plot to Destroy Our Country and What We Can Do to Turn the Tide by Michael L. Brown, pages 60, 61


IV. Abortion and infanticide are nothing less than issues of sin and immorality. To deal with it any other way is ethical insanity.

A. “Or consider this firsthand testimony from Brenda Pratt Shafer, a registered nurse from Dayton, Ohio, who testified before the House Judiciary Committee on March 21, 1996, about a partial-birth abortion she witnessed on a pre-born baby boy at six months gestation. He delivered the baby’s body and the arms—everything but the head. The doctor kept the baby’s head just inside the uterus. The baby’s little fingers were clasping and unclasping, and his feet were kicking. Then the doctor stuck the scissors through the back of his head, and the baby’s arms jerked out in a flinch, a startle reaction, like a baby does when he thinks that he might fall. The doctor opened up the scissors, stuck a high-powered suction tube into the opening and sucked the baby’s brains out. Now the baby was completely limp. What happened next? [The doctor] delivered the baby’s head. He cut the umbilical cord and delivered the placenta. He threw that baby in a pan, along with the placenta and the instruments he’d used. I saw the baby move in the pan. I asked another nurse and she said it was just “reflexes.” I have been a nurse for a long time and I have seen a lot of death—people maimed in auto accidents, gunshot wounds, you name it. I have seen surgical procedures of every sort. But in all my professional years, I had never witnessed anything like this. So, a doctor delivers the body and arms of a living baby, sticks scissors through the back of his or her head, and sucks out the baby’s brains.”
— Jezebel's War With America: The Plot to Destroy Our Country and What We Can Do to Turn the Tide by Michael L. Brown


B. Whatever other causes an abortionist may speak for, the murder of children cannot be hidden among the other “stuff.”


C. There is a lesson from our own Civil War.



What are the take-away points from today.

1. We must return to The Lord’s estimation of good and evil.

A. Isaiah 5:20, 21 ESV “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! 21 Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight!”


B. 1 Kings 22:51-53 ESV Ahaziah the son of Ahab became king over Israel in Samaria in the seventeenth year of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, and he reigned two years over Israel. 52 He did evil in the sight of the Lord and walked in the way of his father and in the way of his mother and in the way of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who caused Israel to sin. 53 So he served Baal and worshiped him and provoked the Lord God of Israel to anger, according to all that his father had done.


2. Understand that if I am right, demonic spirits drive the abortion industry. It is not about a woman’s rights. It is about the destruction of unborn babies. “Abortion is both sacrament and god.” - Jennifer Hartline


3. We must honestly come to terms with the question of when life begins.


4. We must realize that every other argument and cause must be considered apart from the issue of abortion.


5. “Abortion is the moral issue to end all moral issues. It is uniquely defining of a culture and an individual. In America, the delusion is so hypnotic and addictive that nothing must be permitted to question it or come against it. There MUST be sexual pleasure without price. NOTHING matters more than sexual gratification. Sexual immorality, abortion, idolatry is a threefold cord that is not easily broken.” - Dr. Michael Brown


It is as old as ancient Israel, and it brought that mighty nation under the wrath of God. The Psalmist declared: “They did not destroy the nations as The Lord commanded them, but they mixed among the nations and learned their deeds; they served their idols which were a snare to them. Yes, they sacrificed their sons and daughters to demons, and poured out innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was polluted with blood. They were defiled by their acts and acted like whores with these actions. Therefore, the wrath of the Lord was kindled against people, and He abhorred own inheritance. Psalm 106:34-40


1. Repent for our sin or our indifference.

2. Ask God to soften our hearts by The Holy Spirit.

3. Pray for and support pro-life efforts.

4. Vote Christian values.

5. Adopt and care for children.

6. Financially adopt a struggling family if possible.

7. Offer God’s mercy to those who have been caught up in abortion.


Let’s not lose sense of the urgency of the hour, and the magnitude of our sin.

“Around 73 million induced abortions take place worldwide each year.”

World Health Organization 25 November 2021
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/abortion


To hear the original sermon from January 19, 2020, please go the website or contact the church office.