 Four years ago, I was in London with my youngest son Michael. I had been over there speaking and I'm a history buff That means if it has to do with the first world war the second world war in particular I am all over that or American Civil War American Revolutionary War. I'm I'm there if there's a museum and in London on the South Bank of the Thames River. There is the Imperial War Museum Gentlemen, if you ever get within a hundred miles of that place You've got to go see this place. They have eye candy like you would not believe They have a spitfire hanging from the ceiling the plane that saved the West in 1940 The reason we aren't doing this in German this morning is because of that spitfire at a man named Winston Churchill And I had Michael with me and I said let's go to the Imperial War Museum because he's a history buff, too We got there and we were early. They hadn't opened up yet But they had outside on the waiting area a series of photographs of the evacuees How many of you have read the Narnia series or seen the movies? Why are the children in the country? Does anybody remember? Yes, they've been evacuated because Hitler determined to bomb London to smithereens when he couldn't beat the The RAF in the air battle. He said I'll just bomb London and Churchill knew he was going to do it And so Churchill said get all the kids out of London So they put them on trains at Waterloo, Charing Cross, Victoria all the major rail junctions in London And there's these black-and-white photos which some of you have seen in textbooks of Children four years of age two years of age Maybe six and they're standing along the platforms of the train stations with little numbers on them holding hands Many of them are going to board those trains and they will never see their parents again Because their parents will be killed in the bombing raids and I was explaining this to Michael and As I was pointing at one of the pictures explaining it to him I feel a tap on my shoulder and I turn and I look and here's this really short woman in her I'm guessing late 70s and she turns to me points up at one of the pictures and said I was one of those children I Grabbed Michael by the lapels yanked him over and said we will listen to what this woman's about to tell us I Said tell me your story She said when I was four Mom and dad put me on the train at Waterloo In August of 1940 and I never saw him again go on She said 11 nights later. They were both killed In a terrible bombing raid that would have killed me too had they not put me on the train I Said well what happened to you She got a big smile on her face and she said oh I had a good life The people who took me in just stepped up and adopted me Now at that point I'm balling and Michael's balling because I got him by the neck But listen to her words they just stepped up and adopted me Men and women when it comes to issues of respecting human life We are all going to have to step up and be apologists now We're all going to have to step up and make a case for life to a culture out there That does not hold our worldview, but it gets even more interesting not only do we have to make that case out there? We've got to make the case in here among Christian people now you might think what why would we need to step up and make a case inside in house and not just out There I mean I get it at the university campus people don't agree with Christians. I get it But what about within Christianity? Did you know? That there's an organization called the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice whose primary purpose is to argue From evangelical premises that abortion is supported biblically ought to be celebrated within the church And only Christians ignorant of the word of God would say otherwise That's I mean we're talking in-house That's not out there. It's right here In other words, you don't have to wait now any longer to hear a pro-abortion argument till you arrive on campus You can start hearing them within circles of Christianity That's what I mean when I say we are going to have to step up and we are going to have to up our game if we're going to be Effective ambassadors for Jesus on this issue and what I want to do today is give you four things That I believe every one of us as Christians have to know how to do if we are going to be witnesses for Christ and the principle we need to communicate is Human dignity and I want us if you will to open to Genesis chapter one We're going to look at what's going to be our foundational scripture for building this plan Genesis chapter one versus 24 to 28, of course, we are looking at the creation account By the way, you've been given cards that say applied bioethics degree You are not going to earn a degree by sitting and listening to me today. May I clarify that? You ought to but you won't So I will tell you what this is this is you fill this out If you want to get our quarterly newsletter called the five-minute pro-lifer that has training material in it But for now you can just set that aside if you want and then give it to me at the end of the session If you want if you'd like to receive that but that's what this is in case you're wondering Genesis chapter one. We're looking at the creation of man and God said this is verse 24 and God said let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds Livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds and it was so and God made the hearts of the earth God made the beasts of the earth According to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds and everything that creeps on the ground according to its Kind and God saw that it was good and here we come to the heart of the matter Then God said let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea over the Birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on earth So God created man in his own image in the image of God He created him male and female He created them and God blessed them and God said to them be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and Have dominion over the fish of the sea over the birds of the heaven and over every living thing that moves on the earth What we have here is the basis for the dignity of the human being and The first thing we have to do is Christians if we're going to be effective ambassadors for Christ is Nail down a biblical basis for human value Let me give you the two rival views that are in play right now when it comes to what makes human beings valuable Option one and this is the secular culture view Humans have no intrinsic value You're valuable by your function You're valuable because you have self-awareness. You have certain cognitive abilities You're able to feel pain your conscience. You have a conscious awareness of yourself Those are the things that give value in the secular paradigm Not whose image you bear Rather you have value because you function a certain way and this is why you get people who say the following I'll accept that the fetus is a human being, but it's not a person. I Mean have you ever met a human that wasn't a person those of you with high school students don't answer But I mean seriously have you No But yet the culture draws this distinction between one class of human beings We can kill over here called non-persons and another class over here called persons. We can't kill How do they I mean where does that come from it comes from a view of human value that says what makes us valuable is our functions not our nature Thus you get Peter Singer Peter Singer Princeton ethicist says the following No newborn should be considered a person until 30 days after birth and Disabled infants can be killed on the spot if it suits the preferences of the parents You're going what I just heard a guy say you can kill newborns. Yeah, you did Listen to his rhetoric Here's what he says and by the way, he's consistent He's much more consistent than your average pro-choicer you meet on the street The pro-choicer you meet on the street says you can't kill after birth No birth is the magical moment Singer says hogwash nothing special about birth change of location. Who cares? Here's what he says Fetus is not self-aware newborn is not self-aware you can kill both Now that's utter consistency and crazy conclusion But it's not crazy if you accept the premise that what gives us value is our functional ability Not whose image we bear so the secular world view does not ground human dignity in Our nature rather it grounds it in what we do how we function have we reached a certain area Where we can say okay? I'm self-aware. I have desires. I can think critically That's what gives us value in the secular world now. Let's contrast that with the biblical view what we just read The biblical view is what we call the endowment view. It's Precisely what our founding fathers anchored the American legal system in The endowment view says this you're a human being you have certain rights Simply because you're human you do not need to justify those rights and not only that you can't wave them You can't get rid of them if you wanted to they are inherent in your very nature as a human being among those rights Our life liberty pursuit of happiness declaration of independence for example making that point our founding fathers citing Scripture Thinking scripture said our rights do not come from our performance They do not come from government Government's job is to recognize and protect them and your rights come from the fact you bear the image of your maker That was their thinking now. I'm not making the claim all the founding fathers were devout believers They weren't but they certainly operated with a biblical worldview when it came to the dignity of the human person Humans have rights simply because they're human in scripture here. We have rights simply because we bear God's image period We are not valuable because we have an awareness of a moral nature We are not valuable because we have intellects scriptures clear. We bear the image of God. That's it It says nothing else about what gives us value Strictly because we're human now. I know some of you right now. You might be thinking all right. Wait a minute Let's think about this for a moment You're not allowed to drive a car until you're 16 and You're not allowed to vote until you're 21 What do you mean you have rights simply because you're human? Let me draw a distinction here that is very Crucial for us to make because people out there and even people in the church often get confused on this the argument goes like this We draw lines all the time Can't drive till you're 16 can't vote till you're 18 can't if I say vote 21. I'm sorry Alcohol you can't drink till your time. I sound like I've been drinking you can't vote till you're 18 drive a car until you're 21 I think I'd like to make the voting age 55 personally, but that's my own preference doesn't mean though that your basic right to life is Grated the way your vote is graded the way your right to drive is graded. No, here's why Natural rights differ from what we call legal rights. Let me draw that distinction for you I'm an American citizen Do I have a right to vote in the next British election? No, why not? I'm not a Brit. I may want to be but I'm not All right, however Do I have a right not to be gunned down in the street when I'm walking through Trafalgar Square? in London That right not to be gunned down in the street that right not to be intentionally killed Is a natural right that goes with me anywhere? I go It's not a government granted right governments recognize that right and protect it now Let's talk about the right to vote If I'm 16 and an American citizen, do I have a right to vote? Not yet and here's why that's a government granted right The right to drive is a government granted right and governments have the authority to make certain laws to make society function and Sometimes older people are going to have advantages that younger don't but they're equal in their dignity Their natural right to live is across the board the same But government granted rights like voting like driving Those come through achievement in age is everybody with me on the distinction between these two rights a lot of people today Get this wrong. They think well if you get to vote when you're 16 Why not say the fetus doesn't get a right to life till later just like you don't get to vote till later No, they're not the same thing Natural rights are what we're talking about God given rights based on our dignity as human beings as those bearing the image of our maker But there's another point of confusion in this one. You will find Even now more prevalent I'm afraid to say in Christian circles and it goes right to the heart of what we believe and here's what this objection says The Bible is silent on abortion. You're not going to find the word in there You will not find in the Bible and they're right about this a Command that says thou shalt not abort You're also not going to find they say and I'll go ahead and grant the point for the sake of argument That no scriptures teach the unborn are human beings who bear the image of God No scriptures that teach the unborn are persons with a right to life Therefore so the argument goes Nowhere is the Bible condemning abortion. Nowhere is it saying the unborn have a right to life Therefore Christian, why are you all exercised over abortion? Let's stop right there for just a moment. How does it follow? That because the Bible doesn't expressly condemn something it therefore condones it Is there a command in scripture that says thou shalt not use your neighbor for shark bait? Some of you are going you should see my neighbor. He did he needs to be shark bait. No, I mean really is there? Is there a is there a scripture that says Canadians are human? Is there one that says Germans are human? Is there one that says the French are human some of you are going wait a minute now. No seriously is there? No What scripture says is all humans have value because they bear the image of their maker So the fact that the Bible doesn't expressly Single out the unborn doesn't trouble me at all. So when someone throws this at you, here's your first question We'll look in a minute why biblically that it seems the Bible silent on abortion I'll tell you why there's a good answer for it, but here's your quick answer when someone says to you Well, nowhere does the Bible expressly condemn abortion. Here's your question Are you telling me That whatever the Bible does not expressly condemn it condones When they say no is they must You then simply ask well, what's your point? That will end the discussion in your favor now. They will at times Others will say things like well, all right Explain to me then why the Bible is silent. Why is there nothing on abortion in there? I'm about to tell you why the Bible is not In all cases a comprehensive code of ethics. We draw moral truth from the Scripture. No doubt But the Bible was not written to be an ethics book. You just open up and okay There's principle seven eighty nine for the day rather It's scripture written to people in various times dealing with the issues they're dealing with and Conforming them to God's way of thinking everybody understand what I'm saying about this and for example If you pick up the book of Galatians Paul is ticked. He seems very excised. He's really bringing it. He's bringing the thunder Well, why? Well, because there was a problem in the church there Yet Judaizers coming in and saying no, you're not saved by grace You're saved by what you do and Paul addresses this in fact these Judaizers were trying to take these new believers and Bring them back to being Jewish and Paul says that's not going to fly. He's upset So what occasion the book of Galatians was the situation in the church So Paul does not address everything under the Sun in the letter to Galatians He addresses the issues at hand at that moment So what about the Bible? Why is it not really saying much about abortion? Here's why The Hebrew culture of the Old Testament and the early believers of the new were not Tempted to kill their unborn offspring. In fact, abortion was unthinkable to that culture and let me explain Why let's go back to the Old Testament In the Old Testament our children a gift or a problem Gift is barrenness a curse or something you celebrate Remember Samuel's mother first Samuel. She's at the altar crying weeping She's not able to have children meanwhile her husband's other wife is You know popping them out like crazy and she's making fun of Samuel's future mother because she can't have kids and She's crying her eyes out barrenness is a curse In the land of Israel at the time where they surrounded by friendly nations Bent on helping them succeed or hostile nations. They constantly had to subdue Constantly subdue in Order to subdue those nations. Do you want a lot of people in your own flock or just a few a Lot Now let's get theological. What command did God give Israel when they came on multiply subdue what else? What was God's mission for Israel just to make them nice and them alone? No through Israel to do what bless all nations of the world Israel had a mandate not only to drive away foreign enemies But to do that to prepare to be the center of blessing Through which God would convey his truth his mission to the world That's that was their job and every Jew knew it Not that they always lived up to it, but they knew it In that kind of culture. Do you need a lot of children or just a handful a Lot you've got a world to deal with all right. Let's put this puzzle together among a people that saw life is the greatest blessing and barrenness as the worst possible curse Who needed a large population to ward off warring neighbors Who had a mandate from God To bless the whole world and you need a lot of people to do that Is that a culture where elective abortion is going to get a foothold? Not in a million years So it's no wonder the biblical writers don't write about it sure the surrounding nations were killing their unborn offspring But the Jews were not They were not Hence no command. Oh by the way when they did kill their children when they were older when they passed them through the fire Scripture addresses that but abortion was not in the radar system Hence the commands against scripture or I should say the lack of a command against scripture Doesn't trouble us But what about the fact that there doesn't seem to be a passage that teaches expressly that the unborn are human I'm going to make a suggestion for you today Don't quote Psalm 139 any longer Don't don't do it now. It's not because I don't believe that it's inspired Authoritative word of God of course it is it's the inerrant authoritative inspired word of God. No doubt about it. That's not my problem My problem is your critics out there are going to throw an objection at you that you're better off just avoiding And here's what they're going to say. You know that passage in Psalm 139 That's nice, but that's poetry By the way, they will say That same passage Presents a situation where the Psalmist is having communion with God at the bottom of the sea Do you want to take that literally? So do you really want to take that whole passage literally you knit me together in my mother's womb? That's nice sounds good, but it's poetry like the Psalmist having communion with God at the bottom of the seat Okay, that's going to be the objection you have to deal with Here's a better way to make your pro-life case from scripture and we started it this morning with Genesis 1 All humans have value because they bear the image of God. That's premise 1 premise 2 Because humans bear the image of God the shedding of innocent blood is strictly forbidden You are not allowed to intentionally kill innocent human beings because they bear the image of their maker Exodus 23 7 teaches this Proverbs 6 16 to 19 teaches this and Jesus reiterates the command against murder in Matthew 5 21 Now let's take those two points all humans bear God's image and because they bear God's image. You can't intentionally kill them What's the only question we need to ask about the unborn at this point? Are they human beings? Like we are If they are the same commands against shedding innocent blood apply to the unborn as they do every one of us Even if scripture never singles them out What do we know from science? Here's what we know From the earliest stages of development You were a distinct living whole human being You weren't part of another human being you were yourself a distinct whole member of the human family We covered this this weekend in our sessions together, but if you weren't here the science of embryology is Absolutely clear on this point All humans begin at the one cell stage You didn't evolve from an embryo. You once were an embryo You didn't come from a fetus that was you back then by the way fetus is a perfectly acceptable word to use It just means young one. That's all it means You were a young one at that point You're identical today to the embryo. You were back then That's not a different thing back then that was you if that's true Then the commands in scripture that say you can't shed innocent blood apply to the unborn every bit as much as they apply to you and I On a little side note here. I want you to imagine for a moment What the concept of human dignity meant to the ancient world when Christianity crashed on the scene in? the ancient Greek and Roman world Men were the absolute rulers of their homes men called the shots a Woman was not to have multiple lovers But husbands were expected to and Many times they were of the same gender A lot of these guys were switch-hitting and these guys were Getting their sexual fulfillment from slaves in their own households and These slaves were the mere object and mere property of their owners the men Upper-class men that was the Greek Roman world, especially the Roman world Now I want you to think for a moment About our culture today, do they view the Christian sexual ethic as freeing or repressive? repressive It's awful takes away freedom Now let's look at it realistically and historically You're that slave in That Roman household You've been treated as a mere object With no inherent dignity attributed to you your mere property and Along comes Christianity with its sexual ethic its view of the dignity of the human person and You hear these words You most certainly are not the object of another person's lust You most certainly bear the image of your maker and you are so valuable That God himself sent Jesus to come to earth to die in your place for your sins to adopt him into his family Where your heavenly father does not treat you as an object But a dearly loved child and whatever has happened to you in the past that has been covered and dealt with in the Blood of Jesus and his subsequent resurrection. Is that a freeing message or a repressive one if you're that slave? absolutely freeing And in its time Christianity rocked the ancient world with its view of human dignity Absolutely turned over the old structure When people tell you that our view of dignity or sexuality is repressive. They simply don't know what they're talking about They simply don't That leads to the second thing we need to do We as Christians need to deal with assumptions. I Mentioned this this weekend CS Lewis said the most dangerous ideas in the culture are those that are simply assumed and The common assumption out there is that the unborn aren't human people don't argue for it They just assume it and I gave the example this weekend of Huckleberry Finn. How many of you have read that book? If you weren't here Huckleberry Finn in chapter, I think it's 32 or something like that He is late for supper and he knows Aunt Sally is going to give it to him So he concocts a lie. Well, we were out in the steamboat. We were on blew a cylinder head. It's a lie Just lying through his teeth and Sally says well, was anybody hurt? No, ma'am. They killed a Negro, but nobody was hurt Well, that's good said aunt Sally because sometimes people do get hurt What was just assumed about the black man that he wasn't what? one of us No argument just the assumption and Our job as Christians is to uncover that you know that virtually every argument for abortion simply assumes the unborn aren't human There's no argument for it. It's just assumed Women will die in the back alleys of America if we restrict abortion They'll die from dangerous coat hanger abortions. We don't want that to happen. Do we what does that argument assume about the unborn? It assumes the unborn aren't human. How do we know that? Because unless you begin with the assumption the unborn aren't human what you're arguing is that because some people will die intentionally trying to kill others the state ought to make it safe and legal for them to do it But why should the law be faulted for making it more risky for one human to intentionally kill another innocent one? Should we legalize bank robbery so that it's safer for felons? This idea that we're just going to assume the unborn aren't human to get our case for abortion off the ground is Why abortion is so prevalent today? The culture has accepted the assumption without challenging it and our job as Christians Is to push that out into the light where it can be dealt with Ephesians 5 11 Paul tells us this do not cover evil deeds expose them One of the ways you expose them is to call out the assumptions that are in play and This this assumption that the unborn are not human like I said lies at the heart of virtually every argument You'll hear for abortion. We should trust women to make their own personal decisions Would anybody argue that way if we were talking about killing a toddler? No So why do they argue that way with the fetus because they assume the fetus is not one of us They haven't argued for it. They just assume it and That's a problem We're going to have to deal with if we're going to be effective ambassadors for Christ and be people Who actually bring light to this culture a lot of people do this on not just abortion? They do it when it comes to their views of religion and science What do we mean as Christians when we use the word faith? Give me some nominations of what you think that word would mean to a Christian. What do we mean by that? What's that trust what else depend Confidence What else assured hope belief that affects your behavior? I've heard five Absolutely excellent answers. You're well taught at this church. You know what I get in most Christian circles When I say what do you mean by faith? belief Belief in spite of evidence belief that transcends evidence That is nowhere taught in scripture Nowhere in scripture. Are you told to park your intellect at the door? Faith in scripture is not blind faith. It is not that I just believe it even though the evidence is against me That's something way different than what we see in scripture. I liked your answer. Faith is trust When I flew here, I had faith the airplane would get me here There were two guys in the cockpit with uniforms with hundreds of hours of flying It was an airline That has a reputation for safety It was flying within an American system that has an unbelievable system of safety in place That's why deaths from airline travel are almost non-existent In addition to that I was on a modern aircraft designed to handle adversity By the way, you're not going to die because the plane is flying through a thunderstorm You will everybody on the plane will think they're dying Which means it's an excellent point for you to stand up and say repent or burn You got five seconds and have a conversion But nobody's gonna die and they all deconvert upon landing of course, but you know now Was that faith? Yes, and I got on the plane and I like your your answer to it's It's faith that lives out. It behaves a certain way I had faith the plane would get there. I got on the plane and I flew to Orlando But my faith was not blind Not blind at all when you fly Southwest that's blind faith, but not Delta No, I'm kidding As I told those yesterday Delta stands for don't expect luggage to arrive, but Our faith is trust based on evidence, but the culture assumes what we mean by faith is a blind leap in the dark What do we mean by science the secular culture assumes doesn't argue for it assumes That if you can't touch it taste it feel it see it or hear it. It's not real only empirical truth counts as Science only science counts as true knowledge Anything else is mere subjective opinion. So when you talk about your faith or you talk about religion and ethics They think you're just talking Or do they assume rather that you're just talking about what you feel? Subjectively not what's true with a capital T But let me ask you a question What kind of statement is it when I say science is the only truth a scientific statement or a philosophic statement? Philosophic statement, which means the claim that science is the only truth is self-refuting. It literally destructs on itself You can't even do science without presupposing philosophy You have to presuppose that there's a real world out there and that my mind can make accurate contact with it That's not something you prove scientifically. That's a philosophical assumption You have to assume that you should report your data honestly. That's a philosophical concept You can't prove that empirically you see where we're going with this You can't even get science off the ground without doing philosophy and Yet the world we're in simply assumes Science is the only paradigm of truth and everything else is blind faith or subjective emotion of course There's one area where they don't seem too interested in science. You want to guess where it is? Not just gender. How about this? The science of embryology There's no pro-choice argument from science that works Only the pro-lifeside works from science third thing we need to do we need to present a Christ-centered gospel To a world That is a wash In being lost how many of you saw the movie Unforgiven? Clint Eastwood Does that name ring a bell? Okay, I just put a movie on your Sunday night family viewing list actually. It's not family viewing But it is a powerful movie Unbelievably powerful. It's a very dark Western. It's Clint Eastwood and I think it's actually his best role It's phenomenal Clint Eastwood is a seasoned assassin gunfighter and he has a young understudy follow him around known as the showfield kid and Will Money who is Clint Eastwood's character has kind of been mentoring this young kid and the young kid Kills his first guy a bad guy and He's just ecstatic about it Alated Did you see that will I blew those guys away? I mean that guy didn't even know it was coming He's sitting there in the outhouse, and I just nailed him, you know and then he starts to have second thoughts starts to drink the whiskey a little bit and he's like well Will I did I do the right thing? And then he says these words they had it coming will they had it coming and Will Money Clint Eastwood looks at this kid and utters these immortal words boy. We all got it coming There's your gospel right there We all got it coming When we go talk to lost people we're not judging them We're identifying their light condition to our own When people say to me or will you you're telling me if I don't believe in Jesus that I'm lost what you're saying I'm going to hell and my answer is only if you're as bad as I am because Jesus said we all got it coming in fact in Luke Chapter 12, I believe it is I'm going on memory here a Tower falls on some people Is it six or 12? I'll figure it out, but I know somebody's pulling out the smartphone right now And they're gonna give me the answer before we're done here, and that's all right A tower falls on some unsuspecting people and some folks asked Jesus about it And I think what they're trying to do is set him up to say oh those people were worse than all of us And they had it coming they deserve that Jesus says no Unless you repent you too will perish That's what Jesus said He didn't say those people were worse He said we all got it coming Unless we repent unless we turn to the only one who can save us James Montgomery Boyce one of my favorite Bible commentary or commentators wrote a series on the book of Romans That I love I've read through it And he says this in contrasting the believer's reference point with the secular world's reference point Boyce writes this I'm not okay You're not okay No one is okay, and the sooner we admit that we are not okay and turn to the one who knows that we are not But who offers us a way of salvation anyway the better off we will be Jesus does not excuse us. He forgives us He calls us sinners yet He says I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance The most important thing in life is to know that Jesus is able to save you from sin The second most important thing is to know that you require it our culture deals with sin By punting to moral relativism There's no right or wrong Only personal feelings you like chocolate ice cream. I like vanilla. Who are you to judge? What Boyce is saying here is That's not gonna work We're not okay and The reason I bring this up in large quarters of the Christian Church The way they deal with abortion It's to not deal with it There are spiritual leaders many of whom I've conversed with Who here's their here's their reply to the topic of abortion? I don't want to lay a guilt trip on Men and women who may have been involved in an abortion. I Want to spare them that guilt trip You know what my answer is to that? Pastor when you don't preach on abortion, you're not sparing people guilt You're sparing them healing Because unconfessed sin has them out of full fellowship with their Savior and what you're doing is Failing to point them to the only one who can deal with their true guilt and by covering this up You're not sparing anybody guilt. You're sparing people the only possible thing that can bring wholeness to their life repentance and belief on Jesus Christ We don't we don't spare people anything when we refuse to talk about sin We spare them the antidote because the antidote doesn't mean anything to them If I said to you right now, I Need all of you To take five deep breaths immediately or you're going to die because of an airborne disease and The only way to deal with it is to flood your system without our alcohol oxygen right away Yeah, alcohol would not be a good thing to flood your system with in the middle of a sanctuary Anywhere Are you gonna have do I have your attention at that point? Probably But what if I just said well, you know what you're probably out of breathe deep real quick And if you don't you might suffer from some discomfort and I rattle off some name of some illness You've never heard of do I have your attention then probably not But if I'm urgent and say if you don't do this right now You die. I will have your attention. It will be discomforting to you but I Will have your attention and if you follow the instructions you live Greg Coco puts it. Well the gospel is Not about Deciding you prefer chocolate over vanilla. It's about recognizing that if you don't take the medication you die Jesus is not a preference. He's insulin That's it The only way and the way a guilt-ridden a guilt-ridden culture comes to terms With abortion is not by us sweeping it under the rug. It's by us calling people what they are. They are sinners final point That we need to do Is we're going to have to be willing to love Even though it takes great cost and we get called names The cost of being pro-life is going up It's going up Doctors are being forced to refer or perform abortions or go out of business Crisis pregnancy centers who are geared to pro-life ministry in the state of California must now refer clients to abortion clinics or be forced out of business We are fast reaching a point where we're going to have to take a lot of heat and we will be called names You will be called an extremist you will be called intolerant And we're going to have to get very comfortable deciding we don't care what they say about us in prepping for this I reread Martin Luther King's letter from the Birmingham Jail Martin Luther King had one of the most profound understandings of human dignity you will ever uncover anywhere He got it In fact his whole Basis for arguing for human equality was based on man bearing the image of God the black man Equally bears that image therefore he equally deserves the recognition of rights from government He did not argue for it in a vacuum. He actually grounded his case very well in theology and philosophy and Martin Luther King in the letter from the Birmingham Jail Had just contacted clergy to try to get them to support his crusade for equal rights And the pastors wrote him and said you're an extremist Now keep in mind. He's in jail Swelting it out in jail in Birmingham. He doesn't even have anything to write on So he pulls together some tissue paper. That's all he had some napkins and he starts writing this masterpiece And here he responds to the charge that he's an extremist. I Mean, I can't improve on this. I'm just gonna read it He says but though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist by pastors As I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. What's not Jesus an extremist for love? Love your enemies bless them that curse you do good to them that hate you and pray for them Which despitefully use you and persecute you Was not Amos an extremist for justice when he wrote let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream Was not Paul an extremist for the gospel I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus was not Martin Luther an extremist when he said here I stand I cannot do otherwise so help me God and John Bunyan who said I will stay in jail to the end of my days Before I make a butchery of my conscience and Abraham Lincoln this nation cannot survive half lay half slave and half free and Thomas Jefferson we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal so Says King the question is not whether we will be extremists But what kind of extremists will we be? Extremists for hate or for love will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of Justice in that dramatic scene on Calvary's Hill three men were crucified We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime the crime of extremism Two were extremists for immorality and thus fell below their environment the other Jesus Christ was an extremist for love truth And goodness and thereby rose above his environment perhaps the south The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists Sign me up How about you? Let us be creative extremists for good Our world needs it By the way, when does Sunday school end? I was told 12. Is that right? Five minutes, okay, five minutes. I'll take a couple of questions By the way, if you fill out that card We will send you our training newsletter the five-minute pro-lifer just put it on in fact Just bring it up here when you're done or leave it on the aisle if you didn't get one raise your hand We'll get one to you Will mail you this quarterly it has training material in it that will help you defend your pro-life use and If you missed this weekend our website will have materials there for you and your church is going to post material from the conference as well What questions can I answer about anything? Yes? Yeah Yeah Sure And what Yeah Yeah Correct Excellent text To describe the human characteristics of the baby God's love For my input parts Company in my mother's room. I will praise you why I'm fearfully and wonderfully made Marvellous are your works and that my soul knows very well My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in secret and skillfully brought in the lowest part Your eyes saw my substance being yet And then your book they all were written the day is fashion for me when as yet there were none of them So God in these texts describing the humanity No, and that wasn't my argument my argument was not that Psalm 139 Can't be used but tactically when you're out there talking to people who are skeptical that that's going to be interpreted as a poetic passage Then what I say is go for a rock Solid Argument that you start with that they cannot dismiss and that is the one I gave that all humans have value because they bear the image of God because they bear the image of God you can't intentionally kill them shed innocent blood Therefore if the unborn are human the commands against shedding innocent blood apply to them as they do everyone else They cannot dismiss that argument then if you want to Later in the conversation take them directly to texts that make a positive Indication of the humanity of the unborn. I'm fine with that. My point isn't that those texts are irrelevant That's not at all my point. It's that when we deal with people who and by the way I do think there is a point to consider here all Scripture is the authoritative word of God However, not all scripture gets interpreted the same way we interpret poetry different than we interpret an epistle The hermeneutical principles differ so we don't necessarily take every detail in a poetic passage as literal For example, if we're going to teach on the doctrine of justification, we're going to go to Paul We're not going to go to the Old Testament in Psalms now We will see indications of justification in Psalms that we can draw from but our primary source is going to be Romans So therefore I would say be careful using Psalm 139 with people who Will rightly point out now you're going to build a whole doctrine on that if that's all we do I think we run into trouble and while I believe the word of God is authoritative and it does not come forth Void at the same time in scripture We're taught to be wise as serpents and gentle as doves and we're taught to love the Lord our God with our heart soul In mind to develop our intellects like Daniel and his three friends did in Babylon who were able to address a very ruthless dictator in a culture Absolutely antithetical to their own and they were able to wisely engage that culture tactically using the right arguments at the right time and God rates them up so I'm fine using that and pointing to that verse, but I will probably be tactically Shrewd when I'm dealing with folks out there Does that make sense my own experience and I'm not going to I mean I don't want to Take you out of that way of going if you want to go that way I will say this my experience has taught that when we deal with unbelievers who don't have a concept of sin the way We do don't necessarily see abortion as evil that I will go to that point, but it's not going to be the first thing I go to I'm going to engage them on some common ground I walked into a philosophy honors course at Cal State or at Sacramento State two weeks ago all Atheist students one pro-life student present and I was told going in they're gonna they're gonna come at you with fire I walked in there. I laid out a case for the pro-life view. I said folks I'm just gonna lay out a case for why I believe what I believe and I'm gonna give you my reasons for it Here's my syllogism. Here's my Support for that here are five bad ways people argue against my position and then I'll hear from you. I laid out my case Engage them back and forth with very nice Q&A that class gave me a huge ovation when the day was over and Two things happened. I didn't I didn't say to them abortions murder Here's what the word of God says if that was the opening words out of my mouth in that class What would have happened that day? The conversation would have been over that was it so what I did is I communicated biblical truth but I was shrewd as a serpent and What happened is our job is not to close the deal our job is to put a pebble in their shoe give them something to think about That night I got an email from the leader of the Christian ministry on campus who got me into that class He said one of the girls in that heard you this morning just emailed me and said that because of your talk She now realized she's been utterly inconsistent in how she's been living and the only way she can be consistent She fully embraces the pro-life position and by the way, she's going to start coming to our Christian fellowship groups now see I Think God uses that and God uses it powerfully