 Well, many of you are familiar with the historical figure Dietrich Bonhoeffer. And if you're not, I encourage you to read one of his biographies. I've personally enjoyed Eric Metaxas' biography called Bonhoeffer Pastor Martyr Prophet Spy. That's a heck of a biography, isn't that? Four words. I'd like a biography like that. Just four words to introduce you. Pastor Martyr Prophet Spy. And he was all of those things. And he started a group of believers that met together and they called themselves the Confessing Church. Now, this was during the Nazi regime. This was during the Holocaust, ladies and gentlemen. And they were some of the only Christian brothers and sisters who were standing against the totalitarian genocidal mania of Adolf Hitler. One of the reasons they called themselves the Confessing Church was because they were the only ones standing against the genocide of Jewish image-bearers of God. Think about how scandalous that insinuation is for a second. By calling themselves the Confessing Church, do you know what the insinuation was? All of these other German Christians who were silent, apathetic, or sometimes aiding and abetting the Nazis and killing the Jews weren't confessing real Christianity. That's a gnarly insinuation. Whatever Christianity you're confessing, if you don't stand against the genocide of Jewish image-bearers during the Holocaust, you might not be preaching the real Christ. That's a heavy insinuation. But don't worry, we're not political. So Eberhard Besky was one of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's best friends. He was a member of the Confessing Church. And Eberhard Besky wrote down one evening the position that Bonhoeffer and their brothers and sisters found themselves in as Christian dissidents in a political moment where politics was being used to legalize genocide. Brothers and sisters never forget the Holocaust was legal. So Eberhard Besky writes this one evening. He says, Bonhoeffer introduced us in 1935 to the problem of what we today call political resistance. The levels of confession and resistance could no longer be kept neatly apart. By confession they mean proclamation. So not confession of sins, but confessing something, proclaiming something. The escalating persecution of the Jews generated an increasingly intolerable situation, especially for Bonhoeffer himself. We now realize that mere confession, no matter how courageous, inescapably meant complicity with the murderers. Even though there would always be new acts of refusing to be co-opted, and even though we would preach Christ alone Sunday after Sunday. During the whole time, the Nazi state never considered it necessary to prohibit such preaching. Why should it? Maybe because they weren't preaching a robust gospel that demanded a Christian presence in the public square to say, you cannot murder image bearers of God. Maybe they weren't prohibiting that type of preaching because these churches were just confessing the right beliefs but not doing anything to stand against Adolf Hitler. Eberhard Besky continues. He says, thus we were approaching the borderline between confession and resistance. And if we did not cross this border, our confession was going to be no better than cooperation with the criminals. And so it became clear where the problem lay for the confessing church. We were resisting by way of confession, but we were not confessing by way of resistance. This is a unfortunately adequate description of much of the evangelical church in America today, ladies and gentlemen. Our resistance to the forces of evil, our resistance to legalized holocaust, legalized genocide against one million of God's precious unborn image bearers every year usually only manifests itself through confession. We say the right things. Like what? I'm pro-life, brother. I'm pro-life. Our church is pro-life. We make a one-time donation to the Pregnancy Resource Center every year, and we say every January around the sanctity of human life Sunday, we say we're pro-life. Confessing. Saying the right words. Our faith and our confession that we are pro-life and we believe that image bearers of God in the womb are intrinsically valuable and bear the same dignity as you and I ought to manifest itself through resistance, through actually doing something to stop the genocide of abortion. And unfortunately this confessing of pro-life beliefs, this orthodoxy that doesn't lead to orthopraxy, orthodoxy is right belief, right? Orthopraxy is right living. We're seeing this coming from more and more pulpits today on America and most recently friends Pastor Tim Geller from Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. Now Tim Keller has been called the C.S. Lewis of the 21st century. He has done an incredible job articulating the gospel in the 21st century and I believe many people are in the kingdom because of his preaching and his writings in the way that God has used him. But most recently his comments on abortion and the role of the Christian in politics to end abortion are scandalous and way off the reservation. Here's what Tim Keller said on Facebook recently. Regarding the Christian's role in politics and the church in politics. He says the Bible tells me that abortion is a sin and great evil. But it doesn't tell me the best way to decrease or end abortion in this country or which policies are most effective. The current political parties offer a potpourri of different positions on these and many, many other topics most of which the Bible does not speak to directly. This means when it comes to taking political positions, voting, determining alliances and political involvement, the Christian has liberty of conscience. He's saying that on the issue of abortion because the Bible doesn't say here's the policy that you should use to end abortion because it doesn't say that we have liberty of conscience. What does that mean? It means freedom to vote for whoever you want for whatever party you want. In short, God doesn't care about your vote. He didn't care about it. You have liberty to do whatever you want. He says Christians cannot say to other Christians that no Christian can vote for or every Christian must vote for unless you can find a biblical command to that effect. So, brothers and sisters, according to Tim Keller's reasoning, supporting the Democratic Party of the 1850s was acceptable for the Christian. You know the party of slavery and their domestic terrorist army, KKK. That was acceptable for Christians in the 1850s according to his reasoning here because the Bible doesn't tell us which policies are most effective in ending slavery, right? According to Pastor Tim Keller's reasoning, supporting Hitler and his regime was acceptable for German Christians because don't they have liberty of conscience too? Now, if Tim Keller rejects these suggestions as permissible for the Christian but he is indeed pro-life, then his own arguments are rendered false because abortion is wrong for the same reasons that slavery and the Holocaust were wrong. In each case, a government, your political betters denied personhood to image bearers of God and dehumanized them in order to justify their mistreatment or murder. They're wrong for the same reasons. In short, Pastor Tim Keller apparently believes that clerical silence or political neutrality in the face of child sacrifice is an acceptable means of evangelism because we can't get political. Now, you know why this is very interesting. Tim Keller wrote a very popular New York Times opinion editorial in 2018 called, How do Christians fit into a two-party system? They don't. That was the name of it. And he starts with from the inarguable premise that we all agree with. He starts with this premise that God is not a Republican or a Democrat. Okay, yes, amen, absolutely. Now, God is political, guess why? He's the king and he's a monarch and he's coming back and that should scare all of us to repentance. So God is political in that sense. But yeah, he doesn't fit into our political system, of course. Of course, that makes total sense. He starts from that premise and then he says, however, on the issue of racism and slavery, Tim Keller says that Christians in the 1850s who refused to act politically to end slavery who said, we're not political. He says regarding those Christians that they were supporting the social status quo. What was the social status quo? Slavery. And then he says, quote, to not be political is to be political because you were not using the political tools God had given you in a constitutional republic where we the people are the sovereign and using those tools to help end slavery for goodness sake. But abortion, which is wrong for the same reasons that slavery is wrong and kills way more human beings and way more black brothers and sisters than slavery ever did. He says, you have liberty of conscience to vote for whoever you want. So if it was wrong to not vote in 1850 because by not voting you were ensuring that slavery continued, wouldn't it have been a greater moral wrong to vote for the Democratic Party of the 1850s, which was the party of slavery? Of course. Today's Democratic Party says the same thing that the Democratic Party said in the 1850s, which is that there's a new class of human beings that aren't persons. That party said blacks were not persons in 1850s and now they say babies are not persons in 2020. Hmm. But don't worry, we're not political. Tim Keller has forgotten what William Wilberforce, that great British abolitionist, taught us when he said that a private faith that does not act in the face of oppression is no faith at all. Hmm. So maybe we can confess the right words but do nothing to resist the evil. Does the Bible have something to say about our faith kind of leading to works? First, John 3.18, dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. James 2.18, someone will say, you have faith and I have works. Show me your faith apart from your works and I will show you my faith by my works. And we've recently seen this coming from unfortunately brothers and sisters, John Piper as well, who's been one of the most outspoken pro-life pastors in the country and recently decided that it's okay to just not vote. Despite the fact that we have the most radical pro-abortion ticket in American political history. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris would legalize abortion through point of birth, codify it into Roe v. Wade so no state can pass pro-life laws, institute pre-clearance guidelines so the federal government has to approve whether states can pass pro-life laws, overturn the Hyde Amendment which keeps federal dollars from funding abortion through Medicaid reimbursements and is responsible for saving over 2 million babies, expand the size of the Supreme Court with justices who all are pro-abortion and have the judicial philosophy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, make DC a state to get two more Democratic senators and a permanent majority in the Senate and end the filibuster so those pesky pro-life Republicans can't pass the Democrats from passing radical abortion legislation. Let me make something very clear, the Joe Biden and Kamala Harris political ticket is to the unborn what Hitler was to the Jews. And unborn children will be targeted and rounded up for slaughter like no other time in American political history. But don't worry, we're not political. So John Piper writes an article very recently saying that because Trump is so prideful, you know, that's a sin and the sin of pride eventually leads to death. Yes, all sins eventually lead to death if you don't repent and turn to God. But his premise is that because pride eventually leads to death and Trump is just so prideful that that's kind of morally equivalent to killing a million babies a year. And so Christians can't vote for that type of sin or else we'll lose our witness. So we should just not vote. His suggestion is very clear. It's like maybe it's okay to just not vote at all. According to Piper's reasoning friends, if Abraham Lincoln had instead been Donald Trump with all his pride, boastfulness and rude comments but was promising to end the scourge of slavery, Piper couldn't have voted for him. Because Abraham Lincoln in my thought experiment would be too prideful and bombastic to warrant the vote of Christians to end the institution of slavery. Well, try explaining your political piety to the whipped men and women whose enslavement and lashes don't bother you enough to vote for a sinful man who will free them. But perhaps that's the point, brothers and sisters, because John Piper would never defend political neutrality in 1860 because the cries and bondage of God's image bearers crying out to him would override any concern with matters of personal sin from the president. That doesn't mean that personal sin doesn't matter. It just means when you have a sinful man who's saying, I will help end legalized genocide. It is a good thing to vote for that person. It is a good thing to end abortion or to end slavery. But brothers and sisters, the silent screams of our pre-born brothers and sisters will never reach Piper's ears because they're silent. So he won't have to give an account to them as to why he refuses to vote for their protection. This moral and spiritual confusion on abortion, friends, has unfortunately become par for the course among many Christian leaders and pastors today who, like Tim Keller, don't believe they have a political duty to end abortion. And I can testify to this confusion because I speak to thousands of young people and adults all over the country every year. And this moral fog that so many of our nation's pastors are living in is being infected to the next generation. You know the other side understands the importance of winning the minds of your young people? Did you know they understand that the battle for the future of America is the battle over the posterity of America? The future of America. America's young people. They understand this. This is why the former president of Planned Parenthood, Cecile Richards, teamed up with one of the co-founders of Black Lives Matter, Alicia Garza, in 2019, to launch a political training action organization. And their express goal was to train up 2 million young women to be political abortion activists leading up to the 2020 election. Wow, big number, big commitment. Why won't we do for good what the other side will do for evil? Why is the other side more committed to death than the bride of Christ is committed to protecting life? The Santa Barbara Unified School District very recently, just a few months ago, released their new health-connected teen talk. Sounds good, huh? Accepted encourages radical sexual acts and provides young women an abortion clinic locator online so that they know where to go to kill their baby and teaches and coaches them how to avoid parental notification laws so they can murder their parents' grandchildren without their consent. Health-connected teen talk. Don't worry, we're not political. We can't talk about that as a church. Well, the other side is not concerned over partisan labels and they're engaging in the political work necessary to attack the pre-born and pro-lifers who seek to protect them. So friends, while our politics seem to be falling apart and the church seems to be laying down her arms and her spiritual duties, we cannot. We must engage and we must resist the evil of abortion and the evil of our times by acting, by doing something. We can't just come here and say, we love you prenatal Christ who entered human history in a womb, but we're not going to get involved in the political life to ensure that other babies created in your image who are dwelling in the same womb that you once entered human history in are protected. So to engage in resistance and to influence the culture for life, we as Christians must bring moral, spiritual and political clarity to the issue of abortion. And if you have moral clarity and you have spiritual clarity, it ought to lead to political clarity. But unfortunately in the church we can talk about the gospel and we can talk about morality, but we shouldn't talk about how to promote those things in the public sphere to encourage human flourishing and to restrain evil and promote the good. And this is important friends because abortion is here to stay as long as millions of Christians remain apathetic to the genocide of God's image bearers. As long as large swaths of Christians in America confess pro-life beliefs but do little or nothing to stop the killing, then babies will continue to be starved, and dismembered. So how do we bring moral clarity on this issue? This is important because the other side said what? That abortion is a deeply complex issue. It's very complex. So it's best left to women's own conscience. Just let the women decide. Now this is interesting to me because these are typically the very people who say that the unborn baby is actually just a blob of insensate skin tissue and abortion is reproductive health care. Abortion just gently suctioned out the contents of the womb. Now these are all words that the left in the abortion industry uses to describe abortion. So question, if the baby is not a baby and it's just a blob of tissue and abortion doesn't kill a human, it just gently suctioned out the contents of the womb then why is abortion complex? It wouldn't be complex in that point. There would be nothing morally complex about that. Nobody comes back from having a tumor removed and says, my body, my choice. That's my reproductive bodily autonomy. And nobody says, you killed a human being. Dude, it was a polyp. It was a tumor. So if the child is morally indistinguishable from a polyp and abortion is just health care then abortion is not complex. So the very people who say abortion is very complex and should be left to women's own conscience they're the ones who provide the belief system that would lead to saying it's not complex. What does that tell you? Eternity is written on the heart of man. They know at a deeper level they're dealing with something that runs to the very roots of our Republic and to the very roots of what it means to be human. So how do we bring moral clarity to this issue, brothers and sisters? Well, we make our case for life. We stand and defend our position because the other side is involved in defending their position and in winning the minds of your young people with their ideas. Are we as equipped to defend our ideas about life as the other side is to defend their ideas about death? I think many times not. And I think many times the passion to defend the pro-choice position is outstripped by the passion to defend the pro-life position within the church. Believers, Christians who say that our Savior was once a fetus and entered human history in a womb. Shouldn't we be the ones predisposed to protecting life in the womb? If that's where our Savior first dwelt and dwelt safely and whose presence in that womb we're about to celebrate this advent, how do we defend life? Well, there's only one question we have to answer to bring moral clarity to, I know what feels like a seemingly complex debate and my hope this morning is to provide moral clarity on this so you leave as morally clear on the issue of abortion as we all are on racism or slavery or sexism that this issue would be so clear in your minds and you'd know how to defend it. So there's only one question we need to answer, brothers and sisters, to determine if abortion is morally complex or morally simple. I want you to imagine for a second that you're standing at your kitchen sink cleaning dishes one evening and as you're standing there cleaning your dishes because God hasn't blessed you with a dishwasher your three-year-old toddler walks up behind you. Now your back is turned and you hear your three-year-old toddler say mommy or daddy, can I kill this? Now what would be the first question out of your mouth in response to your toddler's question, can I kill this? What is it? Kill what? If you turn around and little Timmy's holding your cockroach dad said here son, here's a hammer, don't tell mom. But if he's holding the neighbor kitty I hope you'd have a different reply unless you're a vindictive cat hater in which case I guess no judgment. But if you turn around and he was holding his little sister by the throat I mean you need counseling, brother, right? So you couldn't answer the question can I kill this until you first answered the question what is it? Similarly on the issue of abortion we cannot honestly answer the question can we kill the unborn until we first answer the question what is the unborn? What is in the womb? And pro-life Christians like you and I we know how to answer this question and we answer it using science and philosophy. Science answers the question of humanity. Is it human? What is it? And philosophy answers the question of personhood. Does it have rights? Now notice I'm not going to cite Bible verses to make my case. I can do that and we're going to talk about some later. But if all truth is God's truth then we should be able to defend and articulate God's truth in every sphere of human knowledge. And if we're trying to persuade those in our lives who don't pledge allegiance to Christ to become pro-life are they going to change their minds if we just read them Bible verses? Probably not. Now the Holy Spirit can still convict them but we need to be able to offer a defense as to why everyone should be pro-life and everyone should be involved in ending abortion even if you're not a Christian. So what is the unborn? The science of embryology, friends, teaches us that from the moment of conception the unborn child is a distinct living and whole human being. Distinct, living and whole. I didn't come up with these terms. You'll find these terms in any embryology textbook on any university campus in the country except those that may be banned in convenient truths that might lead their students to become pro-life. What does the science of embryology teach us? So what the unborn child is distinct. What does that mean? Well, you know what distinct means, right? It means that we're unique. It means that I'm not you and you're not me. There's only one of you. You're distinct. So if the unborn child is distinct from the moment of conception what does that mean as it's applied to the issue of abortion? I guess it means the body in her body is not her body if the unborn is distinct from the mother. And doesn't this make sense at a self-evident level? Because do we really want to admit that pregnant women have 20 fingers and 20 toes, two brains, two hearts, two different DNA codes, maybe two different blood types existing simultaneously? Oh, and what if mom's pregnant with a boy? Now pregnant women have male genitalia, right? Because her body, her choice, there's only one body involved. That's what I've been told. Okay, well, now we've entered the realm of insanity, right? We're through the looking glass now. So maybe we should go back and re-examine our ideas. The unborn child is distinct. Secondly, the unborn child is living. Okay, this means that dead things don't grow. And the unborn child meets all of the requirements for a living thing that we learned in high school biology. It also means that unborn children develop themselves from within. Pregnant mothers do not rub their bellies and say, don't forget to grow today, baby. Babies do that by themselves, independent of the wishes of their parents so they're living. And the unborn child is whole. And this might be the most important scientific concept we discussed today. What does it mean to be a whole human being? It doesn't mean that you're functioning at a full capacity. It doesn't mean that you have all the functions and characteristics that we as humans will acquire given time. It simply means that you have everything you need to realize your full growth and development as a participating member of the human species. For example, I'm 29 and I'm not 40. Okay? Now, my wife recently found out that men don't reach their mental peak until they're 40s. And she said, hallelujah, Lord. Thank you. So she's really holding out hope for me so you can, I guess you can send up some prayers for me. But what I mean is that there are aspects of my development I have not realized yet, correct? Does that mean I'm not a whole human being now? No, I'm a whole human being now. Your grandchildren or children have not realized the aspects of physical, mental, and emotional development that you have realized. Does that mean that they're not whole human beings now? Those of you with teenagers don't answer the question. So we'll all find ourselves on a different tick mark on the continuum of human development. But when did that continuum begin? The moment of conception. From the moment of conception, there's a distinct living and whole human being. This is what the science of embryology teaches us. Here's another example. You guys remember the old Polaroid cameras? Spits a photo out as soon as you take it and you patiently wait and shake it. Okay. I want you to picture the development of the child kind of like a Polaroid camera. If you got a picture of a beautiful sunset down in Huntington Beach, most gorgeous sunset you've ever seen and you take it with your Polaroid camera and the photo spits out and you start to shake it and you're so excited to see this beautiful sunset on paper. What if at that point I walked up to you, I ripped the photo out of your hands, I tore it up in little pieces and I threw it in the ocean. You might be a little upset with me, right? But what if I said, brother, sister, calm down, chill out. That actually wasn't a picture of a sunset. It was just a black smudgy on a white piece of paper. Right? And you're giggling and you should because what would you probably tell me? Brother Seth, listen, the sunset was already there. We just couldn't see it yet. Everything that was necessary for that photo to realize its full development was already present when the photo got spit out. It just needed time. That's what I mean when I say that from the moment of conception there's a distinct living and whole human being that already has everything they need to realize their full growth and development is one of us even if we can't see him or her yet. They just need time. That's what it means to be a whole human being. This is science, right? This is not Bible verses, this is not religion. This is not political partisanship. This is the science of embryology. And I find it highly hilarious and ironic that the Democratic Party calls themselves the party of science. Follow the science. That's why we need to shut down your businesses so you have to drain your 401Ks to buy groceries for your family because the science, that's why we kill babies through point of birth because the science says they're not babies. That's why boys can become girls and girls can become boys because it's science. Okay, well, science says that from the moment of conception there's a distinct living and whole human being and that's when we began. So you want to answer the question what is the unborn to restore moral clarity on the issue of abortion? That's your answer. Now, we make that case and what do many of our pro-choice friends tell us? Okay, all right, pro-life Christian, you're right. I'd be a fool to say that the science is wrong. Okay, it's a human, sure. But you see, it's not a person. Anytime someone tells you that I want you to ask them this question, what's the difference? And have you ever met a human that's not a person? Because I haven't. That's what I want you to tell them. Now, I think your historical blinkers should be going off right now, amen. Is this the first time your political betters, and in particular one political party has said that some humans are not persons? Oh, yeah. That was basically the platform of the Democratic Party in the 1850s. This is what Nazi said about Jews, humans but not persons. And the Hezgerich, the German Supreme Court, said that Jews are not persons. Dred Scott said that blacks are not persons. And in 1973, our United States Supreme Court said that babies in the womb are not persons. Now, you and I would never separate those terms, human from person. We would use those synonymously, human, person, person, human, whatever. But those with a vested political interest to dehumanize one class of human beings will always separate the term human from person. And they'll say that these class of humans are not persons because they haven't realized certain functions or capacities that are necessary for rights. Yikes. So what they will do is they will create functional checkboxes that they say a human must meet in order to have rights. So if you don't have the right skin color, if we say that you're intellectually inferior, then maybe those are our checkboxes to deny you personhood. And now pro-choicers say, well, the baby's so small and they're less developed and, you know, they're dependent on the mother. They can't live by themselves. So those are my modern checkboxes to deny a new class of human beings personhood and rights before the law. But bigotry always has one thing in common. It denies personhood to its victims and uses euphemisms to make their mistreatment sound more acceptable. That's why they called slavery economic rights. And it's why they called the Holocaust ethnic cleansing. And it's why they call abortion reproductive justice and women's rights in healthcare. Because the reality is far too heinous to show the American public. So how do we defend the personhood or value of the child? Again, we believe that a human is a person, a person is a human, there's no difference. But because your pro-choice friend just told you it's a human but not a person and so we can still abort them through all nine months of pregnancy, what is your response? Here's our response. Here's our case for the value of the child. It goes like this. There is no essential or value-giving difference in the born human you are today that can justify killing you at that earlier stage. There's no value-giving difference between you the unborn and you the born that can be used to kill you the unborn. Now does that mean that there's no differences between fetuses and teenagers? No, of course not. And if your mother has that 12-week photo of you at your first ultrasound when you were still doing backflips in the womb and we held it up to your face today, could we identify any differences? Of course, you look different. There's no difference between unborn people and born people. I'm saying none of them matter and none of the differences between unborn people and born people can be used to kill unborn people. But what are the differences between unborn people and born people? This is actually very important friends because it's the very differences between us in the womb and us out of the womb that the pro-choice movement uses to justify killing you in the womb. Does that make sense? Just like they once said, we're not the only ones who can treat us so we can mistreat them. Now they say, but babies, they're also so different than us. I mean, look, they look so different than us. Only a Republican rube would think that there's any human equality between the child and the woman myself with my reproductive rights. What are the differences? Well, they're summarizing the acronym SLED. S-L-E-D. Size, level of development, environment, and dependency. Let's go through these briefly. You see, because by killing you, I've prevented you from reproducing. That's why I called it reproductive health care. It makes sense if you're woke. Wait a second. Clearly, our rights have nothing to do with our size, right? Because where do our rights come from? I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen, you're not a person and if I kill you, I can call it reproductive health care. You see, because by killing you, I've prevented you from reproducing. That's why I called it reproductive health care. It makes sense if you're woke. Because where do our rights come from? Our human nature, the fact that we're all human beings. And when did our human nature begin? The moment we were human. And when did we become human? The moment of conception. So size has no bearing on our rights. What about level of development? Yes, the inborn child is less developed than the newborn child. And the pro-choicer says, well, we can kill them because they're less developed. Because they're not aware. They're not outside the womb. They don't have any desires. You see, they start coming up with functional checkboxes that they say the unborn must meet to be a person. But what is necessary for the child to realize those capacities, those functions, those characteristics? Time or a level of development. They will realize that given their development. So if we can kill unborn children for being less developed than us, can grandparents kill their grandchildren for being less developed than them? Because grandparents are more developed. In fact, the difference of development between toddlers and grandparents isn't that a significantly greater time of development than the difference between the fetus and the toddler? Of course. Because they're all human still. And that life began at the moment of conception. What about environment or location? Yes, the baby is located in a very unique environment. It's called a womb. By the way, we're all former womb dwellers. That's where we all came from. And as Ronald Reagan once aptly put it, I've noticed everyone who's for abortion has already been born. And our pro-choice friends go, what a stupid, pithy little saying. No, it's actually quite ironic. It is ironic you sanctioned the slaughter of children in a womb you once came from. And in which you were protected. How about a hallelujah for the fact that all of our mothers were pro-life? So it is ironic. But where one is has no bearing on who one is. You follow me? So the Democratic Party once said that blacks are not persons because they are the property of their plantation owners whose land they live on. And now they say that babies are not persons because they're the property of their mothers whose bodies they live in. But where one is has no bearing on who one is. We have rights and dignity and value regardless of where we find ourselves. So how does a six inch journey through the birth canal during childbirth create an insensate blob of skin tissue into a baby? I guess the fetus fairy flies up and sprinkles magical personhood conferring fairy dust on the child as it exits the birth canal. And when that last toe see if you're woke this is what you'll know. When the last toe leaves the birth canal oh my gosh it's a baby! It's a person! This is full-scale insanity because where one is has no bearing on who one is. And maybe you're aware of a heinous type of abortion we used to perform called partial birth abortions. Where you deliver a baby by their feet and pull them out of their mother before they were supposed to be born and when the legs and torso were flailing around outside the womb but the head and shoulders were still in the birth canal. I'm going to speak graphically right now because I'm not going to have anything to do with the euphemistic bigotry that calls abortion reproductive health care. While half the child is still in the birth canal you would take scissors and shove them into the back of the neck and then you'd open the scissors and you would create a hole in the back of the head then you would stick a vacuum suction catheter tube into the back of the baby's head while it's still in the mother's birth canal and you would suck the brains out. It's the closest thing to a French guillotine for the unborn. Want to know who voted in two different Supreme Court legal decisions to keep that type of abortion legal in our country? Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Feminist slay queen? That's not for women at their most vulnerable stage of development. Luckily this type of abortion is now illegal but why do I even talk about that? Because they say that if you're in the womb in that environment that location you're not a person with rights but what if half the baby's out? I guess the legs and the torso were persons but the head was still an insensate blob of tissue. Where one is has no bearing on who one is. What about dependency? The last difference between unborn people and born people? Yes, the baby's dependent on the mother and in the first trimester and early second trimester that unborn child cannot survive apart from their dependency on their mother. But tell me something, does that dependency stop after birth? What happens if you leave an infant in a crib and do nothing? The baby dies and you're charged with infanticide as the parents. But what if the mom says to the judge in a court of law, I don't have a choice? My breasts, my choice. I don't have to nurse that infant because they're dependent on me. Will that argument hold up in a court of law? No. In fact, the judge might say something like this. In America, a country built on the idea of natural rights to life, you as a parent have a greater obligation to care for those who are more vulnerable and are in greater need. We as a society have greater responsibilities for those in greater need. The more dependent you are, the more deserving you are of my support. No. But no, we flip that on its head, don't we? And with abortion rights, we say actually baby, the more dependent you are on me, it gives me the greater right to kill you. So if we can kill unborn children because they're dependent on their mothers, can we kill born people who are dependent on heart pacemakers, kidney machines, insulin, how many people could we have just justified killing in this room? Those of you dependent on those various things. Who wants to get on board with killing those people? Of course not, because our rights don't come from our dependency. They come from our human nature, which began at the moment of conception. So notice, size, level of development, environment, and dependency are the only four differences between you the unborn and you the born. And if we accept those differences without justifications to kill the unborn, they can be turned right around and used to justify killing born people as well. The only way to maintain human equality, this idea that we kind of care about in America is to ground our human rights in the only thing we have in common, a human nature. Because we don't have anything else in common, do we? We don't have skin color in common, we don't have ethnicity, we don't have intellectual prowess, we don't have athletic talent, we don't have artistic talent, we don't have any of these things in common. The nature that we have in common, that's the only way that we can maintain human equality. So notice, I've just made a case for the humanity and dignity or rights of the unborn child and I haven't cited a single Bible verse to make my case. But am I communicating biblical truth nonetheless? Yes, that these are intrinsically valuable human beings from the moment of conception and have a right to life. So we must bring moral clarity to the issue of abortion, friends. Secondly, we must bring spiritual clarity. We think that one would lead to the other, but it often doesn't. Because many of our progressive brothers and sisters in the church today insist something like this, maybe you've heard this, because the Bible doesn't strictly condemn abortion, Christian shouldn't either. Have you heard this silly saying, Christian should speak where the Bible speaks and be silent where the Bible's silent? That's a bunch of bleep. And I'm going to tell you why right now. Did you know there's a lot of things the Bible doesn't condemn? There's a lot of things the Bible doesn't condemn. Should we be silent on all of them? For example, the Bible doesn't condemn forced female circumcision. I guess if a country started doing that, we shouldn't speak out against it, right? Because the Bible doesn't condemn it. The Bible doesn't condemn lynching homosexuals. But is that wrong and should we speak out against it? Yeah, especially because some Muslim countries are doing that right now. But the Bible doesn't condemn it, brother. The Bible doesn't have anything to say about cloning or genetically engineered babies. Should we not reach spiritual clarity on those questions? Of course we can. And our progressive brothers and sisters who claim that they're pro-choice because they're Christian would probably say something like this to us. Brother, sister, let me explain to you. See, the Bible provides a theological foundation for us to build upon to establish spiritual clarity on a whole range of moral questions. Uh-huh. That would apply to the issue of abortion as well. God has given his people all we need to develop spiritual clarity on the issue of abortion. And the reason I talk about this because I know you don't need this. I know you have spiritual clarity on abortion. But many of our progressive brothers and sisters in the church today have been full-scale apologists for the Joe Biden, Kamala Harris political ticket, the most radical pro-abortion ticket in American political history. They will say things like, well, I'm, you know, I'm not pro-life, I'm whole life. We need to protect all lives. And so therefore, because I believe the Democratic Party is going to say, well, we're going to murder babies, quality of life outside the womb. We're going to murder babies in the womb because that's what you should really do if you're compassionate in the Christian. There's a lot of spiritual confusion in the church right now on the topic of abortion. And this is coming from people, ready, who claim to have moral clarity, who claim to confess the right beliefs, but do nothing to resist the evil of abortion. Many of my friends that I went to a Christian college with voted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. They said, I'm pro-life. They said, I'm a Christian, I'm pro-life. But, you know, that's why I joined the new group pro-life evangelicals for Biden, because, you know, they're going to put in policies that will decrease abortions, and so that's what pro-lifers should really do. Have you heard of their new group, by the way? It's called Fiscal Conservatives for Karl Marx. Oh, wait, that doesn't make a lot of sense. Pro-life evangelicals for Biden. Hmm. So these people in our lives, many of whom you probably do life with say that they're Christian and they're pro-life, but they just voted for the murder of the unborn. I think we need to return to Scripture and develop some spiritual clarity on abortion, yeah? So what premises or truths can we draw out from Scripture to develop spiritual clarity on the issue of abortion for our brothers and sisters who are so confused? Well, there's a couple. The first one is called the Amago Day, the image of God, the very beginning of the human story, right? In Genesis, God creates man and woman as his image. In the image of God, he creates them. Male and female, he creates them. And we get so used to this word, right? Amago Day, image bearer. I fear sometimes that we forget exactly the beauty of what this means, purely out of familiarity with this term. What does it mean to be an image bearer of God? It means that the creator of the universe who stood before all time in perfect union with himself, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, sat around and said, let's have some fun, Lord, and starts breathing out the Milky Way, dropping oceans, laughing animals into existence, and then makes you as the peak and pinnacle of his creation more valuable than anything else he has created and gives you stewardship of everything he's made and says, have fun with it, children, it's all yours. I made it all for you. Do something with it. The divine spark of the creator of the universe resides in your very soul. And that divine spark was with you at the moment of conception. That's what it means to be an image bearer of God. So if Scripture teaches that all human beings are created in the image of God, and what did we just learn about the unborn from science, that they're what? Human beings. Then what would follow? The unborn child is an image bearer of God. This is why you got the prenatal John the Baptist doing backflips in the uterus when Mary walks into the room pregnant with the creator of the universe, dwelling in a womb that he once knit together and in which he was dwelling. If that doesn't blow your mind as a Christian as we're about to celebrate, right? This advent sees in the incarnation. I don't know what will. This creator of the universe putting on fetal flesh and dwelling in a womb that he once knit together himself and subjected himself to danger, to be abused and to eventually have his skin ripped from his body and abuse for our sake. So the unborn is an image bearer of God. What's the second truth we could pull out from Scripture to develop spiritual clarity on abortion? Well, what are the greatest commandments in Scripture? Love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself. In fact, these are so important to God that he says what? All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. And if you obey these two, you've got them all. You're good. Is the unborn our neighbor? If the unborn is a human, then the unborn is a neighbor. And isn't this what made the question of the lawyer in the parable of the Good Samaritan so offensive? Do you remember? He approaches Christ and says, What must I do to inherit eternal life? It's an important question, right? It's probably a question we should ask all the time. Jesus says, Well, what is written in the law? How do you read it? And he nails the answer. He says, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. Nailed it! Boom, MDiv. You like that hermeneutic, Lord? And Jesus says, You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live. And what did the lawyer say? In seeking to justify himself, he said to Jesus, And who is my neighbor? He was my neighbor. I guess he just didn't know. He must have forgot. I mean, he just summarized all the law and the prophets down to two and a stroke of theological brilliance. But he probably just forgot who his neighbor was, right? Hmm. The lawyer friends is trying to create categories of neighbor and non-neighbor in order to shirk himself of the responsibility of loving those he doesn't want to. He just asked Jesus, What must I do to inherit eternal life? So what is he doing? He's trying to figure out how he can get into heaven and still hate certain people. Who is my neighbor? What an offensive question to ask the creator of the universe. He knew that every human being was his neighbor. You cannot tell your neighbor you love them, but that it also should be legal to murder them. That's not how this works. Why do I say that? Because many of our progressive brothers and sisters say that they're Christian and they're pro-life, but they will vote for the murder of the pre-born. If you do that, you are not pro-life. Now, I can't judge your salvation. That's only what God can do. But you're not pro-life if you vote for the murder of the pre-born. Just like you couldn't have been for the rights of your black brothers and sisters in 1850 by voting for Stephen Douglas, the racist Democrat who ran against Abraham Lincoln. The unborn is an image bear and the unborn is our neighbor. But friends, how are we to love a neighbor that our country says it's legal to kill through point of birth and whose deaths you're forced to fund through your tax dollars? That would be a good question to ask. Lord, how do we love a neighbor that our country said we can murder and that is legal and it's fine? And they call it reproductive healthcare and reproductive justice and they force you to fund it. Now, there would be many ways to love that neighbor, amen. We see many manifestations in the pro-life movement of ways to love the pre-born and their mothers and fathers. And for the most part, I'm on board with all of them. I never condone violence, of course. But what would be the first and most important way to love a neighbor that it was legal to kill? I know past laws saying it's illegal to kill them and you can't murder image bearers of God in a womb that our savior once dwelled in and in which we all escaped safely. So if you have moral clarity and you have spiritual clarity, brothers and sisters, that must translate to political clarity. We would not accept the validity of a pastor saying in 1850, oh, I have moral clarity on slavery. It's a blot on our nation and these are image bearers of God. But you have liberty of conscience to vote for the Democratic Party if you want, the party of the KKK and slavery because we're not political. Who would look up to a pastor like that today who said that on slavery? No one. And no one would go to that church. But people like John Piper and Tim Keller are saying the same thing about our pre-born neighbors. They're saying that they're image bearers, that they're neighbors, and that they're pro-life. But that you cannot vote or you have freedom to vote for the very party profiting off of instituting the genocide in the first place. And we all know what party that is. So moral and spiritual clarity, friends, all to lead to political clarity. I read you the quote from Tim Keller when he said, Christians cannot say to other Christians no Christian can vote for or every Christian must vote for. He says we're not allowed to say that to one another. Now, if we were still a unified country, unified on these basic natural rights, the first one being what, the right to life, if we were still unified on those things, then I might agree with him. If there was one party that wasn't advocating for transgender bathroom laws, ruining women's sports, saying boys can become girls and girls can become boys, and Joe Biden will say that transgender eight-year-old boys who think their girls have rights at a town hall, which means that if they have rights and the parents say, son, Timmy, you're not a girl, and we're not going to chop off your genitalia and pump you full of chemically castrating drugs, that the government will come in and remove the child because they have transgender rights. If a party wasn't doing those things and murdering a million babies a year and forcing you to fund it and calling it reproductive justice, then yeah, maybe that would be good to say that Christians cannot say to other Christians who they can or cannot vote for. But that's not the world we live in. We live in a world where one political party says that you can murder a baby through point of birth, and Andrew Cuomo and Ralph Northam, the governor of New York and Virginia, will come out and legalize that and codify Roe v. Wade into state law so that you can do that. Well, but we're not political, right? The other side friends have no qualms about being perceived as partisan. They don't care if we think they're partisan hacks, and they will engage in the political work necessary to accomplish their goals. And what are their goals? To attack the pre-born, to profit off of their deaths and to force you to fund it. The church needs to abandon their obsession with avoiding partisan labels and be obedient to Christ by standing in the public square and saying, Lord, I will honor you by using my vote, my voice, and these political tools where we the people are the sovereign, and Lord, I'm going to use these to honor you and act in such a way that will end the slaughter of your baby image bearers who are being ripped apart in the womb. Now, that doesn't mean that we make an idol of politics. That doesn't mean that we weaponize our faith for political goals. It means none of that. Our allegiance is to Christ. But that should have some bearing on the political life. If it's legal to murder a neighbor, the best way is to make it illegal to murder a neighbor. And how do you make it illegal to murder a neighbor? You vote, and you have to be involved in the political sphere because if we aren't, others will be. And this is why the church has accepted this lie that we're not political, but we've abdicated our responsibility to be salt and light in the culture, to promote righteousness and restrain evil. So guess what happened when the church did that? People who hate God filled in those institutions. People who hate God ran for public office. And this is why California now leads the country in abortions, in transgender bathroom laws and the most radical sexual education anywhere in the country. And California tends to function as a bellwether, meaning whatever debauched policies we come up with tend to roll over into other states. But don't worry, just don't be political. Just let one side fill in those political offices to murder the pre-born. There's no such thing as not being political in a constitutional republic where you're the sovereign. We don't have a king, you're the king. So when we have greater power, we have greater responsibility. Sounds like Spider-Man's uncle. And it's true, we have more political power than any other person in any country in human history. So we have greater responsibility and to use that power in a way that could quite literally end the genocide of God's baby image-bearers. And yet Tim Keller says, God doesn't care about your vote. Because you have liberty of conscience to vote however you want. Brothers and sisters, let me tell you something. I can guarantee you that a vote that could end the genocide of baby image-bearers is a vote God cares deeply about. And he would want you to use that in a way to protect his children. Amen. The Bible commands us to hold back those staggering towards slaughter. Proverbs 24-11. The Bible tells us to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves. Proverbs 31-8. The Bible tells us in James that whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. If we have the ability to use our vote to end abortion, we should do that. That is the right thing to do. Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said that silence in the face of evil is itself evil. He said, not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act. And God will not hold us guiltless. So there's no such thing as moral or spiritual neutrality on the killing of innocent human beings. So friends, what can you do? Well, we obey Scripture and we love our neighbors. But practically, what does this look like? You remember in response to the question, what must I do to be saved and who is my neighbor? Jesus tells the parable of the good Samaritan, where a man is traveling on the road and he's beaten, he's mugged, he's robbed, he's left for dead. As he's sitting on the side of the road, bleeding out and dying, two pastors walk by, don't they? They walk by on the other side of the road. Maybe they felt compassion. Maybe they confessed an anti-mugging worldview. But it didn't evidence itself in works. They didn't do anything to resist the evil of what had happened to this man. Many of us, friends, many of our pastors, they walk by on the other side of the road of places called abortion clinics, where like the Levite and the priests, they know that image-bearers of God are being abused and repped limb from limb. But you see, they had to get to church to prep their sermon. We had to get home to cook dinner. So we walk by on the other side of the road where innocent image-bearers of God are being murdered. Many of us confess the right pro-life beliefs, but we do nothing to resist the evil of abortion. The Good Samaritan, by the way, didn't stop to preach the gospel to the bleeding victim. He didn't stop to look at the bleeding victim on the side of the road and say, Repent and be saved! He bandaged his wounds. He poured on oil and wine. He put them on his own donkey. He nursed them back to health. He took them to the inn. He nursed them back to health. Then he told the innkeeper, I have to go now, but when I come back and I'm gonna cut you a check for any of the other costs you had to spend in caring for this bleeding victim while I was gone. Radical sacrifices of his time, his energy and his money to love a bleeding victim. Listen, friends, the unborn child is the greatest bleeding victim in America today. That doesn't mean there's not other bleeding victims. It simply means when you murder one million babies a year and over 63 million, since we legalized it in 1973, they become the greatest bleeding victim. And like the lawyer in the parable of the Good Samaritan, many members of the church and our pastors today are asking the same question about the unborn. Are they our neighbor? And unfortunately, there is no other class of human beings today to whom that question is more frequently directed than the unborn children in our midst. Are they really our neighbor? So what can we do? Firstly, we have to take personal responsibility to get people to the polls to vote for life. Now, obviously, we're still waiting for the results of this election, but listen, this is going to continue being important. Abortion, transgender bathroom laws, all of these horrific things have happened because of absence of moral teaching from the church, because we've said we're not political. While people who hate God have filled in these institutions to attack the innocent, it's time for Christians to abandon their concern and fear of being labeled political and say, God, I'm going to be obedient to you and seek the good of the city where you have sent me into exile. Oh, but Seth, that was said to the Israelites. We too are exiles in this land for our citizenship is in heaven and from it we await a savior. So like the Israelites, we should seek the good of the city or the country that we are exiled in. And one of the most important ways we do that in America is through our vote and through our political voice. So I want you to take personal responsibility in the next elections, whether it's local, congressional, or presidential, to get 10 people to the polls to vote for life. Secondly, learn how to persuasively and graciously communicate your pro-life views. Listen, I know you're not going to remember everything I said this morning and that's okay. I know this has been a fire hose of information, but if you want to get discipled and taught on how to persuasively and graciously defend your pro-life beliefs, take time to do that. I have a podcast I release on a weekly basis called Unaborted with Seth Gruber, because we're all unaborted. All of our mothers made the right choice. If you tune in once or twice a week, you will become more equipped to defend the pro-life position than anyone in the country. I create this for you and I guarantee you after a few weeks or a few months you'll be jumping around like pro-life ninjas, defending life, changing minds, changing hearts, and saving lives. So it's for you. We recently were in the top 70 in the news commentary category on podcasts and it was the only pro-life podcast in the top 60 for news commentary. That's pretty incredible. Most people don't listen to pro-life podcasts because it's one issue nobody wants to talk about. So we're trying to reach people who already confess the right beliefs. They're with us ideologically, but they've done nothing to resist the evil of abortion. So we're trying to encourage and equip them to defend life. If you want to help us reach more people, jump on there. Give me five stars and subscribe. It actually drives it up the ratings and then more people see it when they jump on the podcast. I'm on a board at abortion. What's this white cisgender guy saying? And they'll click on it and maybe they'll be challenged to do something to change their minds. So if you would do that for me that would actually help us reach more people. You can also go to my website sethgruber.com, S-E-T-H-G-R-U-B-E-S-N-B-B-E-B-O-I-E-R.com and sign up for my newsletter. There's a box there. You can sign up for my newsletter and you'll get resources to your email on how to defend lives. So that's the second thing I want you to do. Sign up persuasively and graciously communicate your pro-life views. Thirdly, I want you to sign up as a sidewalk counselor or join or begin a pro-life ministry at your church. Now there is a pro-life ministry at this church. I want you to get involved. If you feel convicted this morning and you're saying, wow, Seth, what do I do? If you're asking the question what's next and you feel God pulling on your heart and you think that we all have a role to play on this and you want to find out what that role is, join the pro-life ministry here and we're going to connect you with an organization called Love Life. Love Life is out of Charlotte, North Carolina and their goal is to put a Christian witness outside every abortion clinic in the country. Why is this important? We know from studies that about 80% of women you guys who drive into a parking lot in an abortion clinic will turn around and leave and go home if there's these Christians standing outside praying. Almost 80%. What does that tell us? Eternity's written on the heart of man and God's reign falls on the just and the unjust. So even a man or woman who is at such a low point that they have decided that they are going to pay a physician to poison or dismember their child still has a still small voice in their head that says, don't do this. Why do we know that? Because they have a sense of shame associated with being seen by others walking into that clinic. Can you imagine if we had Christians outside every abortion clinic in the country every day they performed abortions? What would that do to the abortion industry? It would bankrupt them. And we could end abortion in a matter of years and the politics would soon follow. Francis Schaefer once said that every abortion clinic ought to have a sign out front that says open with the permission of the church of Jesus Christ because abortion is happening with the permission of the church and if we wanted to end it we could. And God will judge us on this issue. I believe each of us will stand before God and give an account for what we did on this issue. So do that. And if you want to talk to me afterwards we'll connect you with that organization, Love Life because they exist to train up churches and individuals who run pro-life ministries how to do it effectively and encourage them on how to do that well. And lastly, support pro-life organizations. Like the Good Samaritan we have to put our money where our mouth is. And if you have the means support pro-life organizations. Choices is a local pregnancy women's center in the area. There are others as well. There's one in Corona called Corona Life. You need to do that. These are the people on the front lines. And one of the scandals in the pro-life movement is that pregnancy resource centers have continued to be underfunded and understaffed because churches aren't supporting them. If you want to support me in what I do and this has been helpful for you these are the ideas I articulate to young people on high school and college campuses and youth groups all around the country and you can support me through my website as well if you'd like. Or you can text the word babies to 474747. I want to finish with this you guys and just encourage you and I know we're late on time but I appreciate your time. We are living in a distinct place in human history and yet the battle we face is one that our spiritual forefathers have faced before. And if you know your history you might know the story of a man named Oscar Schindler. You see Oscar Schindler was actually a member of the Nazi party and he was a wealthy entrepreneur and businessman. But God got ahold of his heart. God pricked his conscience. You see Oscar Schindler began to become horrified at the atrocities being committed against his Jewish brothers and sisters. So what did Oscar Schindler do? Well if you've seen the film Schindler's List or you've read the book you'll know what he did. He began to exhaust his great net worth and wealth to buy Jews off of the Nazi death camp lists and employ them in his factory to hide them from the Nazis and in so doing save their very lives. It's estimated that because of Oscar Schindler's sacrifices he saved over 1,000 image bearers of God from a genocide. Do you know how many people that turned into? How many generations are alive today because of one man's personal sacrifices to take his confession and beliefs and turn it into resistance. Resistance against the government that had legalized genocide. We're living in that time today at the end of the war. Oscar Schindler is standing surrounded by hundreds of human beings who owe him their very lives. And if you've seen the film you'll know this scene. The announcement rings out that the war has won. The ally troops have won. People start rejoicing and celebrating and Oscar Schindler stands surrounded by men and women who owe him their very lives and he begins to weep and with tears down his face he turns to his brother and friend and he says, I could have saved one more. And his friend, a man who owes Schindler his very life says, brother, no, no. These people here are alive today because of you. And Oscar Schindler looks at his golden pin that identifies him as a member of the Nazi party and he says, my pin, my pin? This is gold. Why did I keep this? I could have sold this and saved three more. At least one more. And his friend says, no, brother, brother. And Oscar Schindler through crocodile tears down his eyes looks at his car and he says, my car, my car? One of the last things that he owned because he gave it all away. Why did I keep my car? I could have sold this and saved 10 more. I could have saved one more. Friends, the question that echoes through human history to our time today is this, do we take our holocaust in 2020? That seriously, as Oscar Schindler took his. Because if we do, if we truly do, then I need your pro-life confession to prove itself through resistance and action. I believe one day when we stand before God, we're going to give an account for what we did to help end the genocide of his baby image-bearers. And I pray that we will say with William Wilberforce, let it not be said of me that I was silent when they needed me. The babies are waiting for us to intervene. God is waiting for his church to stand in the gap. And friends, the world is watching us. I will see you on the battlefield. Now go out there and give him heaven.