Truth Has Stumbled In The Street

This morning is the fourth sermon in our series, Stand in the Gap. The church is called to defend the unborn. This morning's sermon is meant to expose the lies that surround abortion that have run cover for this American Holocaust that we know as abortion. I appreciate it. Now it occurs to me that as we've gone through this, this sermon series is eight weeks long. It's a hard thing to talk about at all, and it's especially a hard thing to talk about for an extended amount of time. And if you remember, if you were here the first week, one of the things they said was, the goal of this sermon series is to wake you up, to make you aware of something in such a way that you can't ever go back to sleep and ignore this reality. And so it occurs to me that having been talking about this for a few weeks now, some of us are going, when is this going to be done?

When can we go back to normal? When can we get away from this, the discouragement, the weight of this topic? And what I want to say to you is every one of you has sins in your life, right? And some of you have really prominent sins in your life. You have the sort of sins in your life that stick out in your brain, the sort of sins in your life that you think about every day. And they're a burden to you, right? So it is with abortion and those who commit it. They don't get to set down the pain, the hardship of that murder. And it's our temptation to recuse ourselves, to remove ourselves from the weight, from the burden of it, and to go, I don't want to carry that anymore. I don't want to think about it. But consider yourself and the sins that you carry and realize you're not able to set them down.

And I want you out of love to realize those who've been engaged in abortion in some form or another are not able to just set it down and walk away from it. It becomes the defining feature of your life. In the same way that you have sins that you think about every single day from your past, those who've been engaged in this murder think about it constantly. And it's our place as Christians to not abandon them. To that hell and to that misery that ends in eternal destruction. It's our place as Christians, as the church of Jesus Christ, to come to them and to bring the gospel and the grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to them. And so long as there's a need, so long as there's brokenness, our place is to minister to them. And so I understand fully the weight of the topic. And I pleaded with you in the first week, don't go back to sleep.

Don't go back to sleep like a kid in his bed when they say it's time to get up and you wake them up and they go, no, no, no, I want to go back to bed. I don't want to have to face the light of the day. I don't want you to go back to bed. I don't want you to go back to darkness, back to ignorance, back to complacency and abandonment. And so I plead with you that as we work through this sermon series, that you give your hearts to the work and that you not grow weary. You will be tempted to grow weary. You will be tempted to turn away and to go, it's too much. It's too big. I'm inadequate. What can I do? You'll have those thoughts and more, and I plead with you, don't give in to them. This is our privilege to be ambassadors for Jesus Christ and to bring his word and his truth and the healing blood of his cross to those who've been destroyed by abortion. And so don't quit. Don't quit.

This morning's topic, as I've already mentioned, is to expose the lies that surround abortion. What lies are there? We're going to be dealing with this in three different headings that we're going to deal with. The first is the general nature and relationship of lies and the truth. That's the first thing we're going to talk about. The second thing we're going to talk about, and that first part is going to be general. That's why it's the general relationship. The second thing we're going to deal with is the particular lies and truths that surround this topic. And finally, we're going to be looking at our response to these lies, how we must respond, what we must do. Our text this morning is Isaiah chapter 59, verses 1 through 15. Would you please stand for the reading of God's word? This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true.

The Lord's hand is not so short that it cannot save, nor is his ear so dull that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear. For your hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity. Your lips have spoken falsehood, your tongue mutters wickedness. No one sues righteously and no one pleads honestly. They trust in confusion and speak lies. They conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity. They hatch adder's eggs and weave the spider's web. He who eats their eggs dies, and from that which is crushed, a snake breaks forth. Their webs will not become clothing, nor will they cover themselves with their works. Their works are works of iniquity, and an act of violence is in their hands.

Their feet run to evil and they hasten to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity. Devastation and destruction are in their highways. They do not know the way of peace and there is no justice in their tracks. They have made their paths crooked. Whoever treads on them does not know peace. Therefore, justice is far from us and righteousness does not overtake us. We hope for light, but behold, darkness. For brightness, but we walk in gloom. We grope along the wall like blind men. We grope like those who have no eyes. We stumble at midday as in the twilight. Among those who are vigorous, we are like dead men. All of us growl like bears and moan sadly like doves. We hope for justice, but there is none for salvation. But it is far from us. For our transgressions are multiplied before you and our sin testifies against us.

For our transgressions are with us and we know our iniquities. Transgressing and denying the Lord and turning away from our God. Speaking oppression and revolt. Conceiving in and uttering from the heart lying words. Justice is turned back and righteousness stands far away. For truth has stumbled in the street and uprightness cannot enter. Yes, truth is lacking. And he who turns aside from evil makes himself a prey. Now the Lord saw. And it was displeasing in his sight that there was no justice. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. In our text this morning, the prophet Isaiah is rebuking the nation of Israel, God's people, for their unfaithfulness to God and his truth. He describes those who work iniquity and those who are deceived by their lies. There's two different groups of people here. Listen again to how Isaiah describes those who seek to turn away.

God's people from their truth. He says that they trust in confusion and they speak lies. They conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity. The first thing I want you to see is very plain and very simple, is that truth and deception or lies cannot peacefully coexist in the same space. They cannot. One must push the other out. They cannot live in unity. They cannot live in harmony. There is friction and there is conflict always between truth and lies. And what lies do is they rise up and they say, that's not true. This is true. This other thing is true. That's how lies work. Truth, on the other hand, is meant to protect us against and expose the deceit that we will be tempted by.

And so I want you to see those who want to destroy truth, they have a tactic. And their tactic is confusion and lying. That's what they do. If you want to turn someone away from truth, what you're supposed to do is raise in their minds, one way or another, confusion about the fact. I got called for jury duty last year sometime. And the charge was criminal confinement. And so I went through the process, and I actually wanted to be a juror. I thought, I want to see the process through. I didn't get chosen, but I got to hear the lawyers argue their case. And it's the work of the prosecution to prove that the law has been broken, and it's the defense's job to raise reasonable doubt. And so they're asking questions. What is criminal confinement? What is confinement?

And we all have in our minds what confinement is. We say, okay, well, confinement would be keeping someone against their will, preventing them from leaving or doing something for some period of time. And so what the prosecution asks is, how long does it have to go before it's inappropriate? Is it okay to confine someone for 10 minutes? Is that criminal confinement? Some of us would say, yeah, that's criminal confinement. And other of us would go, well, I, you know, I was thinking more like locked in the basement kind of for days thing. And others of us would say, yeah, no, no, no, 10 minutes is long enough. If I couldn't, if I was being held against my will for 10 minutes, I'd be wrong. And then the prosecutor says, okay, well, about five minutes. Some of, again, you have the same sort of back and forth in our minds. What about two minutes? What about 30 seconds? What about standing in the door of a bedroom?

with someone wanting to get out, and you saying, no, you can't leave like this. We need to work this out. And they try to get past you, and once you say, no, I'm not going to let you leave. And they say, if you don't let me leave, I'm going to call the police, and then you let them go. Have you confined them? It's really hard to answer, isn't it? It's not so cut and dried. And so what are we doing? What's the truth? At what point is it criminal confinement? What's the law say? The work of the juror is to understand the truth of the law.

Not to say, well, I think it's okay in that situation to do that. The question is, what does the statute say, and has it been broken? What is the truth? And the work of the defense is to interpret and to change and manipulate the situation in such a way as to raise reasonable doubt. And then there's a judgment. The man that was accused was either convicted, Or acquitted. There was a judgment. The truth was defined. And in the same way that we understand the truth to be defined in a courtroom, so the truth is in our society. Truth and lies cannot exist in the same place. And those who want to obscure the truth will confuse you. That's their goal. That's their tactic. That's how they go about the work of discrediting truth. They will seek to confuse you.

And not only will they seek to do it, it says in our text that they trust in confusion and speak lies. Their hope is in it. Their expectation is that it will work. It's a good strategy. Confused people are vulnerable people. Confusion has to produce, always will produce vulnerability because you're going, okay, which is it? What do I do? And all of a sudden, You're insecure and you're not sure because some people are saying this and other people are saying this and you like both of them or you want to please both of them and you're not sure what to do. You're confused and you're susceptible even more so to lies. And so confusion will always be the aim and the first step in the departure from truth. You will become confused about what's true and what's not. Are you guys familiar with the saying, that's a red herring? In an argument they say, that's a red herring. Well, what's that mean?

It means it's a distraction. It means it's like, oh, look, look at the birdie. Oh, look at the birdie. Squirrel, right, Jamie? Squirrel. Squirrel, where'd it go? And what were we talking about? Don't take your eye off the ball. Don't take your eye off the ball. All of these ways are just standard cliches, phrases that are meant to show us that there's work, what the work of confusion looks like. Working confusion means raising red herrings. Look at the birdies. Take your eye off the ball. Squirrel, what were we talking about? That's how you'll be brought to confusion. You'll be distracted. You'll have your attention. You'll see the truth. You'll know the truth. And something, in some way, and it works, people. You are susceptible to it and so am I. Someone will take your head and turn it away from the truth and they'll make you look at something and you'll go, well, I'm not sure about that. I don't know what to do. I haven't thought about that before.

That's confusion, entering the equation. It's meant to make you doubt. That's the purpose of it. Confusion and lies are meant to reframe the situation by moving it away from the clear and evident truth that you used to know. Those workers of iniquity, those who trust in confusion and speak lies. Isaiah describes them as hatching adder's eggs. What's an adder? Do you guys know what an adder is? It's a poisonous snake, okay? And so they hatch. They cultivate, they produce poison. That's what they do. And those who eat those eggs do what? What's the verse tell us? It says that they die. Those who eat the poison, those who believe the lies, the end of their destruction is death. The confusion doesn't work to no end. It actually produces death. It actually, when you turn away from truth, you turn towards death and destruction. That's where lies lead us to. Lies have consequences. And its end is death.

Those who eat the eggs, the poison of the lie, are led to death. And the lies are multiplied. Those who eat the eggs dies. And from that which is crushed, a snake breaks forth. That means some of us eat the eggs in our infancy. That's what an egg is. It's a chicken, sterile chicken egg in its infancy. You eat it. Adder's eggs, if you eat it, it's going to kill you. It's what Isaiah is saying. Now, some of those eggs, they come to term. They're fertile. They grow. They're born. They break forth out of the egg. And what comes out of that egg? Potent poison. A new snake. So when you had one snake, now we have five of its eggs hatched. You've got six snakes. And those snakes come after you as opposed to you going and getting an egg. The lie grows. The deception increases. So what becomes of the liars, those workers of iniquity, and those who believe them? Those who eat the eggs or are bitten by the snake, if you will. They're webs.

meaning their lies, their supposed truth. They say, that's not true. This is what's true. That's their web, okay? Their web will not become clothing. That's what Isaiah says. That's what the word of God says. Their lies will not cover them, nor will they cover themselves with their works, for their works are works of iniquity. They lie, and their lies are not going to provide them the cover that they desire. It doesn't prevent them from trying, but in the end, it will not provide them the cover that they need. And why? Because an act of violence is in their hands. Their feet run to evil and they hasten to shed innocent blood. This is their aim. This is their goal. Violence, evil, and the shedding of innocent blood. That's the end of the, that's what the lie is meant to do. It's meant to confuse you about what's true and what's a lie, what's right and what's wrong.

It's the goal is to put you on your heels and have you go, I don't know. I'm thinking. Hmm. Think about that. Not sure. And the seed has been planted. The egg is growing. Those liars, those workers of iniquity, their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity, of sin. Devastation and destruction are in their path. And there's no justice in their tracks. It's pretty simple to understand. their aim and what their tactic is. Justice has no place with lies. Lies are meant to dispel and to do away with justice, to do away with truth. So those who are liars and those who believe them, those who are deceived by those lies are described in this way. They are workers of iniquity. Their feet run to evil. They hasten to shed innocent blood. They don't know the way of peace. There's no justice in their tracks. Now, would you want that to be your description?

Someone to describe you in this way. You're a worker of iniquity. The lies that you tell are not going to cover you, and it's not going to keep you from trying, but it will not work. And your aim is to seek violence and evil, and you lust after shedding innocent blood. Do you want that to be how you're known? Nobody wants to be known that way. That's not what we want on our headstone. Here lies a liar, a deceiver, a wicked man who hastens to shed innocent blood. Here's his body. None of us want to be known that way, and yet everyone who believes lies and goes after them and ingests them is described in this way by the prophet Isaiah. Those who trust in confusion must own this end. If you get on I-70 and you go west, you will go to St. Louis. You don't get to get on 70 west and say, I'm going to Dayton.

I say, no, you're not. You cannot be because you are going the wrong way. And this road going that direction has a destination. Lies and confusion have a destination. If you say, I'm going to go on 70 West, but I'm going to go to Dayton. I say, you've believed a lie because Dayton is East, not West. Then there's a transition in the passage. Verse nine, he says, therefore, justice is far from us and righteousness does not overtake us. You recognize that those are the desires of God's people. They want justice and they want righteousness. Every one of us who loves Jesus Christ and has his spirit ought to desire and want and go after justice and righteousness. We ought to say, whatever the consequences are to me, I love God and I want to see justice and righteousness prevail in my heart, in my home, in my land.

But here we're described justice is far from us and righteousness does not overtake us. Our desire is not to have this justice and righteousness removed from us, but that's exactly what happens. Our hopes are described in the following verses. We hope for light, but behold darkness. For brightness, but we walk in gloom. We grope along like blind men. Have you seen blind men walk around without their stick? Can you imagine? At one point, I had a friend who was legally blind. And he was at church with us. And we were meeting up at Kiwanis. And when we met at the other building, we had auditorium seating, right? And the steps were carpeted. And he was blind, but he didn't want you to know he was blind. And he could see kind of. But what he couldn't see were the steps. And he fell down the steps. And we had to catch him. And his weakness, his disability.

was exposed for everyone to see. He couldn't walk downstairs. If he were here and wanted to come up these steps, every one of you could say, and up you'd come, but he couldn't. And this is how God's people are described. They're as blind men, groping around, trying to find something, but having no ability to see because they've lost the truth and they've believed lies. We grope like those who have no eyes. We stumble at midday as at twilight. Among those who are vigorous, we are like dead men. All of us growl like bears. And you think, oh, a growling bear. I want to be like a growling bear. And it's like, no, this is the growling bear in the first day of spring when it hasn't eaten in six months and it's going to die if it doesn't get food. It's weak. You growl like bears. Food, I need food. Where's the food? I'm too weak to go get the food. And moan sadly like doves. We hope for justice, but there is none. And for salvation, but it is far from us.

Believing lies strips away life. It's antithetical to life. Truth produces life. And lies destroy it. And so we become comatose. We become like dead men amongst vigorous men. They have arguments. They have things to say. They have energy. They have zeal. They have conviction. And they say, and we go, I'm not sure. We're as dead men before them. We bemoan the situation. And we go, I don't want it to be like this. I want it to change. I want it to be better. I want it to be good. I want it to honor Jesus Christ. I want justice and righteousness to overtake me, to overtake us, to become the predominating influence in our land. That's what I want. But we've lost our strength and conviction to stand and to stem the tide and to say, no, that's a lie. And I will not believe it. And I will not remain silent while other people are led astray. We hope for something to change, but we have no will to see it done.

Light and justice and salvation are removed from us. Justice is turned back and righteousness stands far away. And we say, I want those things, but we can't have them. Not as we are. Believing lies causes us to stumble in the street. The scripture here says that the truth stumbles in the street. The way that the men are described, they stumble at midday as though it were twilight. They trip over things that they should be able to see and step over. Truth stumbles in the street. It doesn't have an answer. Those who are to proclaim the truth, to know the truth, and to spread the truth go, I'm not sure about the truth. Truth has stumbled in the street and uprightness cannot enter. For uprightness to enter, truth has to prevail. So long as lies and confusion and deception and misdirection rule the day, uprightness cannot come in. It cannot.

Because you remember I said at the beginning, truth and lies cannot coexist. Truth produces life. It produces justice and righteousness. And lies produce death. Lies close the door to salvation. Removes all hope of help from those who most desperately need it. Truth and lie cannot exist together. And it's our place as Christians to know the truth. And to not simply know the truth and to keep it for ourselves, but to speak the truth in love. To not hide our lamp under a basket, but out of love for Christ to proclaim it with love. Not like a jerk, not insensitively, not without care and without compassion. It's possible to speak the truth of God with love. And that's our place.

You remember I told you we have three things we're going to talk about. The first is the general relationship between truth and lies. That's what we've done. Lies and truth cannot entertain the same space. They cannot exist together. But that's general. And it's my expectation that you agree with me. That you agree with the word of God and you say, that's right. If you try to maintain truth and deception together, the Bible has a word for that. It's called hypocrisy. They cannot go together. You cannot say one thing and do another and act as though they fit together. They do not. So what is the truth that's under attack with regard to abortion? It's a very simple truth, and it's this. Abortion is in every time and in every place and in every situation, murder. That's the truth. There is never a time and never a place where it is permissible, or acceptable, or appropriate to kill an innocent human being. Never. So if that's the truth, abortion is murder, what is the lie? The lie is abortion is not murder. Now, if someone came to you and said, abortion's not murder, you'd look at them and you'd say, yeah, it is. Yes, it is.

And you need to remember that confusion doesn't say abortion is not murder. Because that's not winsome. It doesn't work. Lies have to run under the cover of confusion. Abortion is not murder. There's no confusion there. We understand each other. I understand what you're saying. I reject what you're saying. The answer to that is no, it's not. That is not true. Abortion is murder. In Exodus 21, in God's law, we read this. If men struggle with each other, that means get into a fight. And they strike a woman with child, a pregnant woman, so that she gives birth prematurely. Now, two things can happen if a woman gives birth prematurely. One is her baby can live, and the other is her baby can die. Okay? You understand this. If men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she gives birth prematurely, yet there is no injury to the child, he, the man who's...

who struck the woman, shall surely be fined as the woman's husband made demand of him. And he shall pay as the judges decide. And so it's inappropriate. Even if the baby is born and the baby lives, the one whose wife was harmed, whose child was harmed, says this is what it costs. This is a criminal offense in Israel to strike a woman who's pregnant. And we'd say... don't you mean strike any woman? And I say, yeah, but we're talking about babies right now. I'm not saying that striking a woman who's not pregnant is permissible. It's not. It's not any more permissible. But what happens when a woman who's with child is caused to give birth prematurely? If her baby lives, her husband gets to say, this is the cost. And the judge enforces it. But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life.

Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise. Whatever you do to that child, however you harm them, the consequence to those that enact the harm is that they shall have the same thing done to them. That's what should happen to them. That is what God prescribed in his law. And if you can understand the truth that abortion is murder, what I want to know from you then is what should happen to murderers? What should, what should, should they just be, well, that's okay. Well, I mean, you didn't mean to. These guys didn't mean to. You realize that? If two men struggle together and strike a woman, it's collateral damage even. It's unintentional.

And even in this unintentional situation, life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, harm for harm, to the same extent. This is what God's word says about innocent children who are harmed in their mother's womb, who are put to death. Those who are responsible for the child's death ought to be put to death for killing that child. And this is when it's unintentional. This is the truth of God's word with regard to abortion. The world hates this truth. It's a simple truth. It's not hard to understand. It's costly to believe. An unborn child nestled in his mother's womb is worthy of every protection that you or I are afforded. And they are worthy of that protection from the point of conception. And by conception, I mean fertilization. I mean when an egg and a sperm get together.

And there is new DNA form that is distinct from the mother and the father. There is human life. And at that point, that life is only known to God. We in our finiteness don't recognize there's a life at that point. But there is a human life that possesses everything necessary to become you or me at that instant. And at that instant, that child is worthy. of protection and defense. Anyone who seeks to harm that child is a murderer. The abortion doctor is a murderer. The mother who willingly goes in there is a murderer. The father or the boyfriend who pays for it is a murderer. The grandmother of that child who will not let her daughter keep the baby is a murderer. Do you understand me? They are shedding the blood of an innocent child.

Abortion is always, in every instance, murder. That's the truth. The lie, as I've already said, that you will be seduced into believing is that abortion is not murder. But you remember that I said, if I say to you, abortion's not murder, you go, well, no, you're wrong about that. And so what's the confusion sound like? What does abortion is not murder actually sound like? Remember that confusion is meant to distract you away from the issue. The issue is this. There is a life. inside this woman. That's the truth. That's the reality. That's the situation. The confusion and the lie is meant to draw your attention away from that truth and get you to think about something else. And so abortion is not murder sounds like this. Abortion is about women's rights. What are we thinking about now? We're thinking about the woman. And we're not thinking about the child. And what we're doing is we're setting the life and well-being and...

or peace or whatever of the woman in opposition with the life of this child. This child poses a threat to this woman, and she ought to have the right to refuse that threat. Stated another way, abortion is about women's rights, is to say that woman's life or her comfort or even simply her desire is more important than the life of her child. And therefore, she can kill her baby. Because this is an issue of women's rights. Women should not be required to keep that baby. They should not be prevented from killing that baby. And I say, in what other circumstance do you permit murderers to murder? In no other situation would you do this. Would you say, I think that's okay. The situation's really bad. It's okay to kill someone who's innocent. Furthermore, We only have two sexes. God only made two of them, men and women. And if we really care about women, we'd realize that half of those little babies whose voices are silent to us but cry out to God, half of them are women. They're killing women. They don't go in and say, is it a boy or a girl? Not here. In China, that's what they do. They find out, is it a boy or a girl? And they kill the girls. Where are all the pro-abortionists?

When it comes to China and places that actually go see, is it a boy or is it a girl? We value one but not the other. Kill the girls. What do they have to say about China and other places who actually despise women and who actually don't care if they're killed? Abortion is not about women's rights. It's about oppression of the weak. Number two, it's not a baby. It's just a clump of cells. This is an older lie. This is something that when... 20, 30, 40 years ago, before we had the sort of technology that we do now to be able to see at four to six to eight weeks of gestation, what's actually developed. You see eyes, you see a beating heart, you see hands and feet and lungs and mouths and ears and a heart beating and fingernails. It's a clump of cells. I say, if it's a clump of cells, so are you. You are no different.

If that is a clump of cells, it's the same sort of clump of cells that you are. The only difference between that child and you is you're bigger, you're more developed, you live in a different environment, and you're not as dependent as that baby. Those are the only differences. What I just said to you is called the sled argument. Size. I always mess the second one up. Size. Level of development. environment, where do you live, and degree of dependence. That's the only difference between a baby in its mother's womb and you. It is exactly the same. It possesses all of the characteristics that you do that make you human, that make you an image bearer of God and make you worthy of protection. That child possesses all of those things from the moment of conception, the moment of fertilization. It's no less human than you are.

It's a clump of cells just like you. It doesn't fail to be human. Third, we get red herrings. Red herrings sound like this. What if the woman was raped? What if this pregnancy is a result of incest? Why should that woman be burdened, saddled, cursed with the life of this unwanted child when it was against her will? For you to say that she shouldn't be able to have an abortion is for you not to... to love and to care for me, compassionate to her. And I say, that's not true. If rape is wrong, which is the underlying premise of that question, if rape is wrong, the question is, why is rape wrong? What makes rape wrong? Why is it wrong for a man to rape a woman? You just go, well, it just is wrong. And I say, you're right, it is just wrong. But what makes it wrong? What makes it wrong is that one person is enforcing their will against an unwilling victim. And it's wicked.

And it should never be done. And having that victim of rape or incest turn around and become the oppressor to another person and to make them the victim of their aggression is equally wicked. And it should not be done. Murder does not make rape better. It does not heal the real pain and hurt of being victimized through rape or incest. And so it's entirely possible to be fully compassionate and full of care and merciful to the pregnant mother and to tell her, you may not kill your baby as a result of this. You cannot do it. Let me help you. Let me help you with your baby. Let me help you with what's been done to you. We will help. We will bear your burdens. Murder does not fix rape. What else does it sound like to say that abortion is not murder? It sounds like...

Well, that baby is going to grow up in an awful state of poverty. That baby is going to be unwanted. The underlying thing that you're being sold is that we can look at people of different socioeconomic classes, people who grow up in difficult family situations, and say that we determine that your quality of life doesn't meet the threshold of viable. So we'll just kill you because that's not a life worth living. I've never met or heard of a person who was born into that situation and says, if they were asked, do you wish your parents had just killed you so that you didn't have to live the way you live? You won't find a person who says, yeah, I actually wish that I had never been born. This is what Job says when he's dealing with all of the persecution and all the trials and all the misery of his life.

He says, cursed is the day of my birth, and I wish I had never been born. In that statement, if you ever find someone who says, I wish I had never been born, I wish I had been murdered, they're only compounding their sin. Because they, like those who would have killed them, hate their life. And they ought not to hate their life. We ought not to hate their life. We ought not let them be led away to the slaughter without so much as a calling out saying, please don't kill them. If they're going to be born into a family that doesn't want them or if they're going to be born into poverty, we will help. We will take the child. We will care for them. We will give them the things that you're unable to give them. Please don't kill your baby. This is no reason to commit murder. If it is a reason to commit murder, then the way you clean up all of the crime in poor slums of America is to go in there with a gun and kill all the people. And we all go, you can't do that. And I say, you're right. You can't do that. And because you can't do that, you can't kill a baby who's going to be born into a poor family. You cannot do it and think it's okay. What about disabilities? The baby's malformed. Then we can kill them. Can we kill the disabled that have made it out of the womb? Can we just kill them?

No, we can't kill them. That's called murder. They're worthy of our protection. And I say, there's no difference between that person and the baby who hasn't been born yet. They are worthy of equal protection. You say, they're going to live a hard life. And I say, that may be true, but it would be better for them to live than to die. What about capital punishment? How can you be against abortion and for capital punishment? Murder is murder is murder. And I say, no, no, it's not murder. Capital punishment is not murder. Do we not understand the difference between innocence and guilt? If someone is sentenced to death, they have been convicted of a crime worthy of it. That baby hasn't done that. You can't kill them. And you can say, life for life, the one who sheds innocent blood, by man's hands his blood shall be spilled.

There are things that people do because they're wicked and they're sinful that are worthy of death. Where you say, the penalty for this crime is you are no longer able to live. Because justice can't be satisfied in any other way. You have to die. Because you did something to deserve it. That baby has done nothing to deserve it. What about it's a baby, not a fetus? I'm sorry, it's not a baby, it's a fetus. This is a funny argument. Do you know why it's a funny argument? Because fetus is a Latin word. Do you know what fetus means? It means baby. That's what fetus means. So if someone says that to you, look at them and say, can we just speak English, please? Fetus means little life. It means baby. It's just the Latin word for it. So when we have this conversation, can we just be honest? Can we tell the truth? Because you go, oh, it's a fetus. It's not a baby. And I say, you've just been fed confusion and lies.

A fetus is a baby. That's it. You see it's a lie. But somehow people think if I call it a fetus instead of a baby, it's somehow okay to kill it. No, no. That's a baby. How about abortion should be allowed because it's legal? I wouldn't have an abortion and I don't think people should, I wouldn't personally do it, but it's legal and so it's legal. We have to allow it because it's legal. I say it's just because something's legal doesn't make it right. There are lots of things that we're willing to say, just because it's legal, don't make it right. Ask any business owner about taxes. It's legal, but it ain't right. And we'll all go, yeah, that's right, that's right. You shouldn't be able to take all my money. And I'll speak up about it. And when I hear someone saying that they should be able to take all my money, I will say, no, you shouldn't be able to take all my money. You should get off your butt and you should go to work and earn your own money. That's what you should do.

Because if a man doesn't work, he shall not eat. We don't have any trouble saying that. Abortion should be allowed because it's legal. It shouldn't be legal. It's murder. And think of other areas in your life where you're willing to speak up and say, that's legal and it shouldn't be legal. That should not be allowed. One more. If you make abortion illegal, this is strategy, okay? This is confusion. If you make abortion illegal, women will still do it, so what's the point? If it's going to happen anyway, why not have it be, Safe, rare, and legal. People are going to do it anyway. People are going to do what people are going to do, so you might as well allow them to do it. If you don't let them come into a clinic where they'll get good medical care, what they'll do is they'll return to the coat hangers of the back alley. Do you want to know how to respond to that? Back alleys are where murders happen. That's where murder happens. Because it shouldn't happen. And so if murder is going to take place, it can't take place in broad daylight because it's wrong. And we should love...

Jesus Christ, and we should love our neighbors enough to say it should be illegal and it's for your good that it's illegal and you shouldn't go find it somewhere else. You should not kill your baby because it's murder. Do not do it. Please. There are other lies that you'll encounter. If you have questions about them, you can come talk to me. There are answers for every one of these confusions and every one of these lies. There's no reason for you to be left flat-footed going, I don't know. I don't know what to say. I wasn't, I've never thought about that. There's truth that you should know and be able to communicate. Our work as Christians is to, it says 2 Corinthians 10.5, is to destroy speculations, to destroy confusions, to expose lies and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, against his truth.

And we are taking every thought captive for the obedience of Christ. If you run into an argument regarding abortion, here's what I want you to know. It's a lie. If you don't understand how it's a lie, we'll learn how it's a lie. But it is a lie. And I don't want you to believe it. I don't want you confused. I don't want your eyes taken off of the focus, which is that abortion is the shedding of innocent blood. It is murder. And it is never in any way, under any circumstance, permissible. It is, in every circumstance, in every instance, sin. There's no caveat to this. There's no wiggle room. There's no, well, in this situation, under these circumstances, that are super unique and almost unheard of, and that time, it's okay to kill the baby. There is no caveat. There is none. The thing that I haven't brought up is, heading in that direction, the argument is, what about ectopic pregnancies?

That's a baby that attaches in the fallopian tube, not in the womb. What happens then? This is the life of the mother argument. I'm not going to go into that right now, but there's an answer to it. You can talk to me about it afterwards. You can talk to Daniel about it. We can explain to you the actual truth. What I want you to realize is when someone says, but what about this situation? What they're doing is turning your eyes away from the fact that there's a life in there that you're talking about killing. And there is truth to understand and to process that circumstance.

And I'd be glad to explain it to you, but I'm short of time. Now to this point, every one of us, if you're a Christian, can go along with what I've said. Some of us have learned things that we didn't know. We've heard the lies and we go, I didn't know what to say. And I say, now you know what to say. Now you know where to head. Now you know how to defend the truth. You've been given your immunization against the lies and the confusion. And you may not forget it. You'll get booster shots, but you may not forget it. You may not go back to sleep. But there's one final lie, one final point that Christians have believed without giving proper attention to its implications. And it's this. If life begins, it's conception. And conception, defined biblically, is fertilization. It's when the sperm and the egg come together. That is when life begins. God is the author of life. And man cannot decide when life begins.

We can't pick up and move the goalposts and say, that life didn't begin until this point or that life is not worth living anymore. It's dead now. At either end of life, the beginning or the end, God is the author of life. He creates life and he takes away life. Human life begins at fertilization. The reason I'm saying this is because part of the lie you're going to hear is that conception is no longer at fertilization. Conception is now, medically speaking, referred to as implantation. So whatever happens before implantation, It's not murder. That's not true. You hear me? That's not true. Life begins at fertilization. It does not begin at implantation. You have to learn the words. If you just say conception, we can mean two different things. By conception, I mean fertilization. By conception, God's word means fertilization. If you talk to doctors, conception now means they've just moved the goalposts and it means implantation. Now, why would they do that? Is it just arbitrary? Just, well.

It seemed like a good idea to us, and so we just decided to change it. No, there's a reason behind it. It's a very easy, simple, there's a very reason behind it. And I want to ask you a question. If life begins at conception, which means fertilization, why have Christians accepted the use of hormonal birth control in all of its forms? The pill? The patch? The shot? IUDs? Implants? All kinds of ways to get these hormones into you to prevent To prevent pregnancy. That's their game. That's their goal, to prevent pregnancy. It's what they say. That's what the labels will say. If the label said to prevent pregnancy and kill your child if maybe, you wouldn't take it, would you? You wouldn't do it. But it doesn't say that. It says prevent pregnancy because pregnancy, meaning life, meaning conception, doesn't start until implantation. So how does hormonal birth control work? It has three purposes. One of them, is unacceptable entirely. And that is that they work, all of them, to thin the lining of a woman's uterus. That is where that life that's already there in the fallopian tube, as it descends into the uterus, that life is meant to implant in the wall of the uterus. And hormonal birth control, without exception, thins the lining of the uterus. Why? So that that life will continue on out and expire.

That's murder. And no doctor will tell you that. And I understand that your doctors and medical people will tell you, your pastor's an idiot. I've been told I'm an idiot. But I'm not an idiot. And if you're willing to read and to understand what I'm talking about and have been this day, you'll understand that I'm not wrong. They're lying to you. And you may not believe the lie. Have you ever considered the difference between birth control, the words, birth control and contraception? Is there a difference? There actually is a difference. Abortion is a form of birth control. Let me rephrase that. Murder is a form of birth control. Understand? What does contraception mean? It means against conception. It means against creating life. There are ways to prevent life if that ends up being your desire or your conscience or your will. That's a whole can of worms I'm not going to go into. But if your desire is to prevent conception, There are ways Christians can do it without running the risk of killing their own children. And if you find yourself in a position where you go, we don't want children right now, there's forms of contraception that you can use that don't run the risk of killing your child. Here's the thing. You'll never know a baby died. It'll just be a normal cycle. Nothing will seem out of the ordinary because we're finite and we don't know when life begins. We're not immediately aware of it.

How far along are women when they find out, I'm pregnant. If they're on top of it and strict, three weeks, four weeks, there's already been a baby there. Her cycle's been disrupted to the point where they say, okay, something's going on. Take a test. But there's already been a life for weeks. And yes, I know how they measure pregnancies and it actually measures before I get all that. I know it. I've got eight kids, okay? There's life. inside of you women before you are aware of it. And it's your place to protect that life. You do not want to get to the other side of this where you wonder for the rest of your life, did I kill one of my children in ignorance? Because you can't answer that question. I can't answer it for you. I don't know. But I can tell you on the front side of it, you don't have to ask that question and wonder it the rest of your life. Hormonal birth control is the birth control of choice.

in our land. And it is unacceptable because it runs the risk of killing innocent life. You may not take it. Now, in the course of life, many of us wish, myself included, that we had known the things we've heard today before, now. Because some of us have the question in our mind, have I killed my own children? We can't answer it. Some of us haven't had that question yet. Some of us have that question. So what's to be done? What do we do? How do we respond? You respond with the hope and the grace of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is what murderers need. That's what they need. They will get no help. They will find no healing apart from the blood of Jesus Christ shed for the forgiveness of their sins.

You say, I don't like talking about abortion and it's so weighty and it's so hard and it's such a hot button issue and people get upset. And I say, that's right, because it's about life and death. At the beginning of the book of Isaiah, when the Lord comes to him and he looks for a man to stand and he says, who will speak? Isaiah sees himself and he says, woe is me for I am undone, for I am a man of unclean lips and unclean heart. And I live amongst a people of unclean lips and unclean heart. Who will stand, says the Lord. And Isaiah says, I will. I will. I will speak on your behalf, Lord. So what needs to be said? What needs to be said is that murderers are not beyond forgiveness. That's what needs to be said at the abortion mill, time and again. That's what needs to be said here. That's what needs to be said to you and to I, who have the question. That's what needs to be said.

To the whole world, there is forgiveness for real sins, for murder in the blood of Jesus Christ. And anywhere else you turn and anywhere else you go and anywhere else you look for a salve to cover and to heal the wound of abortion, of murder, you will find none. And so this is the place and these are the words that murderers need to hear. And it's the church's work to take the words of life to those who are perishing and call them to believe it. That's our work. And we ought not to neglect it. We ought to have joy in it. We ought to have hope in it and expectation in it. Not because we're great. Not because we've got magic words. I don't have magic words. Dave doesn't have magic words. Daniel doesn't have. None of us have magic words.

The reality is if you go to the abortion mill, you think it's intense here to sit and listen to it, go to the mill and watch woman after woman walk in. Pregnant. And when they come out, not pregnant. You want weight, there's weight. And the only thing that removes that burden is the grace of Jesus Christ. And it's our place to administer that grace through love. Our place is not to go in to beat down and badger people who are sinning. Do they need to be called to repentance? Yes. With zeal? Yes. In love? Absolutely. Will people be offended by it? Yeah, some will. But the word of God is foolishness to those who are perishing, but it is life to those who are being saved. And it's our place to bring that word to those who are perishing. And the only way we'll do that is if we turn away from the lie that abortion is not murder. Abortion is murder. You may not participate in it. You may not condone it. You may not be silent about it.

You have opportunity to love Jesus Christ by witnessing to the truth in the face of lies. And it's a blessed work. Let's pray. Father, we are unfit, unworthy of your kindness and your mercy. But in your wisdom, you've chosen to send your son to save sinners, to save those who are dead, to save your enemies, to give us a hope and a calling and a home. We love you, Father, and we thank you for your kindness and ask that you would strengthen us to do your work, your will, to rescue those who are being led away to the slaughter. We pray, Father, that you would increase our love for your truth, that you would give us discernment about the lies and the strategies of Satan. And we pray, Father, that you would fill our hearts with love and open our mouths to share it with those who are perishing. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.