Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, for which I was appointed a preacher and apostle and teacher, which is why I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that Day what has been entrusted to me.
—2 Timothy 1:8–12 

Introduction: Where We Have Been and Where We Are Going

Where We Have Been: The Installation Service

It would be a mistake to forget to publically praise God for the installation service last Sunday night. So many people helped make that happen in so many staggering ways. I want to say a big heartfelt thank you to everyone that made it a reality and to everyone who took time to be there live or watch online. People have asked me how I am processing it. Here it goes: God was made much of in a big way in our midst and I have been enjoying it all week. In fact, I believe it is a high water mark that we will be talking about for years. God has been so good to us, hasn’t He?

Where We Are Going: The Last Two Months of the Transition

His goodness causes us to look ahead with anticipation in accord with our Savior’s promise to be with us always. Next week we begin a six-week sermon series entitled, "Life Together: The Supremacy of God in our Relationships." The title is inspired by the book by the same title from Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I would encourage you to get this book from the bookstore at a special discount. You should also make the most of this opportunity to have Eric Metaxas come to Bethlehem in February ad talk to us about his biography of Bonhoeffer. Metaxas’ book is also available in our bookstore.

The Life Together sermon series will take us from February to the third week of March. Then we finish March with Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday. Pastor John will preach two more sermons during this time of transition. He will preach February 23–24 and then once more on Easter Sunday. It seems highly symbolic to me to have him preach on Easter. First, he has led us in exulting in the risen Christ so well for so long. Second, I love the reminder that the risen Christ will be with us always—even when Pastor John is not. We have a farewell celebration at Grace Church Eden Prairie planned for Sunday night, April 14. Would you pray even now that God will be present again in a big way and will be made supreme in our goodbye to Pastor John?

Where We Are Today: Sanctity of Life Sunday

Today we are talking about sanctity of life. There is a connection between last week’s sermon on racial harmony and this week’s sermon on sanctity of life. I remember watching the movie, “Amazing Grace,” about the story of William Wilberforce. His perseverance in the cause of abolishing slavery deeply moved me. As the credits rolled at the end of the movie, I asked myself what public moral issue in our day was worthy of that kind of perseverance. The answer was undeniable: abortion. Viewing people as inferior on the basis of skin color is unthinkable, but killing them would be even more unthinkable. What can we say about the systematic killing of unborn babies? Let us pray that the Lord will tune our hearts and our minds in accord with his heart and mind.

Prayer

Three Important Reasons We Care About Sanctity of Life

I want to begin by giving three fundamental reasons why we care about this issue. I want to frame our caring by connecting it with a statement that Pastor John has made: “We care about all suffering, especially eternal suffering.” In abortion, we at Bethlehem care about: (1) the unborn child, (2) the parents, and (3) our country. We will then close the sermon by talking about a fourth point: The thing at Bethlehem we care about most, which makes us care about sanctity of life even more than the previous three reasons.

1. We Care About the Unborn Child

We care about the suffering of unborn children. This is probably the hardest sermon I have ever preached. I read the testimony of an abortion doctor this week. He talked about what he does with a forceps to the head of a child in the womb. I sat in my office and wept. I could not think straight for fifteen minutes. I was mentally and emotionally undone. I read about only one abortion and only one way the “procedure” is done—and I was undone. I began to multiply it; multiply all the ways in which death is administered to so many unborn children.

What do you do when a child dies? Just to hear about it stops you in your tracks. The closer you were to the child and the family—the harder hitting it is. The death of a child is hard enough; what do you do with the killing of a child? What do you do with child killing on the scale in which it happens in our country and in our world?

Now I understand that it is controversial to say that we care about unborn children. I am sometimes surprised by this—why is it so controversial? We need to think carefully about controversy together. Some do not talk about it. I am aware that in many quarters it is not considered polite or wise to address this issue. It makes us uncomfortable. No one can deny that abortion is an explosive emotional issue. It is so emotionally explosive that some people are too intimidated to talk about it because it is deemed too controversial. R.C. Sproul commented on this issue in the church among pastors in his book on abortion. He asked why pastors used his other studies like the holiness of God, but not his study on abortion. Some pastors said that they don’t talk about abortion because it is so controversial that they fear they would get run out of town before the next Sunday.

There is no question that abortion is a controversial issue among Christians. But it should not be. I find myself agreeing with theologian John Frame who says, “There are areas of theology about which sincere Christians can disagree, but this is not one of them. The Scriptures are clear as they can be that God’s people have the responsibility to stop the shedding of innocent blood” (back cover of Innocent Blood). At Bethlehem, we agree that the Scriptures are clear. We are called to rescue the perishing. Scripture says that shedding innocent blood is wrong. “Innocent” does not mean sinless. It means that they have not personally wronged anyone.

Most here probably believe that the unborn really are children and so abortion is child killing. The question becomes what to do about it. Where does caring lead? 

Caring cannot lead to inaction. Some see that it is wrong, but they still try to avoid responsibility. Let me go on record as saying we cannot be evasive and skirt around our responsibilities as a church on this score. If we did, we would join the ranks of others throughout the centuries that have failed to obey God in their attempt to evade responsibility.

The Good Samaritan: Compassion When Seeing Suffering

The story of the Good Samaritan is a case in point. Jesus said the central command of the Law is to love God and love neighbor. This made the questioner squirm as he thought about the need to love his neighbor. So he asked Jesus a question from a squirmy heart that was set on self-justification: “But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’” (Luke 10:29). Jesus told a story that illustrated this evasiveness. A man on a journey was robbed, beaten, and left for dead. A priest and a Levite saw the man and did not merely keep walking as though nothing were wrong—they saw the problem, but then they tried to not see the problem. “When he saw him, he passed by on the other side” (10:31). He saw and then he went to the other side so that he would not have to see and do anything.

The Good Samaritan saw just like the priest, but responded in a way that is as different as night and day: “And when he saw him, he had compassion” (10:33). Notice that the next verses define compassion as action (binding up wounds, pouring on oil, set him on his animal, paid for lodging). The painful truth is that inactivity comes as a result of having too little compassion, not too much busyness.

I don’t want a squishy, self-justifying heart. I want a heart of compassion. We want to be a church that cares about all suffering.

The Holocaust
    
The abortion issue is similar in that we can choose to pass by on the other side of the street so that we do not have to see it. This sort of thing happened during the holocaust in Nazi Germany. I heard a story recently of a German church that was located by the railroad tracks that sometimes would have a railroad car full of Jews headed to the concentration camp. The Jews would be crying out for help and the people in the church would have to sing louder in order to keep from hearing the screams for help.

The holocaust puts us a little closer to the problem of abortion. The problem has been called a “moral fog.” It is easier to see something as wrong when you feel it is wrong and the laws of the land reinforce that it is wrong. But what if you feel like it is wrong, but the laws of the land say it is legal? If enough people in society are willing to accept something, does it make it right? If something gets legalized, does that mean that it is ok? Someone may act decisively if they witness something that their conscience and the laws of the land say is a crime. But what about if it is murder and others have tried to define it in a way that says it is acceptable?

That was the issue with the Holocaust. The laws of the land did not prohibit it. You would get into trouble if you tried to stop it. What would you have done if you had been sitting in that church in Germany while hearing the Jews crying for help?

The question can only be answered one way: we don’t know. We cannot go back in time and put ourselves in that situation. But one thing is clear. If you are not doing anything now, you would not have done anything back then. In other words, if you do not respond to similar situations today, then you have no basis to believe that you would have done anything back then either. The difference between the holocaust of Jews and the mass killing of babies is not personhood because both are humans. The chilling difference is that these babies are killed before we can even hear their screams.

2. We Care About the Parents

One of the most common charges against the pro-life position has been that we care for unborn children and not for their parents. They say we are pro-children and anti-parents. However, we can firmly say we are pro-life and pro-parent in the most profound of ways.

First, there are now over 3000 pregnancy help centers and maternity homes in the US and Canada to blow out of the water the idea that we do not care for the parents. Abortion is big business. People are paid to perform abortions. Contrast this with pro-life efforts. These pregnancy help centers are funded by churches and fueled by volunteers.

Second, one of the reasons that these pregnancy help centers exist is because we care about parents even after abortions. Emotionally, parents cannot escape the fact that they were parents even when the unborn child is gone. The laws may tell them that it is ok, but their emotions and their consciences tell them something different.

In fact, in my reading on this issue, I kept coming across two startling observations:

1. Parents rarely if ever say later that they regret their decision to keep their child.
2. Most, if not all women, regret getting an abortion later. They are beginning to speak out in greater numbers (groups such as “Silent No More”)

This led me to wonder if this same sense would apply to victims who were violated.

In their book, Victims and Victors, David Reardon and his associates drew on the testimonies of 192 women who experienced pregnancy as a result of rape or incest and 55 children that were conceived through assault. “Nearly all women interviewed in this anecdotal survey said that they regretted aborting the babies conceived via rape or incest … among the women profiled in the book who conceived due to rape or incest and carried to term, not one expressed regret about her choice” (quoted in Why Pro-Life?, p. 81–82). Randy Alcorn said it well: “Abortion doesn’t bring healing to a rape victim. Imposing capital punishment on the innocent child does nothing bad to the rapist and nothing good to the woman” (p. 82). Two wrongs cannot make a right in this regard.

So John Ensor talks about pro-life efforts in this generation as “the Underground Railroad of the 21st century” (p. 88). This Underground Railroad is trying to rescue not just unborn children, but parents as well. There are campaigns to join like the Silent No More Campaign, in which women and men speak out about the horror of experiencing an abortion. Unlike their unborn children, the parents still have life, but now their life is filled with deep regret—a pain that knows no soothing. 

One of the women that has come forward is named Norma McCorvey, the young woman called “Roe” in the Roe v. Wade case. She elicited sympathy in the court and media by claiming to be a rape victim, which she admitted later was a lie. She has since that time become an outspoken pro-life advocate and asked the Supreme Court to reverse Roe v. Wade.

3. We Care About Our Country (the Common Good)

The Bible tells us that we are supposed to keep ourselves unstained from the world (James 1:27). People forget that we can be stained by the world’s anti-god behaviors or by the world’s anti-god thinking. Abortion is part of something much bigger in our country. It is part of a larger worldview. Nancy Pearcey (Total Truth) looks at the worldview of the founder of Planned Parenthood, the late Margaret Sanger. She did not begin that organization with neutral beliefs. Her religion was “evolution.” It was an obvious point of fact for her that we are evolved animals with biological urges to reproduce. It would be unnatural to suppress these.

Margaret Sangers’ Religion:

Creation: evolution—we are evolved animals

Fall: suppression of biological urge to reproduce (the “sin” of Christian morality)

Redemption: sexual revolution (children are “unwanted” consequences; biologically they are redefined by some as not fully human—as a haphazard collection of cells).

Consummation: we die and our bodies are recycled

Any country that believes these things does not have a bright future. How can a country that kills its children have hope? A country that tilts toward death and away from life tilts away from hope. We are inconsistent. We hear mixed messages. We talk about our people having an inalienable right from our Creator for life, health, and the pursuit of happiness? Why is someone given two counts of murder if they kill a mother and an unborn baby? Does the mother have godlike power to define life? If she wants it, then someone killing the child against her will is murder. If she wants it gone, then it is not murder?

We are constantly at risk as a nation of plunging into pessimistic despair as many mourn the loss of finding meaning in life. We are taught that we come from animals, we are part of a cosmic accident and there is no meaning in life beyond biology. The experience of something as powerful as love is just a chemical reaction. The brain secretes thought like the liver secretes bile. One hears all of these ideas and begins to mourns the absence of genuine meaning in life.

This philosophy is encapsulated in a 30 second stage play called Breath. There is a recorded scream at the beginning, a breath in the middle (inhale, exhale), and a recorded scream at the end. It begins dark, gets brighter (but never fully bright), and then gets dark again. As the light shines for a little while the viewer is able to see that a pile of garbage is all that is on the stage. The play says that “life” is a solitary breath between two screams. The short life that exists between the two screams is really nothing but a pile of garbage. No wonder death is no big deal in our country—life looks so cheap in this view. This is the opposite of the sanctity of life—it is the gutting of life that views life as garbage to be discarded, which is where aborted babies go. This is the opposite of the sanctity of life; this is the trashing of life. How different is the song that we sing: “from life’s first cry to final breath, Jesus commands my destiny.” That leads us to our fourth point.

The Chief Reason We Care About Sanctity of Life

4. We Care About God

We do care about unborn children and their parents. We care about our country and false, harmful messages that we are hearing. But everything we have said so far has ignored the most important point. We do not want to be known only by what are against. I am not standing on an “anti-abortion platform.” We want to be known and defined by what we are for. Abortion is about God. We are pro-choice in a fundamentally different and profound way: we are about God’s choice. It is God’s choice whether or not someone gets pregnant. He opens the womb and gives life. We are pro-choice in terms of God’s choice to give life. Therefore, because God gives life we are pro-life because we are pro-God.

Because God is sovereign, Bethlehem believes in God’s good design even in disability. We may reach a point when only Christians will continue to have children with disabilities because we will not abort them when the culture of death comes calling to tell us that they are inferior and deficient. We will honor God’s choice and his good design.

God is the most important Being in the universe. He is the standard of all morals. He is the cause of all life. I do not typically hear people talk about a concern to glorify God in these discussions. I cannot see how anyone could believe that abortion glorifies God.

We believe that God created all things. We are not an accident and we are not animals. What went wrong? Sin. Humanity rebelled against their Creator and all creation experienced the curse of sin and death. Abortion came into the world because sin came into the world. I regard it as no small thing for created people to act like they are the Creator. We act as though we have godlike powers to decide if life is really life. When the child is wanted and someone kills it, we call it murder. When the child is unwanted and someone kills it, we call it a procedure and pronounce it legal. It is a fearful thing to disregard God and to act like His choice does not matter.

We Care Because We Are Pro-Gospel

But that is not the end of the story. We are pro-gospel. We stand on these convictions because we are also pro-Bible. We come back now to our text. 

Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, for which I was appointed a preacher and apostle and teacher, which is why I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that Day what has been entrusted to me.—2 Timothy 1:8–12

Abortion enters the world because sin and death entered the world. Redemption comes with the coming of Christ. We are saved not because of our works. We could not do anything to rescue ourselves. We hear the call to rescue the perishing in Scripture: “rescue those who are being taken away to death” (Proverbs 24:11). This call to rescue the perishing has a mega-ton of meaning for us because Jesus first came to rescue the perishing: us.

Jesus abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel (2 Timothy 1:10). We get our cues on this issue and every issue from the gospel. How can Christians, people who by definition have embraced the gospel, also embrace abortion and the culture of death? Because Jesus abolished death and brought life to light through the gospel, one cannot embrace the gospel of life and the culture of death at the same time.

One of the ways that Christians have attempted to distance themselves from the issue (walk on the other side) is to say we care more about eternal salvation than temporary deliverance. Yes, there is a distinction between efforts to rescue the innocent temporarily and efforts to save the guilty for all eternity. We can say that the issues are distinct, but we cannot say that they are completely separable. 

One of the things that makes the gospel of our salvation so precious to us is that life matters to us. In this connection, we see the radical cost to rescue us from death at the cross. I will close by showing the connection in a story told by John Ensor.

Closing Case-Study from John Ensor, Innocent Blood

Two Muslim women came to see John Ensor at a pregnancy center. He wrote about the encounter in his book, Innocent Blood (pp. 69–70):

One of the women had come to the pregnancy center and found the help and courage necessary to not get an abortion. Now she brought her friend. Please, she said, talk to my friend. She had an abortion and all she does is cry.” I said, “Some things are truly worth crying about.” One said, “I told her she could fast. I think that might help.” I said, “Fasting is a good thing. But in this case, I fear she could fast till she starved to death and never find any hope or assurance of forgiveness. No, I think she will need a miracle.”

Then I made matters worse. I took out some pictures of abortion and showed her why she felt so terrible. To be clear, I honestly did not do this to hurt her further. I did it to show her that she was right to be crying. I did it to show her that her tears were a sign that her conscience was working properly. She was not over-reacting.

Then I told her that I too was once convicted about my own guilt regarding the shedding of innocent blood. I never did anything to stop it. I allowed it to happen and did not care enough to even try to stop it. So I, too, was guilty.

She asked me what I did about it. I told her that I gave up all hope that there was anything I could do to remove the guilt. It was there and it was not going to go away by fasting or weeping. Trying to inflict some kind of punishment on myself could never pay it off. Trying to offset the guilt with good deeds never erases the blood-stain itself. No, I too needed a miracle.

Then I took my cue from Hebrews 12:24, which says that the blood of Christ “speaks a better word than the blood of Abel,” or in her case, than the cries of her preborn-child. I applied the cross of Christ to this one thing and explained it, saying, “There is no forgiveness for shedding innocent blood except by the shedding of innocent blood. Let me tell you about how Christ shed his innocent blood for all those who will accept it as a free gift of grace.” When I finished, she whispered, “That is the most beautiful story I ever heard.”

The gospel also keeps us from cynicism when we look into the face of the culture of death and the hard road ahead to abolish abortion. We do not have any promises that it will end in our day. But if we reach a point in which the government tells the church to be quiet on this issue—I would resist in a non-violent way. I would go to jail over this issue. I would say, “we must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). 

I would die on this hill, because Jesus died on a hill called Calvary to abolish death and bring life to light. I remind everyone that feels plagued under the guilt of abortion or not speaking out against abortion: that it is only the wounds of Jesus that can heal our wounds. Let us listen to the blood of Jesus that speaks a better word of forgiveness. His blood is not just innocent blood—it is the blood of a sinless sacrifice. O what a message we have to those who feel such a deep stain: “His blood can make the foulest clean, His blood availed for me.”

Listen to the blood of Jesus and look to testimony of the empty tomb. What unspeakable comfort to look at death and say, "Christ is risen from the dead. He trampled over death by his death." It made all the difference for me this week. We almost did not have a closing song because I thought—how can I sing in the face of such tragedy? The song in me had died. But then the Resurrection restored my song. 

The Resurrection is the ultimate reminder that the cause of life will ultimately triumph over the powers of death. Short-term successes in the fight to abolish abortion will cause short-term singing, but defeats change the singing to a song of lament. The Resurrection is our changeless song of life triumphing over the culture of death.

So let us sing loud—not because we want to ignore the death happening all around us—but because we believe that Jesus has conquered death. He has overcome and in him we will keep singing and keep following our Savior in the cause of life because we found life through the gospel of life.

Sermon Discussion Questions

• State in your own words what you thought about the abortion issue prior to hearing this sermon. Did anything strike you in a new or fresh way after listening to it?
• How does the work of Jesus propel us forward in the cause of life and guard us from cynicism in the face of death as you think about the sheer numbers of babies aborted every year?
• I hope that you agree that we should not see the problem of abortion in our country and pass by it on the other side of the road, but that our compassion should lead to action. If you agree, then what will action (compassion) look like for you?