Amelia Church of Christ - Christian Church in Amelia, OH near Cincinnati in Clermont County

We are kicking off a new series today that is going to be one of the toughest, one of the hardest, and yet one of the most necessary, series that we’re going to do all year. For the next three weeks, we are tackling some issues that are hot buttons in our culture and in the church.

In this series, we’re going to be talking straight up about abortion, homosexuality, and evolution. Can you see why this series is called “Hot Buttons?”

As soon as people hear these words…abortion…homosexuality …evolution…they immediately get their defenses up. People on either side of these issues hear these words and they immediately gear up for a fight.

That’s not what this series is about. We’re not here to start a fight. But we’re not here to wuss out, either.

This is not an attempt to be politically correct. This is not an attempt to be politically incorrect. This series is all about being biblically correct.

In reality, this series is about Jesus. It is about us handling these issues like Jesus would handle them.

Let me show you what I mean. Listen to how the apostle John describes Jesus in his gospel. Pick it up in John 1:14: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.' "

From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” (John 1:14-17, NIV)

Twice in the span of three verses, John reminds us that Jesus was “full of grace and truth.” He says that, “grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

In our Christmas series, we learned that Jesus was 100% God and 100% man. Today we learn that Jesus was 100% grace and 100% truth. He was equal parts grace and truth.

And so if we’re going to deal with these hot button issues like Jesus, then we have to deal with them with grace and truth.

The problem is that most Christians choose one or the other. Some choose grace over truth, and they are afraid to call sin, “sin.” They try to take an area where the Bible is black-and-white and turn it into a gray area. They are more concerned with being politically correct than biblically correct. In their attempts to avoid offending people, they wind up offending God.

Other Christians choose truth over grace, and they become the sin police. They view themselves as God’s Gestapo, and anytime someone crosses them in on of these hot button issues, they cock their righteous rifle and blow them away. Condemning people to hell is an enjoyable pastime to these Christians.

Neither one of these approaches is a Christlike approach. In Jesus, we see that it’s not grace OR truth…it’s grace AND truth. And so that’s what we want this series to be about. I am committed to preaching the truth of God in the grace of God. That’s a tall order, so I absolutely need to pray as we get started.

Today, we’re tackling one of the biggest hot buttons in our culture. One of the most intense issues, not only in our country, but around the world. And one of the most debated issues within the church. Abortion.

Let me say this upfront. Someone in our church is going to be devastated today. This message is going to devastate you. It’s going to conjure up one of the deepest, hurtful, agonizing regrets of your life. Or, it’s going to cause you to face this for the very first time. For the first time, you will feel the crushing weight of this decision you have made.

For those of us who are already on our religious high-horse…ready to criticize and condemn…please stop. God’s Word and God’s Spirit are going to do the convicting. There are people who are going to be wrecked today. They don’t need you to kick them while they’re down. They need to you help them up.

Alright. Let’s get after it. I want to stay above board on this whole thing, so I’ll tell you upfront that I’m using a lot of material from other preachers in this message, Mark Driscoll in particular. I’ve tried to go above and beyond in my research so that I can give you a complete picture of this issue, culturally and, more importantly, biblically.

Anytime that the word abortion comes up, almost everyone will immediately say, “I have a position on abortion.” It’s not an issue where there are very many neutral people. You have a position on abortion. But here’s my question for you…did your position on abortion come from reading Scripture? If you claim the name of Christ, then your view on abortion, and on everything else, must come from the words of the Bible.

So what does the Bible say about abortion? Some people will claim that it says nothing about it. The word “abortion” doesn’t appear in the Bible anywhere. Abortion, as we know it today, didn’t exist in biblical times. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a clear Word from the Lord on this issue.

In Amos 1, God declares that He will judge and punish the neighboring nations of Israel. Here is what He said about the nation of Ammon.

“This is what the LORD says: "For three sins of Ammon, even for four, I will not turn back {my wrath}. Because he ripped open the pregnant women of Gilead in order to extend his borders…” (Amos 1:13, NIV)

In Ammon’s conquest for new territory, its army ripped open the wombs of pregnant women. And it’s obvious that God finds this reprehensible. There were more murders than this committed in Ammon’s battles, but the one that sticks out to God is the murder of babies in the womb. And what did God promise in return? His wrath. His judgment. His divine punishment.

In Exodus 21, God gave some instruction about the unborn in the Old Testament law. He said that that if someone harms an unborn child, “you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.” (Exodus 21:23b-25, ESV)

If someone harmed an unborn child, God commanded His people to take “life for life.” It was a capital offense because it involving the taking of an innocent life.

And that gets to the heart of the entire abortion issue. This thing that is in a mother’s womb…is it a baby or is it tissue? Is it life or is it not?

God, who is the Author of life, tells us point blank in this verse. He said that if someone harmed an unborn baby, His people were to take “life for life.” God views a baby in the womb as life just as He views those of us outside the womb as life. And so He views the taking of life in the womb exactly as He views the taking of life outside the womb.

It was a capital offense in Old Testament Israel. God wouldn’t have made this a death penalty offense if this baby was actually just a bunch of tissue. We come up with fancy medical terms to describe what is in the womb. We call it tissue. We call it an embryo. We call it a fetus. God calls it life!

And this isn’t just the Bible talking. The more medical science progresses, the more the Bible is proven to be true.

At conception, the fertilized egg contains all the genetic data that this child will ever have. All of the inherited features of this new person are already set – whether it’s a boy or girl, the color of the eyes, the color of the hair, the dimples of the cheeks and the cleft of the chin. All of this is decided at the moment of conception.

In the third week of pregnancy, the child registers heart activity. Before many women even know that they’re pregnant, there is a child with a beating heart in their womb.

In the 6th week of pregnancy, the child now exhibits observable brain activity.

In the 8th week, the child can swim in the fluid in the womb and can grasp an object.

In the 10th week, the child develops a distinctive set of fingerprints.

In the 12th week, all the child’s organs should be functioning. The child can breathe oxygen from the fluid in the womb, swallow, sleep, change positions, respond to pain, suck his thumb, and hiccup.

At 18 weeks, the child has reached the point of viability where it is possible for a child to survive a premature birth.

It is life. It is nothing short of God-given, God-breathed, God-ordained life. The baby in the womb is actually a baby. Science and Scripture give the same answer: it is life.

And if this is the case, then how should the people of God view abortion? The excruciatingly simple truth is that abortion is murder.

It’s not a surgery. It’s not a medical procedure. It’s not just having something unwanted removed from your body like having a mole removed or a tooth extracted. It is murder.

And there will be more than 3,200 of these murders carried out in our country today. That works out to one every 27 seconds. If it is just a medical procedure, then abortion is the most common outpatient procedure in America today.

This is contrary to the message propagated by Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood is the leading abortion provider in our country. There is a Planned Parenthood office very close to where we are right now. You probably drive by it all the time.

Planned Parenthood is very good at disguising the truth about abortion. I spent some time on their website this week. It’s a very slick site with wording and images that are very carefully choreographed to make you believe that they are something other than what they are. They portray themselves as a medical clinic. What they are in reality is proponents of murder.

The founder of Planned Parenthood was Margaret Sanger. Margaret Sanger was a racist who saw abortion as a way to murder less fit races.

Speaking of blacks and immigrants, she said they are, “‘...human weeds,’ ‘reckless breeders,’ ‘spawning... human beings who never should have been born.’” (Margaret Sanger, Pivot of Civilization)

Sanger believed that married couples should have to submit an application in order to have a child. ("Plan for Peace." Birth Control Review, April 1932)

She believed that anyone was mentally ill should be sterilized and forced into a lifetime of farm work. (Birth Control Review, April 1932, p. 107) Sounds remarkably like slavery, doesn’t it?

She is well-known for saying, “The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.” (Margaret Sanger, Women and the New Race (Eugenics Publ. Co., 1920, 1923))

If this all sounds remarkably similar to something like Nazi Germany, it is. Sanger believed and followed many of the same teachings that led to the rise of Nazism.

This is the plain, unvarnished truth of how the leading abortion provider in America got its start. Kind of ugly, isn’t it?

Here’s some more ugly truth. 40% of women in our country ages 15-44 have had at least one abortion. 40%.

50% of women who have abortions use it as their sole means of “birth control.” Using murder as a means of birth control. It accounts for half of the abortions in this country.

Now, I know what someone is thinking. I know what is going to appear in my inbox after this message hits the web. “You male chauvinist. You’re anti-woman.”

No. I want us to stop murdering young women. Keep in mind, half of all abortions are taking the life of a female baby. How can you be pro-woman and also be pro-murder of young women? Only Satan could sell that. That’s so messed up…that is so incomprehensible and illogical…only Satan can sell a lie like that.

Here’s another argument. “What about rape and incest? What about when the mother’s life is in danger?” Here’s the deal…those are single percentage cases. Let’s deal with the vast, VAST majority of abortions that are based solely on a choice. That are based solely, on, “This baby is going to be such an inconvenience for me. I have my whole life ahead of me. This will really screw up my plans for college. It will really hurt my reputation. I’m just not in the right place for a baby right now, so I’ll become a murderer and that will solve everything.”

Of all the statistics that I researched this week, here is the one that bothered me the most. 1 in 6 women who have had abortions claimed to be evangelical Christians. 5.6 million women in the church have chosen abortion as a way out of unwanted pregnancy.

1.5 million American women have an abortion annually. This means that this year, 250,000 professing Christian women will choose to abort their own child.

It is a holocaust, and there are people in the church with blood on their hands. There are people in our church with blood on their hands.

There are women in our church who are guilty of murdering their own child. There are men in our church who have pressured their girlfriends or their wives to commit murder. They are complicit. There are bloody hands in this room.

When church is over and you see all the kids running around, ask where the rest are.

If you think I’m having a great time hammering on these murderers in our midst, you couldn’t be more wrong. I rarely get emotional when I’m studying and writing my sermons. But this week, I was broken. The deeper I got into this, the more it messed me up. And I couldn’t keep tears from welling up in my eyes.

If you think I’m enjoying this, you are out of your mind. I’ve been broken over this. And some of you who have blood on your hands…you’re being broken over this. It’s painful, but you have to allow God to break you. If He doesn’t break you, He can never remake you.

A few years ago, I talked with a woman that I’ve known for years. She and her husband are Christians. They have some beautiful children. But I didn’t know that they were carrying a secret.

Finally, one day I was talking to her and she told me that I didn’t know all her children. One was missing, because she and her husband had opted for an abortion years ago.

She grew up in a Christian home. But before these two got married, they disobeyed God by having premarital sex and then they found that she was pregnant. They knew what this pregnancy would do to their reputations, so in an effort to make sure that people would still see them as devoted Christians, they chose an abortion. They chose an abortion to protect their Christian reputation.

You want to know the end result of this abortion? These two were crushed. The guilt over this decision ravaged their lives. This abortion happened more than two decades ago, but these two didn’t find healing and forgiveness until recently. The guilt was simply devastating.

Some of you know what that’s like. You’ve been suffering silently for years. There are women in this room who have taken the life of their own child. There are men in this room who are complicit. You pressured your woman into the abortion, you drove her to the clinic, you paid for the procedure. You are just as guilty as she is.

There are men and women in this room who have been suffering silently for years. Today, you need to own your brokenness. Putting up a front won’t do it. Trying to explain away your actions won’t do it. Trying to say that it’s a political choice instead of a spiritual choice won’t do it. You have to own your actions. You have to own your choices. You have to own your brokenness. You need to feel it. The deeper you feel it, the more you will appreciate the forgiveness, grace, and mercy of God when you experience it.

In the book of Luke, we see a couple of extraordinary women with extraordinary pregnancies. Their names are Elizabeth and Mary. Elizabeth was the mother of John the Baptist and Mary, of course, was the mother of Jesus. There is an amazing scene in Luke 1 that takes place while both of these women were pregnant.

Starting in verse 39, the Bible says, “At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zechariah's home and greeted Elizabeth.

When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. [The BABY leaped in her womb. Not the tissue. Not the embryo or the fetus. The baby.]

In a loud voice she exclaimed: "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?

As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished!” (Luke 1:39-45, NIV)

As soon as Elizabeth heard Mary’s voice, the baby in her womb leaped for joy. This baby, who was six months along, was filled with the Holy Spirit. He leaped for joy in worship. I don’t know of a better argument for personhood than this. God knew John’s name. God filled him with the Holy Spirit. God cause him to leap in joy and worship. All while John was in the womb.

And did you see this? Look again at verses 42-43. “In a loud voice [Elizabeth] exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Luke 1:42-43, NIV)

The first person to call Jesus Christ “Lord” in the Bible is Elizabeth. And she did it while He was still in the womb. Mary’s pregnancy had just begun, and Elizabeth refers to her baby as “Lord.” She recognized that this wasn’t a mass of tissue or a conglomeration of cells. She knew that this was a child. A child who was the Son of God.

And it’s right there where we need to land on this issue. We land with Jesus.

Earlier we studied this Scripture from Exodus 21. If someone harmed an unborn child, the Law said, “You shall pay.”

But then Jesus comes along and says, “I will pay.”

The Law demanded that we take life for life. Jesus says, “Yes, life for life. My life for your life. My hand for your hand. My foot for your foot. My wound for your wound. Stripe for stripe.”

Some of you will hear messages like this…you hear how God views the unborn…you hear that God views abortion as murder…and you’ll say things like, “How dare God judge me?”

And I would say, “How great that God would die for you?”

Truth be told, we’re all murders. Jesus died for our sin. We murdered God. Anyone who would hear this message and feel self-righteous…you killed God. Your sin nailed Jesus to the cross. There is blood on your hands. That should cure your self-righteous arrogance very quickly.

There are people in this room with blood on their hands. Over there, and over there, and over there…and right here.

Acts 2 says, “[Jesus] was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.” (Acts 2:23, NIV)

There is blood on our hands, church. But in an amazing and holy irony, that blood is the only way for us to find forgiveness.

The Bible says in 1 John, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:8-9, NIV)

If we claim to be without sin…if we keep trying to rationalize and justify our actions…if we view our sin as something less than sin…we are deceiving ourselves. We’re not deceiving God, but we are deceiving ourselves and the truth of God is not in us.

It is unbelievable that something like abortion is even up for discussion among God’s people. His Word is so clear. God passionately and clearly tells us that He is the author of life and that life begins in the womb. So if we deceive ourselves and call abortion a “procedure” instead of murder…the truth is not in us.

But, look at the next verse. There is so much hope here. If we confess our sin…if we stop rationalizing and justifying…if we own up to what we have done…God is faithful and just. He will forgive our sin and purify us from all unrighteousness.

You need to focus in like a laser on that little word “all.” God will forgive ALL your sin. He will purify you from ALL unrighteousness. That means God can forgive all abortions…all women who have made this murderous choice and all men who are complicit in the decision.

God can forgive all abortions…just like God can forgive all greed, and malice, and envy, and lust, and gossip, and impurity.

The cross of Jesus Christ is big enough, strong enough, and far-reaching enough to forgive the totality of your sin. Those of you who are haunted by the sin of abortion…and those of you who are haunted by any unconfessed sin…you have to know this. You have to own this.

Romans 8 says, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus…” (Romans 8:1, NIV)

No condemnation. That is what life in Christ is all about. Recognizing the depth, the ugliness, the absolute wickedness of your sin…and then being forgiven totally…absolutely…completely by the blood of Jesus.

You don’t have to carry the guilt anymore. You don’t have to be wrecked by your sin anymore. If God has used today to break you, He did that so He could remake you. He desperately wants to cleanse you. To forgive you. To love you.

You need to know that God has never let you go. He has promised to never leave you or forsake you. He has not and will not give up on you.

He can forgive you and heal you. Whatever is in your past, He can wipe the slate clean and give you a new life. God is not on the Author of life…He is the Author of new life.

Mike Edmisten

Tags: abortion, Hot Buttons