Hope after abortion
Hot Topics 2020 • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 49:09
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· 43 viewsI want to take some time to lay some groundwork for what the Bible teaches about abortion, then I would like to give you the opportunity to hear from someone who can speak from experience, and I would also like to share with you some resources that are available in our community for women who have had an abortion.
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It’s 2020 and our Theme is “Seeing Spiritually.”
During the months of June and July, I am preaching the sermons that you requested. I call it, “Hot Topics.”
Today’s sermon is the last in the series. People are still giving me topics and questions, so I guess I will plan to do it again next year.
This morning’s sermon is one of the more difficult questions that I have addressed, “Is there hope after abortion?”
It is not difficult to answer the question - Of course there is hope!
The difficulty is that it is a very emotional subject.
It is difficult to talk about because it brings up overwhelming feelings, for those who have had abortions, for those who are impacted by another’s decision and for those who are wrestling with how to approach the subject.
I want to take some time to lay some groundwork for what the Bible teaches about abortion, then I would like to give you the opportunity to hear from someone who can speak from experience, and I would also like to share with you some resources that are available in our community for women who have had an abortion.
What does the Bible teach about abortion?
What does the Bible teach about abortion?
4 what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? 5 Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.
Human life is incalculably valuable.
Human life is incalculably valuable.
You may have heard it said that “we believe in the sanctity of human life,” but what does that mean?
Pocket Dictionary of Ethics Life, Sanctity Of
In Christian ethics, the sanctity of life refers to the particular respect that ought to be given to human life because it is both a gift from God and it comes ultimately under God’s sovereignty.
What makes us different from animal life and plant life?
Is it intelligence; our ability to reason or feel? Not really. We have come to understand that animals and even plants to some degree have intelligence and that it it greater than what we once thought.
Is it our capacity to love and to be loved? That’s getting warmer, but I dare you to tell any animal lover that their favorite pet doesn’t love them back, but is just responding to stimuli.
Animals are capable of reason and even of unselfish acts. Do they not know what they are doing?
The reason for the unique value of human life that is usually given is that ‘we are created in God’s image’, but what does that mean?
The image of God means that we are created like God, not in His divine attributes (we are not all powerful, all knowing or everywhere present.)
But we have a kind of divine essence in that we have an immortal soul and a spirit which is able to commune with God.
Michael Heiser, in his lecture series “The Unseen Realm,” states that the image of God should not be describes as anything associated with human brain development or you are actually making the pro-choice argument - that life has to be viable in order for it to be valuable.
Any attempt to describe the image of God as a human ability, whether it be intelligence or any other capacity superior to that of animals makes it an incremental thing and leads the conversation down the path of “when does a person become a person?”
Heiser describes the image of God as the union of the material with the immaterial.
More on what that means later...
Human life begins at conception.
Human life begins at conception.
A person becomes a person when they are created. Just call it a miracle!
A video emerged several years ago from Northwestern University showing a burst of light from a fertilized egg at the moment of conception.
As it turns out, the light was from a chemical reaction that was introduced into the experiment to be able to better see the zinc that is released at fertilization.
However, the image is as close as we can get to actually seeing creation at work.
The moment of conception is it’s own little “big bang” where something that did not exist before suddenly comes into existence.
So many of the arguments around abortion have to do with viability, what is the quality that defines a human life as being worth preserving?
However the image argument is rather about identity.
You are special because of who you are not because of what you are.
At the moment a person is created, they exist because they are known.
1 O Lord, you have searched me and known me! 2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. 3 You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. 4 Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. 5 You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. 6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it. 7 Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? 8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! 9 If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, 10 even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. 11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” 12 even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you. 13 For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. 15 My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. 16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.
God knew you before you were born.
Before you had any ability, you had an identity.
And because you have an identity you also have a destiny.
Human life is created for a purpose.
Human life is created for a purpose.
5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
Karie and I are currently unpacking boxes from our recent move. We have a lot of stuff and not all of it is equally valuable. But what has the most value to us right now, it is the very thing for which we have been thinking, “I have a place for that.”
God has a place for you. He already knows what He wants to do with each person’s life.
We do not want to reduce a person’s value to say it is because of their potential. That would be making value about ability and viability.
But to say that a person has value because of their identity and then add to that a purpose and a destiny adds credibility to an argument which is already strong.
This is also to say that every loss of life is a loss of what could have been.
Who would have prophesied to Israel to give the hope to go through the exile?
Sure, God could have raised up someone else, but it would be different.
There were many prophets in the time of Jeremiah, but Jeremiah was unique among the prophets. Few had the courage to stand up and deliver an unpopular message.
Who are the unique people that God has planned to use for His purpose that never had a chance at life?
When God wanted to raise up Moses, the enemy devised a plan to have him killed at birth.
When Jesus was born, Herod had all of the infants in Bethlehem killed.
Has it occurred to anyone that abortion is a plan of the enemy to stop a generation from accomplishing the purpose of God?
Where is the hope?
Where is the hope?
Hope is redemption. We can’t change the past, but we can let God change our future.
I would like you to hear from someone who knows and understands the power of redemption.