The Abortion Issue

Today I want to look at a subject that's considered a political issue in our country. It has people divided, as people fighting over the meaning of the Constitution, over morality, literally hating each other over this issue. But it's not a political issue for us. There's a time we set aside all the things that are happening in the world around us, and we have to sort through issues and say, what are kingdom of God issues? Now, what are political issues? This party or that party or anything else? An issue I want to talk about is abortion. But this is not a political debate. We're looking at this from a different viewpoint.

At first I started to create the sermon around some good, solid scientific explanations of human life. It was interesting as I went through various major articles and major publications and major websites and read all the responses. It's always interesting to read responses as people debate whatever is written. You saw how much anger and what people say about each other. But it was very interesting that, of course, scientists are all over the place on the definition of when human life begins. Now, let me take that back. They're not. They're in debate on the value of human life, when it becomes valuable. What I mean by that is I found that most biologists, an overwhelming majority, even looked at some surveys that have been done among biologists, even those who are atheists, there was an agreement that from a scientific viewpoint, human life begins when an egg is fertilized.

Because at that point, it's a different kind of cell. And the argument is, okay, it's a cell. It's not human. So there were lots of scientists that said, okay, it's a cell. But so is, you know, you have skin cells that flake off by the thousands every day. Well, what's the difference between a human skin cell and a fertilized egg? They're just cells. They're not humans. They're just parts of a human. But they all agreed, I say, I will say all, the overwhelming majority agreed that when an egg is fertilized, especially when it attaches to the mother, at that point, all the blueprint, all the makings of that human being is already there, and it's in the process of creating a human being. So I decided I'm not going to go through any scientific discussion of abortion. I'm just going to agree with even those who are atheists. A fertilized egg is a cell containing all the blueprint of a human being, and the moment it's fertilized, it begins creating a human being. I agree with that. All the rest of the science I'll set aside. We have a problem with science in that I tell people they should study science. I'm not anti-scientific by any means. But one thing you learn over life, especially, when science, what you tend to think when you're younger, is absolute facts. Of course, it's not. Human beings are constantly exploring and learning and finding out that we build hypotheses sometimes that aren't even true. For years, for decades, scientists taught that the Big Bang Theory is how the universe began. Suddenly, with one of the new telescopes they have, there are scientists questioning that. Because Big Bang Theory says the universe exploded out of a single point and moved outward. They now have found places in the universe where stars are being manufactured. Things are happening there and producing stars. They can't explain that. Why and how is that happening? So now they have to come up with some new explanations. Science can deal with trying to discover our physical world. And sometimes they make incredible discoveries and come to incredible conclusions. Sometimes they don't know. And the reason why is there is another element of information, of knowledge, that has to be combined with science to truly understand the world you and I live in. That's one of the things I thought was interesting in some of the websites I went to that were all scientists debating abortion. And they just concluded, we know what we're talking about. This means this, this means this. And Christians are just stupid because they don't accept this knowledge. Well, I accept that a fertilized egg is the beginning of human life. I accept that. So we have an agreement. But past that, the value of that is where we have a problem. And our value comes from the Bible. Now, we're here because we believe there's a God. We believe that God has revealed Himself in nature. He's revealed Himself in this book. And it is here that we find the value God places on human life. And of course, the question is, when is an embryo of value? At six weeks? Nah, we can abort it then. At three months? No, we can abort it then. All over the, you know, what's the Supreme Court voted down? They're not voted down, but overturned Roe v. Wade. That didn't stop abortion. It's just, it's different in different places. It depends on the value you place on the embryo and then the fetus. I mean, there are still some states that say that right up to birth, you can destroy that baby. In fact, there's some argument that, and this is happening in California, that a baby born, brain function, is not totally that of a human being. So a baby may live for weeks afterwards and the parents could still bring them in and have them certain, you know, medically killed. Because they're not a human being yet.

See, when is the value of when you become a human being? That's the issue. That's not a scientific argument. Because we, it's almost universal. Human life begins when an egg is fertilized and it begins to do its work of creating a human being. So there we got it. But when is it a value? Our conclusion comes from something that God says.

And that's what we're going to look at today. We're going to look at, we're going to start with something very big and move towards a point where we discuss directly abortion. But we're going to have to look at how does God look at human life. So let's begin at a place we've all read over and over and over again, but let's start here. Some place we know. Genesis 1. Genesis 1, 26.

At what point is it a clump of cells? At what point is it what comes up? Viable human being. In other words, it can exist outside the womb. So some decide until it can exist outside the womb, it's not really a human being. You know, that was actually a Protestant religious teaching if you go back into the early 1800s. They called it the quickening. It really wasn't alive until you could feel it move. I mean, it was the only way they could tell, okay, it moved, it's alive. Therefore, it's now a human being.

And what changed that religious belief was because doctors came out and said, no, no, no, we've discovered it's alive from the moment it's conceived. Oh, and that changed the religious belief. I find it interesting. There's a point in the United States where the religious belief was changed by the science.

Because until it moved, is it really alive? Not that they were committing a lot of abortions, but they just didn't consider it an alive human being. So when is it? Is it in the quickening? When is it just to accomplish cells? When is it? When is it before God, a human being in his mind?

Genesis 1, 26. Let's start here at the very beginning. And there's something here I want to zero in on in terms of the creation of human beings. He says, then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

So God created man in his own image, and in the image of God he created him. Male and female, he created them. Now this is real important. He created them male and female. There's a purpose for that. I think I mentioned I had an interesting conversation with a woman a couple months ago who said that she didn't believe in the first two chapters of Genesis. Because in the first two chapters of Genesis, God created Adam, then used some of his cells from his ribs to create a woman, which means women were clones. She said that means they're not complete human beings, and I believe I'm just as equal as a man, so therefore I can't believe in that part of the Bible. And I said that's not what it means. You're taking a human scientific activity of cloning and saying that's what God did. That's not what God did. But in her mind that's what was happening, and therefore you can't believe this. God created a male and female, both in his image, in order to do something, in order that something can happen.

He says then God blessed them, and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it. Be fruitful and multiply. Now the way God made human beings to be fruitful and multiply is by making us male and female.

In fact, in chapter 2, he institutes marriage. He creates and ordains marriage as a fundamental human activity. Marriage.

In other words, it's within this context that other human beings made in the image of God are created.

You know, he could have had a different way of doing that. He could have just said, you know what I'm going to do is every once in a while I'm going to put one of you to sleep and take some cells out of you and create a new one. He could have created every human being like he created Adam. They just pop up out of the ground, right? You look in your backyard one day and say, oh, we have a baby.

What God said is I'm making you male and female. This is how I choose to create more beings in my image. That's very important to understand. From the very beginning, he makes that point. This is how I'm going to continue to have more human beings made in his image.

Now, we know the problem that happened. Adam and Eve rebelled against God. Satan came into the garden and they were cast out of the garden.

Theologians called this the fall of humanity. I used to not like that term, but the older I get, the more I like it. You know, God talked to Israel. You're going to fall. You're going to fall. He talks about falling in sin. He uses that word all through the Bible. In other words, they were in an elevated position or relationship with God and they fell.

And humanity fell. And now humanity became corrupted. And since that time, every one of us has a corrupted human nature. I've talked about that many times. The sin that's in us. I've also talked about how the entire creation is corrupted. We're under Satan's rule and it's all corrupted. This is important to understand. We've got a concept. God made male and female as his way in marriage of creating children in his image. After human beings are kicked out of the Garden of Eden, we are corrupted. But God did not change the way he wanted us to continue to create human beings.

For his purpose. Human beings are created for his purpose. He didn't change that. Which means that every child now that's born is born corrupted and the child is born into a world that's corrupted. Right? So we just keep passing this on. That it didn't change God's ultimate plan. We're going to have to look at that until we can really look into how God looks at abortion. Because that's the opinion we're looking at today. What is God's opinion on abortion?

So that means that all human beings die. He told them that. That's what's happened. And then he said, if you look through the entire Old Testament, you get into the New Testament, he was going to have to do something to us.

Do something to us to stop that cycle of death. But in the meantime, he never changed. We can't help it that we as human beings have totally perverted the concept of how God creates human beings. It was always supposed to be one man, one woman in marriage creating children. That's what it was supposed to be. Now, that's not the way it's turned out, has it? Human history just doesn't fulfill that because we're all corrupted. But his way of doing it hasn't changed. We changed. He didn't. And so we've lived in thousands of years of societies that always collapsed because eventually the family structure collapses.

What changes it? What changes it? God is spirit. Human beings were created as a Hebrew neifesh, which just means physical. Now, God gives us spirit, but when you look at the Old and New Testament, the spirit that comes from God isn't an immortal soul. It means life. He gives life to us. He even says he gives spirit to animals, but it's different. Why is it different? Because you and I are created in the image of God. The life God gives us allows us to have a relationship like him and allows us to have functions that are different than animals. We're way above the animal plane and what we can do with our minds.

So, that isn't enough. The human being isn't enough. It takes something else. So let's look at 1 Corinthians 2 and look at the missing ingredient, and then we have to look at the process by which that is given to us. 1 Corinthians 2. I'm not sure where he's going here with abortion. We'll look at this in a minute. 1 Corinthians 2. So we know how God created human beings. We know how he wanted us to continue to create human beings. We know that it hasn't worked in human history very well, because why? Because we're messed up.

But God hasn't changed.

Verse 10 here. I'm going to start in verse 11. Let's go to verse 10, because he's in the middle of a sentence here, or a thought. Paul's saying, there's things that we can know that aren't natural for us to know. In other words, there's things that an uneducated person with God's help knows something that the greatest scientists can't. It doesn't have to do with scientific fact. That's not the issue. They know what God is doing.

In the world, you see things that people do, the sacrifices they'll make for each other. The things that people will do that are something good.

And you say, okay, you can still see this little bit of the image of God out here in humanity. We still see it. But what we come up with are political systems, even the way we use science. It always fails. It never reaches completion because it never reaches purpose. We don't understand the purpose of everything, and we don't understand what God says is valuable. Now, what we say is valuable. Is the fertilized egg valuable? That's debatable, right, in our society. If it's two weeks old, it's a clump of cells. Well, it's not valuable because it's only a clump of cells. When it gets a beating heart, does that make it valuable? When there's brain activity, does that make it valuable? When it finally can start thought weeks afterwards as born, is that when it's valuable? When is it valuable? When do we say this has intrinsic value? It is, in itself, have worth. That's the question. And that's why science can't answer the question because it's a moral question. And he says here, we don't know, or we know as human beings, what we know because we were made in the image of God and because God gave us a life which gives us the ability to understand certain things. He says, even so, no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Then he says here to members of the Church, now we've received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. There's something we only get if God gives it to us. And it's a process by which God gives us to us.

Now we will call that process conversion. We'll see how God calls us. God awakens us to the truth. God creates a relationship with us. We have to repent. We have to respond. We have all these words. We talk about justification and sanctification. We have all these words that describe biblically, theologically, and doctorally this process.

But there's another way this process is defined. And I'm not going to go through it in great detail because that would take a whole sermon. But I want to touch on it. In the terms of what we're talking about today, it's something Jesus said in John chapter 3. John chapter 3.

So we're human beings. We are corrupted human beings.

We went through the process of being, you know, a mother was impregnated. We grew in her womb. We were born. And we grew up. And here we are.

This man is a man who knows the Bible, who comes to Jesus.

This man knows the scripture. This man believes God and believes in God, and has lived his life trying to obey God. And he comes to Jesus because he wants something.

There's some knowledge. There's some understanding he doesn't have. And he wants him to give it to him. Verse 1. There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.

And this man came to Jesus by night and said to him, He probably came at night because he didn't want to be seen. I don't want to be seen coming to this rabbi. I wanted the great teachers.

But he wants something. What he probably expects is for Jesus to say, Well, as Moses said, as a rabbi would, and teach him from the scroll, or Isaiah said, he would teach him from the scripture. And that's not what Jesus does.

He confronts him with something that takes him beyond any understanding he has.

And Jesus said to him, Most surely I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Oh, they can see that. You are conceived and born and you've lived your life. But unless you're born again a second time, you can't even be part of the kingdom of God.

And Nicodemus gives him a good, solid scientific answer. There's nothing wrong scientifically from the answer he gives him. Nicodemus said to him, How can a man be born again when he's old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born? I mean, this is physically impossible. What are you talking about? I can't go through a second birth. I've already been born. That's not possible. And he makes this hyperbole, you know. Oh, yeah, I'm supposed to go back and ask my mom to see me again. This is ridiculous. I cannot physically be born again. And the truth is, he can't. He can't. He can't. He can't physically be born again.

And the truth is, he couldn't. He does not understand what he's saying. And Jesus answered, Lo, so jurely I say to you, unless one is born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do you marvel that I said to you, you must be born again? The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but you cannot tell where it comes from, or where it goes. So is everyone who was born of the Spirit.

Now, it would take me a half hour to go through and just exegetically explain that. But I want you just to look at the point he's making. The overall point's obvious. If you wish to be part of the kingdom of God, you're going to have to go through another process of conception and birth. He said that's not possible. I mean, physically that's not possible. He's saying, no, it's a spiritual conception and birth. You're going to have to go through that. There's something very fascinating here. Human beings are created through this conception and gestation and birth period between, you know, with a man and a woman producing this child.

And he said, something has to happen to you that takes you through the same spiritual process. Now, we know it's the Spirit of God being put into us. We go through an impregnation process. The Spirit of God is put in here. And God begins to recreate us. Once you receive God's Spirit, we tend to say, oh, good, I received God's Spirit, I'm done.

No, you're an embryo. You're an embryo. Spiritually, that's all you are. Going through a process of being born again. There's always debate over what born again means. And part of the reason why is, the Greek word means basically procreation. I mean, if you break down all the different meanings of it, from conception to birth is being born. So, born again means you have to go from conception to being born again.

And all during that period, you're being procreated. You're going through this process. Nicodemus never got it. I mean, I have to be spiritually born again, with God's Spirit. I don't even understand. You know, there's nothing here that shows that he even understood what he said. So this first process creates human beings who can become the children of God. But without the second process, we never become the children of God. The first process makes us human beings made in the image of God, corrupted image, and God can then save us from that, and he wants us then to be born again.

He wants us to be changed into his children. Peter says something similar in 1 Peter. 1 Peter chapter 1. Peter used a little different word here than what Jesus did or what John wrote. It means the same thing. Jesus uses two words to say what Peter uses one word to say, but they're basically the same meaning. In verse 3 here, 1 Peter 1, Bless be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus, who according to his abundant mercy has begotten us, who has brought us into a process of procreation.

Begotten. It can mean literally, got a child. It has all these subtle different meanings, but it has to do with conception to birth. God has started this process in us, that we are spiritual embryos. At what point in this are you not valuable to God? At what point are we not valuable to God when he takes us, prepares us, and then starts us this process in us?

He says begotten to us again, has begotten it once again. There's this again thing. This isn't the physical thing that's going on. This is something else. There's a spiritual thing that's going on. To a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. To an inheritance incorruptible and defiled, that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, for it kept by the power of God through faith, for salvation ready to be revealed at the last time.

So he says, look, you're in this process of being, you're being begotten again. You're being changed. And, you know, he looks towards the future here as sort of the birth, the end of the process. Look at verse 23. Or look at verse 22. He says, Since you have purified your souls and obeying the truth of the Spirit, and sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart, having been born again, not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible, through the word of God, which lives and abides forever.

So now he says it's like a present tense thing. That's not a problem if you live in a Greek world. That's no problem. Oh, I'm in this period of being made into a child of God. It's complete at the resurrection. But I'm in the process of doing it. I'm in the process of being changed. He says, but this time the seed is not physical seed, which produced you physically at the beginning. It's spiritual seed. It's what God puts inside you. Do we grasp the absolute remarkable thing that's happening to us and how much do we compromise with it?

God started a process in which you are being born again because in your physical state you were born, you were corrupted, you die. And unless he does something with you, you will never escape that cycle.

So you must be born again. Now you begin to understand these two cycles are connected. The connection between creating a human being and creating a child of God, you have to have one to create the other. And this is how God chose to do it. Create the physical first and use that to create the second, the spiritual child. That's why John says in 1 John, he says, we are now the children of God. How can he say that? We're not changed yet. Because in relationship we are, because the seed is in us. And then he says, well, we don't know exactly what we're going to be like in the resurrection. We don't know what we're going to be like then, but we'll be like him. That's all we know. But already we are the children of God. You know, when my wife walked around with, you know, three times with our children, that was my child. That was our child in there, right? Come here, come here, feel him, feel her. Because, you know, you find out what it is, boy or girl, and you're feeling the little foot punch or whatever. And it's like, that's ours. That embryo is ours. It's real. It has value, right? Well, that's how God sees you spiritually. You're real, you have value, and you're in this gestation period. You're being born again. And it's completed when he returns, when Christ returns. But think about that now physically, because that is how God gets us to this place.

And we begin to see the terribleness of abortion. Now, fortunately, there is a resurrection ahead, but in the short run, there are lives that are taken away from God's interaction. There's lives taken away from God's interaction. Let's go to Jeremiah 1. But that's what it is to be in a corrupt world. There's a number of other things we have to talk about here, what it's like to be in a corrupt world. Jeremiah 1, verse 4. Jeremiah writes, Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I sanctified you. I ordained you a prophet to the nations. God said, what you don't understand, Jeremiah, is when you were just a clump of cells, I was preparing you for what I wanted you to do now in your life. When you were just a clump of cells. No, he doesn't tell him that, because Jeremiah would have had no idea what a clump of cells meant. I doubt if there was a Hebrew term that would explain that. He says, I knew you then. And you will find through the scripture, different people, that God says, I knew you before you were born. Now, here comes the hard part that we have to deal with. We have a 15-year-old girl, I know we, but you have instances of a 15-year-old girl who's raped and then has to deal with the parents saying, should we abort the child? Or did God cause the rape to conceive the child? No. Understand, God is doing something here specific with Jeremiah for a purpose. Otherwise, if we say God does that with every conception, we have to have God create incest and rape. No, he does not. Here's the problem. We have to always go back to, you and I live in that fallen world. This isn't God's world. And you and I, I say humanity. I just say you and I because I include myself in humanity because I haven't figured out how to be changed into the Son of God yet. That doesn't happen until later. So, us, humanity, which we're coming out of, humanity has created this mess where we've destroyed the whole concept of what conceptual is all about. So, in doing that, there are terrible things that happen with incest or rape. Or some girl that gets drunk down here in downtown Nashville on a Saturday night, wakes up a month later, and she's pregnant, and she doesn't even know who the boy was. Right? Happens all the time. We've messed it up. That doesn't mean God denies the value of the person that's in there. That's hard. That's real hard, especially if you're on the end where you were, you know, you were conceived through rape. That would, that was one of my kids. But at the same time, does that take away the value God places on that person? No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't. It can't. Because that means that person has a chance to be his son or daughter forever. Just like the woman or the girl that was violated has an opportunity to be his daughter forever. Now, he has to heal her from what she went through. You know, sometimes I've heard people say, well, women who want abortions, you know, should just be punished. We should throw them in jail. We should do this. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Step back a minute. I mean, I agree there are women who use it just as a form of birth control. So that's wrong. I mean, it's a sin. But you know, there's a lot of women out there that face abortion because they don't know God, and they're hopeless. Absolutely hopeless. Besides, if we throw them in jail, I think all the men should be thrown in jail.

In fact, I think they should be thrown in jail first because they run away. When you run away, when you get a girl pregnant, you're a pretty useless man. He just are.

He should be thrown in jail.

But see, we've got it all messed up.

That's why we have to be open to help women who have been through abortions. At the same time, we can't condone it because it is sin. It is murder.

Now, we say that why? Because we believe God designed this process to create human beings in His image so that He can then recreate them into His eternal children. That's part of the process.

So they all have value.

I mean, throughout history, most babies have been born in terrible situations. The Bubonic Plague, Mongolian hordes, the bombing of London, the killing— I mean, whatever, right? Ukraine. Or they're born today and they're sick. They have a deformity. Did God do that? No. There is one case I know of where God did have a person born blind and it was a man that Jesus was going to heal publicly. And He said, yes, He was made blind to show who Jesus is. I can guarantee you when that man was made to see and explain to me what was happening, He didn't say, God, this was unfair. That wouldn't have been in His mind. It had been something else. Wow! Praise God!

But God doesn't do this.

Satan's world does this, and we live in it. And we have to have some compassion for the pain and suffering that people live in without accepting the sin, or without being willing to stand up and say, this is wrong. That is not what God intended.

It is not what God intended.

Go to Luke 1.

Luke 1. I'm not going to read all of Luke 1, but it's a fascinating story. Because what we have is Zacharias in Elizabeth, he's a priest in the temple. They are old. They always wanted a child. They could never have a child. And he keeps praying. God, we wanted a child. Now we're old. We can't even have a child.

And, you know, it's a real trial in their lives. Verse 13.

Now, he said, yes, Elizabeth is going to get pregnant. That's shocking. She's a little old to that. And, not only that, this child is being designed to be used by me. And I'm going to give him the Holy Spirit.

And you know who that is? It's John the Baptist.

So John the Baptist comes from Zacharias and Elizabeth. And then Mary, a member of the family, becomes pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Now, you can't use this argument, though, by the way. You can't go to Luke 1 and discuss this with people who support abortion, because they'll tell you this is all fairy tale. We know how people are conceived, and it's not this way. So you can't use this discussion. But if you come to an understanding of what God is doing, you begin to realize every embryo is important. And there are times when he's working with the embryo.

God's working with the unborn baby. He's doing what John the Baptist. Of course, Jesus has no human father. It's God the Father who creates him in... well, it doesn't create him. He takes who he is and puts him inside Mary, right? And Mary becomes pregnant.

Now, they had no concept. I mean, she's having a child out of wedlock, which in that society would get you ostracized the rest of your life. She doesn't say, let's go have him aborted. That concept isn't even there.

And so what happens is, is that Mary's pregnant. She gets with Elizabeth, and Elizabeth is pregnant. And it's one of the most fascinating parts of this whole chapter, is that here's John, his cousin Jesus. They come into the same room, and John starts jumping around inside, her womb. Now, he's not having a thought process, but there's some interaction between Jesus and John the Baptist. God does something here where something exciting happens. Now, we know that at that fetal point, he's not having conscious thoughts, but something happens, and it's registered how something happens, because God's involved. So when is it that the fetus isn't important to God? At what stage, at what stage does he say, oh, that's really not that important?

There's a couple other things we could go through, but I think you get my point here. There is one scripture I do want to go through, because this scripture is often used to prove that abortion is okay. It's used by some Christians, and surprisingly, it's used by a large number of Jewish rabbis. Now, not all of them, by any means, but some do. And it's in Exodus 21. So I do want to look at that. And we're going to read this from the New American Standard. Exodus 21, verse 22. Because they'll say, well, there's no place in the Bible where abortion is mentioned. And actually, this isn't abortion. But we'll have to look at it, we have to analyze it, and see why they come to that conclusion. Verse 22 says, And if men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child, so that she has a miscarriage, yet there is no further injury, he shall surely be fined, as the woman's husband may demand of him, and he shall pay as the judge decides. But if there's 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. Now this is very important. You say, boy, why is it saying all this? And there's a reason why. He says, if two men are in a fight, a pregnant woman runs over and tries to separate them, she gets punched or pushed, and she falls down, she has a miscarriage. Then the man who hit her, or pushed her, has to pay a fine to the husband because he lost a child. And if something happens to the woman, because if it's a miscarriage, the baby dies, then this idea of life for life, tooth for tooth, eye for eye, in other words, the judges have to determine now what happens to him because there was some damage to the wife. If the wife died, or if she fell down and broke her arm, that goes before the judges because she's a human being, and she has rights before the wall. That's what that means. And that's why there's all these different things they can decide. They can decide, okay, what is the penalty of what was done to her? And the argument is, this proves that the unborn fetus doesn't have the same value as a human being. Because the fetus is killed, there's a miscarriage, and the man has to pay a fine. But the woman gets hurt, and there's a much greater penalty. Well, there's some problems with that, and I understand the problem when I looked in even a Jewish translation of the Old Testament into English. Let's go to here in the King James. Exodus 21.

Verse 25. Well, let's start in verse 22. If men fight and hurt a woman with child, so that she gives birth prematurely, yet no harm follows, he shall surely be punished accordingly, as the woman's husband imposes on him, that he may find as the judge is determined. So this is still a court case. The judge has to be involved in the decision here. But I want you to notice the difference in English between miscarriage and a miscarriage the child dies in English. And the child is born prematurely, which doesn't necessarily, most of the time, in English does not mean death. And that's where the problem lies here. It's how you translate the words. And Jewish translators translate it differently, and English translators translate it differently. But I do believe, after knowing the overview, to me, when you look at how you translate something, you have to look at what it means to the specific audience, what the structure is. And since I don't know Hebrew and Greek, I have to have a lot of people help me make those decisions. But I also look at the overall viewpoint. If you translate something and it says something opposite to what God says in 30 other places, the translation is a problem, right? So what does this mean? Well, it's interesting because you have here... Let's look at it again in the King James. It says, so that she gives birth prematurely. She gives birth... If you translated that, I guess literally, it would be something like, and it comes out. In fact, what no one seems to understand... It says, the word there that would be translated child, it just says it here. Oh, she's with child. She's with children. She has more than one. No one's quite sure what that means. There's all kinds of ideas. Does she have twins? Or she has other children? What's that mean? And remember, part of the problem for some of this is that these are cases. These are cases in which something happens and Moses goes to God and says, how in the world do we rule on this one? Well, here's how we rule on this one. So sometimes there's details that had to be a specific case. This person did this. Now this is case law. This is how you learn to apply this law to other situations. So whatever the reason, children, child...

What we have is the child comes out. That word in Hebrew is used over 1,000 times in the Old Testament. And it has a lot of different uses. You know, Hebrew didn't have a lot of words, so a word can have a lot of uses, okay? Let's just look at a couple places where this word comes out and how it's translated. Let's go to Genesis 1.24. Genesis 1.24. It says, Then God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creatures. Let them come out. Okay? Now, what's interesting here is in the overwhelming majority of places refers to animals or people. They are alive. They come out alive. Genesis 25. Genesis 25. And there's... Believe me, we're not going to go through all 1,000. We'll go through a couple here. Genesis 25, verse... Let's turn verse 23. So this is talking about Ishmael and Isaac, okay? And then it's talking about the children here that's going to come. And the Lord said to her, Two nations are in your womb. Two people shall be separated from your body. One people shall be stronger than the other. And the other shall serve the younger. Well, not only is God working out and working with these embryos, He's working out what's going to happen with not every member of their family, but the history of their peoples. Okay? The history of their peoples is being planned out in this chaos that we call life. He's always getting... He's always doing something in this chaos. And when her days were fulfilled for her to give birth, indeed there were twins in her womb. And the first came out.

And then the second comes out.

They came out and they're alive.

Then we're last place, 1 Kings 8.

1 Kings 8, just to show you how it can be used in different ways. And verse... verse 9.

Nothing was in the ark, correctly, about the Ark of the Covenant, except two tablets of stone, which Moses put there at Horeb, when the Lord made a covenant with the children of Israel, when they came out of the land of Egypt. Once again, they were alive. So this doesn't mean birth. It can mean birth. We see children coming out. But it can mean just live people come out of some place. So when this is used over and over and over and over again, they're alive, except one place that I know of. There may be others, but the only one I know of is Numbers 12.

Numbers 12. No, I have not looked up all 1,000 cases. Okay, so I can only say this is the only one I know of. Numbers 12, verse 12.

And this is talking about when God was upset with Aaron and Miriam, and Miriam was struck with leprosy. And Aaron goes to Moses and said, we have to ask God to heal her. And here in verse 11, he says, Please do not let her be as one dead, whose flesh is half consumed when she comes out of his mother's womb. So in other words, someone who has died and is literally deteriorating in the womb and comes out, which would be much more common then than now when we have procedures. We find out those things, and we have ways to make that happen. That would have been a very traumatic thing.

So here we have a come-out, which is obviously someone, or the fetus has died. But notice it's not an abortion. It's because it's a stillborn. Now there is a Hebrew word for a child that is a stillborn. There is a Hebrew word for a child that, it's not abortion because it doesn't say abortion, but that's a miscarriage. And that word is different than the word that's used in Exodus. Let me show you a couple of places where it's used. Psalm 58. Psalm 58.

Verse 8, Let them be like a snail which melts away as it goes. Have you ever put salt on a snail? Have you ever do that as a kid or a leech and it just melts away, right? He says, like a stillborn child of a woman, that they may not see the sun. So there is a word for miscarriage, a baby who was born dead. But that is not the word in Exodus 31. It comes out, which in every case but numbers is something living coming out. So there is an overwhelming evidence here that it's not talking about an accident which produces a miscarriage. But even if it is, there's something important here. Even if it is, this would have to go before the judges and decide what price the man would pay. You know why? Accidental deaths did not receive the death penalty. So even if it was a miscarriage caused by that, which the words don't mean that, it doesn't support abortion. It supports the fact that he's got to stand before the judges, and he's got to explain and deal with the fact that this child or the woman, because when it gets to that second verse it can mean the child or the woman, something bad happened to one or both of them. He has to go before the judge for what he did. So it can't be a premeditated abortion, because he has to go before law for what he's done. What those verses prove is that the unborn child had rights before the law and the old covenant. They had a right before the law. Not to use. I'm just amazed that you would go to that point, and I'm amazed the Jewish rabbis would do that to support abortion. But they do.

The crux of the matter is this. Science gives us information. Some of it's right, some of it's wrong, and it's always in flux simply because they're discovering new or learning new. It's always in a state of flux. This gives us the missing information, because this gives us God's purpose, God's reason, God's plan, what he's doing. When we look at this, human beings are made in the image of God. And God chose to have them create more of them. He wanted to create more and more human beings. And how he chose to do it was between a husband, a wife, and marriage. That's how he chose to do it. And so the conception of a child is part of God's plan. The problem is human beings are kicked out of the garden, and we miss this all of them. We have children born at times when they shouldn't be born. We have children born through violence. We have children born in the most horrible, wretched situations. That was never God's intention, but it's the reality of what we live in under Satan's rule. And the promise from God is he's going to stop it someday. That's the promise we hold on to. He's going to stop it someday. Christ is coming back. Until then, he still has chosen to reproduce potential children that way. And every child will have an opportunity to receive the second conception, gestation, and birth. Every child will receive the opportunity to be born again, to be changed, because that's the ultimate purpose. The difference is you and I don't get a choice to be in our first birth. We choose to be in the second birth or not. We choose to. We choose to. No, I don't want the second birth, for whatever reason. But every human being is going to have that opportunity. And these two things are connected. These two things are connected. The creation of the human being to become God's eternal son or daughter. We mess this one up. God will fix it. But it's a hard road we walk as humanity. It's a hard thing we do. In our fallen human world, you and I have a privilege beyond imagination. Through the grace of God, we have the missing pieces that science can't tell us. And that sounds arrogant to scientists. It does. Because we think we're smarter than them, and we're not. God just gave us something. He gave us this understanding of the reason for human life and being made in His image. And we understand the amazing opportunity to go through this rebirth process and to be in His kingdom. And that, that knowledge, that understanding makes abortion not just a moral issue. Dealing with abortion is a core aspect of the gospel. As a core aspect of this hope, a core aspect that every human being has value to God. Everyone, even in the worst of circumstances, because everyone will receive an opportunity at some point to choose. Do you wish to be born again? Nicodemus didn't understand it, and he was a learned man. You have the opportunity, through the grace of God, to understand that. So we need to stand against abortion, but do so not for political reasons, but because it is part of the kingdom of God.