Stand together, brothers and sisters, for the reading of God's Word. You may not know that this is Sanctity of Life Sunday, and it's certainly out of character for my expository approach to preaching, but for reasons I'll get into, I chose to preach this sermon to us today. The text I'll be reading is from Ecclesiastes 3, verses 1 through 8, and the verse of focus you see underlined there a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance. Brothers and sisters, please listen very carefully because this is God's holy and infallible word. To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven, a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck what is planted, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to break down and a time to build up, A time to weep and a time to laugh. A time to mourn and a time to dance. A time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones. A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. A time to gain and a time to lose. A time to keep and a time to throw away. A time to tear and a time to sew. A time to keep silence and a time to speak. A time to love and a time to hate. A time of war and a time of peace. Thus ends the reading of God's Word. Amen. Amen. Please be seated. So why this sermon today or at all? Well, it is Sanctity of Life Sunday that has been in place for many years since the dreadful decision of the Supreme Court of this land in 1973 And since that time, we have to agree, don't we, that child murder has become a way of life in our nation. And this sermon is, I'm moving into this topic for a couple of reasons. Not only what I've just said, which would be true every year, but this year, and it's the first time that I've stepped into the pulpit to talk about this topic since the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. And so we live in a new time. That was June 24th, 2022. And I think we need to consider these things. We should have been considering them, but especially now. And also our South Carolina legislative body is currently standing idly by doing nothing, not pressing for law that stops this evil behavior in our state. There are various leaders here and there who are doing good things, but the leadership is standing idly by. and even obstructing in some cases. So that's why I thought it would be good to teach, to preach this sermon today. So what are we going to look at today? Well, first of all, I'm going to lay out some statistics and just show to you that child murder is a way of life in our state. And I hope that you can see that this is going to be a heavy sermon. It's going to be something that is hard to hear. But hopefully the reason that it's hardest to hear is because you will be pricked by God to weep and mourn. And that the coldness and apathy that is in your heart and my heart will be greatly decreased as a result of this. Unto the glory of God. Unto the glory of God. We're gonna talk about the root of this problem, which is that the church has forgotten God. And we're gonna talk about the fruit. See, this problem is the fruit of that, and that is that society rots without a rooted church. And we're gonna talk about eye planks, and we're gonna see our own, hopefully, our own sin and be convicted of our sin. And then talk about repentance, not just for us, but for the church and to consider the need for a widespread awakening of repentance in the church. And again, it's not just a focus on this topic, it is an essence of are we close to God? Do we love him in his glory? And are we brought to broken weeping over his glory being marred? And then we'll be given an opportunity to have faith, right? The gentler notes of the message, but the thunder and lightning will come first. And then we'll talk about righteous actions on this topic. And then just some basic questions for personal examination. Where are you? Where's your family? So let's move ahead. First of all, child murder as a way of life. Since the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized baby murder nationwide, the United States has been seeing approximately 50 to 60 million of our baby boys and girls slaughtered or poisoned to death in the womb. And you'll note that I try not to use the word abortion too much because I think it sanitizes it. I think we need to get in touch today and hear what's happening. In 2022 alone, there were approximately 613,000 legal-induced abortions, and these were just the ones reported to the CDC. Looking at our own blood-soaked state of South Carolina, based on national trends in South Carolina's abortion statistics in recent years, an estimated 250,000 to 300,000 abortions have likely occurred in South Carolina since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. My opinion is it's a lot more than this, because this is just what's reported and recorded. This amounts to approximately 166,430 gallons of blood crying out to God in America since that time. And about 800 gallons of blood crying out to God from South Carolina. I use first trimester estimates because that's when most baby killings take place, and the blood volume at that time is between 10 and 20 milliliters. So these are our neighbors who are being killed. And that's 3,450 murdered children per day in America and 15 per day right here in the good old Palmetto State. And that's since 1973 if we do the math and average it out over all those days. Child murder, I think we have to agree, it is a way of life in our nation and our state. And yet we laugh and dance on instead of falling down in shock, revulsion and continual mourning and weeping before God like we should. I think Francis Schaeffer was correct when he said that every abortion mill should, every killing shop should have a sign over the top of it that says open by permission of the church. Now, in addition to this, we do also need to consider the crushing suffering of all of these guilty souls who have brought this judgment upon themselves. The mothers who have killed their children, who are not victims in most cases. There are certainly victim situations. The individuals who drove them there, the so-called doctors who killed these children. These people have brought guilt on their souls, and they can try to run through all the hoops of self-deception that they want, living in the hell of their own guilt and misery from doing this. And so this is this is another part of the toll that we have to consider in our land today. And sadly, these people have often been commended instead of convicted. And I mean, convicted of their sin and offered the path to freedom from this guilt through the forgiveness that can be theirs in Christ. But instead, they're left with the belief they've done good instead of evil. They celebrate, right? We've seen that. They celebrate. They think they're in good conscience, but you know, they are not. And they have no escape from their soul's guilt burden, and their lives usually fall apart. The suicide and violent crime rates go up. Violent activity, death by violence goes up in the lives of these women. It's been proven. So I hope that you can see that this is something that's really important for us. And, you know, it's just a sign of what has gone wrong in America. So what I don't want you to do when you're hearing this right now is just be clamoring to know how you can get involved. Okay? No. We have to go to the root first and start with our own souls first. So what's the root of this? Well, I believe the root of this problem is that the church has forgotten God. Listen to Isaiah chapter one, verses two through 15, where the Lord brings his conviction upon the nation of Israel. And then I'll describe to you why I think, using this language, I'll describe what I think is going on in our nation. Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken. I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. The ox knows its owner and the donkey its master's crib, but Israel does not know my people do not consider. Alas, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a brood of evildoers, children who are corruptors. They have forsaken the Lord. They have provoked to anger the Holy One of Israel. They have turned away backward. Why should you be stricken again? You will revolt more and more. The whole head is sick and the whole heart faints. From the sole of the foot even to the head there is no soundness in it but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. They have not been closed or bound up or soothed with ointment. Your country is desolate. Your cities are burned with fire. Strangers devour your land and your presence, and it is desolate as overthrown by strangers. So the daughter of Zion is left as a booth in a vineyard, as a hut in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city. Unless the Lord of hosts had left to us a very small remnant, we would have become like Sodom. We would have been made like Gomorrah. Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom. Give ear to the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah. To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to me, says the Lord. I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed cattle. I do not delight in the blood of bulls or of lambs or goats. When you come to appear before me, who has required this from your hand to trample my courts? Bring no more futile sacrifices. Incense is an abomination to me. The new moons, the Sabbaths, and the calling of assemblies, I cannot endure iniquity in the sacred meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts, my soul hates. They are a trouble to me. I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you, even though you make many prayers. I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood. So just like Israel of old, which began as one nourished and brought up by God, our nation began when God moved many people in distress to our shores in order to serve and worship Him in sincerity and in truth. But sadly, since that time, the same Old Testament pattern of unfaithfulness has occurred in our land. The people of God and our nation have rebelled against the Lord, do not know or consider well His word and His ways, and have entered into a similar multitude of man-focused, irreverent worship of siblings that trample His holy courts. Instead of a heart that trembles before the God of heaven and throws off its own unholy self-shoes before His holy burning presence, if we people, if we His people even show up at all to worship Him as He commands on His Sabbath, we often bring so many futile behaviors that are a foul stench and abomination to God, and that in no way please his soul and honor him, but rather trouble him and incense his soul against us. making him weary of bearing with this hubris and causing him to hide his eyes from our prayers, to close his ears to our vain clamorings. Hence, our surrounding nations, unbelievers are largely left to their sin, which has gradually multiplied like flies over the centuries, leaving us, his people now surrounded by a maggot-infested dung heap of a culture, most obviously seen by all the blood that is on our hands. And note, dear people of God, this is not only blood on the hands of those who murder babies in the womb for money and power and all those associated with that act. No, no, rest assured, this sermon is for you. It is blood that rests on the hands of God's people as well because of our own sin and complacency and cold hearts toward God. You see, Daniel and Nehemiah stand as examples for us on how to view this and how to pray. Daniel, you know it well, he prayed we and not them, didn't he? I'm going to reference this. Can somebody hand me a liturgy? I don't even know what happened to the one I brought up here with me. What did I do with it? It vanished. That's never happened before. Thank you, brother. I'm going to read some of the words from our prayer that we prayed together by way of application as we go through this to ask you to examine yourself and think, what am I thinking when I pray this? But before I get to that, I want to remind us that Daniel and Nehemiah stand as examples on how to view this topic and how to pray. So there's a covenantal connection that we have with the people in our land. The nation or the state as a unit, as a whole, is held before God. And we're a part of that covenantal union with them because we live in this nation and we're citizens with them in this nation. And Daniel and Nehemiah, they understood that. So they prayed, we, not them, right? Daniel prayed, we, not them, 13 times in his great prayer of repentance in Daniel chapter nine. That's verses three through 19. And Nehemiah prayed similarly multiple times. We see that in Nehemiah chapter one, verses six and seven. Now, there's this covenantal connection aspect, but we can't stop there. This we, not they type of praying must include serious investigation and inspection and examination of our own souls before God. You see, praying we always starts with me. The first step out of this stench is to smell our own filthy part in this tragic dishonoring of God that attacks and murders His image bearers. And we're going to get to it, but the essence of it is we don't love God. Our hearts are cold. We are apathetic towards Him, and we pursue other things more than we pursue Him. Now, we have an opportunity here to be convicted of our own sin. These are the eye planks that we need to be aware of, that we need to watch out for. I'm going to go through unbelief, pride, selfishness and apathy, idolatry, wrong beliefs about Christ's kingdom, paucity of Bible, unfaithfulness to the church and abdication of our calling as his ambassadors. But there could be many more that we could that we could discuss. So Mark 9, 23 through 29 is a very helpful teaching for us about unbelief. Jesus said to him, if you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes. Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. So there's this child that needs to be healed. This is right after the transfiguration. The disciples have been unable to heal him. When Jesus saw that the people came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, Death and dumb spirit, I command you, come out of him and enter him no more. Then the spirit cried out, convulsed him greatly, and came out of him, and he became as one dead, so that many said, he is dead. But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose. And when he had come into the house, his disciples asked him privately, why could we not cast it out? So he said to them, this kind come out by nothing but prayer and fasting. So this is about unbelief. First, we can see this is about our own unbelief. Instead of trusting in God and we face the impossible and the sickness of this boy, we can see as an analogy of the impossible to heal corruption and sickness that is present in our nation and in our political leadership. And so instead of trusting in God when we face the impossible, we turn to arm-of-the-flesh efforts instead of fixing our gaze on Christ. And this is true in all aspects of our lives, not just dealing with the issue of baby murder. And my point here is for you to examine yourself for unbelief and to ask yourself where you refuse to trust God and instead implement arm-of-the-flesh approaches to life. So instead of fixing our gaze on Christ and abiding in him and his power when the situation is beyond our faith, what should we do in that moment? We have to admit that our abilities can't match this situation. And persistently fasting and praying and crying out to him is the kind of path that we need to take. It's the path that says we don't have what it takes. And if we go back to this boy, we just need for Jesus to say the word from heaven. That's what we need. And that's what we cry out for, is for Jesus to say the word from heaven. In whatever we're facing, So this idea of fasting shows us our constant tendency. Why do we need to fast? I mean, Jesus says, when you fast. So clearly, Jesus had some kind of scheduled fasting in his life. And he expected his disciples would as well. Now, this is not in any way in favor of enforced or required fasting from the church or from the state. I'm not saying that. This is self-discipline. This is self-control that Jesus is referencing. So this idea of fasting, why? because we have a constant tendency to drift away from God. We have a constant daily tendency, week by week, day by day, month by month, to drift away from God. That's who we are. And this must be met with planned personal efforts to intentionally turn toward Him. If we do nothing, we drift away from God. Your prior sense of what you believe in being a Christian is not going to keep you from drifting away from God if you're not communing with the Lord. So this self-denial for a time helps us to grow up in a hunger and a love for God instead of quenching our soul's need for a moment with food or the other satisfying things in this world. So this gets to the heart of the problem. We've forgotten God. You know, we don't forget things that are important to us. Right, I mean, children, do you ever say to your mom, oh, I forgot. Well, did you forget to play with your toys? Did you forget to ask daddy if we could watch a movie? I mean, you see what I'm saying? We don't forget the things that are important to us. All right, so we want to seek the Lord for our hearts to be inflamed with love and affection towards him so that it indeed does become the habit of our soul to draw near to him and we have inward thirsting and disappointment when we choose not to. Next is pride. Proverbs 16, pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. Better to be of a humble spirit with the lowly than to divide the spoiled with the proud. So, you know, the essence of pride here is when we refuse to let God's word define us accurately. We've talked about this. Pride is when we refuse to hear God's word, we're not teachable. We don't want to know what it says because we don't want to know the truth about ourselves at that moment. This is pride. It is that shield we put up around our sin. That shield we put up that says, I'm fine. The path I've chosen is okie dokie. I don't want to hear what you have to say. I don't need to change. And it operates beneath the surface as well. And so it leaves us clinging to this fantasy view of who we really are at that moment. Now I'll tell you, it requires a lot of faith to hear the truth about yourself. Let that sink in. It is very difficult to deal with the truth about ourselves without faith. And it turns out that the more of ourselves that we encounter, the more likely we are to bump into our unbelief and our pride. We have to have our faith stretched so we can hear more and more of the truth about ourselves and not give way to unbelief in that moment and say, Lord, just let me accept the reality of who I am. It's hard to do this But it's so important because this fantasy living offends God. It tells him, this part of my life doesn't belong to you and doesn't need your death, Lord Jesus. This part of me is OK. I'll pick and choose where your blood gets to go. So it offends God, and it harms others, even if it briefly may be associated with wealth and success like we see in this text. But you see, brothers and sisters, the law of the harvest will bear its fruit. And this is really hard for us to think about. The regret of failures can be so crushing to our souls. And it's even more crushing when the reality sets in that even though we're forgiven and we're the apple of God's eyes, we still very well may experience, and others around us, the consequences of our sin. God may mercifully intervene, but he might not. We look at David, right? David was forgiven, right? The apple of God's eye. He was an adulterer. He was lazy. He was a murderer. He abused his positional power. That whole episode in David's life is top level wickedness. but it was forgiven. And we rejoice in that, but we shouldn't forget the part of the story that his family and kingdom suffered terribly because of his own sin. So our pride just doesn't want this. Our pride doesn't want to think about this. We do not want to deal with the reality of the impact that we've had on God and others. So we live in our unbelief and we live in our pride and it keeps our hearts cold And we become selfish and apathetic. We become self-focused and we become indifferent towards God and towards the plight of the suffering around us, the lost and the suffering around us. So we become comfortably accustomed to the blood-soaked culture because our hearts comfortably are accustomed to coldness and apathy toward God. You know, I think that the coldness of our hearts should disgust us more than the coldness of the baby-killing instruments that they use. It is a deep and horrid thing for any person to have this, but most of all for us Christians to live this way. Frost frost laden, frozen Christian hearts have led the world to have blood laden hands. So there's a connection here. There's a connection, as we've said, what we see going on around us. Judgment starts with the house of God. The indifference toward the killing of our neighbors is the fruit of our indifference towards God. So we deal with unbelief and pride and selfishness and apathy as a culture, as an evangelical culture. This is who we are. We are so often far more contemporary American than we So we need to see this about ourselves. So when we pray the prayer, it's the we prayer, right? And there's that covenantal connection. And indeed, you know, we haven't been involved in a lot of the things that we're praying for God to forgive us for and to have mercy on us. But we are not the people that we should be. And we need to be able to be willing to see the connection there. This all leads to idolatry. 1 John chapter 5, the apostle ends his epistle with, little children, keep yourselves from idols. So this is another self-control thing. This is an ongoing requirement that he puts on them as the last thing he says to them. Keep yourselves from idols. This means a constant inspection, or at least a regular inspection, of your own life and of your family for idols. My sons and I have been meeting together in the morning this week, and I hope we continue. And we have been convicted of our sin in a number of areas, idols in our lives. And may God bless us to continue. And I think we all sense him warming our hearts in just this brief time. He's so good. You see, our hearts are never neutral, brothers and sisters. Our hearts are never in neutral. The winds of sin are always blowing. The currents of hell are always beneath this boat. And so we're either sailing in the right direction by the wind of the spirit and the word in union with him on his path, or we are being blown onto the shoals of destruction. There is no in between. We're either growing in true, fiery affection and devotion to God and a longing for His ways and for His kingdom to be revealed in us and through us, or we are cramming our hearts and minds and lives with temporary pleasures and idols to shut up the conviction regarding our pride and our unbelief and our selfishness and our cold hearts. We come to church, we dress up nicely, we do all the things we're supposed to do, but how much of it is done in sincerity and in truth with a thankful heart to God? These types of things that we can fill ourself up with, these idols, as I've said many times, they'll include both good and bad things, but in either case, we're giving way to false worship. It leads to irreverence, it leads to a lack of concern about with whom we are meeting, and what we are doing with the God of the universe as we are here and as we meet with him in our homes. Oh, this irreverence, this idolatrous irreverence that we bring with us into the house of God. We also have wrong beliefs about Christ's kingdom. We have wrong beliefs about Christ's kingdom. Now, we've talked a lot about this here, but what we really believe shows up in how we live. The kingdom of God was important to Paul. Preaching the kingdom of God should not sound odd. When you ask someone what they preach and they say, I preach the kingdom of God, you shouldn't recoil. You should say, well, praise be to God. You're like Paul. You're like Jesus. The kingdom of God is important, brothers and sisters. Understanding the kingdom of God is important. You can't really know what you're praying, can you? And say, thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We can't understand that. And I can't get into all that today. But Paul loved the kingdom of God and he preached it. And the book of Acts ends this way. Then Paul dwelt two whole years in his own rented house and received all who came to him, preaching the four spiritual laws. Oh no, hold on a second, hold on a second. Preaching the kingdom of God and teaching the things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ with all confidence, no one forbidding him. Those things go together. The kingdom of God and the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ, these things go together. They are not to be separated from one another, lest we fragment Jesus and treat him as if he is not king and savior. Like Paul, we are to understand and preach the kingdom of God and all things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ. And this idea of understanding the kingdom of God in this world, in this world right now, the clarification that is needed is this idea, and you've heard it before, but I'm gonna say it again, that the kingdom of God is somehow limited just to our personal lives or maybe to our families or to the church, okay? But that the broader spheres in the earth are not to be submitted to the Lord Jesus Christ. And so there is a bad understanding in the church of the kingdom of God. Now, we understand this, right? We understand this. But are you, in your life, are you presenting the word of God everywhere you go? Do you live like Jesus Christ is the king of your workspace? Do you live as if the Lord Jesus Christ is the king of the place where they kill babies in Augusta? Do you live that way? I mean, this is the question for us because that really reveals what we believe about the kingdom of God. because we know that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him. And we know that there's not a square inch of this earth, Kuiper, where Jesus doesn't look at it and say, mine. So we live in a culture steeped in this concept of secularism or dualism, and we feel like we're freed from the responsibility of being his ambassadors everywhere we go. And what this amounts to is truncating, chopping up the message of the kingdom of Christ and all things which concern him into just four little spiritual laws and making sure that your soul is saved and you get your ticket punched so that when you die, you go to heaven. Now, we have to be careful because we can go into an unbalanced approach and we can forget that in this earth right now, it is the eternal souls of human beings aside from the word of God, that is the only eternal thing in this world. So we must preach salvation for eternal souls imbued by God himself with the image of God. We must do that, and we must adorn that message. We must emphasize that part of the message, and we don't quibble and spend time sharpening needles, as Spurgeon put it. But we then go on. And we preach Christ crucified, yes. Resurrected, yes. Ascended, yes. Coronated, made king of the universe, yes. Still seated at God's right hand, yes. Ruling the earth by his law and by his spirit. Another thing that we need to repent of in addition to our unbelief and our pride and our selfishness and our apathy and our idolatry and our wrong beliefs about Christ's kingdom is our disdain for God's word. You know, I think that we're probably a bunch that reads our Bibles and prays more than most. I know you all, I know that's the life that you live. But I have a question for you. Have you ever said, you know, I read the Bible today and meditated upon God's word today as much as the Lord would have me to do? At the end of your day, have you ever felt confident of that? Right, are you like in Psalm 1, meditating on God's law day and night? His praise always on your tongue and in your mind. I think there's a paucity of Bible memorization and meditation even in our midst. I know there is in my life and in our home. And Proverbs 29, 18 tells us what happens when this occurs. Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint, but happy is he who keeps the law. And yes, the law of God is a restraint on bad behavior. That's a gift to us in our own lives and also in terms of criminal law. It is intended to be a restraint on bad behavior. And we see it in the church and in our own lives. And we don't know God's law. We walk into paths that are unrestrained and dangerous for us. It seems to me that so often we spend more time in entertainment and in pointless amusement with the balm of humanistic surface laughing and dancing our way into oblivion for that moment, then we do in God's word where we find truth, conviction, repentance, righteousness, and deliverance unto heaven wrought dancing and laughing with him rejoicing over us, even as we're simultaneously mourning and weeping over the state of this world. We can experience the grief of David that we're about to read about. and also the dancing and the joy of David. We can have them both. Don't think that this is an either or. And in fact, we can't have one without the other. You think that you're going to grieve over God's ways and God's honor being marred and attacked and abused if you don't love Him? If you don't walk with Him? I mean, how would you feel, wives, if someone just started just tearing down your husbands? Just attacking your husbands? husbands about your wives. How would you feel? Well, I would say that you would feel you would feel like, wait a minute, I love that man or husbands. I love that woman. I know her. No, that's not true about her. You can't talk about her like that. So there's a paucity of Bible in our lives as well. And you know, when we don't have the foundation of the rock of the word of God, we're like the house built on sand. We've got no place to hold on to. And we're blown around by all the currents of the world and we're nothing but confused all the time. Next, I'm not going to go into a lot of this. I'll give you a list. But the church of the Lord Jesus Christ is an unfaithful church in the earth right now today. OK. And I'm not just talking about the visible church that's clearly on the precipice of full apostasy. I'm not talking about just about them. I'm talking about the visible church that still has good creeds and confessions and good statements of faith. There's many and varied heresies and false and evil practices in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ today. Mental gymnastics with God's word. saying that the earth was not created in six days, and allowing such men who do not believe the Bible to be ordained into the gospel ministry. And subsequent linguistic gymnastics with the Bible lead us to all kinds of places like revoice, and the acceptance of homosexuality, and the tearing down of marriage, and the mutilation of children, and the killing of babies in the womb. and the support of these things that has its origin in not believing the Bible. Is the word of God. We have ordained homosexuals. We have ordained women. The Church of God is unfaithful. We have churches happily patting people on the back as they send as these parents send their children to Satan schools to be taught the path to hell. over and over again. We have great unfaithfulness in the church. And there's unfaithfulness in our church as well. May God continue to convict us of our sins. The last one that I thought of was that we abdicate our calling as his ambassadors. I want to read Matthew 28 in Genesis one to remind you again of what it means to be an ambassador of Jesus Christ. Okay. And so as parents, we want to be raising children who think this way. Okay. We want our children to understand life's calling and what we're here for. of the duty that we have in terms of expressing our love to God, what it looks like to obey him, the grand picture of what God is gonna do in this earth through your obedience. Jesus came and spoke to them saying, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you and lo, I am with you always even to the end of the age. So because Jesus is the King of kings and the Lord of lords over every square inch of the earth and over every institution, over heaven and hell, in the seas and in the skies, on every planet and in the middle of every star, because he is the one who's been granted ownership of the cosmos, we are to go forth and make disciples. We are to make disciples, brothers and sisters. We are to teach people the word of God. We are to share the gospel with them so they understand that their sin has an answer, that the guilt and the confusion and the terror of their souls, Jesus has provided the way. And we share with them the message of true salvation so they can be delivered from the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of death and brought into the kingdom of life and light. And we unfold God's word with them over time so that they grow up and they see the glorious reality in which we live and they go forth to do the same in their lives. May God bless us to do this and to see this more. And this will always involve observing all the things that Jesus has commanded us. From Genesis to Revelation, listening to his word and loving his word, and by his grace and by his illumination of his spirit, applying it to our world. And ultimately, this will lead to the success of the dominion mandate, which we read in Genesis 1. 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, and 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. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, be, first command, be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth. This is our calling. and we have abdicated our calling as ambassadors to make disciples, to share the kingdom of God and all the things that concern Jesus Christ with those around us, and to understand the calling that Jesus is the King of kings and the Lord of lords, and his dominion is and shall be fully extended experientially to the ends of the earth. So hopefully it's a time to weep and mourn if you've heard this today. Again, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance. I think David is a great example here. Psalm 119, 136, I've referenced this. Listen to what David said. You think he was using hyperbole and exaggeration or do you think he was serious? He said, rivers of water run down from my eyes because men do not keep your law. Seems to me the flow of Christian tears should outdo the flow of baby blood. And now, why is this, though? Because we're not humanists, we're Christians. Why should this break our hearts and cause us to weep on our beds like David? Rivers of tears. Because this is an attack on God's glory. As I've said, this is an attack on God's being, our Lord, our creator, the one who suffered and died for you and shed his blood for you. It is an attack on him. On each person of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Because Genesis one, God says, let us make man in our image according to our likeness. And every baby that is murdered inside the womb and that has been unjustly killed since 1973 was made by God in his image without exception. And every one of those acts was a direct offense against God himself. So this, I think, will lead us to an appropriate God centered weeping and repentance. that will lead also to a mourning and weeping over the human suffering involved. But you see, the thing that we have to watch out for, our motive, our primary motive must not be focused upon human suffering, but rather upon the glory of God. Because as I said, we're Christians, we're not humanists. Whether you eat or drink, whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. It doesn't say do all to stop human suffering. It doesn't say that. Now we are to rescue the parishioners, rescue those who are being led to slaughter. And we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. Absolutely, it's the second commandment of the great two commandments. So may the Lord lead us into examining ourselves and turning away from our sin and turning back to him in sincerity and in humility. Now again, these are the gentler notes that we're coming to from Spurgeon. That's how he calls, he says, he talks about the thunder and the lightning, and then there's the gentler notes. Because, you know, as we look at ourselves and our own sin and the the relatively retarded nature of our sanctification that we have right now, it's easy to make us go Blossod Toad. Anybody know the Frog and Toad books? You can have just like a month of Blossod Toad. So Toad was always just like the gloomy guy, Blossod Toad. And you can do that. You can fall down into self-navel-gazing introspection. There's no answers there. Right? So as God convicts you of your sin, have faith. Trust in Christ's death for you. Number one, trust in Christ's death for you. Trust that if you have cried out to him and asked him to forgive you of your sins, that you are forgiven, trusting in his death on the cross. You're forgiven. Secondly, trust in his sovereignty. even over your sin and the consequences that it brings into your life and the lives of others. Because then your regret can also be properly dealt with by God. We're told in Hebrews 12, Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, Let us lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily ensnares us and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. So this looking unto Jesus here is what we're talking about. It's a fixing of the gaze upon him. It is that, that's why we fast, right? That's why we have self-control because we know we need to, again, go back and fix our eyes on Jesus. Fix our eyes on Christ. Rehearse, reconsider, remember over and over again what he has done, who he is, where he is, and what he's doing. So brothers and sisters, let us just gladly, individually and together turn to Christ and confess our sins to him. If in any way your conscience has been pricked today, confess your sin to him even now as you sit there. trusting in him to forgive us and to cleanse us all of our unrighteousness. And particularly, probably I would think we all have to acknowledge unrighteous complicity. As Schaefer said, these killing zones, these murder shops are open by permission of the church. And then just with joyful expectation, rest in him to throw down these great powers and evils. Because you know, this kind only comes out with prayer and fasting. So what are some righteous actions that can occur as a result of this? Well, first of all, pray we, not them. And remember that this kind of prayer starts with me. And I'll warn you, don't be a thunder puppy. You can get in the cage stage on this thing, where this is all you can think about and all you can talk about, and you've moved into arm of the flesh, perhaps, and I would say even likely. This is not a paddle that can be won with your determination and your eloquence and your money. Just forget about it, okay? Just forget about it. Do not take any actions until you have examined yourself and confessed your sins to God. You must be gentled by his humbling hand if you are to have any real influence in this battle. These kind come out only by prayer and fasting. So this is a spiritual battle, brothers and sisters, and that means it starts with who you are spiritually. That's where it starts. And ultimately, you can't say, okay, well, I'm gonna repent so that we can end baby murder. You have to say, I have to repent because God is worthy. God is worthy. And then what will happen is that you will come face to face with your duties in regards to living in this culture that has become accustomed to child murder. Next, you need to be properly educated from God's word about the topic of life, okay? And what God expects the civil magistrate to accomplish, okay? And that means we, as the people, are responsible to elect and appoint individuals who will do this, and to remove those by voting, that do not. What is the first thing that we must think about in terms of life? Well, it's hard to know what should come first. I'll grant that. But I want to say that I think that equal protection should come first. What does this mean? Well, it means that if a violent crime is committed against a child outside the womb, whatever the statutory codes are of the state of South Carolina, Whatever they are, those exact same codes should apply if a violent crime is committed against a child inside the womb. This is the foundational concept of being all of us made in the image of God from the very beginning. It's the concept of personhood. So Dr. Seuss knows better than the Republicans. A person's a person no matter how small they are, right? And so equal protection. All right? And this means also not just the fact that babies are going to be in the womb are going to be treated the same as babies outside the womb, but every person who is shown to be through due process of law, which is in our statutes, guilty of this criminal act, every person guilty of the criminal act is to be liable to the criminal sanctions that are in our code. Otherwise, it's not equal protection. All right, let me give you an example. If a mother outside the womb pays someone to kill her child, she's guilty of conspiracy to murder. The hand of one is the hand of all, is what the law of our land has always said, and that comes from the scriptures. Sweet Peter got my attention just then. He's such a beautiful baby. The hand of one is the hand of all. So, therefore, if something like this occurs inside the womb, and the mother has knowingly, willingly, she wasn't coerced, she wasn't forced to do it, she knows what she's doing, she's a moral agent, and she chooses to pay someone to kill her own child, then equal protection says that she would be liable to prosecution, and if found guilty, would face the appropriate sanctions that are present in the law. And this is where I part ways with National Right to Life and South Carolina Citizens for Life. And we are in the recovery phase right now of, since 1973, the lies that they've been telling. That every mother who does this is by necessity a victim and the law must always, without exception, treat her as nothing but a victim and she must have 100% immunity in all cases. And they've gone so far as to say that you are not pro-life if you believe that a mother should face any potential criminal sanctions. That's how far they've gone. And so you can see we've been lied to, and we've got a legislature full of people who've been deceived and a population full of people who've been deceived on this topic. And this creates the political scenario where the glorious tower that we want to build We can't build it right now. We don't have the votes to build the tower we want right now. God may change it, but that's the reality of the situation right now in Columbia. All right, next from conception. I don't need to convince this. You know this, right? So the heartbeat bill, I praise God for it. I really do. I couldn't go out and like rah-rah for it really hard because it had exceptions, which we'll get to. But it moved things to where less babies were being killed. Praise be to God for that. But if that's all we think, less babies killed, less babies killed, what are we? We're humanists. But if we want our laws, the language of our laws, to speak to heaven and say, God, we love you and your law, which is our ultimate motive, then we have to have the right language in our law. So we have to say the heartbeat bill is not enough. It is not enough. That's what we have to say. We have to say that to the people who are around us as we get opportunity, and we have to say it to our legislators kindly. And it has to be without exception as well. But this is another very emotional, difficult topic to deal with. You're always going to hear the debate, if you ever get near this topic, rape, incest, and fetal anomalies. Sick babies, sick boys and girls, that's what we'll say. Very sick boys and girls. And so somehow, people can be, through the emotions of this, and it's very emotional, we have to grant that. The suffering is terrible, okay? But first of all, that child's life and intrinsic value coming from being made in the image of God is not dependent upon the circumstances surrounding its conception, nor dependent upon the level of its health and well-being. Okay? Else we would have to say that outside the womb we could allow for different kinds of legal protection for individuals who happen to be conceived in rape and incest or who are very sick. We would become like any cultures through the past have been, like the Nazis were. Like the US government was with the CIA and the way they've treated people as well. That's a whole different story. So we have to be consistent. So equal protection from conception without exception. And in the category of without exception, this is another finer point to consider. It must also be in the law that the babies that live in South Carolina cannot be taken out of our state and killed somewhere else. That has to be on our books. That if you take a baby out of South Carolina, a child out of South Carolina, to kill them, you've broken South Carolina law. And this should also include do-it-yourself-at-home killings by chemicals as well. So it's just wrong to kill babies. And we know this. understand the reality of the situation and what the beautiful, glorious tower we're trying to build looks like. But you know what? Right now, we got a bigger tower than we had five years ago and a lot more hope because of Dobbs that we can actually write the law in our own state now to get there. It's an exciting time. It's an exciting time. But again, we're not going anywhere without prayer. Step number one, who you are in God and who you are in your prayers and your spiritual life, step number one. And in our prayers, we need to be praying against demonic forces, okay? Our prayers need to be over and over and over again, praying against demonic forces throughout our state and nation, especially in our state house. And that they would be bound up and thrown in the abyss, stay there forever. You've probably heard me pray it 500 times by now. Fasting as well, fasting. All right. So once you believe properly, and you've repented, then you're ready to rightly engage with righteous actions, and this is your duty, okay? This is your duty. This is your duty, okay? Tell me something. The Sixth Commandment, does it only command you not to murder people, or is there something else? It also commands us to protect those whom we can protect, who are about to be violently harmed. We have a Christian duty according to God's law to love our neighbors as ourselves. So at the very least, every one of us need to be praying for our dear neighbors in the womb who are being killed. And I would say, however God calls you, whatever he calls you to do, to do more. To at least make it something that you're willing to talk about with people as it comes up. And especially to communicate with your elected officials with courtesy and clarity and to pray for them and to elect people to replace them if they don't want to build the right tower. And no legal efforts in South Carolina. There are two bills that have been introduced and a third, Lord willing, is going to be introduced. So there's, and they have various things going on in the bills based on these key questions that I presented to you, okay? One of them is the strongest. Another one of them is the most likely to pass. And then there's one kind of in the middle. And again, I use the building a tower analogy. I think Jesus gives us great wisdom to understand how to fight this battle. All right, whatever part of the tower we've built so far in our legal code, This tower of life, we can never give away any of it in future battles, okay? But if we can only just build one more level this year and that's all we can get to, but we're refusing to do anything unless we can build the whole tower at once, are we really listening to Jesus? Now, our plan is to build the whole tower, and we're gonna do that by God's grace as soon as we can, but we know it's a spiritual thing. So we pray. Financial assistance. These efforts cost money. I think it was around $50,000, something like that, that one organization spent in a primary, or two or three. And praise be to God, all three of those sisters of death from the South Carolina Senate were voted out. It takes money. In today's world, it takes money, sadly, to accomplish these things. You know, another thing I'll point out is adoption. You know, this is, you know, it is often the whole creative culture of life thing is used as a distraction from the necessity of outlawing what's happening. But we also do need to be a part of loving life. And the church has failed in this. You know, we treat contraception like it's just this fine option. Either way, it's fine, you go the way you want to, however you want to handle it. What? God made us to be fruitful. He could have put an off switch on our body if he wanted to. He didn't. Right? And when we break the connection between love and life and we act like it's just okay to do that over and over again, we create an objectification of women that leads to a culture of death. So, you know, that's another big topic. Contraception is a way that we undermine a culture of life. We treat children like they don't matter. Okay? Adoption is a great way for us to demonstrate to God our love for every child in this world. Consider adoption, brothers and sisters. I'm serious. I remember one time I was having a talk with a friend, Les Riley, personhood gentleman from Mississippi. Lovely man. We were talking and I told him, I said, you know, we'd like to do that someday. He says, what are you waiting on? What are you waiting on? So I think it's a really important thing. Care pregnancy centers, you know, a lot of times they're the mouthpieces of the national right to life, and so what they say and teach is not consistent sometimes with biblical values in terms of what we're after. But wow, it's a great place to get involved. You have an opportunity to engage with women who are minded to kill their child, and to love on them, and to share the gospel with them, and to help them. And I mean, and they just they come there. They just come there. And so that's an opportunity. There's the Love Life ministry is a great ministry where churches can adopt an abortion meal for a week. And for that week, they're going to pray for that abortion meal. And if possible, they're going to go there. And it's not a sidewalk counseling ministry. They don't engage with anyone on their way and they just pray. They just pray. Now, some people are called to that frontline missionary type of ministry to stand there at the gates of death and say, ma'am, please, please don't kill your child. You're a mother already. Nothing's going to change that. Those people in there are not your friends. We're your friends out here. We will help you. We'll help you with your child. We'll help you. And praise be to God for Steve Smith. We'll pray for him today. Somebody remember to pray for Steve Smith today in his ministry. And our church takes this seriously. We support Steve in his ministry. So brothers and sisters, I've said probably more than I should have. It's longer than I intended to preach. But I want to ask you, where are you on this topic? Has this impacted your thinking on this topic? Have you addressed this topic in your own life? Have you addressed this topic in your family? So may the Lord bless the reading and the preaching of his word. Let us pray. Almighty and gracious Heavenly Father, we acknowledge to you, Lord, that it is good and right for judgment to begin at the house of God. And we ask not, Lord, that we would have some imagined view of ourselves, whether it be. Creating sins that are not present or ignoring sins that are, but that you would show us indeed, Lord, especially where we do not love you, especially the apathy and indifference in our hearts towards you. Oh, God, grant us more faith and grant us to love you and to obey you. We ask you, Father, to bind all the demons of hell, cast them into the abyss for good. We ask you, Father, to do a miracle in the statehouse, Columbia and across this land. and grant us leaders who will love you and serve you in their work and who will do justly in their work and establish true justice so that this innocent bloodshed will come to an end. Oh, have mercy on us, Father, we pray. We ask you to do this, Lord, for the sake of your glory and for the fame and the supremacy and the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.