How Should a Christian Vote?
Legislating Morality #1 - Abortion
Various Scriptures
We began last week a short series of messages designed to help us as Christians know how to vote. The foundation we looked at last week is found in Romans 13:1 where we read, “Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.”
God is the ultimate authority and has designed government to be the means by which those under that government are protected from evil. That’s why we have laws that govern our behavior. Their design is to promote that which is good and punish that which is evil. God has given to governments that authority.
Not only that, He has given us His word so we will have a standard by which we can design and craft our laws. That is exactly what we have in our Constitution and most every law on the books in every state, city and municipality.
And yet we now have this little slogan that has become popular which says, “You can’t legislate morality”. You ever heard that? Of all the dumb statements ever made, that is about the dumbest I have ever heard!
Listen: Every piece of legislation, every piece of policy, every act of government is an attempt by somebody or some group to get what they believe about values on the dockets of a county, a city, or a state, or a government enforced. Every piece of legislation ultimately has to do in one way or another with moral values.
And we, as Christians, desperately need someone there who understands the authority and law of God! That is why it is so important that we not just pull a lever because of a political affiliation. We need to know what it is we are supporting when we stand with a candidate because they will be those who determine the moral climate of the area they represent.
Don’t listen to the left-wing radicals who run around saying, "You can't legislate morality!" You can and that's what all legislation and laws and government are all about.
That’s why what happened at the Democratic convention this year was so amazing. They actually adopted the sins of Romans 1 as their platform. Whereas our primary differences between parties in this nation used to be about economics and taxation and so forth, the dividing lines are now in regard to God’s law and morality.
Notice Romans 1:18-32
What we find there is that God has judged throughout human history and will judge nations endorse and support such sins as sexual misconduct, homosexual behavior, men with men, women with women, doing what is unnatural, haters of God, advocating abortion and homosexuality.
Has it dawned on you that they have literally created a platform out of what God hates and calls sinful?
This is not about politics, although there are things we could talk about. You’re not voting for a pastor, you’re not voting for a spiritual leader, you’re voting for someone who has some sense of morality.
Since the Bible says that the role of government is to punish evil doers and protect the good, you better have somebody in power who understands what is good and what is evil. And if you think homosexuality, abortion, sexual freedom and hating God are not evil, then you better go back and check your Bible again.
How can people with that kind of agenda protect those who do good and punish those who do evil? Remember, we saw last week from Romans 13, that’s God’s design for government. Do you really trust those who support such things to determine the well-being and moral direction of our country?
We could talk about foreign policies, should we protect as many defenseless people from evil aggressors as possible? We could talk about economics, Is it right to get into irreparable debt? Is that responsibility? We could talk about what the Bible says about that.
We could talk about the economics of if you don’t work, you don’t eat, which is what the Bible says.
But those things are not what concern me. I’m of the firm conviction that the economics of our country are the least of our worries. Until the morality is fixed, we have no right to expect God’s blessing on the economy.
In an ideal situation, their platform would mean that the government passes out condoms so people can fornicate at will. For those who happen to get pregnant in the process, the platform advocates that you kill the baby at the will of the mother, up to and including the ninth month at tax-payer’s expense.
At the same time, it seeks to redefine the Word of God by advocating homosexual marriage, which is an oxymoron, an utter impossibility, and an absolute violation of the law of God.
That means the historic, Democratic party now openly endorses and advocates and asks for your vote to support the murder of babies and the marriage of homosexuals. And then, as the icing on the cake, they wanted to leave God out.
All of that is Romans 1 being fleshed out.
We’re talking about the adoption of a Romans 1 platform: sexual freedom, homosexuality on an equal level with marriage, the murder of infants, and the elimination of God.
And by the way, I didn’t like it any better when they put God back in because that’s blasphemy. To connect God with that agenda is blasphemy.
It’s taking His name in vain. In fact, I don’t think God should be in either agenda. But when you have an advocacy of support for the slaughter of infants and homosexuality, complete sexual freedom, you have a formula for divine judgment.
If we have any sense of justice, if we have any sense of righteousness, if we want to make a little bit of a voice heard about what is right and about the role of government being to punish evil doers and protect the people who do right, then we better step up. I’m not sure what God has in the future, but I do know we better take His side and give Him honor.
So what I want to do today and next week is just zero in on these two primary issues, and ask you to consider in light of these two abominations how a Christian should vote.
Listen to the two stances regarding abortion:
The Democratic Position: Protecting A Woman’s Right to Choose. The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to make decisions regarding her pregnancy, including a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay. We oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right.
Abortion is an intensely personal decision between a woman, her family, her doctor, and her clergy; there is no place for politicians or government to get in the way. We also recognize that health care and education help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and thereby also reduce the need for abortions.”
In fact, so strongly does President Obama believe in abortion, he voted four times as a state senator against a measure that would extend general care to a baby if it survived an abortion. His stance was to leave the baby alone to die.
You may be tempted to believe that never happens. Listen to this testimony:
Just for your information, here is the Republican position:
Faithful to the “self-evident” truths enshrined in
the Declaration of Independence, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.
We oppose using public revenues to promote or perform abortion or fund organizations which perform or advocate it and will not fund or subsidize health care which includes abortion coverage. We support the appointment of judges who respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life.
We oppose the nonconsensual withholding or withdrawal of care or treatment, including food and water, from people with disabilities, including newborns, as well as the elderly and infirm, just as we oppose active and passive euthanasia and assisted suicide.
Republican leadership has led the effort to prohibit
the barbaric practice of partial-birth abortion and permitted States to extend health care coverage to children before birth.
We urge Congress to strengthen the Born Alive Infant Protection Act by enacting appropriate civil and criminal penalties on healthcare providers who fail to provide treatment and care to an infant who survives an abortion, including early induction delivery where the death of the infant is intended.
We call for legislation to ban sex-selective abortions – gender discrimination in its most lethal form—and to protect from abortion unborn children who are capable of feeling pain; and we applaud U.S. House Republicans for leading the effort to protect the lives of pain-capable unborn children in the District of Columbia.
We call for a ban on the use of body parts from aborted fetuses for research. We support and applaud adult stem cell research to develop lifesaving therapies, and we oppose the killing of embryos for their stem cells. We oppose federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.
We also salute the many States that have passed laws for informed consent, mandatory waiting periods prior to an abortion, and health-protective clinic regulation. We seek to protect young girls from exploitation through a parental consent requirement; and we affirm our moral obligation to assist, rather than penalize, women challenged by an unplanned pregnancy.
We salute those who provide them with counseling and adoption alternatives and empower them to choose life, and we take comfort in the tremendous increase in adoptions that has followed Republican legislative initiatives.
Mitt Romney, by his own testimony, has changed his position from pro-choice to pro-life. While serving as governor of Massachusetts, he was presented with pro-abortion legislation, and did not sign it and that began his journey to his current pro-life position.
To me it is ironic that those who pride themselves on defending the rights of the weak, murder them in the womb when they are the most weak. In our world, we’re slaughtering between fifty and sixty million babies a year. In the United States we record 1.5 million abortions a year. Every third baby conceived is murdered in the womb. Four thousand a day plus, 170 an hour--Planned Parenthood alone kills one every ninety-five seconds.
The Physicians Association of Planned Parenthood released this statement, quote: “Abortion is a treatment for unwanted pregnancy, the second sexually transmitted disease.”
Pregnancy is now being classified as a sexually transmitted disease. Our nation and others are murdering a whole generation of humans in mass infanticide that was legalized in January of 1973 by the Roe v. Wade decision made by an unrighteous group of people on the Supreme Court.
Now forty-three percent of all women have an abortion and forty-seven percent of abortions are repeats.
It’s legal to do to a child what you might be arrested for doing to a cat, or a dog, or certainly an eagle or snail. In fact, Massachusetts made it illegal to award goldfish as a prize at a fair. And the document from the Massachusetts law said this was to protect the tendency to dull humanitarian feelings and corrupt the morals of those who abuse them--a law to prevent the abuse of goldfish.
How did we ever get here where we just massacre infants in the safest place in the womb? Where we literally go in there and kill them? How did we get to this place?
Obviously, it originates with Satan. This is a satanic thing. He is the father of murder. He is the first murderer. He would have murdered God and taken over if he could have.
Instead he was thrown out of heaven. And when he came down to earth, he moved Cain to kill Abel and unleashed on the world the whole array of murders that has characterized human existence.
We now have everything from slaughtering little infants in the safest place in the womb to massacring people the way we’re seeing it around the world and in the Middle East even now, and everything in between.
Satan particularly goes after babies. He did in Moses’ day; he did in Jesus’ day. He wanted to kill all the young children in Egypt because of the fear that a deliverer would come. He wanted to kill all of the two-year-old and under babies in and around Jerusalem for fear that the King was coming--Satan is a murderer.
All of this is reflective of satanic hatred of the purposes of God and the life that God creates. Any activity, whether it be a medical procedure or done in the name of religion, that has as its objective the murder of innocent life, is out of hell. It’s satanic.
But it’s amazing in a so-called Judeo-Christian environment, which has been the kind of worldview that America has been born in, that we have reached the point that we have where one of the two political parties in this country include slaughtering innocent infants in the womb as a part of its platform which it advocates.
Why? The reasons they would give you are these.
“It’s a matter of freedom; a woman has a right over her own body.” The problem is we’re not talking about her body. The baby is an independent and separate body.
“The child may have some genetic defect or some issue.” I’ve got news for you: We’re all defective. It’s simply a matter of degree!
One writer says, “Women must have abortion as a backup to contraceptive failure.” So murder becomes the backup plan.
And by the way, in a perfect world this would all be paid for by you--by you with your tax money.
There’s an interesting statement that sort of sums up what I want you to understand, written by Dr. Jerome Lejeune, professor of fundamental genetics in Paris.
He is the geneticist who discovered the chromosome abnormality in humans that causes Down syndrome
He does not write as a Christian, but as a specialist in the area of genetics. Listen to what he says:
“Life has a very long history but each individual has a very neat beginning, the moment of its conception. The material link is the molecular thread of DNA. In each reproductive cell, this ribbon roughly one meter long is cut into pieces twenty-three, or chromosomes.
As soon as the twenty-three paternally derived chromosomes are united through fertilization to the twenty-three maternal ones, the full genetic meeting necessary to express all the inborn qualities of the new individual is gathered and personal constitution takes place.
At two months of age, the human being is less than one thumb-length from the head to the rump. He would fit at ease in a nutshell, but everything is there, hands, feet, head, organs, brain. In the fourth week, there is consciousness. All are in place. His heart has been beating for a month by the second month.
His fingerprints can be detected, his heart is beating 150 to 170 beats a minute. To accept the fact that after fertilization has taken place, a new human being has come into being, is no longer a matter of taste or opinion.”
It’s a person. So here’s the bottom line. You have persons being murdered, and now that’s something you can vote for because you want to be a part of that or you can vote against it.
And before you make up your mind, I want you to consider this: God’s people have always rejected abortion. The Jews rejected it for three primary reasons.
They rejected it because every life was created by God, and therefore to take a life was to violate the first commandment: “To love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength”.
The second reason they were against abortion was because of the second law: “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and they understood that when life begins that person then becomes your neighbor. And no one is more a neighbor than an infant in a mother’s womb. If that’s not that mother’s neighbor, then there is no such thing as a neighbor.
Thirdly, the Law of God specifically stated in Exodus 20, “Thou shalt not murder,” and that’s how they saw it. So based upon loving God and honoring God, and loving and caring for your neighbor, and the specific law of God itself, they rejected abortion.
The early church followed in that same stand. Christianity has always been against murder of any kind, especially against the murder of an unprotected infant in a womb.
Some of you may be familiar with the Didache. It is the earliest known codification of the Christian faith outside of the Bible. It is dated by most scholars to the late first or early 2nd century.
The first line of this treatise is "Teaching of the Lord to the Gentiles (or Nations) by the Twelve Apostles"
The text has three main sections dealing with Christian ethics, rituals such as baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and Church organization.,
It specifically said, “You shall not murder a child by abortion.” That’s how explicit it was. The church has always said abortion brings the judgment of God because it is murder.
It isn’t new and the church’s stance isn’t new. So why have God’s people, both in the Old Testmanet as well as the New rejected abortion?
Because the Word of God is very clear. I want to just give you a handful of things to think about, just some principles in the little remaining time we have.
1. Every Conception is an Act of God
Psalm 127:3
How more simply and directly could it be said?
Want some examples? In Genesis 21:2, “Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the set time of which the Lord had spoken to him.”
Genesis 25:21, “Isaac entreated the Lord for his wife, because she was barren; and the Lord was entreated by him and Rebecca, his wife, conceived.”
First Samuel 1 goes back to the story of Hannah and Samuel. “The Lord remembered her; therefore it came to pass after she had conceived that she bore a son and called his name Samuel, saying, “Because I have asked him of the Lord.” She asked the Lord and the Lord answered and gave her a child.
In Ruth chapter 4, verse 13, “Boaz took Ruth; she was his wife. And when he went in unto her, the Lord gave her conception and she bore a son.” “The Lord gave her conception.”
The Bible speaks about every conception as a work of the Lord.
Back to Psalm 127:3, If children are a gift from the Lord, then it stands to reason that conception is an act of God.
We see examples of that every where we look in the Bible.
He started with Adam and took Eve out of Adam together they produced everyone that followed.
In the first six verses of the 139th Psalm you find David talking about the omniscience of God and how He knows everything.
Then in verses 7-12 He talks about the omnipresence of God. He made everything; He knows everything; He is everywhere all the time. You can’t be out of His presence ever.
And then in verse 13, he says, “For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb.”
Literally in Hebrew that reads, “You formed my kidneys”. It was the Hebrews way of referring to the complexity of organs that made up the human anatomy inside the body.
In verse 14, “I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully”--that literally means “awesomely”, a Hebrew word meaning “high-level of reverential awe”, made.
It’s a staggering thing to think of what You have done in fearfully and wonderfully making me. “Wonderful are Your works...my soul knows it very well.” I know that You made me.
And then he gets even more technical. ‘My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret.” You were making me and You framed me. What’s that? Bones, muscles, sinews, ligaments, tendons, structure. You were aware of all of it “when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth.” The “depths of the earth” is a euphemism for the womb, the hidden place, secret place.
Verse 16, ‘Your eyes have seen my unformed substance.” “My unformed substance,” what is that? It’s a Hebrew word that means something rolled together, something balled up before it unfolded, when it was just a genetic mass and, it was just that embryo--it was just that ball before it began to unfold. You framed it. You saw it, and You wrote in Your book everything that was going to take place for my days before any of them ever took place. This is God personally, intimately involved in the very first stages of life, life yet unfolded--God is intimately involved.
I will remind you, when God looks at you, He doesn’t see a mere blob of tissue. God sees deep into us and has known us intimately from conception.
That’s why he says in verse 17, “How precious are such thoughts to me.” He says, “You know so much about me that I can’t even count all Your thoughts about me, they would outnumber the sand of the sea. Amazing statement. God knows intimately everything about you from the time of your conception, because He made you and He made every person ever conceived.
You’re not an animal. You’re not a biological accident. You’re not tissue at some point and then you become a person. You’re a creation of God, by God, who weaves together the genetic code, who intimately sees the unformed fetus, and who guides the entire process.
And by the way, you’re not a mortal. No life is mortal. Every life conceived is immortal. Every single child conceived lives forever.
It doesn’t matter if you’re having sex with someone you’re not married to, if you were raped, if it was incest--it doesn’t change the creation of God. Every conception is an act of God.
The greatest example of all is Jesus Christ Himself.
In the gospels given through Matthew and Luke, we learn that the Holy Spirit created Christ in the womb of Mary without a human father. How did that process start? With a conception.
You say, “Well, what about a deformed baby? Are they a gift from the Lord?” Yeah, remember, we’re all deformed; it’s only a question of degree.
Remember when Moses was questioning God about whether or not he could be God’s spokesman? Do you remember how God responded?
Listen to Exodus 4:11, “The Lord said to him”...to Moses...“‘Who made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute or deaf, or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?’”
In John 9 Jesus said, “This man was born blind for the glory of God.” People say, “Well we can kill them if it was a rape, or we can kill them if it was incest, or we can kill them if they’re defective?” Really? Where did you get that permission? Certainly not from God or His Word.
It doesn’t change the fact that every creation is a creation of God. Abortion is an anti-God act. No wonder they didn’t want God in their platform.
Every conception is an act of God. Here’s the second thing:
2. Every Person Is Created in the Image of God
Where do we begin when there is so much Scriptural evidence? The first chapter of Genesis would be enough, but for time’s sake, let’s look at
James 3:9
Wow!! Is that not an amazing verse? Better be careful how you treat people because they’re made in the likeness of God.
What does that mean? Obviously, there are some characteristics we don’t have. For instance, we haven’t always existed. Unlike God, we have a beginning point. We don’t have His unlimited knowledge and presence and power. We aren’t changeless.
But there are a whole realm of characteristics that have to do with personhood and relationship that we have. We have the capability of relationships. We can show emotions. We can love and hate. We can think and understand and choose and act. All those things that were given to us are part of the image of God.
So every life is created by God and created in His image.
Here’s the third thing:
3. Every Person is the Object of God’s Loving Care
Listen: God designed the special time of pregnancy. A baby is in what should be the most protected, safest place on the planet by God’s design.
It’s difficult to imagine that we now advocate a society that approves of and encourages a mother invading her own womb to kill her own child.
In Exodus chapter 21, there’s a scenario there where is a pregnant woman is attacked and no harm to her or her child results, there is no punishment. But if harm comes to her or the infant, the offender could pay with up to his life if the baby died.
In fact, Oklahoma now has a similar law on our books as well that holds a person responsible for an injury to an unborn baby. It just makes sense. The womb ought to be a protected place where an infact receives the special care of God.
One of the most inconsistent things you will discover on this earth today are pro-abortion liberals who are so worried about what happens to the birds and the bugs and the animals. What a twisted, perverted sense of right and wrong.
Every conception is an act of God designed to result in a person created in the image of God receiving the special care of God.
A fourth point:
4. God Condemns Murder
Listen to Genesis 9:6, ““Whoever sheds man’s blood,
By man his blood shall be shed; For in the image of God He made man.”
Remember when Cain killed Abel and the blood of Abel in the ground cried out to God for vengeance? You go through the Old Testament; you find Leviticus, Joshua, Samuel, Kings, Ezekiel, all kinds of comment about blood guiltiness, that the blood of those slaughtered cries out for vengeance from God.
That’s the plight this country’s in. We’re just another country like all the rest that have gone down this same path. This is blatant paganism at its most rank level, at its most base level, headed for judgment in a sea of blood for the murder of babies, along with all the other perversions that go with it.
And I don’t think that anything shows more clearly the moral collapse of a society than the mass murder of little ones in the wombs of mothers. We’ve become a nation of murderers, and the ground cries out to God.
So let me give you one final word:
5. There is Forgiveness for Sin
You say, “But it’s so severe, it’s murder.” Can murder be forgiven? Ask the apostle Paul. He was a murderer and a blasphemer and he found grace. There’s forgiveness and restoration completely available in Christ.
And praise the Lord, He offers forgiveness today.
So it’s invitation time.
First: salvation
Second: forgiveness for abortion, voting for those who promote it, politics more important than God’s Word
Third: direction: church home, voting for president, other issues
Let’s pray
