Sermon Tone Analysis

Series: Sanctity of Life SundayText: Romans 1:18–32

By: Shaun Marksbury Date: January 22, 2023

Venue: Living Water Baptist ChurchOccasion: AM Service

Introduction

Even though this is the first year we are doing a Sanctity of Life Sunday together, I don’t think there’s much confusion in this church as to the question before us today.

These last couple of years gave us quite a bit of concern, though.

Of course, with the Dobbs Supreme Court decision last year, we saw an end to fifty years of federal recognition of abortion due to the Supreme Court Roe v. Wade.

That is a moment that calls for praise to God, but it doesn’t end abortion, and it seems that people are more divided than ever over this issue.

Consider just the past few years.

We knew that, with the incoming Biden/Harris presidential administration, we would have two of the most pro-abortion individuals to occupy the White House.

Kamala Harris, for instance, is on record fighting for the freedom for women to have abortions based on sex selection, the race of the child, and the potential for disability.

She also introduced legislation to force medical professionals to perform abortions against their wishes and has advocated policy to allow later-term abortions.

She believes any legal restriction to abortion limits women’s healthcare, parroting recent initiatives to re-brand the argument for abortion as “healthcare” and “reproductive rights.”

With them in the White House, even if Roe were overturned, it seemed likely that a Democrat-controlled House and Senate could codify it into law without fearing presidential veto.

It was astonishing to see how blue the country voted in 2020 (and we won’t go into that today).

Even the State of Georgia just re-elected a radical pro-abortion candidate to the US Senate, the first one to occupy that role.

What’s especially interesting about Raphael Warnock is that he happens to be a pastor, and many Christians stated that influenced them.

Yet, he’s vocally pro-choice; when asked whether abortion is consistent with Scripture, he stated that he believed in human agency and freedom and would therefore fight for abortion advocacy.

The public argument for abortion is apparently convincing, even to Christians.

As such, people are shifting in their ideas.

People seem to know on an instinctual level that this is a question of morality, and they wonder which is the more virtuous position.

After all, who wants to restrict healthcare for women?

If abortion is a human right and reproductive justice, then Christians should be the loudest advocates for abortion.

However, when we approach the issue from a biblical perspective, what we discover is that abortion is neither healthcare, nor a right, nor is it just.

If what grows in the mother is human, then it is made in God’s image, and it deserves equal protection under the law.

In short, to seek to take its life is murder, then.

There is a moral reasoning shift occurring, though.

Remember, at one time, the argument for legalized abortion was to supposedly protect young women from back-alley procedures.

Even into the nineties, the mantra was that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare,” for there was always a cultural sense that there is something wrong with abortion.

Yet, abortion advocacy no longer uses the word “rare,” arguing now that no one should tell a woman that her reason for having an abortion is wrong, even if she doesn’t give one.

That cultural sense seems to be vanishing, and the goalposts have therefore moved.

Why is the cultural sense on this issue changing?

This is but one evidence of God slowly giving over our country to depraved thinking, just as this passage describes.

We see three times the phrase that God “gave them over,” and each time, the unregenerate go a bit further down the rabbit hole.

We’re considering this today because we want to know what we think about abortion and what we should think about it.

What God Creates is Clear (vv.

18–20)

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

Consider Paul’s claim for a moment.

There are those who know God created them, and further, they know He has certain ways or expectations concerning behavior.

However, they suppress this truth, wanting instead to embrace their unrighteousness.

A professor explained it in this way: Picture several beach balls in a swimming pool.

You jump in and try to submerge them and hold them under water.

Yet, the task grows more difficult, and you lose one.

Now, you must struggle to both keep control of the remaining balls and re-dunk the one you lost.

This is what people do with God’s truths when not wanting to deal with them.

Now, consider our thinking on pregnancy: We know we’re created by God, and we know something special happens at conception.

That’s why we talk so freely about a miracle occurring.

Those sonagram images go on the fridge, and we scrutinize those black-and-white images to try to determine what sex the baby is, present tense.

We don’t turn to the young couple and say, “I understand that congratulations will be in order soon,” and no mother invites people over to feel “the cell cluster” kick.

We naturally affirm what Scripture reveals.

In Psalm 139, for instance, David reflects on God superintending his creation in his mother’s womb; in v. 13, he says, “For You formed my inward parts; you wove me in my mother’s womb.”

No one has a problem putting that verse on a birth announcement.

Today, we’re blessed with technology to give us a window into such secret moments, giving us the ability to think God’s thoughts after Him, as one scientist once described.

Why is that?

Because we understand instinctively that this is a human being growing.

If, God forbid, something were to happen to the expectant mother such as a drunk driver crashing into her, killing her, we charge the driver with two counts of vehicular homicide, not one.

The family would grieve two losses.

We all understand this.

However, something changes in our language if the pregnancy is unwanted.

People start talking about the zygote and then fetus.

The language becomes clinical, detached, because we’re thinking differently about the life inside.

We talk about tissue requiring surgical removal.

We dare not talk about the “baby” because that would be letting a ball breach the surface, one that may make us face the fact that the child’s true Creator may not be pleased with our contemplations.

Yet, the same biological terms we borrow point to one, undeniable conclusion: the unborn is observably and testably human.

The DNA, the blood type, and the developing brain waves all tell us what we already know: this is a new human being coming into the world.

As Scripture says, “God made it evident to them,” but people still debate whether a living, human body always has the rights other humans do.

How is this even a question?

To answer that, we need to turn to the late theologian Francis Schaeffer; he identified a fact/value split in thinking that was apparent even in his day.

Everyone can agree on observable nature, what he called lower-story living, while values are ethereal, not concreate — upper-story possibilities.

People with this kind of thinking would have us only speak of absolute scientific realities, not moral absolutes.

If you’re not quite following that, he was describing how it would be possible for people to observe a human growing within a womb while simultaneously denying it an upper-story idea: personhood.

This is personhood theory, and Nancy Pearcy points this out in her book, Love Thy Body.

She noted that today, a human being can biologically exist to which culture denies moral or legal standing.

Science might affirm a fetus is biologically human, but we might still deny it the rights of a person.

This isn’t new thinking; in American slavery, antebellum law wouldn’t necessarily grant those of African descent legal standing because a slave is just a body, not a person.

In abortion advocacy, the same kind of thinking denies personhood (with rights and legal standing) to unborn children; they’re bodies, not people.

This is thinking that wouldn’t cross the mind of a farmer or a rancher a couple generations ago, someone working in nature.

However, concepts popularized today require us to ignore nature.

We used to look and see the teleological purpose around us, understanding that eyes are for seeing; ears for hearing, man and woman are for each other, and life begets life.

Structure indicates design, which itself implies purpose from God. Scripture says God formed man from the ground “and man became a soul” (Gen.

2:7).

There’s no divide between one’s soul and body: “My soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You” (Psa.

63:1).

In fact, David reports, “When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long” (Psa.

32:3).

The soul and body together determine personhood, something that happens at conception, which is why God there are laws in the OT against the intentional murder of a pre-born infant.

Only by repenting of foolish notions and getting back to Scripture will we restore our reason.

Yet, as our Romans passage continues, “For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures” (vv.

21–23).

Those who produce clever arguments to get around what is so clear about the sanctity of our nature will find themselves becoming more foolish over time.

They do this because of idolatry.

If God calls us to worship Him in all we do, then Christians supporting abortion-on-demand are placing something else before the worship of God.

That’s why abortion advocates want to see the world in terms of secular and sacred, with morality and religion remaining a separate issue.

They want politicians who can say, “I’m Christian, and I may be personally opposed to abortion, but I won’t let that influence me in the least.”

That’s schizophrenic thinking, just the kind that looks at evil and calls it good.

In fact, the world only believes in the fact/value split when it benefits them.

We’ve already noted that people see abortion as women’s rights and reproductive justice.

In other words, they do believe morality is part of the discussion, but they have to play word games to avoid thinking that they are intentionally taking a life, changing the discussion on justice.

So, God continues turning them over:

The giving over (vv.

24–25)

Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.

For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever.