The Culture of Death

INTRODUCTION

If you take a trip to the Rockies in Colorado, there is a mountain range called the Elk Mountains.

The jewel of the Elk Mountains are two twin peaks that stick their necks above the rest of the range around them.

Those peaks are called the Maroon Bells.

They are two of the most photographed mountain peaks in America, standing 14,000 feet above sea level.

All summer long, snow remains on the mountains.

They are called the Maroon Bells because when the light hits them right, they have that Virginia Tech shade of red.

The Maroon Bells are beautiful. But I want to tell you about different set of Maroon Bells that are not beautiful.

I want to tell you about two other twin peaks that are not descriptively beautiful, but deplorable and depraved.

They are not physical mountain peaks, but metaphorical.

I am speaking of the the heights of our nation’s iniquity.

The greatest stains of sin that we bear on our hands.

The Maroon Bells of American Immorality:

American chattel slavery

America’s twisted history with aborting human life

And when the light of the wisdom God’s Word hits them, we see them for what they really are.

Our nation was formed with Judeo-Christian values.

Sure there is plenty of philosophy of the Age of Enlightenment mixed in, but the reality is that when the first pilgrims arrived, they had Geneva Bibles in their hands.

And while many of our founding fathers were deists and theistic rationalists whose beliefs were more rooted in Athens and Greek philosophy than Jerusalem and biblical truth, they were raised in Anglican, Presbyterian and Congregational churches.

The impact of the Bible upon the DNA of our nation is particularly evident in the Declaration of Independence which states that all men are created equal and have certain unalienable rights.

And yet, the golden frame of morality, rooted in biblical principles, that set the ethical boundaries of our nation has not always been lived up to.

Far from it.

Human dignity and human rights, based on the fact that we are all created in the image of God, have been transgressed.

There have been these times in which we created subhuman classes of people for the purposes of convenience and economic advantage.

Behold—the inverse, awful Maroon Bells of slavery and abortion.

And both rise up out of the soil of a culture of death that results in a bewildering loss of human life, all sanctioned by supposedly civil laws.

In the case chattel slavery—praise God—emancipation has been declared and we have said, “No more and never again.” Abolished.

But in the case of aborting pre-born human beings, the abolition of abortion is far from achieved.

And yet, these things are not to be handled and talked about in our own wisdom.

We must turn to the wisdom of the Lord.

And to do that this morning, we turn to Proverbs 8:32-36.

Proverbs 8:35–36 ESV

For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord, but he who fails to find me injures himself; all who hate me love death.”

THOSE WHO HATE WISDOM LOVE DEATH

Proverbs 8 depicts wisdom as a woman who stands as a crossroads calling out like an open-air street preacher.

Proverbs 8:1–2 ESV

Does not wisdom call? Does not understanding raise her voice? On the heights beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand;

Wisdom is depicted as a woman in a poetic sense because the Hebrew word for wisdom is feminine.

But the wisdom that calls out is the wisdom of God.

The voice that is raised is the wisdom of God personified.

Wisdom calls out to foolish people and asks for common sense to be employed:

Proverbs 8:5 ESV

O simple ones, learn prudence; O fools, learn sense.

She tells the listener how things really are and how things really work, despite what they may think.

Proverbs 8:6–7 ESV

Hear, for I will speak noble things, and from my lips will come what is right, for my mouth will utter truth; wickedness is an abomination to my lips.

True wisdom, despite what people may try and argue, is opposed to the abomination that is wickedness.

And the perceptive listen. They do not close their ears to the message.

Proverbs 8:8–9 ESV

All the words of my mouth are righteous; there is nothing twisted or crooked in them. They are all straight to him who understands, and right to those who find knowledge.

And whenever the perceptive listen and walk in the paths of wisdom, they will enjoy her fruits.

Proverbs 8:14 ESV

I have counsel and sound wisdom; I have insight; I have strength.

Proverbs 8:19 ESV

My fruit is better than gold, even fine gold, and my yield than choice silver.

Proverbs 8:21 ESV

granting an inheritance to those who love me, and filling their treasuries.

And where does wisdom’s sermon begin? Always at the same place.

Proverbs 1:7 ESV

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Those who fear the Lord will hate evil.

Proverbs 8:13 ESV

The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate.

Those who fear the Lord will love wisdom.

Those who love wisdom, fear the Lord.

And the wise who fear the Lord find life.

They obtain the Lord’s gracious hand upon them.

Proverbs 8:35 ESV

For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord,

But those who hate wisdom do not find life.

Instead, to their own detriment, they love death.

Proverbs 8:36 ESV

but he who fails to find me injures himself; all who hate me love death.”

THE CROSSROADS OF THE 1860’S

THE REALITY OF CHATTEL SLAVERY

And so those who hear wisdom’s voice at the crossroads must make a choice.

Will they love wisdom and walk the path of life?

Or will they hate wisdom and walk the path of death?

Will they despise wisdom and love death?

In the early 1860’s our nation stood at the crossroads in the shadow of the first Maroon Bell of immorality—chattel slavery.

In thinking of America, I sometimes find myself admiring her bright blue skies, her grand old woods, her fertile fields, her beautiful rivers, her mighty lakes and star-crowned mountains, but my rapture was soon checked, when I remembered that all is cursed with the infertile spirit of slave-holding and wrong. When I remember that with the waters of her noblest rivers, the tears of my brothers are borne to the ocean, disregarded and forgotten. That her most fertile fields drink daily of the warm blood of my outraged sisters, I am filled with unutterable loathing.

Frederick Douglass

Slaves would typically be brought into the world in a one-room house that equated to a shack.

In the winter, it was cold.

In the summer, it was hot and stunk.

The people who lived in them often got diseases like pneumonia, typhus, cholera, lockjaw and tuberculosis.

If a child who was a slave made it to the age of 12, they were sent to the fields to work.

Their teeth were usually rotten and they often suffered from worms or dysentery or malaria.

Out of 100 slaves, only 3 would usually live to 60 years old.

Work was from sun up to sun down—14 hours during certain parts of the year.

If it were the time of the month where there was light from a full moon, the work would carry into the night.

When slaves were traded on auction blocks, the black men and women were made to jump and to dance to show how limber they were.

They were stripped naked for examining.

They were poked and and prodded by those purchasing them.

They check their eyes and teeth and feet for health, much like a rancher would examine cattle before purchase today.

One slave said that they were examined the way a jockey would examine a horse.

Every slave would expect to be sold at least once their lives—but maybe twice or more.

For this reason, preachers doing a slave marriage would change the vows to say, “Until death OR DISTANCE, would do you part.”

THE BIBLICAL WISDOM IGNORED BY THE JUDEO-CHRISTIAN NATION

How could these things have been? How could a nation that began with Geneva Bibles begin a nation with chattel slavery as still being a part of its heritage?

Well that is because, at the genesis of our great nation, we ignored biblical wisdom when it came to the topic of slave-trading and human bondage.

The Bible is clear regarding the wisdom that should be applied to how we view the value of human life and other image-bearers.

Every human is created in the image of God.

Genesis 1:27 ESV

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

And this image-bearing means that every human possesses objective worth.

In fact, they also reflect God’s worth.

In the creation of humanity, we see His divine power on display. We see His relatable attributes reflected in our own.

And a person’s ethnicity is only one more reflection of His beauty—it should never be a cause for looking at someone as less than or subhuman.

Moreover, the Bible is clear about the practice of slave-trading.

The Old Testament law classified man-stealing as worthy of death.

Exodus 21:16 ESV

“Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death.

The New Testament speaks to how the law relates to sinners and says this:

1 Timothy 1:9–10 ESV

understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine,

The Greek word for enslaver literally means “man-stealer” or “kidnapper.”

These verses show that only a wicked twisting of the Scriptures could ever justify participation in the American slave trade and chattel slavery.

And sadly, there were many who did just that.

Individuals who ignored the wisdom of the Bible.

Individuals who made up a nation who ignored the wisdom of God’s Word...

...A nation formed with Judeo-Christian values that failed to apply them rightly as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness was held back from certain members of a free world that was not so free.

Is this to say that America is an evil nation?

Absolutely not.

But we have to be honest about the brutality of the Maroon Bell of slavery that took us multiple generations to topple.

THE CAPITULATION OF COMPROMISE

Some may wonder why it did take so long?

And that may be because we have a fairly sanitized view of our own history where we think the entire North was filled with abolitionists and the entire South was filled with passionate, bloodthirsty man-stealers.

The reality is that all throughout the nation there was a yielding and giving in to the horrors of chattel slavery because of capitulating compromise.

Thomas Jefferson claimed that slavery was a like a wolf that we were holding by the ear.

It isn’t right to hold on to it, but it is far too dangerous to let it go.

George Washington said he never wanted to own another slave by purchase, but that it could only be ended through slow, imperceptible changes.

And even Abraham Lincoln, as the Civil War began, was no abolitionist.

He actually believed the Constitution sanctioned slavery.

He did not believe in the immediate end of slavery.

Like Washington before him, he thought it could only be ended through gradual means.

And he even supported a plan to free the slaves and ship them off to another nation where they would be colonized.

Throughout the first years of the war, he refused to even meet with Frederick Douglass.

It wasn’t until August of 1863 that they even met face to face, to discuss how Black Union soldiers were being mistreated—Union soldiers not allowed to fight in the war at the beginning.

Obviously Lincoln became an abolitionist. Even before meeting Douglass in person, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

He was the fierce champion of the 13th Amendment and Douglass came to love Lincoln as a man and as a President.

I believe he is one of the great Presidents in our nation’s history and his place on Rushmore is well-deserved.

But my point is to say—That Maroon Bell stood for so long because powerful men lacked the courage to fight for what was right and just.

Capitulation to compromise leads to an ignorance regarding wisdom.

OUR HISTORY WITH ABORTION

Now in the case of the 2nd Maroon Bell—the second bloody mountain of injustice in our history—the abortion of pre-born babies, we can actually go backward and see that unlike slavery, it was not a part of our heritage at the start.

In fact, in the earliest accounts of colonial America, there were levels of justice being executed for crimes against the pre-born.

CAPTAIN WILLIAM MITCHELL

I want to tell you about a man named Captain William Mitchell. Much like John Bunyan, he fought in the English Civil War.

Unlike Bunyan, he was a pretty awful person by all accounts.

Mitchell left England after the war and sailed for the New World with his wife.

He also brought along 22 servants—one of which he convinced to come because he had eyes for her. Her name was Susan Warren—21 years old.

Upon arrival in Maryland, Mitchell claimed that Warren owed him money and demanded that they would be intimate until she had paid the money back.

He made her sign a document saying she would be his servant, which of course included more than scrubbing floors.

It was not long before Warren became pregnant.

He refused to marry her.

She said that as a Christian gentlemen, he needed to make things right.

He laughed it off and said, “Jesus and the Holy Spirit are only a man and a pigeon.”

So what did Mitchell do? Leah Savas and Martin Olasky explain in their excellent book The Story of Abortion in America.

The Story of Abortion in America: A Street-Level History, 1652–2022 Chapter 2: Common Law, Common Sense

Mitchell mixed an abortifacient—a potion that could kill the unborn child—with a poached egg and forced Warren to eat it: “He said if she would not take it he would thrust it down her throat, so she being in bed could not withstand it.” The potion apparently killed the child and caused Warren to lose much of her hair. Her skin erupted into “boils and blains.” Mitchell taunted her: “How now hath your God helped you? Ah thou may’st well believe anything that is told you, such a thing as God.… O thou art a fool.”

The situation was brought to the attention of the authorities and in 1652, Mitchell found himself in court. It is the first abortion case we have solid records for on American soil.

He thought his political connections would keep him from getting in trouble, but he was wrong.

He was on trial for “murder, Atheism and blasphemy.”

In the end, Mitchell was not found guilty of murder.

This is because science was clearly not as advanced.

At the time, a woman would not be counted as truly pregnant until four months, when the “quickening” occurred—when she felt the baby kick.

Before this, they would say there was no way to know if the baby was alive in the womb.

That shows you how primitive the science was.

In light of that, Mitchell could claim that his abortifacient may have not been the things that killed the child in Warren.

He could claim that it could have been anything else that might cause a child to perish before birth.

He ended up being charged with “scandalous behavior” and he was barred from ever holding public office in the colonies again.

He was also hit with a choice of a public whipping or paying a fine of 5,000 pounds of tobacco.

That was about 3 and 1/2 years of pay.

Is 5,000 pounds of tobacco really anything compared to human life? No—it isn’t.

But it does show that our nation had no stomach for this from the start.

The lack of science might have saved Mitchell, but even his being on trial speaks to the recognition of personhood in the womb by the earliest Marylanders.

Susan Warren, by the way, received an allowance from Mitchell’s wealth from the rest of her life and she became a free woman in the new world.

However, when speaking to her affair and the pregnancy and the abortion that came afterward, she said:

“It was a great sin to get it, but a greater to make it away.”

NO MORE SCIENTIFIC EXCUSES

But while science may have clouded things then, we cannot say that it clouds things now. Just the opposite actually—it has made personhood from conception clearer than ever.

When the egg is fertilized and conception takes place, all of the DNA that will make a person who they are is present.

It is all there.

Our ultrasounds are so advanced that we can detect the embryo at six weeks.

Our ultrasounds can detect a heartbeat between the 6th and 7th week of pregnancy—sometimes even earlier.

And here is the deal—until we had these machines, the thought process had not changed all that much since before the time of the New Testament.

For 1600 years, the Western world was using ancient logic regarding pregnancy from Aristotle.

In the 16th and 17th century, there were some minor discoveries that helped track the prenatal development a bit more.

But when we got ultrasound machines in the 20th century, everything changed.

We realized that Aristotle’s contention that there was no life for the first 46 days was wrong.

The ultrasound machine, a gift to humanity by the grace of God, suddenly removed all the justification we might try and come up with for abortion.

BIBLICAL WISDOM ON LIFE

And what the ultrasound machine revealed is that God’s wisdom was correct all along.

The Lord’s Word teaches us that all people are created equal and that they are of equal value as image-bearers from conception.

Listen to some of these words from the Scriptures:

Psalm 139:13–14 ESV

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.

Fearfully and wonderfully made by the Giver of life.

Human in the womb—the handiwork of God.

The Psalmist is expounding on how well God knows us and says that it is God who intimately governed our formation in the womb.

Exodus 21:22–25 ESV

“When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

God’s civil law treated the murder of the unborn just like the murder of the born.

And this should be no surprise.

And image-bearer is an image-bearer, inside or outside of the womb.

God hates unequal weights and measures.

Proverbs 20:10 ESV

Unequal weights and unequal measures are both alike an abomination to the Lord.

And since God hates unequal weights and measures, it makes sense that His law would protect all image-bearers.

So then, when we take the wisdom of the Word, along with the findings of the ultrasound machine, we must admit that it is not a stretch to say that abortion is the murder of an image-bearing human being.

It is a transgression of the natural law given to Noah:

Genesis 9:6 ESV

“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.

It is a transgression of the sixth commandment:

Exodus 20:13 ESV

“You shall not murder.

And it is a transgression of God’s perfect wisdom:

Proverbs 6:16–17 ESV

There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,

SO WHY WON’T THE WORLD LISTEN?

So why don’t we listen?

Why is it that we developed the first commercially usable ultrasound machine in 1963 and yet, our nation declared legalized abortion a constitutional right?

Shouldn’t we have become even more protective over life at that point?

How did we go backwards from Captain Mitchell’s case to saying that abortion is a right that the Constitution demands be in place?

Why didn’t the ultrasound machine open the way for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to be fiercely defended by all Americans going forward?

Shouldn’t 1963 have been like 1863 one-hundred years before?

A time where our nation makes great strides toward seeing the lives of all men and women be counted as sacred, inside and outside of the womb?

After all, some of the most heralded names in early American feminism were quite pro-life.

Susan B. Anthony said that abortion filled her with indignation and awakened active antagonism in her.

Jane Addams said:

The Spartans killed children physically infirm. Are we to go back to the days of Sparta? It is our duty to care for them.

Jane Addams

How did we go from that to 600,000 abortions a year minimum since Roe in 1973?

SELF AND SEX

The answer is found in the sexual revolution, which is a fruit of America’s national idolatry at the altar of Self.

A nation founded on objective truths that are self-evident shifted to being shaped by subjective feelings and desires in an ideological revolution.

In Carl Trueman’s book, A Strange New World, he lays out the philosophical path we have unfortunately walked.

Along with most of the West, we bought into the ideas of French Enlightenment from men like Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Rene Descartes.

Their teaching emphasize that final authority is given to inner-feelings, which are the truest and purest guides.

Marx came along and politicized these ideas, saying that moral codes and religion, which claims objective truth, manipulate people and they must be done away with to give humanity true freedom.

And then Freud sexualized what Marx politicized and what the French Enlightenment romanticized.

What you do sexually is who you are. It is your identity, not your behavior.

The end result is a sexual ethic that says, “I am free to do whatever I want to do. It’s my truth. You have no right to keep me from my identity.”

We have seen this play out in our culture at an alarming rate.

When Barack Obama ran for President, he said he did not support gay marriage, only civil unions.

By 2015, he had the White House covered in a projected rainbow flag to celebrate the national legalization of gay marriage.

One year later, Donald Trump became the first President to win office supporting gay marriage as “settled law”—you can look that up. It’s true.

71% of the nation reportedly supports gay marriage now, including 49% of Republicans.

That toothpaste is out of the tube.

But these things are not disconnected.

Why did we become MORE likely to abort pre-born humans AFTER we got technology that clearly showed us the life that is being taken?

Because Rousseau and Descartes and Marx and Freud convinced us through institutionalized lies that consequence-free sex is our right.

With this new worldview coming into vogue, attitude about abortion also mutated. Narcissistic hedonism fanned the flames of sexual promiscuity and the so-called free love movement, which was neither free nor loving in reality. Sexual liberation meant that not only individuals could choose for themselves if and when they had sex, but they could also determine for themselves whether and how they should deal with the consequences of sex…If the individuals involved are self-fulfilled, indulging their own desires, and not harming others, the behavior was viewed as permissible, the rest of the culture be damned. But…there were harm to others.

C. Ben Mitchell

More people have died from abortion than the entire US population in 1880.

It is awful.

It is a bloody Maroon Bell hanging over our nation.

And it is the product of a narcissistic, self-worshipping, sex-obsessed culture that demands self-gratification on our terms—no matter who gets hurt in the process.

And so, as a people, we have spurned the wisdom of God pridefully and treated it hatefully as it calls out and preaches from the crossroads.

And as a result, we get a culture of death.

Those who hate me, love death.

THE CULTURE OF LIFE

JESUS IS THE WISDOM OF GOD

So what is the answer to this sort of madness? How do we respond to the culture of death?

First of all, we need to know where our hope is found.

We need to know where hope is found for the sexually promiscuous.

We need to know where hope is found for little babies.

We see our hope in the midst of wisdom’s message in Proverbs 8.

Proverbs 8:22–30 ESV

“The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth, before he had made the earth with its fields, or the first of the dust of the world. When he established the heavens, I was there; when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master workman, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always,

Wisdom is depicted as existing before creation and being superior to creation. Preeminent.

Wisdom has intimate knowledge of the created order and and Wisdom was there at the dawn of creation.

Wisdom predates Adam and his children, made from dust and bone.

Wisdom is the builder of creation.

Who does this sound like?

Who is the only begotten? Who is the only brought forth Son of God?

Who was with God and was God before creation?

We know that the answer is the Lord Jesus Christ.

John 1:1 ESV

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Colossians 1:15–17 ESV

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

The Greek word, prototokos, means “preeminent,” the way a firstborn son is preeminent in a household.

Jesus is the preeminent, only begotten Son of God who is the ultimate revelation of God and He has revealed the Father.

Jesus is the wisdom of God in human flesh.

Paul says it clearly in 1 Corinthians 1:24

1 Corinthians 1:24 ESV

but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Before the Fall, God’s wisdom was perfectly operating in the world.

There was harmony between God and human.

There was harmony between human and human.

There was harmony between human and creation.

But after the fall, the harmony was lost. Humanity lost track of God’s wisdom because of sin.

But Jesus, who is the wisdom of God, the only begotten Son, has lived and died and resurrected and ascended and He is the Mediator who restores the harmony.

He reconciles us to God through the blood of the Cross.

He reconciles us to one another through the blood of the Cross.

And in the end, He will reconcile us to creation on the New Earth as we live in the harmony we were made for.

And He is the only One who can do this.

Who knows Jesus? Who knows the wisdom of God? The Church.

What that means is: (PLEASE PUT BOTH ITALICIZED STATEMENTS ON ONE SLIDE)

The only institution on earth who truly has the remedy for the culture of death is the Church.

We have the Gospel. We have Jesus. We have the wisdom of God.

The world hates His wisdom and loves death.

We love the Wisdom of God and we love life.

The church must lead the way in establishing a culture of life.

THE CULTURE OF LIFE

If you look under the hood of the abolition of chattel slavery in the West, you will see Christian leadership at the forefront.

If we will abolish abortion, it will have to be the same way.

We cannot capitulate with compromise.

It took courage for believers to stand up and say, “Whatever the cost—there must be equal rights for image-bearing people, no matter the color of their skin.”

There were people who would twist God’s Word and bend principles to try and fit chattel slavery into a biblical box.

It took courage for preachers and parishioners to say, “You are wrong. This is sin.”

And now, the same courage will be required.

We must stand for the equality for all people—Pre-born and Born.

But if we call for justice in the nation out of one side of our mouths, we must call for pure and undefiled religion in the church out of the other.

James 1:27 ESV

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

This year, Kentucky Baptists and North Carolina Baptists called for the abolition of slavery in resolutions they passed in their state coventions.

In the same resolutions in which KY and NC Baptists called for the abolition of abortion, they also said this:

RESOLVED, that we, our churches, and our ministries love both our born and preborn neighbors as ourselves by continuing steadfastly in our commitment to pursue pure and undefiled religion towards both mothers and children prayerfully, financially, and practically through prenatal and postnatal care in pregnancy resource centers, counseling, fostering, adoption and other available means.

Kentucky Baptists

The statement from NC Baptists is nearly identical.

We cannot compromise on the value of life, but we also cannot compromise on neighborly love.

WHAT WE DO

For us as a local church, I want to challenge you to do two things.

1. Join in on WHAT WE DO.

We are a “House of Refuge” church through Love Life USA.

If they hear of a woman or family in our area who wants to choose life for her child and needs help, they will connect that woman to our church body.

As of today, we stand ready and waiting.

If and when that time comes, we are ready to act.

We will read our House of Refuge Covenant here in just a bit.

Secondly, we are firm supporters of CareNet Peninsula.

They opened a beautiful new facility this year and if you go inside, they have a tree sculpture hung on the wall.

If you look at the leaves of that tree sculpture, each one has a major donor’s name carved into it.

One of those leaves reads, “Seaford Baptist Church, Seaford, VA”

Let us press on in faithfulness in this partnership.

Which each penny we give, we are providing top-notch prenatal and postnatal care for mothers and babies through CareNet.

2. Pray about WHAT TO DO.

What about your individual family?

Could God be calling you to become a foster family?

Could God be calling you to prepare your family to adopt?

Could God be calling you to commit a sacrificial gift to CareNet or Love Life USA?

Maybe you would like to talk more about all of this because you feel motivated by the Lord this morning.

Maybe you would like to know more about justice for pre-born lives and the abolition of abortion.

I would love to speak with you and direct you to some resources that can help you both be informed and take the action that God would call you to take.

And if you aren’t sure what God is calling you to do personally, pray for wisdom.

God says that when we pray in faith for wisdom, He gives it.

James 1:5 ESV

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.

Pray in faith and ask God for the wisdom on what to do to protect life.

We’ve seen one Maroon Bell toppled. Abolished.

May we see another. Let the bloodshed end.

Let justice roll down like rivers and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Wisdom calls at the crossroads? Will we listen.

Let us answer the culture of death with a culture of life.

PRAY

*ASK BAND TO RETURN

If you are here and you have participated in abortion in any way, I want to say something to you before we sing.

God’s grace is greater than your sin.

Participation in abortion is not unforgivable sin.

Jesus died for it just like all the other sins He suffered for as He was pressed under God’s wrath.

If you are carrying around immense amounts of guilt, I urge you—turn to the Lord Jesus Christ and His grace is sufficient to save you.

If you are already a believer—you do not need to live with guilt.

He paid your fine. It is finished.

Rest in His love. Rejoice in His forgiveness.

Satan wants us all to think we are defined by our worse failings. He is a liar.

Turn to Christ.