THE HOLOCAUST

THE HOLOCAUST Jeremiah 31:15 and Matthew 2:17-18 January 17, 2010 Given by: Pastor Rich Bersett [Index of Past Messages] Introduction They called him the weeping prophet, and with good reason. He was called by God to preach messages to His people that they would not want to hear, God’s correction that they would not receive and His commands that they would not obey. He was destined to rebuke kings and priests, false prophets and a profligate nation. He didn’t want this burden, but God put a fire in his bones and made him want to preach His message. He spoke against the many sins of Judah and prophesied that the nation would be carried off into captivity in a faraway land. In one of the tenderest passages in all of scripture Jeremiah was permitted to speak message of hope for the people of Judah – a promise that God would ultimately restore them to their homeland. In the middle of that promise a bleak description of the despair the people were feeling in those long years of their captivity comes forth from the lips of the empathetic prophet: This is what the Lord says, “A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted because her children are no more.” (Jeremiah 31:15) When the Babylonians invaded Judah and dragged off the people, Jeremiah sees with his prophetic eye, and later experiences personally, not only his precious Jerusalem being destroyed, but innocent children being slaughtered in the invasion. As our news brings us endless scenes of destruction and death in Haiti we are ready to understand the bitterness and sorrow of the mothers. He pictures for them Rachel, Jacob’s wife and mother of Joseph and Benjamin, weeping for all her descendants, as an ancestral representative of the mothers who wept for their children. But his words served an additional prophetic purpose, because they are the words quoted by Matthew in another dramatic historical event. Generations later, the long awaited Messiah has come, in remarkable and surprising fashion—as a baby. The tyrant king Herod out of suspicion and jealous rage orders all male children in the vicinity of Bethlehem to be killed, in hopes of eliminating this new king with whom the Magi were enamored. About the murder of those innocent children Matthew writes, Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: “A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.” Have you ever been near a mother whose innocent child’s life was taken by an act of violence? There is no consolation for her. The sorrow and anger comingle, the sense of sudden loss foments and nothing—no words, no touch, no loving concern can mitigate the pain. She refuses to be comforted. Injustice and “the Culture of Death” Unnatural, immoral, hauntingly wicked is the killing of innocent children. We are not surprised that the Spirit of God would draw on such a torrid imagery to illustrate what is perhaps the worst miscarriage of justice in all the world’s history. The most arresting image in warfare is not the leveling of a city, the strafing of the countryside by napalm, not even the catastrophic numbers when the numbers of soldiers dead and injured are added up on the newsreel. What sickens us the most is that heart-wrenching observation, “and many innocent children died.” If your spirit listens carefully among the echoes of our culture, you will hear again the sound of Rachel’s weeping. Among the dwindling numbers of citizens in this country who dare to believe in righteousness there is the nauseating awareness of a terrible, ongoing injustice,. “The slaughter of the innocents” is the grim headline assigned to Herod’s murderous Bethlehem pillage. It is an apt name for our more modern holocaust - Abortion. Many liberal minded people make a big deal of social justice, but wink at this most hideous of all social injustices. They insist that in a “just society” there is no mistreatment or exploitation of the defenseless. And they go to bat, and rightly so, for the poor, the underdog, the needy, those circumstantially bereft who cannot take care of themselves. But there is no one more innocent, more defenseless, more vulnerable than a pre-born human being. Fully alive and responsive, but helpless in a pool of amniotic fluid, the fetus is the most endangered species of all. Nevertheless, these same liberal-minded defenders of the innocent, champions of the helpless, 37 years ago this Saturday marshaled their forces and legalized the most heinous of all injustices. The Roe v. Wade decision recklessly handed down by When a most injudicious team of nine judges recklessly handed down their grisly decision in the Roe v. Wade case in 1973, they in fact signed what has become, to date, the death sentences of 50 million innocent, vulnerable, helpless babies. You shall not murder. Exodus 20:13 And it won’t do to stick our heads in the sand of imbecility and call them simply masses of tissue. Their hearts beat, their brains work, when they are threatened they recoil, and when they are stabbed, sliced and suctioned out of their wombs, they scream with pain. Keep praying that our president, our legislature and our wayward courts will one day wake up and say, We have made a horrible, horrible mistake. The chances of your being killed by terrorists anywhere in the world is about 1 in 650,000. The chances of your being killed by a mugger, sniper or maniac in any major city in the US is 1 in 4,000. The chances of your being killed if you’re in the womb of an American woman – 1 in 3.3! It sounds like the baby shower from hell. As cake and punch are passed around, a doctor runs medical tests on a month-old baby. If he passes the tests, the guests welcome the child to the human community. But if the baby fails -- if he has, say, Down's syndrome, or cerebral palsy -- the parents bid him a sad farewell. And then, the doctor snuffs out his life. Believe it or not, a Princeton professor thinks parties like these would be a good idea. This is a tragic illustration that the killing of a month-old child -- once absolutely unthinkable -- has become a debatable moral question. In an article entitled "Killing Babies Isn't Always Wrong," philosopher Peter Singer writes: "Perhaps, like the ancient Greeks, we should have a ceremony a month after birth, at which the infant is admitted to the community. Before that time," he says, "infants would not be recognized as having the same right to life as older people." This means that if the child is considered "defective" in some way, the parents would presumably have a different kind of ceremony -- one that ends with child being admitted, not to the human community, but to a grave. This is morally acceptable, Singer says, because newborns, while indisputably human, are not really persons. They don't become persons, and acquire a right to life, until weeks or even months after birth because they lack "self-awareness." This man is teaching your kids at Princeton! It’s no wonder that the wisest of our contemporary philosophers and sociologists are now saying that history will record that this season in our nation is when the “culture of death” was inaugurated. Recently our president made a statement to Pope Benedict that he “would try to reduce the number of abortions in the United States." Here’s the question: if abortion is not wrong, if abortion is not murder, why did he pledge to reduce the number? If abortion is murder, why pledge to “reduce” the number of abortions? Why not abolish them altogether? I pray for our president. I give him all the honor and respect I can. But he is wrong. And our government is wrong in this matter of life versus abortion on demand. A far greater pastor than I, and a man with awesome intellect and communicative skill is John Piper, pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis. Here is some of his stirring commentary . . . Play the Tangle video at this site: http://www.tangle.com/view_video?viewkey=8768cf5b97a6d08ae5ce Righting the Monstrous Wrong Edmund Burke’s famous quote is as true to today as it has ever been in the 225 years when he first said it: “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” It hurts me in a deep place to admit that good men have been far too quiet concerning this heinous cancer in our culture. We must do all that we can under the law, around the law and in spite of the law, to put it finally to an end. It should never have been, and it most certainly should not continue. 1. We must redress our government concerning this evil. That involves Prophetic pronouncement—that is, the church speaking clearly, courageously and continuously the mind and heart of God. It involves political engagement—at the very basic level, voting for righteousness. I don’t care if they’re Republicans or Democrats or Libertarians, we must find the best candidates among those who respect life, and vote for their best platforms. It involves participation. Where are the letters to the editors that wisely and responsibly spell out the reasonable notion of respect for life? Where are those who will stand against the tide of immorality and idolatry before the gods of hedonism and convenience? And it involves prayer. Would you do the perfect will of God and intercede daily for the abolition of abortion? Let us come before God and repent for our ill-chosen laws, our spineless passivity and our thoughtless culpability. Get involved with Mosaic Ministry, pray for them, fill those baby bottles. . . 2. We must personally repent while we come to the God of holiness and righteousness, for inasmuch as the Church of Jesus Christ has remained silent and paralyzed before the noisy and amoral minority , we have allowed them to steer the culture, when that is our rightful stewardship as salt and light. The temptation here will be to shy away from repentance, but that is only pride and arrogance. Humble yourselves before the Lord and He will lift you up and cause you to stand. Draw near to Him and He will draw near to you. Honor His Word and He will honor your cause. Repent of sin and He will heal you. 3. We must receive God’s healing In a group this size, statistically, there are predictably a dozen or more women who have had an abortion. And there are as many men who’ve condoned and encouraged those abortions. The message to you this morning is simple. God wants to forgive you. His Son died to make it possible. Post-abortion counselors agree there is very troublesome residual pain that abortive women deal with for the rest of their lives. The church is not here to add more guilt to that burden, but to give you good news that God knows all about your sin AND your need, and He longs to forgive and heal you. I recommend to you that you seek post-abortive counseling. It is offered through Christian agencies such as Mosaic, and appointments can be easily and discreetly set up. Let someone help you in the name of Christ. Find deliverance from guilt and shame through the personal ministry of the Spirit of Christ working through sincere believers. And let there be no tsk-tsk-ing among the rest of the sinners in this room who might wrongly assume that abortion is somehow more wrong than your sins. We are all sinners in need of the reconciliation Jesus died to provide us. Self-righteousness is an affront to the God of truth and mercy. Repent of it, and receive His healing. To the rest of us, especially those of child-bearing ages, both men and women, I remind you in the sanctity of God’s Word and the power of His Spirit, hold your sexuality in holiness as befits the children of God. Marriage is God’s ordained confines for the sexual relationship. There you can avoid unwanted pregnancy, venereal disease and much, much emotional pain. If and when you come to the place where you consider abortion as an option, remember, where the sperm and egg has joined, God has created a human life. Respect it. This child is more than a part of your body. S/he is a human being in the image of God. It is God we serve and it is He alone to whom we must answer, not the gods of pleasure, preference or convenience. May Rachel’s weeping finally come to an end in America. Manhattan Declaration comments       [ Back to Top]