Love Them Both

Introduction

Video: Free Indeed

Tension

Happy Independence Day Weekend Church! A time when we celebrate the many freedoms that we have in this country, but for Christians we have even greater freedoms to celebrate. Freedoms that reach on into our eternity because of what Jesus has done for us. Still it is fitting to celebrate lesser freedoms and the grace that God has given us in them.

I don’t know about you but this year I am especially excited about celebrating our Country’s Independence. Every 4th of July I try and spend some time thanking God for the many freedoms that we have in this country, and what inevitably happens is that at some point my prayers of thanksgiving turn to prayers for help over the areas in our nation where freedom has not yet been realized. This year I am happy to say that one of my prayers for freedom has been answered with the overturning of Roe vs. Wade decision.

Anyone else thanking God for this? (hopefully there is a celebratory response!) I realize that there is still much work to do, but looking at things from a national perspective our nations freedom from that unconstitutional decision is worth celebrating.

Our nation, “the land of the free” has protected abortion for almost 50 years. Think about the significance of this time frame. Some of you are a little older, but many of us, myself included, have never lived in a time when abortions was not the law of the land. Where it was not declared a “legal right” to take the life of an innocent child just because he or she was not born yet. Think about that for a second. 50 years. That is a lot of time. That is a lot of influence…a lot of formation…a lot of shaping our individual thinking on this issue. A in a time frame this long the attitude, understanding and ways of thinking about an issue can change.

And if you are like me and you grew up in Church then you remember being a kid and learning about this “abortion” thing and how it is wrong but still somehow the laws of this country that we love still allowed it. It was confusing and so really difficult to explain how this even could be to young children. But we were encouraged to pray and... when I could.. to vote and to hope in faith that one day this terrible law that affected our whole nation would be overturned…and that day has come.

But when I think of all the time, effort and money that God’s people have gathered together to pray for this, fight for this, stand up for this, march for this and I wonder if our celebration of it is doing it justice. This is some of the greatest news that we have heard in a long time, but I don’t hear an overwhelming voice of celebration from a unified Christian Church in this country. We maybe be quietly celebrating this inside, but we are not doing much publically.

And it has me asking why? Why isn’t this the greatest news that we have heard in a long time? Why aren’t we unified together in celebration? Why all the hesitation? Why the holding back?

I am know that much of the answer involves the tactics of our enemy the Devil. Satan has been working overtime on this issue using his primary weapons of deceit and doubt to confuse and silence us. Jesus said...

John 10:10 (ESV)

10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

The thief. The devil. The one who opposes every good thing that God desires for us is stealing our joy because he opposed to God’s gift of life, in all the different ways that God gives it. The devil is not pro-choice, he is just anti-life. He desires for people to suffer and will twist the truth to deceive as many people as possible so that they are kept in a “life-less” and “God-less” experience. That is his mission and he has been doing it forever.

In the earlier video, where Jesus was talking to the false teachers of his day, the conversation continued into these these harsh words:

John 8:42–45 (ESV)

42 Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. 43 Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. 44 You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires.

He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. 45 But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me.

Satan hates life. He is a murderer. He is a liar, and the Father of lies, and I am convinced that the reason that we don’t have the Church celebrating across this land like every prayer warrior, line picketer, street counselor, and Caring Pregnancy Center volunteer fully expected we would when this day came is because over the past 50 years many in the Church have slowly begun to believe some of the Devils lies.

Now don’t misunderstand me here, I would never claim to be able to see anything with the clarity that Jesus could see it so I am not accusing any particular person, group or Church here as being “children of the devil”. Jesus said that to some people and it was His right to do that, but that is not my place in any way and I don’t want anyone to think that I am saying here.

What I am really saying is that I see my own hesitation to publically celebrate to the degree that I always thought that I would and I am having to ask myself why is this. What is keeping me from celebrating like that?

And the conclusion that I have come to is this: While I am fully convinced that abortion is the taking of an innocent human life, I am also heartbroken for the many mothers who are in situations that I cannot even imagine and I am struggling for how to express my concern over both these things. Over the past 50 years, Satan has so deceived and perverted our culture that somehow the celebration of the former is now received as a rejection of the later. And so I hesitate.

Maybe I am the only one struggling in this, but I imagine that at least some of you have been hit with similar struggles this past week. Even though the evils of abortion are so black and white to us, we do not want to in any way imply that this makes the road that these mothers are on a simple or easy one. And we are not certain how to respond, especially after 50 years of deception where the devil has worked so hard to make this atrocity sound so attractive.

And I don’t know if I have completely found the answer to this, but the principle that has captured my heart and mind in this season is this, “LOVE THEM BOTH”.

I know that may sound simplistic and maybe you have long heard and even expressed this sentiment, but it is hitting me differently in this season than it has ever hit me before and I can’t help but think that this expresses well where God wants His people to be.

Because I see our accuser, that roaring lion, ready to pounce because there are ditches on either side of this road.

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On one side, there are those of us who have long understood that abortion is the murder of the most vulnerable people in our society because unborn children literally have no voice and are unable to stand up for themselves and so we are called to stand up for them…but we can sometimes get so passionate about standing up for the rights of the baby that express little if any concern over the plight of the mother. In this 50 years of struggle, we may have even drifted toward feeling contempt for anyone who would even consider abortion. We may have forgotten many times when we were tempted to take a path that someone said would be an easier way out of a situation that we got ourselves into...

even to find out only later that we were lied to and it only made things worse. The idea that an abortion does not end a human life is a lie, but it just as much of a lie that an abortion ends the crisis for the mother. Satan is using both these lies to kill, steak and destroy. We need to LOVE THEM BOTH.

That is why Pregnancy Care Centers like our friends at APPLE in Eau Claire willingly counsel post abortion mothers and fathers too. Because we are not just called to care for the life of the baby - but also to care for the life of the mother.

I was talking with Melinda Gardner the director of APPLE this past week and as always I was blessed to hear once again of her and her staffs love and care for all mothers regardless of their past decisions - even as they desire to counsel them in the truth they need to make the next ones.

One of the things that she said was that some talking head from Texas suggested that now that Row has been overturned we don’t really need Pregnancy Centers anymore. And we were both like “What!? That is crazy if anything we need many more Pregnancy Care Centers because we will have even more pregnancy needs!” That person was projecting this wrong attitude. An attitude that just seems to care about the baby. As long as the babies are safe, the Moms are on their own. No. We are called to “LOVE THEM BOTH”

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And what I love about this declaration is that it provides a check on both sides because “Loving Them Both” means loving the unborn child as well. While we must fulfill our call to love the mothers, we cannot allow our compassion and sympathy for their difficult circumstances to excuse their responsibility to treat the life inside them as another life. A life that is equally made in the image of God, the author of life.

This is another lie that Satan has been so successful in penetrating our Culture with. Notice that the response to the “Pro-life” movement is not labeled as “Anti-Life”. That wouldn’t sell. The claim is that they are just “Pro-Choice”.

And this has lead many well meaning, good hearted followers of Christ to wonder: “What is so wrong with giving them a choice? I wouldn’t choose it, but who am I to push my choices on them.”

On top of that this battle has long been a dividing line in the political realm so some of us who still would just rather leave politics alone use that an excuse to not take any stand on this issue. And so the overturning of Roe has drawn out this real struggle for many believers and many Churches.

At the end of the day, this issue is not political it is theological. It all boils down to one question:

“What or who determines when a human life is a human life?”

Do we classify human life in the same way that we do plants? Stay with me for a moment. I have learned that sometimes the only difference between a flower and a weed is whether or not that particular gardener wants that plant in their garden. Someone else might choose differently, but If they want it then they nurture and protect it like a flower, but if not they remove it like a weed.

That is what “Pro-Choice” looks like in the gardening world - but it operates the same when it comes to this issue. To be “Pro-Choice” is to see the child as either a baby or a mass -of-cells depending on whether or not they are wanted by the mother.

The thing is, the Bible doesn’t leave us room for that perspective. Scripture affirms in many places that it is God, not us, who gives life to a person and that life is recognized even before we are born. Some of the clearest verses are:

Jeremiah 1:5 (ESV)

5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

God recognized Jeremiah life, when he was still in the womb

Psalm 139:13 (ESV)

13 For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.

God recognizes David’s life when he was still in the womb. And lest you think this is just an Old Testament thing, the Apostle Paul says in...

Galatians 1:15 (ESV)

15 But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace,

God recognizes Paul’s life, before he was born.

There is just no room in the Biblical World View for the idea that a baby is or is not a life depending on the mother’s desire to have that baby. You are free to disagree with me, but coming against God’s Word is something else. This just will not fit in a Biblical Worldview.

There is a Worldview however, that this idea fits into very well. We have talked about Secularism before and it is the dominant Worldview in our day and age. Let’s look again at the four tenants and you tell me if you don’t see support for a “Pro-Choice” view here. Secularism teaches that:

My Happiness is the ultimate goal

My Feelings are the ultimate guide

Judgement is the ultimate sin

God is the ultimate guess

To the degree that we allow this Worldview to drive our perspective of God and the world that he has created we will find ample room for “Pro-Choice” perspective. Not just when it comes to abortion, but in every aspect of our life. This is why Satan is getting so much traction here.

And it is not that we never get to choose anything, but that we are responsible to make our choices in line with what God has taught us is good and right in His design and His decrees. When or if a baby is a life is not our decision to make because God has already told us that life begins in the womb. So now we must love and defend that life, just like we would defend the rights of any other person who was made in the image of God. Because we LOVE THEM BOTH.

We love the mothers in compassionate understanding that their plight is not an easy one, but we love them enough to tell them the truth that taking the life of their baby will not take the crisis away. It will only make it worse.

We love the babies enough to stand up for them in their God given rights because they do not yet have a voice to stand up for themselves.

And LOVING BOTH means that we will speak the truth into the fears and lies that Satan is using to torment so many people in his “anti-life” agenda.

WE LOVE THEM BOTH.

Does that make sense? Are you with me Church? Ok.

So some of you are are panicking right now because we are this far into the message time and I have not gotten to a single blank on the notes page. You are like, “Is he just finishing his introduction here…um…we have fireworks to light off tonight are we gonna get out of here in time…well…maybe.

Actually this principle of “LOVING THEM BOTH” folds very well into where I wanted to take us in the message last week, but I just didn’t have the time. Last week we tackled Spiritual Gifts from 1 Corinthians 12, so for the remainder of my time today we will quickly look at 1 Corinthians 13.

As you are turning there I will pray over the truths we have looked at so far and ask for God’s blessing on us as we move forward into His Word together.

Let’s pray.

Truth

So many of you know why the principle to “Love Them Both” fits so well in a teaching from 1 Corinthians 13, because this chapter is known as the “Love Chapter”. You have probably heard it used in most every Christian wedding that you have ever been to, and rightly so because it does offer one of the greatest descriptions of Christian love in all the Bible.

And it is fitting to focus our attention on this verse when a Man and Woman unite in Christian marriage, but we should not limit its application to that relationship because the truth is that is not the context that Paul is speaking into here. He isn’t talking about romantic wedding vibe love - he is talking about how the Church, the EKKLESIA should practice our Spiritual Gifts.

That is why I wanted to look at it last week in that message because this text we so often call the “Love Chapter” is all about how the effectiveness of any one of Spiritual gifts goes only so far as the Love that it exercised along with it. Simply put:

Love is essential to Spiritual Gifts (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)

It is impossible to miss this if you read this chapter right after chapter 12, so keep in mind all that we went through last week from chapter 12 and now hear chapter 13. Paul says:

1 Corinthians 13 (ESV)

1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. Not only is it useless…it is annoying!

2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. This is like “Super-Christian” stuff and still it amounts to nothing.

3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. The missing love variable makes all that service and sacrifice meaningless.

Do you catch the many spiritual gifts in these verses? It is impossible to miss them.

Tongues, Prophecy, Teaching, Wisdom, Knowledge, Faith, Giving, Serving these are all spiritual gifts but Paul says they are useless it they are not practiced alongside this love thing. I appears that the Church in Corinth was trying to use their spiritual gifts for other purposes. Something like personal gain, a prideful reputation, power positioning the Church or some other reason. Paul says you are wasting your time, true spiritual gifts are worthless if they are not practiced in love.

When we hear love we typically think only in terms of one kind, but the ancient Greeks had many different words for love depending on the type of love it was. Paul and the other New Testament actually resurrect this uncommon Greek word for love called “agape”. They didn’t wan’t their readers to get confused between other kinds of love, like love for family (storge), brotherly love (philia) or romantic love (eros) so they used this word agape a selfless unconditional love.

Listen to how Paul describes the effects of this kind of loving each other from his letter to the Church in Philippi. These are the things that will happen when we love each other with this kind of love:

Philippians 1:9–11 (ESV)

9 And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, (We don’t typically think of “knowledge and discernment” going together with love but this is the kind of love that Agape is) 10 so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

The person who initiated the phrase “Love is blind” was not talking about Biblical Agape Love. Agape love is not blind, it makes truth clearer and clearer and then draws people into righteousness because they so desperately want to honor God in all they do and say. Paul prays this for the Church and we should be praying this for each other.

Even here in his letter to the Corinthians Paul gives them a picture of what this love looks like. These may be familiar words to us, but look at them again through the lens of Spiritual gifts:

Love is sacrificial in Spiritual Gifts (1 Corinthians 13:4-7)

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

This is such a full picture of what Biblical agape love is and what it is not. Of what this kind of loves does and what it does not do. And remember this “love” thing is what Paul says is essential to our spiritual gifts being effective. We cannot effectively exercise spiritual gifts outside of these sacrificial principles of love being in place.

So as we interact with one another, with our community, even with people on the issue of abortion - these principles need to be dominating our interaction with them.

We need to be patient and kind and not rude or self seeking

We need to not be irritable or resentful even as

We reject wrongdoing and rejoice only with the truth. (Wow, that is powerful in our “relative truth” world to think that the opposite of “rejoicing at wrongdoing” is “rejoicing with the truth” ) but even it that...

We stick with them. We bear with them. We listen to them and believe them even as we hope for even better things for and from them

We willingly choose to endure hardships on their behalf, if that is what it takes to express our love for t hem and use our spiritual gifts to point them to the work and ways of Jesus.

Because...

Love is eternal, but Spiritual Gifts are not (1 Corinthians 13:8-13)

8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.

As crazy as it sounds, Spiritual gifts have a shelf life. They are only good for a limited time. They are not eternal, because they are only needed while we are still operating in this state of being. In this broken, flawed temporary state where the Holy Spirit works through our gifts to point people to Jesus. But a very different day is coming...

9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. (a new day) 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. (it was new day)

12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. (on that new day) 13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Gospel Application

Someday we won’t need our Spiritual gifts to point people to Jesus anymore, because Church…we will be with Jesus - AMEN! We will be fully redeemed, perfected by his grace, and dwelling together with the object of our faith, the reason for our hope and the source of our love - Our Savior and Lord, Jesus the Christ.

Landing

It is with that day in mind, that I invite you to prepare your hearts with me for communion.

Here at friendship Church we practice what is referred to as ...