"Who Has Made Man?" Exodus 4:11 Sunday Morning Worship Service

I'm going to read for us.

Here's what's going to happen.

I'm going to read for us verses four through twelve.

I'll go to the Lord in prayer and uh then we'll begin.

Exodus four, verse one.

Moses answered.

Moses is talking to the burning bush.

He's talking to Yahweh, and it's a conversation between Moses and the bush is the context we're jumping into here.

Moses answered the bush.

But behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice.

They will say, Yahweh did not appear to you.

Yahweh said to him, What is that in your hand?

He said, A staff.

He said, Throw it on the ground.

So he threw it on the ground, and it became a serpent, and Moses ran from it.

I love Moses' humility that he noted that.

But Yahweh said to Moses, Put out your hand and catch it by the tail.

So he put out his hand and caught it, and it became a staff in his hands, that they may believe that Yahweh, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, has appeared to you.

Again Yahweh said to him, Put your hand inside your cloak.

He put his hand inside his cloak.

When he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous like snow.

Then God said, Put your hand back inside your cloak.

So he put his hand back inside his cloak.

When he took it out, behold, it was restored like the rest of his flesh.

If they will not believe you, God said, or listen to the first sign, they may believe the latter sign.

If they will not believe even those two signs, or listen to your voice, you will take water from the Nile, pour it on dry ground, and the water that you take from the Nile will become blood on the dry ground.

Moses said to Yahweh, O my Lord, I am not eloquent either in the past, or since you've spoken to your servants, I am now slow of speech and of tongue.

Yahweh said to him, Who has made man's mouth?

Who makes him mute or deaf or seeing or blind?

Is it not I, Yahweh?

Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth, and I will teach you what you shall speak.

Let's go to the Lord in prayer.

Father, we know that you spoke the universe into existence by your omnipotent power.

You've sent your son, the Savior, because you set your love on your elect.

Your son has come to pursue them and redeem them.

We're thankful for his death in our place, his sinless life that becomes our righteousness.

We're thankful for his resurrection, demonstrating that he is the way, the truth, and the life.

And we're thankful for the Holy Spirit who comes and draws us to the Son, draws us to you through the Son.

In a very real sense, He is the one who seals our hearts, convicts us of sin, and transforms us.

And that's what we pray for this morning.

We pray that we would have an encounter with you, the living God, through your word, and that your Holy Spirit would take this encounter and seal it in our hearts and conform us into the image of Jesus Christ.

It's in his name we pray.

Amen.

This morning I want to talk to you about the sinfulness of abortion, and I want to specifically take you to the passage we just read and show you how it provides an antidote to our culture's pro-abortion and pro-death trends.

You need to understand that abortion is the sinful taking of a human life from the sanctity of the mother's womb.

That's as graphic as I'll be this morning, is that sentence right there?

It's a sin against God and against man.

It's interesting that statistics show the younger a person is, the more likely they are to be against abortion.

This is uh kind of goes against the grain of the political landscape in our worlds that generally speaking, the younger a person is, the more likely you would imagine them to be liberal and progressive, and that's true, except in the area of abortion.

And that's because of the nature of the Roe v.

Wade decision, which you can download a free copy of.

It's you know, PDF for free, and you can read it yourself.

It is comically absurd.

It reads like a manifesto from the Flat Earth Society.

It's these these guesses where the Supreme Court justices in the 1970s say, you know, we don't know what's going on inside of her mother's womb when she's pregnant.

It seems sense to, you know, it seems to make sense to divide it into thirds and say the first third, we don't know what's going on inside the mother's stummy, and the second third, you know, there's something alive there, but we don't know what it is.

And the third trimester, it's more likely to be a baby and so is worthy of more protections.

And this it's the kind of thing that is so anti-science it could only be written in an era before the ultrasound machine.

And that's why younger people are less likely to buy it.

You know, a younger person grows up, you know, your friends announce they're pregnant by putting up an ultrasound picture on their Facebook wall.

You know, you can count the fingers and the toes and the little tiny nose.

It's a different kind of world now.

The typical person who gets an abortion today is, no, you know, ten years ago the stereotype of the person who got an abortion was a high school student or a college student who didn't want to interrupt their studies or mess up their future kind of thing.

Who knows what their parents would say.

That's no longer the case.

Reading books about the pro-life and the abortion movement, you see that today the typical person getting an abortion is a career-minded woman.

She's in her late 20s, early 30s.

She likely has one or two children already.

She feels overwhelmed.

She's trying to juggle a job and the kid she has, and she can't handle another one.

And that's where the abortion movement takes root at today.

So, in a sense, now it's less about shame, like it might have been 10 or 20 years ago.

And now it's more about a sense of being overwhelmed, a sense of not having another option to navigate life.

This is the cultural sin of our era.

And it shouldn't be surprising that abortion is the cultural sin of the United States.

In some other very real ways, our country was woven out of the fabric of this idea that not all life is equal.

At the very founding of our country, at our country's inception, we have baked into it, into the very DNA of our country, is this idea that all people are created equal, but we don't really mean all people.

All people have inherent life, value, dignity, honor, should have the right to pursue happiness and equality.

But by that we don't mean all.

And so in our country's past, we have this category in our kind of cultural and corporate thinking for a whole segment of our population that we would grant are human, but that doesn't mean they're worthy of human rights.

Speaking, of course, of slavery.

And that's not the kind of thing that can be excised from a culture so quickly.

The Civil War doesn't end the stain of that.

Even the end of Jim Crow and segregation laws don't end the stain of that.

That stain is it's woven into our country's thinking.

So I hope that you see when we're talking about abortion, you're seeing the same stuff that enabled slavery is pushing abortion today.

Yes, of course, the baby is a human.

I mean, it's alive.

The cells are dividing, he or she has her own DNA.

I mean, it's obviously a person inside of there.

It's alive, and of course it's human life.

What other life is it going to be?

It's human life in there.

But that doesn't mean it's worthy of the rights of being a human.

I mean, come on.

Our whole legal system has the capacity to promote that kind of thinking because of our nation's past.

This is why I think Exodus 4 is one of the strongest anti-abortion pro-life chapters in the Bible.

It's very interesting to see how God interacts with Moses on Moses' excuse making on why he can't be a messenger for Israel.

Now, it might seem like a stretch to go from the verses we just read to abortion, but I want to show you why it's not a stretch.

First of all, all the books of the Torah, Genesis, Exodus, and through the first five books of the Bible, they all have a function in the Bible.

They're all trying to make one argument for you.

So Genesis, it's in the Bible to show you where things came from, where the world came from, and animals came from, and sin came from, and languages came from, and nations came from.

Israel, where did Israel come from?

That's Genesis.

You know, Leviticus is what holiness is and the sacrifices and all that.

Exodus, in particular, what Exodus is in the Bible to do is to introduce you to God, the subject of the rest of the Bible.

And so Exodus 3 and 4 are very critical chapters because they are where Yahweh introduces himself to Moses.

Exodus functions as God introducing himself to the world through Israel, through Moses, to us.

And so these two chapters is where Moses first encounters God.

And God tells Moses, you're going to go and you're going to lead your people.

Moses is 80 years old.

You're going to go and you're going to lead your people out of slavery to freedom.

And Moses follows with a series of excuses.

Really, five objections.

He has five objections about why he can't do it.

We won't look at all five of them.

We'll glance at them.

The first objection, chapter 3, verse 11, Moses says, I don't even know who I am.

I can't do this.

Do you know who I am?

It's about who Moses is.

And God responds in Exodus 3, verse 12, with it doesn't matter who you are, it matters who God is.

Exodus 3:12

In other words, think with God in the center of the world, not with Moses.

Moses.

Moses goes to a second objection, chapter 3, verse 13.

I don't know who you are.

Can you tell me don't worry about who I am?

What about who you are?

I don't even know your name.

And so God responds to that objection in chapter 3, verse 14, by telling you, my name is Yahweh.

There.

Objection solved.

That leads to chapter 4, verse 1, where Moses says, I will go to the Israelites then, but they won't believe you sent me.

They'll say, Ah, we don't even know who Yahweh is.

Who's this?

They won't believe me, Moses says.

And so God gives Moses the three signs.

And even in these three signs, you see a wonderful picture of the gospel, don't you?

Sign one, the staff becomes a snake, and Moses grabs the snake.

Through Moses, the snake will be conquered.

That kind of imagery.

And as I mentioned as I was reading it, it's so funny to me that Moses, who's the humblest person to ever write a Bible book, he says so himself, has to put in there that he ran from the snake.

The fear of the snake did not start with the American housewife.

And he grabs a snake and he has to put his hand in his pocket and it comes out leprous.

And he's got to put it back, and now it's cleansed.

And it's demonstrating that God not only has the power to crush the devil, but he has the power to change the heart.

He has the power to cleanse, to forgive.

And then finally he'll have the power.

This power all is revealed through blood.

The sign of blood in the Nile.

Which leads to Moses' fourth objection.

And here is where we get to the heart of the issue.

Verse 10.

I think the first three were just excuses.

Verse 10.

Moses says to Yahweh, Oh my Lord, I'm not eloquent.

Either in the past or since you've spoken to your servant, in other words, I haven't gotten more eloquent through this conversation.

I am slow of speech and of tongue.

The word there literally is the word kavod in Hebrew, which means it's often translated glory.

It literally means heavy or weight.

What he says is, my tongue is heavy.

I can't speak.

I can't lift my tongue off the bottom of my mouth.

This is often assumed to be a stutter, and I think that's, we don't know if it's specifically a stutter.

It could be any kind of speech impediment.

His point is that when he talks, people don't understand what he's saying.

He's obviously embarrassed about this, there's shame about this.

You can tell it because he's having to peel back the layers of the onion to get to this.

I don't know who I am, I don't know who you are, people won't believe me.

Okay, here's the real issue.

I can't talk well.

The Jews had built this whole apocryphal legend around the idea that when Moses was 20 or so in Pharaoh's household, he had seared his tongue with a hot coal because he was so distressed by the blasphemous speech of Pharaoh's household that he would never partake in it.

I don't think that story is true.

I think it's likely an apocryphal legend designed by the Jews to guard Moses' integrity while he's in Pharaoh's house.

Perhaps he had a speech impediment from being left on the river exposed to the elements back then.

Who knows?

The point is, he says he can't talk in a way that people can understand.

And he's ashamed of it.

Now, God, in his response, goes to the very essence of what it means to be a human being.

It is God that jumps from the Sinai Peninsula right into the mother's womb.

It's God that makes this about what constitutes human life.

And so this morning, for outline, I want to give you four truths about the sinfulness of abortion.

Four truths about the sinfulness of abortion.

Again, it may seem like a stretch here.

But reading abortion into Exodus 4 is not as far-fetched as you might imagine.

If you remember when Moses was born, the Pharaoh wanted all of the Hebrew children killed in Fonticide here, and he was left to die in the open, and he was fished out by a midwife who recognized it's not lawful, it's not just, it's not right to just slaughter all these children, and so he was rescued and raised in a Pharaoh's very own household.

Later on in life, Moses would become a murderer when he decided he was going to lead Israel to freedom when he was around 40 years old.

He instead murdered an Egyptian and was forced to flee for his life.

And so the concept of murder to infants being wrong and the concept of Moses himself being a murderer, it is wrapped up in this passage.

We've already encountered that in the brief time we've been in Exodus so far.

And so, this idea of abortion, I think, is not being read into the passage, but is here.

Now, before we start looking at these four points, I'm gonna give you four of them, by the way, before we start looking at them, I hope that you understand this.

Listen to me clearly on this.

This is not a political sermon at all.

I don't mean it to be political.

It's not an argument to vote for one party over another party or anything like that.

In fact, let me just make this clear before we get back to Exodus four.

If your expression of a pro-life view is who you vote for every four years, that is a very shallow expression indeed.

What this passage, I hope by the end of this, that there's an ethical mandate in this passage that is on your life and your speech that is more profound in the political world.

I'm talking about real people with real pregnancies, with real problems in real life that you can minister to without waiting for it to be November.

Okay?

So there's implications to all of life, this of course.

But all right, first point, Yahweh gives life.

Yahweh is the one who gives life.

Verse 11.

Moses respond, Yahweh responds to Moses, who has made man's mouth?

The end of the verse, is it not I, Yahweh?

Yahweh responds to Moses' objection that Moses cannot lead Israel to freedom because of his speech.

Yahweh responds by saying, Who do you think made you?

And then he uses his covenant name, Yahweh, his life-giving name.

The word Yahweh is the Hebrew expression just for I am.

It means life.

In the New Testament, Jesus picks up on this in John 7 when he declares, I am that I am.

Jesus takes that as his own identity.

I am, he declares.

And of course the Pharisees pick up rocks to stone him to death because he's making himself out to be equal to God.

You understand this in English.

When you say I am, it requires a helping verb to finish off the sentence.

There's some kind of adjective or some kind of description there.

He needs a predicate, so to say.

So I say, I am, you're waiting for the rest of the sentence.

I am charming, ruggedly handsome.

You can finish the sentence on your own.

You can't just say I am.

And you definitely can't say I am, I am, because you're not.

We all have life on loan to us.

Only God is the fountain of life.

Only God has self-existence.

This is what theologians call the doctrine of Assyri.

It's just a fancy word to say that God alone has life.

Nobody else has life like God does.

Everything else that has life has it because they borrowed it from him.

Only God can say, I am.

Period.

And this is what Yahweh says to Moses.

Moses says, I can't speak well.

And God says, I made you.

I am Yahweh.

Flesh produces flesh.

Sin produces death.

God produces life.

It's the like-to-like principle.

God makes things that are alive.

Now, biologically, all human life comes from Adam.

Even Eve's life came from Adam.

Every other human life comes from Adam and Eve's union.

We all trace our way back there.

Nevertheless, we're all just drinking from the water of which God is the source.

If you have human life, God is the source of all human life.

This is what Paul says in Acts 17.

In him we live, move, and have our being.

Everything that has life comes from him.

He gives men everywhere life, breath, and all things, Paul says.

This is God's response to Moses.

Your life comes from me.

I mentioned poking fun at the Roe v.

Wade opinion.

I mean, it really does just read like something so backwards and absurd.

In contrast, David writes, Psalm 139, that I was knit together in my mother's womb.

You formed my inward parts, he said.

You put me together.

This is not a trimester approach to human life.

It's the idea that cells are dividing.

They're human cells that are dividing.

There are human cells with their own unique DNA, genetic signature.

This is from God.

This is God's response to Moses.

Don't tell me you can't talk.

I made you.

You came from me, you belong to me, God says.

This is Job, Job chapter 1.

Job 1 · chapter mention

All life comes from God, Job says.

His wife says, Why don't you curse God and die?

And Job says, Shall we receive only good from God and not evil?

Naked I came from my mother's womb, naked I will return.

Yahweh gives and Yahweh takes away.

Blessed is the name of Yahweh.

That's Job's response.

Think of the profound nature of that response.

All life comes from God, Job says.

So don't be bitter when God takes it away because it is his.

It comes from him, Job says.

All life comes from God.

This is the difference between murder and theft.

If I steal your wallet from you, it is not a crime against the wallet maker.

It's a crime against you.

The company that made your wallet is not going to prosecute me for stealing it.

If I steal your watch, Rolex is not going to come after me.

In fact, it's a compliment to Rolex that I would want to steal it.

It's a crime against you, though.

Murder is distinct from that.

Murder is a crime against the maker and the person.

When you murder someone, you are sinning against that person by taking his life, and you're sinning against God who made it.

This is a truth that people deny.

You see Moses denying it in this passage.

He doesn't want to think about how God made him in his inadequacy and in his deficiency because that would compel him to act.

The person pursuing an abortion has to separate the creative power of God from the baby inside of her.

You have to.

A typical abortion-minded thinking has the person at the center of the scheme.

I feel trapped.

I feel in a corner.

I don't have options for me.

I don't have options for my future.

I can't handle this.

I can't deal with this.

People are pressuring me to do this.

The person is in the center.

It very much is a theological problem.

The way you fight against that is by removing the person from the center and placing God at the center.

This is not about you.

You're pregnant, but it's not about you and feeling trapped in the word the the weight and the burden that's on you.

It is about God who makes human life.

To justify abortion, it's like justifying any murder.

You have to remove God from the equation.

To deny that God is the author of life.

The Christian response to this, of course, is that God is, in fact, the author of life.

To deny it is a form of selfishness, and that's what Moses wanted here.

To deny that God was the former of his life to justify his apathy and his inaction.

This is basic sovereignty.

It's basic ethics.

It's that the Lord makes life, the Lord ends life.

And it is blessed when he does it, and it is sin when anybody else does it.

Yahweh gives, Yahweh takes away, blessed be his name.

Secondly, people have a quality.

God made life, secondly, people have a quality because God made everyone.

And in his answer here in verse 11, he's showing the equality of all human life.

Who has made man's mouth?

And that of course makes sense.

But God doesn't just jump there to Yahweh.

Look at what he says in the middle.

Who makes him mute or deaf or seeing or blind?

Who's talking about anybody who's deaf or blind here?

Where did that come from?

Moses said, I have a hard time speaking, and God said, I made your mouth.

I've also made mute people, which Moses is clearly not mute.

I've also made blind people.

I've also made deaf people.

Moses isn't even talking about those.

But God's response is, I've made all of them.

Every person, God says, in their deficiency and in their inadequacy, is still made by me.

This is what it means that people are made in the image of God.

We have our value, our worth, our dignity and honor coming from being in God's image.

That does not mean everybody is equal in every way, of course, correct?

Some are faster than others, some are slower, some are smarter than others, and some are whatever the opposite of smarter is.

Some are taller and shorter, etc.

We have basic differences in us.

It doesn't mean that all are equal.

Some are stronger, some are weaker, etc.

God's point here is that every human, though, is equally made by God, even those that society would consider deficient or inadequate.

Fascinating that God focuses on deformities to make that point.

That our value is seen in who our creator is, not in how well we talk or how smart we are.

To justify taking someone's life because of their inadequacy, you have to deny this truth.

This is what's behind so much of the pro-abortion movement that wants to abort babies with deformities, that wants to abort babies with genetic deficiencies.

I had a friend who's now a pastor in Kansas who got arrested at the hospital when the doctor told him that they needed to abort their baby because of some kind of deformity, wasn't going to have a good life, and he got angry, and the doctor said you have to do this now, and he ended up, I guess, pushing the doctor and a fight ensued, and he got arrested.

He's now a pastor in Kansas.

And his baby, by the way, was born completely healthy.

Months later.

Completely healthy.

To justify abortion, even with a baby that is not born completely healthy, to justify abortion, you have to go after this point.

And again, you see this with even with slavery.

To go after the idea that all people are created equal.

If you want to promote the idea that all people are created equal, what does that assume?

A creator.

If you want to deny that, you have to deny the agency of the creator.

That leads to deism, the idea that God made the world, wound it up, and stepped back.

So God isn't actually making all these other people over here.

He's got his hands off of the thing.

It's just playing out.

And you see this even in the abortion world today.

You deny the idea that God is the one who made the human inside of me.

Because he's inadequate in some way.

He won't have a happy life.

He won't, or it'll interfere with my life.

To our looks-obsessed, achievement-obsessed, materialistic culture, we have such a tendency to put the focus on externals or on abilities.

But God says that your value does not come from your quality of life.

Your value does not come from your wealth.

It doesn't come from your job.

It doesn't come from those things.

It comes from who made you.

Not on the externals.

God makes people different with different capacities, different speed and intelligence, and to whom much is given, much is required, of course.

God has different standards for people and the gifts that He gives them and how they use them, to whom much is given, much is required.

But that does not mean that people have equal or different measures of being made by God.

And God underlines this in verse 11 by saying, the mute and the deaf and the blind are made by Him.

An unhealthy child, a child with missing chromosomes, a child with Down syndrome, a child with some kind of mental deficiency or physical deformity is still made by God.

We often justify killing those children because we say they won't have a life like ours.

They won't have a life worth living, meaning a life like mine.

But God tells Moses, who do you think made them that way?

Which leads to the third point.

All people can be used by God.

All people can be used by God out of the womb or out of the box.

People get opened out of the box, ready to be used by God.

Batteries included.

Moses' assumption here was that God can only use people with special abilities.

Right?

I can't talk well.

I lack those abilities, Moses says, so you must be wrong to use me.

And God's answer is that not only did I make you lacking those abilities, but he says in verse 12, I will be with your mouth, he says.

Not a normal thing you would tell someone.

What God is saying is, I'll be with you in your weakness.

The very point you're weak, the very point you're ashamed of, the very deficiency you're highlighting is where I will be with you.

God doesn't only say I will be with you, he says, I will be with the weakest part of you, Moses.

I read a book on children with Down syndrome a couple years ago, George Will's book about his own son.

Fascinating point he makes in there.

That God makes, this is Will's argument, that God makes children with Down syndrome in a way that brings a unique joy to the world.

Because despite their chromosomal deficiency, the flip side of that is that they generally, not 100% true, but generally children with Down syndrome have a sense of joy to them, a sense of happiness to them.

The worst thing you can do to a kid with Down syndrome is tell him you're not like other kids because that robs him of his joy.

He assumes that he is and just takes such delight in it.

And you think, man, what a picture to us.

What if you took joy in the weakest part of you?

What if you took joy in how God made you, even though everybody else thinks you're weird?

You know the weird people in your life.

Don't point at them right now.

What if you took joy in your own deficiencies?

Because God made us like that.

I know sin is in the world.

I know sin is responsible for sickness and disease and defects.

But God is not talking about primary versus secondary causes right here.

God just owns this and says, I made you, Moses.

And God, why does God make people with weaknesses and then you want to use those weaknesses?

Well, you have to take an even bigger step back and says, Why does God make people, period, to glorify himself?

So if you have a weakness, do you see how God is more glorified by using you through your weakness than he would be by using you through your strength?

He's glorified by taking the warrior's bow and breaking it over his knee.

He's glorified by taking the rich and making them poor and taking the poor and exalting them.

He's glorified by taking the proud and the arrogant and breaking them down and taking the humble and the broken and building them up.

He's glorified by taking the wise people of the world and exposing their idiocy and taking the broken and the humble and the foolish people of the world and giving his wisdom to the world through them.

That's what glorifies God.

God chooses the foolish things in the world to shame the wise.

He chooses what is weak in the world to shame the strong.

He chooses what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not in the world by their own standards, to bring shame to the things that are, so that no human being can boast in his presence.

He describes humans as having treasures in jars of clay.

Our weakness and our deformity is exactly where he puts his glory.

That's why he's going to use a stutterer to confront Pharaoh and leave the Israelites, lead the Israelites to freedom.

Well, if you take these three points together, it leads to this fourth one.

All people should have their God-made equality protected by those who know Yahweh.

If you know the God who makes the weak and the deaf and the blind and the mute, then you have an obligation to defend those who are victims or potential victims by a culture that doesn't value them for exactly those reasons.

Some say I don't want to wait into the abortion debate because I know that abortion is wrong, but it's, you know, it's kind of a political thing, and I don't want to get into it.

But that's failing to use the mouth God gave you.

You have a mouth, and there are some with mouths who are unable to use them because they're not born that need protection.

Speaking up against abortion is protecting people at precisely the point that our society abandons them.

And again, this is a theological argument.

The argument that our culture says is that God does not make their life worth protecting.

God does not make their quality of life worth having because of the circumstances of the mother's life or the pregnancy.

It's not a valid life to bring into the world.

You have the right to terminate it.

That requires a theological response.

And the only theological response that is adequate is to say, no, God is the one who makes life and he made that life.

Job was accused by his friends of withholding wages from his workers.

You know, Job has lost everything in life, and his three helpful friends come to him and say, You probably have secret sin and you deserved it.

I was joking about them being helpful.

They were not helpful friends, not helpful counsel.

One of the things they say is, You probably withheld your workers' wages, didn't you, Job?

Job could have answered that in many different ways.

He could have said no.

He could have said, go consult the bank records.

He could have said, go ask if any of them are still alive, go ask them.

But Job answers it differently.

He says, Job 31, verse 15, he says, I could never do that.

Job 31:15

Because did not the one who made me in the womb make them as well?

Do you see Job's argument?

How dare you say that I would harm these other people by taking what is theirs from them because the same person who made me in the womb made them as well.

Job sees in the nature of God making people in the womb an ethical argument about how you protect the needy.

Abortion is sinful because it is an attack on the three truths above this, that Yahweh gives life, that people have a quality of value, worth, dignity, and honor.

And that all people should have their God-given rights protected by those who have the ability to do so.

I mentioned earlier that the most common reason for abortion now is the person who feels trapped, who doesn't believe there's a way out, who doesn't believe they have the courage to stand up and bring their child into the world because of how difficult it would be from their family and their career and their other kids and everything going around them.

They don't have the courage to stand up and do what is right.

And that is exactly where helping those people is a powerful pro-life action.

To reach out to those who are desperate, to reach out to those who are trapped, to reach out to those who feel like they have no hope, no way to cope with their life, and showing them how there is hope, showing them how they're how God doesn't give you more than you can handle.

And with every temptation, gives a way of escape.

People murder because they see a better life for themselves and they see another human being in the way of that.

This is what James says.

He's not talking specifically about abortion, he's talking about all murder.

You see a better life out here, you see something you want, you have greed and desire, and you see somebody in the way of that, and so you murder that person to get what you want.

All murder is done in that regard.

And abortion is no different.

And so it falls for those who recognize that no, this person standing in your way is made by God and cannot be taken out of the equation.

When you reach out to those who are desperate, when you reach out to those who are in need, those who feel trapped, who covet a better future than what they have.

And you show them the truth of God, the mercy of God's word.

That is a pro-life action.

And that's exactly what God tells Moses to do.

You see those people in captivity?

Go get them.

Let me end by asking you to think about John chapter 9.

John 9 · chapter mention

The man who was born blind from birth.

And the disciples came up to Jesus and asked him, Who sinned that this guy is born blind?

Did he sin or his parents?

The idea that he sinned in his womb, so he deserved it?

Or his parents sinned.

Blindness was often a sexually transmitted disease, so that's a reasonable guess.

Jesus' answer is really paradigm shifting.

Before you think of Jesus' answer, which you know all know the story, but before you think of Jesus' answer, I want you to just very briefly in your own mind, we're running out of time, but briefly in your own mind, think of how you would answer that question.

Somebody comes to you and says, My baby is going to be born with, you know, missing a part of her head, missing a part of her skull, missing a part of her brain.

The doctors say she won't be able to live outside of the womb.

She might have five minutes of life or five days of life.

We don't know, but it won't be long, and she won't be cognitive.

Who sinned so this would happen?

Why is this happening?

And I want you to think, how would you answer that question?

Very easy to say, oh, this is sin, this is Adam's sin.

God didn't want this.

This is Adam's sin in the world.

Adam did this to you.

Do you recognize when you say that, you are saying the answer of the Pharisees?

His parents sinned.

Maybe not his direct parents, but his great-great-grandparents sinned.

This is all about sin being in the world that did this.

Which I grant is even true.

It's a true answer.

But it's not the answer that Jesus gave.

Jesus said this happened so that God could be glorified through them.

I don't know how God will glorify Himself through a baby that lives five minutes with a mental deformity.

Maybe by bringing the parents joy for five minutes in life?

Maybe by being a picture of our own frailness.

Maybe by being a picture of people who trust the sovereignty of God and the creation of life, even over of life that the world doesn't value.

God could be doing ten million things to that child that we don't even know about.

The Bible doesn't say you'll have all the answers, but it does say that the child was born to bring glory to God.

Lord, we're thankful that all human life is given by you to the world to bring you glory.

We do know that sin is a robber and a thief.

It steals our joy and brings death into the world.

We're so thankful for the good news of Jesus Christ that conquers the grave.

I pray for anyone who's here this morning that has had an abortion but has since fled to you for forgiveness.

I pray that their conscience would be cleansed by the sprinkling of your blood.

The death of Christ provides forgiveness for sins, even the sins of murder, and that in the death of Christ, he takes our shame.

The shame that we feel for our sin, it becomes his shame.

He is out there with his arms stretched out, taking our shame from us.

And so I pray for any woman who's here today that has gone through this, that she would place her faith in you and that she would really have her conscience cleansed by your shed blood.

That's a supernatural work that you can do from the inside of their heart.

No amount of counseling, no amount of external input can take their sin away, but you can, Lord, by nailing it to the tree and rising from the grave.

That's all of our hope.

All of our hope is found in the crucified Christ in his empty grave.

It's in his name we pray.

Amen.

Thank you for being with us today.

And now a parting word from Pastor Jesse.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, emmanuelbible.church.

If you're not a member of the local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.

I'd love to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel vocally.