THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR

"God at Work in Every Womb (2)”

Rev. Carl Haak

haakprca.org

January 28, 2007; No. 3343

(Printed copies in a four-message booklet can be sent monthly without charge. Request from: Reformed Witness Hour, Box 1230, Grand Rapids, MI 49501)

Dear radio friends,

Last week we began to look at the word of God in Job 31:13-15. The focus of our attention, in light of these verses of Scripture, is, as you recall, the evil of abortion. We pointed out that abortion is not a woman’s issue, or a social issue, or a health issue, but it is God’s issue. For God is at work in every womb.

Young women, sisters in Jesus Christ, young men, our bodies and our sex organs are not given by God for the tantalizing of the flesh. They are not given for the base and for the pornographic and for the lewd. Your body, young sister, is not for partying, to give away sex, and to have sex. But your body is a gift of the Creator, so that, according to God’s will, with a husband, He works in you His marvels. Let us not abuse the marvel and the works of God.

It does not matter what the world says. Apart from grace they are not going to see it. Nevertheless, I will say it, abortion is directly tied to the sexual immorality of our day. The world can deny that all they want. Abortion is tied to sex outside of marriage. It is tied to pornography. It is tied to all that is debasing of life. Pornography is debasing of life. There is but a half step between pornography and abortion.

And then there is something that Job does not directly mention but alludes to. In this marvel of God in the womb is not only the physical life, but a human soul. Did not He that made me…?

In conception and in the womb is a human soul. And that human soul must exist, it will exist, for good or for ill. What is conceived in the womb is not something that may be put away with the “after-morning pill.” It may not be put away in any form of abortion. As the Creator of that which is within the womb, God is the judge and God is the avenger of all injustice against that human life. And this is Job’s point, going back to our text. Job’s point is that, because God is the Creator of life, He is the One before whom I must stand in my relationships with other human beings.

Job here is trembling. He is thinking about the possibility that he had been unjust, that he had been unfair to one of his servants, that one of his servants has a legitimate complaint against him. He knows how quickly that can happen between employer and employee, that he oversteps his bounds and gives cause for a just complaint. Job knows that he cannot simply brush that off and say, “I’m the lord and master here.” He cannot do that because God is the Creator. And as Creator, God is the judge of all human relationships. God sits on His throne judging all human relationships. Job says in verse 14, “Shall not God rise up” as the Creator of human life? The word refers to a judge who rises up to his judgment seat. “Shall he not,” says Job, “visit?” That word refers to a diligent looking into the matter as an earthly judge will diligently look into all the facts before he renders his judgment. Job says, “If I am guilty, even in my heart, of sin against another human being, what will I do? When God rises up to judgment, what will I answer?”

He stands trembling before the Creator, because all are answerable to Him. All are answerable to Him for what is done with the life that He makes in the womb. He creates this life. It is not the jurisdiction of a Supreme Court. It is not the jurisdiction of the Senate, or of the President, or of the people. It is God and God alone who is the avenger and the judge of all human relationships. Man is not autonomous. Man is not self-governing. He is answerable.

I would like to apply that word of God, the Avenger, to three situations.

First of all, to women who have had an abortion; to boyfriends or to husbands who have forced or agreed to this; and each and every one us as we are murderers before God.

I speak now to those who, by the grace of God, are convicted by the Holy Spirit of sin in their heart so that they are wounded and crushed. I say to you, as a woman, do not listen to the false Christian counselors, even in abortion clinics, who will say to you, “But this was not sin. This was a choice. There was no sin involved.” Do not listen to them. They are false prophets. They say, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace. They cannot lead you to a place where you are going to find healing. That is only in the cross of Jesus Christ. But I say to you, in the behalf of the Master, “Hear the gospel of the cross of Jesus Christ.” To everyone who pines away in sorrow, to everyone who imagines that he cannot possibly be forgiven, I proclaim the cross of the grace of Jesus Christ that cleanses sinners from all their stains, and who cleanses by imputing our transgressions upon the head of His own Son who died for murderers. And I say that to all of us. For when the Holy Spirit works in our hearts, we see that we are all guilty before God of depraved indifference to human life. When we come to the cross of Jesus Christ we can never, before that cross, say, “How could they...?” We can never point the finger. But we can only say, “God, be merciful to me the sinner.”

How far has depraved indifference to human life come in your life? What do you watch on television? What is your opinion of so-and-so? What is jealousy? What is envy? How do you drive your car—are you reckless? Do you think you are god? If God were to arise in His judgments, what would you answer Him? Hide yourself in Him. By faith, believe in Christ, in the shadow of a great Rock in the midst of a weary land.

Next I would like to apply this truth that God is the Avenger to our nation. And then, to bring that closer, apply that to Grand Rapids and to our community and to abortion clinics in our community where tens of thousands have been killed; to our community, which, perhaps when hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, was saying, “Yes, yes. Filthy city!” Do we suppose that they were greater sinners than our community? What will happen when God stands up to visit this?

In the Old Testament, God would speak often of the guilt of innocent blood and of the fact that by that innocent blood the land would be polluted. You remember, children, that God came to Cain after he had killed Abel in such a way that Abel’s blood was poured out and soaked into the ground, and God said, “The blood of your brother is crying to me from the ground.” Now I understand that Abel represented the church, the cause of God, I know that. But let us not forget that Abel’s blood was also innocent blood. It was taken evilly and it cried to God for vengeance. God says that that innocent blood came to Him as a voice. That blood took on a mouth, and it cried for God to requite that blood. Psalm 9:12: “When he [God] maketh inquisition for blood, he remembereth them: he forgetteth not the cry of the humble.”

Our land is covered in blood of the innocents. Our age, which is seeking to rub our consciences raw with the memory of Hiroshima, has far exceeded the casualties of World War II, with forty-four million abortions in this country alone!

Our society would be aghast tomorrow morning if it read in the paper that tonight a madman with a pistol went berserk at Spectrum Hospital. If you read that he entered into the neo-natal unit, where the preemies are kept and where they are supported with oxygen tubes, and he took his revolver and riddled those two-three pound preemies with bullets. There would be a cry of horror. But at the same time, within sight, there is the killing of unborn children in the womb, who are breathing through God’s oxygen tube, the umbilical cord, and are killed by a doctor with a suction tube.

And this is the land that sings: “God bless America.” This is the land that is pictured with waving fields of grain. It is not. It is a land covered with blood. And it is the beast. For out of her, out of such a culture, out of such a mentality, arises the Antichrist, the Antichrist who exalts himself over everything that is called God, according to Scripture—the Antichrist who, according to Scripture, makes himself to be God. It is the beast. And this is God’s word to our nation: “What will you do when God arises? What will you answer him?” God says to our nation, “Don’t be afraid of a Osama bin Laden. Don’t fear what might be in some missile silo in the country of Iran.” But God says in Psalm 2: “Be wise now therefore, O ye kings; be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little.”

Then I wish to apply God the Avenger to us as the congregation of God. “Ye are my witnesses,” says God in Isaiah 43, “that I am God.” We do not advocate, on this issue of abortion, social rebellion. We proclaim God’s word that says that he who takes up the sword will perish with the sword. We teach the New Testament Scriptures ( Rom. 13) that ye must needs be subject to the governmental authority for conscience sake. And you must pay tribute, taxes, to whom tribute is due. We believe that.

But that does not mean that we will not preach the truth. And that does not mean that we will be silent on these issues. That does not mean that we are relieved of our responsibility to witness of Him and of His truth. That does not mean that we do not pray that God may deliver young women from this evil. That means that we will lovingly and bluntly and prayerfully speak with our young people about purity and chastity. And we are to speak to our country.

Perhaps someone says, “But I’m not going to be writing my Congressman all the time.” OK. Have you written once? Have you written even one letter? Perhaps we say, “But we know that the end is coming in this world and, therefore, we’re just going to turn our back on it.” But God says, “That’s right. The end is coming. And I have put you in this nation to speak My Word, which will be effective also to leave without excuse and to save My people.” Are we like Jonah? We will not go to this Nineveh. We will not tell this Nineveh God’s Word because we do not want this Nineveh to hear God’s Word. Instead we get on the ship and go to Tarshish?

But we think that we have no calling? As we have opportunity, let us, as God gives us the ability, speak. Let us speak to the Supreme Court. Let us speak to the President. Let us speak to senators. Let us speak to local officials. And let us not play the hypocrite. I mean, let us not give ourselves over to the entertainment of this age on the television, which gives the scenes of sexual immorality and killing and butchering and blowing people away and dead bodies and death and disregard for human life. Let us not entertain ourselves with that in our own living rooms, and then decry abortion!

Let us hear God’s Word: “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers with her of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities” (Rev. 18:4, 5).

He is Creator. He is Avenger. And He is sovereign. God made me. He made you white and made another black and another brown. He caused us to born where we are and caused another to be born in poverty. He made your bodies with what we call defects. He made me five/three, and He made another six/seven or eight. God did that. God gave me to love Him. God justified me in His Son Jesus Christ. God gave His Son over to my death. God gave His Holy Spirit to dwell in my heart. All that I am, I owe to Him! That humbles us.

And He made us for His glory. He sees all of our ways. He counts all of our steps. He calls us to be faithful to Him. And now, standing before the cross where God redeemed me (He created me and then redeemed me), we have this comfort: The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me. “Thy mercy, O Lord, endureth forever. Forsake not the work of Thy own hands.”

Let us pray.

Almighty God and Father, we pray for Thy Word and Thy Word alone to be our light. Send forth Thy Word and humble us before it. In Jesus’ name, Amen.