Biblical Guidance Concerning Abortion Series

BIBLICAL GUIDANCE CONCERNING ABORTION

JER. 1:1-5

1 The words of Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah, of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, 2 to whom the word of the LORD came in the days of Josiah, the son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign. 3 It came also in the days of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, until the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, until the exile of Jerusalem in the fifth month. 4 Now the word of the LORD came to me saying, 5 "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations." (NAS)

Introduction Today you have a insert in the Bulletin

What is your Decision? Would you advise an Abortion?

1. Let’s say there is a man and his wife and they are at the bottom of the poverty level. They have nothing. Absolutely nothing. Except 14 children. And now she is pregnant again. Would abortion be considered acceptable here or should she just keep on breeding?

2. What if a man of one particular race (let’s say white) violently rapes a young girl of another race (black). Should the parents consider abortion? Do they have that right?

3. What if a man who is constantly sick has a wife with a dread disease, tuberculosis. What if they have four children. Let’s say the oldest is blind, the second is dead, the third child is deaf, and the fourth child has tuberculosis like the mother. Should she not have a fifth child. What if she is pregnant during her dread illness?

4. And lastly, so common in these days is the following example. We see it too often. A teenage girl gets pregnant. Her finance’ is not the father and he is very upset. What should they do? What do we as Christians tell them to do? What should society do?

Is there EVER a reason for abortion? Could we as Christians EVER justify the termination of a baby’s life?

The Key to these cases is in the final point.

Does it bother you that there are One Million abortions a year?

Do you realize that number is equal to all the people who live from here to Joplin? It helps to get anew perspective on the number of aborted babies.

We need a new perspective Biblically also.

Entire Denominations have aborted scripture from it’s proper place in maters of faith and practice.

Note this Presbyterian Statement.

The silence of the church about abortion is strange because it is a recent phenomenon. Beginning with the Didache in the second century A.D., the church through the centuries has unanimously and unambiguously opposed the killing of unborn children. Luther, Calvin, Bonhoeffer, Barth, and Thielicke all spoke against it.

(2) Indeed, a statement issued in 1856 by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States summed up the consensus of all the churches:

"[We regard] the destruction by parents of their own offspring, before birth, with abhorrence, as a crime against God and against nature; and as the frequency of such murders can no longer be concealed, we hereby warn those that are guilty of this crime that, except they repent, they cannot inherit eternal life."

From Presbyterians for Life: by Elizabeth Achetemeier, Ph.D., is adjunct professor of Bible and Homiletics at Union Seminary in Richmond, Virginia.

1. Biblical Guidance about God’s . . Composition of a Child. v 5 a

5 "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations." (NAS)

3335 yatsar (yaw-tsar’);

probably identical with 3334 (through the squeezing into shape); ([compare 3331]); to mould into a form; especially as a potter; figuratively, to determine (i.e. form a resolution):

A. God’s Composition Implies . . Origination. v 5 a

Gen. 1:26 Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."

1. The Theory of Evolution.

a. Attempts to tear away God as Creator.

2. The Society Today.

a. Attempts to remove God from our thinking.

Rom 9:21 21 Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use, and another for common use? (NAS)

Illustration

Soren Kirkegaard was a Danish theologian back in the last century. He once told a story of a bunch of thieves who broke into a jewelry store. They didn’t steal anything, they merely rearranged all of the price tags.