Abortion & the Image of God in the Unborn

Good morning. It is indeed privilege and a delight to be with you on this morning, to be with you on this weekend. I have been looking forward to this for quite some time. I am excited about what the Lord has been doing and what he will do through our time together here. I believe this is a crucial time in history, and I believe this is a crucial moment that we are experiencing right now, one of those times, in one of those moments that will have a far reaching impact. And there are those kinds of times and those kinds of moments in history. We talk about them, we learn about them, we reflect on them, we try to learn from them, and I hope that this is one of those. In this first session this morning, I want to talk to you about abortion, and specifically about abortion as spiritual warfare, because that's what abortion is. Abortion is, among other things, spiritual warfare. Absolutely, it's the taking of human life. But in order to get there, there are a lot of steps that we have to take in order to get there, in order to get to the place where you will kill a human being. You know, it's interesting, before we kill, we dehumanize. Let me say that again, Before we kill we dehumanize. We have to. This is why even even in war, Right, if you are a student of history and you know, you look at wars and even the big wars, World War one, World War two, or even you know, other smaller wars, one of the things that you'll discover is that warriors tend to have nicknames for their enemies, have nicknames for enemies. It's interesting. There's a lot of reasons for that. But one of the reasons that you don't call that person a person. One of the reasons that you don't call him, you know, a Frenchman or an American or a German or right, that you have to call him something else. One of the reasons you do that is because before you kill, you dehumanize, because there is something in us that sees one another as image bearers, and there has to be something really wrong with you in order to take the life of an image bearer, because in the life of another human being is reflected not only the image of God, but the image of yourself. Illustrated it this way, when we drive along, right, sometimes you'll be driving along and you'll drive by the carcass of a dead animal. Right, And when we see the carcass of a dead animal. Depending on the animal, right, we just we may say oh that's too bad, but generally we drive by as we say, oh that's too bad. You would never do that if there was a dead human being in the road, you couldn't do it. You couldn't unless there was something terribly wrong. Because we see in one another the image of God and a reflection of that image that is also in us. So before we can kill, we have to dehumanize. And that's where this spiritual warfare becomes evident. We dehumanize the person in the womb, because that's the only way that we could justify murdering the person in the womb. You know, about a decade ago, there was a trial in the United States that technically was the trial of the most notorious serial killer in history, and his name was Kermit Gosnell. How many of you have heard the name Kermit Gosnell. Kermit Gosnell. Yeah, the most notorious serial killer in all of history. When Kermit Gosnell's case, when his trial was held in Philadelphia, there is a picture taken on the first day of the trial by a blogger, and this blogger took a picture of the courtroom, and the reason she took a picture of the courtroom is because there was no press present in the courtroom. Not one reporter was present on the first day of the trial of the most notorious serial killer in history. Not one Why because Kermit Gosnell killed babies in a Philadelphia abortion clinic. That's why Cosnell would would frequently kill babies after they had been born. His clinic was filth and squalor. He was in a poor, majority black neighborhood. He had unqualified workers. He taught them how to sedate patients and get them ready, and oftentimes, because of how busy he was, he would get there late. And sometimes many times a child would have been delivered before he showed up, in which case he would simply take a pair of shears and snip the brainstem. And so when he finally is arrested and goes to trial, first of all, the district attorney was very hesitant to bring the case to trial. And secondly, when this thing finally does come to trial, there's no press in the courtroom none, and reporters only show up after This blogger's picture of the empty courtroom is on the front page of the newspaper. Why why does the district attorney why is he hesitant to take the case. Why why was the prosecutor's office hesitant to take the case. Why was there no press there? The answer is people were afraid that it would humanize babies in the womb and turn the tide of the abortion debate. That's why. And they did not want anything to jeopardize that. Just think about that for a moment. What has to happen inside of us for us to say we need to be really careful about dealing with this mass murderer, because if we're not careful in the way that we deal with this mass murderer, then others may not have the ability to continue in their mass murder. There's a classic moment during the trial where another abortion doctor had been brought in too testify, and this abortion doctor was supposed to, you know, differentiate for the prosecution the difference between you know, good proper abortion medicine and what Gosnell was doing. And during the cross examination, Gosnell's attorney, attorney doing his job, masterfully got this doctor to acknowledge the fact that the only difference between what this legitimate abortion doctor does and what Gosnell did was location. It's the only difference. You do it inside the womb and you're practicing medicine. You do it seconds later and this much further away, and it's murder. The only way that we get there where we would allow endure, even celebrate such a thing, is that something happens spiritually to us. And I want us to look at that, and I want us to go all the way back to the beginning in Genesis, Genesis chapter three, and we'll look at a number of passages of scripture here today, but I want you to see where this spiritual war begin Genesis chapter three. In Genesis chapters one and two, we have the account of creation. First, in chapter one, we have this beautiful, poetic overview of creation. And then in chapter two we slow down and we get the micro view, if you will, and we get the creation of man, and it's wonderful and it's beautiful. And then in chapter three the wheels fall off. Chapter three. That's it. That's as far as we get. Chapter one wonderful, beautiful, awesome, Chapter two, wonderful, beautiful, awesome, Chapter three sin. And then judgment comes, and there is the curse, and there is the curse of the man, the curse of the woman, and the curse of the serpent. And in Genesis three and verse fifteen, we have this curse of the serpent, which is essentially a declaration of war. God says, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring or seed and her offspring or seed. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. There is the declaration. God is the one who declares this war. He declares this enmity that will exist between the serpent and the seed. Now, the good news is he declares the ultimate victory of the seed of the woman over the serpent. Amen. That's that's the good news that even here where we have the fall and we have this curse, even here where sin has entered into the world, in that very moment, there is good news. There is good news for Adam and Eve. The good news here I mean, imagine this. I'll put enmity between you and the woman, in between her offspring and your offspring. Hell bruise your head, you bruise is heel. The only way that this can be true is if Eve doesn't die today. Amen, he didn't say it, but he said it. Can you imagine. We know they're afraid because they run and hide from God, which how do you do that? We know that they've been warned that death will follow. And yet in the Curse of the Serpent, God mentions offspring, which says to Eve, not only are you not going to die today, but you're going to be a mother and that's good news. But it's also a declaration of war. And the serpent believes God. Here's what's interesting about this. In order to deceive the woman, he undermines the word of God. Hath God said? Is that really what God said? Is that really what God meant? But now we know that the serpent takes God at his word, because from this moment on there is a war between the serpent and the seed. In John three, verses eleven and twelve, we read four, this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brothers were righteous. So in chapter three we have a declaration of war between the serpent and the seed. And in chapter four we have the first murder. What is the first murder? The seed of the serpent, Cain kills the seed of the woman. By the way, here's what we learn. We learned that the seed of the woman, or that the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent are both going to come through the womb. And John makes it very clear that Cain was of the evil one. And this murder occurs because the serpent takes God at his word. And notice that this first murder was of a son, by the way, contrary to popular belief, especially among those who like to impune the creation narrative. Right, And you may have seen it's a popular meme. You know that, you know, we're supposed to believe that, you know, all of us came from to people who only had two sons, right, Which is an absolute display of ignorance on a number of levels. First of all, it is an undisputed, absolutely undisputed in the scientific realm, that every human being alive today can be traced back to the same pair of humans somewhere between six and ten thousand years ago. Evolutionists do not dispute this. Nobody disputes this nobody does. Now. What they argue, of course, is that those two humans were the first humans to evolve from primates. And then now we trace ourselves back to those people who evolved from primates somewhere around this neighborhood, right. But they but they say, but then they say of us. You know, yeah, you guys believe that we all came from Madam and Eve and they just had two sons. How do you do that? Newsflash, They would have been prolific childbearers, amen, two perfect human specimens, everything in working order. They probably would have had hundreds of children, and not all of them would have been sons. It's just that this particular story is about two of their sons. And why is this important? Because God told the serpent listen, he takes the word more seriously than many Christians. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruce his heel. Serpent hears pronouns, and to him, pronouns matter. And so the first murder is not not just the murder of a human being, it's the murder of a male child of the woman. Because God said he, and pronouns matter to God. Amen. So then what do we see in the very next book of the Bible. In Exodus one, verse fifteen and sixteen, then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, when you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him. But if it is a daughter, she shall live. Because the serpent believes the word of God. And God said he. So in the very next book of the Bible, you have the murder of male children from this particular line. You take that all the way over to the New Testament. Matthew two and verse sixteen. Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise man. Remember, the wise men come, they come to worship this king of the Jews who has been born. Right, Herod says, okay, fine, you go find him, and you go worship him, and then you come back, and you tell me where he is so I can worship him. And he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise man. Mass murder of male Hebrew infants. Why because there is a war between the serpent and the seed, and it has been raging since the beginning, from the beginning of the Bible to the end of the Bible Revelation Chapter twelve, verses three and four. And another sign appeared in heaven. Behold a great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns, and on his head seven diadems. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child, he might devour it. From Genesis to Revelation we have a picture of this war between the serpent and the seed. The serpent takes God at his word, and the serpent knows that there is going to be a child born a descendant of a particular line, whom God says will crush his head. By the way, that's a death blow, even though the serpent will only bruise his heel. So what does this have to do with abortion? Several things. Number One, every abortion is an attack against God himself. Every murder of a human being is an attack against God himself. And every murder of a baby in the womb is an attack against God himself. Secondly, every abortion is an attack against the cultural mandate. You know, the first command that God gives in the whole Bible is be fruitful and multiply, and he repeats it. He repeats it, be fruitful and multiply. Every abortion is an attack against this mandate. And then thirdly, every abortion is an attack against the Gospel. How is it an attack against God? First of all, it's an attack against the image of God in Genesis one twenty six to twenty eight. In Genesis two eighteen, we see that man is an image bearer, and so ultimately, when we are attacking and killing human beings, we are killing God in effigy, if you will. It also violates the six Amendment, which says that we shall not commit murder. It also usurps God's role as the author of life. God himself and God alone is the author and giver of life. Abortion attacks at the heart of that. It is a rebellion against that. It also negates the idea of children as a blessing from God that we see in Psalm one twenty seven and Psalm one twenty eight. Children are a blessing, a gift from God himself. It's an attack against the cultural mandate because again we were told commanded to be fruitful and multiply Genesis one, twenty two, one twenty eight, again in Genesis eight seventeen, Genesis ninety one ninety seven, in all of these places, be fruitful and multiply. But understand this that this is not just a birth mandate. This was part of the cultural mandate. It's not just be fruitful and multiply, it's be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. In other words, in other words, God creates man, and he puts man in this perfect idyllic environment, and he says to man, do this everywhere. Multiply, fill the earth, subdue the earth, exercise dominion over the earth. Spread the goodness that you have here everywhere in the earth. So this is not just a birth mandate, it's a dominion mandate. It's a cultural mandate. We're not just supposed to multiply, but we're supposed to subdue and cultivate, bring order to the rest of the world, like the order we find in the garden. And ultimately it is an attack against the Gospel. It's a fracture in the husband wife Christ church image that we see in Ephesians five of marriage being this beautiful living picture and illustration of the relationship between Christ and his church. It's also the negation of the fruit of a healthy husband wife relationship. Healthy things grow, healthy things reproduce. It's amazing that in the scriptures and throughout most of history and most of the world, barrenness is seen as a curse. You go to God and you beseech him if you're not burying children, something's wrong, and you run to God and you say, God, help us. It also is a minimizing of Christ's full reward. So here's the question. Then, if this whole spiritual war between the serpent and the seed was about ultimately stopping Christ from coming, and in an ultimate sense that that is what this war was about, stopping Christ from coming, then why would it continue? Why would it continue? It's interesting for a number of reasons. First of all, every human being is a potential adopted son or daughter of God. The Romans eighth fourteen fifteen. For all who are led by the spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear. But you have received the spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry Abbah Father Ephesians one four through six. In love, he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the beloved Roma's eight twenty nine. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, in order that he might be the first born of many brethren's. That's the potential of every child in the womb, the potential of being adopted sons and daughters conformed to the image of Christ, who was the very one that our adversary wanted to prevent from being born. We're also potential adopted sons and daughters again, or I'm sorry, potential heirs. Look at Galatians three twenty eight and twenty nine. We love Galatians three twenty eight, but I hate the fact that we isolate Galatians three twenty eight from Galatians three twenty nine, because that good news just gets better in the next verse. Amen, Galatians three twenty eight and twenty nine. There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is no male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. Don't stop. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise. You're not just a child, You're an heir, Abraham's offspring. Amen, Father Abraham had many sons, Many sons had Father Abraham. I'm one of them, and so are you. So that's all praise the Lord left right. Okay, all right, but you get the point. Adopted sons and daughters and heirs James two five. Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him heirs, potential sons and daughters and heirs. So then maybe he just thought to just you know, maybe he just ought to kill those who are going to be Christians. How can he know? He can't know. But here's the other thing. It's not just because we're potential adopted sons and and potential heirs. Every human life is sacred. Every human life is sacred. And for this, I want you to look at the next chapter in Galatians four. Look in Galatians four, verses four through six, and I want us to spend some time here in Galatians four, four through six, because I believe that really this is the crux of the matter when it comes to biblical worldview and this issue and question of abortion. Right. I mean, on the one hand, there is this sort of general revelation argument, okay, And the general revelation argument is a really simple one, and it is that life begins at conception. That's a human being. We don't kill human beings, okay. And people have tried to get around that argument by saying, you know, well, by arguing that that life begins at some other point, right, argue unsuccessfully because I mean we there is no other agreed upon point at which life begins, and all of those things are hugely problematic, right. I mean, if you if you start arguing that you know, life begins when when the baby can live independently outside the womb, you know, we can start killing teenagers. By the way, there is a professor of ethics at Princeton University by the name of Peter Singer, who argues that that we should not only be able to kill babies in the womb, but but infants outside of the womb as well, based on the same type of argument. You know, you start talking about development, there's an an argument and a debate right now in the US, there's a woman running for a governor in Georgia. Her name is Stacy Abrams, and Stacy Ager Abrams is is rabidly pro abortion, and she just said some of the stupidest stuff anybody has ever said on the campaign trail. Uh. Stacy Abrams argued that that ultrasound technology was designed to deceive women to believing that there is you know, a heartbeat at six weeks, because there is no heartbeat at six weeks, that that's just an echo created by the machine. And then because she's a flaming liberal liberal right and a black female right double minority black female, I mean, you just got you just you know, absolutely untouchable. She can say stupid stuff and you can't say it's stupid because if you do, then you're a racist, biggot, black woman hating person whose words just shouldn't be listened to anyway. Even if they are correct, right, And so the press just went into overdrive, you know, trying to trying to support, you know, trying to trying to say that she didn't say what she said right, kind of like they've been doing with Biden for the last couple of years. He said yes, but he didn't mean that. What he meant was right, And same thing with her, and they're saying no, no, no, no, no no no. What she means is you know that the that the heart valves are not developed by six weeks, So what that is is not not technically you know, a heartbeat, because it's not it's not a fully developed heart as we know it in adults. Now follow this. First of all, that's not what she said. Secondly, regardless of how developed that thing is, it's beating at six weeks, about one hundred and ten beats a minute, right, It's it's beating. So that noise is not manufactured by an ultrasound machine. That noise is real. Thirdly, if the argument is because the heart's not fully developed, it's okay to abort the child, then we've got a couple of problems. Number one, she just wants to go from six weeks to ten weeks, which not her argument, right, because if you press her on that, you go, oh, wait, so you believe ten weeks? Is that where you ten weeks? Because we get okay, cool ten weeks? No, no, no, no, no, that wouldn't be her argument. The other problem with that is that the human brain doesn't fully develop until the mid twenties, especially in young men. So again, on the one hand, you know there is that argument. But regardless of all of this stuff, right, let's say, well, let's say we can't agree, by the way, there is agreement that life begins at conception. Right, you have an independent entity that, if left alone, will be a fully formed, separate human being. That's life. Okay, that's life. But let's just say, for the sake of argument that we're not sure. That doesn't change anything. It doesn't change anything because if we're not sure, then that means it's potentially life. You still don't kill it because it might be amen. So, on the one hand, there's this general revelation argument, and the general revelation argument is important. I think it's important, but it's insufficient. It's insufficient because we got to answer the question why why is human life sacred? And the answer to that question, I believe it's in Relations chapter four. God is the one who has sanctified, set apart human life as sacred, and he does so in the incarnation beginning of verse four. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son number one, born of a woman. Folks, Jesus could have been sent forth fully grown, but he wasn't. In order for him to be fully human, just like he was fully divine, he had to go through the tire human life cycle. So the fact that Jesus comes as an embryo means that God sanctifies human life from its embryonic stage, because that's what the God Man went through. God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law. He identifies with those who are under the law. While we have this law because of sin, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the spirit of his son into your heart's crying. Abba, Father, we see the sanctity of human life in every stage and circumstance. You can take all the arguments that will make right. Why do we need abortion? We need abortion? You know because because of lives that are unplanned. Nope, God is the author of life. There's no such thing as an unplanned pregnancy. Amen, somebody. My God doesn't make mistakes. He never has and he never will. There is no human being ever born, no human being ever conceived that was a mistake. Also, the incarnation embraces all of humanity. So these arguments for you know, at what point, at what stage? No, no, no, from conception, because the conception of our Lord Jesus Christ was essential to his humanity, which means it's essential to your humanity. What about What about when we know that that child in the woman is terminally ill? What about then? My wife and I agonized with a friend of hers who was who was given such news from her doctor's when she was pregnant, news that this baby that a terrible disorder that would mean that the baby wouldn't live long and the baby's life would probably be very painful. That was the first time my wife and I ever considered adoption. And she came to me and we talked about it for like fifteen seconds before we agreed, just tell her we'll adopt that baby. But she went through and she had an abortion because because she believed that it was better to end the child's life than to see the child suffer. The Incarnation says, otherwise, God sent forth his son born under the law, which means he was going to suffer under the law. God sent forth his son knowing that his son would die a painful, excruciating death. And yet in spite of it, in spite of it, Christ came. The incarnation of Christ says, and impending life of difficulty and death is no reason for a child not to be born. Part of what distinguishes us as humans is our empathy and our ability to walk with one another through the valley of the shadow of death. And Jesus died. He was born under the law so that he might redeem those under the law, which means he died for the ungodly. The other argument that people make is yes, but we need to have exceptions for rape and incest. Praise God that I was not condemned because of the sins my father committed, which is essentially what this argument is. If the child's biological father is a rapist, then you kill that child. The Incarnation answers all of these every last one of them, and this one is especially especially poignant and meaningful for me. You know, Bridget and I we have the privilege of being adoptive parents. We have nine children. Seven of those children came to our family through adoption. We adopted seven newborns in a nine year period. And the reason it worked like that is because, you know, once we decided to enter into the adoption world, and we decided to enter into the adoption world. Because when Bridge and I got married we met January twenty first, nineteen eighty nine. It was my sophomore year in college. We met at a dance on her campus and I walked up to her and I asked her to dance, and she said no. Six months later we were married, and so here we were, you know, the summer between my sophomore and junior year we got married. I turned twenty a couple of months before we got married, and then ten months after that, our daughter was born. Because we were what you called efficient. It was a few years later when our son was born. And there are a lot of people in my life's ear and our attitude towards children these days, right, a boy for me and a girl for you, And praise the Lord, we're finally through, right, and I wish I could say we withstood that storm, but we didn't. And so after our second child was born, we hired a doctor to speak to God on our behalf and on our behalf. This doctor said to God, this couple no longer wants you, need you or trust you in this area of their life. Several years later, we were convicted. We were convicted, and my wife came to me one day. It was a surreal moment. She came to me. I was sitting in a chair. She knelt down beside the chair and she said to grab my hands and she said, I need to ask you to forgive me. Boy. The ideas that went through my mind at that moment, I was, you know, I forgive you. Just give me a name. We can always start a prison ministry, all right. And she said, you know what I was wrong. I should never gotten my tubes tied and I'm sorry. And I grabbed my wife and I looked at her and I said, listen, that happened on my watch. She said, do you mean it? I said yes. She said good, because there's this procedure and it costs and I said how much? How much does it? And so we went and we got another doctor and we said, doctor, we want you to tell God that we didn't mean what that doctor said. And this doctor came back and he said, I cannot undo what this man did. Terrible moment for me as a husband, because on the one hand, I'm crushed, I'm crestfallen, But on the other hand, the more guilty I feel, the more horrible my wife feels. We had already talked about the possibility of adoption, but that's when those discussions became more real. And so we walked into an adoption agency in Houston, and with our other two kids, we walked in and we said, listen, we would love to adopt a couple of few babies, if that's you know. And so the lady behind the desk, she got up and she walked away. She comes back with the director and she says, tell her what you just told me. And we said, you know, we would love to adopt to a couple few babies if that was okay. And these ladies just kind of looked at each other and almost started crying. And the director said, we pray for you. I said, what see, here's what we didn't know. We didn't know that, you know in the United States, in particular, if a black birth mother comes to an adoption agency and says she wants to place her child with a black family, somewhere between ninety five and ninety eight percent of all adoption agencies in America have to tell her we don't have one. Yeah, So we went through the process, we got matched, and when we got matched, we were actually out of town. We got a phone call from the agency and they said, we found your baby. She said, awesome, how do you know it's our baby? And they said, just we just trust me. There was a woman, a young woman who was riding around in Houston, Texas. She and her cousin they were carjacked and raped. This young woman, you know, fouls the police report and everything. She was on depa bavera, these birth control shots, and so they didn't give her any sort of morning after treatment because any pregnancy should have been naturally aborted. A couple of months later, though, she realizes she's pregnant. She goes to a planned parenthood and she says, I was raped and I'm pregnant. Help me. They schedule a time for her to have an abortion. She gets a ride to the clinic. She's sitting there waiting for her appointment to abort this baby. And in her word, she says, I'm looking up at the clock, and I'm wondering why it's taking so long. And all of a sudden it dawned on me. This baby didn't do anything wrong. And she called somebody to come and pick her up, and she didn't know what she was going to do. And it wasn't until late, late, late in her pregnancy that she finds this adoption agency and she's sitting there and she tells them what happens through tear stained eyes, and they say, I think we have a family for your baby. And eighteen years ago, she placed that boy in my hands, and she looked at me and she said, can you just do one thing for me? Don't let him hate me for what I did. I said, young lady, you are going to be a hero to this boy because of what you did. So why did we adopt six more kids in the next seven years? Because young women walk in, and if they're black women who say I would prefer to place my child in a black family again, ninety five ninety eight percent of adoption agencies have to look at them and say we don't have one. So we began to get calls from all over the country because these agencies would call one another and say, hey, we don't have any of you have any you know, And after a while it was like, hey, we know one. We had to say no to four potential adoptions because we were already in the process of other adoptions when we got called listen, my time is gone, but I'll tell you this the second adoption. A couple of years later, I get a phone call that I have to bring the baby back to the agency. This child's birth mother was fourteen, and I had to take the baby back to the agency because they needed to swab him for DNA because of a police investigation, because it turns out that this young woman was molested by her uncle. So when you talk about exceptions for a rapid incest, you're talking about two of our nine children. And I dare you to tell me they should have been killed because of what their fathers did, Which leads me to my last point. Abortion is absolutely spiritual warfare. There's no doubt, but adoptionist it is spiritual warfare, and we are in the midst of a spiritual battle. Let us never ever, ever forget that, and let us conduct ourselves as such. This is the war between the serpent and the seed, and this is a war for the glory of God and the image of God in every human life, from its conception to its natural death. Let's pray. Father, We thank you for your goodness and your kindness and your mercy toward us. Thank you for the privilege of being in this place. Thank you for the opportunity that you've given us to contemplate these incredibly important ideas, and to equip and prepare ourselves to engage more appropriately, more intelligently, more winsomely. Father, we do pray for those all around us who are wrestling with and struggling with this issue. We pray for those who perhaps have walked through the dark experience of an abortion, and we thank you that there's grace. We pray that you would continue to give us the wisdom and the courage bage to face this issue and to fight this battle, not just so that we can win political points, but so that lives may indeed be saved. We pray these things in Christ's name and for his sake. Amen.