Hello, if you have your Bibles, go ahead and grab them. I don’t know if you’re at a desk or someplace where you can access one, but go ahead and grab that and open up to Matthew chapter 5. Before we dive into this passage, I wanted to tell a story and highlight this moment in the ministry of Jesus that honestly to me has really shaped in a unique way how I’ve tried to approach not just the subject I want to cover today, but almost any subject that might have with it some significant pain or confusion or loss.
And so, in John chapter 4, Jesus is heading through Samaria, and He stops at a well and John 4 lets us know that He stops at a well because He was tired. And He sent His disciples on in order to get food and to come back. And there at the well, if you know your Bibles, the story He runs into the Samaritan woman.
That in the middle of the day, which is not when you go to the well. You go to the well early in the morning. You never go when it’s at the day’s, at its hottest– you go when the day is at its coolest. And so, she goes to avoid a lot of shame, a lot of brokenness. She’s more interested in hiding her life than she is displaying her life.
And it’s at this well that Jesus begins this conversation with her about living water, about fullness of life, ultimately about healing and wholeness. And He does this thing that if you’re paying attention, you would almost want to pull Jesus aside and go, ‘No, no, no, don’t do that. Don’t bring that up. Don’t ask that question.”
And so Jesus asks her, “Woman,” in a way that’s honoring, “Woman, go get your husband.” And the woman responds, “I don’t have a husband.” And Jesus said, “You’re right. You don’t have a husband. You’ve had five husbands, and the man you’re living with now, isn’t your husband.”
In other words, “You don’t have a husband, you’ve had five husbands, and the man you’re living with now, you’re exchanging sex for rent.” And you’ve got to be going like, “No, no, Jesus, this is no way to have this conversation with this woman. You have to build up a relationship with her. You have to have a long history with her. Certainly, you can’t touch this area of her life. Talk anything you want about the kingdom of heaven. Talk anything you want about forgiveness and grace, but you can’t touch that part. You can’t talk about that. You can’t bring that up.”
And yet what Jesus is doing in this moment by asking the question by then informing her of His knowledge of the brokenness of her life is to, in a really beautiful way, touch the deepest, most painful aspect of her soul because He wants to heal it, because He wants to call her out of brokenness and into the whole-heartedness that comes from life in Him. He’s beckoning her out of shame, out of guilt, out of anger, out of hiding. He’s calling her into a life that according to Him, would lead to streams of living water, “bursting forth” is the language in the passage. “Bursting forth” from her soul.
And there’s something about that interaction that, as a pastor, began to shape me because He wasn’t afraid to go to that place that He knew was dangerous. He wasn’t afraid to go to that place where He knew there was danger. Deep and broken pain in this woman’s life.
Her whole life had been formed by this wound. Her whole life had been shaped. Her schedule had been determined. How she saw her own value had been shaped by this moment, by these failures, by this pain. And Jesus loved her too much. He loved her too much to not go there. And so that honestly reminds me of the subject that we are here to talk about today, and that’s the subject of life.
And so for me, as a pastor of a large church in the Bible Belt, this is probably 15 years ago. I’m just in my Bible reading plan. So, it’s somewhere in January, you hadn’t quite, it’s that moment where you hadn’t quite got to Leviticus yet. You’re full of optimism. Genesis is weird, but at least Exodus has some stories you remember from Sunday School. You hadn’t quite got to Leviticus yet, where you just throw the whole thing out and just go to the gospel of John and the Psalms and camp out there.
So, I’m reading through Genesis early in January, about 15 years ago, I saw this verse, a very quirky, strange verse. And here’s what it says. This is Genesis 5:3. “When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness after his image, and he named him Seth.”
So, I’m sitting at the kitchen island, and I’ve got my, it wasn’t a kitchen island back then. I was sitting and I had my Bible and my journal. I’m just doing the Bible reading plan. You never know when the Holy Spirit is going to ambush you. And so, this little verse, man, it pops off the page, and I have a simple question that floods my mind.
Does this phrase, there’s so much going on in this verse, such a strange verse, but in this passage, the question that popped into my head was, is the phrase, “in his own likeness after his image,” is that simlar to or exact to the one that we read back in Genesis 1:26-27, when God says, “Let us make man in Our image, in Our likeness.”
And so the question that started to bubble up or form in my head was, ” Am I looking at, when I look at Genesis 4 and 5, am I looking at this idea of the imago Dei, where God in His triune beauty says, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, in Our likeness, and male and female, He made them,’ is the image of God, the imago Dei, that God placed into humanity, into Adam and Eve, is that the same thing that’s now being passed on from Adam and his offspring?
That was the question. And I found, as I just, it was a quick study. I just popped open Logos Bible Study Software and attacked the Hebrew, and it’s actually an identical phrase. It was identical. And so, this idea that humankind are different than everything else in the creative order that it’s been given to us and us alone as human
beings to have a moral, spiritual, and intellectual nature. And that, that difference doesn’t mean that we’re cruel to creation. It actually means that we steward creation. It doesn’t give us permission to destroy everything that’s not made in the image of God. In being made in the image of God, we actually steward well and make the world according to the Cultural Mandate flourish.
We bring order. We bring light to darkness and organization to chaos. It’s been given to us and us and alone to have a spiritual moral nature. No other creature has that. And I know you might be watching this and you’re like, “Well, you haven’t met my dog Bootsy. If you’ve ever seen Bootsy, Bootsy feels guilt and shame.”
And I just want to argue that no, she doesn’t. And the most expensive animal on earth, the most rare, the most endangered animal on earth, although worthy of protection and respect, has not been made in the image of God that has been given to humankind alone. And it is this doctrine, the doctrine of theimago Dei, that is ground zero for any and every discussion in the Western world about rights, human rights, any conversation that has anything to do with equality is rooted in this Judeo-Christian idea of the imago Dei.
So men and women that are more secular in their worldview, who would watch this and disagree with most of what I’m going to say today, cannot argue human rights or equality without this foundation of the imago Dei are that humankind has been made in the image of God and is worthy of dignity, value, and respect, regardless of socioeconomics, regardless of ethnicity, regardless of background, regardless of education, regardless you name it, all humankind, even those who lack certain mental capacities or physical capacities, they are made in the image of God.
And that cannot be said about Seabiscuit or any other animal in all of creation. It’s been given to us and us alone. And so much good has come from this foundation, from this belief.
And so, that kicked off my January, and again, this is 15 years ago. And I start pulling the thread as I read the scriptures that year, and I began to see that this kind of moral, spiritual nature that we have and our pets don’t, that we have and other animals don’t, like your golden retriever, your labradoodle is not worried about the future.
He’s not wondering what happens when he dies. She’s not concerned about the welfare of her puppies three years from now, five years from now. That’s not how this works. It’s been given to us. We’re unique among all of creation and that specifically, that moral, spiritual nature. We began to see in the Scriptures that’s present, according to the Bible, in the womb.
Now this comes loud and clear, specifically in the Psalms, but in other places. And just a quick note on the Psalms. The Psalms is filled with singing and poetry that dials us into its imagery, that’s dialing us into a greater truth underneath it. And so, when David says in Psalm 139 that we are fearfully and wonderfully made and that God knit us together in our mother’s womb, we know, those of us who believe the Bible, we know how biology works.
We know how babies are made. We don’t literally think that there’s needles in the wombs of women. We’re just saying there’s something underneath the biology that actually the point of the whole thing, that biology might be the mechanism that brings things about, but there’s a Creator God who’s up to something in that biology.
And what we see in the Psalms is this idea that our moral, spiritual nature is present in the womb. Let me show you this in a couple of places in Psalm 58 verse 3, the Bible says, “The wicked are estranged from the womb. They go astray from birth, speaking lies,” and anyone with children knows this is true.
Right? Anyone with children. No, you don’t have to teach children to be dishonest. You don’t even have to, in some cases, teach children to act violently against other children. I don’t know who all’s watching this, but if you’ve ever had a child or one of your children was a biter. They just, when they didn’t get what they wanted, they got overstimulated, they got upset about something, they would bite another child.
I’m just guessing they didn’t learn that from their environment. I’m guessing you weren’t in an argument with your spouse and you just got so worked up you bit him over the remote and you snatched him. That’s not how it works. Their moral, spiritual nature is there. And the Bible says it’s bent.
It’s got iniquity. It’s moving from God, not towards God, but this is, it’s there in the womb is what the psalmist is arguing. And then again, in Job 14:4, Job asks the question and then answers it. “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? There is not one.” And then another just in the next verse in Job 15:14. “What is man that he can be pure? Or he who is born of a woman that he can be righteous?”
So you get this idea that the moral, spiritual nature that makes us distinctively human and different than everything else in creation is present in the womb.
And so, now the question I think that has to be answered and that the Bible answers for us is, “When does that moral, spiritual nature begin?” Is it at six weeks? Is it at eight weeks? Is it now that we have the science to look in there? Is it when the baby starts to dream? Is it when its kidney starts? Is it when we see brainwaves? Is it… when do we say, “Ah, now that moral, spiritual, intellectual nature that belongs to humankind alone, when does it start in the womb?”
By the grace of God, in Psalm 51:5, we read these words from David. “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” And so Psalm 51 begins to lay out the argument that it’s actually at conception that this moral, spiritual nature is imparted to a human soul. And if you think about it, it actually, it can make sense.
Even if you think about it scientifically, like you’ve got this thing that happens where you have the sperm that meets the egg and there’s this opening in the egg, and all of a sudden two cells become four cells, become eight cells, become sixteen cells, and on, there’s like this explosion that occurs.
And in that miraculous moment, a new soul is introduced into the cosmos. All of a sudden, you have a brand-new human being, a brand-new DNA that never existed before, and now it does, and it won’t be long til there’s a new blood type inside that womb.
There’s brainwaves that are not the mother that’s inside that womb. There’s a bent, as we already read, inside that womb. But the Bible is going to argue that life begins at the moment of conception. And here’s what I, this 15 years ago, here’s what I, as soon as all of that kind of congealed. I knew I had to say something. So that year, 15 years ago, was the first time I wrote a sermon on life and worked my way up to the pulpit and fully expected that my church would empty out.
It was a very young church at the time. I don’t know that I would call it progressive or left leaning, but it certainly was a very young church. And it was a, with a great deal of trepidation and tears, I began to write and prepare to preach. This is a complex issue that has real meaning, real hurt, real loss, real pain, real anger, and quite a bit of ideology tied to it.
And so, it was a long, prayerful, laborious week leading up to that sermon. And so, I have tried from 15 years ago to this very moment in time, to talk about this subject multiple times a year, especially as the text dictates it as we walk our way through the Scriptures. And I want to just kind of state that it’s been an incredible year on this front for those of us who believe that the Word of God is true, and that life begins at conception.
The overturning of Roe v. Wade, man it started a fire across our country and yet hundreds of thousands of little boys and little girls, and if stats are right, far more little girls will be born this year because of the efforts and the prayer and the marches and the monies and the pregnancy centers and the appeals to God and to man that have gone into this epic fight.
And yet, there’s still so much work to be done. And so, I do want to just say and make the appeal and thank you, especially if you’re on the front. If you’re a pastor who talks about this stuff, I just want to say thank you, man. You are a courageous man. I praise God for you like that. You won’t shrink back, but you will with a great deal of compassion and care, step into and lean into these spaces.
If you’re someone that’s working on some ministry that has life as its focus, thank you. We’re in such desperate need of you. Wasn’t like Roe v. Wade’s over, so we don’t care about life anymore. No. We care deeply about life, whether Roe v. Wade’s in place or if it’s removed. We have been there since the beginning.
We’re going to continue to be there. And it’s, that’s the framework. I want to spend my time on, my time today with you. I’m going to read Matthew 5 here in a moment, but I want to set its context in Matthew chapter 4, starting in verse 23, 23- 25. It says that Jesus comes preaching the kingdom of God.
And so, I don’t know if you’ve studied kingdom of God stuff, but basically Jesus is coming and saying the reign of sin and death is over. Heaven’s invading earth. The future is pressing into the present. My righteous rule and reign is here, and all that is broken, I’m undoing. And then you watch the miracles of the kingdom.
He heals the sick because He has authority over disease. He raises the dead because He has authority over, right? He cast out demons because He has authority over the demons. The kingdom has come. That’s the proclamation. And then He gets into the Beatitudes. And the Beatitudes, it’s important to note, the Beatitudes aren’t like the kind of people Jesus comes and looks for.
It’s the kind of people Jesus is turning us into. So, when we read the Beatitudes, we’re reading that this is God’s commitment. This is the Holy Spirit’s commitment to, over time, slower than we want, turn us into a specific kind of people. And so, He says, “Hey, blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God.”
Notice it didn’t say the kingdom of God is theirs. It says, “Theirs is the kingdom.” So, translation, “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs and theirs alone is the kingdom.” So, who receives this breaking in of the power of God? Who receives this? Kingdom that’s invading earth, who receives kind of darkness being driven out and order being established?
The people of God do, those who are poor in spirit. Those who are humble, not those who are haughty. Those who are low, not those who are high. And He goes on to say, those who mourn- blessed are those who mourn. They’ll be comforted. Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, they will receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. And then hear it, blessed are you when you are persecuted for righteousness sake. That’s huge. Not because you’re a jerk. Not because you’re rude. Not because you’re heavy handed. Not, no. For righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of God. I also wanna highlight and then just read 5, and let’s talk about what that means for us.
This idea of blessedness in this passage is not a subjective feeling that you and I might have but rather it’s an objective state of being that God is saying is true over us.
So instead of translating this, like some people are prone to, it’s fine. It’s just not fully correct. It’s there. It’s just not there in the way, it isn’t happier. You, when you mourn, it’s not about happiness. It is big. Blessedness is thicker than happiness. It’s stronger than happiness. And it’s an objective state, not a subjective feeling.
So, what happens when you and I are low? And not high. We are humble and not haughty. God says, “Blessed are you.” There you go. Now you got it. When we mourn, when we see the brokenness of the world and it breaks our heart, and God gives us the gift of tears, like we see the hurt and pain of this world and we weep over it, God says, “Blessed are you.”
This is a state, a subjective state that you are in an objective state that you’re in. It’s not a subjective feeling. Mourning’s not happiness, but it’s blessedness. And on and on we could go, but it’s from this framework. I’m turning you into these kinds of people that we read this. Matthew 5:13-16.
“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”
So, what does this have to do with life? What does this have to do with the imago Dei? What does this have to do with abortion and caring for children and women? What does this have to do with the subject that you’re dialing into this sermon to think about and to consider?
I think it’s an easy answer, and here’s my easy answer. The world is dark and decaying, and we’re here. Like you and I, we’re here, we’re the ones, this is our day that we were made for this day and this day was made for us. It hasn’t been given to Augustine, it hadn’t been given to Billy Graham. Billy Graham’s not here, we’re here.
And there’s darkness and there’s decay and this passage says that you and I are salt and we’re light. And if you tap into our history as the people of God, no one has cared about life like the Church of Jesus Christ across church history. It was in antiquity and in the Roman Empire that it was the Christian church that grabbed hold of all these little girls across the empire.
They were being discarded because they were simply born female, and they formed orphanages and began to build hospitals. And even if you again, if you study missions and how the gospel is spread across, if you think about giants of the faith like George Mueller, right? He’s so known for prayer, but you know what he did, is he established orphanages to care for children that weren’t wanted by anyone else, whether it be foster care systems or hospitals or other kinds of orphanages.
The Church of Jesus Christ has been on the front line against culture on this issue since day one in the Roman Empire, and it’s our turn. It’s our day, and I want to celebrate the overturn, overturning of Roe v. Wade, but it has made women all over the place feel hopeless, and when women feel hopeless, they’ll make decisions that are dangerous for them and deadly for unborn babies.
And so what an opportunity you and I have to step into this moment of history as salt and light to the world in the hopes that we might, in a very real way, push back darkness, slow down decay, and use our lives and our monies and our pulpit and our influence and our, to, establish light and order.
I think about how this has played itself out. And here’s what I know. We are climbing up a mountain when it comes to just nonsensical propaganda about everything that I’m saying right now. In fact, at the time of this filming, we’re just a few months away from the Guardian article that came out and literally intentionally tried to deceive all of its readers by picking some random picture.
It looked like a bunch of cotton balls and saying, fetuses are actually just tissue in the womb. So they didn’t take what we know to be an eight-week fetus image, but they actually tried to just Intentionally deceive anyone who could look at that or read that and go, it’s just a clump of cells.
There’s no eye here. There’s no hand here. There’s no foot here, all which is clearly visible in the actual. So the ideological propaganda that men and women, specifically younger men and women are incessantly drinking in makes this conversation very difficult and all that more necessary to not speak, to not engage, to not highlight, not even just lay out in front of people basic first principles, which is how you handle, how Western civilization has handled complex situations since its beginning.
And so, here’s first principles, like a first principle, I know there’s going to be complex. I know there’s gonna be hurt. It’s gonna be sad. There’s gonna be really awful things that I’m gonna have to stare in the face of, specifically if you’re in ministry. So, how do I anchor myself in what’s true and navigate spaces where I know they’re really painful, really tender, and really complex?
And if you’re like, I could tell you stories. We had a high school kid drink bleach trying to get rid of a baby before she came and allowed us to help her. There have been really complex, really awful things that we’ve seen had a front row seat at and it’s because they drink an ideology and they’re just overwhelmed by propaganda that has them believing that their only play is abortion rather than receiving the hope and care of, I think, hundreds of thousands of people who’d be willing to open wallets and homes and life to them.
And so let me talk about first principles. The way a first principle would work would be, let me get to the baseline truth and then hold fast to it while I can mourn the complexity of a situation. So, if we were talking about life, we were talking about abortion in particular, I think our first principle, it would work something like this.
If the baby in a mother’s womb is a person. So, if the baby in a mother’s womb is its own person, it’s in the mother, but it’s not the mother. And I think the Bible would speak to that. That’s why I tried to cover that earlier. Then it’s never okay to murder an innocent child. That would be my first principle.
It’s never okay to murder an innocent child. Now, what happens when I grab hold of that is when red herring arguments come, which is when people are like you don’t say anything about gun control. Why are you talking about this? Or the foster care is deeply broken. Why do you care? I can anchor into, it’s never, that’s right.
I do think there’s probably more that needs to be said about guns and you’re right. The foster care system is broken. God help us. Let’s pray. Let’s fund, let’s do whatever we can as a church to help as a community of faith as a nonprofit to help, but it’s never okay to kill an innocent baby. And we have a first principle by which we stand and we move.
And this allows us to mourn and weep and come alongside people who are in really terrible situations while not conceding the life and the cost of that life as the only option. I had this woman email my office. She felt and I don’t, I know this is, I’m a Bapticostal, so let me not apologize. I’m just a Bapticostal.
I had a woman email in, and she had this vision from the Lord. That’s her language. And she had written this vision out that she had. And part of the vision was that of an antelope. There was an antelope in the vision. So I, you might not take that seriously at all. You might just, you might’ve just wadded up that and thrown it away or deleted the email, but I printed it out.
I sent it to my wife, sent it to my elders, and then began to pray and consider these aspects of the vision, what it might have, what the Lord might have for me and those things. And my wife is like, ” She’s a researcher, man.” So, she went down this, she started just studying everything she could about antelopes.
And one of the things that she discovered about antelopes in particular, is that in times of drought, and in times of famine, an antelope will actually shrink its own heart and liver in order to survive. They will physically shrink their heart and liver in order to stay alive, as opposed to a deer that will pant and incessantly look for water until the deer finds the water.
I think if you’re not careful, you’ll look around right now, and it looks so dark and broken in the world. It looks like it’s out of control. And I just want to plead with you to not shrink your heart. I know that as we’re talking about the care for women and children, it feels so big and our lives are so full and they’re already so much and we feel overwhelmed already.
I just want to make the appeal that you wouldn’t shrink your heart, but either like the deer pants for water, you might seek Him, look for Him. Get yourself in the presence of the Lord. Lay down by those streams of living water. Find that pasture that’s green and lush where you can rest in His presence.
And then by the grace of God, where He’s placed you with the resources He’s given you, do all you can to be salt and light where you are.
I know of two churches, one in the D. C. area and one in the Miami area who have rallied their men and women to almost completely take care of the foster systems in their areas.
And maybe that’s something that you and your church might consider or think about, or maybe you could rally around. But I also know we had a woman in our church, actually the New York Times or Washington Post actually, wrote an article on him. We were actually, it was, it blew my mind. It was actually warm to them.
And her name’s Aubrey Schlackman and she just, in our church, we talk about this a lot and she was just so moved by the Holy Spirit. She felt like she got this vision from the Lord to start a ranch. And on that ranch, she was going to build houses for women who were pregnant and didn’t know what to do.
And specifically, women who had already had children, but were having another one and felt double trapped. And so, she had this vision. She was going to buy land. They’re going to build houses. They’re going to do job training for these women. They’re going to give them a place to live, curriculum to go through where they could heal and grow and become more and more wholehearted under the banner of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And Blue Haven Ranch was born. And over the last, really last year and a half, tons of land was donated to him. Millions of dollars. They built a greenhouse. You got these women who already have children who are now pregnant again and have no place to go, who have homes to live in.
And they’re learning job trainings and skills and their kids are being taken care of and old wounds are being healed. And you don’t have to start a ranch but wherever you are, God is uniquely wired you and placed you. What little things might you be able to do? Might we be able to do with where God’s placed us that shows we actually care about this?
Are there ways that we can get involved at advocacy centers in our area? Are there ways that we can get involved in the foster care system? As simple as. ” I want to be trained so that I can babysit the children of foster parents who can’t just let anybody babysit?” There’s hundreds of low-hanging-fruit ways for us to get involved.
But the thing I want to press on is this is near and dear to the heart of God. Because we have all been made in His image and the Church of Jesus Christ has most often pushed back the darkness and decay in our moments of history. Not through clever memeing, not through satire, and there’s a place for all of those.
But the way we’ve done it is being unapologetically for life. Specifically, the lives of little children and women. And what an opportunity we have. In the growing darkness of our day. To yet again, lean into this space that’s been so near to the heart of God and such a historic part of who we are.
You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. And I know, man, you might be a train wreck right now, man. I, listen, I pastor a church. I get it. You might think there’s no way you got any juice for this. There’s no way God would want to use you in this way. There’s no space for you. You’ve made too many mistakes.
You may be, I’m just telling you that the only people in the kingdom of God are imperfect journeymen who are on the path to sanctification. I think one of the things I’ve learned is it’s in serving in ways like this, that actually we begin to mature more quickly, that God begins to quicken our hearts to greater prayerfulness, that it begins to stir us up all the more in His love.
And so again, you know where you are, you know what you lead and who you’re connected to. What would it look like for you to prayerfully consider how to get involved? On this stuff, in the life stuff, in order to push back darkness, slow decay, and be that bright light of the kingdom of God breaking through and in the darkness of this world.
Let me pray for us. Father, you know who’s watching this. I, or listening to it in a car, or on a jog right now with my voice coming through their headphones. You also know the souls of little boys and little girls and moms who are feeling hopeless. And so, I pray, Holy Spirit, would you orchestrate a collision, a providential collision between the hopelessness of an unexpected mother and the capacity for whoever’s listening to this right now. And in that providential collision that your love and grace might spill out of the listener now onto the one in need.
And I pray it happens in a thousand different ways. Acts of kindness, hospitality, an opening of the home, a giving of resources. A commitment to follow through for a long period of time, not just throw diapers at a problem, but to have legitimate, deep relationship. I thank you that you’re not overwhelmed by this moment.
You’re not overwhelmed by the amount of work there is to be done. And in that heart, nor do we need to be overwhelmed by the amount of work. Just pray that you allow us to be faithful where we are in everyday presence, where you’ve placed us. It’s for your beautiful name, I pray. Amen.