I have recently come to the realization that the main reason I’ve been preaching this series of sermons dealing with the imprecatory prayers is because my love for our Lord and my hatred of evil has been increasing significantly. The closer I get to Him as I travel through this dark sin drenched world, the better able I am to see sin through His eyes and desire what He wants. I don’t know how close I am to arriving at the end of my journey, but today I can honestly say I love the Lord and hate evil. Passionately! So much so, that in addition to trying my best to let my light shine in the darkness by struggling to lead a Christ-like life, and try to persuade non-Christians to accept Christ’s love for sinners such me; He expects me to do my utmost to overcome evil with good, Romans 12:22.) The Lord tells me to: Ephesians 5:11 (ESV) ¹¹ Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. To this end I ask you folks to pray for each other and also for me that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel. Ephesians 6:19 (ESV)

I’m convinced that unless it has directly impacted their own lives, all too many of us Bible believing Christians in the United States don’t have as clear a  view as we could of how horrendous evil truly is. Of course, we’re all aware of some of it that has been occurring throughout the beautiful Green Mountains of Vermont. For example, we’re bombarded with accounts of evil on TV, the radio and in the newspapers. Who of us isn’t aware of the kidnappings, child molestations, murders and rapes, and until uncovered by the law enforcement authorities a couple of years ago, poor immigrant women and girls serving as sex slaves less than 5 miles from our church? Those are some examples of what’s been motivating me to bring vivid accounts of evil to your attention in these recent sermons regardless of the discomfort I knew some of you would no doubt experience. Thanks for sticking with me and hanging in there.

I appreciate the helpful thoughts some of you shared with me after my last sermon, including those from the person who was obviously upset when I referred to abortion as being legalized murder. Putting my remark in context I was quoting David Chilton who asked: “What should the church do about the modern form of human sacrifice, the daily abomination known as abortion? If our central response is social or political action, we are, in principal, atheists; we are confessing our faith in human action as the ultimate determiner of history. True, we should work for the criminalization of abortion; the murders should receive capital punishment.” (Exodus 21:22-25)

Exodus 21:22-25 (ESV) ²² “When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. ²³ But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life ²⁴ eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, ²⁵ burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

Chilton continues: “We must also work to save the lives of the innocent and defenseless. But our fundamental actions should be governmental and liturgical. Church officers should pronounce judgments upon abortionists-naming outstanding Pro-Death advocates, judges, doctors and publishers.”

You and I and our fellow Christians must do our part in overcoming evil in the world we live in. I doubt if we pray as frequently and as passionately against Satan and his human slaves as we could and should. I don’t want you or me or any of our loved ones to be around and witness the Lord motivating us Christians in this country to finally wake up and take Him and evil seriously. For example, who can say with absolute certainty that He won’t remove His restraining influence upon some of Satan’s most devoted followers who are living in the United States of America, and unleash them on all of us? The resulting grief, suffering and pain Americans will experience will make 9/11 seen as though it was a child’s fairy tale in comparison.  Judging from some of the comments posted in my Guest Book, I know there are others who share my concern for our country. For example:

“People of God don’t understand the situation we are in at the moment. Satan has his hand in everything and has a very strong hold. If you say the word God you are put down, and people who have or state they have a strong relationship with the Lord are saying things like, ‘God damn the United States,’ or telling people abortion is an okay thing and that it’s up to the person. We are at war with evil and if we don’t open our eyes we are in for a long period of suffering,” Ed McGrath. “I also am broken hearted that in the United States of America it is legal to brutally murder unborn babies. We live in a selfish, self-serving society that turns its back on God,” Guy Rossi. “I can see where these sermons might disturb some but it is only because it’s not what their itching ears want to hear. There is evil all around us and it is destroying our nation. Too many so called Christian people are turning their backs on biblical truth and falling into Satan’s trap.” “… America’s biggest threat today is its own people. We are destroying our own nation by allowing Satan and his children to run the schools and government in this country. I have to ask myself, why God should bless America when most Americans have turned their backs on Him,” Mike, Jr.

Our Creator has revealed everything we human beings need to know about unborn babies through divinely inspired words such as the following. For example, consider that godly woman Elizabeth.

Luke 1:5-7 (ESV) ⁵ In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah. And he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. ⁶ And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord.  ⁷ But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years.

Luke 1:13-14 (ESV) ¹³ But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John. ¹⁴ And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth,

Luke 1:24-25 (ESV) ²⁴ After these days his wife Elizabeth conceived, and for five months she kept herself hidden, saying, ²⁵ “Thus the Lord has done for me in the days when he looked on me, to take away my reproach among people.”

Luke 1:41-44 (ESV) ⁴¹ And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, ⁴² and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! ⁴³ And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? ⁴⁴ For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.

Did you notice that Elizabeth did not refer to what is taking place inside her womb as being a part of her body but rather that it was a baby boy” She didn’t say that a certain part of her body somehow managed to hear Mary’s voice and leaped for joy, did she? In this series of sermons on the Imprecatory Prayers I’ve been calling to your attention the fact that the Lord referred to King David as being a man after His own heart, ( 1 Samuel 13:14; Acts 13.22  ). But that certainly couldn’t mean that David lived a sinless life. We’re familiar with David’s acknowledgment of the great sin he committed with a beautiful married woman named Bathsheba. The Lord sent Nathan the Prophet to confront David about the evil he was engaged in, ( 2 Samuel 12:12 ). So convicted was David that he went to the Lord pleading for mercy.

Psalm 51:1-5 (ESV) ¹ Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. ² Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin! ³ For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. ⁴ Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. ⁵ Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.

Wayne Grudem in his excellent work, Politics and the Bible, writes, “David thinks back to the time of his birth and says that he was “broth forth” from his mother’s womb as a sinner. In fact his sinfulness as a person extended back even to his birth, for David, under the direction of the Holy Spirit says, “In sin did my mother conceive me . He is not talking about his mother’s sin in any of the preceding verses, but is talking about the depth of his own sinfulness as a human being. Therefore, in this verse he is talking about himself as well. He is saying that from the moment of conception he had a sinful nature. This means that he thought of himself as a distinct human being, a distinct person, from the moment of conception. David also thinks of himself as a person while he is growing in his mother’s womb,” (B) Psalm 139:13-14 (ESV) ¹³ For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. ¹⁴ I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.

Another example is found in the case godly woman named Rebecca whose husband was a man named Isaac. Genesis 25:19-24 (ESV) ¹⁹ These are the generations of Isaac, Abraham’s son: Abraham fathered Isaac, ²⁰ and Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel the Aramean of Paddan-aram, the sister of Laban the Aramean, to be his wife. ²¹ And Isaac prayed to the LORD for his wife, because she was barren. And the LORD granted his prayer, and Rebekah his wife conceived. ²² The children struggled together within her, and she said, “If it is thus, why is this happening to me?” So she went to inquire of the LORD.  ²³ And the LORD said to her, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the older shall serve the younger.” ²⁴ When her days to give birth were completed, behold, there were twins in her womb.

Let’s return now and take another look at those Exodus verses I cited earlier.

Exodus 21:22-25 (ESV) ²² “When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. ²³ But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, ²⁴ eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, ²⁵ burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

I would be very concerned about my ability to communicate spiritual truth to you folks if any of you haven’t been able to connect all the dots I just brought to your attention. I wish I could say the same for our professed “Christian” pro-choice President Barak Obama who is adamantly supportive of Roe vs. Wade. In defense of Row vs. Wade, Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote “A woman’s right to choose an abortion is something central to a woman’s life, to her dignity… And when Government controls that decision for her, she’s being treated as less than a full adult human being responsible for her own choices.”

What she is actually saying is that a woman’s right to choose to butcher her unborn child is something central to a woman’s life, to her dignity. And when Government controls that decision for her, she’s being treated as less than a full adult human being responsible for her own choices. I find it interesting that folks who are in favor of giving women the right to kill their unborn baby have already been born just as Ronald Raegan once said. During lunch with a couple of friends this past week, one of them was relieved when I said I wasn’t going to quote any Bible verses about bashing little kids against the rocks in today’s sermon. Instead, I planned to speak about going right into a woman womb and plucking the baby out and then tossing it into a garbage bin. Or inducing labor feet first as far as the little child’s neck, and then jamming a pair of scissors into the child’s skull, inserting a tube into it and sucking the tiny boy or girls brains out so that the child’s head collapses like a burst balloon; and then yank the rest of the little body out and getting rid of it as though it was some kind of malignant growth. So protective is President Obama of preserving a woman’s right to choose to commit this barbaric act that he once cautioned his colleagues in the Illinois legislature about recognizing the unborn child as a person because to do so would lead to the overthrow Roe Vs Wade.

In his insightful article, “Thorns And Thistles” in the Sept. 25, 2010 issue of WORLD, Marvin Olasky, writes, we … minimize the results of Adam’s fall when we say the pro-Life movement has failed because abortion is still legal. Back in 1970 reasonable prognosticators were predicting that by this year the United States would have 4 million abortions annually. They did not anticipate the growth and perseverance of the pro-Life movement; the actual butcher’s bill is probably 1.2 million, still a terrible number, but 70 percent less horrible than the forecast.

Think about that. That’s more human beings than the entire population of the State of Vermont. In America those tiny defenseless babies happened to be living on the wrong side of the womb, and our government continues to sanction their annihilation! You and I ought to ask ourselves: “Am I doing everything I can to put an end to this carnage. Could you look Jesus in the eye and tell Him you are? Each of us ought to judge our own hearts. I have and I’m ashamed to say that I haven’t done everything I possibly could and should have. Of course, whenever we are able to, my wife and I make donations to Christ centered Pro-Life ministry such as Care Net. This wonderful Christian non-profit agency offers free compassionate support and assistance to anyone facing a pregnancy. They even offer a Recovery Program designed to effectively address the needs of women who have been demonically deceived into believing the child living in her womb wasn’t a tiny baby being knitted together by the Lord. It’s sort of like our Harvest Time Community Fellowship, but they focus on dealing with the negative side effects from a past abortion.

Writing in the January 30, 2010 issue of WORLD, Anne Hendershott wrote: “As a pro-life Roman Catholic who taught for years in a Catholic college, I have been concerned about the role that Catholic college graduates play in defeating pro-life initiatives in Congress. I wondered whether the graduates of evangelical colleges and universities showed similar voting behaviors,” “Faithful Catholics were dismayed when nine of the other Catholic graduates in the senate joined [Sen. Richard] Durban in voting to have the United States fund abortions overseas.” Those favoring such funding, included Georgetown grad, Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. “And, in the debate over healthcare, the majority of Catholic lawmakers pushed for federal funding of abortions-even though Catholic bishops were overwhelmingly opposed. Most of the pro-life votes came from conservative Protestant senators. As a Catholic, I’m embarrassed and chagrined.”

Gruden makes mention of the fact that : “Some objections may be raised against the idea that the preborn child should be treated as a person from the moment of conception. One objection is that the preborn child is unable to talk or interact with other people or perform moral actions. In addition it is unable to survive without its mother. But these factors do not mean that the preborn child is not a person. For instance, a newborn is still unable to talk or perform moral actions. This is also true for a person in a coma due to a serious accident. Moreover, a newborn infant is surely unable to survive without its mother. (In fact, some people would say that most junior high students are unable to survive without their mother!)”

“Another objection concerns preborn children who are to have birth defects. Should parents have the right to abort such children, thus saving themselves much hardship and saving the child from a life of suffering? But the relevant question here is: Would we think it right to put such a child to death after it is born? Gruden goes on to cite [author] Randy Alcorn who quotes an example of a medical school professor who told about the following case study and asked students what they would do.” “The father had syphilis and the mother had tuberculosis. Of four previous children, the first was blind, the second died, the third was born deaf and dumb, and the fourth had tuberculosis. What would you advise the woman to do when she finds she is pregnant again? One student answered, “I would advise an abortion.” Then the professor said, “Congratulations …. You have just killed Beethoven.”

“How about pregnancy’s resulting from rape or incest, or perhaps in order to save the mother’s life; would it ever be morally permissible? “Would we think it right to kill a baby conceived through rape or incest after it is born? The rape that occurred is not the fault of the child, and the child should not be put to death because of someone else’s crime. Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each shall be put to death for his own sin” (Deut. 24:16; compare Ezek. 18:20). “If a child has been conceived through rape or incest, we must recognize the genuine pain and hardship experienced by the mother, who is involuntary pregnant and perhaps pregnant at a very young age. Christians who know of such situations should be ready to give encouragement and support in many ways.” I also agree with Gruden who is of the opinion that in those extremely rare cases where the choice must be made whether to save the life of the mother or that of her unborn child, Gruden explains that, “directly intending to save the life of the mother, not from directly intending to take the child’s life is morally permissible. (D)

Let’s bow our heads.

Father, I hope this message was pleasing to You and that You will use it to draw many non-Christians to the only hope there is for removing the horrible scourge of legalized murder from America. Using whatever means You alone know precisely what is necessary to convict our legislators and those in the abortion industry of the depravity of their hearts, and powerfully incline each of them to ask You to forgive them through the atoning sacrifice of your only begotten Son, my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Encourage my brothers and sisters in Christ within the Roman Catholic Church to pray often and fervently for their religious leaders. Incline them to ask You to give those men in authority the strength and courage to take drastic action such as immediate excommunication and/or obtaining an illegal trespassing order barring those pro-death people from setting a foot on church property. Speak tenderly to those hurting Catholics in the pews so that they will each know without a doubt how they can please You in this divinely ordained challenge. And Father, please, please do the same to the rest of your children in America, and I beg you to do this before Election Day.

As for the women and girls who were themselves victims of the abortion industry and who have come to deeply regret having aborted their tiny girls and boys; I’m reminded of those memorable words of your Son who once cried out this heartfelt plea to You, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Incline those hurting women and girls to accept your forgiveness and please help them to forgive themselves.”

Finally, Father, forgive me for all those times I haven’t done my very best to protect the lives of those tiny boys and girls you were knitting together in their mother’s womb. I ask You to grant these petitions in the name of Your Son, my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

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(A) PARADISE RESTORED by David Chilton, © 1985 by Reconstruction Press, P. O. Box 7999, Tyler, Texas 75711.

(B)  POLITICS ACCORDING TO THE BIBLE, © 2010 by Wayne A. Grudem, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530, p. 158.

(C)  Ibid. p, 163.

(D) Ibid. p. 164.