Nepaug Bible Church - http://www.nepaugchurch.org - Pastor's Sermon Notes - http://www.nepaugchurch.org/Sermons/zz20090607.htm

THRU THE BIBLE EXPOSITION
Exodus: God's Forming The Nation Israel For His Abrahamic Covenant
Part I: God's Deliverance Of Israel From Egypt, Exodus 1:1-15:21
H. God's Glorifying Himself By Egypt's Plagues, Exodus 7:14-12:36
2. God's Proof As The Sole Reproducer Of Life By His Plague Of Frogs
(Exodus 8:1-15)
    Introduction: (To show the need . . . )

    Abortion is becoming an increasingly sensitive and divisive issue in America, and it often leads to troubling ideas (as follows):

    (1) Evidence abounds that abortion is becoming an increasingly sensitive and divisive issue (as follows):

    (a) Last Sunday, while serving as an usher in his Church in Wichita, Kansas, Doctor George Tiller was shot to death for having performed late-term abortions. ( USA TODAY, June 1, 2009, p. 1A)

    (b) Last month when President Barak Obama spoke at Notre Dame, since he backed federally-funded embryonic stem-cell research, it led to "a storm of controversy". (cnn.com, May 18, 2009).

    (c) Legal parties are divided over the 1973 Supreme Court decision to legalize abortion. Dissenting Justice Byron White "said, 'I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court's judgment.'" ( The Rebirth Of America, Arthur S. DeMoss Foundation, 1986, p. 86) However, Justice Harry Blackman, who wrote the document supporting the decision, held that though the majority noted the Hippocratic oath and Christianity opposed abortion, it countered them, the latter due to the "separation of church and state" because "'ancient religions did not bar abortion.'" (Ibid.)

    Nevertheless, "[t]hose who have studied the document in detail confess it is a mix of illogical reasoning and nonsequiturs (sic)," Ibid.

    (d) Then, the President's nominee for the Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, will be grilled by both parties on her view about Roe versus Wade, USA TODAY, June 5, 2009, p. 2A.

    (2) The the abortion issue has thus led to troubling ideas:

    (a) U. S. Senator Dianne Feinstein of the Judiciary Committee who is pressing to hear Sotomayor's view on the 1973 Roe versus Wade decision said Wednesday that prior to that ruling, "the lives of young desperate women were in jeopardy." (Ibid.) No concern was voiced on the ruling's lethal effects on myriads of the unborn!

    (b) Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, on January 25, 2009 on ABC's TV show, "This Week" claimed one way to cut costs for the states was to increase funding from the Stimulus Package for abortions to lower the number of infants who would end up on welfare! Thus, cutting costs was more important than the lives of the unborn.

    We thus ask, "As abortion becomes an ever more sensitive, divisive issue that leads to troubling ideas, what are we to do?!"

    Need: "With abortion becoming an increasingly sensitive, divisive issue that produces troubling ideas, how are we to respond?!"

  1. The theme of God's involvement in REPRODUCTION is DEEPLY ROOTED in His Exodus 8:1-15 plague of frogs on Egypt:
    1. The plague of frogs that God led Moses to produce to urge Pharaoh to let Israel leave Egypt critiqued some of Egypt's gods of (especially human) reproduction , that Pharaoh might obey God, not his gods:
      1. The Egyptians worshiped Heqet, a woman with a frog's head, symbol of reproductive life in crops and in childbirth, Russell Grigg, "The Ten Plagues of Egypt," Creation (vol. 27, no. 1), p. 34.
      2. Heqet's husband, Khnum, the ram god guardian of the Nile, was thought to mold the bodies of the unborn from the dust of the earth, and Heqet to give them the breath of life from her nostrils and help women deliver infants in birth, Bib. Kno. Com., O. T., p. 121-122.
      3. Thus, when the frogs in the plague entered all realms associated with reproduction (Exodus 8:2-4), and the Egyptians could not kill them since frogs typified divine life (Ibid., p. 121), and the frogs died and were piled high in reeking heaps (Exodus 8:13-14), God revealed that He, not Heqet, was the true God of reproduction!
    2. As God had planned and predicted, though Pharaoh initially asked Moses to reverse this miracle, ridding the land of the frogs, he later hardened his heart, and did not let Israel go, Exodus 8:7-11, 12-15.
    3. [Some evangelicals have adopted Greta Hort's idea that this plague was a natural event, not a miracle, but scientific facts counter her idea:
      1. Hort held the first plague's algae killed the fish, causing an anthrax plague that led the frogs to leave the river to die, Ibid., Grigg.
      2. Yet, "Anthrax occurs in soil . . . It does not affect aquatic animals [like] fish . . . or frogs "; it "infects mammals . . . land animals which graze on grass contaminated by anthrax . . ." Ibid., p. 36]
  2. This plague applies PROFOUNDLY to the issue of ABORTION:
    1. In CONTRAST to Egyptian belief, Genesis 2:7 reveals God, not Khnum, molded the first man from the dust of the earth, and that God, not Heqet, breathed into his nostrils the breath of life to make him alive as a living being in the "image of God," Genesis 1:26; 2:7!
    2. Then, God said man would reproduce (Gen. 1:27-28a) in His "image" (Gen. 9:6), and Psalm 139:13-18 NIV, ESV notes God, NOT Khnum and Heqet, builds and animates each human fetus in the womb:
      1. Psalm 139:16 reveals God records all the body parts of each fetus He forms in a book before He ever forms them, Psalm 139:16.
      2. In Psalm 139:13a, the Hebrew word for "reins" (KJV) ["inmost being", NIV] is kilyah, literally "kidneys," that figuratively here refers to the emotional structure. Thus, God forms the soul of the fetus in the womb, B.D.B., Heb. & Eng. Lex. of the O. T., p. 480.
      3. Psalm 139:13b says God knits the fetus' body parts together.
      4. Psalm 139:12, 15 claims God weaves soft tissues onto the fetus' skeletal structure in the complete darkness of the womb.
      5. In fact, Psalm 139:17-18a claims the thoughts God has for the fetus exceed in NUMBER the grains of sand on the seashore!
    3. Indeed, Scripture reveals GOD views every human fetus as a person when He STARTS to build him so that to ABORT ANY HUMAN FETUS is to KILL a HUMAN BEING:
      1. Psalm 51:5 reveals the fetus is a sinner as a person at conception:
        1. David admitted that "in sin did my mother conceive me." (KJV)
        2. The context dwells on David's sin, not his mother's, so he was a sinner at conception, meaning he was a person at that TIME!
      2. For this reason, Exodus 21:22-23 ruled that if any pregnant woman [in any trimester] delivered a fetus after being hit, if the fetus died, he who hit her was to die for murder, Ibid., B.K.C., O.T., p. 141!
  3. Thus, since our government has legalized abortion on demand, God wants the believer to have the following threefold Biblical response:
    1. Believers are to be subject to the government regardless of its evil law(s), for the government exists by God's will, Romans 13:1-4.
    2. Thus, believers in subjection to the government must not kill those who perform abortions since the government sanctions such an evil!
    3. However, we believers must NOT ourselves practice abortion on demand so that we might heed God over man, Acts 5:29!
Application: (1) may we trust in Christ as Savior to be justified and forgiven, even from the sin of abortion on demand, John 3:16; Col. 1:14. (2) Then, may we respect all human life as beginning at conception! (3) Finally, may we respect the government's rule and those who follow it even if they uphold evil, but heed God ourselves!

Lesson: Human fetuses are persons by God's work at conception, so abortion on demand is murder. Yet, if the government sanctions this evil, since God lets the government exist, we must not rebel against it or kill those who perform this evil, but we ourselves must not practice it.

Conclusion:

 The way we ought to respond to the ifficult abortion issue as believers was illustrated in the way Millvina Dean's father reacted to the crisis he faced on the RMS Titanic the night of April 14, 1912.

Millvina passed away last Sunday at the age of 97 as the last survivor of the sinking of the Titanic. In her life she had told how the wise, quick response of her father had led to her long life as a survivor of that great disaster, cf. "Last survivor of Titanic dies," Waterbury Republican-American, June 1, 2009, p. 6A.

This lady explained that "Some people thought the ship was unsinkable," but when her father "felt the ship scrape the iceberg," without hesitating, he "hustled the family out of its third-class quarters and toward the lifeboat that would take them to safety." (Ibid.)

Millvina added: "'That's partly what saved us -- because he was so quick.'" Later, her mother "'said good-bye to my father and he said he'd be along later. I was put into lifeboat 13. It was a bitterly cold night and eventually we were picked up by the Carpathia.'" (Ibid.)

Millvina's father knew many others would not adopt his view that the Titanic was in trouble. However, he also knew that he had no time to waste in helping his family who would heed him. Because of his decision to act regardless of the opinion of many others that the ship was perfectly safe, he saved the life of his wife, Georgette, his two-year-old son Bertram and his infant daughter Millvina. He could not get a lifeboat for himself as there were lifeboats enough only for the women and children, but he led his family to safety, doing what he knew was right against the view of the majority to the contrary. (Ibid.)

That is how we need to respond to the issue of abortion on demand. WE know it is MURDER that God will one day judge! However, just like many folk on the Titanic who thought it was an unsinkable ship on April 14, 1912, many people today think abortion on demand is an unsinkable ship before a holy God! Nevertheless, WE like Millvina Dean's father can do what he did that night 97 years ago, and opt to go against the grain of the opinion of many by choosing to do what is right! We can choose to view abortion on demand as murder while living respectfully before others around us who think otherwise, and avoid that sin!



May we thus live in wisdom and in righteousness!