Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri

portion of your scriptures. Help us, Father, now to look at it briefly and to consider more of who you are and what your requirements of us are. Help us, Father, to be moved by these scriptures to be a light of righteousness in the land, shining light among the nations.

Martin Luther, a great man of the Reformation, said the following: “If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved. And to be steady on all the battlefield besides is mere flight and disgrace. If he flinches at that point…”

If our proclamation of the gospel of our savior stops short of confronting the point of our culture personally and socially where confrontation is inevitable, we have failed to preach the gospel.

The psalmist in Psalm 10 does not hesitate to apply the eternal truths of God to a contemporary injustice plaguing this land. And we meet this morning to consider the implications of this particular portion of God’s holy and inspired word. Like the psalmist, we find ourselves in a nation in which the wicked persecute the defenseless. Because the Supreme Court of the United States of America failed to provide a biblical answer to the murder of a single preborn baby 15 years ago, literally millions of babies have been denied justice.

They have fallen into the murderous hands of the wicked. And because God’s ordained authority of civil justice has turned its back on the defenseless, the carnage has continued virtually unabated, and the wicked remains firmly entrenched in his belief that God will not require an accounting for these evil deeds.

But while it’s certainly appropriate and necessary to point to the massive responsibility that the Supreme Court and the elected officials of this state and nation play in this American holocaust, I believe that the passage of scripture which we have just read should be examined first for what it tells us—how it instructs the church of Jesus Christ and us as individuals to respond to the horror in our land.

Our topic this morning then is a biblical response to Roe v. Wade. We read in 1 Peter 4 as well as in many other scriptures that judgment begins with the house of God. Now that simple statement from scripture points out the tremendous responsibilities of the church in relationship to the evil of abortion in our land.

The church’s preeminence in receiving God’s chastening hand is predicated on the church’s preeminence in responsibility to curb evil in the land. The church, and only the church, can effectively proclaim the biblical standard for our society. And when the church fails to do that, the culture slowly rots away.

Now, it’s a common idolatry of our times that turns to civil governments for the answer to evil and unrighteousness in our land. Now listen very carefully to this: As much as this church supports political action and the need to address the political arena of life from a biblical perspective and from a biblical mandate, you must understand that the civil government is really and truly just one government among many and a very limited one at that.

The Supreme Court would never have given the opinion that it did in the momentous Roe v. Wade case had not the religious underpinnings of our society been washed away long before.

Now, Judge Beers several years ago gave me a copy of the Roe decision and he said it’d be profitable for people to read that decision occasionally. It’s a little long, but it is profitable. The specific statute in Texas that was overturned or made known by Roe v. Wade had been in place from roughly 1854 in pretty much the same form.

I’m going to read you a portion of that particular statute. It says that any person—well, it says basically a person shall not commit abortion, that a physician cannot put to death an unborn fetus, and then it goes on to say that the person who does so shall be confined to the penitentiary not less than two nor more than five years. If it be done without the woman’s consent, the punishment shall be doubled.

Okay. Now, in Justice Blackmun’s opinion in Roe v. Wade, he cites that case, of course. Then he cites various arguments that Texas made in their appeal to the Supreme Court to keep their law in place. One of the bases for Texas’s appeal was that the unborn baby was a person and therefore had Fourteenth Amendment rights. Commenting on that, Justice Blackmun said the following:

“When Texas urged that a fetus is entitled to Fourteenth Amendment protection as a person, it faces a dilemma. Neither in Texas nor in any other state are all abortions prohibited. Despite broad proscription, an exception always exists. The exception contained in article 1196 for an abortion procured or attempted by medical advice for the purpose of saving the life of the mother is typical. But if the fetus is a person who is not to be deprived of life without due process of law, and if the mother’s condition is the sole determinant, does not the Texas exception appear to be out of line with the amendment’s command?”

“There are other considerations between Fourteenth Amendment status and the typical abortion statute. It has already been demonstrated and pointed out in this ruling. He’s saying that in Texas, the woman is not a principal or an accomplice with respect to an abortion upon her. And what he’s saying is that the woman was never prosecuted. The abortionist was specifically, as in statute. If the fetus is a person, why is the woman not a principal or an accomplice?”

“Further, the penalty for criminal abortion specified by article 1195 is significantly less than the maximum penalty for murder prescribed by article 1257 of the Texas Penal Code. If the fetus is a person, may the penalties be different?”

Well, that’s a real good point, isn’t it? Justice Blackmun said that the state of Texas was hypocritical in asserting the essence. He said here is hypocritical in asserting that the unborn baby is a person. It doesn’t believe it. And the fact that the state of Texas didn’t believe it was evident from the statutes. And I remind you, as I said, those statutes have been in place in roughly the same form since 1854.

That means that since at least 1854 in the state of Texas, it was okay to murder a baby in the mother’s womb. And if the mother went and procured somebody to accomplish that murder, she was not prosecuted by the state for well over 120 years roughly before the Roe v. Wade decision.

Roe v. Wade only put into practice what had already been the practice of the people and of the states up to that time by and large. Now it’s certainly opened the floodgates and there’s certainly been a tremendous increase in abortions since that time. The point I’m trying to make is that Roe v. Wade isn’t our problem. The problem was the state of Texas for 120 years prior to that didn’t have a biblical basis for their statute code.

The civil government reflects the religion of the people. The religion of the people didn’t provide protection for the unborn babies in the mother’s womb that God’s law would require. Justice Blackmun noted that inconsistency and used it in his determination of the illegitimacy of the Texas case.

Now if we—what that means is that if we fight the battle there in the civil court and the civil government arena exclusively and only there, we will never succeed. Fight the battle primarily in the civil arena, in civil court, in civil government and you’ll never succeed. Judgment begins with the house of God. And implicit in that statement is the fact that restoration then must first begin with the house of God as well.

Now, here’s where the answer must start. Here’s where the problem started—a declension of the faith, a failure to apply the Bible in civil statutes relative to the murder of unborn children. The problem started there. The solution, the restoration, must start with the church as well—the proclamation of God’s righteous standard.

Now, here we are 15 years after Roe v. Wade, and we’re also seven years after we elected and put into office a president that was absolutely committed to ending abortions. Where are we? Even after President Reagan’s next appointment takes his place in the Supreme Court, does anybody here honestly expect abortions to end as a result of that placement on the Supreme Court?

Of course not. Anybody who understands what’s going on there understands that the best possible scenario, the absolute best possible scenario, is the Supreme Court to kick it back to the states. And what do you think the state of Oregon is going to do? Outlaw abortions as soon as that is accomplished? No way.

Where we are 15 years after Roe v. Wade and after 15 years of attempted political action by various groups to overturn that ruling is really in a state of loss of effectiveness in the anti-abortion fight. The civil government was not the beginning of the evil of abortion and the civil government won’t be the end of the crime of abortion. It didn’t bear first responsibility for the evil and it must not be seen as primary in our efforts to eliminate the abortion either.

Institutionally the church must bear the responsibility for the evil and it must also institutionally lead the way back to wholeness. The church’s preeminence is taught throughout the scriptures. I wish to remind us today then of three specific areas which I believe are essential to accomplishing the restoration that will be necessary if God’s full judgment is to be spared this country.

These three areas the church must move forward into are, I believe, as I said, absolutely essential and necessary to stem the tide of murder of unborn children in our land. I would like us all to look at these three elements this morning then and to walk away from here committed to doing something about them—committed to move in the area that this psalm addresses.

Now, this psalm says first of all that there should be a concern for the fatherless in our land. So, the first aspect the church must reclaim is an understanding of the biblical mandate for compassion and protection of the fatherless.

The emphasis in the passage of scripture that we read just a couple of minutes ago was upon the fatherless or orphan. Now, in James 1:27, the same thing is told of the church: “that pure religion undefiled before God is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction.”

Now that’s somewhat passé today. Many people say we don’t have orphans. We can’t really practice that all that well. There are no orphanages left. And so what are we going to do about this particular admonition from scripture which is quite important? Where are the orphans today?

Well, to answer this question, we must first understand what an orphan was according to the scriptures. It’s interesting that if you have a newer translation, instead of “fatherless” as in the King James translation, you may well have the word “orphan.” You may wonder why it was translated “fatherless” by the King James translators and other translators as well. The Hebrew word itself does not carry any notation of specifically not having a father. It is more a word indicating desolateness or aloneness.

But there are various scriptures that point out that an orphan wasn’t somebody with a lack of both parents. For instance, in Exodus 22:24 God says that his wrath shall wax hot and I will kill you with the sword. This is part of the curses of God for disobedience. “I will kill you with the sword. Your wives shall be widows and your children fatherless.”

So the picture there is that God’s going to bring his wrath against the covenant head of the household, the father. As a result of that activity, his wife will be a widow and his children will be orphaned or fatherless, which is the King James translation for that word. An orphan in this sense then was somebody with a mother but without a father.

This is repeated in Job 24:9: “they pluck the fatherless from the breast and take a pledge of the poor.” Well, obviously here there’s a reference to the fatherless having a mother—the orphan having a mother. So, in biblical terms, the orphan was somebody without a father, but perhaps having a mother.

Lamentations 5:3 says, “We are orphans and fatherless. Our mothers are as widows.” And there’s another verse that shows that orphans are those without fathers but many times having mothers.

What this means is that those people who are in the sense of the scriptures who are neither guarded nor nurtured by their parents, and particularly by the covenant head, the father, are called fatherless in the scriptures or orphans.

By the way, this emphasis upon the covenant headship of the father here also carries with it tremendous implications for the abortion intervention work that we perform. As much as the mother is certainly responsible to protect the child that’s in her womb, yet the father has the greater responsibility, and the father of an aborted child will be judged more severely and harshly by God. He has greater responsibility. He has greater accountability and he’ll suffer a greater judgment from God for his failure to guard those members of the covenant that he is head over, which includes his children.

One very specific way that we might think about in terms of reinstituting God’s order in the family in this particular problem is to insist that marriages be accompanied by a legally binding contract entered into by both husband and wife that declares that any decision relative to the offspring of the union must have the consent of both marriage partners.

Now what I mean by that is that if we understand that the father is essential as a covenant head of the family and these scriptures point it out, that one of the things we should begin to do in churches is to insist that marriage be accompanied by a prenuptial agreement that says that the wife cannot abort that child apart from the decision of the father.

Now that may well be thrown out of court. Many such agreements have been. But it’s a correct step for the church to take—to begin to bring the fathers into the responsibility and show them responsible in terms of the products of conception, the babies involved.

Additionally, our abortion intervention work should not then primarily focus upon the mothers. We should go to where God says the covenant head of the family is—which is the man—and insist that he take means to protect and guard those members of his family.

So an orphan then according to the scriptures is somebody without a father and the father’s responsibilities to the wife, as we’ve seen for the last few weeks, and then through on into the family were twofold: to guard and to nourish. And so an orphan according to the scriptures is somebody who doesn’t have a father, who doesn’t have a protector, and who doesn’t have somebody to nourish him and to feed him.

Okay, that’s an orphan according to the scriptures.

Now, if that’s what it is and if God says we’re to have compassion and we’re to actively seek justice for the orphan or the fatherless, then we may say that in some application, the Christian parents who fail to note the qualifier in the Ephesians passage that tells us to bring up our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord are on the road to orphaning their children.

You see, that passage says to bring them up in nurture and admonition of the Lord. Of the Lord qualifies the nurture and admonition that parents are to provide for their children. And what that means is that if you don’t nurture them and admonish them according to the Lord’s directives, that you’re not giving them protection and you’re not giving them nourishment that God tells us to give them. And so, in a sense, your own children are being orphaned by you when you fail to protect them in that way.

Those Christian children whose parents do not guard them against the evil influences of public schools—and I can think, by the way, of almost nothing more inherently yet deceptively evil than teaching the irrelevance of God and of his written revelation to the thought patterns and knowledge of a society. Those children whose parents send them to public schools where they’re taught the irrelevance of God to those areas of thought and life are being orphaned in a sense also.

Now, we’ve talked a lot about public schools. You have to know that there was a survey taken not that long ago put by vocational groups—people that sent their children to private schools as opposed to public schools. In other words, they said, “How many doctors? How many physicians?” The number one vocational group that sends their children to private schools as opposed to public schools are public school teachers. They know what’s going on.

The worst group with the worst track record that have most kids in public school and don’t hardly ever make use of Christian private schools are pastors. Pastors. You see why we’re in the problem we’re in? The pastors themselves have orphaned their own children by abandoning them to the public schools. This is one example of what an implication of the orphan principles in the scriptures are.

But the most blatant and the one that we want to concern ourselves with primarily this morning—the most blatant and obvious full-blown places of the fatherless in our land today—are those poor, defenseless children who find themselves in the abortionist clinic while yet in their mother’s womb.

That womb, you remember, is very carefully crafted by God to be a place of guarding the inhabitant of that womb from harm and being hurt and also a place of tremendous nourishment for the child. See, that’s the perfect environment that God has made for that child. Well, that child whose parents then abandon those children inside the womb to the abortionist scalpel is then truly and blatantly left fatherless, left orphaned by those parents.

The orphans are those boys and girls whose parents have abandoned them to the executioner’s evil deeds, whose parents have weighed the children God have given them on the scales against idols of convenience, cheap sex, money and careers and discarded their offspring on the abortionist garbage heap.

You know, God describes his covenant people themselves in Ezekiel 16 as just such an abandoned dying orphan left for dead by its parents while still in the birth fluids that it was born in. We were orphaned, is what Ezekiel 16 says. And God graciously extended his life-giving hand to us.

Jesus in John 14:18 says, “I will not leave you comfortless. I will come to you.” And that word comfortless there is orphanos, which is the same word in James that talks about orphans. Jesus says, “He won’t leave us orphaned, without protection, without nourishment.” He provides that for us.

God gives his life-giving hand to us. And he then demands that we extend that same life-giving assistance to those in our land who are orphaned in whatever way by their parents.

Orphans are a biblical concern then, not because we see them and our heart melts for unborn children who are being killed by their parents, not because of the pictures we see, but we have a concern for the orphans because God’s word says that he has a love for those fatherless. And we’re commanded then, regardless of our emotional reactions pro or con to unborn children—whether or not we feel anything about it—we have a command by God to have concern and compassion and working compassion for those fatherless in our land.

Christians then in our land and we as individuals here are responsible to teach the people that we come in contact with in the world the requirement that God places upon us to show love and concern and working compassion to the fatherless. And Christians have a very real and specific requirement to plead then and work for the cause of the orphans themselves.

That’s number one. But beyond this duty, we’re also to be a people characterized by an understanding of God’s justice or righteousness. These verses are a prayer that we’ve just read, but they’re a special kind of prayer—an imprecatory prayer.

We have to add to our concern for compassion God’s methods for helping those who are fatherless and orphaned in our land. And the second thing the church must reclaim to turn back the evil of abortion in our land is the notion of imprecatory prayer.

Prayer is a biblical response to Roe v. Wade.

Now, an imprecatory prayer is one in which the judgment of God is called for, one in which God’s implications or curses are prayed for by the psalmist here under the inspiration of the God who will answer the prayer with his wrath against evildoers.

Now, the psalms themselves are a book of inspired hymns and prayers. And God wants us to sing these psalms and to pray these prayers in our corporate worship services. He wants us to understand and be motivated by his justice and righteousness. He wants us to pray that those who would oppress the fatherless, who would murder the unborn orphans, would either repent or be destroyed by God.

He tells us that abortion is murder and that the murderers—mothers, fathers, and abortionists—are under his wrath and condemnation, and that we are to plead the cause of the unborn by this inspired method of imploring God to break the arm of the wicked that they might perish out of the land.

Imprecatory prayers and imprecatory psalms are seen in the scriptures relative primarily to two specific problems. One: threats to the church specifically. When the ungodly attack the church, imprecation is one of the tools that God’s church has to defend herself. And secondly, as this psalm shows us, when the unrighteous attack the defenseless in the nation—the unborn, orphans, fatherless, the poor, the vulnerable people of our society—the church is to respond biblically with imprecation.

And we’re responsible, each one of us individually, to instruct our fellow Christians in the proper use of imprecatory songs, the proper use in our worship services for prayers and songs of imprecation against the decision makers at the abortionist clinic, to mothers and fathers to deliver up their children to the scalding, cutting, ripping horror of the abortionist death chamber.

And we’re to do this. We’re to pray these imprecatory prayers and teach others to as well. Not because of our own personal anger or sense of injustice. Not because we get insulted at an anti-abortion rally. Not because we get arrested at a sit-in. Nor because abortion offends our sensibilities. But because the justice of Almighty God is the standard by which these murderers must be judged.

I said earlier the church must proclaim God’s standard. And that’s certainly true in relationship to the truth of life in the womb and God’s creation of life. But the standard which we proclaim is also a ringing indictment against those that violate it. It has inherent in it then, this standard, an aspect of deterrence.

Deterrence is a biblical concept. In Deuteronomy 17:12 and 13 we are told to execute a man guilty of contumacy or flagrant contempt of court, which would by implication be seen as treason against God’s authority. Those verses read the following:

“And the man who acts presumptuously will hear and be afraid and will not act presumptuously again. Then all the people will hear and be afraid and will not act presumptuously again.”

The point is that when those people are executed, it is according to God’s plan clearly stated here in Deuteronomy 17:13 for the purpose of causing fear in people who see the execution so that they would be deterred from evil actions.

Part of the process then of purging evil from our land is to cause fear to come upon potential evildoers which will move them to restraint or will deter them from evil.

Now note here in Psalm 10, this fear is absolutely gone from the heart of the wicked. Verse 13 says, “Why does the wicked spurn God and practice evil? Why? Because he said in his heart that God will not require it.”

Why does abortion rage in our land? If there’s parallels here, the abortionist says that God has gone to sleep, will not judge him. There’s no fear of God before his eyes. Why is there no fear? Is God asleep? God doesn’t sleep. Church asleep.

The church of Jesus Christ has been asleep. The church of Jesus Christ hasn’t proclaimed the standard of life. The church of Jesus Christ has not proclaimed the standard of God’s justice. The church of Jesus Christ has failed to act and to pray and to pray for God’s cursing upon the wicked in our land who murder innocent children.

And so as a result, the wicked has no thought of God’s justice and no standard put up to him that God will judge his evil deeds.

The church needs to sound the trumpet of God’s judgment.

Now we put an ad in the Oregonian yesterday about this service. We don’t want to offend people with that ad. We wrote it so that it shouldn’t offend people. But we did include a verse or two out of Psalm 10 asking God to break the arm of the wicked.

Why do we do that? Why we place an ad in the Oregonian about a service of malediction? It’s not a popular thing to do. It won’t get us any votes with people necessarily. It isn’t maybe smart politically in terms of building a political base, but we’ve got to remember that we’re a church and we’re not primarily a political action committee. We’re not a society of nice democratic principles. We’re a church that is to proclaim God’s standard.

We have a responsibility to proclaim that standard to the world around us. One of the reasons for taking out the ad in the Oregonian was to in some very small and perhaps minuscule way begin the proclamation publicly that God will require justice. He will require that his wrath be upon those people that perform evil deeds in our land. They need to hear that. That’s what I’m saying.

I remember when we used to put out a good report originally and we were trying to think whether or not we should send it to certain people and I remember Howard L. used to say, “Well, it’s like medicine. Maybe they don’t want to see it, but if it comes and we know they’re going to read it, they may not like it. They may not contribute to it. But they need to take the medicine.”

Well, that’s like that ad in the Oregonian. The world needs that medicine. It needs us to blow the trumpet of God’s judgment.

And we mentioned the movie The Outlaw Josey Wales several times. The man portraying the preacher in that movie prays a prayer of imprecation against evildoers who come up when he’s preaching in church outside the door of the church and start to trouble the church inside. He comes out, tries to reason with them. They have nothing to do with it—they don’t want anything to do with that. They make fun of him. They make fun of God in the church and he then begins to pray and ask for God’s judgment upon them.

Well, that’s a good biblical picture of what’s taught here in these Psalms and elsewhere in the scriptures.

The church no longer sounds the warnings of judgment of God and no longer prays imprecatorily and the evil increases. Men forget God because we don’t show them God through our actions. Each one of us has a responsibility to tell whatever sphere of influence that God has placed us in, to tell those people that God will require justice, that the murder of the innocent is a stench in his nostrils, and he will move in judgment against the wicked, to break their arms, to eliminate them from the land, to move against them temporally in justice and judgment.

But finally, we must remember that judgment does indeed begin at the house of God. To pray for God’s wrath against the abortionist and not to deal with the abortionists in our churches would be the height of hypocrisy. And so the third area that the church needs to reclaim and that we need to individually move upon is the establishment of church courts.

We must reestablish the church courts spoken of in Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians. While the civil government will not in the near future meet its responsibilities to wield the sword of capital punishment against murderers, we must be diligent to wield the church’s sword of excommunication. We must be diligent in casting out of the visible body of Christ all those in our churches that advocate, practice, or help others to practice the killing of preborn infants regardless of rape or incest. If it’s life, it’s life and it must be protected.

The church must reassert its judicial authority against any and all who support or in any way encourage the murder of preborn children.

We must individually in this congregation pressure—and that’s the word I want to use, pressure—talk to people, convince them biblically and press them in their own churches. If we know pastors, pressure those pastors. If we know people that go to other churches, pressure those people. Instruct them from the scriptures the necessity of doing these things.

We must pressure these people, instruct them and persuade them from the scriptures that go to other churches to put into their covenant statements or into their membership forms a strong statement against abortion and then to move in other churches to judicially enforce those provisions.

If we can’t clean God’s house in this way, then the world will remain a very filthy place indeed.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn in an acceptance speech for a reward several years ago wrote that men have forgotten God. They have forgotten God. They have—they are like the wicked in Psalm 10. And part of reestablishing a presence of God in the community is to pray for imprecation against evildoers and is to visibly establish church courts and to make those public courts so that people would know that the church is serious about proclaiming the standard of God’s righteousness and justice.

If we’re unable in our churches to plead the cause of the fatherless, to ask for God’s wrath against the practitioners of abortion and instruct the civil government that refusal to obey its responsibility to protect the orphaned unborn will bring God’s judgment upon the nation, if we’re unwilling to sing the inspired psalms that God has given us to ask for his judgment against the wicked, and if we’re unwilling and unable to clean our own houses first, we’ll not see this land cleansed of the evil of this form of murder and will not be able to save the children being killed at the abortionist clinic even today.

We will instead ensure that we are the first ones that will receive the curses spoken of in this passage.

But if we as the body of Christ are faithful in these tasks, then we may well see the day when children are safe in hospitals and clinics once more and when, in the words of Psalm 10, the man of the earth may no more oppress. That should be our goal as we move to reestablish a concern for the fatherless in imprecatory prayers and psalms and in church courts in our land and in our spheres of influence.

Let’s pray. Almighty God, we thank you for Psalm 10. We thank you, Father. We find there revealed that you’re a God of justice and righteousness and a God who wants his people to mirror that justice and righteousness and compassion for the unborn, to proclaim the standard to those people that flout your laws and break them and kill other people.

Help us, Father, to recognize that you desire an accounting of our heads if we fail to warn the evildoer of the results of that evil, of your judgment. Father, we know that your scriptures tell us that if we fail to warn him, then his blood is upon our heads.

Help us, Father, individually and corporately and in the church institutionally as well, in this city and in this state to move to show compassion to the fatherless, to move toward the establishment of imprecatory services and to sing your imprecatory psalms and to pray the prayer that you would bring judgment against evildoers in our land.

And help us, Father, to establish and to encourage other churches to establish church courts that would clean out the murderers that are in so many churches in our city and state today. Help us, Father, as a church. Give us the grace, the Holy Spirit, that we would walk in obedience to what you require of us in Psalm 10. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

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Brethren, in the early church, there was a godly discipline that such persons that stood convicted of notorious sin were put to public repentance and punished in this world that their souls might be saved in the day of the Lord, and that others, admonished by their example, might be the more afraid to offend.

But that discipline is sadly lacking in our day and until such discipline is restored again, which is much to be desired, it is thought good that at this time should be read the general sentences of God’s cursing against impenitent sinners gathered out of the 27th chapter of Deuteronomy and other places of scripture and that you should answer to every sentence “Amen,” to the intent of being admonished to the great indignation of God against sinners, that you may be rather moved to earnest and true repentance and may walk more wearily in these dangerous days fleeing from such vices for which you affirm with your own mouths the curses of God to be due.

Cursed is the man that maketh any carved or molten image to worship it.

Cursed is he that curses his father or mother.

Cursed is he that removes his neighbor’s landmark.

Cursed is he that makes the blind to go out of his way.

Cursed is he that perverts the judgment of the stranger, the fatherless, and widow.

Cursed is he that smites his neighbor secretly.

Cursed is he that lies with his neighbor’s wife.

Cursed is he that takes a reward to slay the innocent.

Cursed is he that puts his trust in man and takes man for his defense and in his heart goes from the Lord.

Cursed are the unmerciful, fornicators and adulterers, covetous persons, slanderers, drunkards, and extortioners.

Now, seeing that all who err and go astray from the commandments of God are accursed, let us return unto the Lord our God with all contrition and meekness of heart, lamenting our sinful life, acknowledging and confessing our offenses, the sins of our nation, and seeking to bring forth worthy fruits of repentance.

For now, as he acts put under the root of the trees, so that every tree that does not spring forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. He shall pour down rain upon the sinners snares, fire, and brimstone, storm, and tempest. This shall be their portion to drink.

For behold, the Lord has come out of his place to visit the wickedness of such as dwell upon the earth. But who may abide the day of his coming? Who shall be able to endure when he appears? His fan is in his hand, and he will purge his floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but he will burn the chaff with unquenchable fire.

Therefore, brethren, take heed now while the day of salvation lasts, for the night comes when no man can work. But let us, while we have the light, believe in the light and walk as children of the light, that we be not cast into utter darkness where is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Let us not abuse the goodness of God, who calls us merciful to amendment, and of his endless pity promises his forgiveness of our past sins if with a perfect and true heart we return to him. For though our sins are as red as scarlet, they shall be made white as snow. And though they be like purple, yet they shall be made white as wool.

“Turn, you,” sayeth the Lord, “from all your wickedness, and your sin shall not be your destruction. Cast away from you all your ungodliness that you have done. Make you new hearts and a new spirit. Why will you die, O house of Israel, seeing that I have no pleasure in the death of him that dies,” sayeth the Lord God. “Turn you then and you shall live.”

Although we have sinned, yet have we an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins. For he was wounded for our transgressions and smitten for our wickedness. Let us therefore return unto him who is the merciful receiver of all true penitent sinners, assuring ourselves that he is ready to receive us and most willing to pardon us if we come unto him with faithful repentance, if we submit ourselves unto him and from henceforth walk in his ways.

If we will take his easy yoke and light burden upon us to follow him in lowliness, patience, and charity, and be governed by the word and his Holy Spirit, yielding always to his glory and serving him duly in our vocation with thanksgiving—this if we do, Christ will deliver us from the curse of the law and from the extreme malediction which shall fall upon them that shall be set on the left hand. And he will set us on his right hand and give us the gracious benediction of his Father, commanding us to take possession of his glorious kingdom, unto which he promises to bring us all for his infinite mercy. Amen.