Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

Sermon scripture is Colossians chapter 1 verses 12 and 13. Epistle to the Colossians. First chapter I’ll begin at verse 9 and read through verse 13. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

For this cause we also since the day we heard it do not cease to pray for you and to desire that you might be filled with the knowledge of his will and all wisdom and spiritual understanding that you might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God strengthened with all might according to his glorious power unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness, giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us be to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light, who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear son.

You may be seated.

We have ever since—ever since I believe our beginning as a church—observed what the Christian Action Council designates as the sanctity of human life Sunday, which is held on the Sunday closest to the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision which legalized abortion on demand. We have celebrated this particular day in a little different fashion. We have used a liturgy of malediction, a portion of which we began with this afternoon service, the beginning of it in the call to repentance.

The actual formal part of the liturgy of malediction will be performed after the offertory and after the Evans family covenants into membership at Reformation Covenant Church.

It’s important I think to recognize that really behind the abortion issue there are much bigger issues that loom that need to be considered. For that reason, I’ve decided this year to preach on the two humanities—the power of darkness and the kingdom of his dear son—from Colossians 1:13, using that as a departure point essentially to talk about the big picture behind the abortion issue. And I think that it’s important that we put it in proper context. And so we’re going to try to do that in this sermon.

What I want to do is talk about these two humanities characterized in verse 13 and verses 12 and 13 of Colossians 1 using a couple other scriptures. And I’m going to talk about the relationship of the fact stated in Colossians 1 and other places of scripture that there are two humanities existing in the world today, the relationship of that to the act of abortion and children essentially, and then finally look at the place of prayer as it relates to these two humanities and the dreadful sin of abortion as it exists throughout this world today and certainly in a very radical form in America as well. So that’s what I want to do and kind of look at the big picture instead of getting mired down in the details.

This church we preached for ever since our inception that abortion is consider the murder of pre-born infants and so it certainly is against the law of God. It’s a heinous sin and needs to be repented of by those participate in it. So we won’t cover all that ground. What we’ll do is talk about the larger issues of the two humanities.

Now these two humanities are characterized for us in these two verses from Colossians 1 as being those who are involved in darkness as opposed to those involved in light. And throughout the scriptures this is a common theme. We read it in Psalm 68 just now.

So these two humanities first are characterized as the conflict. There is an antithesis. There is a conflict that exists in the world between the two humanities. And so this is framed to the context of a conflict between these two groups. We have those elements of the human condition, human race who are in darkness and those others who are in light—two humanities.

Colossians 1 verses 12 and 13 talks about this deliverance out of the power of darkness into the kingdom of his dear son. Just before that in verse 12 we read that we’ve been made partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. And so these two humanities exist, one in the context of darkness and the other in the context of light.

Now that darkness should bring several things to mind from us if we understand and have familiarized ourselves with the scriptures as the definition of these words and not just think in secular terms or scientific terms. Although there is a relationship of course to the science created by God and the terminology that he uses here.

Darkness is in Romans 1—it talks about darkness in the context of our intellectual attainment. Those who don’t give thanks to God, their foolish hearts are darkened by God. They’re turned over to worship of ridiculous things. They are led into intellectual darkness by God. To reject the source of all wisdom is to move from light into darkness. To reject the source of light and knowledge is to remain in foolishness and a lack of knowledge. So certainly darkness relates to that. The one humanity—those who, for instance, practice the sin of abortion—are intellectually darkened.

But they’re also volitionally darkened as well. John 3:19 says that people love darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. They like the darkness. They like the darkness they live in. They try to do their deeds and dark at times chronologically and also behind closed doors—their deeds of darkness. So darkness is related to the volitional aspect of men.

Both of these aspects come together when we read in, for instance, Matthew 4:16 that the people that sit in darkness are in a region in shadow of death. There was a relationship between scripture between darkness and death. And so volitionally, intellectually, the first humanity—the fallen humanity in Adam—and those who have not been brought to saving faith in Jesus Christ, who have not been regenerated by the gracious gift of God—these people dwell in intellectual and volitional darkness. And that darkness is really the darkness of death, the standing punishment of God upon them.

We have a relationship to these people, the children of the light. Ephesians 5:11 has said that we’re not supposed to have fellowship with them, with their unfruitful works of those in darkness. But we do have another aspect in relationship to them. That is to reprove them. Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. It is our job to reprove the wickedness that characterizes that humanity that dwells in darkness. And part of abortion liturgies and services that proclaim the sin of abortion as being sin are just that—reproving the deeds of darkness.

Darkness is also in this context characterized as power versus kingdom. These two humanities we’ve been translated out of the power of darkness into the kingdom of his dear son. So there’s an antithesis drawn here between the concept of the power of the fallen humanity and the kingdom aspect of the regenerate humanity, those who’ve been raised up in Christ.

Now I hesitate even to use the word power versus kingdom because power certainly is true of the kingdom. The kingdom comes in power and so power is not an aspect that is related to or restricted to darkness or the fallen humanity. It exists in terms of the kingdom as well. So I hesitate even to make these kinds of dichotomous statements—power versus darkness, Satan versus Jesus—because really the scriptures are clear that all power really lies in Jesus Christ. So I hate to even say it, but the scriptures do give us that antithesis in this verse. And there’s a reason for that.

But before we get into that reason, it’s important that we do recognize that Colossians goes on to say a few verses later that all power was created by Christ and for him. That’s Colossians 1:16. And in the second chapter of Colossians, it says that we are complete in Christ who is the head of all principalities and powers. And then in verse 15 of Colossians 2, he is spoiled principalities and powers.

So don’t get the idea somehow that these two humanities are waring on an even playing field. That’s a nice thing they talk about these days in terms of trade. There’s no even playing field here because the only part—the dark—the only power rather of those in darkness is a delegated power that God has for a time granted to people in darkness. That’s one aspect of it. But don’t get the idea there’s some kind of you know great conflict going on that you know like an arm wrestling match between Satan and Jesus. No, no, no.

The only powers that be, including the power of darkness, is really in relationship to the ultimate power of Jesus Christ and are delegated from the throne room with God—the way that Satan, for instance, was given the ability to tempt Job, to test him and to try him.

Matthew 28 Jesus says all power is given unto me in heaven and earth. I hesitate to even say it but yet the scriptures do make this correlation. There is a significant difference I think in this terminology. Well he could have used different terminology. He chose this terminology: power versus kingdom.

Kingdom has the aspect of order to it. Law, a king, brightness, goodness. That’s what kingdoms are usually about. Power tends to be more stressing the actual exertion of authority of one person over another. The term power is used throughout scripture in terms of derivative authority. And so when we talk about the power of the fallen humanity, again, it is a derived authority that they’ve been given for a time and a season.

This darkness though—the power specifically in the context of Colossians 1—certainly speaks to the compelling nature of the fallen world. In other words, people that exist, the fallen humanity, they are under the power of darkness. There is a sense in which they’re in bondage to their sin and in bondage to Satan. The powers of darkness, the power of darkness exhibits a control over them. And the only way really to be delivered from that is through the gracious gift of salvation through Jesus Christ offered by God to the regenerate, or leading it to regeneration rather, to his elect community.

So the darkness is contrasted here with the kingdom. The darkness is the power of the darkness rather is limited. It is a tyrannical power but it is also derivative. It has the aspect in this verse anyway of the connotation of bondage as opposed to that the kingdom is characterized—the kingdom with light, of course, correlation to verse 12.

And the word kingdom also, like the word darkness really, but kingdom is used 155 times in the New Testament. All but a very few occurrences refer to the kingdom of God. And again, I don’t want to—I want to make sure you don’t get the idea this equal time here in the Bible for the kingdom of God versus the kingdoms of the world. No, no. The big stress in the scriptures is the kingdom of God.

The exceptions to this though—when the kingdom is used to talk about something other than the kingdom of God—are important to note in passing here. It relates to what we’re talking about today.

In Matthew 4:8, for instance, Satan shows all the kingdoms—plural of the word—of the world rather to Jesus in the temptation. We see from that the idea that the kingdoms that are not part of the kingdom of Christ are many. In Matthew 12, Jesus says that every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation. The kingdom divided against itself, it cannot stand. And then in Matthew 24:7, continuing on in that gospel of Matthew we read that nation shall rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom.

Now what I want to point out here is that the kingdom—the power, the authority of darkness and the fallen humanity—the kingdom if we call it kingdom in that limited sense is divided against itself. And this is very important as we’ll see in relationship to abortion here in a couple minutes.

But it’s divided against itself. To think of the kingdom of darkness and powers of darkness as some sort of monolithic force as monolithic and destruction as well ordered as God’s kingdom is wrong. It’s just it’s not like that. It’s divided against itself and it is subject to the subduing to the new humanity, those who are in Jesus Christ.

Hebrews 11:33 says that there were the great men of old were those who through faith subdued kingdoms and if them how much more we who live this side of the cross of Jesus Christ were more than conquerors. The kingdoms that are there are meant to be conquered by the people of God. The old humanity is being replaced by the new humanity by the race of Jesus Christ. Race in the sense of not a biological but a spiritual race.

Revelation 16:10 also is another place where the kingdom of darkness is spoken of as opposed to the kingdom of God which is the normal usage of the term. And there again it says the kingdom of this kingdom was filled with darkness and they gnod their tongues for pain. The powers of darkness of the fallen humanity is characterized by pain, death and destruction.

In Revelation 17 it says that God gave their kingdom unto the beast unto the word until the words of God should be fulfilled. It is the derivative of authority again from the throne of God. And finally in Revelation 11:15 we read that the kingdoms of this world, the powers, the authorities, the kingdoms that are characterized in terms of the old humanity, these kingdoms are become the kingdoms of our Lord.

All of those kingdoms are broken and crushed by the coming of Jesus Christ and through time increasingly are transferred over in a heightened sense from this domain of darkness to the kingdom of God Jesus Christ.

The kingdoms of the world have become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ. So again, it’s not as if these things are somehow combating each other. We’ve received that kingdom. Hebrews 12:28 tells us and it cannot be moved. Our kingdom, the kingdom is opposed to the power of the darkness. The kingdom of the new humanity is one that is in shake, unshakeable by God.

Shakings occur throughout all history. Hebrews tells us that all things that might be shaken are shaken and removed out of the way. But our kingdom cannot be moved. The powers of darkness divided against themselves, tyrannical, characterized by death, destruction, dissolution, disintegration, as opposed to the kingdom of Christ, which is characterized by stability, peace, light, love, and all goodness. Tremendous contrast between the old humanity and the new humanity.

And finally, the kingdoms of darkness, as we said—the power of darkness rather is being dissolved. It has an end to it. But Luke 1:33 tells us that of the increase of Christ’s kingdom there shall be no end. It is eternal and perpetual as opposed to the forces of evil. The kingdom of Christ goes on perpetually.

So we have these two characterizations. The old humanity and darkness and having power limited, derivative of power, related to pain, destruction, dissolution, decay. As opposed to those who are light—intellectually and volitionally, what they know and what they two—those who characterize the kingdom, the order of Jesus Christ, characterized by his law, a stable force source of government and no internal division. The church is unified in Jesus Christ. And then finally, it’s the kingdom. Those in the old humanity are characterized as those in obedience to Satan as opposed to those who are obedient to the son Jesus Christ.

Point three of the first point of this outline. Now, it doesn’t talk about Satan in Colossians 1:13, but there’s a parallel verse in Acts 26:18. We read that Paul was given to open their eyes and to turn them from darkness to light, from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins.

That’s very much parallel language to Colossians 1:12-14, where we read that we become partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light, delivered from the power of darkness, translated in the kingdom of his dear son, in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins.

So it’s all this is characterized as the forgiveness of sins that the motive force has translated us out of one humanity into the other power of God. And so the power of Satan, we’ve been released from out of that bondage and we’ve been transferred over to the authority of God and of Jesus Christ.

Now again here, I shouldn’t give Satan equal time even on one line of this outline. I hated to do it, you know, but it seems to be implied in the text, but just I don’t want you to get the wrong idea here. It’s not again as if it’s some kind of wrestling match.

I was listening to a tape. I brought some tapes that I’ll put in the church library this afternoon by Richard Gans, a reconstructionist and a nouthetic counselor. And he was saying that we give far too much attention to Satan in the Christian church today. He said we should only give Satan as much ink as God in the Bible does which is really very little—very little ink. And that same thing should be true in our thoughts really.

So don’t get the idea that somehow these are two equal characters on the scene both buying over the control of the world. That’s not what’s going on according to the scriptures. Rather Satan has been defeated by Jesus Christ. John 12:31 says, “This is the judgment of the world. Now is the judgment of this world. Now shall the prince of the world be cast out.” Jesus has dealt definitively with Satan at the cross.

And so in Gary North’s words, all we have left is a mopping up operation.

So it’s important to recognize that the new humanity is really the characteristic of humanity of the future. The race of the future, you want to look at it that way. The future belongs to us, not to the old dying dissolute bondage held tyrannical death-driven culture of fallen man who aborts their own children.

This conflict between these two humanities has a relationship to abortion. Now, first I want to point out that children are seen in scripture in this section relating all this to abortion. Now, children are seen as fruit in the scriptures. That’s an kind of an important concept.

Psalm 127, children are spoken of as the fruit of the womb. Isaiah 13:18 speaks of very interesting verse. “Their bows also shall dash the young men in pieces. They shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb.” That’s certainly true of the abortionist today, but children are described as being of the fruit of the womb there too.

And Lamentations 2:20 “shall the woman eat their fruit and children of a span long.” Speaking of the curses of the law that people would actually devour their own children and that kind of hunger coming upon came actually came upon Jerusalem in its fall in 70 A.D. And I don’t think we can anybody that aborts a baby today for convenience sake or a bigger house or whatever it is, this is just what they’re doing. They’re eating their own children, so to speak.

But in any event, these verses, I primarily wanted to point them out because it talks about children as fruit. Children are the fruit of who we are. Okay? And particularly of the marriage union, but in who we are in other dimensions as well.

I want to talk now about children being a blessing or a curse. Which is it? What are children? A blessing or a curse?

Well, by as many children as we have in this church, we are pretty well convinced they’re a blessing. And the scriptures are replete with such references. We know them. We probably don’t know as well the verses that talk about children as a curse. Some examples: Proverbs 10:1, “A wise son maketh the glad father.” But what’s the second half? “A foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.” A child, the fruit of a foolish woman, a foolish marriage, foolish people who reject God’s knowledge. Doesn’t mean silly. It means those who do not consider God and everything that they think. These children are a curse to their parents. Their heaviness to the mother, for instance.

Proverbs 17:21, “He that begets a fool doeth it to his sorrow. And the father of the fool hath no joy, no blessing, no joy of children to the father to the to the to the one who is a fool. He begets a fool. He beggets fruit like him, and as a result, he has no joy.”

Proverbs 29:15, “The rod of reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame.” Children are not a blessing when they’re left to themselves. When they’re not disciplined, when they’re not controlled by the parents. What do they become then? They become a source of shame, curse to the mother as opposed to blessing.

We know the blessings upon the seed. Deuteronomy 28, you’ll be blessed. The fruit of your body will be blessed. Deuteronomy 28 says, if you obey the word of God, but verse 15 and following says that if you don’t hearken under the voice of the Lord your God, cursed shall be the fruit of your body, the fruit of thy land, the increase of thy kind, the flocks of thy sheep, the fruit of your life in all of its implications, whatever you put your hand to do, including the raising of children, becomes cursed to you and dust in the mouth, so to speak.

Job 17 and following read, “This is the portion of the wicked man with God and the heritage of oppressors which they shall receive of the Almighty.” Here’s what they get. “If his children be multiplied, it’s for the sword and his offspring shall not be satisfied with bread.” Children are a cursed to that man. They’re multiplied for the sword. Those that remain of him shall be buried in death and his widows shall not weep. Not even compassion for the widow, to the child that she’s lost through the death and the curse of God.

I think that this whole concept that we have a natural affection for our parents or for our children is wrong. I think that to the extent that this Christian, this culture has been primarily built upon Christian values, we’re still using, we’re still going down the hill. There’s no gas left in the engine. We’re still coasting along though on the beginnings of this country which we’re Christian were for a long time and there’s still a heavy Christian influence. That’s given us a culture where people value their children have some degree of affection for them.

But as the culture moves further away from Jesus Christ, I think they move further away and they realize more and more these children are a curse to us and there are no natural affection. When the children are killed through God’s providence in whatever way, the widows don’t even weep.

Children are not always blessing. Children can be a curse from God upon people that are in disobedience to him.

Jeremiah 15:8, “Their widows are increased me above the sand of the sea. I have brought upon them against the mother of the young men, a spoiler at noonday. I have caused him to fall upon it suddenly and tears upon the city.” Well, you know, that’s what’s going on every day. These sounds like terrible things to us to have happen in the context of God’s curse. But even at this point in time, probably right at this very moment, there are babies being aborted in clinic, probably right in this city and there are women whose people are falling upon their offspring suddenly many times without the darkness the woman is in being told this is for her well-being etc. or many times the woman going along with it gladly because she doesn’t love her children.

She really doesn’t love them more than the problems they might cause her but the implications they might be for her life and there is no there is no sense of blessing in that relationship. The children are cursed by God upon them.

Those who reject the firstborn of every creation—the ultimate child, Jesus Christ, in the sense of the ultimate perfect humanity and God and man combined and the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Those who reject the firstborn of every creature eventually, as it works out in their lives, have no love for their own firstborn. God won’t let—won’t have it. He will not have people love in a proper sense their own children when they’ve rejected his son.

I believe God’s punishment comes upon them to the end, they end up hating their own children as well. Not very self-consciously at first, but as the culture continues to slide away, that’s what we see characterized more and more. Situation is never static. Abortion has now led way to infanticide. Happens all the time. You just check the back sections of the Oregon on a regular basis, you’ll see little stories about kids born, left in a plastic bag, left alongside the road by their parents. No natural no affection left anymore.

People have turned their back upon that concept. God has given them over to total darkness and cursing in their life and as a result they kill their own children. If they have no love for the true babe Jesus Christ in sense of his incarnation and reject the only begotten, they are moved away from love for their own seed as well.

They if they’re part of that darkness and under the tyranny that the power of that darkness represents and the dominion of sin over them. And following the one who is himself a destroyer, Satan, in the sense of trying to break down and not build up, they move further and further away intellectually, volitionally away from blessing and life, and they move closer and closer to death, to pain, and to tyranny, and exhibiting their own tyranny over their own offspring to the end of killing them.

There’s a relationship between these two humanities. On the one hand, those who are in the humanity of Jesus Christ in the new redeemed humanity, who are in the kingdom of light, blessing that kingdom of the beloved son. These people love their children and they are indeed the children are a blessing to us and we thank God for them and the implications they bring to our lives including the responsibilities they bring and we have great love of life. We love the author of life and so we love that life when it is brought in the way of offspring into our families as well.

But the children of the fallen humanity turned over to increasing darkness removed further and further away from the light of the gospel. Those people have no love of life. The scriptures say they move increasingly toward a love of death.

Proverbs 8:36, “He that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul. All they that hate me love death.” The context for that in Proverbs 8 is the offer to come to wisdom. Come to an understanding and a volitional application of the understanding of God’s word as it relates to all of life. Wisdom, a rejection of wisdom. People rejected increasing in their lives are turned over more and more to not a love of life, but a love of death and so abortion and infanticide, euthanasia, the killing of parents as well as the killing of children. These are the wicked results of the fallen humanity. A love of death and a love of the death of their own children.

A terrible thing to consider and yet so true according to the scriptures.

The relationship to all this to prayer is very important for us. We are at the end of this service going to pray that God would bring his wrath upon those in the fallen humanity and that they would quit murdering their own children.

Now, there’s a there’s some reason we need to think about this a little bit. Why should we pray for these children? You know, if you think that it’s because these children are innocent somehow, you’re thinking not correctly, not biblically. The scriptures say that all are conceived and born in sin. We all have the imputed sin of Adam declared to us. Children are not innocent. Children are born under the judicial condemnation of God. Death is the fruit of sin and all children are declared covenantally dead. Adam. And so we don’t ultimately pray for children because they’re innocent somehow. We don’t.

And if we recognize the truth of what we’ve been saying here that God often times takes the children of the unregenerate and turns them over to destruction. There is an aspect to the abortion dilemma in this country that is judgment from God. You know, I read a book 30, 40 years old and it was on child planning for Christians etc. And it said that how many kids should Christians have? They said, “Well, we should have more than the pagan because we want to supplant them. And so and the pagans are not going to slow down in the number of kids they’re having. So we got to have a lot of kids.” This is only 30, 40 years ago in this country the book was published. Presbyterian I think something that I’m not sure liberal. But in any event the point is that things have changed. The pagans are not having a lot of children. They’re having very few children. And a lot of their children are being murdered to the tune of over 1 million a year.

Now there’s an aspect of judgment in that you cannot ignore. These verses I just read about how God says if they are multiplied children it’s for death. God will not allow them to supplant in terms even numerically the people of God. So there’s an aspect of judgment to this.

But there’s also a need for us to recognize there is an important place to pray for the deliverance of those children are being aborted and murdered. Let me give you just several reasons real quickly.

First of all, the scriptures tell us we’re to have one law for all people. One for the stranger, one for the citizen, etc. One law, the law of God is going to be applied across the board from a Christian perspective. It gives protection to those even who are unregenerate and it gives protection to the children as well. And so that law prohibits murder and we’re told to enforce that law in the context to demonstrate what the justice of God as it relates to the world. And so we should outlaw abortion immediately if we could and move toward the elimination of abortion across the board on the basis of that one law, one standard for all people.

Secondly, the fatherless over and over in the scriptures are told that we’re supposed to protect the fatherless.

In Psalm 10 verses 12 and 14, we read that well actually that relates more to the killing of the sent in verse 8 and then verse 12. “Arise, oh God, lift up thine hand. Forget not the humble, those who are humble in the sense of being weak before oppressors and certainly the most vulnerable of all people is a child in the womb. And so God wants us to pray to lift up and forget not the humble.

Then in verse 13, “Thou has seen it, for thou beholdest mischief and spite to requite it with thy hand. The poor committeth himself unto thee. Thou art the helper the fatherless. Thou art the helper the fatherless.” God declares himself to have a special interest in the fatherless as well as widows and strangers. And so God wants us to protect particularly those who are fatherless.

Well, you say the aborted children are not fatherless, but they really are. Their fathers have abandoned them to the abortionist uh deadly devices. And so, in a very real sense, they have been orphaned from their mother and father. And then they come under the special care of God. And as a result, God’s people, we’re supposed to have a heart and compassion for the fatherless to try to rescue them whenever we can.

And so there’s a second reason: one standard. And then secondly, these are fatherless we’re talking about. They have a particular protection from God. As a result, they have a particular protection from the church as well.

And then third, of course, is that abortion is the fruit of this wickedness that we talked about earlier. And whenever you see wickedness thrive in a land, it is a bad thing. It demonstrates the wrong picture and it’s just evil in of itself. And so the very fact that abortion is murder means that it should be punished.

And then fourth—and this is I think pretty important—there is an aspect in which this is a little bit extracted from a couple of principles in scripture. There’s an aspect of which the war on the unborn has I think involved with it a war on the church as well. Let me explain that.

In Matthew 13 we read that of the wheat field, the wheat and the tares and the tares are not to be uprooted prematurely from the wheat field because it might hurt the wheat is what the text tells us. Well, now what does that mean?

Martin Srey, who is a reconstructionist, a postmillennialist, says that what’s going on there is wheat is coming from tares. If you tear out a tare, you’re going to destroy some wheat inevitably. Why? Because the historical process is that God is converting manner. He’s remember our text translating us out of one humanity into the new humanity. These are tares over are here. So if we rip out all the tares now, we eliminate the elect that God has planned for the future.

We couldn’t do that, of course, but theoretically, logically, that’s what we’re talking about doing. Point is that God doesn’t want murder to go on in the culture, particularly murder of the of the unborn, because these are potentially wheat from God. Okay? And so to the end that if we were to if we were to ask God to judge everybody right now in history, wanted Jesus to come back right now and put an end to everything, it means there are that fewer elect can be born in the years to come.

God’s number of his elect is still building and that building process is accomplished as men are translated out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light out of the power of darkness into the kingdom of light. Okay? And so Satan when he lost his war upon the seed who is Jesus Christ continues to war upon the seed of the women of the church and other potential or other seed of people outside the church even who could possibly come to salvation.

In other words, I think that Satan would love to destroy all future offspring of mankind because in doing that he would supposedly destroy potential Christians. Well, the fact is though, of course, he can’t do that. And the fact is that we should as a result of that, however, protect children because they are potential wheat field wheat even though they may be born of tares in terms of their parents. And certainly they’re all tares at birth in that sense.

So, we have many reasons why we should pray for the fatherless. And I think one of the ways we do this is we pray that those people that are killing the life of us, we pray that they would come to repentance.

Again, here from Psalm 10, we have several verses in terms of this. Well, we’ll just read one. Verse 15, “Break thou the arm of the wicked and the evil man. Seek out his wickedness till thou find none.”

Now, there’s a couple of ways that can be accomplished. We pray that those who oppress, those who murder the unborn would be stopped, that their wickedness shall be no more. Two ways for that to accomplish to a particular abortionist: If an abortionist has come to repentance and if God translate him out of the power of the darkness into the kingdom of the beloved son, he then changes from a love of death to a love of life. He quits aborting babies and his wickedness is no longer found in the land. His righteousness now replaces it.

And so when we pray for abortionists, we pray that God would bring them to salvation. We pray hopefully that they would come to repentance for their evil deeds. Remember that we also were as these people evil and wicked. Did only thing that moved us out of the kingdom of the power of darkness into the kingdom of God’s son was his grace shown to us in Jesus Christ.

So we pray for judgment unto repentance. And throughout this psalm in Psalm 10, the point is made over and over again. Why does he do these things? He doesn’t because he think you don’t see them. You’re not going to judge him. And so the Psalm 10 is a call for God to rise up to bring forth justice in the land to bring punishments upon the wicked that his wickedness be found no more. To either repent or the next part of the outline: prayer for judgment to destruction.

If people do not come to repentance in faith in Jesus Christ, the abortionist, then we pray that the judgment that God brings upon him would cause them to be broken off himself and as a result that his wickedness would no longer fill the land.

Verse 16 of Psalm 10, “The Lord is king forever and ever. The heathen are perished out of his land. That’s what we’re to pray for, that the heathen are perished out of God’s land.”

We read we read before then Proverbs 8:36 that “he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul. All them that hate me love death.” Proverbs 22 is a parallel verse to that. “The fear of a king is as the roaring of a lion. Whoso provoketh him to anger sinneth against his own soul.”

God is angry with the wicked. He is particularly angry when they strike out at the fatherless. The scriptures tell us about that. And so he’s wronging his own soul because God will over time raise up and judged these men in relationship to the prayer of his people.

It’s a good thing that imprecatory prayers, those prayers that ask for God’s cursing upon those who commit abortion and other sins such as this nature, are becoming more and more frequent in our land. When we first began doing this at Reformation Covenant nearly a decade ago, I didn’t know any other church that was doing this kind of thing.

And yet, these last couple of years, we’ve seen, for instance, published this last year a book by James B. Jordan on the imprecatory psalms, War Cries to the Prince of Peace that advocate the use of imprecatory prayers and the use of the imprecatory psalms services of malediction. Essentially this was published by a Presbyterian Reformed or mainline publishing house in terms of conservative Presbyterianism in the country.

Even here locally pastor Jerry Probes from First Baptist out in Hillsboro three or four months ago sent out a letter to the Willamette Valley prayer chain in which he talked about prayers of malediction or imprecation asking for God’s curse upon abortionists and other who do heinous sins in the sight of God.

Operation Rescue has recently published some articles by a reformed minister named Wayne Sedlac that we’ve talked about before in terms of imprecation. And now the latest issue on the theory of interposition which we’ve talked about at this church.

And so it is a good thing that these things we’re talking about here that God has a particular concern for the fatherless. That concern should be our concern. Our concern should usher forth in prayer for either the repentance or the destruction of abortionists. This basic biblical teaching taught in many places of scripture is finally being practiced in other portions of the church and that is a good thing.

Prayer is a very important element of eliminating what we’ve talked about here—the abortion movement—and so God calls us to do that as he gives us these examples in the psalter in terms of doing this.

And I want to just take it one more step up in terms of understanding that really what we’re doing is based upon the Lord’s Prayer itself and that helps us to understand what we’re doing in a little fuller sense again in terms of these two humanities by talking for just a couple of minutes about the relationship of this prayer for imprecation to the establishment of God’s kingdom.

A prayer that we’ve been talking about here that’ll involve ourselves here in a couple of minutes is also a prayer for the establishment of God’s kingdom. We read in Matthew 6:9 that our Lord instructs us to pray in this manner: “Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.”

I heard a sermon by this by Greg Skipper and he quoted from Calvin’s Catechism that was used at Geneva in relationship to these petitions of the Lord’s Prayer and I wanted to quote just a couple of these questions and answers.

The Catechism says: “What understand you by the kingdom of God and the second petition where it says thy kingdom come?” Answer: “It consists chiefly of two branches that he would govern the elect by his spirit and that he would prostrate and destroy the reprobate who refuse to give themselves up to his service, thus making it manifest that nothing is able to resist his might.”

Question: “In what sense do you pray that this kingdom may come?”

Answer: “That the Lord would daily increase the number of the faithful, that he would ever in a more to load them with new gifts of his spirit until he filled them completely. Moreover, that he would render his truth more clear and conspicuous by dispelling the darkness of Satan, that he would abolish all iniquity, by advancing his own righteousness.”

“What mean you by asking that the will of God may be done? That all creatures may be subdued into obedience to him and so depend on his nod that nothing may be done except at his pleasure.”

When we pray according to our Lord’s injunction, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done,” we are praying also not only for the establishment of God’s kingdom, but to the end that it is established, for the destruction of every other kingdom that raises itself, raises itself up against the King of Kings, Jesus Christ. And so if the Lord’s Prayer is a model for all our prayers and if each petition can be expanded out as it could be and demonstrated that all prayers in scripture relate to these various petitions, we see in these two petitions, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth,” the call to engage ourselves in prayers for the destruction of those kingdoms that exalt themselves against the kingdom of Jesus Christ.

There is a validity to it. But more than that, this Lord’s Prayer is a correction. It is a correction for the anti-abortion movement. The anti-abortion movement is not ultimately an anti-abortion movement if it is biblical. Rather, it is a movement for the establishment of the kingdom of God. And if we fail, if we lose sight of that, we’ve lost sight of the central teaching of the scriptures. That is the very motivation that leads us into such action as this political action, action of using maledictory prayers, etc.

And that is the establishment of the kingdom of God. That is what we’re praying for. We’re praying that the old humanity would increasingly come under the temporal judgments of God and that they and particularly in their most advanced wickedness would either be repented or either be converted and brought into the new humanity or that the old humanity would be crushed and destroyed off the face of the earth to the end that this kingdom we said is unmovable and is the only thing that stands after the shaking of all of the things that it may be established.

And so we can pray confidently, we can pray assuredly that this is the flow of history. And we know that our prayers have an effect upon this because our savior has commanded us to participate in them and told us of the efficacy of them in relationship to the wicked.

Sunday is the model for the rest of the week and this Lord’s Prayer is the model for all our prayers. And what this means is if we pray this prayer in our home, our children should understand that when we pray that God’s kingdom come and can be increasingly manifest in our day and age and it also means the abolition, the destruction of all other kingdoms.

John 12:32 Jesus said, “If I be lifted up from the earth and draw I will draw all men unto me and he will.”

Now this phrase is other portions of the New Testament relate back to an incident in the wilderness in the book of Numbers. The brazen serpent God sent his judgments upon people upon his wicked disobedient people. There were serpents that fiery serpents that bit men and gave them fiery bites and they would die of those bites—terrible deaths. And how did God save them? Well, he had Moses construct a brazen serpent, put them up on a pole, and lifted them up. And anybody that would look to that pole would be saved. But the rebellious who would not look would die.

Jesus Christ in this verse identifies himself with the brazen serpent lifted up that mud might come to either salvation or destruction. He identifies himself not just with the salvation of God, but with the destruction of the wicked, the serpent. The fiery serpents in the wilderness who were God’s judgment temporally upon a wicked and disobedient people.

In the book of Acts, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is a cause for fear—fear to the people that heard the preaching of it. Why? They’d put him to death. How would you like it? It’s like these Clint Eastwood movies. The guy comes back from the dead and you are afraid. And Jesus’s resurrection is a demonstration the judgment of God will now be meed out in history upon the old humanity and those who reject the Messiah, who reject looking to Jesus for salvation, and who instead turn in their darkness to the destruction of their own children, the destruction of their own seed and their own future, who love death and exert that death against themselves, frequently against their children, or increasingly in terms of euthanasia, against their parents.

Scriptures say that we pray this way for the establishment of God’s kingdom and the destruction of all other kingdoms. Now God says that we will be efficacious in this prayer. This will be effectual to the establishment of God’s kingdom. Jesus said, “I give unto you power, power of darkness. Forget it. I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy.” We have a greater power, a firm kingdom. And he gives that power unto us that we might tread upon serpents, that we might crush the serpent’s head as it were picture of Satan and all those who are in relationship to him and prayer is an important aspect of that.

Political power is not effectual for this for this particular sin in America today why we’re not ultimately seeking simply the elimination of abortion we know that abortion will only be eliminated when people come to faith in Jesus Christ when that old dying humanity is brought either to conversion or destruction or Citizen Alliance tried a political move several couple of years ago now an initiative petition a thing on the ballot to try to get rid of abortion totally backfired went down 60-40 and as a result the Oregon legislature will not hear anti-abortion legislation would not this last session probably won’t for a couple more sessions they’ve got their out the people let them know they approved abortion 60 to 40 they did the same thing by not quite as big a margin but a more effectual bill in Washington to keep in place abortion up there.

A majority of the people supported it and a lot of people supported the euthanasia initiative. What’s going on? We Oregon Citizens Alliance their problem is and the problem of all too many Christians is they fight the abortion movement. They fight it thinking somehow we have a Christian America today. We do not have a Christian America. We have a population that have been converted to a new faith which is really the old faith.

In 1973 abortion activist Lawrence Lader, quoted in Michael Gilstrap’s Phineas Report. Lawrence Lader wrote a book called Abortion 2 and he said this: “Perhaps even more important than producing 600,000 legal abortions in 1972, the abortion movement affirmed that an act of faith can become revolution.”

Gilstrap correctly pointed out that every time a woman has an abortion, she becomes a convert to this old dying humanity and she be she moves even further away.