Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

Today’s sermon text is Psalm 78, verses 1-11. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

A contemplation of Asaph. Give ear, oh my people, to my law. Incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter dark sayings of old, which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, telling to the generation to come the praises of the Lord and his strength and his wonderful works that he has done.

For he established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers that they should make them known to their children, that the generation to come might know them, the children who would be born, that they may arise and declare them to their children, that they may set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments, and may not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that did not set its heart aright, and whose spirit was not faithful to God.

The children of Ephraim, being armed and carrying bows, turned back in the day of battle. They did not keep the covenant of God. They refused to walk in his law and forgot his works and his wonders that he had shown them.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We pray now that your Holy Spirit would shine, Lord God, upon our hearts and transform us by the power of this word. We pray that we would be careful in our deliberation of what is said today. Keep me, Lord God, from making mistakes, slips of tongue, things that are inappropriate for the preaching of your word based in this text. We thank you, Father, for the contemplation on history that this text places before us.

And we pause now to think of our history, the past and what’s led us to this point as a culture and people, and the future and what will lead us out of the dark waters in which we now swim. We thank you, Father, for your word and pray that you would shine upon us through it. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

I have some hard things to say today, both in terms of the subject matter as well as in terms of the difficulty of understanding a portion of the book of Revelation, which may be a little hard to understand. So I pray that God would give us clarity on that first point of the three points of the sermon.

But this is a difficult thing that we do every year on what some churches call sanctity of human life Sunday, and we refer to as anti-abortion day of the Lord. And if this is the first such service that you’ve attended at RCC, I pray that you’d be gracious and understanding of what we’re trying to accomplish and what we’re not trying to accomplish.

The songs have been selected, as you probably have noticed, to emphasize the importance of the civil magistrate protecting those who are relatively powerless in a culture, with obvious implications to the anniversary this week of 31 years of the Roe v. Wade decision by the United States Supreme Court, in which they grievously sinned against God by not acknowledging the truth of his word—that children in the context of the womb are still children and people.

And so, while we had abortion before that, and while abortion was not treated as murder in most states prior to that decision—and we can see that as a positive result of a negative set of affairs—that now there is a consideration of that amongst more people than ever. So we had it before, but after Roe v. Wade, of course, the floodgates were opened, and annually over a million children are murdered in the safest place that God has established for them on the face of the earth, which is the womb.

So this is a horrific evil that we kind of get callused over to in the context of growing up in this culture, and we don’t want to let that happen. It’s not the only evil in the land. There’s lots of them, but we think it’s good and proper once a year to focus on this particular sin, and specifically to orient the preaching of the word so that it finds its culmination in the prayer of imprecation or malediction that we enter into after the offering.

The great prayer today is really simply a prayer for God to judge abortionists and those in league with them. Now, that’s different. You know, we’re used to benediction, a good word at the end of the service, but the scriptures also talk about malediction, an evil word or a bad word spoken to people who particularly need God’s judgment upon them, either to bring them to repentance, or in cases like the psalm we just read, that they might be removed off the face of the earth.

They either become submissive to God and quit their evildoing, or we also pray that there are circumstances in which God might actually remove them through temporal judgments.

Now, we want to distance ourselves immediately from that aspect of the anti-abortion movement that has resulted in murder. It is wrong for those who may be properly outraged by the horrific sin of abortion to take the law into their own hands and to strike out at abortionists in a physical way. And we think the reason why this has probably happened is that churches have not done what the scriptures command us to do: to cry out for those who need crying out for, to be delivered, and specifically to cry out for God to move in the context of history and culture.

So the purpose of this service is to prepare us for the prayer where we ask for God’s temporal judgments upon those who engaged in this horrible sin.

Now, we call it here “anti-abortion day of the Lord.” The pro-life movement changed terminology to be more politically correct and put a positive spin on “anti-abortion.” They went to “pro-life.” But you have a problem with that in the scriptures because, you know, God at certain times in Old Testament history specifically commanded the destruction of whole cultures—men, women, and children—for their gotten evil.

So there’s no automatic presumption of the sanctity of human life. I mean, in a sense there is. These children in the womb are, you know, innocent in that sense. But there’s no—it’s not really the case to be made. And one of the implications of this has been interesting over the last few years politically: those involved in the pro-life movement, once they shifted their rhetoric to “pro-life” instead of “anti-abortion,” then started calling for the funding of more welfare programs and higher tax rates, et cetera, to help people who need better life.

Well, the scriptures are anti-murder. Certainly the scriptures are pro-life, but the scriptures want us to combat evil by speaking to specific sins and saying they’re wrong. So abortion, the killing of infant children in the womb, is a sin. And so we call it “anti-abortion,” and we don’t refer to it as “Sunday.” That “Sunday” is a good name for a day, but we think it’s particularly good to speak of the “day of the Lord.”

You know, there’s a transition. Well, this is the Christian Sabbath the Reformed confessions tell us, and they think it’s correct. Still, there’s a transition in terminology from the Sabbath to “Lord’s day” in the New Testament. And we think of that as kind of a milder version of the Sabbath. You know, everything’s loosened up and God is more gracious. But you have to understand that in the Greek, for instance, in Revelation, when John is in the spirit on the Lord’s day, there’s no difference between the “Lord’s day” and the “day of the Lord.”

It’s just as proper to translate that phrase as “the day of the Lord.” And in fact, that’s probably a better way to translate it because now we understand the Old Testament connections being made by that reference to the Lord’s day, the day of the Lord. The day of the Lord in the Old Testament was a day of God’s coming to be with his people. We were talking about Solomon’s couch coming up out of the wilderness to Jerusalem with his bride.

And well, is Solomon in the couch or not? Well, in a sense, Jesus comes down in his couch, takes us up, and takes us up to heaven, right? We go up to heaven, but he also comes down to be with us. In the Lord’s day, there’s a drawing near to God. And in the day of the Lord, when the Lord comes forward in this day to draw near, it’s dangerous. Drawing near to God is a great thing, but it has to be done in particular ways.

We have a whole book of the Old Testament, Leviticus, designed to tell us how to draw near properly to God. In Hebrews, Doug Wilson said his short form outline of that is “how to draw near to God without becoming toast in God’s judgment.” When God approaches his church, judgment begins at the house of God. And so God deals with us here certainly by dispensing gifts, but also by calling us to repentance.

It’s a day of the Lord. There’s judgment that always ensues. The word that we’re preaching today is a two-edged sword. The scriptures say it cuts us, then it also heals us. But it has that aspect of judgment. And so we refer to it as “anti-abortion day of the Lord.”

And the scriptures make clear that when the Lord comes, he doesn’t come just to the church. It begins there, but then God goes out in a special sense to the community round about us. So this is what we’re emphasizing on this particular day: God’s judgment. We’re actually going to ask him here—as the scriptures, as we just sang in several psalms and just recited—we’re going to ask God to bring his temporal judgments upon people that are involved in the sin of abortion, that they might stop doing it either through repentance or through being chastised severely enough where they’re no longer able to engage in that kind of sin.

So this is what we’re doing. And I’ve got a few scriptures for you there from Exodus 21.

You know, it’s a wonderful thing that in the context of this service, another event is going on really not very far from us, over at Walnut Falls Hospital. Lydia is in labor, giving birth today, no doubt, to a young child. And what a beautiful picture to us—on the one hand, there are those people that are cutting off their future, and on the other hand, the Christian community—and this community is a picture of that—engages in great joy and blessing with pregnancies and the birth of children.

You know, at our church, when people announce that they’re pregnant, great joy is heard. There’s no worry about, “Oh, they having too many kids. What about it? And they’re able to afford it?” No. Praise God for the blessings of children. And so we have this wondrous event going on.

Let’s pause just a moment right now and pray for Lydia. Father, we thank you for this wonderful illustration to us, Lord God, of the beauty of life and birth. We pray that you would bless Lydia in her labor, bring forth a child to the joy of her parents and also to your extended community here. We thank you, Father, for this great picture to us, in the midst of focusing on the sin of people against babies, to exhort each other again to rejoice in their coming, and particularly today with Lydia. May you be with her, Lord God. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Now, “All those who hate me love death.” We looked at that last week, and we can apply that to the abortion situation. The sin results from a hatred of God and a movement in terms of death. But ultimately, from Proverbs—the immediate context in Proverbs for that verse is the crying out of wisdom. “All those who hate wisdom, the instruction of God through his word and the application to life, move in terms of death.”

And I’ve listed Exodus 21, the case law of Exodus 21:22-25. Psalm 139, where David talks about his life in the womb and knowing God there. We could talk about John the Baptist leaping in the womb, et cetera. There’s lots of proofs from the scriptures that human life is present in the context of the womb. The problem is not that scriptures are unclear. The problem is that people want to twist the scriptures because they hate wisdom. And ultimately, that is focused in the hatred of God. And that’s what leads forth to death in the context of this great sin of abortion.

So we’re not going to go to great length to prove that life in the womb is life. The scriptures are clear about that. You know, now the scriptures aren’t clear, supposedly, about homosexuality and whether that’s sin. And over the last 20, 30 years, churches have gotten less clear about whether there’s really life in the womb. And it’s less clear whether women should be preachers and represent Christ to the bride in Lord’s day worship.

Well, there’s nothing unclear about it. The scriptures are quite clear, and we take that as a given based on these particular texts.

Mark 9 is listed there because that’s a chapter that shows us that demons hate children. They like to strike out at life and specifically at the life of children. And all too often the disciples are ambivalent to the life of children. And so Mark 9 is another reminder of what we’re battling today.

It’s always interesting to me that the anti-abortion day of the Lord’s service happens in the immediate context of the celebration of the advent of Christ and then Epiphany with the coming of the wise men. And that’s directly linked in the scriptures in Matthew 2 to the slaughter of the innocents, where Herod strikes out in rage and kills every child age two and younger. And we’re to hate this kind of activity. The scriptures give us that picture of Herod doing that—not that we’ll just sort of ambivalently think about it, but that we would hate that kind of evil.

The scriptures say it is a positive requirement: “You that love the Lord are to hate evil.” And we’re to hate this sin of abortion. And we’re to properly hate him who engages in killing a child in the womb. Now, that doesn’t mean a personal vindictive hatred, but it means putting our focus and energy on prayers to God that man might be stopped.

Jesus Christ himself—the reference in Hebrews 1:9—”Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity. Therefore, God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.” So this is what we’re talking about today: a proper understanding of what we do with that hatred. We don’t turn it into striking out physically against abortionists. We turn it into a prayer to God that he might stop the awful butchery and bring those men and women to repentance.

So I want to talk today about maturation, generational maturation. This has been going on for 31 years, and it’ll go on for another 31 years in all likelihood, and who knows how long beyond that. But there’s generational maturation that goes on here in the context of the warfare between the two seeds. And that’s what I want to talk about.

Dan Prenis and I share somewhat of an appreciation for the social commentary of a rock group from years ago called Devo. And Devo is short for “de-evolution.” One of the men who formed the group was at Kent State when the young people were shot by the National Guard and became convinced that we were mutant hairless apes and that we were actually part of a de-evolutionary process. Well, you know, it’s probably just as reasonable as the evolutionary mindset. And it actually is a little more biblical because, you know, in terms of people that reject God, they don’t just stay where they’re at—they devolve. Our culture is devolving.

I didn’t bother to look it up, but I was wondering when the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Grizzly movies started coming out. Was it before or after the Roe v. Wade decision? In the immediate context, we have a culture that moves increasingly in terms of horror and mutilation. I think it’s because we have a culture that is struggling—if not too well—with trying to put up with the kind of conviction that comes upon us as a culture for the slaughter of children in mother’s wombs. And it’s an interesting thing that God will not let it go on in secret. He brings it to the silver screen, as it were, through other images, but he brings it nonetheless.

We want to look at the maturation of our children—the growth in righteousness and sanctification, a growth in knowing how to combat this particular evil. We want to lay out some particular goals for our young people here for the next generation, because this is a multigenerational battle. When we did our strategy map, Brad wanted us to have some things on there that would be multigenerational tasks that we cannot accomplish in the next 20 years. Well, this is one of them.

And it’s a task that we put our hand to and continue to put our hand to. It was interesting to me. I saw a C-SPAN show a couple weeks ago about the political season, and it was all about young people—you know, the Democrats and the Republicans are all trying to get young people out to vote. And how do you get them interested? Well, they said it works better to actually have social events for them and then try to stick in some political action.

And it was interesting hearing them struggle over how to get young people to vote and be involved. And then the last one of the comments made on this little forum that was being held was particularly interesting. They said, “You know, there is one group of voters, young voters, that are really very involved. It’s the evangelical Christians, and they’re probably involved so much because they see their parents being involved. It’s got that whole social political action thing going on because they’re in the context of homes that have some degree of commitment to being good citizens.”

And as a result, young people—Christian young people—are more involved in the political process. That’s good. And I want to encourage that today. And I want to encourage a maturation of that in the context of our church.

We gave David Spears this handgun. I guess his buddies up there at Fort Lewis thought that was pretty neat—that a church would give a man headed for Iraq a handgun with that verse from Psalm 144: “Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle.” Some of them may visit and say, “Well, there comes a time for physical warfare.” The scriptures are clear about that. But preeminently, of course, Psalm 144 is about the normal sort of stuff we do.

There is this two-seed warfare that we’re going to get to in just a minute. There is warfare in the context of our culture. And I pray that God would use today’s sermon to teach our hands to war, that we might mature in how we go about combating this sin and beyond that, how to produce righteousness in the context of our country once more.

All right. I want to start first—both to drive home this point of warfare but also to say how this warfare is accomplished in the church primarily—by looking at Revelation 16:12-16.

So, Revelation 16:12-16. And what we’re going to be talking about is the two-seed warfare and the prayers of the church. Then we’ll move on to generational maturation, and then conclude with some specific items of application.

Now, this two-seed warfare comes in the very beginning of human history in Genesis 3:15. After the fall, God says, “I’ll put enmity between you, that is the serpent, and the woman, between your seed and her seed. It shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

So God has judicially put into place in human history an antithetical relationship between those that follow the serpent and the fall of man—fallen men, the old man—between them and the new man, the seed of the woman, ultimately pictured in the coming of Jesus Christ. Christ will crush the head of the serpent, but also applied to the church. Romans 16 says that God will shortly crush Satan under your feet—the church.

So we have these two cultures, and there is this antithesis between the two cultures. God will not allow them to blend and merge and become one, because he wants them separate. One culture is devolving. They’re becoming callous to sin and getting worse. So we move from, you know, Cain, who strikes out at his brother with some degree of justification, I suppose—sin was eating him up—and then we get Lamech later on, who just—you know, a guy insults me and I kill him, and I kill a whole bunch of people. So there’s devolution. But on the other hand, the seed of the woman is maturing. It’s our job to prepare our children for this two-seed warfare.

And Revelation 16:12-16 is an interesting text, and frequently misunderstood, I think. It’s the sixth bowl test. We read this: “The sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates, and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared. And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet, for they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth, and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garment, lest he walk naked and they see his shame. And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.”

Well, you know, this is—I won’t go into the other interpretations of this, but I’ll tell you what I think it means. It means there are two groups out there going to be gathered together by God at Armageddon. Armageddon means “the mount of assembly.” So God is bringing together people. Now, people normally interpret the text by going back to the literal place in the Old Testament where this plain of Armageddon is. But clearly, in the book of Revelation, we’re supposed to think a little deeper and broader than that.

This is stuff that happened in the context of the first century of the church, the first leading up to AD 70. But it’s also stuff that has continuing application for the church today. And I think that what’s going on here is you’ve got two armies being raised up. And the first army are those that are going to cross the river Euphrates. That dries up for them. They’re kings from the east, right? And they come across a river that’s been dried up for them.

Well, what associations does that bring to mind? Jesus Christ comes as the king, the ultimate king, from the east. The scriptures tell us in the gospels that his coming will be as lightning from the east. He’ll come, and these guys are coming from the east. And the water is dried up. The river Euphrates is parted, so to speak. It’s dried up so that they might enter into the promised land from the north and enter into this battle that’s going to go on.

Well, you know, God’s people entered the promised land through a dried-up river before. The Jordan was parted before them, and they entered in. Abraham somehow was able to ford the Euphrates and come into the promised land. And in opposition, so on one hand, you have these kings of the east—east is like sunrise literally—the kings who come with the rising of the sun from the east entering the promised land through waters that have been miraculously dried up. And before that, they’re at the Euphrates.

And on the other hand, you’ve got this army of frog demons—like frogs, demonic, devil sort of gods. And I think that what’s being portrayed here is this two-seed warfare going on in the context of Revelation. And now we can apply it properly to who we are. Our children, this church, are the kings of the east with the power of God.

Now, I know that’s a little different way to interpret this, but I think it’s consistent with the rest of the book of Revelation. In Revelation 7, verses 2 and 3, “I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal, the living God. And he cried out with a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea, saying, ‘Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads.’”

Most commentators who wouldn’t agree with my last interpretation of the sixth bowl—most commentators agree this is Jesus Christ. He is this great angel who restrains the four angels, the power of God, from crossing here and from doing their business. The four winds from blowing upon the sea are restrained for a period of time. You know, now earlier in the book, the four angels are restrained. Now, here come kings of the east—no longer restrained at Euphrates. They’re going to cross into the promised land.

And in fact, it isn’t just them, because it is the Lord Jesus Christ then who is leading them into this battle. He is this great angel. He told us there: “Behold, I come as a thief. Keep your garments pure.” So Jesus Christ is associated with these kings of the east who are coming. And Jesus Christ had previously restrained these people earlier in the book of Revelation. Now he comes, and he comes with his people.

We’re going to sing “Arm of the Lord Awake” at the conclusion of the service today. And you know, if you think about that song, usually you think, “Well, God, do something. God, do something. Arm of the Lord, awake.” Well, the text in Isaiah from which that phrase comes—”Arm of the Lord, awake”—has two other awakenings in its immediate context. I’ve got them on your outline. Isaiah 51:9 says, “Arm of the Lord, awake.” Isaiah 51:17 says, “Awake, Jerusalem.” And then Isaiah 52:1, in this threefold repetition in that section of Isaiah, calls upon Zion to awake.

You see, the arm of the Lord is the church of God in his expression in the context of the world. And so when we pray that the arm of the Lord awake, we’re really praying that God would awaken his church from its slumbers and go about doing this warfare to roll back the evil of abortion in the context of our land.

So now he comes. Behold, I come as a thief in the night.

Now, this is the sixth bowl, and earlier we have the sixth trumpet with a relationship to this sixth bowl in chapter 9 of Revelation, verses 13 to 21. Listen: “The sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar, so four winds—no, four horns of the golden altar, which is before God. The golden altar, of course, is the altar of incense or prayer. Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, ‘Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates.’”

See, earlier Jesus had bound these angels, right? Well, now we find he had bound them at the river Euphrates. And with the blowing of the sixth trumpet, they’re going to be loosed. And then with the pouring out of the sixth bowl, that loosing is portrayed as the kings of the east coming against the demonic frog army of the opposition.

“So loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates. And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour and a day and a month and a year, for to slay the third part of men. And the number of the army of the horsemen were 200,000,000. And I heard the number of them. And thus I saw the horses in the vision and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire and jacinth and brimstone. And the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions. And out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone.”

So this is, I think, a parallel reading of what the sixth bowl judgment is all about. The kings of the east following the great king of the east, Jesus, will come from the east like lightning. He is the rising of the sun. He’s the one that parts the waters, right? Prepares his people. Behold, I come, he says. He comes. And that army that follows him is described in the sixth trumpet section. And that army follows him and they’re going to wage war with the demonic frog army of the opposition.

Now, this is a picture of life—quite an image that God has set up for us here. An illustration, not an illustration—an image of what reality is. You don’t think about this much, but this is who you are. You are kings following the great king from the east, the Lord Jesus Christ. You have been sent forth into the world. You’ll go out of this place today and go into the world to wage war. How will you do it? There’ll be demonic frog guys out there. How are you going to defeat those people?

Well, the text tells us by way of imagery, of course, as Revelation does. But what it tells us is that this army is an army whose power is in their word. What it says in Revelation 16. First, it gives us this picture. They’ve got these breastplates, right? The high priest had the breastplate. And on the breastplate is this jacinth stone—the color of the incense burning described in the Old Testament. We can’t take time to make the associations, but that’s what it is. It’s one of those fiery stones.

Fire is on that breastplate—a fire stone with the 12 tribes of Israel on the breastplate of the high priest. Fire is on there. And the particular stone that’s portrayed—this fire stone is fire sparkling inside of it—is this color of much of the tabernacle, the background of the high priest’s garments, and it’s the color of incense, and associated to the incense being burned—it’s a praying army. The incense of the saints ascends, and it’s the prayers of the saints that are what they are. Now, they also have brimstone. Their prayers as they go forth to battle are mixed with judgment.

And the text goes on to say that it is their word that is their power, and they have a tail with the sting, and the tail is judgment again. So some people may have thought of this group as bad people, but clearly they’re not. Clearly, they’re the power of God, the fourfold power of God that Jesus is releasing across the Euphrates to affect change in the world. And what he’s going to affect is repentance. And it’s pictured as death because repentance is death to the old man and life to the new man.

And a third of the people are converted through the preaching and praying of the kings of the east following the Lord Jesus Christ. This is what they do, and this is how they conquer. And the ones that do not repent are left alive. What does that mean? Well, it’s the reversal kind of thing in the text. But the point is those that don’t repent are the ones who haven’t been moved by the preaching and the prayers of God’s people to repent of their deeds and die to themselves and live to Jesus Christ.

So by imagery here—and I know it’s a lot of details here, and I’ve thrown a lot of things at you—but what’s going on in Revelation is a picture of spiritual warfare. And what it tells us is that to be successful in spiritual warfare, our weapons—surprise, surprise—are not carnal for the tearing down of strongholds. Our weapons are not ultimately, you know, a 9mm pistol. Sometimes it’s a useful tool, but the way that the church of Jesus Christ engages in the battle and wins the battle is through prayer and proclamation blended with the brimstone of judgment.

That’s what we do today. We proclaim forth the truth of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then we also pray, mixed with judgment, that God might indeed have his way with his enemies.

Now, this—we can’t take the time—but read the book of Zechariah with this kind of perspective on it. And read, for instance, in Zechariah 2:6: “Ho, come forth. Flee from the land of the north, sayeth the Lord. I have spread you abroad as the four winds of the heaven, sayeth the Lord. So come back now, four winds of the heaven.” Come back, four angels. Releasing the four riders. Come back, those kings of the east coming back into the land. Zechariah relates those horses, the four winds, the four horns of the altar—all that stuff—to the power and spirit of God coming to the land to do his particular bidding.

So what we have here is the liturgical warfare at the mount of assembly. Armageddon is not the literal place. Everybody’s looking for some literal battle. No. Revelation began by saying in the very first chapter that these are signified—that things which will happen are signified by symbols, not code—biblical imagery. So if we know all the Bible, we can understand what these images mean and how they relate.

And this word, this Hebrew word Armageddon, means “mount of assembly.” God has brought us to the mount of assembly today, and we’re to engage in liturgical warfare through the preaching of the word and the prayers of the saints ascending before God. And in this case, asking for judgment, brimstone, upon those who are committing this horrific evil in the context of our culture.

We could go a lot deeper. We could spend a lot of time in the book of Acts, and this is what happens. Here’s an example of it in Acts 12:5. Peter has been imprisoned by Herod, and here’s where I pick it up in verse 5: “Peter therefore was kept in prison, but prayer was made without ceasing of the church unto God for Peter. And when Herod would have brought him forth to kill him, the same night Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and the keepers before the door kept the prison. And behold, the angel of the Lord came upon him,” and he gets delivered.

Throughout the book of Acts, this is what happens. The prayers of the church ascend. The prayers against Herod, and the very next thing after this, it talks about the death of Herod. So the prayers of the people are related to the protection of God, the relief of God’s people, the release of Peter. It happened because they prayed. Prayer changes things. It’s the only thing that changes things, ultimately. I mean, they produce actions in the world. There’s things you have to do as a result of your prayer. But that’s where it starts—in Lord’s Day worship, liturgical warfare. This is what we do here. This is what we believe.

This is what we believe for 20 years. That’s why we structure the worship service the way we do. So liturgical warfare is what we’re called to do, and it is effectual warfare.

Notice, by the way, that in Revelation 6:9 and 10, the specific prayers that were given from God’s people is this. “He opens the fifth seal. I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God for the testimony which they heard. And they cried with a loud voice, saying, ‘How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?’”

The specific prayer that’s singled out for us in this section is an imprecatory prayer. It’s a prayer asking for God’s particular judgments upon people that slaughter Christians. This isn’t purgatory. These guys aren’t being purged of their evil intentions or bad thoughts toward those that killed them. These are perfected saints in heaven, and they’re praying forth prayers expecting that imprecatory prayer that they ask of Jesus Christ will find its result in judgment.

And Jesus says, “Yeah, I’m going to do it. Wait a little bit longer. It will happen by about AD 70.” It does happen definitively. God judges. God brings judgment, and then in a very specific way, the old world is judged and removed via the prayer of the new world. And we’re around in this new world, this new creation of Jesus Christ. And we have remnants of the old world—abortion and abortionists and people that give up their babies to be killed. This is the old creation that’s dying away. And the way that old world is swept away is through the liturgical prayers of the church and then the proclamation of the word, and that having an impact throughout the rest of the week.

So we’ve got two armies, and we want to have our army trained to know how to go about doing this warfare against the demonic frog people that kill children. That’s what we’re about today.

And what we want to look for, based on Psalm 78, is a generational maturation of Christ’s seed—not our children ultimately, but Christ’s children. Our job is to train them and to perfect them, to mature them, to make them better children and better seed for Jesus Christ than we are. We desire, pray for, and work to achieve generational maturation. It’s a long-term perspective in this battle and the rest of the battles of life, and it’s going to be accomplished generationally.

Well, what does Psalm 78 tell us about generational maturation? Now, we go back to Psalm 78. Psalm 78 is a long psalm. It used to be a favorite in the Reformation times and then in Puritan times. This would be one the kids would memorize because this is one that’s right for them, right? We’re going to tell the children. They’re going to tell them to their children the things that God has done. And here’s all they are. Here’s all the stuff he’s done.

We’re not going to get into most of them, but what we’re going to do is kind of look at the introduction—a contemplation of Asaph. “Give ear, oh my people, to my law.” It begins with a contemplation, a meditation on the law of God and the way God has moved in the context of history. It’s important for our children to grow in their understanding of the historical development of the church of Jesus Christ. So they should have a proper contemplation of history. In verses 1 to 8, that is sketched out for us.

“Give ear, oh my people, to my law. Incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter dark sayings of old, which we have heard and known. Our fathers have told us. We won’t hide them from their children, telling to the generation to come the praises of the Lord, his strength, his wonderful works that he has done. He established a testimony in Jacob, appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers that they should make them known to their children, that the generation to come might know them. The children who would be born, that they may arise and declare them to their children.”

Okay? So there’s a movement of this transmission of what God has done. This contemplation of history goes from generation to generation, and it happens to the end of maturation. Because verse 7 says that they may set their hope in God, not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments, and may not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that did not set its heart aright and whose spirit was not faithful to God.

And then it goes on to talk about the children of Ephraim and how they failed. Now, the big picture of Psalm 78 is the movement from Moses to Jesus—movement from Ephraim and Joshua to David, and then finally to the greater David. That’s what the big picture being told is. But just like in Revelation, while it’s talking about AD 70, it has these great truths to apply to us.

And the great truth here is that we’re supposed to desire generational maturation in the church of Jesus Christ. And while we didn’t engage in the specific sins of Ephraim in the wilderness and other things that they did, we certainly can say—I can say—that I have a tremendous desire that my children be more faithful and not as rebellious as I have been.

And now, maybe there are some young parents here who don’t get that. You will as you get older. You’ll understand more and more the depth of your sin and the grace, the depth of the grace and love of God. We know that we have been a rebellious generation. We know that we inherited this culture from a rebellious generation that let abortion develop in the seamy underbelly and then take root. And we know that we haven’t done a real good job of combating it as well as we could have.

You know, all the things that lead people to abortion—many of those same sins we engage in on a regular basis. So we desire generational maturation—a contemplation of history—to the end that the next generation and the generation following might indeed become more and more faithful in going about this two-seed warfare that we’ve talked about.

This generational maturation of Christ’s seeds comes about as a commitment to equip covenant children for the battle, specifically by arming them with the knowledge of the covenant. It says here that he’ll declare to them the covenant of God. He made a covenant. And so we are to equip our children by an understanding of the covenant of God.

And one of the great things that’s going on in reformed Christianity is a contemplation of that covenant. This church’s worship services are based on a covenant renewal model. Every Lord’s day becomes a teaching and application to them of what the covenant of God is. A knowledge of the covenant: God has delivered us sovereignly, graciously, and brought us into a victorious relationship with him. This is who they are, and they need that knowledge of the covenant. They need a knowledge of the law of God, and they need a knowledge of the mighty deeds of God.

This is our distinctives: covenant theology, an understanding of what that is; the law of God—that we’re theonomic, that God’s law has application to us, not cut and paste, but that the 66 books we call the Bible is the way we’re supposed to govern ourselves in every sphere of life. The law of God. And then a knowledge of the mighty deeds of God—that he doesn’t lose in history. History is marked by the advance of his people and the judgment of evil through generational maturation.

This knowledge of the mighty deeds of God is a demonstration of God’s judgment of the stiff-necked. Verse 7b says this instruction goes on that the children might not forget the works of God. What were those works? It goes on to talk about God’s judgment on the stiff-necked people. Those that forget God are judged. And our children are to understand that the victory of God works both ways. The mighty deeds of God produce victory through judgment of his enemies. And we can always have the potential there to become God’s enemies and to stiffen ourselves up and forget the works of God.

The knowledge of the mighty deeds of God is to produce discouragements to disobedience—that they might keep God’s commandments. Generational maturation happens as people contemplate the acts of God in history as an inducement to fear their own disobedience, their slide into sin, because the Lord God judges people and brings chastisements against them.

And finally, this is given as an encouragement to obedience and praise, that they may indeed set their hope in God. We’re to teach the things of history and have them contemplate it, that they might end up setting their hope on the things of God—understanding the covenant, the law, and the works that God does. The end result of that is that the children might indeed set their hope on God.

Now, this is all gospel to our children. To you young people, this is gospel. We’re declaring to you the covenant of deliverance, grace, and victory. And this is gospel to you. We give you this knowledge so that you might indeed be discouraged from disobedience and encouraged to obedience. But it’s gospel. This is the path that God has placed you in. You’re children of faithful Christians. God has given you the knowledge of the covenant and his law and his mighty deeds in history.

But the proper response on your part, young people, is to commit yourselves afresh to covenantal maturation. The proper response of covenant children to this declaration of the covenant, law, and works of God is to say yes: God has done wonderful things for me, and I want to commit myself afresh to becoming mature and a trained warrior for the Lord Jesus Christ in response to the wonderful blessings that he’s given me.

We tremendously desire a maturation in an understanding of God’s word for our children—generational maturation through a contemplation of God’s covenant, law, and his mighty deeds—because this is where Ephraim failed, right? Verse 9. “The children of Ephraim, being armed and carrying bows, turned back in the day of battle. How did they turn back? They didn’t keep the covenant of God. They refused to walk in his law. For God’s works and his wonders that he had shown them,” the covenant, the law, and history, what God has accomplished.

And Ephraim, while raised in the context of the faith, turned back in the day of battle. What will you do, young people? 20 years from now, when maybe a few of us are dead and gone to our glory—we’ll be watching from heaven—what will you do here as you run this church? Will you keep in the center of this church the covenant of God and the great delight it is to walk in the law of God and to remember that he is not inactive in history, but rather he works in the past and he is working in the present?

Will you be faithful to enter into battle? And are you faithful now to enter into battle in the ways that you can accomplish in your particular sphere of influence in the context of you growing up here at Reformation Covenant Church? Are you faithful to enter the battle in this particular matter—to proclaim forth the truth of God that abortion is murder and to try to affect change in that particular arena?

Well, this is what we’re calling you today, young people—the next generation at this church. This sermon is aimed primarily at you. We are praying for and working hard toward generational maturation. This is an intergenerational task this church has set its hand to: to see this land, certainly this city, this state, this nation, cleansed of the murder of pre-born infants. Will you join us in that battle? Are you doing anything now? Will you join us in the prayers here in a few minutes as a beginning place to how you go about your warfare?

Well, let’s talk about kings of prayer and prophecy. These kings, who are colored like incense and prayers, they are the prayers of the saints. That’s how they do their warfare, and they are kings of prophecy. Their power is in their word. Let’s talk about them. Let’s sketch out a goal for the next generation here at RCC.

And the first goal is a maturation of day of the Lord worship prayers. If you’re an army of prayer, then this is where those prayers begin. All the prayers of the saints throughout the week find their focal point in the saints’ collective prayer on the Lord’s day. This informs all the other prayers.

One of the things we’re trying to do this year is prepare aids to prayer, to teach the congregation how to pray better. To take what we do here on the Lord’s day and take those prayers into the rest of your life. You have an obligation, young people, to the church—to the church as an institution. You’re to mature the worship of this church. We have not arrived, by any stretch of the imagination, at the final destination in our worship. It is your job to mature the worship of this church, maintaining what’s right and reforming, making better what is immature.

This involves first of all a maturation in imprecatory prayers. Psalm 10 is a great psalm to remember for those of you who prepare imprecatory prayers in the future. Psalm 10 tells us that imprecatory prayers are absolutely needed because it demonstrates God’s judgments in the world—to demonstrate to people why they shouldn’t sin.

Psalm 10 tells us that the wicked have security. Let me read a few verses here from Psalm 10.

“The wicked boasts of his heart’s desire and blesses the covetous whom the Lord abhors. The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God. God is not in all his thoughts. His ways are always grievous. Your judgments are far above out of his sight.”

This is the common refrain in Psalm 10. The reason why the wicked do these things is because your judgments are out of sight. And as a result of that, then we see the same thing in verse 11 of Psalm 10: “He hath said in his heart, ‘God has forgotten. He hides his face rather. He will never see it.’”

So the wicked man, the abortionist, does what he does because he doesn’t believe God will do anything about it. That’s why he sins. That’s why he continues in his prideful sin. And as a result of that, the proper response of the church is verse 12: “Arise, O Lord. Oh God, lift up your hand. Forget not the humble.”

We’re to cry out to God in liturgical maledictory prayers against the wicked because this is the very thing they need. They need to see God active in the context of their lives, judging them with temporal chastisements of judgment. The wicked have security, and as a result of that security, we launch into imprecatory prayers.

Verse 15: “Break the arm of the wicked and the evil man. Seek out his wickedness till thou find none. We pray for that. The Lord is king forever and ever. The heathen are perished out of his land.”

We pray confidently, knowing that this is the movement of the world in which we live. “You have heard the desire of the humble. You will prepare their heart. You will cause thine ear to hear to judge the fatherless and the oppressed, that this man of the earth may no more oppress. I have said, ‘Ye are gods, and all of you are children of the most high,’ but ye shall die like men and fall like one of the princes.”

This is true. This is what the Supreme Court needs to hear. And then our job is verse 8: “Arise, oh God, judge the earth, for thou shalt inherit the nations.” Imprecatory prayer.

Our church should mature in the application of imprecatory prayers in the context of Lord’s day worship. You have an obligation, young people, because of Psalm 10—as you look at the wickedness around you—to lead this church in the future by the use of proper prayers of imprecation against God’s enemies.

You already do this. We’re training you every week to pray imprecatorily. You know how that thing we call the Lord’s Prayer, right? “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” And it was Luther, among many other people probably, who said that every time you pray that prayer, you really—by implication, as you pray for the establishment and manifestation of Christ’s kingdom—you are praying for the destruction of every other kingdom that exalts itself against the Lord Jesus Christ.

You pray for the destruction of the kingdom of abortion clinics when you pray for the establishment of the kingdom of God, that his will might be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Generational maturation of this church means a maturation in worship and specifically it means a maturation in Lord’s day prayers of malediction.

Secondly, it means maturation in the proclamation of the full gospel. Paul told the people in Acts who were worshiping him and the other Barnabas as gods: “You know, in times past God winked at sin. But no more. Now is the time of judgment.” As Elder Wilson read from the Gospels: “Now is the axe put to the root of the tree.”

We think the Old Testament was a time of wrath and the New Testament a time of grace. But in reality, Paul says it’s the other way around. Up until Jesus came, things sort of were left alone in some sense. But now there’s an intensification of judgment on the earth. The full gospel means the gospel is the good news that the Lord Jesus Christ—his name meaning Savior, King—has ascended to the right hand of the Father and he reigns now in a heightened sense. That was not true prior to his coming.

The gospel is the good news that his judgments now fill the earth. That the prayers of Psalm 10, the prayers of Revelation 6—all those prayers are now in the process of being answered. Maturation in worship means the proclamation of the word with a full gospel, meaning that yes, we have great blessings in the gospel of Christ, but it is great danger to those who stiffen themselves against the Lord Jesus Christ. The abortionist needs to hear that judgment is still around in the world this side of the cross, and in fact it is around in a greater sense. And we need to hear it, that we might be warned away from disobedience.

Third, this obligation to the church should result in the maturation of the sovereign God dispensing his clemency gifts graciously in the divine service. And I’ve got a subtitle here: the dialogue of worship and the proper motivation for imprecatory prayers.

The scriptures say, don’t pray this out of your flesh. There’s a great opportunity to do that, but don’t do that. Know that you are like the abortionist. You are likewise a sinner. The worship service—the covenant renewal worship pattern of dialogue and of stressing the gifts of God to people, stressing the sovereignty of God, stresses the grace of God to us. We’re not in this position because we’re better than the abortionists. No, we’re here because the grace of God has brought us here and received his gifts. This produces a gracious people.

The end result of our prayers, our great desire, is that men would repent. We hope that wicked man here in Oregon City who killed those two girls—we don’t hope that he goes to hell. We hope that he goes to hell if he won’t repent. But we hope that he repents of his sins and comes to the Lord Jesus Christ. And worship trains us in that attitude. As much as it declares the judgment of God, it’s a reminder that God has graciously and sovereignly called us to himself.

Psalm 139:22 says, “Do not I hate them, oh Lord, that hate thee? Am not I grieved with those that rise up against me? I hate them with perfect hatred. I count them my enemies. Don’t I hate the men that killed innocent children in the womb?” Oh yes, I do. The psalmist says I hate them with a perfect hatred. I hate them as my enemies—not just God’s enemies. They’re an enemy of the church. Any enemy of God’s should be an enemy of ours.

But it goes on to say this: “Search me, oh God. Know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. See if there be any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.” The psalmist knows that if we’re going to talk about imprecatory prayers, it’s a warning against us as well. And we know that it’s the grace of God, and we call him to search our hearts as we engage in the prayers of the church. So we are to mature in our understanding of this. We’re to have proper attitudes about our own sinfulness and the grace of God in the context of this.

We’re to develop and mature in our worship. Secondly, we’re to mature in the prophetic witness of the church. We’re to mature in the context of our prayers and worship. Secondly, we desire for the generation to come to mature in their prophetic witness. This is an obligation to the state.

Psalm 82. And I give you a little structure there in your outlines about this. This talks specifically about the United States Supreme Court, talks about Governor Kulongowski, talks about the judges in our state and nation. “God stands at the congregation of the mighty. He judges among the gods.” What does that mean? Amongst the rulers.

Psalm 82 is a reminder that rulers are judged by God. We have an obligation to tell them that. If we don’t warn them about that, then God holds us responsible and culpable for failing to do that.

“How long will you judge unrighteously and accept the persons of the wicked? Selah. Defend the poor and fatherless. How long, Supreme Court, will you let defenseless children be killed by men making profit? By women sleeping more leisure time, or whatever, by husbands—and this is usually the case—who push their wives because they don’t want to be responsible dads? How long will you let this go on? You judges of the earth.

How long, Governor Kulongowski, will the sin of abortion go unpunished in this state? You are called upon, civil magistrate, to defend the poor and fatherless, do justice to the afflicted and needy, deliver the poor and needy, rid them out of the hand of the wicked. They know not, and neither will they understand. They walk on in darkness.

We’ve been doing this for 31 years. The Supreme Court walks on in darkness. All the foundations of the earth are out of course. That’s the way it is when civil rulers now become so oblivious to the truth of God and the need to show mercy and compassion to the young ones.

‘I have said, Ye are gods, and all of you are children of the most high, but ye shall die like men and fall like one of the princes.’

This is true. This is what the Supreme Court needs to hear. And then our job is verse 8: ‘Arise, oh God, judge the earth, for thou shalt inherit the nations.’ Imprecatory prayer.”

Our children should grow and mature in a prophetic witness to the civil state of the need to repent of this sin and to defend the fatherless in the context of our culture. They need to be positively encouraged to apply the law of God.

1 Timothy 2 talks about how to set up a church. Paul says, “Well, if I’m gone, Timothy, this is what you do in the house of God.” In the church, first thing, chapter 2, verse 1. Most important thing is the singing? No. Most important thing is the sermon? No. Most important thing is how to do the sacraments? No. First and foremost, he says in chapter 2, verse 1:

“I exhort therefore that first of all supplications, prayers, intercession, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings, and for all that are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who will have all men to be saved.”

It’s the job of the next generation to pray for and then to work toward the conversion of civil rulers and their ability to uphold proper judgment. First, by warning them about the judgments of God that’s coming upon their heads for allowing abortion, for instance. But then secondly, by positively encouraging them and praying for them to come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and apply his law in how they’ll go about doing his work.

You know, this is really an extension of an Old Testament text. 1 Timothy 2:1-4 is really an extension of an Old Testament text. It’s quite important: Jeremiah 29:7.

You know, we read the Old Testament an awful lot of it. It’s talking about a covenanted nation. We’re really not that anymore—at least, maybe we never were. Maybe we were. But it’s hard to apply directly the portions of the scriptures given while Israel is in the promised land because we’re not there. But there are other portions of scripture that talk about what it was like in exile, and these are scriptures we can learn from.

And you know, we read in Jeremiah 29:7, he says, “While you’re in captivity, have families. Get married. Have children. Seek that generational maturation that’ll bring you back to the land. And then in verse 7: ‘Seek the peace of the city wherein I have caused you to be carried away captive. Pray unto the Lord for it, for in the peace thereof shall you have peace.’”

Sounds an awful lot like what Paul told Timothy: pray for authorities that you might live a quiet and peaceable life. But you cannot have that as a minority ghetto community pulled back from the culture. You’re to pray and work—both things—for the peace of the city in which you live. We’re to pray for Oregon City, but we’re to work that Oregon City might eventually become an abortion-free zone. The way we’ve tried to blot out pornography—and God has answered our prayers in that way.

We have a positive obligation to the civil magistrate to tell him first of all that he’s in deep danger, and secondly, that his civil laws should be framed in terms of the word of God. So we pray that the next generation has this positive maturation in terms of their proclamation of the word of God to kings of the earth.

Psalm 138—that’s the one I’ve talked about. “You know, the Lord will perfect that which concerns me.” Well, this is another thing it says: “All the kings of the earth shall praise thee, oh Lord.”

So a great promise, Psalm 138:4: “All the kings—Kulongowski, Bush—all the presidents and governors shall praise thee, oh Lord.” But there’s a condition put on it: “when they hear the words of thy mouth. Yea, they shall sing in the ways of the Lord, for great is the glory of the Lord.”

Can we blame the civil magistrate if they have not heard the words of the mouth of Jesus through his church prophetically to them? We’re going to try this year to put one position paper out, to deliver to the civil magistrate as a church, to produce that proclamation. But young people, we need a lot more of those. We need a perpetual witness to the civil state both at the warnings of their judgment for their sin of letting abortions continue and of telling them that they should frame their laws according to the word of God.

In Deuteronomy 4, the law of God was seen as having such a great thing for a nation that all the nations of the world would see what kind of great laws you have and emulate them. Our desire for our next generation of RCC is that some of our people may eventually end up in those halls of power and authority in the civil arena, that they might indeed try to frame the laws of the state according to the wisdom of God’s laws. This is the wisdom. This is your wisdom, God says, in the sight of the nations—these wonderful statutes and judgments that I’ve given to you.

It’s how America became a great country. It’s why people first were attracted here. Now it’s money. It used to be the law of God. And it will be again as the next generation matures and their obligations in terms of the civil state.

The pregnancy resource centers—Oregon Right to Life—are conducting a camp here, actually just east of Salem. We mentioned this a couple weeks ago, and I wanted to mention it here. You have to get your applications in by February 2nd. What’s the date? It’s in March.

I was a little disappointed in the information. I don’t know if it’s this was a second mailing, but it actually doesn’t tell me what ages are supposed to come to this camp, where they’re going to train you in terms of civil action, being political, political action, benevolent action, bioethics—all this sort of stuff. The whole purpose of it is that Right to Life is developing a camp—I think it’s in March—that will train young people, that will mature you generationally, so to speak, in your ability to fulfill your obligations to the civil state.

And I would greatly encourage any of the teens here to get this information from myself or from Sarah Apprentice later to see if that’s something you should do. I know that Scott Conn did some kind of leadership thing at the capital last year. There’s several opportunities that are readily available here. The maturational generation of the children at RCC has a civil component to it that properly understands how to go about doing biblical political action. Put yourself in the way of receiving instruction from Right to Life and other people who have been successful in taking this fight into the civil arena. So there’s that.

The maturational generation of our children involves this obligation to the civil state.

And then finally, it’s a maturation of benevolent service—obligations to the victims. Now, I know that word “victim” is not one we like to use in terms of sin, and everybody has their own fault, their own responsibility for their sin. But still, the scriptures certainly say that there’s increased culpability to those who know better and delude people into sinful actions.

Mothers are responsible for turning their children over to murderers. But all too often, those mothers have done that as a result of a great deal of pressure from the authorities in the land, both civil and in terms of the family.

It’s interesting, you know. I have to handle this carefully, but we just passed, I think, the 10th anniversary of the attack on John Wayne Bobbitt. And if you don’t know what that is, don’t listen. Just forget about it. But those of you who know what it is and know what the woman did there—you probably don’t know this. Maybe a few of you do. That the attack happened shortly after the third anniversary of that woman’s abortion.

She did not want to have the abortion. Apparently, her husband John Wayne Bobbitt pressured her into doing the abortion. And she apparently has said that she felt that her womanhood was attacked and defiled in an irrevocable sort of way through aborting her own child that she wanted to carry to term. And that on the third anniversary, within a day of the actual third anniversary, she went in for anxiety attacks to a hospital or mental health clinic or something for feelings of depression. And then several days later, she struck out at her husband’s manhood because her womanhood had been destroyed—so she thought in her own mind.

We now live in the context of a culture where a great many people are going clinically insane because they’re trying to cope with guilt that the culture says is no guilt. And they’re not doing that correctly. Those women need the voice of the church of Jesus Christ reaching out to them to assure them that indeed, as they come to faith in Christ, those sins are forgiven.

The voice of the Lord Jesus Christ—the prophetic ministry of the kings of the east—to do warfare against the frog army. The maturation of you young people involves a maturation in the benevolent services—your obligations to the people directly affected by these sins.

In Acts 10:4, Cornelius is told he’s the gentile that Peter has to go to. You remember why Peter was sent there by God? Well, listen. “When he looked on the angel of God, Cornelius was afraid and said, ‘What is it, Lord?’ And he said unto him, ‘Thy prayers and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God.’”

The prayers and alms of Cornelius led to the response of God to bring him this great favor of being this gentile convert. As the church begins to include Gentiles into the broader church of Jesus Christ in the book of Acts, the prayers of the church have to be accomplished by the benevolent activities of the church. The alms of the church cause God to remember and change the reality of the world in which we live.

Proverbs 24:11 and 12: “Rescue those who are being led off to the slaughter. Will you say you don’t know about it?”

The first application is to rescue people who are going to go engage in sin that will end up in their destruction. I think that verse has primary reference not to rescuing the little children—as much important as that might be—but it means rescuing those mothers who are about to slip into the horrific folly of killing their own children. That’s what I think the immediate application of Proverbs 24:11 and 12 in the context of the book of Proverbs is.

The ones who are being led to the slaughter are the people that are going down the path of folly, lady folly, and ending up at the house of death. Women go down that path of folly because they listen to their stupid husbands, or they listen to their stupid Planned Parenthood person, or their teacher at school, or the civil magistrate who says, “Well, there’s nothing illegal about it. Maybe it’s good for you.” They go down that pathway and end up at the house of death.

We have an obligation to those women to rescue them. And God says, you know, “Are you going to say, ‘You didn’t know this was going on’? We know what’s going on. How can we go about rescuing them?”

Well, you can serve. You can serve at the Pregnancy Resource Center now. You should call them up. “What can I do?” Because they’ve been flooded, and they’re closed for a month or two. Maybe they need help. If you’re getting in there to help restore the place, maybe get ready to start serving. You give them—they reopen the doors. They have an ultrasound machine there to show women that this is really a life that’s going on inside you. They have peer counseling. You can be trained to do it. Sarah Apprentice does that. There’s laundry. There’s preparation of blankets and quilts. There’s all sort of stuff that you can do to fulfill the requirements of Proverbs 24:11 and 12.

And try to rescue women who are on the