In his sermon titled 'Abortion: War on the Unborn,' Paul Carrington addresses the issue of abortion through the lens of Romans 1, emphasizing the conflict between secular autonomy and divine authority. Carrington argues that abortion is an attack on personhood and equates the secular world's insistence on self-definition with a deviation from God's design. He draws parallels between the dehumanization in abortion and historical atrocities like the Holocaust and slavery, suggesting that dehumanization is a necessary precursor to such acts. Throughout, Carrington stresses the spiritual nature of the abortion debate, advocating for the church's role in proclaiming biblical truth. He criticizes the secular pro-life movement for not rooting its arguments in theology and warns against societal trends of 'creature worship,’ highlighting examples of environmental activism and moral inconsistency. Carrington concludes by calling for repentance and redemption through Christ's gospel, urging the church and individuals to act against abortion with the truth of God's word.

Well, good afternoon. It's our time for afternoon teaching session, and I just wanted to Start us off with some thoughts in and around what we're going to be dealing with here this afternoon really we're talking about abortion and the war that is taking place against the unborn in our culture all around us. It's almost impossible to go at a couple of days or even a week without seeing headlines or some other news event taking place in the media. And I want to acknowledge right up front that we're going to be talking about a topic that's very, very difficult. I'm not going to be getting graphic or anything like that, but a very uncomfortable topic.

And to help us think through this topic, we're going to be really using the lens that is provided for us in Romans 1. We're going to be staying in Romans just like we were in Romans here this morning. And really and truly what we're looking at is a war that's taking place but it's on the same front as much of the other wars that we've been discussing or the battles that we've been discussing whether it's manhood or womanhood or even the the myth of transgenderism as people pretend to not know what gender they are whether they're male or female what is a boy really and what is a girl really all of these things they really come down to one common denominator and that common denominator is personhood what it is to actually be a person And an abortion is an attack on personhood at the earliest stages. The secular world insists that we are what we decide. In the case of gender, for example, I decide what I am and I can decide that for myself.

And of course when you hear the common tone now in our secular society, really Romans 1 is at the heart of this conflict. That's really what we find. And the prevailing view of the 21st century specific to America is that I will create God in my image. As a result, I will determine what is right, and I am accountable to no one but myself. It's a worldview that makes plenty of room for the shedding of innocent blood, doesn't it?

But on the other side we have God who completely does away with the charade that man is autonomous and somehow in control. He says, you are what I created you to be. So you can see this conflict that's set right before us. In other words, I am the authority and man is made in my image. You're absolutely guaranteed to have a battle and have a war when you have these two opposing forces.

God on the one side and mankind insisting that He is something that He is not. And so the very first words of the Bible settle the score for us and removes all conflict really and truly when we read those words in the beginning God. God doesn't try to prove he's God, he doesn't try to prove he's the authority, he just assumes That man will acknowledge and know that he is God And so I want to I want to approach the matter by laying out the facts as plainly as I can And I'm purposely not going to get into any application today. I'm gonna leave that to you We dealt with application last Sunday But I my prayer my hope the thing that I really want to lodge in your mind as we go through this afternoon's session is really two questions. What can I do and what should we do in light of all that we're going to be listening to?

And upfront, what I want to acknowledge is this, that the abortion industry, it banks on one thing pretty much over and above everything else. And it's the fact that people will just simply turn away. It's invisible and most people, they don't really like it. It's an uncomfortable topic But they just turn away and as a result the evil just perpetuates and continues It's met with amazing success this strategy has in the US alone. There's been over 60 million babies that have been aborted since Roe v Wade in 1973.

It's almost impossible. When I say that number your mind can't even compute that. It doesn't really mean a whole lot. It's, I mean it's ten times more than all the Jews that were killed in World War II as a result of Nazi Germany. Or if I were to say this to you children, listen to this for a second.

If I were to say to you right now, start counting to 60 million. One, two, three. Do you know how long it would take you to get to 60 million? It would be September 10th, 2021, before you would finally get there. That's without sleeping, without eating, without stopping, just continuing one day after the other counting counting to account account for all the deaths that Abortion has wrought in our nation and Wilberforce put it this way William Wilberforce who fought against slavery in the 1800s, he started before it was abolished but in 1791 he was addressing the House of Commons and he ended his speech with these words.

He says, having heard all this you may choose to look the other way but you can never say that you did not know. And my prayer is that there might be a young person even among us perhaps some young person with the spirit of Wilberforce so to speak that would want to honor God and fight a battle that is a worthwhile, worthy fight. And I want to start by turning our attention, as I said, to Romans the first chapter. If you have your Bibles, please open to them, to chapter one, verse 18. And I'm going to read from 18 just down to 25, So just a handful of verses.

But it starts off with after declaring Paul saying, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, something that's very well known to us. He then goes in verse 18 and he makes this statement. He says, for the wrath of God is Revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness Because what may be known of God is manifest in them for God has shown it to them for since the creation of the world his invisible attributes are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made even his eternal power and Godhead so that they are without excuse Because although they knew God they did not glorify him as God nor were they thankful But became futile in their thoughts and their foolish hearts were darkened professing to be wise they became fools and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness in the lusts of their hearts to dishonor their bodies among themselves who exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forevermore.

Amen. So what Romans 1 really seeks to teach us is something very very very simple that if you do not worship God as creator You will worship The creature and as a result what happens is that when you get God wrong you also get human life wrong specifically you get personhood wrong. What is a person? What has God created us to be? What is our purpose?

When you enthrone the creature, the fruit of that or one of the fruits of that is going to be abortion as we see it not only in our nation but really all Around the world by the way 60 million have been aborted since 1973 in America But that's the annual number of babies aborted globally Can you imagine that that number every single year? Just gone on the altar of convenience. And so this war takes a terrible toll. It takes a terrible physical toll. But make no mistake What I want you to come away with here this afternoon is that this is a spiritual war that we're fighting It's a sin issue and a sin issue has to be addressed By one means and that is the gospel of Jesus Christ And so I want to just talk about some current events just to help us think as we're considering Romans 1 on what's really going on even in our world.

And first of all, see if you can, as I'm going through these, see if you can find the Romans 1 element that we just read. There's full blown creature worship that's going on right before our very eyes. In fact, this coming week starting, I think it is tomorrow, in New York City is the very beginning of what they're calling climate week, where you're getting all these massive corporations that are going up there. Students are being allowed to skip school so they can go and march in a mythical protest against the world collapsing and fading and everything going to absolute nothing. They're referring primarily to the destruction of the Amazon rainforest and other things like that.

They've actually coined a new phrase, if you can believe it, called ecocide. It's intended to conjure up the feeling of genocide. Now they've almost assigned being status to trees and to plants in the sense that if you commit ecocide That's one of the great crimes of our present age and and so here's a movement it thrives on hypocrisy Doesn't it it thrives a lot on? Inconsistency No doubt you've seen the teary-eyed celebrities as they crisscross the country in their private jets telling you to stop driving a four-cylinder vehicle as they travel all over the place. And in one of the most ridiculous virtue signaling campaigns ever, just this past week, NBC released what they called a forum for climate confessions.

I don't know if you heard about this, where you can go and make climate confessions online. And it's absolutely ridiculous. Now it says this, this is the call to action, it says even those who care deeply about the planet's future can slip up from now and then. Tell us, where do you fall short in preventing climate change? Do you blast the AC?

Throw out half your lunch? Grill a steak every week? Share your anonymous confessions with NBC News. And you read through this list of confessions it's absolutely horrendous it's ridiculous one of them one of the people said this even though my partner and I largely rely on soy and insects for our protein intake I still sneak some pieces of boiled chicken. Another person, I've been using plastic golf tees from time to time.

You know golf? I will never use a plastic golf tee again. And you see this, And what it's demonstrating is that they've assigned almost a religious status, haven't they? You're making climate what? Confessions.

It's very much religious in many different ways. And so I won't even get into all the other stuff like Union Theological Seminary up in New York having a service where they were all confessing to plants. They brought plants into the chapel and began confessing to the plants. I'm not going to get into all these other things. What I want you to see is that there is full-blown creature worship that is taking place in the same city, New York City, where just earlier this year the legislature stood upon their feet and applauded as they said that you can abort a baby Right up until the time that the baby is going to be born Do you see the the terrible inconsistency when you get everything mixed up when God is not in the picture?

All of a sudden you get this unbelievable almost you have to just shake your head and say what kind of world are we living in? Kill the babies, but by all means protect the turtle eggs. Don't you dare get close, even within 100 yards of an eagle's nest, but the babies, human babies, fair game. This is the world that we're living in and this is what Romans 1 said because they, although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God nor were thankful, but became feudal in their thoughts and their foolish hearts were darkened. And I want you to remember this, that what might be legal at one given point in time is not necessarily lawful before the courts of heaven.

Legal, maybe, by our Supreme Court, but not legal in the court before which every man and every woman will stand to give an account. Just last week, I don't know if you heard of this situation, a young lady by the name of Brooke Richardson was in court and she was, she had a verdict that was rendered by a jury of her peers where she had actually given birth to a newborn baby girl. But she wasn't ready. She was 18 and she decided she didn't want that baby. She killed the baby and buried the baby in her backyard.

After that, a couple hours later, she headed to the gym for the first time in a long time and she sent this text to her mom, my belly is back. I am never ever ever letting it get this way again. You're about to see me looking better than before." That was read during the court hearing. Well, the jury of 12 of her peers did not find her guilty of any crime. The only crime they found her guilty of was corpse abuse and she was given probation.

Do you see where this is going in our nation? Do you see where the line is no longer even within the womb? Well, You know, come on. If there's no difference between hours before a baby is born, then what's the big deal a couple of hours after? They're just being logical in their conclusions.

See, this is what's happening. And so meanwhile, I also just want to point to one more example. You might remember four years ago David D'Liden He did an expose on Planned Parenthood Do you remember that and it turned out that he was he discovered and revealed to the world that Planned Parenthood was actually selling baby body parts. They'd abort the baby, but that wasn't good enough. They would then take the remains and sell them on the market to the highest bidder.

Well, it was an absolute PR disaster for Planned Parenthood. I mean, they had thrived for decades on the idea and they would continue to purport the idea that all we're dealing with is tissue, human tissue. There's no big deal and yet here they were selling what? Human body parts, livers, hearts, muscle, all that kind of thing. And I remember thinking back in 2015, well how in the world are they gonna get out of this one?

After all, human organs come from human beings. They were trying to have it both ways, saying it's not really a human, while they were selling human body parts for profit. See, here's what they were essentially arguing. Well, the parts have a value, but just not the whole. Do you see that?

The inconsistency, this is what's going on and I thought for sure the ruse is up, that something is amiss. Even the most secular minded individual would have to conclude that there was something wrong here. After all, everyone knows we're not dealing with a ruptured appendix that needs to be removed. We're not dealing with simply the extraction of a bad molar when we advocate for abortion. That's not what we're talking about and everybody knows that.

Well, fast forward to just last week. Finally, finally there was a trial. The trial is actually taking place in San Francisco. And Planned Parenthood, it's obvious, they clearly broke federal law. Not to kill babies, that's fully legal, but it's illegal to sell body parts after the abortion.

But guess who's actually taking the stand as the defendant? Guess who's actually on trial? It's not Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood is the prosecution against the person on trial who is David D'Liedin. What is his crime?

Illegal wiretapping. After all of this, the crime that they're focusing on is not what Planned Parenthood was doing and is doing. But here's a guy that illegally wiretapped to get the videos that revealed one of the biggest, I would say probably one of the most evil schemes that were ever taking place, at least in our present day. We could go on and on as I was saying, but we've got perhaps the most acute problem in America at this point. Wouldn't you agree?

Think about it just for a moment. God has instituted civil government to restrain what? Evil. That's the purpose of civil government in a fallen world. But our civil authorities, You take the mayors, you take the judges, the congressmen, the senators all the way up to the present, and they have denied pre-born children that are created in God's image their God-given right to life.

I read a statement this week that shocked me when I read it. In the old days politicians kissed babies to get elected. Now they murder them. Do you see the pattern? See, sin against God by...

This is the pattern. You sin against God by closing your eyes to his invisible attributes that are clearly seen. Romans 1, that's where it starts. You don't glorify him as God. You instead say, I will determine for myself what is right and wrong.

No, not only will I determine, but what God decrees to be right, I will say is wrong. What God decrees to be evil, I will rejoice and celebrate as the pinnacle of righteousness. That's where the nation is at right now, professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. This is what it means to be a debased, to have a debased mind. If you ever want to know what Romans 1 concludes and where, what it actually looks like, you're living in it right now.

A debased mind means there's a mind and it's falling, but there's no foundation to even hit at the bottom. That's how far man can go in his utter depravity and in the exercise of his evil. Well, the conclusion that's made in Romans 1 is that they were they are without excuse and that word means they have no apologetic. There's no reason to answer that they can combat God's truth with. And I want to talk to you just briefly here about the the evolution of the abortion argument and where it's landed today because sometimes I find we can be fighting a battle or using weapons that aren't even up for debate anymore.

And it's really around the idea of personhood. And I, first before we get into abortion, I just want to talk about a few things. If you look through history, if you want to find the common denominator, if you want to find the foundation that must exist before atrocities can be carried out. So, in other words, we look to an atrocity that took place in history, but before that atrocity took place, there had to be some pre-work or groundwork that laid and set the tone for what was going to take place. Well, what is that groundwork that has to take place?

See, how could the Jewish Holocaust in Germany, in Nazi Germany, be carried out? Do you know what the Jews were called? Vermin or rats. It's wrong to kill a person isn't it? But it's permissible to exterminate dangerous disease-carrying rats aka Jews in Nazi Germany.

1994, fast forward, in Rwanda, which is a small country in Central Africa, a million Tutsis were killed. The Tutsi is a tribe. There's Hutus in one side and the Tutsis in Rwanda. One million of them were killed in a couple, I think it was a period of a couple of months. How was that possible?

Do you know what they were referred to? Cockroaches. What do you do to cockroaches? You stamp on them, you get rid of them. Even when you look at something like chattel slavery here in this country, where black Africans were referred to as somewhat subhuman, all you see in the same situation every single time, And when you fast forward now to where we are with abortion, it's one single word, dehumanization.

That's what they did to the Jews. That's what they did in Rwanda. That's what they did to make slavery legal for so long. And you pick any atrocity, and that's what you will find is the ground rule first. The groundwork is first you need to dehumanize and that's exactly what's happened when it comes to the whole issue of abortion.

By the way in all of those cases those atrocities were fully legal weren't they? They were just unlawful in the court of heaven before the living God. Gregory Stanton, who's a researcher of genocide studies, he says this, and he's not even a believer, he's not speaking even about abortion, but see how this resonates. He says, one group denies the humanity of the other group by equating it with animals vermin insects or diseases This allows those in the first group to overcome the normal human revulsion against murder How can people do such things Lay the groundwork and then it becomes normal. It's not a big deal afterwards.

And in the case of abortion what is happening? Well, the whole message is that the baby in the womb is being pitted against the mother who is carrying the baby. See, how has it come to the conclusion in our country now that the place that God designed to be the safest, most nurturing place on earth, has now become the most dangerous place in America and even on the planet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind to do those things which are not fitting. And so here we're at now, again as I say I want to kind of upgrade us and help us to think what is the evolution of the abortion, pro-abortion position.

And really it's evolved to something called personhood. Because of scientific advancement really it's forced the argument to shift You know it's it is human now. That's what the pro-abortion people will say it is a human being but It's not a person Try to get your head around that one. Just like they say, yes, it's a male. That's his sex, but his gender might be any list of 58 options when you go to Facebook.

See, where do these divisions take place? For the first time in history there's this decoupling or detaching. How could it be that someone's a human and just not a person? How could it be that someone is a man, maybe just not male gender? These are totally arbitrary things that people have created out of nothing because of a debased mind.

And here's the issue though, they can't deny that a baby in the womb is a human, but only that a person that is in the womb is not worthy of legal protection. So what is the nature of the war? It's the same ideology that powered the Jewish Holocaust. It's the same engine that powers abortion. It's dehumanization.

It's this matter of personhood. It's a matter of taking away what God has so clearly assigned to His image bearers. As a result of rejecting the God of the Bible. This is what happens. And I want you to just get a picture.

These are what feminists are saying. The people that are on the front lines kind of leading the fight. Here's a woman by the name of Mary Elizabeth Williams. She wrote an article the other day, or a couple years ago actually I think it is she said so what if abortion ends a life? Question mark that's the title of her essay.

Yeah It's a human being Listen what she says I believe that life starts at conception And it's never stopped me from being pro-choice. Then listen to what she says, all life is not equal. A fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She's the boss. And I would put the life of a mother over the life of a fetus every single time, even if I still need to acknowledge my conviction that the fetus is indeed a life, a life worth sacrificing." End quote.

Unashamed, modern-day, Moloch worship. Not even hidden. Here's another woman by the name of Sophie Lewis. This was earlier this year. She was speaking in favor of abolishing the family.

Get rid of the family. Here's what she said. I'm interested in winning radically. Abortion in my opinion, and I recognize how controversial this is, is a form of killing. It is a form of killing that we need to be able to defend.

I'm not interested in where a human life starts to exist. See Proverbs 8 ends with this verse, all those who hate me love death. And so I just want you to pay attention to see how the argument has evolved. It's no longer about is the baby in the womb a human being. It's evolved to I don't care, we are autonomous, and I will determine what is right and what is wrong for myself.

That's exactly what's happening. And so I want to end or come too close to the end here just speaking about the role of the church and what is the role of the church? Well the role of the church in all of this is to simply say what God already says. I ran across a letter on Ligonier earlier this week that I was reading. It was a letter kind of in the form of the screw tape letters.

It was a letter from Satan. So Ligonier, by the way, is a Christian website, just to clarify. It was written from Satan, at least that was the design of it, to his minions. And here's an excerpt from it. The whole idea was how can we, as Satan and his demons, render the church as useless and helpless in the earth.

Well, listen to the words from somebody writing on behalf of the devil. This is what he says, these are his instructions. Begin the process by intimidating the church and pushing believers into a posture of timidity. Bring outward public shame on them for holding to controversial doctrines of Scripture, focusing especially on the doctrines of man's sinfulness, the exclusivity of Christ in hell as eternal conscious torment. For these doctrines provide both the framework and urgent need for the gospel.

Make it known that in the spirit of tolerance and inclusivity of the secular age these doctrines are considered repulsive and bigoted. Next, tempt the church to compromise its stance on biblical ethics, particularly on issues regarding marriage, the family, sexuality, and abortion. Work to raise up leaders in their midst who will gain a hearing and propose slight ethical modifications to their traditional Christian understanding of such matters. Complete the deception by deluding our enemies followers into thinking that they will simply keep quiet about the critical issues of the day. They will have a more effective platform for the advance of the gospel.

Well here is the sad truth is that this strategy is working very well. If you look to some well-known pastors even today, arguments are being made that Christians need to be move beyond their fixation with abortion and graduate to the more complex issues and matters of our day. Things like cultural oppression, standing against war and the imagined climate crisis even. And when you look to leaders in the pro-life movement, some of the most popular ones, there's just even a movie that came out recently about one particular lady, those that tell themselves oftentimes as conservatives, what they do and what they insist on is not using the Bible. They try to argue from a position of moral neutrality And this is going to be the failure guaranteed of the pro-life movement.

Because they fail to see abortion as a theological issue, that it's actually rebellion against the God who made them. And they take this stance, well we can't argue from a dogmatic position. They don't even believe in God We need to find common ground and so what they do is they come up with a Christless Lordless strategy to try to halt the atrocity of our age How's that gonna work out? It's not gonna work at all. And so we're left with a largely Christian culture that's pretty much afraid, when I say Christian in quotes, afraid to tell the truth of God's Word.

And this is what Charles Spurgeon said, he said, it is better to preach five words of God's Word than five million words of man's wisdom. And that seems to be the strategy of so many in our modern world today. For all their imagined bravado and active suppression of the pro-choice movement some of the quotes I just read or when you just flip open the newspaper or listen to something tomorrow for all of that what I want you to realize is this that the greatest ally the spirit-filled evangelist has is the conscience that God is embedded into every human being. Remember what we read, I think it was a couple of weeks ago in Hebrews chapter 4 where the writer of Hebrew says for the Word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword piercing even to the division of soul and spirit and is the discerner of the thoughts and of the intents of the heart. You see, you preach the word, you rely on the truth of God's Word, you don't know what impact it's going to make, but you know that God's Word is the thing that changes the world, Not politics and all these other things that men can rely on.

The weapons that we lean upon the most need to be spiritual weapons because the war is primarily a spiritual war. It doesn't mean that we don't do anything else. Wilberforce is a perfect example. As a politician in the House of Commons that used the Word of God and over the course of 30, almost 40 years saw slavery finally come to an end. But what I want us to see is that this is a sin issue and Matters of sin have to be addressed through the gospel.

And so scripture is so clear, isn't it? It speaks so clearly on where human life begins right at the very moment of conception. And it also should be protected, human life should be protected by law from that moment forward. And we could, I don't have time, but we could go into Psalm 139, we could talk about how John the Baptist, before he was born, in Elizabeth's womb, leapt for joy when she bumped into Mary, because Mary was carrying the Messiah Jesus Christ. We could go into all these different things and proverbs and there's so many different things but I just want to pick on one verse here and it's in Exodus 21 verse 22 and 23 where it speaks about full legal protection of the baby in the womb It says if men fight and hurt a woman with child so that she gives birth Prematurally yet no harm follows.

He shall surely be punished according as the woman's husband Opposes on him And he shall pay as the judge determines. But if any harm follows, then you shall give life for life." Do you see Exodus? The second book in the Bible identifies the baby in the womb as life equivalent to life. And what's amazing in our modern day with all of our technology is that science has simply caught up with what the Bible and the human conscience has known and declared so plainly all along that a baby in the womb is a human being and by being a human being as a person you cannot divide humanity human being from person just like you can't divide a man from being a male. Those things don't exist at all.

And so the core contention is this for all of us here. The only entity that can and will speak the truth into the darkness is the church. And those that are in the church you and me the church is the pillar it's the ground of truth you see Orwell writing in 1984 his book 1984 said the further society drifts from the truth the more it will hate those who speak it. And so the temptation is to just keep quiet, isn't it? How about you and me?

I want to ask you just a challenging question. Are you nominally pro-life? A weightless, costless pro-life? Yeah, I'm pro-life. Well, how does that translate?

What does that really mean? You know, this is the problem, and this is what the pro-choice abortion, the whole platform stands upon, that people just kind of shrug and move on with life because it seems like it's an insurmountable problem and it is except God fights the battle for us. I was at work and this is just I think last week or two weeks ago they were having another forum and debate on abortion and this was taking place in Portland people are just increasingly getting nervous that certain states are actually putting laws in place to limit and curtail abortion and so being a liberal company people are biting their nails wondering what's going to happen with our country if abortion becomes illegal. They're not concerned for the babies, they're concerned that they won't be able to get abortions. And so they have this wonderful forum that they open up and they have the ground rules that they laid and I just want to read you first ground rule.

Everyone is welcome. Ground rule number two and I'm not exaggerating, cut and paste, zero tolerance policy. Everyone's welcome, no dissent is basically what they're saying. And so speaking of believers, this is what Wilberforce said, let them boldly assert the cause of Christ in an age when so many who bear the name of Christians are ashamed of Him. May that be our call as a church.

And I want to end here just with a parting thought. And I want to offer hope to those of us, perhaps, that have had an abortion. Or maybe you've been party to an abortion as a man Maybe you were compelled by your parents Maybe you were you did it on the altar of convenience just like so many do But I want to just say two things to you, two words. Full and free. Full and free.

Pardon that is offered in Jesus Christ alone. The Lord doesn't want you to be hampered by a burden that he has taken off your shoulders. Whatever you've done it's true it can't be undone but it can be forgiven. And so we can enter the fray with humility and fight really one of the greatest battles of the ages. Just consider King David for a moment.

Adultery, murder, he covered it up with conspiracy. He sought forgiveness through repentance, paid a terrible price. But when he's writing Psalm 51, you know what he says? Then, after I receive forgiveness, then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will be converted to you. And so if you've had an abortion, God does not require a life of penance.

Through repentance, you're given full and free forgiveness. And I just want to end with Paul's words to Timothy as we close here this afternoon. Listen to this, and I read this so often, but look at what it says. And I thank Christ Jesus who has enabled me because he counted me faithful putting me into the ministry although I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent man, meaning he killed, he was a persecutor of the church. But I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant with faith and love which are in Christ Jesus.

This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the chief. However, for this reason I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show all long-suffering as a pattern to those who are going to believe on him for everlasting life. Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, to God who alone is wise, be glory and honor forever and ever. Amen. Father, we come before you as your people.

Lord, I pray that you would make us a people that asks those questions that we started with. What does this mean for me and what can we do? Lord, we feel powerless, but that's so often because we look to ourselves oh God we we ask you to fit us and equip us for the battle help us oh Lord I do pray that you would raise up a young man or young men and women With that will before spirit Oh Lord the tenacity of the desire to see an end to the greatest atrocity of our age. Lord, we acknowledge that you alone must give the victory. So grant it, O Lord, use our little church here in whatever way you can to bring glory and honor to your name.

Thank you Lord. Amen.