"YOU SHALL NOT MURDER"

INTRODUCTION:
January 22,1973 to January 22,2009  36 years of legalized abortion.
1. The sixth commandment of the famous ten found in Exodus 20:13 is one of the most misunderstood.
2. This is due in part an unfortunate translation in the KJV of 1611.
a) The translation "Thou shalt not kill"  has been used to teach against everything from war deaths, to accidental death, to capitol punishment and everything in between.
b) From time to time you run across a letter or article taking the position that killing of any kind is forbidden by this commandment.
c) The accurate translation of the command is "You shall not do murder" (Exodus 20:13).
3. Other killing was not only condoned by God, it was in some cases commanded by Him (Genesis 9:6; Exodus 21:12-16).
a) Punishment by death is not murder.
b) The Old Testament system of cities of refuge made a distinction between murder          
          and manslaughter (Numbers 35:11-12; 16-28).
4. The New Testament provides for the exercise of government, and of authority against lawbreakers, up to and including the death penalty. "For he [the governing authority] does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil"  (Romans 13:4 NKJV).
5. It is interesting to me that many pro-abortionist are against the death penalty.
6. The question becomes, then, is abortion murder?

I. ABORTION: THE ROOT PROBLEM:
A. Abortion is one of the most divisive and controversial issues of our day.
B. People generally have strong views about abortion.
C. It is not a social issue of mere preference, but an issue about life and death.
D. Abortion draws out the clashes between two divergent world views.
1) The humanistic world view says, "Man is the highest standard there is. You don't answer to anyone, so do whatever you want."
2) The Christian world view says, "We answer to God, and He has commanded us not to murder. We must always submit our desires and preferences to the authority of His word."
E. I believe that the real reason that we see such emotional, tenacious commitment to the availability of abortion goes even deeper than the issue of abortion: people want sexual freedom without consequences.
F. Our culture has a definite agenda supporting any and all sexual expression.
G. It's difficult to find a new movie, or a successful TV show, or a popular song, that doesn't embrace this view of sex.
H. When the director of a Crisis Pregnancy Center in Dallas offered a school district a presentation supporting abstinence till marriage, the district turned her down.
I. Their own presentation featured birth control devices, and they couldn't let her talk about self-control one day if they were going to sell the kids on condoms the next.
J. As a society, we are amazingly schizophrenic about this sort of thing.
K. People born in 1982 , were members of what they were calling the "Smoke-free Class of 2000."
L. No one bats an eye at this worthy national goal of graduating an entire class of non-smokers, but people laugh in derision at the thought of kids not having sex.
M. Which is easier to get, a sex partner or a cigarette?
N. Teenagers are becoming more and more open about the fact that they are having sex, and this is a reflection of the sexual attitudes they see in movies, on TV, and in music.
O. The whole society has loosened to the point that people who have chosen to remain chaste are openly ridiculed.
P. Western civilization has been heading down this path for a long time. With the rise of Humanism during the Renaissance, societies began turning away from God's laws and God's ways.
Q. From the Enlightenment sprang a virtual worship of nature.
R. Once nature, not God, became the standard for morality, people started believing that, since humans are a mere product of nature, anything we do naturally is normal, and even good.
S. Sex is natural, sex is powerful, and so it eventually followed that sexual expression was seen as a natural and normal part of all human existence in any circumstances, much on the level of eating and sleeping.
T. It's no coincidence that the two most heated issues of our day are abortion and homosexuality; underlying both is an insistence on sexual freedom while thumbing one's nose at God and His laws.
U. Given the sexually charged atmosphere in which we live, it is not surprising that so many people are having sex outside of marriage and getting pregnant.
V. And so abortion is treated like an eraser; people see it as a way to try to get rid of the consequences of their sexual activity.
W. Of course, there are always exceptions; pregnancies do occur as a result of incest and rape.
X. Some women get pregnant because of someone else's sin.
Y. But does that make it right to kill the baby that has been conceived?
II. The Bible's View of the Unborn
A. Historically, hiding the evidence of sexual activity was the main reason for abortions.
B. One of the early church fathers, Clement of Alexandria, maintained that "those who use abortifacient medicines to hide their fornication cause not only the outright murder of the fetus, but of the whole human race as well."(1)
C. Pro-choice advocates don't like the use of the word "murder."
1) They maintain that no one really knows when human life begins, and they choose to believe that the idea of person-hood at conception is a religious tenet and therefore not valid.
2) It is a human life that is formed at conception.
3) From the moment of conception, the new life is genetically different from his or her mother, and is not a part of her body like her tonsils or appendix.
4) This new human being is a separate individual living inside the mother.
D. The Bible doesn't specifically address the subject of abortion, probably since it is covered in the commandment, "Thou shalt not murder."(Exodus 20:13)
E. But it does give us insight into God's view of the unborn. In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for the unborn (yeled) is the same word used for young children.
1) The Hebrew language did not have or need a separate word for pre-born babies.
2) All children were children regardless of whether they lived inside or outside the womb.
3) In the New Testament, the same word is used to describe the unborn John the Baptist and the already-born baby Jesus.
4) The process of birth just doesn't make any difference concerning a baby's worth or status in the Bible.
E. We are given some wonderful insights into God's intimate involvement in the development and life of the pre-born infant in Psalm 139:13-16:
"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be."
F. All people, regardless of the circumstances of their conception, or whether they are healthy or handicapped, have been personally knit together by God's fingers.
G. He knows what the days of the unborn child's life are going to be before one of them has happened.
H. Sometimes you will hear a pro-choice argument that says the Bible does not put the same value on the life of the unborn as on infants, citing an Old Testament passage on personal injury law.
I. Exodus 21:22-25 gives two penalties if fighting men hit a pregnant woman. The first penalty was a fine, and some people conclude from this that an unborn baby doesn't have the same value as a born child.
J. But that penalty was for a situation where nothing serious happened. If there was serious injury, the offender was severely punished with the same injury he inflicted.
K. If the mother or baby died, the offender was to be put to death. This actually shows very eloquently how valuable God considers both the mother and her unborn baby.

II. Post-Abortion Syndrome
    A.  After having an abortion, many women feel a sense of relief at having avoided the 
        stress and responsibility of pregnancy and a baby, but abortions eventually cause        
         serious emotional damage in millions of women.
B. The American Psychiatric Association has identified abortion as one of the stressor     
      events that can trigger post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
C.  Many of us associate PTSD with Vietnam Veterans suffering from the effects of the
      war; but post-abortion syndrome is a form of PTSD that affects women who have
      had abortions.
D.The death of a child is one of the biggest stress points a person can experience in life.
    1) Post-abortion syndrome is the emotional stress of not grieving, not letting
         ourselves  feel the pain and suffering that is part of a loss.
    2) To be emotionally healthy, we all have to grieve through our losses; but what  
         do you do when society tells you there's nothing to grieve about?
  3)   When we allow it to occur, that emotional pain is going to go somewhere.
  4)  Frequently, following a woman's abortion, she goes into what one CPC counselor described as "self-destruct mode": getting pregnant again, having an affair, punishing herself, and generally showing all the variations that severe depression can take.
  5)  Depending on how stressed a woman is, PAS can show up within weeks or months of the abortion, or she can have a delayed reaction to it, typically seven to eight years later.
1) Women experiencing post-abortion syndrome generally feel a confusing and overwhelming sense of guilt.
2) One study reported that 92 percent of women who have had an abortion feel guilt.
3) One woman who is now involved in a post-abortion healing group reports that after her abortion, the memory haunted her.
4) She heard this little voice in her head: "Abortion, abortion; you're a terrible, awful person."
5) For many women, the guilt and shame is expressed through a deep anger--at the doctors and abortion counselors for hurting her and her baby, at her husband, boyfriend, or parents for pressuring her into an abortion, and at herself for getting pregnant and having the abortion.
A. Many women dealing with the effects of abortion spend a great deal of emotional energy denying the death and denying that what they did was wrong.
B. A woman uses denial to keep herself from coming face to face with the fact that her child was killed and she allowed it to happen.
C. One young woman pleaded with her friend not to leave her alone the day she had an abortion.
D. This hurting teen tried to keep her feelings at bay as she spent the afternoon telling dead baby jokes.
E. Abortion is not an eraser to rub out a mistake or an inconvenience.
F. It has more than one victim; women as well as their babies are victims of abortions.

CONCLUSION:
1. It is essential that a woman grieve for her baby and face her role in the baby's death; in fact, women who allow themselves to grieve and understand their need to grieve are not likely to experience post-abortion syndrome.
2. But even more essential is that women who have had abortions accept that there really has been a death, that abortion is sin, and that the Lord Jesus Christ's death covered every wrong they have ever done.
3. No sin--not even abortion--is greater than the power of His blood, and He offers total forgiveness and cleansing to everyone who will come to Him in faith.