Grace to you, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. I'm very grateful to be here again with you, and I bring greetings and love from my church in Frankfurt. And if you have a Bible, please turn with me to Proverbs 24. Proverbs 24. And I read verses 11 and 12, Proverbs 24, verses 11 and 12. And this is the word of God. Rescue those who are being taken away to death. Hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, behold, we did not know this, Does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it? And will he not repay men according to his work? Amen. Let's pray. Lord, as we now hear about this horrific issue, let us take it to heart and be moved to action. Train our hands for war. and our fingers for battle. Amen. I was asked to talk about a very serious and very important issue today. In fact, I believe it's one of the most important issues of our time. I'm preaching today about the issue of abortion. But is this really a topic for a sermon? on a Lord's Day, on a morning service. Yes, it is. You see, abortion is not merely a social or political issue. It is a spiritual issue. Abortion is spiritual warfare between the gospel of life and the culture of death. It's not merely a battle between two different opinions. It is a cosmic conflict, a conflict of ideologies, a conflict of religions. It is a conflict between the creator of life and his gospel of life, and the prince of darkness and his religion of death. And we cannot merely be idle bystanders in this conflict, lest we become complicit and the murder of hundreds of thousands of children and the downfall of our nations. That's why abortion concerns every one of us. The church has been silent way too long, has done not merely enough about this issue. Listen to this true story. A mother told her little son, who was about four or five years old, that babies are being murdered in the womb. The son ran off to his room, and when he came out again, he held his wooden sword in his hand. His mother asked him what he was up to, and he replied, I'm going to protect these babies. Do you see? This little man had more decency, more moral integrity than most adults. He knew that it was his duty to protect the weak and helpless from being murdered. Do you understand that? That this is your duty too? And I hope that that is what we will all understand today. that it is our holy duty, our duty even before God, to protect the weakest and the most helpless among us, to protect babies from being slaughtered in the womb. And first, even though I don't want to do this, but first we need to talk about what actually happens during an abortion, because most people don't know. I know it's horrific, but we must face it, because it is the reality for millions of babies in this country and around the world. So what exactly happens during an abortion? I will try to explain this as carefully as possible, but here's a warning. Parents with young children may wish to leave the room for the next three or four minutes or so. So there are various methods of abortion. None of these are clean and simple and without pain. Sometimes babies are burned with chemicals or starved to death But most abortions are carried out as follows. A suction cup is inserted into the mother's womb, into her uterus, which uses vacuum to tear the baby's body apart, piece by piece, and then sucks out the individual pieces, the arms, the legs, The baby's intestines are torn out of its belly, and the little head is crushed and sucked off. I've seen pictures of this. It is unimaginable horror. And the baby suffers unimaginable agonies. There are ultrasound videos. of abortions in which you can see this little being writhing in agony and trying to escape the suction cup. And I've seen the pictures, I've seen the pools of blood in which the little arms and legs are floating, the crushed heads, hands and feet, the little crushed heads with their eyes and noses and mouths, human beings, children. It's horrific, it's unspeakable, it is unbearable. Listen to a mother describe her abortion. I could feel the baby being torn from my insides. It was really painful. Three quarters of the way through the operation, I sat up. In the cylinder, I saw the bits and pieces of my little child floating in a pool of blood. I screamed and jumped off the table. I just couldn't stop throwing up. The bits and pieces of the child are then placed on a tray, and the child is carefully put back together again to make sure that nothing has been forgotten in the womb. It's a grotesque baby puzzle. The parts of the baby are then sold to companies which utilize them for various purposes. Abortion is the cruelest thing imaginable. Anyone who hears this and does not freeze in horror and melt with pity and grief must have such a hardened conscience that it is difficult to detect anything still human in them. They are indeed without natural affection. Abortion is murder. Deliberate, cruel murder of the smallest, most innocent and most helpless. It is commissioned by the person who should love and protect them the most, their own mother. It is carried out in the place where they should be the safest, in their mother's womb. And it's carried out by people who have sworn to do no harm. It is not reproductive self-determination or reproductive health care. Don't be fooled by these euphemisms. It's systematic, highly professionalized mass murder. It's a silent holocaust. And we must call it what it is. We cannot sugarcoat it. We owe it to the murdered children. This murder has reached unimaginable proportions. According to the HWO estimates, around 73 million children are murdered worldwide every year. 73 million every year. I believe that's more than the entire population of the UK, isn't it? And these figures don't even include certain abortifacient drugs. The actual number could be much higher. In Germany, we talk about more than 100,000 babies every year, but the true figures are probably three times as high, probably 300,000. Now get this, every year around 60 million people die worldwide. 60 million. But 73 million are murdered in the womb. This means that we kill more babies than born people die every year. Most of our death are children that we have murdered. The murder of our babies is by far the leading cause of death. Calculated over the last decades, we are talking about billions of murdered children. That puts every war, every pandemic, every genocide in the shade. What does this say about us? What does it say about men? What does it say about our culture? How will people in the future look back at us? And don't think that the pro-lifers don't know what they're doing. Listen to a professor and pro-abortion advocate, Camille Pellier. I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful. The vinyanism, right? Which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue. They know what they're doing. I'm sorry that I must confront you with these horrible things, but only if we understand what is happening every day next door, if you really see and understand the horror, only if we really let all the horror and suffering of these children get to us, will we also understand that we must act. American pastor John Piper said, Use your imagination to see what abortion really is. Fight against the kind of social stupor that gripped Nazi Germany, the feeling that the problem is so huge and so horrendous and so out of control that I just can't be wrong to let it be. Use your imagination to see and feel what is really happening behind those sterile clinic doors. If you could see each little handiwork of God and what it looks like when it is being crushed or poisoned or starved, you would say this can't be happening. Civilized people do not do this. The children will not be saved and God's work will not be reverenced without an act of sustained sympathetic imagination. Otherwise, it is out of sight, out of mind, just like Dachau, Buchenwald, Belsen and Auschwitz. It just couldn't be happening. And so we act as if it isn't. We must see what's really happening. You have to stop looking just at yourselves. and in your struggles, your problems, at your family and your marriage and your church. Look at these children. Imagine, use your imagination to see what is happening to these children. And this includes that we must also stop pretending that women are the victims. The women who have their children murdered are no victims, they are perpetrators. Yes, many of them have difficult circumstances. Many of them have a partner or family who are pressuring them to have an abortion. Many of them have difficult lives. And you know, any father who incites the mother to murder their child is not even a man. Because men would protect their children. But the women are still guilty. Our culture is telling you a lie. That the true victims of abortion were the women. No. They are guilty. They commit what is probably the worst and most defiant act of all. The murder of their own child. A mother murdering her own child. And any father and any doctor and everyone who partakes in this murder is guilty too. And they must be named and treated accordingly. Of course, leftists and feminists disagree. They portray us, the Christians, as the bad guys and call the murderous victims and heroes and the murder of babies a human right. They call evil good and good evil. And they want to declare abortion a human right and enshrine it in the constitution of various European countries. France has already done so. Do you see how absurd this is? Murder is supposed to be a human right? What about the most essential human right, the most fundamental human right, the right to life? of those who are murdered. See, this human right to life does no longer apply to all humans, only to those who are born or to those who are wanted. This reduces human rights to absurdity. They are no longer human rights. If they don't apply to all humans, they are something but not human rights. What determines whether a human has the right to life or not? It's ultimately the will of the mother. Once again, passage on Piper. It is illegal to take the life of the unborn if the mother wants the baby. But it is legal to take the life of the unborn if she doesn't. In the first case, the law treats the fetus as a human with rights. In the second case, the law treats the fetus as a non-human with no rights. Humanness is thus defined by the desire of the strong. Might makes right. We reject this right to define personhood in the case of Nazi antisemitism, confederate race-based slavery and Soviet gulags. When we define the humanness of the unborn by the will of the powerful, we know what we are doing. Just recently, the Green Party in Germany published a paper calling for the complete legalization of abortion. And at the same time, they are demanding that violations of animal welfare be punished more severely. So if I tear puppies to pieces, I should be punished more severely. But if I do that to a human baby, everything should be fine. These men and women are given over to absurdity. And it's so evil, it's absurd. Do you see the madness and the hypocrisy? Do you see that this is about more than just different opinions? This is spiritual warfare that is being given over. We are dealing with a demonic religion of death. These people are obsessed with murder. And the reason for this is ultimately their hatred of God. As God says, all who hate me love death. Proverbs 8, 36. God has given them over to a debased mind, filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, malice, full of murder, without natural affection, ruthless. Romans 1, 28 to 31. So, What does God say about abortion? How does he view children in the womb? King David writes, for you formed my inward parts. You knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works, and my soul knows it very well. The soul of each human being knows very well that God is doing a miracle in the womb. My frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance. In your book were written every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. Psalm 139, 13 to 16. Every child is an amazing miracle of God, a marvelous masterpiece. And every person, every soul knows this very well. They might deny it, but in their hearts and their souls they know it. It is God who knits every child together in the womb. Pregnancy is not simply a biological process. Rather, every pregnancy, every child in the womb is an intentional work of God. And for him, these children are not just lumps of cells, but persons. He knows the little children in the womb. He loves them or hates them, Romans 9, 13. He has given them a name, Isaiah 49, verse 1. They are not anonymous to him, but persons whom he knows by name. And he has a plan for their lives, Jeremiah 1.5. He can already fill them with the Holy Spirit, so that they leap for joy, Luke 1, 31-44. So, children can already feel in the womb. They can be filled with joy in the womb. And they also can feel pain and agony and fear. And God says about them, behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb, a reward. Psalm 127 verse 3. This is how God sees children, even children in the womb. What do you think? He'll say, when these children, these masterpieces he's knitting, who he knows by name, what do you think he says when these children are being murdered in their mother's womb? And the womb, the place where he is creating life is being turned into a graveyard for God. Every murder of a human being is an abomination, for he created man in his image, in the image of God. Genesis 1, 27. Every little human being in their mother's womb is created in the image of God, created by God, created for God. And because every one of us is created in the image of God, he commands us, you shall not murder. And because the murder of a human being is such a heinous crime before God, murdering the image of God is such a heinous crime before God, he decrees the death penalty for it. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed. For God made man in his own image. Genesis 9, 6. By the way, this has never changed. This is not any law just applicable to Israel or something like that. This was right after the flood. This is rooted in creation and human beings being made in the image of God. And what God hates most is the shedding of innocent blood. It's an abomination to him. Proverbs 6, 16 and 17. When the Israelites sacrificed their sons and daughters to Molech, God says that this abomination did not even enter into his mind. Jeremiah 32 and 35. Do you understand? The all-knowing God says that killing one's own children is so evil that it is almost inconceivable to God how anyone could do such a thing. It did not even enter into his mind that someone would do something like that. And this also applies to the unborn. It's written in the law of God. when men strive together and hit a pregnant woman so that her children come out and there is harm, then you shall pay. Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. Exodus 21, 22 and 25. So if someone hits a pregnant woman and her child dies as a result because it's born prematurely, the punishment is death. God protects the unborn in the womb just as much as the born outside the womb. So what does God think about abortion? He hates it. His soul hates it. It is an almost imaginable abomination to him. It is the satanic cult of Molech, the cult of death, the cult of killing your own offspring. But God is life. And because he is life, and he loves life, and he creates life, he hates abortion. And he will judge those who murder children in the womb and punish them with death, eternal death. He will avenge the innocent children murdered in the womb. He will never forget any of them, for their blood cries out to him. And he who avenges blood is mindful of them. He does not forget the cry of the afflicted, Psalm 9, 9, 13. By the way, most contraceptives, pills, or other methods have an abortive effect. Who knows how many human lives you have already destroyed without even thinking about it because you took some of these contraceptives. You should stop doing that. Of course, various attempts are made to justify abortion and the fact alone that they try to justify it should tell you something. They know this needs somehow to be justified The baby in the womb, it's not really a human being, it's not a person, it's just a clump of cells. That is scientific nonsense. We have already heard how an abortion advocate admits that these are human beings. I once showed my daughter, who was two years old at that time, I showed her a model of a 10-week-old fetus. In Germany, you can just kill this baby for no reason, basically. It's just 10 weeks old. When I showed it to her, she immediately cried out, oh, how sweet, a baby. Even a two-year-old can see at first glance that a fetus is a baby. It's not so difficult to see. Yeah, but what about cases of rape or incest? You surely don't want to force a woman to have a baby under such circumstances. You are the bad guy. Well, these cases are extremely rare. And even then, why would you murder the baby if the father committed a crime? The baby is innocent. Punish the father, not the baby. If you need to kill someone, well, kill the father, but not the baby. And by the way, if you think rape or incest are such evil things and you are killing babies, where's the standard here? You're being a hypocrite. Or, my body, my choice. Right? OK. Every woman can decide what to do with their own bodies. Fine. But see, the baby is not the woman's body. It has its own arms and legs and its own head and heart. If you ask a mother who's pregnant, how many hats do you have? Have you ever heard, well, two? No, because the head of the baby isn't her body. It's a separate body. So you want to make an argument from bodily autonomy? Fine, great. Then don't kill your child's body, because it is not your body, and you have no right to kill another human's body. I could go on. In fact, I had a list of the 10 best arguments for abortion and how to refute them. But then I would be preaching for another 45 minutes or so. If you have any questions about that, feel free to come to me after the sermon. But we have to continue. Suffice it to say that there is no good justification for murdering millions of babies in the womb. There is none. And everyone knows that. So we know that something horrific is happening in our countries. Something that God hates, but is an abomination to him. The mass murder of unborn babies. What must we then do as Christians? We cannot ignore what's happening. As John Piper said, we cannot just pretend that it's somehow not there. God commands us, open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute. Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy. Proverbs 31, 8 and 9. Who could be more destitute than the murdered babies? who could be more in need of our help than these poor creatures who never saw the light of day. They can't talk. They are mute. They cannot protest the injustice they are suffering. They cannot scream out their pain. That is why we must do it for them. Why we must open our mouth. We must protest loudly, publicly, audibly for everyone. And we must do even more. God commands us. This is our text from the beginning of the sermon. Proverbs 24, 11 and 12. Rescue those. who are being taken away to death. Hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, behold, we did not know this, does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it? And will he not repay men according to his work? We must rescue the children who are being taken away to death. We must not only mourn for them. We must not only pray for them. We must not only open our mouths for them. We must do what we can to rescue them. We must call abortion what it is. We must speak about it with our family, friends, neighbors. We must preach about it in the pulpit and on the streets. We must beg the mothers not to murder their child. We should write to the MPs who make the laws and legalize the murder of children and who should hold them accountable to the law of God. And we should not vote for any party or any politician who does not take a clear stand against abortion. Again, this is one of the most important issues of our time. It's not the economy. It's not even immigration. It is the murder of children. Abortion must once again become a punishable criminal offence. It is murder and it needs to be treated as that. If we don't do that, if we don't try everything we can to rescue these children, we have no excuse before God. God knows that we know what is happening. And if you didn't know, you know now, because I told you. You know what's happening, and God knows that you know. And if we do nothing about it, if we don't do anything to rescue these children, He will repay us according to our work, according to our indifference, according to our cold-heartedness, according to our cowardice, To do nothing against the murder of the innocent is a gross violation of the two greatest commandments. Love God. Well, if you love God, this includes you love his law and you love his justice and you love his handiwork. And love your neighbor as yourself. We must love these little children. as ourselves and not look the other direction when they are being murdered. So if someone wanted to do this to you or to your loved ones, if someone wanted to rip you apart piece by piece, wouldn't you do something about it? Why are you not loving your neighbor as yourself? So, this is what Christians have always done. They have always rescued the children that were being murdered. See, the murder of babies is nothing new. The feminists celebrate it as a major step towards women's liberation. That's utter nonsense. Pagan cultures have always practiced abortion. They have always murdered their children. The Romans practiced it. They killed babies in the womb. And when they were born, they threw the newborns into the rubbish at night so that they would be eaten by the dogs. What did the first Christians in Rome do? At night, they searched through rubbish dumps for abandoned babies, for thrown away babies, took them in and fed and sheltered them, adopted them as their own. They let their light shine into the darkness of the Roman culture of death. And Christ rewarded their faithfulness and gave them victory due to the influence of Christians. Abortion was made illegal. The Christians pushed back the culture of death with the gospel of life. Now as our culture becomes more pagan again, We must do what the brothers and sisters in the early church did. We must rescue these babies. You need to understand that abortion is not simply a private sin. It's not simply what this woman did. You can be complicit in it if you don't open your mouth, if you don't try to rescue these children. And also, it is a national sin. It is a sin that will determine the fate of our nations. For righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people." Proverbs 14, 34. The sin of mass murder of our own offspring is a gigantic reproach to our people. Why is it a national sin? Well, because it is permitted, financed, legalized, promoted by the state. It is taught at universities. It is implemented by the health system. It is supported by society. It is supported even by many churches. It is a national sin. And since it is a national sin, God will respond with a national solution. You have to understand this. You are not safe from God's wrath when it's poured out on our nations because of abortion. God says, you shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech. That's what we're doing. And so profane the name of your God. I am the Lord. lest the land vomit you out when you make it unclean, as it vomited out the nation that was before you. National, systematic infanticide is an abomination. We sacrifice our children to the modern mollick, the idol of our selfishness and fornication and lawlessness, and God will respond. And the land we have defiled with these abominations will vomit us out. Because it can no longer bear us. It can no longer bear our sins. Our sins make it sick. It can no longer drink the blood of our children. So it vomits us out. God has done so to nations in the past. He will do it again. That's why we must fight the murder of children and call the whole nation to repentance before it's too late for the entire nation. One last thought. What if you have had an abortion or you somehow partook in it? or you became complicit in it because you did not open your mouth, because you didn't do anything to rescue this child. Well, if you have had an abortion, you are a murderer. You have committed one of the most heinous crimes imaginable, the cruel and violent murder of your own child. There's no sugarcoating it. You are guilty before God. You stand before God as a child murderer. And he will avenge the innocent blood of your child and pour out his wrath upon you, punishing you with death, with eternal torment in hell. But, and this is probably the most important part of my sermon, but there is hope. You see, most women who have had an abortion feel guilty about it for the rest of their lives because they know what they have done. And again, medicine calls it something else, but it's just guilt. The law of God is written on their hearts, and their conscience accuses them and allows them no peace. They know what they've done. There are different ways to deal with this guilt. You can despair or you can harden your heart and convince yourself that you did the right thing and that you will do it again. Some women go to meetings with other women who have had abortions and when they hear that these women also feel guilty, it comforts them because then it seems just normal. And then there is the right way to deal with it, the Christian way, the only way that works. If you want to go this way, you must first stop looking for excuses, blaming others, portraying yourself as the victim, justifying yourself with all the difficult circumstances and all the pressure. That might all be true. It's not a justification for child murder. You must repent. You must admit to yourself and confess to God what you have done, be it that you murdered your child, be it that you didn't say anything to stop it. You have to admit that it was a sin, that it was murder, that you are not just a victim of your circumstances but a perpetrator, a condemned sinner who deserves death and who therefore needs a saviour. And then you must call upon the name of the Lord, you must pray to the Lord Jesus Christ and beg him for forgiveness, for salvation, And this does not only apply to child murderers. It also applies to fornicators and adulterers and liars and blasphemers. It applies to every one of us because every one of us is a sinner. But it applies also to child murderers. There is God's promise to you, everyone, everyone, even the child murderer. Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Acts 2 21. Say this again. Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Do you believe that? There is no sin so heinous that God cannot forgive it. Why can he forgive sin? Why can he forgive a child murderer? After all, he is a just judge. He's righteous. How can a just judge forgive us instead of judging us justly? He said that murder must be punished by death. How can he not do it? How can he forgive? Because while we murder our children, he gave his child, his only son, to die for us. He killed his son for us, not for himself, not to have no further troubles, and for us. For even though we are sinners and even child murderers, he loves us and has compassion on us. Jesus Christ bore our sins on the cross, including the sin of murder of millions of babies. He took upon himself the wrath and punishment of God for our sins. He was punished with death for our murder and thus brought about atonement for our guilt. If you believe in Christ, your sins are forgiven and can never reach you again. Listen, though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool, Isaiah 118. Even if your child's innocent blood is on your hands, his blood will completely cleanse you and make you white as snow. You will have peace with God and you will be in heaven even though you are a murderer. And there you will see your child and hold it in your arms forever. Jesus says, truly, truly, amen, amen, truly, truly, I say to you. Whoever hears my word and believes in him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. John 5, 24, you may live even though you have murdered. For Christ was killed in your place. He was murdered in your place. And now his blood can cleanse you from every sin, even from blood sin. Believe in him. Put your trust in him. Do not harden your heart, but come to Jesus. Let your sins be washed away in his blood. Be reconciled with God. In the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.