Implications of the Image of God

All right, if you'd open up the Genesis chapter one with me, it's my privilege to Bring us to the word of God. Genesis chapter one. And in a little bit we'll be reading from Verse 26. And 27.

my wife and I, those of you guys that don't know me too well, my wife and I, have been here at Cornerstone for a long time. We actually met in 1993 in the college career group. And Pastor Milton married us in 1995 and we've had all of our three children here. In 1999.

my wife came out of the restroom with a little pregnancy test that turned blue. And we both started crying and we're rejoicing in this new life. and several months went by and it didn't really set in until, September 27th, 1999. We went and saw a sonogram that changed our lives and the sonogram was of my son Joshua.

We found out he was a boy. And when I saw that image, it turned everything, everything turned real. Up until that point I knew that there was something alive inside of Katie's tummy, but when we saw that image representing my son Joshua, it impacted. our lives and so Joshua was born on February 5th, 2000.

I was there, he was born by C-section and I got to see him come out of the womb literally and, and as soon as I saw him, the, the first thing that hit me is, oh my goodness, he looks like my dad. It just. I was, I was shocked. And So he, he comes out and, and we were just very, very excited and just excited to see this, this little guy grow up and And what a blessing he has been.

Just the first of our 3 children. We, we love all of our children. I, I can say honestly I love Joshua. I love my wife, and yet when I say I love my wife, that's different from when I say I love tacos, right?

I do love tacos. And there is one dog in my life that I've loved. It's a little dog that my sisters might remember named Fifi. It's the only dog I've ever really loved.

Some little dog that one of my siblings painted a white stripe down its back. And then somehow that dog ended up just going missing. And I just remember this heartache over Fifi. And while I love Fifi and while I love tacos, it's not the same as saying I love this little human being that I took home from the hospital.

I can remember just coming home and we kinda had training wheels at first. My mother-in-law Maggie stayed with us for a couple of weeks, after Joshua was born, and I can just remember the day she left. Both Katie and I were just standing there. We just wanted to grab her and pull her back into the apartment and she walked out and here we are holding this little life and it still had the little scar from the umbilical cord, not scar, but the, the umbilical cord tissue and it just freaked me out every time I wiped it down with a little alcohol wipe and, and changing his little diapers.

it was just an incredible experience. I'll just never forget it and it's something that really Grew us up and it's something that really helped us see the image of God. Which is what we're gonna be talking about. If you want to put a title on today's message, we're gonna be talking about the implications of the image of God and let me read from Genesis chapter one.

Pastor Milton covered this several months ago. Genesis 1:26 says, then God said, Let us make man in our image according to our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and over the cattle of all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, and God created man in His own image. In the image of God, He created him, male and female, he created them. When the invisible God wanted to make something visible that would be like him and represent him, he made man, male and female.

There's lots of creatures that God could have made and called them his image. In fact, he created, dogs, right? He created cats. I don't know why, but he created them.

It's the one animal that I, I just wonder why God didn't leave it off the ark, but He created dogs, cats, all kinds of animals, but there's only one being that God said, this is, this is my image. theologians call this the Amago Day, and while this is not gonna be a theological sermon where we're covering the whole Amago Day doctrine, I do want to give a little survey. If you guys wanna go and listen to some of our notes on the image of God doctrine, you can go back and listen to the systematic theology or ask me for the notes.

But basically, in summary, when we talk about the Imago Day or the image of God, basically what we mean is that when the Bible says that man is made in the image of God, it means that man, male and female is like God and represents God in all the ways that further revelation delineates.

Everywhere that the Bible goes on to say that this is how human beings reflect God and are like God, that's what the image of God is. The image of God is not just something that man does. It's not just something in man, it's man himself. Men and women are the image of God.

And because men and women are the image of God, this has implications. Let's just run a little. You can basically preach the gospel talking about the image of God. We see that at the fall, God's image is distorted but not lost.

Men and women are created the image of God, and while sin does affect, it distorts the image, it's not lost, and we see this in Genesis 5 where Seth is still in the image of Adam and Adam is in the image of God. And then after Noah gets off the ark, God says, whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God, he made him. And so you can't just go without any authority from God Himself and just go kill the image of God. God will kill you.

He will authorize someone to kill you if you murder the image of God. And so the image of God is still present after the fall. And then Jesus Christ is sent to the earth in flesh. Jesus could have stayed in heaven.

God the Father could have just said, I have a son in heaven and, and just given us the, the word through prophecy about the second person of the Trinity, but Jesus comes as the Bible says in Hebrews, as the exact representation of his nature. Hebrews 1:3. So Jesus Christ is the ultimate image of God, and then he begins this progressive recovering. Of the image in us as we look to Christ and become more and more like Christ.

Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:18, but we all with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror, the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit. So we're being transformed and one of the ways that God is transforming us is through his preached word, but he also left his what we would call the visible word, with some theologians call the visible word. When Jesus Christ ascended, before he ascended the earth, he, he could have told his disciples, just every time you get together, just remember me mentally, but what did he give the disciples?

He gave them the Lord's Supper, right?

He gave them an image. He gave them something that they could touch and taste and see. we have the bread in the cup that is given to us by Jesus. And so when we gather together, we remember the Lord's death, we remember his blood, and we have images to help us with that memory.

And at Christ's return, we will actually be restored to that original place that Adam and Eve were in. At Christ's return, when we see Him, we shall be like Him, as it says in First John. And because of this whole Imago day concept, there are various implications that we can draw. We can draw the fact that we are creatures being made in the image of God.

So we're not the creators ourselves. We are His creatures. There's a creator-c creature distinction. we can also draw this implication that we belong to God.

we are the image bearers, right? We belong to God. And we should pattern ourselves after Jesus, who is the ultimate representation of the Trinity. We can also from the Bible, conclude that people have more value than animals.

Yes, I love Fifi. Still have a soft part in my heart for Fifi. But Fifi does not equal Joshua, right? Animals do not have the same value as those that are made in the image of God.

But the one implication that we're gonna spend time talking about this morning is this, that because of the image of God, because it's universal, all people have value. Regardless of your race, regardless of your age, regardless of whether you're weak or strong, all people have value. Why? Because they are made.

In the image. Of God But what happens, what has happened historically when we try to deny or destroy the image of God and people? And what happens when we expose or are exposed to the image of God and people, even exposed to the injustices committed against that image. What happens?

Well, we're gonna be talking about 3 groups of image bearers. And how the image of God in them has been denied by some and exposed by others. In all these instances, images that is drawings, pictures, or film have been used to either deny or expose the image of God in people. In the end, I'm hoping that we will all see that all people have value because they're made in the image of God.

And as we understand the doctrine of the Amago day, it will help us grant value to all people that are created in God's image. So this morning we want to look at the ways the image has been denied or distorted in the ways it's been exposed with 3 different groups. How many groups are we're gonna be looking at? 3.

In each group, we're going to look at two sides of the coin. We're going to look at how those groups' image has been denied or distorted and how those groups' image has been exposed. All right? Let's first of all talk about 6 million Jews.

6 million Jews. This is an estimated number that has lots of statistical data behind it. I'm not going to go into all of that. There's at least 6 million Jews that we know were annihilated by Nazi Germany during World War II.

This doesn't account for all the others, up to upwards of 11 million total that were killed. And Hitler and his regime had a way of denying and distorting the image. They would use drawings and various pieces of propaganda to convince people that Jews and others simply were not human beings. That they were worthy of this type of extermination.

Drawings on the fronts of magazines or books. This is called The Wondering Jew, very common image in Nazi Germany to portray Jewish people as of course evil and dark. There's also just the, the stereotype and the image of Jews. This translation of that came under this picture is the Jewish God is money.

Another image that was passed along in Germany. And it wasn't just healthy Jews, it was also disabled Jews. Hitler and his regime used the science of eugenics, used the, the philosophy of social Darwinism, the idea of, survival of the fittest in order to convince the German people, a very intelligent people, that they, that disabled, the disabled needed to be eliminated. On your left, there is a poster that basically is communicating how many marks per year this disabled person is sucking from the German economy.

On the other, the black and white picture, you have an Aryan that's represented holding up the weak of society, those who cannot carry their own weight and the suggestion to the German people is that these people are a drain on society and a drain on, the economy. Another poster that was commonly put up in Germany portrays if we continue to allow the weak and disabled to propagate, their population is gonna go up and up and up and if strong Aryan Germans don't populate at the same rate, they're gonna be overtaken and overshadowed by the weak and so the implication is eugenics.

We need to apply social Darwinism to the equation. we need to eliminate the weak, the strong live, the weak survive.

We have the struggle for life. Mein Kampf, my struggle that Hitler wrote based on the philosophy of Spencer's Social Darwinism is we have this struggle for life. That is going on and, and, and we are going to eventually the, the strong will survive and the weak of necessity. will die and we need to actually come alongside of Mother Nature and help that process to occur.

This is the engineering, the social engineering, the eugenics that is, was being applied. in Germany. It's interesting that in 1933 in Nuremberg, we'll talk about Nuremberg here in a little bit, the Nuremberg Party rally, Hitler proclaimed this quote, higher race subjects. higher race subjects to itself a lower race, a right which we see in nature and which can be regarded as the sole conceivable right.

Because it's founded on science. And so Hitler had established this idea. The Nazis believed that they were simply applying facts proved by science to produce a superior race of humans as part of their plan for a better world. The business of the corporate state was eugenics or artificial selection, it's politics as applied biology.

And so part of their propaganda campaign would also be to take pictures of the mentally disabled, for instance, try to cast dark light on them. There's a, a movie that Spielberg, I think reviews actually on one of, on the special features of one of his films where he talks about these films that the Nazis would put together to try to test lighting to see how they could, make, mentally disabled people look as dark as possible and sinister as possible and show these films in, in the movie halls to convince Germans that these were bad people that needed to be eliminated.

This is just one, picture. Of a film that goes on for about an hour.

After the war Many people still have no idea what has happened with the concentration camps. The thing that we consider to be common knowledge now is still fairly unknown to many people around the world. Enter General Dwight Eisenhower to the, the theater as he begins to survey, the damage that was done by the Nazis, he is shocked and appalled. In one of his letters, famous letters to General Marshall, he says this, the things I saw beggar description.

The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty, bestiality were so overpowering. I made the visit deliberately in order to be in a position to give firsthand evidence of these things. If ever in the future there develops a tendency to charge these allegations to propaganda. Eisenhower, he, as he was seeing these atrocities, he foresaw a day when people would say the Holocaust never happened.

And we're in that day to day. In fact, if you go online and just Google Eisenhower propaganda, you'll find all kinds of sites that will say Eisenhower was part of the whole propaganda. They'll say that he's, he was part of it. These, these visions were so overpowering that Patton could not enter.

Several of the places that Eisenhower went to to take photographs. Think of this, battle-hardened George C. Patton said he would get sick. To enter some of these places.

So, Eisenhower and others began to document. Just the rings of Jews that had been taken off that had been gassed in gas chambers. Eisenhower had about 80,000 ft of movie film taken that was edited down to about a 1 hour documentary called Nazi concentration camp. And it was this film that was actually shown at the trial at Nuremberg after World War II.

And if you raise your hand if you've seen the movie Judgment at Nuremberg. I would recommend that everybody in this room see that film. It is a great film on propaganda. One of the things that really hits you in this film is it, as it portrays the and it, it's taken from court transcripts, but as it portrays this trial, the lawyer who is defending the German officers who participated in the In the atrocities, you find yourself finding that this guy's making a lot of sense.

Maybe these officers should be let off. Maybe, maybe they really haven't done anything all that bad. And then come the movies. And once they began to show the movies of Jewish bodies by the thousands being dumped into ditches.

It was the end. Right there at Nuremberg where Hitler had pronounced his scientific eugenics, these officers were judged and they were hanged, many of them. And it wasn't the publications in the newspapers, unfortunately. It wasn't the print.

It was seeing the atrocities that had been committed to the image of God and so showing the atrocious images reminded people of the image of God in these Jews. And so I'm gonna show a few graphic images here that were taken by some of these were taken by Eisenhower, some of them that were part of the Warsaw ghetto and so on, but these were the types of things that, FDR at first, Franklin Dela Roosevelt, at first he had put a ban on the press early in the war and didn't want certain images to be seen, and then at some point during the Pacific Campaign, he felt like that the energy for the war was waning and said we need to allow the American people to see what's really going on.

And so he allowed this, this really infamous picture of three dead soldiers on the beach in the Pacific campaign. And it just awakened people to the fact that this is, this is real.

This is really happening. Up until that point, people didn't realize, a lot of people weren't realizing what was going on, and it was images like these that people began to see that began to awaken them to the atrocities that were going, that had gone on. This particular picture at the back of it says the last Jew in this town. And it's, it's written in celebratory fashion.

People began to see images that what, what had really happened in the Warsaw ghetto. And, and people just could not deny the humanity and the image. And once people began to see the images, that Eisenhower and others, really hundreds, hundreds of others, thousands of others had documented, it was undeniable that an atrocity had occurred, that we have people who are not animals, we have people that are not just weak who need to be crushed underneath the, the feet of the strong, that people began to see.

That this was a horrible, horrible atrocity.

And while it's not easy to assign or assess the conflicting motives of a madman like Hitler, I think we can safely say something like this if the Nazi Party had fully embraced And consistently acted on behalf on the belief that all humans were descendants of Adam and Eve and equal before the Creator as taught in the Old and New Testament scriptures, the Holocaust would have never occurred. If people, if the Nazis and Hitler really believed in the image of God, this would have never happened, but they convinced themselves that the Jews, that these disabled were just animals.

No more than animals. And so this was able to occur.

The 20th century is known as being the bloodiest century in human history. The pictures taken by Eisenhower and so many others revealed the atrocities. And thus restored the image. In our minds They help restore the image by refusing to hide the atrocities.

They opened the casket of anti-Semitism and eugenics for all the world to see. Let me say that again. These images open the casket of anti-Semitism and eugenics for all the world to see. Let's talk about a 2nd group of image bearers.

Let's talk about 12 million slaves. Between 1525 and 1866. the entire history of the slave trade in the to the new world according to Transatlantic Slave Trade Database. 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World.

10.7 million survived the dreaded Middle Passage, disembarking in North America, the Caribbean and South America. 12. million. Slaves.

And what was it that Moved people. In both continents, North and North America and South America to come to the place where they began to embrace race-based slavery and actually began to question the humanity. Of their slaves Well, it was similar types of ideology, people began to See There began to creep up ways to explain why that African-Americans could be treated as thus, that basically African-Americans are just lower evolved. On the, lower evolved animals, we have apes and then we have African-Americans and then the highest, most evolved race would be the Caucasian race.

And so people began to give scientific and even biblical responses to race-based slavery. There were movies that came out after the Civil War. Civil Wars fought, you think, all right, that's the end of slavery, that's the end of racism. Actually, there was a big turn after the Civil War towards lynchings, towards racism, repression of blacks in the United States.

One of the most influential films at the turn of the century is called The Birth of a Nation. Richard, have you ever seen this film? OK, just a few of you. The Birth of the Nation was a huge hit.

Silent film came out in 1915. Basically just basically presented its view of the post-Civil War world in the South where blacks are evil and where the Ku Klux Klan is the hero. In this particular scene, you see a, a black maid who has a sinister look on her face and then the white woman is, is, is screaming, trying to escape the clutches. Of the black maid, you have the heroes, the Ku Klux Klan that are arresting someone who has dared to oppress a white woman.

if this was just a friend group that had seen this film and, and basically everybody just laughed it off, that'd be one thing, but in March of 1915, there was a special screening of this film for the president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, who reportedly said this, it is like writing history with lightning and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true. That's from Woodrow Wilson. This film portrayed what would happen if African Americans were allowed to be part of Congress and to desecrate the Senate.

They'll just be eating chicken and putting their bare feet up, up, up on the, the desk of Congress and desecrate that sacred office.

there are other types of cartoons that just try to portray African Americans as stupid and as animals and basically denying them the image. It's, it's no surprise that after Birth of a Nation that you see a rise in the Ku Klux Klan, you see a rise in lynchings, and, you have one of the darker periods of American history. But along in 1955, we have an, an amazing turning point in the history of the United States. And that happens with a young man named Emmett Louis Till.

And his mother, Mammy Elizabeth Till. Raise your hand if you've heard of Emmett Louis Till. Oh, I'm very grateful that. Some of who this, this guy is.

young boy. Approximately 14 years old. He's from Chicago. He goes down to Money, Mississippi to see relatives.

His mom warns him to be careful as he heads down there it's not the same. He goes down. Hanging out with some friends, goes to Bryant grocery store, like a 7-Eleven, goes in to buy a stick of gum. The stories are, are a little bit different, exactly what happened.

Some people say that as the 21 year old wife, Carolyn Bryant, as she put the change in his hand, their hands touched. Some people say that's all that happened. It was just the touching of the hands. Some people say that, that Emmett whistled at her or made a comment towards her.

So basically this 14-year-old boy walked out. Two days later, the husband of Carolyn Bryant with another individual broke into his home, forcibly took him with a gun. they took him away and beat him to a pulp, shot him in the face, tied his body to a cotton gin with barbed wire, threw him in the Mississippi. And then later his body was floating in the Mississippi.

When the sheriff of the town discovered what had happened, he tried to have Emmett's body buried right away. Mammy Elizabeth Till had to get a court order to prevent her boy from being buried down there in Mississippi. she was eventually able to get her son back up to Chicago and, and to have a funeral for her son. Where many people were trying to convince her to have a closed casket funeral.

Mammy refused. She said they're gonna see, everybody's gonna see what these guys did to my son. By the way, the two people who killed him were tried and they got off. They were never convicted.

Those 7 years afterwards, they reported in the magazine that they had done these crimes and they were proud of it. But because of the statute of limitations, they could no longer be tried because it was past 7 years. So Mammy says, I'm gonna let everybody see it. Now, the image I'm about Ray show is very graphic.

So if anyone wants to cover up your kid's eyes, feel free. But basically, this is, this is what Mammy's boy looked like after he came out of the river. And it was this image that had a lot of people call this the spark of the civil rights movement. 1955.

There's a lot of things that you can point to that sparked the civil rights movement, but this is the image that was going through Rosa Parks's mind when she sat in front of a bus. 100 days later, she said, I thought of Emmett Till and when the bus driver ordered me to move to the back, I just couldn't move. Mammy helped restore the image of God by opening the casket of racism for all the world to see. She could have succumbed to pressure.

She could have said, I'm gonna keep that casket closed. She could have said, yeah, go ahead and bury my boy in Mississippi. But she said, no, my boy is made in the image of God and people are gonna see what they did to my boy who's made the image of God. And when people saw the open casket of a boy who's made the image of God and saw what had been done to him, people said, that's enough.

Many other images were shown during the civil rights movement of the 50s, 60s, 70s on to today. It's my contention that you really cannot understand race relations in the United States if you don't understand Louis Emmett Till. Every time something happens out there and, and, some of us that did not grow up, in, in a as a minority we're shaking our heads, we don't understand, go back and study Lewis Emmett Till and you will get a bigger understanding, a greater understanding for even what's going on today.

So there's 2 groups.

Two groups and two people who said, we're not going to close the casket. We're not gonna close the casket on anti-Semitism, we're not going to close the casket on eugenics. We're not gonna close the casket on racism. Let's talk about a third group.

Let's talk about 58 million. 58 million, what? Well, many people today, they, they, they want to leave the screen blank. And if they're going to fill anything into that blank.

What they would prefer to fill into that blank is blobs of fetal tissue. 58 million blobs. A fetal tissue. That's what people want us to think.

And those that are on one side of this debate are accused of propaganda. Because we refuse to close the casket. On atrocity. We're accused of propaganda because we just want moms to see what a baby really looks like in the womb.

We're the ones that are accused. of propaganda, but there's really only one question that matters in this whole issue of these 55, 58 million whatever. And that is what is it? What is it?

Because if we can answer this question, if, if we can determine with absolute certainty. That whatever is in the mother's womb is not human, then no justification is needed. Do what you want. It's like clipping your fingernails, right?

No justification is needed. But if we know with certainty that what resides In the womb of a woman from the very beginning is a human being. Then no justification is adequate. So what is it, is the question.

And, we, we carry on debates in print, we carry on, we speak. Seth Gruber came down here and spoke, did a great job at our apologetics conference. But what? When we use words and we, when we just use the printed word, what many people are hearing because they've been overwhelmed by a certain viewpoint in our country, basically what they're hearing is Charlie Brown's teacher.

What they're hearing, when we say that we don't believe in abortion, they hear something like this, I don't like chocolate ice cream. Or I don't like broccoli. What they hear us saying is that we just don't prefer abortion. You prefer abortion, but we don't.

They see it as, as some preference issue and so to them, it can be very much like just clipping your nails. But the question is, what is it? If my family is watching one of the babies in this church, let's, let's say a, a one month old baby and we get the privilege of, of babysitting the one month old baby. We have the baby over to our home with Josh and Anna and little seven year old Samuel.

We're having fun, we're playing games and all that stuff and all of a sudden I'm washing dishes and Samuel comes up behind me and he says, hey Daddy, can I kill it? What am I gonna do before I answer that question? Sammy's behind me. I'm gonna turn around and I want to see what he's got, right?

Because if he's got a cockroach, I'm probably gonna give him a hammer. Right? If he's got the neighbor's kitty, I'm gonna say no. I'm gonna take that.

I might, I might be tempted, but But I'm gonna say no, let's, let's get that back over to the neighbor. But if I turn around and he's got our friend's one month old baby. I'm gonna take the baby away and I'm gonna get my boy some counseling. Right?

What is it is the only question that really matters here. What is it? And one of the reasons why our friends on the other side don't want pictures to be seen is because it's plain what it is. The science today has absolutely proven beyond a doubt that what it is, is a human being from the very beginning.

Everything necessary for a fully developed human being is right there from the very beginning and, and the leaders in, in the pro-choice movement acknowledge that. So now that's why the debate has moved from humanity to Personhood. It's now a metaphysical debate. They don't even debate the humanity of the child anymore.

Now it's When does a human become this metaphysical thing called a person? in California state law, if somebody shoots a pregnant mother, He will be tried for double homicide, right? If a doctor without permission of the mother goes in and takes the baby and kills it, he will be a murderer. But if the mother gives permission to the doctor to take the baby, it is now no longer a person.

So what determines personhood according to California state law? It's whether the mother says it's a person or not. That's the only thing. California state law, if the mother says it's a person, it's a person.

If the mother says it's not a person, it's not a person. That's the only thing that determines whether it's murder or an abortion. That's where we're at today. And so You see bumper stickers like this one, don't like abortion, don't have one.

It's almost like that, see, you see the logic there? It's, it's the vanilla chocolate thing. Don't like apples, don't eat one. What if we change that to say don't like domestic violence, don't beat your wife.

That's the type of category we're talking about. We're not talking about whether I like apples or not. We're talking about is it OK to beat your wife? The type of category, we need to clarify the moral reasoning in this debate, the type of category we're talking about is, is it OK to torture toddlers for fun?

That's what we're talking about. Is it OK to torture toddlers for fun? We need to clarify. The moral question and virtually every pro-choice argument can be answered with the toddler response.

It's called trotting out the toddler. Somebody says, how dare you? How dare you? Tell a mother And her husband or boyfriend, what they can do or not do in the privacy of their own home.

Who are you? And they're very lovingly and gently, you can just say, Well, is it OK for me and my wife to to kill our two year old in the privacy of our own home? Of course not. Well then privacy was never really the issue, was it?

It wasn't privacy, it's what is it. You're granting him, you're granting personhood to the 2 year old, but you're not granting personhood to the person in the womb. It's, that's the only question that matters. It's not privacy.

Somebody comes along and says, how dare you tell this woman who is impoverished. Who doesn't barely have enough money to feed herself that she has to have this baby. To which you very lovingly respond and say, if my wife and I no longer have the funds to raise our two year old, can we Lay them out and expose them to death. The obvious answer is no, you can't.

Why? Because it has nothing to do with poverty. It has to do with personhood. They're granting personhood to the 2 year old, but they're not granting personhood to The infant in the womb.

That's the only question that really matters in this debate. But see, people don't see that because the casket. has been closed on them. Scott Klusseldorf says this, this, he's an amazing speaker, pro-life advocate, says if Christians do not lovingly but truthfully open the casket on abortion, our nation will continue to tolerate an injustice it never has to look at.

We're talking about 58 million little boys and little girls since 1993, Roe versus Wade, who systematically have their arms and legs torn off. And are killed 58 million is only 3%. Of the abortions in the world. Since 1980, there have been 1.4 billion abortions in the world.

Think about it. When we stand before the judgment seat of God. And God looks at our generation. And he looks at 1.4 billion.

Human beings made in the image of God, people. Who have been ripped to shreds. What will God have to say? the other side of this debate, they're free to show their images.

They have no problem showing their images. They show up at a protest for the funeral of Doctor George Tillet, who we think was a horrible guy, right? And what's the one image they show? Is Somebody standing out saying God sent the shooter, God hates baby killers, God hates you.

That's the image that the media is more than willing to show. But for some reason, they don't want this shown. This is propaganda. 3D and 4D images.

You, you stand up and you show 3D and 40 images. And people call it propaganda. But the statistics tell us that one of the reasons why they're afraid of these images is 90% of women who are intent on having an abortion, once they see this image of their baby, they will not have an abortion. 90% will not have an abortion once they see this image because there's no way to deny that this is a person.

This is a real image, 4D technology. September 11, 2001 killed 3000 Americans and injured many, many more, but every day 4000 American babies are killed. 4000. And yet they're afraid this is propaganda.

It's propaganda to show triplets in the womb like this. This, is this propaganda. For us to reveal to mothers, the people that your baby out of the womb, your baby in the womb is a person. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing.

Is that propaganda? Are they able, why, why can they show the images, but we're not allowed to? And back in 1986, so you just a little bit of, some history in my family. In 1986, a girl, my sister, this is like a year before Melissa got pregnant, part of her testimony.

Actually, a little less than 1 year later, the softball player was going to be pregnant at 14 years old. And for one reason or another, she was convinced that she needed to go have an abortion. That that was the, that was, that was what needed to be done. But on her way to the abortion clinic, somebody just very lovingly stopped her and said, hey, would you like to see some pictures of what your baby looks right now, looks like right now at 14 weeks?

She says, yeah, and she saw a picture of a 14 week old baby in the womb. And when she saw that picture, She's like, that's it. We're going home. 14 years old, poor.

Right? private decision. So she goes home, decides to have her baby. And then he wins like a, a beauty contest a year later, right?

Right here with these in the suit there, he wins a beauty contest. It's one of the well, well-known facts or unknown facts of Matt Kaufman. he's a model as a baby. And so now, one of the guys who's or that, that's teaching every Sunday, teaching our Sunday school class.

was really just, just yards away from his death. And at at the time, the pictures and the information just was not available. My sister did not get any of that information. In school.

She didn't get any of that information watching the news or television. All that information was being hidden, denied, distorted from her. On her way to the abortion clinic. Somebody who cared about her and cares about life just showed her a picture.

Showed her a picture And now we've got, our youth pastor over here just giving messages on Sunday morning. Yards away from not even existing, going to be with Jesus. That's the power It's the power of truth. That's the power.

Of images Let me share a couple more things and then we're gonna show the most graphic. Image of today I want to just share with you or remind you that the execution of Jesus Christ was public. Jesus Christ orchestrated his own death. Jesus Christ could have died.

He could have orchestrated sovereignly his own death, privately. He could have had his death occur before Pontius Pilate or somewhere in some private sector of Jerusalem. But he sovereignly orchestrated his own death where the Romans took him, beat him, bloodied him, tortured, writhed image on the cross for man, woman and child to see naked. Massacred on the cross.

To appease the wrath of God for sins, including sins like genocide, sins like racism. Sins like abortion. Jesus Christ died showing the horror of those sins with his own death, but the intensity of God's love with his death. In the cross, we see one at the same time, the horror of sin and how really bad it is.

And so we must gaze at the cross for all that the, the horror that sin really is. And at the same time, we see the love of God being demonstrated because the wrath of God is absorbed in Jesus Christ. There are those of you here today. Who have friends or family who have been racists.

Maybe you've, in your own life, you've had hateful feelings or, or, or feelings against somebody of a different race, African-Americans, Jews, Hispanics, what have you. Whites Maybe someone who has had an abortion. Maybe you've had an abortion yourself. Jesus Christ, the death of Jesus Christ demonstrates two very clear facts.

One is, yes, our sins are horrible, and worthy of the death of Jesus Christ. The second thing that that Jesus' death demonstrates is our sins are not so horrible that they cannot be forgiven. And yes, the sins of abortion, the sin of racism, the sins that we've talked about today are forgiven in Jesus Christ. If you just call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, you can be rescued.

The rescue of sin is a great comfort to us. We need to comfort people who have been through abortions, and I'm gonna recommend a little, a little bit, actually, I'll recommend it right now. article, you can go to calm.org. Matthew Slick has a wonderful article on how to speak to mothers who've had abortion.

You can go to abort 73.com. It's an excellent website to both talk about the issue of abortion and also find comfort. But that doesn't change the fact that we need to throw the casket off the sin. If showing the images that Eisenhower took helped cause social change, if Mammy's image of her son laying in the casket helped spark social change, we dare not keep the images of abortion hidden.

Behind a casket. And so what we're gonna do is I'm gonna show you the exact same short movie that we showed at the Apologetics conference. It's a 55 2nd movie. It's gonna show what abortion really looks like.

You can close your eyes if you wish, but I'm gonna, we're gonna take 55 seconds to take a look at this. Do I have to click one more or? We good? William Wilbur Forres, who is a leader in the abolition movement, was insistent on having artists that would draw the horrors of slavery, and he would show these images before his government.

One of the things that he said is you may choose to look the other way, but you can never say that you did not know. And images were an important part of the campaign against slavery in In England. And images are an important part. Of the campaign against the murder of young boys and girls in the United States and around the world.

It's important that we speak truthfully. It's important that we deliver comfort. It's important that we keep just like. Mammy, till that we keep the casket open.

People can debate us in print all they want as long as they're thinking it's just like clipping fingernails. But these are real human beings in the womb, and these are real human beings that are being killed. 4000 a day. the plaintiff of the Roe versus Wade.

Norma McKey. is now a believer and, and she has tried to get. this overturned. A quote from her I long for the day that justice will be done and the burden from all these deaths will be removed from my shoulders.

I want to do everything in my power to help women and their children. The issue is justice for women, justice for the unborn, and justice for what is right. The irony is that Norma Rowe McCovey had her baby. And that the real intent of what she was after had really nothing to do with abortion, it had to do with divorce.

But the lawyers at the time saw an opportune case, took it all the way to the Supreme Court. And one in 1973. One of the things that we can say to Norma, we can say to anybody in this room who has had an abortion, is that you do not need to feel the weight on your shoulders because Jesus Christ has already taken all the weight. On his shoulders.

Hebrews 8:12 says this, for I will be merciful to their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more. As we come to the Lord Jesus Christ and just frankly admit the sins that we've committed, the atrocities that we in our culture have committed, we need to, we need to dig deep in sin. But as we come to the Lord Jesus Christ, it's amazing to think That he would look at the death of Jesus, and then turn and look at you and say, I will not recall your sins to mind. Anymore.

What an amazing God. What an amazing God that he would look at. Our atrocities that he would look at our sins and set them aside. That's the hope that we have.

This morning, I, I pray that you would just contemplate the things we've talked about. I know there's been some very difficult matters. pray how the Lord would have you to apply it to your lives, your family, in your, in your care group. I would encourage you to go check out, we've got a message on our website by Seth Gruber.

I would encourage you to go listen to that. He gets into all kinds of other stuff that I just didn't have time for. you can go to calm.org, you can just Google Comfort for mothers who've had an abortion, go to abort 73. We've advertised the, the post-abortion class save one in our, in our bulletin if you want information about that, you can go to call our office.

And also Pastor Milton talked earlier just about the opportunity to give to San Bernardino Pregnancy Resource Center. San Bernardino Pregnancy Resource Center is a place right over here in San Bernardino that's situated right next to a Planned Parenthood where mothers will go in and, and they can get an ultrasound. They can see their baby in 4D or 3D. And, and they are ministering to women and so the our what we're taking up for our Agape fund offering here the first week of February, all of that is gonna be going to the San Bernardino Pregnancy Resource Center and so it's one of the ways that you can participate.

We have a number of our people here in the church that volunteer over the San Bernardino Resource Pregnancy Center. It's a great place where you can minister and really be part of the solution. We know that not everybody is called to, pro-life ministry. But all of us can pray.

All of us can give and, and all of us can support, this very, very important cause. Let's pray. Lord, we, We just cry out with Job, who said, did not he who made me in the womb make my servants? Did not the same one form us both within our mothers?

We've been all made in your image. Help us to retain that image in our minds when we think of people around the globe. Really, it doesn't matter if they're believers or not, doesn't matter if they're male or female, old or young, weak or strong, whatever their ethnic background, every person is valuable because they're made in your image. We thank you for Jesus Christ, who is the exact representation of your nature.

Now that he came, lived a perfect life and died a horrible, gory, bloody public death for us. So that we could see the seriousness of sin, but also see the intensity of your love for us. We ask God that you would just bring comfort upon those that need the comfort of your spirit. We pray that you bring conviction upon us that need convicting.

We pray, Lord, that those in our midst who may not know you, that they would come to know you today, they would call upon the Savior as their Savior. We pray all this in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, and all God's people said, Amen.