SANCTITY OF LIFE: The Effects of Societal Sin
Joe Florestano
Transcribed by PulpitAI (with edits)
Introduction
We’re gonna be—I don’t think this is in your bulletin, but the passage that we’re gonna be in today is Amos chapter 5, and so you can kind of make your way to that in your Bible. And as you open up to that chapter, you may be looking at it and saying, “I don’t see anything about the sanctity of life in here. It’s not very obvious.” What you will see in this passage is a definite picture of brokenness in society. And I’m gonna invite you, as you kind of listen to the words of this chapter, to ask the question, “What went wrong with these people that Amos is addressing?”
Context of Amos
And a quick background, just a little bit of background, on the book of Amos: Amos is a prophet that’s commissioned to go prophesy to the Northern Kingdom of Israel. This is after Israel split into two kingdoms, the Southern and the Northern. In the Southern Kingdom is where you get—the Temple is there in Jerusalem, and the unbroken line of kings that came from David is in the Southern Kingdom, and the Northern kingdom broke off after the death of Solomon.
And right off the bat, the Northern Kingdom of Israel is marked with idolatry, because they’re no longer—part of the consequence of breaking off from the Southern Kingdom is that they no longer were going to the temple to worship God as he prescribed in his law. And so right off the bat, the fabric of the Northern Kingdom of Israel is identified with idolatry, and it remains that way throughout its history.
Amos comes into the picture around 750 BC. This is about 280 years into its existence—the Northern Kingdom of Israel, that is. And it’s kind of an interesting time because Israel is experiencing a little bit of economic, political, social resurgence under the kings of that time. But at the same time, it’s about 30 years prior to when Israel would be conquered and captured and led away into captivity by the Assyrians. So Amos finds himself in a very interesting situation where he has to address these people who kind of think everything is good to go, but he knows how close they are to destruction. And you get that in the tone of his book, that he’s pleading with the people to return to God.
The Words of Amos
I’m gonna read the text in its entirety, and then I’ll kind of talk through it, and maybe you’ll see why this has anything to do with sanctity of life. This is Amos chapter 5.
Hear this word that I take up over you in lamentation, O house of Israel:
“Fallen, no more to rise,
is the virgin Israel;
forsaken on her land,
with none to raise her up.”For thus says the Lord God:
“The city that went out a thousand
shall have a hundred left,
and that which went out a hundred
shall have ten left
to the house of Israel.”For thus says the Lord to the house of Israel:
“Seek me and live;
but do not seek Bethel,
and do not enter into Gilgal
or cross over to Beersheba;
for Gilgal shall surely go into exile,
and Bethel shall come to nothing.”Seek the Lord and live,
lest he break out like fire in the house of Joseph,
and it devour, with none to quench it for Bethel,
O you who turn justice to wormwood
and cast down righteousness to the earth!He who made the Pleiades and Orion,
and turns deep darkness into the morning
and darkens the day into night,
who calls for the waters of the sea
and pours them out on the surface of the earth,
the Lord is his name;
who makes destruction flash forth against the strong,
so that destruction comes upon the fortress.They hate him who reproves in the gate,
and they abhor him who speaks the truth.
Therefore because you trample on the poor
and you exact taxes of grain from him,
you have built houses of hewn stone,
but you shall not dwell in them;
you have planted pleasant vineyards,
but you shall not drink their wine.
For I know how many are your transgressions
and how great are your sins—
you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe,
and turn aside the needy in the gate.
Therefore he who is prudent will keep silent in such a time,
for it is an evil time.Seek good, and not evil,
that you may live;
and so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you,
as you have said.
Hate evil, and love good,
and establish justice in the gate;
it may be that the Lord, the God of hosts,
will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.Therefore thus says the Lord, the God of hosts, the Lord:
“In all the squares there shall be wailing,
and in all the streets they shall say, ‘Alas! Alas!’
They shall call the farmers to mourning
and to wailing those who are skilled in lamentation,
and in all vineyards there shall be wailing,
for I will pass through your midst,”
says the Lord.Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord!
Why would you have the day of the Lord?
It is darkness, and not light,
as if a man fled from a lion,
and a bear met him,
or went into the house and leaned his hand against the wall,
and a serpent bit him.
Is not the day of the Lord darkness, and not light,
and gloom with no brightness in it?“I hate, I despise your feasts,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them;
and the peace offerings of your fattened animals,
I will not look upon them.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
to the melody of your harps I will not listen.
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.“Did you bring to me sacrifices and offerings during the forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? You shall take up Sikkuth your king, and Kiyyun your star-god—your images that you made for yourselves, and I will send you into exile beyond Damascus,” says the Lord, whose name is the God of hosts.
Societal Sin
What we see in this passage is this idea of societal sin. And I’ve heard—I think sometimes we get the sense that sin is so individualistic. Okay, I heard someone make the argument one time, he says, “Oh yeah, you Christians, you’re so against abortion.” I have an idea for you: don’t get an abortion. Problem solved, right? And it’s this idea that the only people impacted by sin are the one who offends and the one who is offended, but that’s not how sin works at all. Sin always has an impact on the community. Paul says this in 1 Corinthians 5:6:
… a little leaven leavens the whole lump.
Paul is writing to Corinthians about sexual sin that is happening in the church of Corinth, and it’s not everyone in the church. It’s some people who are doing this and other people who are allowing it to happen, and it’s having an effect on the entire community. So Paul says, “You have to deal with it.”
Abortion is one of our societal sins in our day and age, okay? And you may or may not be personally culpable, but you live in a community that is, and that forces you to reckon with it. Neutrality is not an option, okay? You can’t turn a blind eye to the injustice that’s happening. And so, the way we’re gonna approach this text in Amos chapter 5 is, we’re gonna look at this chapter as a paradigm for how we can, as Christians, make sense of societal sins—how we can address them, and what we can do in the context of societal sins. And particularly, we’re gonna look at this sin of abortion that’s so prevalent in our day and age, and we’re gonna kind of relate it back to there. So there’s the connection, in case you were looking for it.
Respond With Sorrow
Going back to the beginning of the chapter, in verses 1–3, it starts with a funeral lament, right?
Hear this word that I take up over you in lamentation, O house of Israel…
Talking as though Israel’s already dead, because everything about Israel’s situation is sad. They were chosen special by God, but they have walked so far away, mired in sin and unaware of how close they are to death. And honestly, this should be our first response. When we think about this issue of the sanctity of life and the issue of innocent children being discarded so often, our first response should be sorrow.
I looked at some of the numbers this week in preparation of this, and it was depressing. The number I kept on seeing is that in the United States, about 900,000 abortions per year. And then worldwide, the number that I kept seeing was 73 million per year, which, to put into context, is about six and a half holocausts per year, regarding death toll. That has to break your heart.
You can’t be apathetic about it, because godly sorrow can be a motivator, right? 2 Corinthians 7:10:
For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.
We have to approach this with a godly sorrow. We can’t just be apathetic about it as Amos makes this funeral lament.
The Issue of Idolatry
Then we go on to verses 4 and 5. And right here, this is the key right here, because the root issue is laid bare. All right? There’s all these sins that are happening in Israel—and we’re gonna get to that in a moment—but that’s not the main problem, because the root issue here is idolatry. It’s idolatry. It’s what makes up the fabric of Israel at this time. Amos invokes the names of Bethel, Gilgal, and Beersheba, and these were hotbeds for idolatry and improper worship. In fact, at the very beginning of Israel’s history, the first king of Israel (in the Northern Kingdom, that is), Jeroboam, sets up these golden calves. One of them is at Bethel that’s mentioned here. And he makes this chilling comment, echoing what Aaron said to the Israelites in the desert: “Here are your gods, O Israel, that brought you out of Egypt.” Oof, it makes my skin crawl when I read it because it’s so just immediately walking away from what God has done for them.
And so what’s happening in Israel is, they have this kind of synchronistic worship, because I think the people of Israel at that time would have said that, “Yeah, we are worshiping Yahweh, the God of Israel, but we’re also worshiping these other pagan gods.” And so it becomes kind of this hodgepodge of stuff, and it’s nearly indistinguishable from the pagan worship at the time, the Baals and the Asherahs that the people of Canaan were worshiping. All of this was kind of mish-mashed together in the worship that Israel was engaged in.
And so this issue of idolatry becomes the quintessential sin of the Northern Kingdom. It’s that for which every king of Israel was charged with committing and permitting and promoting, and it was the reason for their exile. If you read in 2 Corinthians 17, where it describes the narrative of Assyria coming in and conquering Israel and carrying them away, it just straight up says it was because of their idolatry that they continued to commit throughout.
And there’s two fundamental problems with idolatry.
The first is that, in idolatry, you’re worshiping creation rather than the Creator, and thereby robbing God of his glory.
And secondly, idolatry is ultimately self-serving. If you’re worshiping an idol, the goal is to get something from that idol. So in ancient Israel, you would have idols that you would worship because you wanted the rain to come on your crops, or there’s fertility idols—those types of things. “I want to get something from this God that I’m worshiping.” And so ultimately, it’s self-serving.
And we have idolatry in our day and age, don’t we? It’s not the same as that in ancient Israel, but it’s essentially the same. People worship money to gain security and pleasure. We worship knowledge to fuel pride. We worship self to make ourselves lord. We worship celebrities and athletes to gain distraction and escape. If you’re a Vikings fan like me, you were disappointed after the game on Monday. But let me ask you this: Were you let down by a casual hobby, or were you let down by an object of worship? The answer to that question probably affected your mood on Tuesday.
We’re designed by God to worship. That’s part of what it means to be human. But ideally we are designed to worship God. Disordered worship or misdirected worship leads to disordered passions and desires, and that leads to a disordered sense of goodness and righteousness and justice. And that opens the door to all kinds of evils, including the killing of infants.
In verses 6–9, what we see here is this contrast with the idolatry that Israel has accepted and promoted. And this is the true God, the God that Israel is rejecting. What does it say here? The God that:
“… turns deep darkness into the morning
and darkens the day into night,
who calls for the waters of the sea
and pours them out on the surface of the earth,
the Lord is his name.”
It’s no wonder that these people can’t tell right from wrong. They can’t even tell this powerful and amazing God from the lifeless images of wood and metal that they’ve made for themselves. So it all starts with this idolatry, this disordered worship. That’s gonna be the fundamental problem that flows into the rest of the problems that Israel is dealing with.
Idolatry Leads to Societal Sin
Verses 10–13, here’s where we see these societal sins, okay? They have different societal sins than what we deal with, but there’s a lot of the same stuff too. Because the overflow of idolatry and disordered worship is evil committed against one’s neighbor, both on the micro and the macro scale. Some of the examples listed here in verses 10–11, you got things like lies, slander, oppression, extortion, and bribery. The one that really stuck out to me was in verse 11:
“… you trample on the poor
and you exact taxes of grain from him…”
This is going on, and it’s permitted to go on. And it’s not like everyone was doing it either. Like I said, this is a societal sin. It’s not like every single person is oppressing their neighbor and putting down the most vulnerable people, but it’s happening, and it’s being allowed to happen.
Why does disordered worship lead to evil and injustice? Well, let me ask you this. Who is more likely to mistreat his neighbor: someone who carefully tries to follow God’s laws to the best of his abilities, or someone who has decided that some of God’s laws are optional? Because God has given directives in his law both about proper worship of him and how to treat one another. It all comes from the same place. These are scriptures that the people of Israel would have been familiar with. You have things like the Ten Commandments. Right? The first two commandments: “You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourselves an idol.” There’s a reason that these were the very first of the Ten Commandments, because everything else is kind of derivative of that.
But then in Deuteronomy chapter 13, here’s an interesting situation if you want to know how seriously God takes idolatry. It says:
“If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son or your daughter or the wife you embrace or your friend who is as your own soul entices you secretly, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods,’ … you shall not yield to him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him, nor shall you conceal him. But you shall kill him. Your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people. You shall stone him to death with stones, because he sought to draw you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”
It’s a big deal. God makes that clear over and over and over again in his law. And what you have is, the Northern Kingdom of Israel has decided, “Nyeh, that stuff isn’t all that important.” I don’t know how you can read that passage and decide that idolatry is not that important, but that’s where they were.
Sin Intensifies
So in the same law where you have these directives for worship, you also have directives about how to treat one another. In Leviticus 25, verses 35–38:
“If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he shall live with you. Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God, that your brother may live beside you. You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt…”
And in Deuteronomy 15, verses 7–11,
“If among you, one of your brothers should become poor, in any of your towns within your land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother, but you shall open your hand to him and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be.”
Contrast that with what you’re seeing in verses 10–13 in Amos 5. They’ve walked completely away from all of it. Because they rejected God and the proper worship of God, now the door is opened up for all this kind of stuff, all this injustice.
And also it’s the nature of sin to intensify, isn’t it? Sin, if left untreated, will always intensify. Sin is never content with having a small hold in a person’s life. It always tries to get bigger and bigger and cause as much destruction as possible. And so we see this in our day and age with this societal sin of abortion. Not fearing God leads to ignoring what the Word says, leads to dismissing the Bible’s teaching on the sanctity of life that Pastor Steven so eloquently put last week. Once you’re at that point, when you’re willing to ignore what the Bible says about life, it’s not a very big step to tolerating abortion as an unfortunate necessity. And from there, it’s not a big step to celebrating this murder and calling it empowerment. Because sin intensifies when left on its own.
God is Good
Verses 14 and 15. Here we get some imperatives: “Seek good,” “love good,” “hate evil.” I was reading that, and I, you know, had to—when you read the Bible, you have to think about the context in which it’s written, and absolutely no ancient people would have thought about the words “good” and “evil” in subjective terms the way people do today. Good and evil were objective categories rooted in the character of God and his revelation to man. So Amos isn’t just saying, “You should want good things to happen, and you should be upset when bad things happen.” He’s saying, “No, return to God. Return to God because God is good.”
God’s Judgment
On to verses, in this section, 16–20. What we see here is this judgment that’s gonna be doled out because of sin. And judgment on sin is divine justice. Speaking of this natural progression of sin, what’s the end point? Well, Romans 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death.” There is no other natural end point to the progression of sin than death. And for Israel, it was quite literally, because a lot of them died at the hands of the Assyrians. But the end game is always death. And so what you see here in 16–20, the case has been made against Israel. Things are not okay, much as they would think otherwise.
He mentions the day of the Lord in verse 18:
Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord!
Why would you have the day of the Lord?
There was like a misunderstanding in those days that this day of the Lord would be a moment when God would come and restore Israel to this prominence in the ancient Near East, and it would be this political powerhouse, and it would be like the good old days. And Amos is telling them, “No, the day of the Lord is a day of justice. And if you want God to come in justice, you are not in a good place, because you stand condemned because of all this stuff that’s happening. You don’t want the day of the Lord. Trust me. You want it to get pushed back so that you have time to repent,” which they didn’t do.
Abortion Opposes the Gospel
Verses 21–24, it’s got some Isaiah chapter 1 vibes to it. In fact, a lot of the prophets make this case that, you know, you’re going about this business of religion, but you’re essentially doing nothing. Okay? The priests of Israel, they were interested in participating in these dead religious rituals, whereas he’s saying, “You need to be interested in participating in God’s redemptive plan for mankind.”
This is why I really think that, this issue of abortion and sanctity of life, it’s a gospel issue. Here’s what I mean by that:
Think about the message of the gospel. Jesus Christ, fully God, comes to earth as a man, lives a life without sin, voluntarily gives his life, dies, takes on the sins of the whole world, pays the price so that we could be in right relationship with God. Think about the transaction that’s happening in the gospel message. Jesus willingly lays down his own life for the benefit of others. Now think about the transaction that happens in the act of abortion—willingly taking someone else’s life for the benefit of oneself. It’s the complete inversion of the gospel message, and something that is so antithetical to the gospel of Jesus Christ can be nothing other than evil and from the devil.
Call to Action
Verses 25–27, this is kind of the summation of Amos’ case against Israel. Idolatry leads to injustice, which leads to judgment. The ball is in their court. What are you gonna do with this, Israel?
Some of you are like, “Joe, you skipped over the best verse in there!” I didn’t. I’m coming back to it. I promise. That’s the only positive verse in this whole thing, right, verse 24?
… let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
This is a call to action. It’s a call for a reversal of course from what they were doing. This verse was famously referenced by Martin Luther King Jr. in his I Have a Dream speech. And when he invokes this verse, he wasn’t just hoping for things to get better. He was actually calling on people to change what they were doing.
Furthermore, this verse 24, it echoes some of the imperatives found in verses 14–15, where it says, “seek good,” “love good,” “hate evil.” These are action words, okay? Didn’t DC Talk tell us that love is a verb? Right? Yeah, some people got that, right?
But it’s not—this idea of seeking good and loving good, it’s not having a favorable disposition to what is good. It’s actually going out and trying to do it. And this idea of hating evil is not just being bothered by the things that are going on. It’s actually combating sin. It’s doing violence to sin. You need to be hating this that’s going on. It’s a call to action.
Our Response
So that leads us to, what do we do?
I think the goal—if we’re thinking about this societal sin of abortion, I don’t think the goal is to end this practice by means of legislation or coercion. Legislation is a good thing. There’s nothing wrong with enacting laws that curb evil in society. But it’s a small piece of the puzzle, because the goal should be to make the practice of abortion so unthinkable in the minds of people because their hearts have been transformed by the Spirit and conformed to the will of God.
I’ve come up with a few things that every one of us can do in light of this societal sin. And this is not an exhaustive list; this is a few things I thought of.
The first thing is, we can commit to a greater and deeper understanding of God’s Word. Your devotional life should be propelled by a deep desire to know God and love God better, and that is to know the scriptures better, and in turn to teach our children and neighbors. In Israel, the problem was kind of these external factors, the pressure from the nations around them to commit idolatry. That’s not as much of an issue in our day and age. I think a bigger issue in our day and age is this culture of biblical illiteracy. We don’t even know what the Bible says because we’re not reading the Bible. We’re not digging into what it says.
But here are some examples of what can happen when we shift our thinking to a worldly perspective to a biblical perspective:
The worldly understanding of what it means to be a human is kind of nebulous. Kind of, you know, #live-your-best-life, and “You do you,” and, you know, it’s not really nailed down to anything. But the biblical perspective of what it means to be a human is that we are image-bearers of God. We bear the divine image.
Think about the absurdity of—imagine a curator at the Louvre looking at the Mona Lisa and saying, “Ah, it’s been up there long enough. Let’s toss it in the trash. Throw something else up.” Right? That would never happen because this picture, this image, bears the genius of da Vinci, and because of that, it has worth, and it has value, and it’s precious, and it’ll never be discarded.
And so when you look at human beings as bearing the image of God, a mother can look down at the life inside of her and say, “This is not just a clump of cells. This bears the image of God. How can I possibly discard it?”
Similarly, there’s all kinds of things that, when we shift from a worldly to a biblical point of view, it kind of stems even the issue of abortion before it even becomes an issue.
For example, if we shift from worldly sexual ethics to biblical sexual ethics, that can have a huge impact. Steven brought some stats last week that were a little bit eye-opening. Here’s a stat for you: 87% of abortions are carried out by unmarried women. Not surprising. I mean, it’s scary. The thought of being a single mother is scary, and I sympathize with that. Not that I don’t, you know, I don’t condone it, but I sympathize with that. It’s a real thing. There’s a solution here. Just, you know, go with what the Bible says about human sexuality, that the sexual act is reserved in the context of marriage. That takes care of 87% of the problem right there. Okay? I don’t know how to say it other than, you know, sex outside of marriage leads to a whole lot more abortions than sex inside of marriage.
That’s a part of the puzzle, right? That’s part of shifting from a worldly to a biblical perspective and how we can combat this societal sin.
I have a whole bunch of other examples, but I’m like—I think I’m running low on time here.
But suffice it to say that, in all these ways, a greater understanding of scripture stems any lines of reasoning that lead to abortion. And as a church, we should be on the forefront of encouraging people to shift their thinking from the worldly to the biblical. So that’s the first thing we can do, is commit to a greater and deeper understanding of his Word.
The second thing that every one of us can do—and I’m gonna echo what Steven said last week—is to show grace and love to all that are involved. And I mentioned earlier that I think this is a gospel issue. Well, who’s the gospel for? It’s for sinners like you and me.
So we speak the truth in love, but we—we speak the truth, we correct, but we don’t condemn, all right? Because Romans 8:1 says there’s no condemnation for those who are in Christ. So if someone has gone through this, and now they’ve been redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ, they are not condemned. And if someone is not brought in, if someone’s outside of Jesus Christ, we want to bring them in. Okay? So there’s so much grace that can be given to people who’ve been affected by this. And there’s a lot of ways of dealing with this that does not involve grace, and it doesn’t go well. Doesn’t go well at all.
Finally, something that every one of us can do is we can take action. James 1:27 says:
Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
“Orphans and widows” is a term there to refer to the most vulnerable people in society. That phrase may as well be “unborn babies and desperate mothers.” Okay? We can replace that in that verse with that and keep the message the same.
All right? There’s things that we can do. We got the Life Care Center here today. We had the Women’s Care Center here last week. We got the diaper drive going on. There are tangible ways that you can put this verse into action. You can put your money where your mouth is. You can put your time and your efforts where your belief is. These are things that every single one of us can do in face of this societal sin.
And look, if you commit to being this countercultural force as an individual, look, as an individual, you’re probably not gonna change the tide of culture. But as a church, we are called to do whatever we can.
Conclusion
Societal sin exists in all civilizations, and this chapter, I think it gives us a paradigm for how we can address it. There are real lives and real souls at stake, and I’m gonna leave you with this one thought. This is kind of my last thought here, is that during the downward spiral of Israel and Judah that we see um narrated in the Bible, there was always a faithful remnant working against the cultural trends, living out justice and righteousness, and may we reflect that attitude in the way we conduct ourselves.
Let me pray for us.
Heavenly Father, I pray that, as we interact with this culture that in some ways is so opposed to your will and so opposed to your goodness and your character as a loving God, God, I pray that we’d be lights for you. I pray that as we live out this walk and try to understand the Bible better and try to do what it says, God, I pray that lives would be saved and souls would be saved.
May you work through us powerfully, Lord. May we never get tired of doing your will.
Thanks be to you, our Lord Jesus Christ, for all the blessings you’ve given us, for all the pain and insults you’ve borne for us. Merciful Redeemer, friend and brother, may we know you more clearly, love you more deeply, and follow you more nearly. Amen.
Life Care Center – Introduction (Jasmine Anderson)
Good morning, Salem. Thank you, Joe, for that.
I have personally been very deeply impacted by abortion, and—sorry, I hadn’t planned to share this. The gospels talk about, when Jesus saw people who were hurting, he had compassion. And that is the most important thing—to always lead with compassion. This is not something that mothers that I know (some personally) or fathers are celebrating. This is something that they usually are led to because they feel that they have no other option. And I just want to, in light of all that, remember that these are people that Jesus looks on compassion and calls us to look with compassion, and out of that compassion then to act.
So with that, today we have Maxine and Christine from the Life Care Center to share with us some of what they are doing. And we support them as a church; this diaper drive is going to them as well. But I also—if God has been working in your heart and moving you, this is pretty, honestly an easy next step. There are ways that you can be involved behind closed doors if you are a really private person and not ready to talk to strangers or whatever. And so I really challenge us as a church to think about and ask the Lord, “Is this a next step that you would have for me to take?” Please ask the Lord that. And if this is something that has impacted your heart or someone you know of, I encourage you to talk to me, talk to Steven, find someone to share this with, because this is something that our Church as a whole—I’m talking, like, the Church of God, capital C—it can be a hard place to actually share when this has been something that has impacted you somehow. So please reach out on that as well.
With that, please come up and share, ladies.
Life Care Center (Maxine)
Good morning. I’m Maxine, and welcome. Thank you for inviting to your church. And I want to say, a great message. I wish I was here last week to hear what you had to say.
But I want to—Venessa is a friend of mine. I used to work with her, and so I was excited when I told that we were coming.
(Oh, sorry. Is that better? Yeah. I’m not that hungry.)
Anyway, so I was excited to, you know, tell her that we were coming, and that I’m glad to see her, because I hadn’t seen her in a while, since we don’t work together anymore. And she said, “Oh, we’re gonna be at the Camp.”
And I said, “Oh, that’s a bummer.” But we made a lunch date, so we’re good with that.
So I appreciate all that you guys have done. The prayer support is huge for us, and the diaper drive, another blessing. We go through lots of diapers at the Center. But along with what Jasmine said, you know, about what inspires you to give, you know, how you can get involved—there’s a lot of different ways that you can do this. And at our Center, you know, you can do thank you cards for the people that give non-monetary gifts, help with events. If you’re good at writing, we could use a grant writer. And then, on the table out in the foyer, we have a little laundry basket (we call it the “layette”) that we give to all the moms that come through that do a pregnancy test and it’s positive. And some, you know, know what they’re having, a boy or a girl, so we have boy/girl, and then those that don’t want to know the gender, we have those too.
But if the Lord is tugging at your heart, kind of like what Jasmine said, and he’s just really prompting you, what you could do to volunteer—these are just some of the simple ways to volunteer, you know, organize in the shopping (we call it the “boutique”) for us. But if you’re not really sure what you should do, come and tour us, and sometimes the Lord gives you a feel once you’re there of where it is that he wants you to serve, because ultimately, if God doesn’t call you to serve, we can’t do God’s work without God.
And we have a nonemergency medical clinic that we have twice a month, that we have two doctors that donate their time, and it’s a lot of time spent for. And we also have an ultrasound machine; however, our ultrasound tech has moved away, so we’re in need of one of those also. We sure have an abundance of needs. And we need another client advocate, and I don’t know—for those of you that get our newsletter, we are gonna need an executive director. So if there’s somebody that the Lord puts on your heart, have them contact us.
And I liked how Joe said about the societal sin, and how, as a society, so much has been impacted. And I just think of, years ago, when my daughter was involved with Teens for Life in Wisconsin, we went to Washington D.C., and we were in the hot tub with a bunch of—it was the teacher’s union at the same time. And the teachers, you know, and she was—they’re very anti what we believe, and my daughter was kind of (she was a teenager) she said like, “How can you even talk to those people, mom?”
And I’m just like, “Because if I listen to her, I can earn the right to say something.” And I said to her, it’s amazing how these young teenage girls, they don’t—some of the parents, you know, you grow up with what your parents think, and you kind of lean towards what they lean. But this generation—my daughter’s 35, so that tells you a little while ago—but that generation didn’t necessarily follow all of what their parents believed. And they were fighting for these babies. And I just think, with all the women’s libbers, and I just think, how can they promote women’s liberation when some of them are murdering their little girls? It’s like, that just kind of seems like a very odd—it doesn’t go well together. But I challenge you to take action, and Christine’s gonna speak more.
Life Care Center (Christine)
So some may wonder, “Why do we need pregnancy resource centers in the Twin Ports?” What is the purpose for us to be here? Well, I prayer walk at the abortion center once a week, and just for information’s sake—I think a lot of people don’t know this, but 10–15 babies lose their lives every week in Duluth, Minnesota. And this has got to stop. And like Joe said, it’s about changing the hearts. And the Lord told me back in the 1980s that until people’s hearts get changed, abortion won’t go away, and so that’s where a lot of prayer, the volunteering, the pregnancy… Lake Superior Life Care Center works with women who have planned or unplanned pregnancies that give them that support. We have classes for them so they can learn how to parent, safety things that they can learn how to keep theirselves safe and their babies safe, and so, when I prayer walk at the abortion center, I see—because of the social climate in the state of Minnesota, Minnesota has declared itself an abortion sanctuary state—and so I see license plates, of course, from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Upper Michigan, and Red Cliff Reservation, Bad River Reservation; I’ve seen Courte Oreilles from Hayward; I’ve seen Leech Lake, Fond du Lac; so I’m seeing license plates from all over our region in Duluth at the abortion center. And just to be aware that this is going on in our community. And so we do need pregnancy resource centers in our region so women do have a place to go to get help when they need help.
Closing Prayer (Christo Möller)
Thank you for sharing with us. I’m going to ask that we take a moment to pray for the Life Care Center and for everyone who might be impacted by this. Can we pray together? Let’s bow our heads.
Heavenly Father, I come before you with a heart burdened for the sanctity of life in the Duluth community. You are the Creator of all things, and I praise you for the precious gift of life. Your Word reminds us that every person is fearfully and wonderfully made, and that you know each of us even before we are formed in the womb.
Lord, I pray for an awakening in Duluth to value sanctity of life. Let your truth permeate every corner of our community. Turn hearts toward you. Soften the minds of those who may see life as disposable. I ask that you bring clarity and compassion to those facing the difficult decisions of abortion, showing them that you have a plan and purpose for every life.
Father, I lift up The Women’s Care Center and Life Care Center to you. Thank you for the work they are doing to provide hope, resources, and care to women and families in crisis. Bless their staff and volunteers with wisdom, strength, and perseverance as they serve others. Provide for all their needs, Lord, whether financial, emotional, or spiritual, and protect them from opposition as they carry out this important mission. May their ministries be a beacon of hope and life in our community.
Lord, I also pray for those who have experienced abortion. Let them know that your grace is sufficient and that your love is greater than their pain or regret. Surround them with people who will walk alongside them with compassion and point them to your healing power.
Use me, Father—use us, use Salem—as an instrument of your peace and love. Show us how we can support this life-affirming work in Duluth, whether through prayer, giving, volunteering, or simply sharing your truth with others. Help us to be bold, Lord, yet gentle, always reflecting your heart in our words and actions.
Thank You, Lord, for hearing my prayer this morning and for being the source of life and hope. I place this community, these ministries, and every precious life in your hands.
In Jesus’ name, amen.
