Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that
the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say,
‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden'?” And the woman
said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the
garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree
that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you
die.'” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely
die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and
you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman
saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the
eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of
its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with
her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that
they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves
loincloths. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden
in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the
presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God
called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” And he
said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid,
because I was naked, and I hid myself.” He said, “Who told
you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded
you not to eat?” The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be
with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” Then the Lord
God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

The modern secular world—the world which tries
to remove God from his all-creating, all-sustaining, all-defining,
all-governing place—has no choice but to make itself god and to
create its own morality. In other words, when man abandons God and his
self-revelation as the source of what is objectively true and right and
beautiful, the next highest court of appeal is man himself.

If
God is not the measure of what is true and right and beautiful, then I
am and you are. And since we—the god called “you,” and
the god called “me”—may not agree, the result will be:
Might makes right. And everything in education, and media, and politics
in this God-evicting world becomes a battle for power. Not a quest
for objective truth and right and beauty, since there isn't any, but a
power-struggle. Because the one who has the power, in a world without God,
defines reality. Defines what is true. Defines what is right. Defines what
is beautiful. And there is no court of appeal in heaven for the weak. Man
is god. And the powerful man is god-Almighty—the maker of the truth,
the inventor of what is right, and the definer of what is beautiful. And
the bloodiest century in the history of the world—the twentieth
century with its Stalin and Hitler and Mussolini and Milosevic and Pot and
Amin and Mao and Sung and Hussein and the abortion industry—prove
it with horrifying evidence.

The implications of God-dethroning
secularism for abortion and genocide are huge, and we will come back to
them in a moment. But first let's see how old this “modern”
secular world is.

The Ancient Roots of Modern Secularism

In Genesis 2:16-17 it says, “And the Lord God commanded the man,
saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but
of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for
in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” What was the
meaning of “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”? It
represented independence from God. There is nothing wrong with “the
knowledge of good and evil” in itself—Genesis 3:22 says God
has it: “Then the Lord God said, ‘Behold, the man has become
like one of us in knowing good and evil.'” This was bad. Man was
not to have it the way God had it. Now he has taken it.

In the
creation story, to have “the knowledge of good and evil”
means to claim the independent right to decide for oneself what is good
and evil (true and false, ugly and beautiful). It was proper for God
to have that, not man. God knew that it would be utterly devastating
for man to cut the cord of dependence from God and claim “the
knowledge of good and evil” for himself.” That is why he
said, “Don't eat it. It will kill you.”

Indeed it has,
in more ways than we know. And it is still killing us—spiritually
and physically. All death is rooted in this insurrection. You see the
insurrection beginning in the satanic temptation and fall in Genesis
3:1ff.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the
field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God
actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden'?”
And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of
the trees in the garden, 3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of
the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall
you touch it, lest you die.'” 4 But the serpent said to the woman,
“You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of
it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good
and evil.”

Yes, if you choose to eat of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, you will be saying, “I henceforth
decide for myself what is true and right and beautiful.” That
is what God does. God alone is the source of objective truth and right
and beauty. But Satan says otherwise. Eat it. You will be like God. So
true and so false! God is a flower of truth and right and beauty, and he
has no roots and needs no water, no sunshine, no soil. He is absolutely
self-sufficient. We are planted in God. We get all our water and light
and nutrition from him. Yes, we can cut our stem and try to be like
him. We can be our own source of life and light and truth and right and
beauty. We can. And die.

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that
it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to
make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some
to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both
were opened, and they knew that they were naked.

The first result of choosing to be god is the canyon
between appearance and pretension. Now that I have chosen to be God, my
non-godlike appearance is ridiculous. And humans have spent centuries
with fine clothing (cool clothing) and make up and body-building
trying to look less like the wreckage we are without God. The root of
shame is the pretension to be god—the need to look invulnerable,
self-sufficient, god-like (or goddess-like). The essence of the fall of
Eve and Adam—and all of us in Adam—is the supreme pleasure
we have in being independent, and deciding for ourselves what is true
and right and beautiful, rather than finding supreme pleasure in God as
the fountain of all that is true and right and beautiful. The essence of
the fall is preferring to be god rather than enjoy God.

So the
modern secular world is very old. It puts on new clothes from century
to century, and we call it by different names. Recently: modernism,
existentialism, secular humanism, postmodernism. But there is a common
root they all share: God is dethroned, and the next highest court of
appeal for truth and right and beauty is man—little, finite,
fallible, mortal man.

Abortion: The Contemporary Scene

The implication of this for abortion is staggering. Before I make
the link, let's be sure we feel the weight of what is happening. A
conservative estimate of unborn babies killed in the world each year is 30
million—about a third of those in Russia . Romania is reported to
have the highest abortion rate in the world (3 out of 4 pregnancies). In
America , since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 made it legal to take the
lives of an unborn baby for any reason, there have been about 43 million
abortions. One baby aborted every 26 seconds, 151 every hour, 3,629
every day.

In Minnesota , from 1973 to 2002, 461,026 abortions
were reported. There were 14,186 in 2002. 50% on women under age 24. 79%
were unmarried. 40% has had an abortion before. 60% reported that the
reason for their abortion was either economic or “does not want
child at this time” (http://www.mccl.org/factspage.htm).

The
Link Between Abortion and the Dethronement of God

Here's
the link between abortion and the modern secular world that began
in the Garden of Eden. It's the word “want.”I do
not want the child at this time.”

I used to think that
if we could persuade abortionists that the fetus was a human child,
and that they were killing children, they would stop. If we could
show them,
like Scott Klusendorf does (http://www.str.org) that there is no morally
significant difference between a one-month-old baby and a preborn
baby (S.L.E.D. Not size, not level of development, not environment,
not dependence), they would stop doing abortions. But I talked to
two abortionists that said they knew they were killing children
and that they would not stop. It was the lesser of two evils. The
worse evil was denying the “want” of the mother (call it
“freedom”; call it “reproductive rights”).
¹

So in these words—“I do not want a child at this
time”—we are near the heart of the issue. At this time
in American history, that is one of the most powerful sentences a
person can speak: “I do not want a child at this time.”
It's powerful, because in a world without God, and without submission
to his will, the will—the “want”—of a mother
has become the will of a god. I say it carefully and calmly and sadly:
Our modern, secular, God-dethroning culture has endowed the will (the
“want”) of a mother not just with sovereignty over her
child, but with something vastly greater. We have endowed her will
with the right and the power to create human personhood. When God is
no longer the Creator of human personhood, endowing it with dignity
and rights in his own image, we must take that role for him, and we
have vested it in the will of the mother. She creates personhood.

Fetal Homicide Laws and “Might Makes Right”

In this sense: Minnesota , along with 33 other states (http://womensissues.about.com/cs/parentingfamily/a/aafetalhomicide.htm),
has a fetal homicide law. A crime against a mother that injures or
kills her unborn baby will be treated as a crime with two victims,
not just one. We have seen several remarkable cases in Minnesota . In
one case a man was convicted of assisting the suicide of his girlfriend
and “inadvertently murdering the fetus during the commission of
a felony.” The fetal homicide law caries a stiffer penalty than
aiding a suicide, and could have required 12 years of prison for the fetal
homicide. What was astonishing in this case is this sentence from the
StarTribune : “The law makes it murder to kill an embryo
or fetus intentionally, except in cases of abortion.”

That
is an accurate sentence and should make us tremble. Why? Because it shows
that in a world without God, the will of the strong creates (or nullifies)
the personhood of the weak. How can there be a fetal homicide law that is
not broken by abortion? Why is abortion not fetal homicide? There is one
essential answer. In the case of the fetal homicide, the mother wants
the baby. In the case of abortion, she does not. The will of the mother
is god.

And the awesome thing is that we endow her will not just
with sovereignty over her unborn baby, but with the authority to define
it: If she wants it, it is a baby, a person. If she does not want it,
it is not a baby, not a person.

In other words, in our laws we
have now made room for some killing to be justified not on the basis of
the rights or crimes of the one killed, but decisively on the basis of
the will, the desire, of a stronger person. The decisive criterion of
personhood and non-personhood, what is right and wrong, what is legal
and what is illegal, is the will of the strong. Might makes right. Might
makes personhood. Might makes legal. This is the ultimate statement of
anarchy. It is the essence of the original insurrection against God,
and against objective truth and right and beauty.

No culture
can survive this kind of anarchical thinking indefinitely. Part of the
remedy is to spread the truth: Might does not make right. Desire
does not define duty. Wanting does not create worth. All of us
know intuitively that if someone desires our destruction, that desire
does not justify our murder. We know this. We should say it over and over
again.

The Ultimate Remedy to This Issue: Salvation in Christ

But the remedy that goes most deeply to the heart of the issue is found
back in Genesis 3. When the man blamed the woman and the woman blamed
the serpent—the devil—God said these words to the serpent:
“ I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your
offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall
bruise his heel” (Genesis 3:15 ). This is the first great prophecy
in the Bible of God's triumph over sin and Satan through the offspring of
the woman, Jesus Christ.

This is why Paul said in Galatians 4 :4,
“When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born
of woman [offspring of Eve], born under the law.” Born of a woman
because he had promised: The offspring of the woman would crush the head
of the serpent. That is what Jesus did when he came.

Listen very
carefully now, especially you women and men who have had or supported
abortion. God knew that Eve had sinned and turned her back on him. But
when he spoke the promise, he did not say: The day will come when the
seed of the serpent will crush woman for her sin. Almost immediately
after Eve's God-dethroning sin, God makes her a means of salvation,
not an object of judgment. The offspring of this woman will crush
Satan. Jesus Christ died and rose again to forgive and reverse our love
affair with being god instead of enjoying God.

I think God wants
every woman, and every man, to take heart this morning that his offer to
you is salvation, not judgment. The offspring of the woman, Jesus Christ,
came into the world to save women who have dethroned God, taken his place,
defined personhood as tissue, and willed the death of their own child. It
can't be reversed, but it can be forgiven. That is why Christ died.

Every person listening to me now needs this salvation—men and
women and children. Some only feel it more than others. And those who feel
it most are most fortunate. Turn to Christ for forgiveness and embrace
him as your Lord and the Treasure of your life.

If you think that
your sin is too great, listen to the apostle Paul as he pleads with you
not to lose heart: “ The saying is trustworthy and deserving of
full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,
of whom I am the foremost. 16 But I received mercy for this reason, that
in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience
as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life”
(1 Timothy 1:15 -16). God saved Paul, the murderer (Acts 9:1; 7:58 ),
so that you would take heart and believe.

¹ This perspective
has recently been repeated by British senior advisor on medical
ethics and a candidate for president of the United States. According to Sunday
Telegraph, Professor John Harris, a member of the British Medical
Association's ethics committee, said: “I don't think infanticide
is always unjustifiable. I don't think it is plausible to think that
there is any moral change that occurs during the journey down the
birth canal. . . . People who think there is a difference between
infanticide and late abortion have to ask the question: what has
happened to the foetus in the time it takes to pass down the birth
canal and into the world which changes its moral status? I don't
think anything has happened in that time.” And Wesley Clark (http://www.crosswalk.com/news/weblogs/mohler/1240588.html?view=print),
running for president of the United States , recently told the
Manchester Union Leader that “Life begins with the mother's
decision.”