Idaho and the Abyss

“If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (Psalm 11:3).

The church of Jesus Christ should never allow herself to be manipulated in accordance with the wishes of a particular political party or faction, whether of the secular right or the godless left. The church is never to become a partisan institution.

At the same time, and leaning on the full strength of the word nevertheless, the church is inescapably political. We are building out an alternative polis, as the apostle Paul taught us in Philippians. This being the case, there are times when our citizenship in Heaven (Phil. 3:20) will necessarily have a direct impact on how we must live out that celestial citizenship in our earthly communities. One of the most obvious times when this can happen is when the state, in high rebellion, gets into the business of legislating wickedness.

Many foolishly claim that the state cannot legislate morality, but the claim is an empty and vapid one. It is going to be one way or the other. Because states are moral agents, their actions will necessarily have a moral component to them—the way all human action necessarily does. Our corporate choices will either save life or destroy, and the authority of Christ tells us which way it needs to go (Luke 6:9). States are obviously moral agents. They can commit genocide, they can oppress the poor, they can declare unjust wars, they can enslave entire populations, and they can slaughter the unborn.

If they are not under the authority of the law of God, then they have become the law of the gods, and they, with all their corruptions, are those gods. Given the nature of unregenerate man, who in their right mind would ever want to separate morality from state? But if we say the state is subject to an objective system or morality, at some point a bright sophomore is going to ask, “which system of morality?” And the only appropriate answer that a Christian may offer has to be “the true one.”

All nations will either legislate in line with God’s most holy law (which is what morality is) or on the basis of man’s lusts and whims (which is what immorality is).

And one of the areas where this can be seen in pronounced and stark relief is on the matter of human abortion. There is no slipping off the point. We must confront this atrocious behavior of ours, and we must also come to realize that the only issue that really matters in the final analysis is what Christ thinks of our behavior.

So what does the Scripture teach?

How shall we summarize this text?

Israel’s legal system was a case law system, a distant ancestor of our American common law system. In that system we see the broad categories of law that we find in the Ten Commandments. But you also have specific laws based on particular scenarios, just like this one, and these specific laws can also be categorized in line with an appropriate place in the Decalogue. A judicious and righteous judge was supposed to be able to look at this circumstance, extract the principle of justice within it, and then apply it to other cases.

In this particular case, two men get into a fight, and in the course of that fight they collide with a pregnant woman, causing her to give birth prematurely. If the baby survives (“no mischief follow”), then the fighter responsible shall pay a fine as levied by the child’s father. The culprit is fined for having given everyone a scare. But if “mischief follow,” meaning that if the baby is harmed, then the strict lex talionis of the ancient Hebrews is applied—life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, and so forth. This is the same standard that is applied when the harm is done to an adult (Lev. 24:19). In short, in accordance with biblical law, rightly understood, an unborn child is granted the full rights of someone created in the image of God (Gen. 9: 5-6). In biblical law, unborn children have the same status and the same rights as grown adults.

To argue, as some do, that the harm should be understood as harm to the woman—this makes no sense. If that were the case, the fact of her pregnancy would be entirely irrelevant. And so we conclude that when the blood of the unborn is shed unlawfully, that blood cries out from the polluted ground (Gen. 4:10).

And this means that if the ghoulish measure called Prop. 1 passes, the soil of Idaho will rise up as a witness against us, and will lay a dreadful and unanswerable charge at our feet. It will be a charge that stops our mouths. There will be nothing for us to say. There will be no excuse available to us.

Are the stakes higher than they were before? Yes, and here is why.   

Since the early seventies, most of the abortion carnage, with tens of millions of children killed, was imposed on our nation by means of judicial activism at the federal level. Most notably, the Roe decision in 1973 struck down the restrictive laws of most states. It was judicial tyranny . . . a tyranny that we in our state-level moral cowardice decided to put up with.

At the state level, there was real sin on the part of the general populace, and on the part of the lesser magistrates, in that we did not rise up and refuse to have anything to do with such a wicked decision. “Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee, which frameth mischief by a law?” (Psalm 94:20). Our reply to the federal government at that time ought to have been “whatever you think you have the right to do to babies, we are not going to allow that to be done to ours.”

Nevertheless, although this timidity was a grave sin, it was a sin of neglect and omission. The people of America stood by as this travesty was imposed on them, which really was a grievous and cowardly sin. The people of Idaho did the same as all the other states in this.  

But Prop. 1 is in a different category, and passage of this measure would be far, far worse. It would move from being contemptible to being heinous. After the Dobbs decision struck down Roe, returning the issue of abortion to the states, our representatives in Boise did pass a very restrictive law. It was not perfect, and not yet what it ought to have been, but it was significantly better than before. It was going back in the right direction.

In response, pro-abortion advocates with the ghastly name of Idahoans United for Women and Families submitted 110,000 names calling for a referendum on the issue—the most names ever submitted in Idaho’s history for a ballot initiative. A simple majority is required to pass it, and so if it passes, the travesty will have been done by the people of Idaho directly. Idahoans will have voted directly for the destruction of unborn Idahoans. That blood will soak our soil, and we will have voted directly to have it that way.

We will have moved from the status of cowards who would not fight for our children, which was bad enough, to the status of those who insisted on becoming perpetrators of a crimson carnage—against our own children. The people of Idaho will have blood all over their hands, up to the elbows. And we will have done it in the broad light of day, as though there were no Justice in the heavens, looking down on the sons of men.

We will have forgotten what no sinful nation is ever in a position to forget.

His eyes behold. His eyelids try, meaning that His eyelids evaluate. They judge. And who do they judge? They judge the children of men, practicing what they are pleased to call democracy, using the device of a legally-called referendum. On the ballot of said referendum is the question of whether Idaho believes that we weren’t killing enough babies. Idaho is standing on the lip of an abyss, and Idaho doesn’t know. What will the eyelids of God make of that moral imbecility, I need scarcely wonder.

One of the things that God sees is what Prop. 1 will actually do. He sees past all the shifts and smoky evasions.   

The language of this proposition is sneaky—because, remember, the devil is an accomplished liar—but this is what it means. This would legalize elective late-term abortions up to the point of “viability.” The effect would allow for abortion up to seven or eight months of pregnancy by redefining viability. Current Idaho law defines viability as the potential to live outside the mother’s womb, even with the use of artificial aid. Prop. 1 defines viability as a significant likelihood of sustained survival “without extraordinary medical measures.”

This is radically different than pro-life measures that want to use viability to outlaw abortions that are going on now, as over against a measure to legalize abortions that are prohibited now. To evaluate the moral difference you need simply ask which direction it is going.

Prop. 1 has other awful features. It eliminates all parental-consent requirements for abortion. It allows non-physicians to perform abortions. It allows for taxpayer funding of abortion. This is truly a pig’s breakfast of a law.

Now having said this much, this is an issue where I feel most free to bind your consciences. If you are eligible to vote in Idaho, then you must do so, and you must vote no. And this public stand, from the pulpit, does not mean that Christ Church is now dabbling in politics. This is prophecy, not politics. Idaho is contemplating an expansion of what they think is their right to murder the innocent. This is a moral issue. It is a foundational moral issue. If this is not a moral issue, then there is no such thing as a moral issue.

It is in an entirely different category from an appeal to “vote for Murphy,” simply because Murphy and the pastor are fishing buddies. There used to be a time when candidates from the different political parties inhabited the same moral universe, and it was the part of true wisdom for churches to be very wary of involvement in partisan campaigns. This is no longer the case, and especially not on an issue like this one.

So—no. We are not bringing sectarian religious concerns into the political process. We are telling the political worldlings—politicians and. justices both—that fetal dismemberment is obnoxious to the God who is going to judge every mother’s son of them. All the justices of the Supreme Court who voted for Roe are now deceased. They have all appeared before Almighty God, without their robes, and have had to answer for their judicial crime. Those citizens of Idaho who are pushing us to adopt this travesty have not yet died and have not yet appeared before the Judgment Seat. But they are going to.    

Many of you were involved in the door-knocking campaign to defeat Prop. 1—and well done there, by the way—but there is one more step to take. Unless providentially hindered, you need to bank your vote against this monstrosity. Vote early, or vote absentee, or vote on election day, but be sure to vote. On top of that, if at all possible, take two of your friends with you when you go to vote.

And here is another thing you can do. As soon as the video of this sermon is uploaded, send it to as many Idahoans as you can think of. They need to know that on this coming election day, we are all voting in the presence of God. He is looking straight at us while we do so. God in Heaven cares what you do this election day.

And our prayer goal for this, our prayer stretch goal for this battle, should be to ask the Lord that this terrible measure be defeated in Latah County, where we live. Unlike various races for city council, this ought to be a true measurement of whether the kirker salt in Latah has attained the savor we should have.

So remember the judgments of the Almighty as you vote.   

One of the things we must come to understand is that in the aftermath of the Roe decision, Jehovah could have destroyed the United States with a giant fireball, and with no injustice done. Every year since that time, He could have done the same thing on the anniversary of Roe. And no injustice done.

He did that with Sodom and the other cities of the plain, did He not? And what was one of His stated reasons for doing so?

Not only did God destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, He also has filled up human history with samples and examples of His majestic and inexorable righteousness. As our Lord’s mother put it so memorably, again and again He has pulled down the mighty from their seats. 

What? Do we honestly think that the God who brought Nebuchadnezzar so low would not be up to the task of ruining a state like Idaho? The God who left Egypt a smoking crater under the rod in the hands of Moses somehow exhausted all His powers in that effort, and is now unable to deal with a 51% vote from the people of Idaho? What on earth makes us think that we are capable of voting ourselves out of God’s range?

Port Royal Jamaica, a cesspool of villainy, just fell into the sea one day in 1692. Pompeii, a dissolute Roman town, was buried in the ash of Vesuvius. In 1906, a devastating earthquake struck San Francisco, wiping out a great deal of wickedness on the waterfront there. Then there was the giant asteroid that landed on Boise just a couple years from now. But I am forgetting . . . Idaho has been granted immunity, right? That could never happen, right? Haven’t the courts determined that the First Amendment means that Americans can sin with impunity?

When Jesus was talking about the savage judgment that was about to come down upon Jerusalem, what did He tell His disciples to recall? He said to them that they should “remember Lot’s wife” (Luke 17:32). Lot’s wife was not part of the general debauchery in Sodom. She was married to a man whom the apostle Peter calls righteous (2 Pet. 2:8). Nevertheless, for whatever reason, she looked back and was turned to a pillar of salt (Gen. 19:26). We are not told why she looked back, just that she looked back—and we have the Lord’s word added to the account, telling us to remember her. Maybe it was the fine shopping in Sodom. Maybe it was the standard of living. Maybe it was relatives who wouldn’t come out with them. We don’t know, but we do know that God’s judgment was certain, and that Lot’s wife was facing the wrong direction.

We are ignorant of the judgments of God, and in that ignorance of ours we do enjoy a certain serenity. But such blissful serenity is no protection whatever from the hard realities of living in a world that is in fact governed by an absolute justice. Now of course such justice is not exhibited in a moment-by-moment way. Rather, God keeps a running tally, and in the meantime, out of His great mercy, He stays His hand for the moment.

The sinful heart of man wants to believe that the merciful delay is a function of God being absent-minded. But the words of Deuteronomy stand sure, and should strike Idaho the same way they struck Massachusetts when Edwards preached to them. “Their foot will slip in due time.”

Scripture teaches us that this absolute justice will in fact be calculated on the last Day. It will be tabulated. And that final Day of reckoning is one day closer today than it was yesterday. It is approaching every man and every woman, every city and every town, every nation and every state. In that approach, the click rate is constant, and nothing whatever can be done to switch it off.

Because of sinful man’s insistence on facing his sins longingly, as though his sins might deliver him, this means that the judgment of Yahweh is coming up on us from behind. Our sins cannot deliver us. How could they? They are what we need deliverance from. As the God of all vengeance is walking toward us, the earth does not shake because He is approaching us in stocking feet, and with sharpened righteousness in His right hand, a true Jerusalem blade. To speak of God in stocking feet might be a homely image, but no more homely than that of a thief in the night.

Now in the tabulation of the Last Day, we are told expressly that every cup of cold water given in the name of Christ is going to be remembered (Matt. 10:42). And it is not possible for this to be true without it also being the case that for every drop of innocent blood shed there will be a savage reckoning.

This is a foundational biblical truth. Blood answers blood.

Scripture tells us that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins (Heb. 9:22). This would include the need for forgiveness when the sin was the wickedness of ungodly bloodshed. Even unbelievers understand this principle instinctively, which is why there is no turning away from Christ without simultaneously turning toward the shedding of blood in grotesque ways.

Wisdom, speaking clearly in Proverbs, says this.

In a vain attempt to wash away the stain of guilt and blame, the unbelieving heart turns naturally toward the shedding of innocent blood, following their great carnal principle, which is “your life for mine.” This is the opposite of the great Christ-example, which is “my life for yours.” In doing this great wickedness, they have inverted the entire moral order, and pulled down deep heaven upon their heads.

This is why they treat their pursuit of “women’s health care” with such religious fervor. They run after iniquity until they are out of breath, and they do not hesitate to “shout their abortions.” But not only does this bloodshed increase the stain of their guilt, the cathartic effects fade away, and so the demons repeat their demands for more blood, and the drumming resumes. Hell and destruction are never full, never satisfied (Prov. 27:20). If their blood sacrament really were efficacious in dealing with the guilt of their iniquity, in giving them peace, they would have come to a place of rest. But there is no rest, no peace, for the wicked (Is. 48:22).

The only release from this sort of blood guilt is the blood of Jesus Christ, the righteous one. All religions are ultimately religions that depend upon human sacrifice, but the Christian faith is the only one that depends upon a human sacrifice that puts an end to all human sacrifice. That is why we are privileged to drink the cup of the new covenant as wine, and to partake of the broken body in the form of sourdough. We repeat the memorial, but not the crucifixion.    

So always keep the gospel in perspective. We will not bring in the kingdom by means of pro-life activism. Of course not. Voting down Prop 1 would be glorious, but it will not purchase the cleansing or the forgiveness that we would still desperately need. We may defeat this measure, but the soil of Idaho would still be stained with blood. What are we going to do about that? What can we do?

The answer to that question is that we can do nothing. If there is to be cleansing at all, it will have to be Christ who does it. As Isaiah put it, “The Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Is. 53). But for us to benefit from that sacrifice, we must turn and look to Him, the way the bitten Israelites looked to the bronze serpent (John 3:14). And when we look to Him, we must say His name. We must confess with our mouths that Christ is Lord (Rom. 10:9-10).

We bring in the kingdom by preaching the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We worship God the Father every Lord’s Day in the name of the risen Jesus. It is Word and sacrament that will bring in the kingdom, and nothing else. But what does the kingdom bring with it? The kingdom necessarily brings with it a love for the children (Mark 10:15).