You can download the MP3 (53:18min, 36.6MB).
I was heavily indebted to the work of John Piper, Greg Koukl, and Scott Klusendorf. Follow the links to hear this material said much better than I can!
At the end of my message I quoted James 1:27, where we are commanded to visit orphans. I made the brief comment that if God commands us to help to those who parents are dead, how much more should we seek to rescue those whose parents want them dead.
I neglected to mention that I got this idea from a sermon by Piper on this passage. Here's the relevant section:
James' command to have compassion on the helpless who have lost mother and father applies to them if their mother and father turn on them and become worse than dead parents; namely, killing parents. If orphans should be cared for by God's people, how much more children whose parents reject them.Piper closes the sermon in this way, and I call you to pray this prayer with him:And when it says, visit them "in their distress" we may ask, Is there any place of greater distress than in the womb of a woman who gives herself over to abortion? This is the greatest distress any child will ever experience. To be torn limb from limb in the very place that should be the safest place in the world is "distress" if there ever is anything called "distress." "Visit orphans in their distress."
O how I pray that the religion of our church will be "pure and undefiled religion"--pure and undefiled faith in our Lord Jesus Christ! May God grant us to speak both languages of compassion: the language of the orphan and the language of the widow. The language of the helpless child and the language of the desperate woman. There are many other languages we must speak (to the fathers and to the lawmakers and to the doctors, etc.). But whatever we do, let us not be silent. For if we are, our religion is empty, and our faith is dead (James 1:27; 2:14,17).Amen.
