Well, what would you guess is the biggest myth today in America that most people believe? What would you guess that it is? Most people believe it because they've heard it so often they think it must be true. That's a major mistake. So, what do you think that myth is? In my research this last week, I came across a fantastic video about babies who were born deaf, but then they were fitted with hearing aids, and for the first time they heard their mother's voice. I want to show you that video, and I recommend Kleenex. Here it is. "Hello. Hello." [crying] "I've never seen that face before. I love you." "Oh, can you hear me? What's he doing?" "Hi. Hi. What do you hear? Are you listening?" "Archer. Hi, Archer. Uh-oh. Hi. Oh, hi, Archer. Archer, you're so connected." "I love you, too. I love you. Hi, baby sister. Baby sister." [singing] [laughter] "Hey, baby. Hey, you can hear me. I know." "Say daddy. Say daddy." [laughter] What a great baby. I show you those videos because I want you to know there is no such thing as a defective baby. Only babies who need solutions and extra love. My favorite picture is this little guy you see on the screen. Just a month or two earlier, he was living inside of his mother, and we have a photo of him in the womb. That's the same guy. He's living inside his mother, and now he's been born. Unfortunately, the most dangerous place in America is not the streets of Chicago, but a mother's womb. In America, we kill babies in the womb. We call it abortion because we want to hide what's really happening. So we call it this innocuous term, abortion, when in fact we're killing a baby. Before I go any further in this message, I want you to know that I intend to stand up for the unborn babies who cannot speak for themselves, who cannot choose life for themselves. I intend this morning to stand up for unborn babies. And the reason is I think it's really shameful that most pulpits in America today are silent on this issue. They are not telling the people the facts. And the reason is pastors are very open. They're afraid they're going to lose people. But for a pastor, you are to preach the truth and God's Word, whatever the consequences are, because it's not just the population of your church. It's whether or not the church is light in the world and faithful. And of all times for Christians to be light in our country, it's now, with abortion. But the other thing is, by the way, you owe us pizza. Whoever that is, you must be new. We prefer pepperoni pizza, and we'll probably take about 50 to feed us. So please make that call. Anyway, the other thing is I want you to know that I'm standing up for women today who have endured abortion. And the reason is that so many people throw rocks at women who've endured abortion, Christians who do that, or they don't want to listen to their story. And one of the books that really was striking to me that I read in the last couple of weeks is called Forbidden Grief: The Unspoken Pain of Abortion. Don't think that because a woman is not talking about the grief of abortion, she doesn't have it. The fact of the matter is there are so many women, and probably right in our midst here, who are carrying a heavy load of guilt because you ended the life of your baby. And today, before this service is over, I want to give you freedom and relief from that. The tragic fact is that virtually 100% of abortions occur 7 weeks after conception. And the reason that's important is that all the organs that baby would have in life are in place and functioning. And more importantly, those organs are not the mother's organs. Those organs are not serving the mother's health. Those organs are entirely dedicated to the baby, serving the baby and not the mother. So it makes no sense whatsoever to say that this baby is just the mother in a different form, or just a glob of flesh. The most frequent surgery in America today is abortion. More than 50 million babies have been killed under the rubric, the vocabulary, of freedom of choice for women. Freedom of choice. And you know, this is so common. If you really are thinking and sensitive, you will see that evil often is given a tremendous name. That happens in politics. Things are passed, and the name disguises what the bill really carries. It's like George Orwell's novel 1984. They tortured those who disagreed with the government in what was called the building of love. And so here we have it under the rubric of freedom of choice. I believe every woman deserves freedom of choice over her body. Nobody tells her what to do with her body. But that is expanded to eliminating a baby, taking its life. And what happens is that every abortion stops the heart of a baby beating. And more than that, science has found that babies in the womb dream. So it is stopping a heart from beating, and it's stopping a child from dreaming. And so a baby that could have had a productive life is eliminated and crossed out. What this means is that in this year's high school graduation class across America, more than one-third of the students who should have been there were not there, because they were aborted as a baby. One-third of the graduating class. Dr. Bernard Nathanson was known as the abortion king, because he owned the nation's largest abortion clinic, and he was totally committed to a woman's right to end whatever was within her. And to make the killing of the baby easier, it was renamed "fetus." That's vocabulary that dehumanizes a child. It makes you think of just flesh or something impersonal. It dehumanizes a baby in the womb. And that is always the way, whether it's in Nazi Germany, killing Jews and those who had disabilities, or it's today in America, where babies who are unwanted can be eliminated because they're not a baby. They're just a fetus. So it's no longer a person waiting to be born, but only a blob of the mother's flesh, a piece of her body. In fact, those who are pro-abortion have pushed this so far that now, even if they recognize that this is a human being in there, they call it an intruder or a trespasser. The baby's an intruder, as if it was his idea to be in the womb, making the baby responsible for its existence. It's not an intruder. That baby is the natural result of sex between a man and a woman. That's what happens. So what changed all of this is an exciting scientific invention that came along called ultrasound. I hope you know about ultrasound, because it's able to peer into a woman's womb and in Technicolor show the baby within the womb. For the first time, doctors could see inside the womb. They crowded around this new invention of science, and Nathanson talks about this, and they were asking, "Is it a boy or is it a girl?" No one talked about a fetus anymore. Science and Technicolor on the screen changed their vocabulary. They were faced with the fact of science that this was a baby, not just a blob of flesh. I think about that when I see on the nightly news people yelling in the face of those who are pro-life and demanding it's a woman's right to have an abortion. I guarantee you they've never seen an ultrasound. They are really advocating against science, and so much of that is just ignorance of what science has discovered about the baby in the womb. For example, after only six weeks, every organ is formed in the baby. And most importantly, they serve the baby, not the mother. The baby's heart and all of its organs are entirely separate from the mother. It's a separate human being. How could it have all of these organs? And you say, "Well, it's just a blob of flesh." No, it isn't. It's a human being. Ultrasound is science exposing the myth that the baby in the womb is not a baby, but just flesh. And so Nathanson really asks a great question. He stopped doing abortions because of what science on the screen showed him. And then he wrote this: Does a pregnant woman now have two hearts, four eyes, two mouths, four ears, four arms and legs, two livers, two stomachs, and two noses? If you really want to insist that this in her womb is really part of her, well, suddenly she's got two noses. As soon as you think about that, you know it's ridiculous to claim that this is part of her body. It isn't. And that's why she has a right over her body, but this baby is not part of her body, and she has no right to end its life, even if it's unwanted. Planned Parenthood is simply an abortion factory, and sadly, it's supported by our tax dollars. Planned Parenthood is built upon a lie. They knowingly are dishonest when they refuse to allow a woman to see an ultrasound of the baby in her womb, because they know if she sees that ultrasound, she will not have the abortion. And that's why we as a church have supported the pregnancy center here in Salinas and helped it buy an ultrasound machine, because in Technicolor it shows the woman, "You have a baby inside of you," and it changes their mind. Abortion depends on lying to women. Nathanson, after what he saw in the ultrasound, stopped doing abortions, because now, he said, that's murdering a child. Science in Technicolor changed his mind. It was not part of a woman's body that was being removed in abortion. It was a baby being killed in the womb. And that's the stark fact. He produced a film called The Silent Scream. And I'm sure most of you have not seen this. If you have any doubt whether or not this is a baby in the womb and not the mother's flesh, you owe it to yourself and to honesty to see this short video. I'm not showing it because it's just so awful. And what it shows is a baby in the womb and a doctor with this suction machine coming in to tear its arms and legs, tear its body apart. And what you see in it is the baby crawling away from that suction machine with its mouth wide open in a silent scream. People like Planned Parenthood who say a baby in abortion doesn't feel pain, they're lying. They don't know what they're talking about. Science says, "Oh, yeah, it does." Medical studies prove that only six weeks after conception, a baby dreams as it sleeps. So abortion not only stops a heart from beating, but it stops a child from dreaming. And when it hears music by Mozart, the baby becomes very peaceful. And that's why many of us played Mozart music to the baby in the womb, even though you might not like classical, because it became very peaceful. The Eagles' "Hotel California" does the same thing. But play Van Halen and the baby will stick its tiny fingers in its ears. Okay, I made that up. But music affects that baby in the womb. How in the world, then, can we say it's the mother's privilege and choice to end its life because it's just her body? No, it isn't. That's a choice she does not have. Why do pregnant mothers talk to their belly? Why would they do that if it's not a baby in there? And what exactly is kicking in their stomach? And what exactly is getting the hiccups in their stomach? Mothers know it's a baby. And when a woman has a miscarriage, it is a deep loss and hurt, isn't it? Why is that? Because a baby has been lost. Often she's already named the baby, and she goes into deep grief. And I have a picture of the smiling baby. I think this little guy was actually fortunate to be born, with this kind of ideology in America today. 50 million of him have been killed in America since 1973. It's a national travesty. So today, I'll speak up for helpless babies who cannot speak for themselves and defend their right to live. We hear a lot about a woman's right to choose, but I say a baby has a right to choose life, but they're not being given a choice. But I'll also speak up again for women who've had an abortion and carry crippling guilt. The worst myth in America today is that it's not a baby in the womb. Abortion clinics like Planned Parenthood will tell women that it's like having your tooth pulled. It's nothing more than an inanimate tooth, and it's your right to choose whether or not to keep your tooth. And so women begin to believe that it's not a real human being that they're killing in abortion, and they have it done, and then later the guilt comes heavy upon them, because they know it was a baby. For starters, science says that DNA is the genetic code of every human being, and it's unique. Every baby at the moment of conception has DNA. Not a month later. At the moment of conception, DNA is formed. And that's why it is scientifically accurate to say that at the moment a woman's egg is fertilized by the sperm, DNA is created, and that means a new human being has come into existence, because that's what DNA is. It's a human being, and it's unique to every person. The mother of the baby does not have the same DNA. It is scientifically illiterate to say that the baby is the mother's flesh when its DNA is different from hers. And as you know, we use DNA to identify criminals, because every criminal has separate and distinct DNA. So DNA is useful to find the unique individual who really carries it and committed the crime. So the mother does not have the same DNA as the child, and that child is not part of her body. It's a separate being. And often the baby's blood type is different from the mother's. 50% of the time its blood type is different. How could it be the mother? And 50% of the time its gender is different. So you have a male inside a mother's womb. What sense does it make to say that this baby is really the mother's flesh? It's a male baby. Science exposes the lies of abortion. And all of these things you hear run aground on real science. The science of molecular biology and ultrasound have shown us really what the Bible has told us for thousands of years, in Psalm 139:13: "For you created my inmost being. You knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place of my mother's womb. Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before I was born." And so what this says is that when a baby is killed in the womb, all that God had planned for that baby is lost. This Scripture talks about the development. We see the pictures in the womb, the development of the baby being knit together by God. The baby is God's work. It's very sad that it's politically correct to save whales and owls, but not babies. This is schizophrenic. I think it's odd. Have you thought about this? Restaurants and bars have signs up warning pregnant women not to drink alcohol because it'll damage the baby. Why do we have that up if it's not a baby in the womb? For example, in July 2020, the US Congress passed a law making it illegal to execute a pregnant woman. Did you know that this was voted for by people of the right and the left? But what's interesting is that liberal politicians who defended the right of a woman to have an abortion of her baby, because they wanted to say it was just her body and flesh, just her tooth, voted for this. And so in America today, it is illegal to execute a pregnant woman. And the reason is she's guilty, and she should pay a penalty for her crime, but the baby inside of her is innocent and should not pay a penalty. That's the reasoning behind that law. And so even those who are denying the scientific fact that it's a human being in there voted to pass this law. They're schizophrenic. I've invited Christine Morris from the Confidence Pregnancy Center in Salinas to be in the lobby after this sermon today. We are supporters of the Confidence Pregnancy Center because they have an ultrasound. They counsel women on the alternatives that Planned Parenthood will never tell them about. It gives material and emotional support. It'll help you find adoption for your baby if that's needed. This is a positive force that really saves the lives of a lot of babies. She's a credentialed marriage therapist, so she will give you real answers and support. And I hope many of you will talk to her in the lobby afterwards, even if this is not your situation. You may have a friend who has this situation. And after you learn about what she does, you can guide them towards some real solutions and support at the Confidence Pregnancy Center. We ought to be alarmed about this rush for abortion, because it's a slippery slide to a death culture. Did you know that in Holland today, seniors are afraid to go to the hospital? Because if the doctors determine that you're unwanted by your family, or that you're a burden financially upon the state because whatever problem you have is just too expensive to treat, they pull the plug. Seniors have seen so many of their friends die this way in the hospital. They're afraid to go. And the reason simply is they're unwanted, and it's uneconomical. They're a burden. Now, just think about that. One day you may be unwanted by your family. One day you may have a very expensive disease. What will happen to you? Do we just get rid of you because you're unwanted? Being unwanted is no excuse for killing a human being. But that's what's happening with babies, and it's a slippery slide down to adults. It's called euthanasia. Secondly, Planned Parenthood is racist. I know that's dramatic, but it is racist. Why do I say that? Well, their founder is Margaret Sanger. You should know a lot about Margaret Sanger. It's only recently that Planned Parenthood has begun to distance itself from their founder, after about 100 years. And the reason they're distancing now is because it's becoming well known that she was a racist, and that she thought through birth control and abortion you could reduce the Black and Hispanic population of America. She saw them as unfit to be in our country. She actually called Blacks and Latinos human weeds. They needed to be dug up and thrown away. Now, that's racism. That's discrimination at its worst. So this explains why Planned Parenthood has more than 80% of its clinics in Black and Latino neighborhoods. That's not coincidental. It makes it easy for these two populations to come to Planned Parenthood, which will drive them towards abortion. Despite being only 13% of America's population, Blacks have well over one-third of all abortions in America. And that's because Planned Parenthood has targeted them with clinics in their neighborhoods. Sadly, and to me this almost makes me cry, more Black babies have been aborted in New York City than have been born. More have been aborted than born. Margaret is succeeding, but I say she must be stopped, and she must be exposed. And it's only going to be the church that does that. And that's why it's so sad that so many churches are silent. Third, abortion tears apart women emotionally and spiritually. If you only read one book, I recommend Forbidden Grief to tell you what it's like for women who've been through abortion. And the other book that I read in the last two weeks is Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing. Phenomenal book. We need to get educated, because the media is not going to educate us. I've counseled many women who've had an abortion and now live with crippling guilt. It is guilt that only a mother can have. I believe that a mother's guilt is the heaviest guilt in the world, especially with children. The tragic fact is these women are afraid to talk to anyone about their grief. So often they can't talk to the man in their life because he doesn't want to hear about it, and so often he's already left. They can't talk to other friends and other people, because most of America thinks abortion, well, it's your right, and it's part of your body, and you have a right over your body, and now you're free. So they don't get people around them that are going to listen and support them. Especially when babies in the womb are called an intruder, a trespasser in your womb. But you know, the fact of the matter is babies are just the natural result of sex. Is that a revelation here? And I say that because the woman's choice, and the man's, is before sex, not after sex. Before sex, you do have a choice. After sex, you have a responsibility. You have consequences that you need to deal with, and you don't deal with them by killing the result of sex. But in America today, we're people who blame. We don't take responsibility. And so the baby is being blamed for ruining our life, as if the baby planned the whole thing of its birth or its conception. We have to take responsibility for our actions. The real freedom of a man and woman is before sex, not after sex. Once you've created a human being, murdering that human being is a terrible thing. One of my favorite events in Jesus's life is the time that the religious elite threw a half-naked woman who had been caught in the act of adultery at the feet of Jesus. And then they circled the woman and Jesus, all these men holding rocks in their hands. And they reminded Jesus that Moses said a woman caught in adultery should be stoned to death. "What do you say, Jesus?" They were trapping Him. They wanted Him, who was known for His forgiveness, to condemn this woman. But instead, He famously went to His knees, and with His finger He began to scribble in the dirt. We don't know exactly what words He scribbled, but most scholars think that what He did was write the sins of the men who had the rocks in their hands, sins that were hidden. So there He is. He wrote a name, John, and then his hidden sins, and then Pete, and then his. And as He was writing, He stood up and said, "The one of you who is without sin, you throw the first stone." And famously, they began to drop their stones, beginning with the oldest, and left. One by one, they dropped their stones and left. And then Jesus said to her, "Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more." He forgave her, but He said, "Don't keep doing this." He called for repentance in her life. It wasn't cheap forgiveness. We are not a stone-throwing church. And I'm not a pastor who throws stones, because I have a past too that'll stand toe-to-toe with anything you've done. And I've been forgiven. It was a long time ago that I dropped my stones. A long time ago. But I have to say, there may be some rock throwers still in our church. When I first came, there used to be a whole bunch of rock throwers. They were all rock throwers, sometimes at me. But my preaching drove many of them out of the church. Unfortunately, it didn't drive them all out. There are still some judgmental, better-than-you, holier-than-you, critical people within this church. But they do not represent Compass. I just say that to you because it's frustrating for me as a preacher to preach so much about gossip and judgment all these years and to have so many people who won't change. [laughter] So if you meet up with one of those, don't take it personally. Go to Jesus. Go to me or one of the staff, and remember that they do not represent this church, and we're not throwing rocks at you. [applause] And so after this worship service, I have some gentle, loving, non-judgmental women who won't lecture you, but who will listen and grieve with you after this service and pray with you. And since one out of four women in America has had an abortion, I know they're represented here today. I hope you won't leave without coming to one of these women afterwards and being relieved of this crippling guilt. Because I say to you, Jesus does not mean for you to live the rest of your life with guilt. That's why He died upon the cross. The Scriptures say if we confess our sins, Jesus will forgive us and cleanse us completely. And then in Hebrews 10, He says, "I will not remember your sins, says the Lord." You need to cling to that, because there are people in your family and other people who are going to remember, and they're going to remind you. Ignore them, because Jesus is not remembering, and He's the only one that counts. So I know that the biggest challenge of this message, as I wrote it this last week, was not to convince you that that's a baby. The biggest challenge is to convince you that you can be forgiven and you can leave today cleansed. I hope I've done that. Let me pray for us. We're going to take an offering. So let me pray. Lord, we give an offering to You because You've given everything to us. We think about all the blessings You've given us, Lord. We pray You will be pleased with what we give to You today to finance Your ministry, pushing back the devil. We pray it in Your name, Jesus. Amen.