Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, I'm a Republican. - Joe Sobran
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me a thousand times, I'm a pastor. - Soe Jobran
The news today from the national level is that the men and women of the Republican Party in Congress have backed down on their late-term abortion bill because they don't want to alienate female voters. The news today from our own Indiana state level is that a certain bill written to protect the unborn children of Indiana from being murdered by their parents is being treated with diffidence by the committee chairman because he and other Republicans don't want the wrath of Planned Parenthood to descend on them.
Now listen, these men and women—the Republicans, that is—are mostly publicly confessing Christians and therefore have pastors, elders, deacons, and older Titus 2 women who are called by God to admonish and rebuke and exhort and encourage them. But you and I know that their pastors, let alone elders, deacons, and Titus 2 women, will say nothing to them about their cowardice—about their selling out unborn children in order to stay in office. If the Church of Jesus Christ in these United States of America desired to stop the mass slaughter of unborn children; if we desired to see the bloodshed of little ones by their mothers end; if we feared God's judgement on our nation...
we would do what is necessary to admonish and rebuke and shame our mayors, councilmen, senators, congressmen, governors, judges, justices, and presidents until they stood for justice and mercy. Or, better yet, until they simply stood for the rule of law. There is no rule of law in a city, state, or nation where the most vulnerable among us are not protected from wholesale slaughter. This is not the rule of law. It is the rule of the rich, the strong, and the bloodthirsty.
Like slavery in its day, abortion today exists because of the silence of pastors conniving at the sins of their flock. And by that I don't mean pastors don't preach against abortion. All Evangelicals (except Tim Keller) do that. I mean preaching in person to the men and women in our congregations who rule us. I mean speaking to the judges and governors and senators in our congregation, exhorting and admonishing them concerning their actions during the week. Encouraging them when they stand against bloodshed and rebuking them when they don't. Pressuring them to write the bills that are needed to defund Planned Parenthood and asking them regularly how that work is going? Making it clear that you, the shepherd of their souls, are watching them on these matters because you are responsible to God for your leadership of them and they will answer to God if they do not use their authority to guard the little ones. Reciting to them only one of a host of Scripture texts warning us of God's hatred of the bloodshed of innocents, following up with only one of a host of texts promising God's blessing to those who take up the cause of the widows and orphans in their distress.
Listen, brothers, we all have civil magistrates in our congregations and if we fail to warn them of God's coming judgment on those who refuse to defend the innocent, we have blood on our hands. They will die in their sins, but God will require us to answer for their blood and the blood of the unborn they betrayed.
But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet and the people are not warned, and a sword comes and takes a person from them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood I will require from the watchman’s hand. - Ezekiel 33:6
But you say they're Christians who know how to pronounce "providence" and "sovereignty," and maybe even "presuppositional" and "postmillennial?" You say they've received Trinitarian baptism and their children are enrolled in a classical Christian school?
So what. Our Savior's rule is "by their fruit ye shall know them," and where heartlessness and cruelty hold sway over a civil magistrate, where are the fruits of the Spirit? How can a man have living faith in Jesus Christ who demonstrates no willingness to sacrifice for the least of these under his authority? Faith without works justifies no one.
On this forty-second anniversary of the Supreme Court of These United States declaring it open season for the hunting and slaughter of our nation's children yet in the womb, let us anathematize the Republican Party for their conniving at that slaughter while buying votes by claiming to be the pro-life party. And let us begin—I say begin!—to teach and exhort and admonish and rebuke the civil magistrates in our own congregations.
Not to do so is for us to have the blood of the unborn on our own hands. We failed to warn them as God commands, and so the blood of the unborn is on their hands and ours. But the blood of the cowardly and conniving civil magistrates is on our hands.
Therefore, I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all men. For I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God. Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. - Acts 20:26-28
Tim serves Clearnote Church, Bloomington, Indiana. He and Mary Lee have five children and big lots of grandchildren.
Want to get in touch? Send Tim an email!
