Families that Choose Life

From the Lower Finding Studios in Memphis, Tennessee, I'm Byron Tyler, here with Kerry Vaughn, the CEO of Lower Finding. You know, Kerry, we all want a happy home. And I'm excited about today's message with Adrian Rogers, Families That Choose Life, because that's really the foundation for having a happy home. I've heard Adrian say many times, without your family, you have no ministry. And so we think about our jobs, we think about our identity, we think about our ministry, but without a family or family unit, I mean, what do you really have? Well, Jesus said in John 10, 10, I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly.

And my favorite verses and then it goes on to say, but the thief comes to steal, kill and destroy. Right. And so we want that abundant life. And the only way we can have that abundant life, as we know, is through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. But here we're talking about the family and we're talking about how to have a healthy family.

And I think a lot of that, Byron, is leadership is caught many times as opposed to being taught. And so I think the children and everybody in that family catches it along the way. So I think it's our responsibility to foster a healthy, vibrant, spirit filled life inside the home. Well, we always love hearing from our listeners. And here's one from Florida that says, I am grateful that Adrian Rogers sermons are available for free on the Internet.

My wife and I listen at least once a week. My soul hungers for God's word. And yet I'm careful where I go to listen to preaching. I know Pastor Rogers preaching is sound, exciting, encouraging, thought provoking. Thank you for this ministry. Oh, that's wonderful. You know, when you go into my home and it's not a perfect home by any means, but there's the word of God plastered all throughout the sunroom and we have tried to, by God's grace, make that a vibrant, healthy, fun place.

And we've tried to model in front of the kids a Christian environment. Are we perfect? No. Are we flawless? No. But I think that's what God's design is for the home.

Kerry, we are in a series right now, Perfect Ten for Homes That Win. As we talk about families that choose life, Adrian Rogers has something to say. But you know, many parents are moaning and groaning about children not having a standard. And yet I wonder, have the parents themselves, first of all, understood the Ten Commandments and applied them to their own lives? Are they demonstrating the truth of God's word in front of these children? Number two, are they lovingly teaching and inculcating these things in the hearts and minds of kids? I sometimes have to laugh almost a, I hope it's not a cynical laugh, but the parents who are complaining about the Ten Commandments no longer being on the classroom walls of our public schools. And if you visit those homes, look in those homes and see if the Ten Commandments are on the walls of those homes. Seems to me that there's a little bit of hypocrisy there. There is hope, but parents, first of all, must believe the Ten Commandments, understand them, apply them, live them out, teach them, and illustrate them to the kids.

Kerry, a great reminder that moms and dads ought to lead their children to Jesus, you know, praying and pleading for their spiritual life until there's that full assurance that they're truly saved. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, we talked about the family unit, but I think it's not only the physical life or the social life, but what you just mentioned, the spiritual life that we would say, I will not go to heaven without my children. Well, that's a strong statement. And what if we took that statement a little further?

I will not go to heaven without my children, without my immediate family, or without my neighbors. We've got some work to do. We do, Kerry.

We really do. Kerry, this month we have some opportunities for our listeners to stop by LWF.org. And as we talk about the Ten Commandments, we do have a calligraphy print of the Ten Commandments that's available. And that's a resource I would encourage our listeners to check out.

Yes. Also this month is His Story Book. What is that about? His Story, a wonderful collection of eight powerful messages.

It's about God's purpose and plan from Genesis, the beginning, all the way through Revelation. And so that is a great, great, hot off the press new product. You can't live without it.

Want to stop by LWF.org for that and many more resources. Well, for today's message, Families That Choose Life, here's Adrian Rogers. Thou shalt not kill. Let me tell you this, that life is God's wonderful, wonderful gift. And therefore we ought to enjoy life and we ought to choose life. Jesus is the great life giver. Satan is the great life destroyer. And Jesus said Satan comes to steal, to kill and to destroy.

But he said of himself, but I am come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly. Satan came to destroy. Jesus has come to give life. Now, this command that says thou shalt not kill is another way of saying we must reject Satan.

We must choose life. Satan wants to bring death into your family. He wants to bring death to youth, death to purity, death to joy, death to happiness. He wants to bring physical death. He wants to bring spiritual death. He wants to bring eternal death. He wants to make this life that Jesus said is to be abundant.

He wants to make it miserable. Now, fathers, listen to me. We're talking about the Ten Commandments as they relate to the home. Your wife, your children have three kinds of life. They have physical life, social life and spiritual life.

They were made that way by Almighty God. And it is your job to protect that life. Now, having said all of that, let's just talk about those three kinds of life that we're to choose and let's see what fathers are to do and mothers are to do to protect these homes.

First of all, the family is given to protect physical life. From what? Well, number one, from intentional killing. There are people today, it's a bloody and a murderous society. There's the crime of homicide. There's the crime of suicide as I've been studying about homes. I'm so alarmed at the rise of teenage suicide. What a grievous thing. What a heartbreaking thing it is for anybody to take his or her own life. No one, no one ever has the right to take his own life. Never.

Number one, it is not his. It belongs to God, the most incurable disease, the most constant pain, the greatest trouble and heartache. The worst persecution that you can mention is still no reason to take one's own life because it takes out of God's hand matters which he alone is wise enough, strong enough and good enough to handle.

Never do that. Jesus will give grace and God will make a way. Then not only is there homicide and suicide that families need to be protected from in these days, but oh, the crime of infanticide, the taking of innocent little lives with governmental approval. Do you know what the Supreme Court said in February 1973? This ought to make you angry, listen. They ruled, quote, that every woman in the United States now has the same right to an abortion during the first six months of pregnancy as she has in any other, listen to this, minor surgery.

Any other minor surgery. I deplore the classification of little preborn children and their death as minor surgery. Something very wrong in America where we protect spotted owls and whales and snail darters and eagles and have made perhaps the most dangerous place the mother's womb. The real issue, of course, is simply this, when does life begin?

That's the real issue. Jeremiah 1, 5 answers it if you're a Bible believer. God said to Jeremiah, before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee.

And before thou camest out of the womb, I sanctified thee and ordained thee a prophet unto the nations. Now, that little baby there in that mother's womb is life. What kind of life is it?

Vegetable life or animal life or human life? It is human life. Somebody said, well, you, that's not a human being any more than a nut and bolt put together in a Ford factory is a Ford. There's a difference.

That nut and bolt will always be a nut and bolt. But that baby in its mother's womb, it has every component of life and all you add to it is nutrition and fluid. That's what the brain used to grow.

The analogy does not fit. Within 18 to 25 days, the heart of this little human being is beating. Brain waves may be recorded in 45 days. In eight weeks, the brain is completely present. By this time, the little one will respond to touch. At nine or 10 weeks, he'll squint, swallow, move his tongue. In two more weeks, he has fingernails, sucks his thumb, swallows, digests, recoils from noise or pain. All of the organ systems are functional.

He'll develop. All he does is just simply pass on down through the birth canal. That's life. Dr. R.A. Gallup made the Gallup poll so famous, said this, if a doctor will take money for killing the innocent in the womb, he will kill you with a needle when paid by your children. In the newspaper, I read this. I couldn't believe it, but yet knowing today's insanity, I did believe it. I told a Frank Balaam, B-A-L-U-M, a New Jersey gardener.

He's in his 70s. He went out, you know, to grow tomatoes. Everybody has to try that one time or another to grow tomatoes. And a rat was coming out there eating his tomatoes. So Mr. Balaam set a trap for this rat. And he caught the rat, and the rat was trying to get out, and Mr. Balaam took a broomstick, wrapped it in newspaper, and beat that rat to death that was eating his tomatoes. Now, Mr. Lee Bernstein, the Associated Humane Society Executive Director, issued a summons for his arrest, for Mr. Balaam's arrest. He said that he needed to be fined $1,250 for killing that rat and could face up to six months in jail. His crime, he beat a rat to death with a broomstick. Now, when Mr. Bernstein found out that people were laughing at him, this is what he said.

Listen to this. The fact that the animal was killed is not why the summons came, but the summons came because it was a trapped animal that could not escape, and it was mutilated and died a horrible death. Not that I killed a rat, that's okay, but he was trapped.

He couldn't escape. That's why I said I thought about little babies in their mother's womb. Little babies in their mother's womb who are trapped and cannot escape and are mutilated in their mother's womb.

Yet, here's a man who wants to arrest another man for killing a rat who's been eating his tomatoes. You say, well, what do you know about it? You're not a medical doctor, pastor. Well, let me tell you what a medical doctor said. Dr. Andrew Shuttles served for more than a quarter of a century as the attending obstetrician and gynecologist in Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. He pioneered in the field of sperm biology, fertility, and sterility, and a part of his international reputation lies in the discovery of male and female producing sperm. This man's no six or seven either. He is a medical doctor of no mean repute.

Listen to what he says. He said, I oppose abortion. I do so first because I accept what is biologically manifest, that human life commences at the time of conception, and second, because I believe it is wrong to take innocent human life under any circumstances, my position is scientific, pragmatic, and humanitarian.

I don't know whether he's saved or not, but he thinks straight. But not only is there this matter of direct transgression of this commandment, there's the indirect transgression that we don't want our children about. Cruelty. Cruelty is a way of killing people.

I'm just talking about being heartless. Some sons have put their mothers in an early grave. Some husbands have put their wives in an early grave.

Some of you have pinched wrinkles into your daddy's brow and put gray hairs in your mother's head because of the way that you live. The Chinese used to have an ancient torture and then they called it the Chinese water torture. They would strap a man into a chair and put over his head a huge reservoir of water and let the water just drip on the man's head until finally the whole nervous system would explode in devastating rebellion and it would end in horrible death.

Drip, drip, drip, drip. Some of you are killing people that way. The same way, I believe people that are guilty of this are people who are in corrupt businesses. I would never be in the whiskey business, not because of financial matters, but because of this verse that says, Thou shalt not kill. The liquor industry, and we need to teach our kids this. They don't understand it. Hollywood is saying drink it.

Their friends are saying drink it. But listen, the liquor industry has the curse of God upon it. Whiskey is brewed with tears and thickened with blood and flavored with death.

Listen to these scriptures. Habakkuk chapter 2 verse 12, Woe unto him that buildeth a town with blood and stablisheth a city by iniquity. Habakkuk 2 verse 15, Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink.

What's he saying? People say, well, liquor is good for business. God says, woe unto him that buildeth a town with blood and stablisheth a city with iniquity.

Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink. Here's a letter that was written to the Dallas Morning News. It's signed by a medical doctor in Dallas.

He works in the Parkland Hospital there. Recently, we saw another preview of hell in the Parkland Hospital emergency room. A woman struck down by a drunken driver, a college student lying semi-conscious following a head-on collision with another drunken driver who himself was critically injured. The drunk's companion was dead. Four other drunks with lacerations and stab wounds waiting to be treated. Night after night, year after year, the same bloody trail of horror, major automobile accident injuries, crimes, rapes, wife beatings, and nightly emergencies treated and released, admitted to the hospital or pronounced dead on arrival, and almost always the bloody trail is led by that honored man of distinction who again drinketh. Almost always the moderate drinker, not the alcoholic. I wonder, is there so much joy to be gained from the total consumption of all the beers and whiskeys ever made to ever equal a small fraction of its suffering, the damaged bodies, the broken marriages, the discarded children, the total brutality, and the crimes that will ever accompany its use. What a quiet place our emergency rooms would be if beverage alcohol was ever abolished from our city.

That's a medical doctor. Now, I know that alcohol has many defenders, but it has no defense. I mean, it has turned our highways into slaughter pens and our homes into prisons of despair. Fathers, you need to build a wall. Take that boy, take that girl down some Saturday night, some Friday night to the emergency room and let them see. They don't understand.

These kids think they're invincible. I'll tell you another way that we transgress this is just by failing to take care of our bodies in temple maintenance. We commit suicide by degrees. For those of us who look down our long noses at the drunkard, we're killing ourselves with a knife and fork. Someone as well said that we, Americans are digging their graves with their teeth, killing themselves with immorality and embalming themselves with alcohol. Now, you say, well, pastor, I'm free from all of those things.

Well, one more thing. Our Lord said in the spirit of this command that if we allow hatred in our hearts, we have transgressed this command. 1 John 3 verse 15, Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him. Mental murder.

Is there somebody you hate? You say, I'm not in the liquor business. I'm not an abortionist. I'm not a strong-armed thug. I'm not a terrorist.

I'm not a drug pusher. Do you hate anybody? Do you? Is your heart headquarters for hate? Now, I believe in salvation by grace, but according to John, you're going to hell. You're going to hell. But if you are a person who hates others, I don't care what kind of hate. It could be racial hate, religious hate, revengeful hate.

Somebody has done something bad to you. Fathers should protect physical life. Fathers should provide social life.

It should make the home a happy place. And then fathers should present spiritual life. Dads ought to lead the children to Jesus. I have four children on this earth and a little boy in heaven, and my four children are a long way from perfect. You know how the preacher's kids get into trouble. They get that way playing with the deacon's kids, but they're not perfect.

But I tell you, they all love God. My son Steve, I went with him down in Florida. When Steve was a teenager, I got to watching him.

I didn't see the beauty of Jesus in his life though he walked down the aisle and made a profession of faith. I said, Steve, get in the car with me, would you please? I said, go for a ride. Got on the ride, I said, let's just go out and walk in the woods.

I spent a day just walking in the woods. And I said to him, son, daddy has got to know that you know Jesus. We talked. I didn't try to put a stranglehold on him, but I just wanted to know that I knew that he knew Jesus. And out there in the woods, we kneeled and prayed. He assured me, daddy, I love Jesus.

And he's shown it now through his life. One day, I was praying and I said, Lord, if any of my children are not saved, I don't have any reason now to believe that any of them may not be saved, but if any of them are not saved, oh Lord, I don't want to go to heaven without all my children. I didn't say anything to my wife or the children about it. But the next Sunday when I gave the invitation, my oldest daughter Gail came down the aisle and she said, daddy, I don't believe I've ever really and truly been saved. I want to be saved. She'd already been baptized.

She gave her heart to Jesus. And I believe it was directly related to that prayer, oh God, if any of my children are not saved, I want them saved. Families need to choose life. Choose life. And dads, you need to protect them, their physical life. You need to provide their social life and take home the happiest place on earth. And you need to pray for and plead for their spiritual life and say I will not go to heaven without my children to come with me. Families need to choose life.

Satan has come to steal and to kill and to destroy. Jesus has come that we might have life. Right now you can choose life. If you're not certain that you're saved, if you don't know for certain that if you died right now you could go to heaven, you can get it settled right now.

Now you can choose life and abundant life. Would you pray a prayer like this? Dear God, that's right, just pray. Dear God, I know that you love me and I know that you want to save me. Lord, you promised to save me.

If I would trust you, I do trust you. Jesus, I believe you're the Son of God. I believe, Jesus, you died on that cross for my sins. I believe God raised you from the dead and now I turn from my sin and I receive you by faith as my Lord and Savior.

I receive you from my heart. Forgive my sin. Save me, Lord Jesus. Would you pray that prayer right now? Save me, Lord Jesus.

I repent of my sin. I yield my life to you. Thank you, Lord, for saving me. I don't look for a feeling.

I don't ask for a sign. I stand on your Word. Thank you for saving me. Please begin to make me the person you want me to be because I'm very weak. And, Lord, give me the courage to make this public. In your holy name I pray.

Amen. If you prayed to receive Jesus Christ just now, we would love to celebrate with you and invite you to our Discover Jesus page on the website. You'll find answers you may need about your newfound faith.

There's a response section there. You can share your testimony with us. Tell us how this message has affected you. Just go to lwf.org and click the tab that says Discover Jesus. Welcome to God's forever family. We can't wait to hear from you.

Well, as you continue with your day, remember this beautiful commission from Adrian Rogers. Families need to choose life. You've got to build a wall around the roof of your house lest your children fall off. Let their physical life provide for their social life and make home the happiest place on earth. And you need to pray for and plead for their spiritual life and say, I will not go to heaven without my children to come with me. Well, thanks for joining us today. And tune in next time for more profound truth Simply Stated right here on Love Worth Finding. .