I get some version of this question all the time (“Why don’t you talk about ______ more?”), and I answered it here. Short answer: It might always seem like we’re not emphasizing something enough (and the thing will be different for each person), but that’s so we can keep emphasizing the gospel above all. On Sundays we preach through books of the Bible, and don’t try to shoehorn current hot topics into the text, but rather look for faithful applications of the text as given.
Sometimes we feel a need to address other topics, which is why we plan Talk Story Tuesdays, and why we have the Ask Pastor Matt forum (where I answered a previous question about abortion here). Other times, our Sunday preaching text lends itself well to current events, like when we launched our study of Luke last year. Here’s what I preached from Luke 1:
In Luke 1:15, the angel Gabriel tells Zechariah that his unborn baby (John the Baptist) “will be filled with the Holy Spirit while still in his mother’s womb.”
Sometimes people wonder why Christians are so pro-life. Here it is, right here. Right now, John’s only 9 inches tall. He weighs a pound and a half. But his fingers already have fingerprints. He can open his eyes and look around. He has thoughts, feelings, and emotions.
And Gabriel says he’s been filled with the Holy Spirit! He’s not just a mass of cells and tissues, he’s precious to God. He’s already being used as a prophet of God, announcing the arrival of Jesus while he’s still in his mother’s womb. This is why Christians fight for the rights of the unborn.
My daughter Talia is a pro-life warrior at her high school. Not only because she believes that unborn babies are people, but also because she came close to being aborted herself. Talia’s birth-mom was a teenager when she got pregnant, and she went to a crisis pregnancy center thinking she might terminate the pregnancy. Ultimately she chose adoption over abortion, and that’s why Talia is here today. So Talia tells everyone who will listen to her that abortion is murder.
Now to be clear, Jesus died to forgive murderers. Murderers like Paul, who wrote half the New Testament. So if you’ve had an abortion, and you turn to Jesus, he’s ready to pour out his love, grace, and forgiveness on you.
But now he’s calling you, and calling us all, to protect unborn babies like John.