Christ can stop this flow of blood
October 2027 will mark sixty years since members of parliament voted to legalise abortion in the United Kingdom. April 2028 will mark sixty years since that law came into force in our communities. In that time we will have killed well over 11 million precious babies. For them and for our sin it is a time to mourn and beg God for mercy.
Whilst on earth our Messiah met a lady who had bled for 12 years. We do not know the bleeding’s cause, but it made her (and everyone and everything she touched) ceremonially unclean and in need of atonement. Her grief at the loss of good standing before God and man, not to mention the loss of all manner of relationships and opportunities, must have caused unimaginable pain beyond the physical wound. Added to that, she had lost all her money seeking the help of many doctors, and was no better. On hearing of Christ, her desperation and her faith led her to say: “If only I touch His clothes, I shall be made well” (Mk 5v28). She found Him. She came up behind Him in the crowd. She reached out and simply touched “the hem of His garment” (Matt 9v20). And ‘immediately the fountain of her blood was dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of the affliction’ (Mk 5v29). We know from Mk 5v33 that she was afraid, perhaps afraid she would make Jesus unclean. But she took the risk, and in touching Him found powerful, instantaneous healing.
Perhaps the UK today is like that bleeding lady before she touched Christ. Though there were always back-street trickles here and there, for nearly sixty years now she has with increasing gusto killed over 11m babies. She is killing over 800 babies per day on average, over 300,000 per year. Every day more and more of her mothers take pills in the privacy of their own home to make the bleeding start, and the fountain of that collective flow shows no sign of drying up. She will not prosecute anyone for turning life into death, for forsaking breeding in favour of bleeding, and works overtime to justify her brazen love for barrenness. She masks the deep, indelible pain of her mourning mothers with lies and placebos and distractions. Her bleeding has over time become a great flood, a flood it seems no barrier can stop.
In Isaiah 59 we see God looking for someone to come to Him, in between an unholy nation and an awfully holy God. The word translated ‘intercessor’ is the Hebrew word paga which has the idea of laying something on someone, urgently asking for something, or placing oneself between two people or parties. In Isaiah 53 we see the same word as Isaiah sees that ‘the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all’ (v6) and that because ‘He bore the sin of many’ (v12a) He ‘made intercession for the transgressors’ (v12).
According to J. John, ‘abortion is seen as one of those 'taboo' subjects, but as an evangelist I am convinced that the gospel is big enough to handle this issue.’ Surely if the prophet Isaiah were around today he would emphatically agree: the vision of God he saw and recorded for us in Isaiah chapter 6 depicts a God so glorious, so massive, that only the train of His robe – the ‘hem of His garment’ if you will – fit inside the then temple. It is, in a manner of speaking, that robe that the bleeding lady touched in faith and through which she found healing. The God Isaiah saw hadn’t come to take all our sins away yet. The Saviour the bleeding lady saw and touched had not gone to the cross to bear the weight of every sin, every abortion yet. But today, we can come in prayer to touch and then be touched by a holy, holy, holy High Priest who took upon Himself the wrath of Almighty God, who offered up His sinlessness as THE sin offering, and who can stop the UK’s flow of blood.
Together with friends at Brephos (and hopefully more organisations in the future), we are embarking on a new prayer initiative entitled Praying to End Abortion. Commemorating these dark moments in our history gives us an opportunity to mourn together, interceding before God and crying out for mercy every month until abortion is illegal and unthinkable here. We know it is a huge ask. Many of us did not have faith God could rescue us from the legalisation of assisted suicide. But He heard our cries for mercy, showed us His heart, brought us to deeper repentance and did what only He can do, for His glory. Christ has the power to stop suffering and can do it if we touch Him in faith. May we hear Him say to the UK: “Go in peace, and be healed of your affliction” (Mk 5v34)!
To see meeting dates, times and venues, and access downloadable resources, see our dedicated webpage here: https://www.intercessorsforbritain.co.uk/end-abortion.
This blog post is based on a recent sermon that you can watch in full here.
