A Biblical Case for Life

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But I’d like to share something with you that I ran across Thursday, and I won’t read the whole thing, but I’ll post it out there on the bulletin board in case any of you want to look at it later. It’s an article from the Christian Research Institute, and it starts off by saying, it appears that millions of evangelicals, especially younger ones, are experiencing fetus fatigue. Tired of the abortion issue taking center stage, they are moving on to newer, hipper things, the sort of issues that excite Bono. And if you’re as cool as I am, you’re probably not real sure who Bono is.

I wasn’t real sure either, but he’s, I think, the lead singer of U2. Yes, I was wanting to say U2, but like the video website. U2 is an Irish rock band.

And as far as I understand, he professes to be a Christian, but, well, I’ll leave that up to you to decide. The sort of things that excite Bono, such as aid to Africa, the environment, and cool tattoos. Abortion has been legal since 1973, before they were born.

It is the old guard that gets excited about the millions of abortions that have taken place over the years. When they say the old guard, no offense, they mean your generation, many of you. When they say excited, they don’t mean clapping their hands and shouting for joy.

They mean get upset. And what he starts out by saying, it’s many of the Christians my age who don’t care, don’t want to talk about this issue. And I’ve certainly found that to be the case.

I mentioned to you a minute ago, I try not to preach politics. I’ve never really preached you a sermon on the Federal Reserve, although I think I could. But when it comes to political issues, it’s easier to discuss the Federal Reserve because people aren’t quite so emotionally invested.

I’m not going to get called a bunch of bad names for talking about my view on the Federal Reserve. It’s hard to discuss abortion with people. And so they say the younger, fortunately I don’t fit that mold, but the younger Christians don’t want to talk about it.

I’m willing to talk about it even though it’s not easy. In the midst of such casual sentiment, I’m compelled to say in no uncertain terms, for God’s sake, and he really does mean that, that’s not just using God’s name in vain, for God’s sake, evangelicals, if that word has any meaning, Please wake up and consider the acres of tiny, bloody bodies that you cannot see. He goes on to say, Yes, the Christian vision is all-encompassing, and we should endeavor to restore peace to the whole of the beleaguered planet under the lordship of Christ. That includes helping Africa, preserving the environment, combating human trafficking, and much more.

The leading domestic moral issue, however, continues to be the value of helpless, unborn life. I agree with that. The greatest moral evil facing our country today are the 50 to 55 million children that have been killed in the last 40 years.

Folks, not to sound too extreme on it, but Hitler didn’t have those kind of numbers. Since Roe v. Wade, over 1 million unborn humans have been killed through abortion each year.

That puts the total well over 35 million. His numbers are a little low there, but this article is a few years old now. The Russian Marxist totalitarian Joseph Stalin said, one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.

Too many evangelicals are Stalinists on abortion, since the numbers apparently mean nothing to them. Almost through with the part I’m going to read today. The vast majority of these abortions were not done to save the life of the mother or in view of other extreme conditions.

Before Roe v. Wade, abortion advocates argued that hard cases such as rape, incest, or severe fetal deformity justified more lenient abortion laws. They said we need to have these laws because of these extreme cases.

But 35 years later, abortion is deemed simply a matter of the mother’s private relative subjective preference, despite the fact that two human beings are involved in this matter. Things have declined to the point where bumper stickers say, don’t like abortion, don’t have one. How about, don’t like slavery, don’t own slaves?

The two cases are exactly parallel. If slavery is not a private issue, he says, then neither is abortion, since they both involve questions of the value of human lives. Folks, we couldn’t get by.

I’m not saying I would want to, but we couldn’t get by with a bumper sticker that says don’t like slavery, don’t have slaves. We couldn’t get by with that. And yet millions of people, even in Bible-believing churches, have bought into the idea that it’s acceptable to kill unborn children for whatever reason.

Now, I understand there are Christians that have varying views on this. Some may accept, in the case of the life of the mother, I don’t have a huge quarrel with them. I happen personally to believe that under no circumstances is it justified.

That’s my personal view on it. And that’s not just a man’s view. That’s my wife’s view as well.

She may be even more radical on the pro-life issue than I am. But I happen to believe, as the Bible teaches, that all life is a gift from God. Folks, that’s easy to say from the pulpit, but that includes the people that I don’t like.

And there are people out there I don’t like, not out there in this congregation, aren’t you glad? But there are people in the world that I just don’t especially care for. But you know what?

That doesn’t change the fact that they have value as human life. Folks, there’s nobody that’s not precious in God’s sight. What we’re going to talk about this morning is, as I said earlier, a little more than abortion.

It’s the biblical case for life as a whole. Because as we’ll talk about in a few minutes, the debate isn’t confined just to abortion. It’s confined to things like euthanasia.

That’s the taking of somebody else’s life, mercy killing, as some people would call it. And there are actually moves for both voluntary and involuntary euthanasia. I remember several years ago, around 2004, 2005, somewhere in there, I was in college, and I started at the University of Oklahoma, and I was surprised.

I took philosophy classes. I don’t know why I did that, but I did. I thought it sounded fun.

I took philosophy classes, and I was amazed on the first day of school to find out that there were professors who not only advocated abortion, but actually advocated you should be able to kill your children up to the age of 18, as they did back in ancient Rome. Now, if this were a less serious occasion, I might tell you that some days I see the wisdom in that. But the truth is, this is a serious matter, and it’s wrong.

It’s wrong to say, well, because they’re legally under your control, you should be able to kill them. Some days you might want to, but we don’t. And as we got further into this, I thought, it’s not just this one professor, because he was quoting And some of these professors were quoting one of the most influential philosophy professors in America from an Ivy League institution who said, yeah, you ought to be able to kill your children up to the age of 18.

I thought, okay, we’ve gone from a point where we’re just talking about the unborn to even born children don’t have tremendous value in some people’s view. Then there was the talk, if you get really sick or, you know, can’t help, can’t contribute to society, maybe they should have what they call suicide centers. I had a professor teach on this and advocate this in class.

Suicide centers where the family wouldn’t have to find you or clean anything up. You go there, you do what it is you need to do, and there are professionals that clean up, and it’s all just very neat. And that’s a way that people that are not valuable to society can just turn in their lives.

George Bernard Shaw, the famous playwright, I’ve seen him on video talking about everybody should every five years or so have to go before a board or a panel and justify their existence. And if they’re not producing as much as they consume or a little bit more, that they should be asked to turn in their lives. And I’ve heard fans of his say, well, it was satire.

He was making a joke. What an awful joke. I can’t see where, folks, I’ve read other things that he’s written and heard about some of his affiliations.

I can’t see where he was anything but serious in claiming that. And I remember in this first or second semester of college, as a youth worker, The youth at our church were throwing a dinner, a banquet for our senior saints. We called them the primetimers.

They were throwing a banquet for them and serving food one Friday night, and they had asked me to be the speaker, and I was so excited to go and speak in front of the older people. So I hadn’t gotten a whole lot of chances to do that. But then as it got closer, I thought, why was I excited?

Why did I agree to do this? I have no idea what I’m going to say to them. I have no idea why would they care to hear from me.

And I remember coming from a class, and I was sitting there at the student union the day it was supposed to happen, that Friday night, sitting in the student union working on homework, and at the same time thinking, what am I going to talk to them about? And reading a paragraph in one of my philosophy textbooks that talks about when people get to a certain age, they ought to just make room for everybody else in society and hand in their life. I ended up going that night to the church, to the banquet, and speaking to the older people.

And I read them, kind of shocked them a little bit. I read them the paragraph from that book without saying anything, without prefacing it beforehand, reading them that paragraph and then looking at them and then throwing the book on the ground and telling them that my Bible says everybody has value. The book I care about, what it says, says that everybody has value.

God’s Word, and talking to them about how God’s Word makes it clear there’s no room in the body of Christ for a generation gap. There’s no room in the body of Christ for hatred, fighting, division between generations, between races, between the sexes, between any of it. There’s no room in the body of Christ for that kind of division and separation when God has made it clear that every body has value and that Christ died for all of us.

Can we all get on the same page about that? Psalm chapter 139, starting in verse 1, says, O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me. Thou knowest my down-sitting and mine uprising.

Thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether.

Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high.

I cannot attain unto it. So what David starts out by saying is that God knows everything about him. When he sits down, when he stands up, God knows where he is.

God knows him. God knows all of his thoughts. God knew every word.

He was going to speak before he ever was born. And he says, such knowledge is too wonderful for me. I think that’s the King David equivalent of when I tell you something about like trying to wrap our minds around the Trinity or to wrap our minds around eternity, and if you think about it too long, it’ll give you a headache.

I think that’s David’s way of saying that. It’s too wonderful for me. I can’t think about it.

I can’t imagine it. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high I cannot attain unto it.

It’s something only God can understand, how he can know all of that. If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there. If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.

If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me, even the night shall be light about me. He says no matter where he goes, God’s hand is there protecting him and providing for him and leading him.

He says that if the darkness surrounds him, it’s like the light of noonday because God is there with him. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee, but the night shineth as the day. The darkness and light are both alike to thee.

You may be thinking at this point, if you’ve not read the rest of the passage, what in the world does this have to do with abortion? We’re setting the stage because up to this point, David’s been talking about God’s love for him, God’s care for him, God’s presence with him at all times. And he goes back at this point, starting in verse 13, and says it, and it didn’t just start here, your presence with me.

Verse 13, For thou hast possessed my reins, Thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb. That when he even was in his mother’s womb developing, God was there orchestrating the way he developed, the way he grew. God was there protecting him, watching over him, saying, Possessing my reins, that’s like a horse.

You take the reins, I’m not a horseman, but I think I understand that you take the reins and you can control which way the horse goes. Is that right? Okay, just making sure.

I thought that was right, but I want to make sure. God was in control of him. God knew him and God was in charge.

I will praise thee, verse 14, I will praise thee for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. He realized that he was a creation of God. Ladies and gentlemen, each and every one of us today are a creation of God.

Fearfully and wonderfully made. There may be days, and I’m sure there are days, when we don’t feel, when you don’t feel like you’re anything special. Remember that you’re fearfully and wonderfully made. That God made you specifically.

God made you with a purpose in mind. I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are thy works, and that my soul knoweth right well.

That what God has done is amazing. And David says, my soul knows that. My substance was not hid from thee when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.

Okay, we know, I’m assuming we all know, the genetic process, how babies develop, all of this stuff. Scientists can tell us, well, it takes place here, such and such chemical, and such and such cell, and all these things, and replication, and all these processes. but as I learned when we started having kids, there’s a lot doctors don’t know.

They can explain the mechanics of it and the cells down to the cellular level, but they’re still not sure why some cells work and some cells don’t. They’re still not sure why. I’ve had a doctor tell us, I’ve had an obstetrician tell us that the body, for some reason, processes in the body actually fight pregnancy, and that’s why a lot of times there are miscarriages and before the women even know they’re pregnant.

And she said it is a miracle that there’s even a human species at all. So, doctor told me this. It is a miracle that any of us survive in the womb at all.

And folks, when you say miracle to me, I can’t picture anything else that makes that work other than God. They don’t even understand why and how and all that. We can walk through the mechanics of it, but when you get right down to it, why certain cells act the way they do.

And how the cells know to replicate. Because you start with two cells, and they divide into four. And they divide into eight, and they divide into 16.

And before you know it, you’ve got a full human being. How the cells know to do that, how all of that, folks, we don’t know. For all of our learning, we don’t completely understand how the tiny little cells know to do that.

And yet not a bit of it is a mystery from God. And what he says here, my substance was not hid from thee in secret. My substance was not hid from thee when I was made in secret and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.

When he came to be and we don’t understand the process, this curious process, he said even then he was not a mystery from God. Even then when he was just, as the world would say, a collection of cells, God knew who he was. Can you imagine that?

Probably not. It’s too wonderful. The knowledge is too high for us, as David said.

But folks, when we were just a couple of cells, God already knew who we were. God already knew who you were going to be. Now, I’m not saying he made all the decisions for you, that everything was predetermined, But I’m saying God knew who you were.

Possibly before your mother even knew you existed, God knew who you were. My substance was not hid from thee when I was made in secret and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect.

God, you saw me before I was perfect. And when he says perfect, he means complete. That God knew us before there were fingers and toes and eyes and all those things that develop.

I don’t know, I guess when I was a child, I thought the baby started out as a full baby, but just very small and got bigger. But as we’ve had kids, Christian would always go onto this website where you could put in your due date, and it would walk you through week by week, and you could see pictures and drawings of how the baby developed. And she would tell us this week, okay, the baby’s the size of a pea.

The baby’s the size of a kumquat. Oh, this week it grew eyelashes. What, you mean it didn’t have eyelashes to start with?

No. This week it has a heartbeat. This week it has toenails.

It’s incredible that before even everything was there, God knew the child. God knew me before I had fingernails and eyelashes and fingers and eyes to put those fingernails and eyelashes on. And God knew you.

Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect. And in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them. And God had, he talks about his members.

A lot of times that means the appendages. so the body parts, God had recorded all of them, what they were to be when they were still in the process of forming. Folks, this really is one of those things that if you think about it too hard, I mean, think about it, but don’t think about it too hard.

It’ll give you a migraine to know that God knew all of this before we were anything. How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God, how great is the sum of them. David was able, and I probably didn’t do the reading of that justice.

You’ll notice there are exclamation points here, two places in that verse. David cries out, in thankfulness to God and in gratefulness to God as only someone can do who knows how precious he is to God. To realize that God loved us enough, that God oversaw our formation, God knew who we were going to be and loved us even then, and folks, God knew us even before we were.

It’s not that we became two selves and God said, oh, there’s somebody new, I’ll have to check this out. God knew who we were before then, but that God, the creator of the universe, would give such attention to oversee our formation and our development and would know us and love us even then. It’s hard not to feel a little bit special when you’re that loved by the creator of the universe.

And he says, how precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God. And David’s realization here that if God loved him and God valued him when he was nothing more than a few selves, if he was valuable to God when he was still in the womb, how much, why would he think any less now? That if he could trust God to oversee his formation and development when he was in the womb.

He could trust God to be with him now. And ladies and gentlemen, same God who oversaw our formation and development in the womb, the same God who knew us and loved us then, we can trust to know us and love us still and to have his hand in our lives, directing us, guiding us, and protecting us. How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God.

And he says, and how great is the sum of them. It’s not just that God thinks about you once every couple weeks. God’s thoughts of us are numerous.

How great is the sum of them. If I should count them. Again, he’s talking about God’s thoughts toward us.

They are more in number than the sand, and when I awake, I am still with thee. And we’ll look at another passage in a minute, but hopefully this begins to give us some idea, if we didn’t have one already, of how precious human beings are to God. And we can see from this passage as well that God created human life.

God created human life in his own image. When he says in verse 14, I am fearfully and wonderfully made, marvelous are thy works and that my soul knoweth right well. Folks, we’re not just made, we’re fearfully and wonderfully made.

And the Bible makes it clear that that fearfully and wonderfully part, that comes in as a result of being created in the image of God. You know, I thought it just said it in there once, let us make man in our own image. What is that?

Genesis chapter, that’s Genesis chapter 1. No, it’s in there several times, not to mention the times where he, where God puts it down and alludes to it and says, you know, we’re going to create him like us or something like that, and doesn’t actually use the words my own image. But Genesis chapter 1, verses 26 and 27, saying, God said, let us make man in our own image.

After our likeness, let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. God didn’t create everything equally. I believe God created all men equal, but God didn’t create everything equally.

God created the fish and the birds and the land animals and, as we like to say back home, the sea critters and the land critters and the air critters. God created all of those things. But only man did he create in his own image.

Now, I don’t know that that means physical image. It might. But I know God is a spirit.

And what I believe it means is that he created us in his image spiritually. Again, could mean physically as well, but I believe it’s talking about spiritually. He breathed the breath of life into us and we became a living soul.

Folks, we have a spiritual life that the rest of the plant and animal world doesn’t have. We have a knowledge and understanding of God that the rest of the created world doesn’t have. We are unique within God’s creation.

We, for a simple reason, that we were created in His image to fellowship with Him and love Him forever. That’s why we were created. That’s why He created us the way He did.

He could have very easily created us to be like the dogs or the birds or the cats. Folks, I love my dogs. I’ve told you that before.

I’ve talked about my dogs. My dogs have no idea. My dogs have no idea who God is.

My dogs have no idea that Jesus Christ died on the cross. My dogs have no knowledge of sin. They know there’s right and wrong, I guess, because they understand that if they make a mess in the house, they’re going to get a spanking.

So they’ve kind of understood some ideas of right and wrong, but as far as sin, they have no idea. God created us in his image as a moral agent to love him and have a relationship with him. He didn’t need us within the Trinity.

You’ll notice in Genesis chapter 1, it says, Let us make man in our own image. Some very smart people have said that means, maybe it was aliens. No, folks, no. God said, Let us make man in our own image because it was Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Within the Trinity, three persons and one God, or one God and three persons, there was unity and there was perfect fellowship. God wasn’t lonely. He didn’t need anybody else.

And yet God desired someone who would love him and worship him and have a relationship with him. Now that sounds to us self-centered. Oh, I’m going to create somebody so they can love me and worship me.

But folks, when you’re worthy of all the love and worship and adoration, it’s not selfish. See, he’s worthy of it. And he created us in his own image so we could know him and love him and have a relationship with him.

It says in Genesis 9-6, a few chapters later, Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed. For in the image of God made he man. It says it again that we were created in the image of God.

1 Corinthians, for as much as he is the image and glory of God, speaking of man, but the woman is the glory of man. James 3, verse 9 says, Therefore, bless we God, even the Father, and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God. And what he’s talking about there is how we ought not to, with one mouth, praise God, and on the other hand, curse men.

He’s talking about the tongue here, but he makes the very important statement there again in James that we are created in the image of God. And so it makes no sense to bless God with our mouths and with the same mouth, curse men who are made in the image of God. All throughout the Bible, you will find the principle that we are created in God’s image.

We are distinct from the rest of creation. And that leads us to the, well, God created us in his image. That makes mankind special, not as special as God, not as important as God, but definitely makes us important, and that’s the reason why God forbids the taking of innocent life.

God forbids the taking of innocent life. That’s the innocent human life. That’s the next blank in your bulletin.

God forbids the taking of innocent human life. He doesn’t allow human life to be taken without just cause. Throughout the Bible, even in the Old Testament, where it talks about the death penalty, and it talks about for this crime and for that crime, it’s always because somebody has committed a crime worthy of it.

That’s why I say innocent human life. And I don’t mean innocent in the sense of morally innocent, you know, blameless before God, we’re perfect, sinless, that kind of thing. If that were the case, none of us are innocent human life.

What I’m talking about is innocence of any crime that God has said is worthy of the taking of life. And again, he created us. He created us in his own image, so he gets to set up the ground rules here.

That’s part of why it’s so important that we’re created in the image of God. Why does anybody care what God says or what the Bible says about human life? And that charge will be leveled at us.

You know, oh, you’re just Bible thumpers. You know, you can’t bring that into the debate about it. Folks, we absolutely can because God created it.

God created us in his own image, and God has the absolute say in what’s done. And God says, you’re created in my own image, do certain things, and he forbids the taking of innocent life. Now, there were certain crimes that God allowed life to be taken for.

He allowed it to be taken for murder. in some instances, rape, and some different instances. It’s spelled out throughout the Old Testament law.

But it’s always in accordance with his word. If he hasn’t said this is one of the conditions and we take a life, we’re breaking God’s law. And the reason why he said it could be taken under these conditions is because if you’ve got somebody going around murdering and you don’t do something to stop it, they’re just going to keep on murdering, is the thought process behind it.

But he tells us, he tells us in Proverbs chapter 6, if you’d like to turn there with me for a moment, and then we’ll be back to Psalm 139. Proverbs chapter 6, starting in verse 16, These things doth the Lord hate, yea, seven are an abomination to him, a proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, a false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among the brethren. The part I really want you to focus in there on there is in verse 17, that one of the things that God hates are hands that shed innocent blood.

God says, I don’t want you to take innocent life. He tells us in Exodus chapter 20 in the Ten Commandments, thou shalt not kill. And some people have taken that and said, well, what about animals?

What about killing for food? What about this? What about that?

And what the Hebrew word actually is there is murder. And what he’s telling us is thou shalt not murder. Do not take innocent human life.

Again, the verse we looked at a minute ago in Genesis chapter 9, I think I said Genesis chapter 6 earlier, but it’s Genesis 9, 6. Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed. For in the image of God made he man.

God said, don’t take innocent life. God said, do not take innocent human life. If they have not committed a crime worthy of the death penalty, do not take their life.

Because if you do, it’s a violation of God’s law, and it’s sin. You say, well, what about this death penalty that God imposed? And to be honest with you, my wife and I have discussed this at length, New Testament, Old Testament.

I have varying mixed emotions and thoughts on the death penalty. But what God has said here, it’s not just a bloody system where he’s got an eye for an eye. It says an eye for an eye, but what we think of an eye for an eye, where people are just killing each other back and forth.

In Deuteronomy 17, 6, he says, At the mouth of two witnesses or three witnesses, shall he that is worthy of death be put to death. But at the mouth of one witness, he shall not be put to death. God was so concerned about the value of innocent human life that even when they’ve got somebody on trial for these crimes that are worthy of death, he said if it’s just one witness, you can’t put them to death.

If Brother Ted said he saw me kill somebody down the block, it would not be enough under God’s Old Testament law for me to be put to death because the concern there is what if I’m innocent? God didn’t want them just going and killing people willy-nilly. No, it would have to be.

Brother Ted would have to see me. Brother Daryl would have to see me. Maybe Brother Joe would have to see me.

But God was always concerned that innocent life not be taken. That was always God’s concern. And for us as Christians, we should stand against the taking of innocent human life.

Again, I don’t mean sinless or we’d all be in trouble. But the taking of innocent life is not something that we as God’s people can in good conscience get behind. Folks, that extends to abortion, first of all.

And I know some people who will say, certainly it’s innocent life. They’re born with a sin nature, but they haven’t been outside the womb to break any laws. I’ve never