Now is the Time: To treasure and protect life

Text: Psalm 139:13-18

Next week I want to encourage you to be here.

The rhetoric of those who oppose and hate Christianity is heating up in an effort to get Christians to go away.

Maybe fall-away is more accurate.

Those who are

not reading (and studying) their Bibles,

not praying,

not attending discipleship (yes, I know it is hard — but it is more important than ever!)

and not regularly (as in 3 out of 4 Sundays a month) attending at least morning worship.

Are in severe danger by all of the opposition that is directed against those who believe in Jesus.

Failing at getting us to fall away, they (the devil and his crowd) will be slightly appeased if we will just sit down and shut up.

As illustrated by what we are doing at 2 pm, the Life Chain, we will not do it.

We are going to keep praying.

We’re going to continue to be visible in the workplace, in the schools, in our neighborhoods.

We’re going to keep standing up for Biblical values at school board meetings, in the voting booth and in every media outlet we can get on.

Because the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:13-16 echo in our heart and mind:

Matthew 5:13–16 (NASB95) “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men. 14 “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; 15 nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. 16 “Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.

Jesus, please don’t let the impurities of the world cause my salt to be tasteless and useless.

Don’t let the darkness of this world encroach on Your light shining through me.

So next week I want to encourage us to do what Jesus and the apostles told us to do over and over — it was a theme they spoke about on a regular basis: we must persevere, we must hold on!

Now’s the time: To Hold On!

But this week, as we think about the issues of the day.

As we think about the culture that surrounds us.

We realize it is a culture of death.

49 years of Federally mandated abortion has taken a huge toll on our culture.

Media, including extremely realistic video games, now COMPLETELY immersive through virtual reality, relentlessly bombards us with violence has desensitized us.

So, Now’s the time to proclaim life, to defend life.

To stand against abortion, infanticide, assisted suicide, war and murder.

Because the Bible clearly tells us that God Values Human Life

Jesus says very clearly in: John 14:6 (NASB95) Jesus said … , “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.

Our nation has strayed from God as its center, and in doing so it has become insensitive to the leading of the Spirit and has lost its value of human life.

Many people have apparently become numb to violence, killing, and murder because of desensitization by television and media.

However, the greatest contributor to our lack of value for human life is the problem of our own self-centeredness; as rearing a child is often deemed too inconvenient.

Life is something that is valued by our God for He created life,

And it is especially valued by God’s Son, Jesus Christ, for Jesus gave His own life as a sacrifice on the cross that we might live eternally.

All human life is valuable to the Lord, no matter what age a person may be, no matter what social class you are from, no matter what skin color you may have, no matter how much or how little money you may have and no matter what gender you are.

You are valuable to God.

We especially emphasize protecting unborn children on this Life Chain Sunday, because this is the greatest area in which we see human life being devalued.

This morning we are going to focus on the value of the unborn child to God, and we are going to look at how abortion is a very serious offense committed before the Lord.

May God help us to stand against the lies of the abortion crowd.

Lies like Stacey Abrams told week before last when she said:

'There Is No Such Thing as a Heartbeat at 6 Weeks,' Says Stacey Abrams

Ben Johnson reports that...

Stacey Abrams, the Democratic candidate for governor of Georgia, denied that unborn children have a heartbeat at six weeks and that the ultrasound is part of a grand conspiracy to give men control over women's bodies - statements that run contrary to well-established facts and medical standards of fetal development.

Johnson tells us that medical experts and scientists say:

If the definition of “heartbeat” is cardiac tissue contracting to pump blood through the circulatory system, then the answer is an emphatic “yes,” unborn babies have a heartbeat at six weeks. The fetal heart begins as a tube, which contracts to pump blood as early as 22 days and begin circulating blood at week four, but it is not detectable by an ultrasound until six weeks. The heart’s four chambers develop at week seven.

We must stand against the lies Stacy Abrams tells and that she and all the other pro-abortion expect even Christians to support.

We will not!

Too Many Deaths!

This country has seen its share of casualties, but the number of deaths that have resulted from abortion is appalling.

Listen closely as I read the number of casualties that have occurred in all of our country’s wars, and as I compare them to the deaths that have been a result of abortion.

There were 25,324 American casualties in the Revolutionary War;

498,332 during the Civil War;

407,316 during WW II;

54,246 during the Korean War;

56,655 during the Vietnam War;

293 during the Gulf War;(5)

and nearly 7000 in the War on Terror.

The “War on the Unborn” has caused over 60 million deaths since abortion was legalized in 1973 -

SIX times the number of casualties in all U.S. wars combined.

The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the nation's oldest pro-life organization, estimates that 63,459,781 abortions have taken place since 1973.

That estimate was gathered by tracking data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Guttmacher Institute, which previously served as a research arm of the nation's preeminent abortion provider, Planned Parenthood.

It is evident that our country has lost its value on human life, especially the life of a child.

A wise person once said, “It seems that all of the people who favor abortion have already been born.”

Imagine that!

But they don’t want others to share in life — how utterly selfish!

The Lord Despises the Killing of Children

God’s Word tells us in

Exodus 21:22–25 (NASB95) “If men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she gives birth prematurely, yet there is no injury, he shall surely be fined as the woman’s husband may demand of him, and he shall pay as the judges decide. 23 “But if there is any further injury, [if the baby dies] then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.

The Lord makes it very clear that the killing of an unborn child is a serious crime punishable by death.

If someone caused a premature birth and the baby lived, he would be punished according to the husband and the courts, and likely his life would be spared;

but if the baby was born prematurely and died then the man who caused the death would be executed.

People today are still punished for killing a baby.

If a woman is harmed and loses her baby prematurely, the perpetrator of harm to a pregnant woman can be sent to prison for manslaughter.

And yet, in many states, a woman has the law to back her up if she decides to abort her baby.

Thank God that it is no longer a federal mandate with the overturning of Roe v Wade.

Exodus 21:22 is the only place in the Bible in which abortion is spelled out and condemned, but other places speak of the great value placed on children.

In reference to offering child sacrifices,

Leviticus 18:21 (NASB95) ‘You shall not give any of your offspring to offer them to Molech, nor shall you profane the name of your God; I am the LORD.

Deuteronomy 12:31 (NASB95) “You shall not behave thus toward the LORD your God, for every abominable act which the LORD hates they have done for their gods; for they even burn their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods.

Abortion clinics and research facilities are committing the very same crime that the Lord spoke against here.

They are actively deceiving young mothers into having an abortion by telling them lies about their child and about the options after a baby is born.

They are actively deceiving them for the sale of money.

These abortionists are killing our children and sacrificing them to a god.

The god they worship is the god of money.

We read in 1 Timothy 6:10 that “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”

Abortion clinics have been selling fetal tissue and body parts for stem cell research and for other uses in the medical field and they make a great profit from this.(8)

We read in the Bible that after King Solomon’s reign, when Israel began worshiping foreign gods and committing such abominations as sacrificing their children, that the Lord allowed Israel to be taken over by Assyria in 721 B.C.

Later when the Israelites had not learned their lesson, He allowed them to be taken into captivity by Babylon in 587 B.C.

If we keep sacrificing our children to the god of money then the Lord may allow our country to fall as well.

God Knows Us and Makes Us for a Purpose (Jeremiah 1:5)

Jeremiah 1:5 (NASB95) “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, And before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

Jeremiah was not somebody special that God knew him even before He formed him in the womb.

Just like us Jeremiah was an ordinary person.

Like every one of us — appointed by God to a purpose.

Created on purpose for a purpose.

Even the child conceived through rape or incest will find purpose through our God who redeems the evil and turns it to good.

We hear people argue that we are not taking a human life when a child is aborted, because technically a child is not alive until after it leaves the womb.

It has not yet achieved a state of personhood; the point at which it is conscience of its surroundings and its own existence.

God however views each of us as a complete person, a human being, long before we were ever conceived.

Not only did the Lord reveal this to Jeremiah, but He revealed it to Isaiah.

In Isaiah 49:1 we read, “The Lord has called Me from the womb; from the matrix of My mother He has made mention of My name.”

As we look at Jeremiah 1:5 more closely we that:

The Hebrew word here for our English word “formed” is (yaw·TSAR).

It is a word that is used by potters when they mold and shape their clay into a particular shape, like when they pour it into a mold.

It means to squeeze into a predetermined shape. God’s Word here in Jeremiah is telling us that before God formed us, shaped us, and brought us into existence - He knew us.

God told the prophet He “knew” him long before he was conceived in his mother’s womb.

The Hebrew verb used in this verse for “to know” is yaw·DAH, which conveys great meaning in the Old Testament.

It goes far deeper than mere intellectual knowledge and awareness.

Yada means personal commitment and intimate experience with the person known.

Yada is most readily used for the intimate union between husband and wife, as in Genesis 4:1.

The fact that God not only knew Jeremiah, but knew him and was involved in a personal way with him before he was conceived tells us something today.

This means that God knew each of us sitting here today intimately before we were even a twinkle in our mother’s eye.

He not only knew us then, but He valued us and loved us as part of His future creation!(11)

If God loved us and valued us as human beings before our conception, then He also values us as worthy of life while in the womb.

Anyone who denies that a fetus or human embryo is a living human being is only fooling themselves.

We are viewed by God as human beings long before our conception and especially while in the womb, so it is nothing less than murder when we kill these innocent children.

And since the Lord says that He ordained Jeremiah as a prophet before he was even born, doesn’t it stand to reason that we are killing the future spiritual leaders of the world whenever we abort a child?

We are, no doubt, missing out on the fullness that God intends for His people because our country is killing God’s future prophets and preachers.

We are killing teachers, scientists, missionaries, inspirational leaders of all kinds.

And our nation is all the poorer for it!

God Saw Us as Special in Our Mother’s Womb (Psalm 139:13-16)

Looking at our text:

Psalm 139:13–17 (NLT) You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. 15 You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. 16 You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. 17 How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered!

God knows us and cares about our life as we are formed in our mother’s womb.

God says that each human life is “knit” together.

The Hebrew word here is sakak and literally means to fence in, and to weave.

God literally weaves us together in our mother’s womb.

And lest someone think that this is of little significance to an almighty, all powerful God, where He could just set the process in motion and then back away to let nature take its course, just look at verse 14:

King David, the Psalmist, declares we are fearfully and wonderfully made.

When it says here that we are fearfully made it means that we are made in an awesome way, a way too beautiful, too complex, too supernatural to be anything but [incredible]!

We also read in verse 16 that before we were even a recognizable form in our mother’s womb that God had written all the days of our lives in a book.

God saw us as being special in our mother’s womb, and He saw us as having value in life even before we were born.

The Lord sees even the smallest embryo as a living, breathing human being.

Time of Reflection

It is my hope this morning that we have come to see that even though our country places little value on human life, especially the life of an unborn child, that God cherishes human life.

As I said earlier, life is something that is valued by our God

for He created life,

and it is especially valued by God's Son, Jesus Christ,

for Jesus gave His own life as a sacrifice on the cross that we might live.

God’s love for us and how much He values us is unfathomable.

God loved us so much that He gave us life.

He even sacrificed the life of His own Son so that those who believe in Him might have “eternal life.”

Since this grace and mercy of God has been shown to us, we should be willing to share this mercy with the lives of others.

We need to learn to respect life, because God cares for ours.

The problem with many people who favor abortion is that they have not experienced God's love for themselves. If they have not known love then how can they return it to others?

Norma McCorvey, who was “Jane Roe” in the 1973 Supreme Court case Roe vs. Wade that legalized abortion, accepted Christ as Lord and Savior and was baptized on August 8, 1995.

Before she died in 2017, she said, “I think abortion’s wrong. I think what I did with Roe vs. Wade was wrong … ”(14)

Norma McCorvey finally knew and experienced the love of Jesus Christ for herself.

Because she was loved, she was able to reciprocate that love to others.

I want to ask you if you have experienced the love of Jesus Christ in your own life.

If you haven’t then I wish to invite you to know the One who gave His life that you might have it.

Jesus tells us that He came to give us a life more abundant than anything we have ever known. I invite you to come today, and receive life.

Influenced by sermon by Boomer Phillips: God Values Human Life on Sep 11, 2021

Scripture: Jeremiah 1:5, Psalms 139:13-16 Denomination: Baptist

Summary: This message addresses the topic of abortion by looking at two key passages that reveal how God cherishes human life even before conception in the womb. It was written for "Sanctity of Life Sunday" back in 2003.