Life Is Sacred

We’ve been having some trouble with our satellite television lately, and the problem has necessitated a couple of long, troubleshooting phone calls with the folks at Dish TV support.

I don’t know if you’ve had the pleasure of trying to decipher the instructions given to you by a thickly-accented foreigner while your family is staring at you and waiting for you to finish so dinner can be served.

Well, if you’ve never had this experience, then let me NOT recommend it.

Complicating things even further was the fact that our main DISH receiver is located UPstairs, and the connected device that was causing our problems is DOWNstairs.

So, for every attempted reset (“Have you unplugged the machine and plugged it back in?”), I had to go upstairs and flip a switch and then back DOWNstairs to flip another switch and then back UPstairs to see what lights were lit on the receiver, and then back downstairs…

It was a rough night, and as you can tell, I’m still not quite over it.

In the end, nobody knows why things stopped working. But then, they started working on their own again the next day, and nobody knows why THAT happened, either.

Which got me thinking about something that’s occupied a little piece of my mind for a long time: Isn’t it weird how things just stop working all of a sudden?

One moment, everything’s fine, and you’re watching a home renovation show on television. The next, all you’ve got is a black screen. One evening, the car was running fine on the way home from work. The next morning, it just won’t start.

One day, the washing machine is merrily churning all your dirty clothes clean. And then, the next week, it won’t even fill with water.

Of course, this isn’t rocket science. It’s not all that hard to figure out. Gaskets wear out. Belts break. Switches get stuck in the wrong position.

Indeed, a lot of manmade things in our throwaway culture have failure built IN to them; they’re designed to work for only a limited time so you’ll have to go out and buy a replacement.

Nonetheless, I’ve always been fascinated by the idea that there is a moment — a point of no return — between something that works and something that’s broken.

And in the moment just on the other side of that point of no return, whatever it is that broke goes from being perfectly fit to the purpose for which it was made to something that might LOOK like what it is but is unable to do that which it was made to do.

It wasn’t long before I realized that the same things I was pondering about the tools and machines that break are also true of us when we pass from this life.

One moment, the body is working as ever. Perhaps it’s straining, showing signs of age and hard wear. But the pumps are still pumping, and the electricity’s flowing. And then, it’s not.

And in that moment, the surviving loved ones begin a lifetime of assessing the hole that’s been left in their lives and being surprised at how much larger that hole seems now than it did before.

Human beings have had at least thousands of years to come to grips with death. But we’re still surprised by its abruptness. And we’re still crushed by its finality.

No matter how well-prepared we think we might be, the death of a loved one is a life-changing, faith-shaking event that we cannot fully understand. It just feels … wrong.

And it’s hard for us to reconcile ourselves to the fact that the person who was so full of life so recently is now lifeLESS.

And here’s the thing: All this is true, whether or not we understand whatever CAUSED the death, whether it happened suddenly or over a period of time, whether we’ve developed a theological understanding of death or not.

The heartbreak, the confusion, the anger, the sense of loss — these emotions are universal for survivors of the deceased.

Regardless of culture, national heritage, geography, religion, sexual orientation, or any of the many other ways we try to identify ourselves, we all have the same responses to the loss of a loved one.

Now there’s any number of reasons that this is true, and many of those reasons are straightforwardly obvious.

But this morning, I want to suggest to you that one of the biggest reasons we’re so shaken by death is that things were never supposed to be this way.

Contrary to all those who say, it’s just part of the cycle of life, death has nothing to do with life. We weren’t made for death. Indeed, we were created by the God who IS life FOR life.

And today, as we mark Sanctity of Life Sunday, along with churches around the nation, we’re going to look at what makes life sacred and talk a bit about why this church works so hard to support the Crisis Pregnancy Center.

But first, let’s look at the statistics. According to estimates from the National Right to Life Center, there were more than 65 million legal abortions in the United States between 1973, when Roe v. Wade made abortion legal across the nation, and 2019, the last year for which data was available.

In 2017, there were 18.4 abortions per 100 pregnancies in the U.S., meaning nearly 20 percent of the babies that women carried were killed before they could be born.

And don’t think that the reversal of Roe V. Wade has stopped this assault on babies. The pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute reported just last week that abortion, which had been trending downward since the 90s, has actually increased each year since 2020.

Guttmacher and other abortion proponents want us to believe that abortion is an intensely personal decision that gives women power and control over their bodies.

But what does the Bible tell us about it? Why IS human life sacred?

To answer that, we’re going to take a tour through Scripture today, starting back at the beginning, in the Book of Genesis.

And the first thing I want you to see from the creation account of chapters 1 and 2 is that human life proceeds from God, and it does so in an intensely personal manner. Look at chapter 2, verse 7.

Genesis 2:7 NASB95

7 Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

When God created the plants and birds and cattle and fish and all the other living things with which He populated the Earth, He simply spoke them into existence.

“Then God said, ‘Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens.’”

That’s how Moses describes some of the work God did on the fourth day of creation. And that’s how all the other days looked, too. God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

But then, when we get to the sixth day, God does something different. He FORMS Adam from the dust of the ground.

The Hebrew word that’s translated as “formed” here has the sense of an artist carefully and lovingly molding his creation.

And if that’s not personal enough, we see that Adam then comes alive when He receives the breath of life from God Himself.

Adam and Eve were special to God, and every one of you here today is special to Him, too. The Apostle Paul told the philosophers in Athens that God continues to give to all people “life and breath and all things.”

We’re special to God. We’re precious to God. So much so that He made us in His own image. So much so that Jesus reminded the worriers who were listening to His Sermon on the Mount that God has placed a high value on their lives.

But just when do we become valued by God? In political and philosophical circles, this question is stated differently: When do we become HUMAN and thus attain to the basic rights of all humans, including the right to live? In other words, when are you a PERSON?

There’ve been many different answers to that question throughout modern times. Should we consider the baby whose heart beats at 3 weeks to be a person? What about at 6 weeks, when brain waves can be measured? What about at 9 weeks, when the baby can be seen moving around on ultrasound?

Whatever answer the lost world wants to give to this question to justify killing babies in the womb, we who follow Jesus in faith and are therefore citizens of the Kingdom of God — our desire should be to understand God’s perspective on the matter.

King David, the man after God’s own heart, had some interesting and enlightening thoughts on this matter, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit lines that you’ll surely recognize from the 139th Psalm.

Psalm 139:13–16 NASB95

13 For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb. 14 I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well. 15 My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth; 16 Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Your book were all written The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them.

Of course, we don’t see anything there about heartbeats, brain waves, or ultrasound scans. And this is poetry, so we wouldn’t be surprised to see the language of metaphor used to describe things David couldn’t possibly have known about.

So, let’s look at what God Himself says to the prophet Jeremiah in the first chapter of that book of prophecy.

Jeremiah 1:5 NASB95

5 “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.”

There’s three things I want you to notice in this verse.

First, God says HE formed (there’s that word again) Jeremiah in his mother’s womb. What this tells me is that there may be unPLANNED pregnancies, but there are no accidental pregnancies.

God knows you, and He’s known you all along. And He still remains active in the creation of new life, although the presence of sin and death in the world mean that none of us is born with the perfect health and eternal longevity God intended.

The second thing to notice is that God says He KNEW Jeremiah even before the sperm and egg came together to form Jeremiah’s first cell.

This doesn’t simply mean that God was aware Jeremiah’s father and mother would have a son some day. The Hebrew word for “know” here suggests and intensely personal knowledge.

God knew the kind of person Jeremiah would grow up to BE. Before Jeremiah had even been conceived, God knew what his strengths and weaknesses would be. He knew the sins Jeremiah would struggle against and those he’d ignore.

In that Psalm we talked about a few minutes ago, David spends some time pondering both the omniscience and omnipresence of God.

He realizes that he is fully known by God, that there’s nothing and nowhere he could hide from the God who knew him before he’d even been formed in the womb.

That was a comfort to David. But to the lost world, the fact that there’s nothing they can hide from God is something that sticks in their craw.

Indeed, the latest trend among abortion proponents is to take shame completely out of the equation. “Shout your abortion,” they say, encouraging women who’ve had abortions to proclaim what they’ve done on social media.

I guess we’ve moved from abortion being a matter between a woman and her doctor to it being a matter of prideful public discourse.

And let me encourage you to go home today and read Romans, chapter 1. What you’ll see is that this is JUST the kind of thing we should expect when people have rejected God.

But even those who’ve rejected God are known by Him. And if you’ll look back at that verse from Jeremiah, the last thing I want you to see there is that God has a plan for each one of us.

God tells Jeremiah that he was consecrated and appointed as a prophet to the nations before Jeremiah was born.

Now, Jeremiah could have refused the calling of God. He could have rejected God altogether. But that wouldn’t change the fact that God had a plan for him.

65 million babies lost. How many cancer cures were lost with them? How many preachers of the gospel? How many inventors and teachers and politicians and plumbers? How many fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters? How many poets and composers and sculptors?

Now, God’s plans aren’t thwarted by our disobedience, even to the point of 65 million abortions. But I would suggest to you that, in the interconnected world in which we live, all of humanity suffers to some degree when human life is held with such callous disregard.

Why do we support the Crisis Pregnancy Center and its work to end abortion in Hampton Roads? Why do we mark this “Sanctity of Life Sunday”?

We do this, because we are citizens of the Kingdom of God and therefore should have values that align with God’s values.

And God values human life. It came from God. He created Adam and Eve and breathed life into them and continues to sustain us with His breath.

We value human life, because it is precious to God. He forms each one of us, He knows us completely, and He has plans for us.

We value human life, because we were created by the God who IS life. We value human life, including the lives of unborn babies, because Scripture tells us that children are a gift from God.

And we continue to pray for the day when abortion will no longer be considered as an option to pregnancy.

But I want to talk for a moment before we close to those here today who’ve had a more personal experience with abortion. There’s no doubt in my mind that there are women here who’ve had abortions and that there are men here who’ve been the reason other women have had abortions.

Let me tell you this: God loves you. He always has. Your abortion wasn’t a surprise to Him. And yet, He loved you then, and He loves you now.

Abortion is, indeed, a great sin. But there’s no sin so great that you cannot be forgiven for it.

King David was a murderer and an adulterer. But God loved him and called him a man after His own heart.

That wasn’t because David HAD the heart of God. If he did, he wouldn’t have sinned as he did. What it meant was that David was ever STRIVING for God’s heart.

He repented for his sins, and he turned to God in faith that God would forgive Him.

The same thing is true for every one of us here. Whatever our sins — whether abortion or lying or gossiping or lust or whatever — Jesus gave Himself as a sacrifice at the cross so they could be forgiven.

The sinless Son of God gave His life at Calvary, taking upon Himself your sins and mine — along with the guilt and shame — suffering the punishment that we all deserve for rebelling against God — so that all who follow Him in faith can be saved and have eternal life — life everlasting in the presence of and in fellowship with the triune God.

If you’ve placed your faith in Jesus, then your sins — even abortion — have been forgiven. He already paid the price. He took the punishment you deserve. He suffered the shame and guilt of our unrighteousness so we could stand before God clothed in HIS righteousness.

But if you’ve never turned to Him in faith — if you’ve never repented of your sins and turned your life over to Him as your Lord and Savior, then your sins are still your own, and the penalty for them is yours to bear.

The God who IS life sent His own Son to die and rise again so that WE might have life in Him.

Abortion is just one aspect of the culture of death that pervades this nation. We’re fascinated by it, and we even celebrate it in movies and television and social media posts where women “shout their abortion.”

But you were made for LIFE. Won’t you accept that gift today?