Sermon Tone Analysis

FEARFULLY AND WONDERFULLY MADE   PSALM 139:13-18

 

 

            We are just four days away from the thirty-sixth anniversary of the most barbaric legislation that has ever been decided by the U. S. Supreme Court.

It is /Roe V. Wade/, which legalized abortion on January 22, 1973.

The Court ruled that an unborn child is neither a human nor a person, and therefore is not protected under the Constitution.

A fetus, not seen as a separate entity in itself, merely functions as a part of the mother’s body.

The Court also conferred the decision for two other reasons: a woman’s right to privacy included her right to terminate a pregnancy, and the states’ interest in unborn life is not sufficient enough to outlaw abortion.

The child, labeled as “potential life,” does not require the government to protect its one chance to live.

Also in 1973, the Supreme Court ruled in Doe v. Bolton to allow for abortions when the “health” of the mother is jeopardized.

Loosely defined, the “health” of the mother can refer to anything from depression and emotional well being to the age or marital difficulties of the mother.

This case also allows abortions to be performed in clinics, instead of hospitals.

In 1992, the Court upheld the right to an abortion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, but the ruling significantly weakened the core of Roe v. Wade by requiring counseling to women and a mandatory 24-hour waiting period after this counseling, as well as public files of all abortion providers, including ones that receive state funds.

Most recently, Stenberg v. Carhart (2000) upheld partial-birth abortions as a viable option for women seeking to terminate their pregnancy.

As a result of this ruling, over 40 million abortions have been performed in the United States alone.

Every 20 seconds in America, a baby is torn from its mother’s womb and discarded; about 1.4 million unborn babies are aborted every year in the U.S., not to mention the 40 to 60 million children (one every half second) aborted each year worldwide.

Along with these astounding statistics, the abortion industry has “birthed” critical, new issues to consider in its wake.

Many opponents of abortion see a ban on partial birth abortion as a doorway to ending the infanticide, and so continue to push for its acceptance.

While 31 states enforce parental consent or notification laws for minors seeking abortions, these laws may be overridden by a court order, allowing young teenage girls to suffer through the consequences of their choices in isolation.

And while federal money purportedly is not used to support abortions, taxpayers have supplied Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the country, with 1.6 billion dollars since 1987.

Abortion also jeopardizes a woman’s health in an unnatural and cruel way.

Nearly 70,000 women die each year from abortions.

Underlying the physical danger, the emotional and mental health concerns surrounding abortion threaten women and their futures.

Many women, plagued by guilt, insecurity, or depression from an abortion, never fully recover from their decision.

Also to be considered in the 21st century, the introduction of RU-486, the “morning after” abortion pill, allows women to further remove themselves from the stigma of killing a child by simply taking a few pills to abort the baby.

(Sarah Jane Head – Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission)

            Today, more than 80% of Americans believe legal abortion should be either prohibited or limited, according to a new survey.

The poll of U. S. adults shows 11% support a total ban on abortion, 38% favor restricting abortion to cases of rape, incest or a threat to the life of the mother and 33% endorse limiting the procedure to the first three or six months of pregnancy.

Nine percent favored unlimited abortion rights throughout pregnancy.

(Tom Strode)

            Yet, with all the statistics, it seems that some of the proponents of the pro-choice movement do not get it.

They are completely out of touch with mainstream America.

For example, gift certificates are now a big part of the American economy.

Along with electronic gift cards, gift certificates represent a growing segment of the consumer market -- and for good reason.

Who wouldn't welcome and appreciate a gift certificate to a favorite store or service provider?

Well, what if the product is abortion?

Planned Parenthood of Indiana is now selling gift certificates redeemable "for services or the recipient’s choice of birth control method."

Those "methods" include abortion.

/The Washington Times /reported: Indiana residents in need of a quick stocking stuffer this holiday season have an unusual option: Planned Parenthood gift certificates.

The group's Hoosier State chapter on Wednesday began selling gift certificates redeemable at any of its 35 facilities for any service provided -- from basic health screenings to birth control to abortions/./

In tow days from now we as a nation will swear in our 44th President Barak Obama, who promises that one of the first piece of legislation he will sign into law in the Freedom of Choice Act.

This act virtually overturns all federal and state pro-life laws and would overturn all restrictions on public funding of abortion and require the taxpayers to pay for elective abortions.

The FOCA creates a new federal right to abortion and would repeal the Hyde Amendment allowing unlimited federal funding for abortion.

It removes all safeguards currently in place at the state and federal level.

These include full disclosure to the patient (ultrasound images of the unborn child, details about the pain inflicted on the baby, and any information about long-term complications for the mother), parental notification for minors seeking abortion, waiting periods, restrictions based on fetal viability allowing for abortion on demand through the ninth month of pregnancy, protections for doctors and nurses who refuse to perform or assist in an abortion, protections for religiously affiliated hospitals as well as public hospitals that currently do not perform abortions, and exclusions for abortion coverage from health care plans of federal employees.

Also, it overturns the partial-birth abortion ban.

Mr.

President, we as God-fearing Christians ask you not to sign into law such a barbaric and brutal piece of legislation because what is done in the name of free choice is actually murder.

I argue against this act from the Word of God.

So turn to Psalm 139:13-18.

Listen to the words of David describing the omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence of God.

In this passage, I see God caring about our beginning, our present, and our end.

First,

 

GOD CARES FOR OUR BEGINNING – 13-14

            In these verses, God is personally involved in the shaping of individuals in the womb.

God is involved in the formation of our inward parts.

In other words, God was putting us together in the womb of our mothers.

God was not only interested in shaping the outside, but also the inside as well.

Unlike the folks promoting the pro-choice movement of trying to redefine life, God is weaving to together a complete human being at conception.

The abortion industry has done well in marketing their product by referring to an unborn child as a fetus, embryo, or mere tissue rather than a baby.

Yet, these verses completely refute that notion.

God is here in the process of creating a human life.

David was so overwhelmed with this thought that he broke out in praise in verse 14.

He said he was fearfully and wonderfully made.

So David was amazed at how involved God was in bringing about his life.

Consider the miracle of the human body: Every second more than 100,000 chemical reactions take place in your brain.

It has 10 billion nerve cells to record what you see and hear.

That information comes to your brain through the miracle of the eye, which has 100 million receptor cells (rods and cones) in each eye.

Your retina also has four other layers of nerve cells.

Altogether the system makes the equivalent of 10 billion calculations a second before an image even gets to the optic nerve.

Once it reaches your brain, the cerebral cortex has more than a dozen separate vision centers in which to process it.

Your tear ducts supply a bacteria-fighting fluid to protect your eyes from infection.

The tears that fight irritants differ from the tears of sadness, which contain 24 percent more proteins.

That’s not to mention the miracle of the ear and how it translates sound waves into meaningful speech and sounds; or of touch, taste, and smell.

Part of your brain regulates voluntary matters, such as muscle coordination and thought processes.

Other parts of the brain control involuntary processes, such as digestion, glandular secretions, the rate at which your heart beats, etc.

How did it accidentally happen that your body could speed up your heart rate to the proper speed to meet increased oxygen demand when you exercise and slow it down when that need is met?

One square inch of your skin has about 625 sweat glands, 19 feet of blood vessels, and 19,000 sensory cells.

Working in coordination with your brain, it maintains your body at a steady 98.6 degrees under all weather conditions.

Your stomach has 35 million glands which secrete the right amounts of juices to allow your body to digest food and convert it into stored energy for your muscles.

To avoid digesting itself, your stomach produces a new lining every three days.

Your body is an efficient machine: to ride a bicycle for an hour at ten miles per hour requires only 350 calories, the energy equivalent of only three tablespoons of gasoline.

You have more than 200 bones, each shaped for its function, connected intricately to one another through lubricated joints that cannot be perfectly duplicated by modern science.

More than 500 muscles connect to these bones.

Some obey willful commands; others perform their duty in response to unconscious commands from the brain.

They all work together to keep us alive.

The heart muscle itself beats over 103,000 times each day, pumping your blood cells a distance of 168 million miles.

Coupled with that, your lungs automatically breathe in the right amount of life-giving oxygen (about 438 cubic feet each day), which just happens to be mixed in the right proportions (about 20% oxygen, 80% nitrogen) in our atmosphere.

Each of the other vital organs and glands in your body works in complex conjunction with the others to sustain life, which science can’t explain or create.

I haven’t even mentioned the complexity of human cells.

Listen to this: A single human chromosome (DNA molecule) contains 20 billion bits of information.

How much is that?

What would be its equivalent, if it were written down in an ordinary printed book in modern human language?

Twenty billion bits are the equivalent of about three billion letters.

If there are approximately six letters in an average word, the information content of a human chromosome corresponds to about 500 million words.

If there are about 300 words on an ordinary page of printed type, this corresponds to about two million pages.

If a typical book contains 500 such pages, the information content of a single human chromosome corresponds to some 4,000 volumes.

“It is clear, then, that the sequence of rungs on our DNA ladders represents an enormous library of information.

It is equally clear that so rich a library is required to specify as exquisitely constructed and intricately functioning an object as a human being.”

That information, incredibly, comes from the astronomer,

Carl Sagan, who thinks it all happened by chance (/The Dragons of/

/Eden//, Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence /[Ballentine Books], pp.