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Understand the Context

On January 22, 1984, President Ronald Reagan issued a presidential proclamation designating the third Sunday of January as National Sanctity of Human Life Day.

Lifeway has helped maintain that commitment but publishing lessons with that theme every year since.

Lesson plans for major Christian holiday are often themed but they more often do not attempt to stay within the quarterly’s over all bible book focus.

This past Christmas lesson was from Matthew, even though our all the other lessons in the book stays within Ezekiel and Daniel.

Although the lessons are all biblically grounded sometimes the presentation of the theme can appear a bit forced.

Our week 7 lesson passages come from Ezekiel 16 and 23, and then a key passage for our sanctity of life theme from Psalm 139.

Both of the Ezekiel passages are before the final fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians at the beginning of Chapter 24 so their focus is more on the sinfulness and unfaithfulness of the people of Israel both in the city and those already exiled.

We will look at these passages first and a few others to contrast the views of the people presented and God’s view of children.

Generations before Ezekiel and his fellow kinsmen were exiled, the second King of Israel penned the lesson’s passage from Psalm 139.

Reflecting on the wonders that he had seen God do he also understood there were equally powerful things God had done before David was born from the time of creation up until he was conceived.

Such realizations help us see how significantly we are valued in the eyes of God even when we are not acting exactly according to His Word.

We will explore these verses and several other Scriptures in order to present our sanctity of life topic, with an attempt to understand of the whole counsel of God from His Word.

Hopefully we will see how much value God puts on human life, from the very young to elderly and all ages in between.

Explore the Text

Ezekiel 16 describes the wickedness God’s people displayed.

He had created them and given them all they needed; yet, they turned their backs on Him and worshiped idols.

When they turned their back on Him, they also disregarded His word, choosing instead to adopt their neighbors’ pagan worship practices.

[LifeWay Adults (2021).

Explore the Bible: Adult Leader Guide - ESV - Winter 2022.

LifeWay Press.]

Psalm 127:3 tells us that children are a gift or “heritage” from God.

But as with all gifts they can be misused.

In verse 20 of our passage the sons and daughters are described as “yours” even though they came from God for His purposes and were “borne” because of His provision.

The qualifier speaks more to the mentality of the parents seeing the children as their possessions instead of as the gifts that they were.

Whenever we become ungrateful or dehumanize others and view them as commodities, we are more likely to treat them with sinful attitudes, which in turn creates a downward spiral to more abusive attitudes and actions as the heart grows colder and farther away from God.

God’s people should have loved and treasured the children God gave them.

Rather, God charged, they sacrificed to them to be devoured.

Pagan worship often involved leaving food and drink in front of an idol as a present for the god.

However, God’s people were taking their own children and “feeding” them to the gods through human sacrifice.

[LifeWay Adults (2021).

Explore the Bible: Adult Leader Guide - ESV - Winter 2022.

LifeWay Press.]

Continuing with the unfaithful bride analogy in Chapter 16, the Lord through the prophet asks the people a rhetorical question in an attempt to correct their view of their children.

Notice now they are “my children” that have been not only sacrificed but now are “slaughtered”.

You give gifts and offerings as a form of worship and in sacrifice to show what you are willing to let go for the benefit of another.

Tawdry meat used only for bait or consumption is slaughtered.

Not only were the people contemptuously abusing their children but in doing so they expressly disobeyed God’s commands against child sacrifice and disregard his commands to cherish, nurture and teach them His ways.

One of the laws given to the Hebrew people before they conquered the promise lands was not to worship the gods of those being deposed, which included child sacrifice.

(Lev 18:21, Deut 18:10).

Not only does God not want children offered to other gods, but He especially does not want them offered to Himself (Deut 12:31).

We see this earlier in history when God stopped Abraham from offering Isaac in sacrifice (Gen 22:10-12).

Such harmful actions toward children are in direct opposition to the nurturing principles found throughout Scripture not only towards children but to all humans and even extends to livestock in some cases (1Tim 5:18).

God continues His denouncement of the people’s improper attitudes of worship and living through the prophet Ezekiel in our next passage.

This time through an allegory of two promiscuous women representing Samaria and Jerusalem.

In verse 37 alone, God listed four sins.

First, He said they have committed adultery.

Second, God affirmed that blood is on their hands.

This idea of bloodshed often designates murder of the helpless (Isa.

1:15).

In this context, the focus was on the children they sacrificed.

Third, with their idols they have committed adultery.

Physical adultery occurred within marriage relationships, but spiritual adultery occurred as the people forsook the Lord to worship Baal and other gods of the peoples of the land.

Fourth, God lamented that they have even offered up … the children whom they had borne to me.

The people’s children belonged first to the Lord, but they sacrificed them to other gods.

The burned flesh of their children became food for the idols they served, and God hated it.

As God’s people sinned against Him in smaller ways, they gradually became calloused to sin and began to sin against Him in greater ways.

We must guard ourselves against compromising God’s laws with regard to smaller issues, lest we become calloused and move on to greater sins.

[LifeWay Adults (2021).

Explore the Bible: Adult Leader Guide - ESV - Winter 2022.

LifeWay Press.]

All of these sins were against God, He states that in the beginning of verse 38.

Not only were the people defiling themselves, but this led to them defiling other parts of God’s holy places and practices.

It is unclear whether the “same day” refers to a literal day, but regardless the people’s callous attitude toward God and His ways was blatant enough that God knew in their heart they could do it on the same literal day.

As our sin toward God grows, our care for Him or His people diminishes as well, and we will treat His people and His creation with more and more contempt.

This disrespect of God’s way was not always the normal for the people of God.

Back in Egypt when they were in bondage to Pharoah the midwives were more afraid of God’s wrath than the kings and would not obey the command to kill the newborn sons (Exodus 1:16–17).

The people in Ezekiel’s day had forgotten what these midwives knew, the taking of a life was murder.

They did not want “blood on their hands” in the eyes of God, but their ancestors would think nothing of it and even willing kill their own children.

One of the “Ten Words” expressly forbids murder in any form, Exo 20:13 ““You shall not murder.”

Although this act is against another person, it is equally if not more so a sin against God.

Life is so precious in God’s eyes that He even enacted laws to help prevent accidental deaths.

Deut 22:8

Protecting your neighbors from harm places great value upon their lives.

We are to protect not only those who cannot protect themselves like children and the unborn, but also people from the fallen effects of sin which allows for “accidents” to occur.

Sin leads to death, sometimes indirectly.

We cherish human life by helping protect from the effects of sin and “unplanned” events of a fallen world.

God knew that not everyone would accept that accidents happen, and some may see the death of a loved one as an intentional act when it was not, this is part of the reason He enacted the “cities of refuge”.

God protects not only those who are not guilty but through these cities allows even those may be guilty of murder not to be killed before being proven guilty through a trial.

Places of asylum spaced throughout the kingdom instead having to go to sanctuary and grasping the horns of the altar made it easier to prevent another life being taken.

Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary (Cities of Refuge)

The OT reveals the importance and sacredness of human life by its laws regarding the taking of life.

The reason for distributing the cities of refuge throughout Israel on both sides of the Jordan was so that a city was easily accessible to a person responsible for an accidental homicide.

The establishment of the cities of refuge served a humanitarian purpose by transforming a case of homicide from a private feud between two families to a judicial matter settled by a group of elders.

Taking of another’s life will not only usurp God’s plan for that life, it treats Him and His image bearers with contempt.

Immediately after the flood as Noah and his family were directed not to use the animals for food at that time so that they too could “multiply and fill the earth”, God had a special directive about the shedding of blood.

Genesis 9:6 (ESV)

“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.

Taking a life is therefore linked to violently removing God’s image from the world.

We do not need less of God in this world.

God had just finished destroying the world because of sin when He declared this.

We look at the world today and wonder how much worse can it get?

Apparently, it is not as bad as it was in Noah’s time.

God determined in that day that only 8 people would survive.

As God, He has that right and only He has the right to determine when a people, nation, or individual’s life it to end.

Job 14:5 (ESV)

Since his days are determined, and the number of his months is with you, and you have appointed his limits that he cannot pass,

Once those days are completed, then we stand before Him.

God chooses when we are to die and to take a life before that time is to make ourselves equal to or even above God in our hearts and minds.