What Makes Life Sacred?

Well, as I mentioned last week, this is Sanctity of Life Sunday, and pastors at churches around the nation — at least those pastors who haven’t succumbed to the world’s liberalism — are preaching messages about the evil of abortion.

I could do that this morning, too. There’s no doubt in my mind that abortion is one of the greatest evils perpetuated upon God’s creation.

Maybe you don’t know that an estimated 63 million babies have been aborted in the United States since the U.S. Supreme Court declared a constitutional right to this procedure in 1973.

Maybe you don’t know that more than 1.6 billion babies have been aborted worldwide since 1980.

Maybe you don’t know that, just 15 days into 2022, more than 34,000 babies have been aborted in the U.S. this year.

Perhaps you don’t realize that recent data suggests about one in four women will have had an abortion by age 45 or that more than half of the women who will seek an abortion this year identify as Christians.

We could dwell on all these statistics today, and I could talk about the great scientists, the Nobel Peace Prize winners, the poets and musicians, the teachers and plumbers and pastors we have lost among those 65 million children who never lived to become what they were created to be.

I could stand up here and talk this morning about what a great tragedy is represented in all these children who have been robbed of their lives. I could tell you what a great moral failure this represents on the part of humanity.

I could tell you what a great sin against God all this represents. I could take you to the verses in the Psalms that you already know. And I could even take you back to the verses that surprised you a couple of weeks ago about the evils of child sacrifice in ancient Israel.

But, see, the thing is, even if you didn’t know all the statistics, and even if you’re surprised that people were killing their babies thousands of years before Jesus Christ, what I know is NOT a surprise to you is that abortion is wrong, that abortion is evil, that abortion is a sin.

And the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of those who call themselves “pro-choice” can justify this evil only by deceiving themselves.

When folks who are pro-choice finally decide to have babies, where do they go? They do the same things that pro-life people do. They get pregnant, and then they set up a series of appointments with an obstetrician.

Why? Well, at least part of the reason is that they want to keep track of the baby’s development, to make sure the baby is healthy.

But if a baby is not alive until after it has been delivered, as many in the pro-choice movement would argue, then how can one keep track of its health? It seems to me that one of the basic requirements for health is to be alive.

Look, I’m not going to get into all this today, because the simple fact is that pro-choice people and pro-life people are all the same in one important regard: Each of them makes a choice about the value of life.

The difference is that the pro-choice people include the matter of expediency in their decision. They decide whether or not to allow a child to live based on convenience.

The simple fact of the matter is that if we allow ourselves to be drawn into THAT debate, then we have already lost the argument, because the one who has the most to lose from an abortion cannot speak for himself or herself.

So what I want to talk to you about today is WHY life is sacred. This is Sanctity of Life Sunday, when we are to proclaim and celebrate the sanctity, the sacredness, of life. So we should spend some time talking about WHY life is sacred.

And our primary text for this discussion will be one verse, Genesis 2:7. You can turn there now if you would like.

Now, you should understand that what we have in Genesis 1 is a kind of birds-eye view of the week in which God created the heavens and the earth and all that was in them.

As we turn to chapter 2, we are given more detail about God’s creative activity, especially as it relates to His creation of mankind.

In other words, Genesis 1 and 2 are both accounts about the same time frame, but they look at it from different perspectives, and they approach the telling of this story with different purposes in mind.

Genesis 1 tells the story of an omnipotent God who brings order out of chaos, light out of darkness, and life out of lifelessness.

Genesis 2 tells the story of mankind, God’s greatest creation, failing in its calling to display the life-giving character of the God in whose image it had been created and bringing death where there was life.

But I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

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.

The first thing I want you to see in this verse is what a personal act it was for God to give this man life. God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.”

Whenever I read about someone successfully performing CPR on someone else, I am struck by just how personal this act of resuscitation is. It requires touching and placing your lips on the lips of another person and blowing your breath into their lungs.

And in this act of creation, we see the same sort of personal contact between God and Adam. He “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.”

Now, what’s different about CPR and what took place in Gen 2:7 is that CPR is not always successful. Why not? Well, the short answer is that we’re not God. Amen?

The longer answer requires that we dig into the Hebrew words for “breath” and “life.” So hold on tight for a Hebrew lesson.

The Hebrew word that’s translated as “breathed” and “breath” here is “naphach.” It can mean “to blow or breathe,” “to set aflame,” or “to gasp or pant.”

This is one of a few Hebrew words that can mean “breath.” Another is “ruach,” which is the word that’s translated as “Spirit” in Genesis, chapter 1.

Genesis 1:2 NASB95

2 The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.

So, in this verse, what we see is that God’s breath — God’s wind, His Holy Spirit — is moving over the surface of the waters on the formless earth.

Now, here’s something neat. Both of these words, naphach and ruach, appear together in one place in Ezekiel 37. What’s going on in that passage is that God has taken the prophet Ezekiel to a field filled with the dry bones of men — probably the site of an old battle.

God tells Ezekiel to call out to those dry bones and tell them that God will bring them back to life. And so, the prophet does as he is told, and the bones come together, and sinews and flesh grow on them, but, as Ezekiel recounts the story, “there was no breath in them.”

I’ll pick up the account in verse 9.

Ezekiel 37:9–10 NASB95

9 Then He said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, ‘Thus says the Lord God, “Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they come to life.” ’ ” 10 So I prophesied as He commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they came to life and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.

“Prophecy to the breath [ruach], son of man, and say to the ruach, ‘Thus says the Lord God, “Come from the four ruach, O ruach, and breathe [naphach] on these slain, that they come to life.’ So I prophesied as He commanded me, and the ruach came into them and they came to life and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.”

So, what we see here is that God’s Spirit — His breath — gives life to these dry bones.

And, going back to the verse we’re studying in Genesis, I think what we can conclude is that, when God created Adam, He breathed the Spirit of Life into Adam’s nostrils.

This is confirmed in Genesis, chapter 7, when God wiped out all living things on the earth in the Great Flood, except for the eight people and two of every animal that He had shut up in the ark.

Genesis 7:21–22 NASB95

21 All flesh that moved on the earth perished, birds and cattle and beasts and every swarming thing that swarms upon the earth, and all mankind; 22 of all that was on the dry land, all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, died.

So, now you understand a little bit more about “breath.” Let’s take a look at “life.”

God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being” or a living soul.

Now, there are several Hebrew words that your Bibles translate as “life,” but the one here is “hay.” Its basic meaning has to do with lifespan.

But its meaning in Scripture goes deeper than just the time that you spend breathing between when you’re born and when you die.

To get a better picture of what Scripture means when it talks about life, we can look at what God told the people of Israel as they were preparing to enter the Promised Land after He had outlined the blessings of obedience to Him and the curses of disobedience. We see this in Deuteronomy, chapter 30.

Deuteronomy 30:15–16 NASB95

15 “See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, and death and adversity; 16 in that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His judgments, that you may live and multiply, and that the Lord your God may bless you in the land where you are entering to possess it.

“I have set before you today life [hay] and prosperity, and death and adversity.”

He had given them the choice between life and death, between prosperity and adversity.

How would they choose life? How would they choose prosperity?

By loving the Lord, by walking in His ways and keeping His commandments.

So, what we see here is that REAL life is life in loving, obedient relationship with God.

He is the God who transformed a formless, chaotic, and lifeless place into an orderly creation full of life. He spoke life into existence with birds and fish and plants and wildlife. And He breathed His life-giving Spirit into that first man, whom He created in His own image.

And then, after creating Adam and Eve in His own image, He charged them with extending His kingdom of life throughout the earth.

Genesis 1:28 NASB95

28 God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Go and make life. Go make babies and fill the earth with human life, and bring order to the rest of the earth, just as I have done.

Why is life sacred? Why do we talk about the sanctity of life?

Because life is from God. Life is from the God who IS life, whose breath is life, whose Son described Himself as the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

And we who are made in the image of this life-giving God are called to demonstrate His life-giving character, to consider life to be as precious as He does.

But from the beginning, way back in the Garden of Eden, we have failed in that calling.

Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the Garden, and their sin brought death into the world, both physical death and spiritual death, which we can think of as separation from fellowship with God.

God had warned them that their sin would bring death, and that’s exactly what happened. They were cast out of His presence in the garden, representing spiritual death. And before long, one of their sons killed another. And eventually, they both died, too.

The same thing is true today: Sin brings death. How do we know that there’s still sin in the world? Because there’s still death.

Adam and Eve chose death over life. The people of Israel chose death over life after they’d entered the Promised Land. And they did it again when they crucified God’s own Son — the Way, the Truth and the Life.

We see people choosing death over life all the time, and not just in the abortionist’s operating room.

We see people choose death over life when they choose to speak falsely against their neighbors. We see them choose death over life when they choose to ignore the suffering they see around them. We see them choose death over life when they make choices that destroy their families.

We see them choose death over life when they gossip and when they seek retribution and when they take advantage of the weak and when they use their power or their positions to elevate themselves, rather than to lift others up.

The truth is that the sin nature we have all inherited from Adam causes us all to choose death over life all the time, because we all are sinners — even those of us who have followed Jesus Christ in faith.

And the penalty for sin is the same today as it was in the Garden of Eden — death, physical and spiritual.

But there is good news. And the good news is that there is one who has paid that penalty for you and for me.

The unique and eternal Son of God came to earth and lived as a man, except He did NOT sin. He lived a life of perfect obedience to God, doing what we could not do.

For 33 years, He chose life over death. And He said that He had come to give us life and life in abundance.

But in order to give us life, He finally had to choose death. He gave Himself as a sacrifice on our behalf, taking upon Himself the sins of the world as He hung upon that cross at Calvary and suffering the just penalty for those sins.

There on the cross, Jesus gave up His life — it wasn’t taken from Him, He laid it down of His own volition. There on the cross, the innocent King of kings and Lord of lords — the very Son of God — allowed Himself to be punished for OUR rebellion against God.

He lived the life that we could not live, and He paid the price that we could not pay so that we might have life instead of death. And then, proving that He has the power to keep this promise, God raised Him from the dead.

And He did all this so that we might have that relationship with God that was not available to us as people who had chosen death.

Remember how we talked about God bringing Adam to life by breathing into Adam’s nostrils the life-giving Spirit of Life?

Something similar happens when we place our faith in Jesus as the Son of God who sacrificed Himself so we might be reconciled to God.

At the moment when you turn to Jesus in faith, admitting your sins and trusting in His atoning death, burial and resurrection, you receive that same Spirit of Life.

Paul put it this way in Romans, chapter 8.

Romans 8:11 NASB95

11 But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.

We who were dead in our trespasses now have life through the Holy Spirit who dwells within us. Our bodies are still mortal, and we still have the nature within us that draws us to do sinful things, to choose death over life.

But we have God’s own Spirit within us, promising us that our sins — past, present, and future — have been forgiven.

Promising us that if we will set our minds on the Spirit, rather than the things of the flesh, we will have life and peace, because we will more and more become people who turn from sin and death and pursue life and peace.

Promising us that we will one day be redeemed from these bodies of sin. Promising us that, whatever we are now, we will one day be like Jesus — sinless and life-seeking.

On this Sanctity of Life Sunday, we should surely remember that the lives of unborn children are sacred, because their life comes from the God of life Himself.

But I want to tell you today that YOUR life is sacred, too. Every breath you take is the breath of God Himself in your lungs. The Psalmist put it this way in his great celebration of God’s creation in Psalm 104.

Psalm 104:29–30 NASB95

29 You hide Your face, they are dismayed; You take away their spirit, they expire And return to their dust. 30 You send forth Your Spirit, they are created; And You renew the face of the ground.

“You take away their spirit [their ruach, their breath, and] they expire.” You send forth Your Spirit [Your ruach, Your breath, and] they are created.”

All life is sacred in the eyes of the God of Life. So sacred, in fact, that He sent His own Son to die so that we who so often choose death can be forgiven and have eternal LIFE through repentance and faith.

You can choose life today. You can begin today to experience life the way God meant it to be.

Today, God has set before you life and death. Choose life.