On National Sanctity of Life Day in 2002, President George W. Bush made “A Proclamation.” Based on our country’s Declaration of Independence, he declared that Sanctity of Life is the belief “that every human being is endowed by our Creator with certain ‘unalienable rights’.”(1) He said that the forefathers of our country “recognized that an essential human dignity is attached to all persons by virtue of their very existence and not just to the strong, the independent, or the healthy. That value should apply to every [person], including the elderly and the unprotected, the weak and the infirm, and even to the unwanted.”(2)
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. 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, and no matter what gender you are. You are valuable to God.
President Bush said that we should “pursue a civil society that will . . . embrace its essential moral duties, including defending the elderly, strengthening the weak, protecting the defenseless, feeding the hungry, and caring for children - born and unborn . . . [and] we should peacefully commit ourselves to seeking a society that values life - from its very beginnings to its natural end. [And he emphasized]: Unborn children should be welcomed in life and protected in law.”(3)
President Bush emphasized protecting unborn children 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. It is my hope that we will gain a greater appreciation for human life and that we will be stirred to take a stand for unborn children.
Putting the Number of Casualties in Perspective
On September 11, 2001 over 3500 lives were extinguished. They were future leaders of this nation, doctors who could have saved many, scientist who may have found a cure for cancer, evangelist who may have lead thousands to the Lord. Yes on September 11, 2001, terrorists killed over 3500 people and it is an event that will forever be etched in our minds. Did you know, however, that on September 12, 2001 that 4000 lives were extinguished, and again on September 13th and 14th and 15th. Every single day in America there are over 4000 unborn babies whose lives have been taken in what is called pro-choice. 4000 each day, 28,000 each week, 112,000 each month and 1,460,000 each year.(4)
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 left an estimated 31,000,000 casualties since abortion was legalized in 1973 - six times the number of casualties in all the wars combined.(6)
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.”
The Lord Despises the Killing of Children
God’s Word tells us in Exodus 21:22, “If men fight, and hurt a woman with child, so that she gives birth prematurely, yet no harm follows, he shall surely be punished accordingly as the woman’s husband imposes on him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if any harm follows, then you shall give life for life.”
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 the baby prematurely, the man can be sent to prison for manslaughter. However, a woman has the law to back her up if she decides to abort the baby.”(7)
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 says, “Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molech, for you must not profane the name of your God. I am the Lord” (NIV), and Deuteronomy 12:31 says, “You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way; for every abomination to the Lord which He hates they have done to their gods; for they burn even 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 fooling young mothers into having an abortion. They 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)
Paul Likoudis, in an Internet article entitled “Dead Baby Parts Business Booming,” says, “Since the widespread legalization of abortion, abortionists, protected and promoted by media publicists, have dramatized the plight of the poor pregnant girl whose life can only be set right by free and easy access to tax-funded abortions.” He goes on to say, “The abortion industry, however, has always been about money.”(9)
An interview with one company in the abortion industry on ABC’s 20/20, it was revealed that the income for the abortion industry is well over 1 billion dollars, and that’s just the business from the abortion clinics alone. They profit even more from whatever they can get from the sale of fetal material.(10)
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)
5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations.”
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 viewed 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.” Let’s look at Jeremiah 1:5 more closely:
The Hebrew word here for our English word “formed” is yatsar. 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 yada, 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.
In an article entitled “Abortion Questions They’d Rather Duck,” Mark Crutcher asks a few interesting questions that suggest that a child in its mother’s womb indeed is a living human being. He says, “Pro-abortionists say that the unborn child is part of the mother’s body. If that is so, why does the child possess a completely different genetic code and often a different blood type? How do you explain the fact that it has its own immune system?” “If we use the absence of brain waves to determine that a person’s life had ended, why shouldn’t we use the presence of brain waves to determine that someone’s life has begun?” – meaning that a fetus does have brain waves. “We are now seeing the unborn being treated for disease, given blood transfusions and even operated on. When a doctor does one of these procedures, who is the patient”(12) - the mother or the child?
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 could be missing out on the fullness that God intends for His people because our country is killing God’s future prophets and preachers.
God Saw Us as Special in Our Mother’s Womb (Psalm 139:13-16)
13 For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. 14 I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well. 15 My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. 16 Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them.
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 - 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]! The Hebrew word for “wonderfully made” is palah and it means to set apart, to marvel at, and to make wonderfully.(13)
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. She now says, “I think abortion’s wrong. I think what I did with Roe vs. Wade was wrong and I just have to take a pro-life choice.”(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.
NOTES
(1) George W. Bush, "A Proclamation," National Sanctity of Life Day, 2002, taken from the Internet January 2003 at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/ 2002/01/20020118-10.html.
(2) Ibid.
(3) Ibid.
(4) Steven Pace, Sanctity of Human Life, taken from the Internet January 2003 on sermoncentral.com.
(5) Douglas Bryan, The Sanctity of All, taken from the Internet January 2003 on sermoncentral.com.
(6) Ibid.
(7) Ibid.
(8) Grace Chapel, January 20, 2002, taken from the Internet January 2003 at http://www.gracechapel.org/sermons/020120.htm; also Paul Likoudis, Dead Baby Parts Business Booming, taken from the Internet January 2003 at http://www.abortiontv. com/BabyPartsForSale2.htm.
(9) Likoudis.
(10) Grace Chapel.
(11) Neil Olcott, God Values Life, taken from the Internet January 2003 on sermoncentral.com.
(12) Matk Crutcher, Abortion Questions They'd Rather Duck, taken from the Internet January 2003 at http://www.family.org/cforum/research/papers/a0004309.html.
(13) Olcott.
(14) Houston Chronicle, Aug. 11, 1995, 1.
