INTRODUCTION
Opening Statement: On January 22, 1973 the United States Supreme Court handed down its famous Roe vs. Wade decision which unleashed death and destruction to the unborn. By a vote of 7-2 they declared that abortion was a constitutional right. This January marked the thirtieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the dreadful Supreme Court decision that found this "right to privacy" in the Constitution and used that right to legalize abortion-on-demand. Human dignity was dealt a horrendous blow. Some 50 million babies have died since that ruling was handed down. Today, however, the stakes are higher. We’re not talking about taking the lives of 50 million kids, as horrible as that is. We’re talking about creating the lives of 50 million kids—and then killing them, ostensibly for the good of humanity. Supposedly, we have created life for our own purposes.
Title: Life is Beautiful – Let’s not Mess it up!
Theme: Abortion and Cloning
Introduction: Charles Colson has suggested that cloning and the biotech agenda are even worse news for human dignity than abortion. Not only are we taking upon ourselves the god-like prerogative of ending human life as we choose, we are attempting to appropriate the prerogative of making human life as we choose. And now, the Raelians, a pro-cloning religious group, claim that a cloned child has been born. The Raelians claim that a cloned child, a baby girl named Eve, was born on December 26, 2002. They claim that more clones are due in a couple of months, and there’s a waiting list of two thousand people waiting to pay $200,000 each for a clone. This is not some science-fiction story—it’s an immediate concern. Their goal is to somehow transfer the mind of an aged or infirmed person into a youthful clone.
Observation: This is dangerous for a number of reasons. For example: cloned animals are typically plagued by health problems and are easily euthanized. Most animal cloned embryos die in the womb and most that survive to birth are defective in some form or another and often die early. We can only expect the same result for this unfortunate human clone, which is nothing more than a human experiment. Are we going to do the same to our human clones that begin to develop major problems? Are we going to bring human beings into this world with the intent of using them for replacement parts and take their lives when they no longer serve a valid purpose?
Exhortation: All of this makes many Christians want to simply build the church walls even higher, dig the moats deeper, and pull up the drawbridges. This is the least helpful—and least biblical—of all responses. We are called to be in the world, just as Jesus was. This is our moment to offer Christian hope. Even though the biotech revolution is moving like a steamroller, crushing everything in its path—including ethical questions, we can come in alongside our friends and encourage them and support them in choosing life for their unborn baby. We can offer eternal life in Christ rather than duplicate ourselves and use the duplicated person as “spare parts”. The cloning debate could very well be won over backyard fences and in barbershops across America. It will be won in our families as we teach our children, the future scientists and leaders of America, about the sanctity of human life. Helping our neighbors to understand the issues by our words and demonstrating our love by compassionate care is the way we will build a public consensus that will reject the culture of death to those who no longer serve a purpose.
Key Word: There are two key points to help us through the sanctity of human life issue: know what the Bible says about life and know what the issues really are regarding our most recent threat to life.
OUTLINE
What the Bible Says About Human Life!
Explanation: God is our Creator. We are responsible to Him. “I am your Creator. You were in my care even before you were born.” (Isaiah 44:2a - CEV). All life is precious to God. Whether it is a baby in the mother’s womb, a child, a youth, an adult or an elderly person. We are all precious to God. Thus, to kill a life because it doesn’t meet our criteria of “quality of life” is to usurp God’s creative role. Thus, abortion (the killing of an unborn human being), infanticide (the killing of an infant), euthanasia (the killing of the ill and the infirm), homicide (the murder of human beings at any stage in life), and cloning (the duplicating of another human being on our terms and for our own reasons) are all a revolt against God and an attempt to usurp the prerogatives and plans of the Creator.
You are not an accident. Your birth was no mistake or mishap, and your life is no fluke of nature. Your parents may not have planned you, but God did. He was not at all surprised by your birth. In fact, he expected it. Long before your parents conceived you, you were conceived in the mind of God. It is not fate, nor chance, nor luck, nor coincidence that you are breathing at this very moment. You are alive because God wanted to create you!
God prescribed every single detail of your body. He deliberately chose your race, the color of you skin, your hair, and every other feature. He custom-made your body just the way he wanted it. He also determined the natural talents you would possess and the uniqueness of your personality. The Bible says, “You know me inside and out, you know every bone in my body; You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit, how I was sculpted from nothing into something.” (Psalm 139:15 – Msg)
Because God made you for a reason, he also decided when you would be born and how long you would live. He planned the days of your life in advance, choosing the exact time of your birth and death. The Bible says, “You saw me before I was born and scheduled each day of my life before I began to breathe. Every day was recorded in your Book! ” (Psalm 139:16 – LB) God also planned where you’d be born and where you’d live for his purpose. Your race and nationality are no accident. God left no detail to chance. He planned it all for his purpose.
The Bible says, “From one man he made every nation … and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.” (Acts 17:26 – NIV) Most amazing, God decided how you would be born. Regardless of the circumstances of your birth or who your parents are, God had a plan in creating you. It doesn’t matter whether your parents were good, bad, or indifferent. God knew that those two individuals possessed exactly the right genetic makeup to create the custom “you” he had in mind. They had the DNA God wanted to make you. While there are illegitimate parents, there are no illegitimate children. Many children are unplanned by their parents, but they are not unplanned by God. God’s purpose took into account human error, and even sin. God never does anything accidentally, and he never makes mistakes. He has a reason for everything he creates. God planned every plant and every animal, and every person was designed with a purpose in mind. God’s motive for creating you was his love.
The Bible says, “Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love.” (Ephesians 1:4a – Msg) God was thinking of you even before he made the world. In fact, that’s why he created it! God designed this planet’s environment just so we could live in it. We are the focus of his love and the most valuable of all his creation.
What the Issues Are Regarding the Most Recent Threats to Human Life – Abortion and Cloning
Explanation: The scientific support for therapeutic cloning, which is cloning for the purpose of harvesting stem cells. Therapeutic cloning kills an embryo but for the greater good of hopefully curing disease. Reproductive cloning will maim and kill dozens of embryos, fetuses and children, and saves no one.
Quotation: Once again, Colson is most helpful regarding the present cloning debate. He says: “The distinction between "therapeutic" cloning and "reproductive" cloning is a smoke screen. All cloning is reproductive. Who is going to enforce whether an embryo goes to a lab for experimentation or is implanted in a womb to be born? The Justice Department has testified that it cannot. In order to ban live birth cloning, we must ban all human cloning. Politically, this is the time to do it. The president has said he wants a cloning ban. Let’s stand behind that. When it comes to human cloning, we believe God does a much better job at creating and preserving life than we do and that’s where we will leave it.
Observations: I think most of us can live with animal cloning – I think, providing that no potentially harmful situations are created for human beings. But we cannot live with the idea of human cloning. No government can police it, and I know too much about human nature to trust us in a creative role. A few writers have suggested that some individuals may want to establish an embryonic clone to be frozen and put away. Then, in the event of a childhood disease requiring a transplant, the embryo can be thawed, implanted in a surrogate, and raised to a sufficient age for the spare organ to be harvested and transplanted. While this is certainly possible, I consider it very unlikely that America would sanction these practices because it completely tosses aside the uniqueness of humanity and trashes the concept of human dignity. That doesn’t mean, however, that someone won’t try. But then again, America sanctioned abortion. And of course, millions have elected to terminate the life of an unborn child because they have been told that it’s legal and the child is not yet a human until birth.
Illustration: In Collier’s pregnancy center in Naples, Florida, Colson notes that 95 percent of the women who see their babies on the ultrasound choose not to have an abortion. Planned Parenthood won’t let expectant mothers see their ultrasound. When it comes to abortion, we are not warring against women’s rights. Women have been fed a lie. We are for life, not choice at the expense of life.
Conclusion: How would you advise a mother who was pregnant with her fifth child based on the following facts? Her husband had syphilis. She has tuberculosis. Their first child was born blind. Their second child died. Their third child was born deaf. Their fourth child had tuberculosis and the mother is considering an abortion. Should she? If you said yes you just killed Ludwig Von Beethoven!
Would you consider an abortion in any of these circumstances?
1) A preacher and his wife living in extreme poverty. They have 14 children and she is pregnant again.
2) A thirteen-year-old black girl raped by a white man.
3) A teenage girl becomes pregnant but not by her fiancée. He is very upset. Would you consider abortion?
If you aborted in the first case you have killed John Wesley. If you aborted in the second case you killed Ethel Waters the black gospel singer. If in the third case you aborted you killed Jesus of Nazareth.
CONCLUSION
Illustration: I want to show you something. [Show ultrasound video of Meg and then a few baby clips.]
Life is Beautiful! Let’s not mess it up.
