Sermon Tone Analysis

Sanctity of Life Sunday

January 19th, 2014

Psalm 139:13-16

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Before I begin, I want to explain something.

Today I will be talking about abortion.

At one point I will briefly describe three methods used in abortion.

If you do not want your child or teen exposed to this description you are more then welcome to have them leave the room.

You can send them now to hang out downstairs in and around the nursery.

Or you can send them out for the one point where I describe the abortions.

Also, if you for whatever reason are not comfortable hearing about abortion, you are free to step out now or at that point.

I will give you a heads up before I share that part of the sermon.

Please join me as I pray:

Father we come before you today as your people and your servants.

We want to grow in our knowledge of the truth and our ability to act on it.

Please open our eyes and transform our hearts so that we can put legs on our faith.

We praise You and pray all these things in Jesus' name.

Val's Story

Yesterday I was told that a lady in our church lied (smile).

She went to the Maryland clothing swap yesterday and left her children with their grandmothers.

After she left, her oldest said, "Mommy lied to me today."

"What did she say?" Grandma Asked.

"I told mommy that I was going to throw up and she said that I wasn't going to throw up.

I threw up in the car and now it smells like puke.

Mommy lied to me."

Let me talk about another lie.

In the mid 1930's a man named Adolf Hitler preached the idea of a an elite race of people.

In short he believed that the German nation and specifically genetically "pure" germans were better and destined to rule the world.

He cast this vision and lead the German nation to believe they were better then the people around them.

In short he shared his vision that some life had more value than others.

This is where the concentration camps fit in.

Hitler believed that Jews were a scourge on society.

He believed their lives were less valuable therefore he convinced the German nation to look the other way as millions of Jews disappeared.

This death doctrine didn't stop there.

What many don't know is that hundreds and thousands of mentally handicapped men and women were also sentenced to death in concentration camps because their lives were not deemed worth much.

Because the lives of these men and women were deemed worth less Hitler made them human lab rats.

Those humans endured all sorts of experiments to see what humanity could handle.

All the while Millions of Germans (and millions of German Christians) looked the other way because they had either bought the lie of worth-less lives or they didn't want to trouble themselves to worry about what was going on.

Friends The Holocaust was wrong because Hitler and others decided that life's value was ascribed by society.

They took men and women that God had endowed with value and told them "You are worthless."

The Holocaust was not wrong because Hitler killed God's people.

It was wrong because Hitler killed humans that God created in His image.

You and I may wipe our brows and thank our God that we won the war and Auschwitz is out of business.

We can rejoice Adolf Hitler is gone and his dream is stopped.

But the Holocaust we ended 70 years ago cannot compare with the one we started in the United States just three decades later.

On January 22, 1973 the Supreme Court ruled to legalize Abortion across the United States.

Rulings in the years that followed expanded on the original decision so that now any woman, even a minor can kill her baby for any reason.

(That is, as long as her child hasn't been lucky enough to take a breath of air).

Hitler's Third Reich accounted for the death of between 6 and 7 million people.

Legalized abortion has allowed the recorded killing of more than 52 million children.

Those who have abortions and perform them usually believe one of two things.

First, they may believe that what is inside the womb is only a parasite, a collection of cells.

This is a lie.

Any birthing book will detail the complexity and human-ness of a baby even in the first month of gestation.

The second belief is that the life of the woman is more valuable than the life of the baby.

Many passionately defend abortion because they are championing the rights of women.

The mistake they make is that they have made human life valuable by achievement rather than endowment.

They are saying in essence that life only has value as assigned by society.

That's pretty much what Adolf Hitler believed.

Really though, why do we have endowed value as humans?

And why is Abortion wrong?

To answer this, please join me in Psalms 139:13-16.

David writes:

For you created my inmost being;

you knit me together in my mother's womb.

I have a scarf that I really enjoyed through snowmageddon a couple weeks ago.

(show scarf) My sister knit it for me a couple Christmas's back.

It is complex with different designs knit in and it is warm.

Making something like this requires thought and a plan (not to mention skill).

Years ago some girl tried to teach me crocheting.

I tried but my crocheting looked more like modern art then a scarf.

I love the scarf my sister made for me.

In the same way, the assembly of the human body takes a plan and intelligence.

David writes that God exercises care and plan in the building of every one of us.

From this verse and nearly a dozen other verses throughout the Bible we believe that Human life begins in the womb.

God exercises intentionality in the formation of every life that comes into our world.

From the baby with spine ambifida to the unwanted pregnancy to the future Einstein God is intentionally building every life.

Life has it's genesis and the foundation of it's value in the womb.

The problem is that many disagree on the beginning of life.

Scientists debate on what qualifies life and where the fertilized egg becomes a separate human.

Many people don't even know that the baby in the womb is distinctly human.

Volunteers from the Crisis pregnancy center tell me that many men and women don't know how human their baby is.

That's why they push to do a sonogram.

Thankfully seeing a sonogram sometimes works.

Wednesday the director of the Crisis Pregnancy center emailed out part of the story of one woman who came in planning an abortion.

When she saw the sonogram she decided to carry the baby to term.

Now she loves her little boy and is so happy to have him.

Our court system is confused about the beginning of life.

Perhaps you may remember the trial of an abortionist named Herman Gosnell last year.

He was convicted of murder because he made a practice of killing a number of babies immediately after they were born rather then killing them in the womb.

If he had only killed the babies anywhere inside the mother's body the court would have said that he was simply conducting legal abortions.

As Christians we must understand that God begins life in the womb.

God begins every life with a plan and purpose for his or her existence.

For this reason every human life has value.

For this reason we must defend life from its' conception.

Please join me in the next couple verses:

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

your works are wonderful,

I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you