The Sanctity of Life
Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 1:24:42
0 ratings
· 8 viewsFiles
Notes
Transcript
The Sanctity of Life
WHO DETERMINES PERSON-HOOD?
Psalm 139:13–18 (ESV)
13 For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.
17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
18 If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you.
God Knows Me
Although the psalmist may be ambivalent about the extent of God’s knowledge and the scope of his presence.
The Psalmist has no doubts that God is and has been with him from the very beginning and that he knows him thoroughly.
It was God who created him.
God did not simply create humanity and then withdraw. as though natural processes alone accounted for the birth of future generations.
God is intimately involved in the birth of all his human creatures.
And the result is amazing, as the psalmist considers
that he is fearfully and wonderfully made.
God’s knowledge of the psalmist even extends to the time before he was conceived (your eyes saw my unformed body).
He not only knows the psalmist’s distant past but also his future, a statement about God’s foreknowledge.
The Psalmist is overwhelmed by the vastness of God’s thoughts (vv. 17–18), “They outnumber the grains of sand.”
The million dollar question -------------
Who Determines Person-Hood?
who gets to decide? if there is a person inside a mother’s womb ....or the worst of horrors do we already know that the baby is a person and we don’t care
There is a Person in the Womb created by God
These verses also plainly teach a child's individuality while it is still in its mother’s womb.
David is not writing about abortion, of course. Nothing could be farther from his mind. But no one can read these verses thoughtfully today without considering their obvious bearing on this important contemporary problem.
The chief issue in discussions about abortion concerns the identity of the fetus.
Video.............The Only Question That Matters Greg Kokul Stand to Reason
· Those who argue for the right of a woman to have an abortion—“It’s my own body; I can do with it as I please”—usually argue that the fetus is not yet a person but is only a part of the woman’s body.
like a gallbladder or appendix that she can elect to have removed.
That is why language describing the unborn child has changed so radically.
A generation ago everyone referred to the unborn child as a baby, and pregnant women knew they were carrying a baby.
It is hard for anyone to admit that they are killing a baby. So today
People talk about the fetus or the embryo or even mere “tissue” instead. To get rid of tissue doesn’t seem so bad.
But this is not the way the Bible speaks of the unborn child.
What is more, growing medical knowledge of unborn children undermines that comfortable delusion.
The Greek philosopher Aristotle speculated that the fetus becomes human when it quickens in the womb, that is, when the mother feels it move.
We know today that the movement of the fetus is only a matter of degree; the baby is moving all the time.
· Others have argued that the fetus becomes human only when it is old enough to survive outside the womb.
but advances in the care of premature babies
make it possible for even extremely small infants to survive,
certainly infants that are younger and smaller than many being aborted.
Size Is Irrelevant in Determining Person hood
We know what we are doing because the size of a person is irrelevant when deciding if the person is a human being or not.
The five-foot-eight frame of a teenage son guarantees him no more right to life than the 23-inch frame of his little sister in her mother's arms.
Size is morally irrelevant (1 inch, 23 inches, 68 inches) in determining who should be protected. Forgive, Father, we know what we are doing.
It is increasingly common today to identify life with brain activity, but we know there is brain activity in the unborn child even before the mother is aware that she is pregnant. For that matter, there is a beating heart and the circulation of the baby’s own blood as well.
The problem with trying to determine a point before which the developing child is fully human is that there isn’t one.
There is an uninterrupted development of the child from the very moment in which the sperm of the father joins the ovum of the mother and the cell begins to divide.
The father’s seed cannot multiply by itself, nor can the mother’s egg, but as soon as the two sets of chromosomes combine, not only does the development of life continue steadily unless interrupted, either accidentally or deliberately, but the life that is developing is a unique life.
There is no other combination of chromosomes exactly like these new ones. The fetus is already a uniquely determined individual.
· In the perceptive wording of this psalm David is speaking of his unique individuality from the first moments of his existence in the womb.
From that very first moment, God knew him and had ordained what his life was to be.
All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be (v. 16).
If that is how God views the unborn child, dare we call it only tissue and destroy the unborn.
as we are doing in this country at the rate of more than a million-and-a-half babies each year?[2]
The strong decide which of the weak are persons.
It is illegal to take the life of the unborn if the mother wants the baby, but it is legal to take the life of the unborn if she doesn’t.
In the first case, the law treats the fetus as a human with rights; in the second case, the law treats the fetus as nonhuman with no rights.
Humanness — existence as a human being — is decreed by the will of the mother.
The baby is young and weak and cannot cry out, “I am a human being!” Therefore, the will of the older, the stronger, holds sway.
By her will, she may, under the law, confer human personhood on her baby or not.
If she does, no one may kill the baby. If she does not, the baby may be killed with impunity. That is legally enshrined self-deification. John piper
The strong decide which of the weak are persons.
We reject this in the case of Nazi anti-Semitism.
We reject this in the case of race-based slavery.
We reject this in the case of Soviet Gulags.
In the case of the unborn, millions of people embrace this self-deifying principle: the human will of the strong confers personhood.
If the baby is wanted it’s a baby.
If the baby is not wanted it’s not.
if the mother wants the baby. And it’s legal to take the life of an unborn child if she doesn’t. In the first case, the law treats the fetus as a human with rights. In the second case, the law treats the fetus as a nonhuman with no rights.
Self Deification
According to God’s word, both inside and outside the womb, only God confers life personhood.
Stalin was guilty of murdering 40 million of his own countrymen. Hitler, 30 million human beings. The United States, since Roe v. Wade (not globally, but the United States), has blown past both of those brothers and has made them look angelic as we have slaughtered wholesale 60 million little boys and little girls.[3]
We’re talking about 60 million souls and counting. A thousand every day, almost all under the guise of convenience, not medical emergency. It’s a horrific, brutal, disgusting practice. Many of us are guilty, but most of us are indifferent.[4]
We Know What We Are Doing
1. The Inconsistency of Fetal Surgery and Abortion
We know what we are doing because of the inconsistency of doing fetal surgery on a baby in the womb to save him while his cousin at the same stage of development is being killed.
The evidence mounts on all hands that the unborn are persons and patients alongside of their mothers. They can be medically treated just as the mother can. But many people turn a deaf ear to observations like Dr. Steve Calvin's i
In a letter to the Arizona Daily Star Dr Steven Calvin wrote, "There is inescapable schizophrenia in aborting a perfectly normal 22 week fetus while at the same hospital, performing intra-uterine surgery on its cousin."
Father, forgive, we know what we are doing.
2. Location or Environment Are Irrelevant for Determining Person-hood
We know what we are doing because in all other er areas of life we do not allow location or environment to determine a person's right to life.
Scott Klusendorf asks, "How does a simple journey of seven inches down the birth canal suddenly transform the essential nature of the fetus from non-person to person?"
(http://www.str.org/free/bioethics/Seriously.pdf) The so-called "partial-birth abortion" is so obviously infanticide that only the most guilty blindness could deny it. Father, forgive, we know what we are doing.
3. Dependency on Another Is Irrelevant for Determining Person-hood
We know what we are doing because we consider persons on respirators and dialysis as human beings whose lives are precious and to be protected.
In other words,
The unborn cannot be disqualified from human life because they are dependent on their mother for food and oxygen and protection from toxins.
In fact, we operate on the exact opposite principle: The more dependent a little one is on us, the more responsibility we feel to protect him, not the less. Father, forgive, we know what we are doing.
(Those last four observations were summed up by Scott Klusendorf under the acronym SLED: Size, Level of development, Environment, Degree of dependence – none is morally relevant for the definition of human life.)
4. We Have Seen the Ultrasounds and the Photographs
We know what we are doing because the marvel of ultrasound has given a stunning window into the womb that shows the unborn, for example, at 8 weeks sucking his thumb, recoiling from pricking, responding to sound.
And, besides that, we have the amazing books and magazines capturing the intrauterine photographs of every stage in a baby's development.
We think especially of the photography of Lennart Nilsson. When pro-choice people say pictures don't count, they are inconsistent.
The way things look is a crucial part of how we make choices. You don't shoot a man, you shoot a deer, and you use your eyes to tell the difference.
If the world could see clearly the babies being killed, millions of people would recoil. And O how great the guilt of our ignorance, because we can see them – if we would. Father, forgive, we know what we are doing.
Indictment and Forgiveness
Jesus Christ indicts and forgives in one and the same act of death.
He died to show us the greatness of our sin, and he died to forgive the greatness of our sin.
And, we add, he died (according to Titus 2:14) "to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds." O may God raise up coronary, Wilberforce-like, never-give-up Christians in the battle for racial justice and justice for the unborn, mingled with mercy for everyone involved, because we live by mercy.
Jesus offers you forgiveness this morning.
for aborting your child, or encouraging your girlfriend or your daughter to abort your child, or for working in an abortion clinic,
or for being apathetic and doing nothing about this great evil and injustice in our society.
In offering forgiveness, Jesus declares that we are guilty.
Our ignorance is guilty ignorance. We should know what we are doing even if we don't. And we do know!
Titus 2:13–14 (ESV)
13 waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, 14 who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.
[1]Longman, T., III. (2014). Psalms: An Introduction and Commentary (D. G. Firth, Ed.; Vols. 15–16, pp. 453–454). Inter-Varsity Press.
[2]Boice, J. M. (2005). Psalms 107–150: An Expositional Commentary (pp. 1209–1210). Baker Books.
[3]Chandler, M. (2015). The Sanctity of Life. In Matt Chandler Sermon Archive (Ps 139). Village Church.
[4]Chandler, M. (2015). The Sanctity of Life. In Matt Chandler Sermon Archive (Ps 139). Village Church.
[5]Chandler, M. (2015). The Sanctity of Life. In Matt Chandler Sermon Archive (Ps 139). Village Church.