All of human life is sacred.  We are created to live lives that are consecrated to God, and can be celebrated in Eternity.  It all begins when we recognize that Life is Sacred. 

Psalm 106: 35-42
“They mingled with the nations  and adopted their customs.
They worshiped their idols,  which became a snare to them.
They sacrificed their sons  and their daughters to demons.
They shed innocent blood,  the blood of their sons and daughters,
Whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan,
And the land was desecrated by their blood.
They defiled themselves by what they did;
by their deeds they prostituted themselves.
Therefore the LORD was angry with His People
and their foes ruled over them.
Their enemies oppressed them
and subjected them to their power.”

In spite of God’s faithfulness to Israel, her history from the Exodus down to the Babylonian Captivity, is filled with “faithlessness”, “ingratitude”, and constant urning away from God.  Our text for this morning traces some of Israel’s rebellious activities and God’s judgments on them.  We ask, “How, after the great miracles they saw, experienced, and benefited from, could they turn from God and worship the idols of the land?  And so, because Israel sinned so grievously, becoming the harlot after idols, the Lord was angry with His people and He gave them over to “the oppression of their enemies”.

We who are privileged to have lived in the 20th and 21st centuries have also seen God’s great miracles, yet we too find ourselves enticed by the gods, the idols, of this world:  power, convenience, fame, sex, pleasure, and even the destruction of the “least of these”, the unborn babies by abortion…..a practice which has opened the Pandora’s Box and is now moving into infanticide and euthanasia of the crippled and the elderly.  The most demanding challenges of our age appear to be the parallel rise of 1)”high, ever more complex technology” and 2) the demise of traditional values, the crumbling of old moralities, and perhaps a 3) third  factor…our corresponding sense of a loss of control.

he former pastor of 10th Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia, the late James Montgomery Boice made this comment:   

    “The extraordinary technical advances of our time are accompanied
      by an extreme and debilitating “moral permissiveness” which promises
      in time to break down even the values and system that made both the
      advances and the permissiveness possible.”

This feeling of a loss of control in an age of high technology and moral degeneration is developed by Christian theologian, Joseph Bayly, in his novel, Winter Flight.  In this novel, set in America in the not-too-distant future, the twin concepts of the rise of technology and the loss of the old values (loyalty, truthfulness, courtesy, kindness, compassion) present a world even more frightening than George Orwell’s 1984.  One of the characters in Bayly’s book, Dr. Price Berkowitz, explains “the forces that led to the loss of control”:

“It seems to me that a certain point of no return was passed in the early 1970’s when the U.S. Supreme Court made abortion legal for any cause or none.  I’m not blaming the Court…things had been heading up that way any way.  Then, when people got accustomed to aborting a fetus, even a viable one, the medical researchers said, ‘Look, why do we have to kill those babies?  Why not use them for experiments?’ At first there was an outcry, people…including some physicians…said it was immoral.  But then, pragmatism won the battle, as it always does.  If a fetus can be torn to pieces, why can’t an aborted fetus, a viable one, be kept alive and used in experiments, the same as rats and dogs and little pigs?’‘You make it sound so natural,’ Grace said.
‘That’s the way it seemed at the time.  After that, it was just another logical step to destroy newborn infants, normally born ones that were found to have congenital problems.  Why should parents or the government spend money on their care?  It was maybe 5 years later that someone had the great idea of the organ factory.’”

The “organ factory” is used for the unwanted persons of the “Brave New World.”  The upper portions of their brains are killed, but the bodies are kept alive and growing so that they may be used to donate spare parts for the “beautiful people”. Dr. Berkowitz exclaims:   

    “Can’t you see it?  This whole country’s cursed.  Jews and WASPS, Blacks,
    Chicanos, everybody.  It’s cursed with health and intelligence and beauty.
    Everyone’s so darned beautiful, so darned bright, so darned healthy.”

UT, the Word of God tells us that perfect health is a blessing when it is provided by God.  The Word of God tells us that perfect health will be a particular blessing of the Coming Kingdom of His Christ.  But, perfect health brought about by the “machinations” of evil men is a terrible curse.  Beauty, intelligence, and health that are achieved by genetic manipulation and by the destruction or removal of all that in man’s eyes are ugly, feeble, and sick, is no blessing at all.  The late Francis Schaeffer wrote that:   

    “Times of monstrous inhumanity do not come about all at once; they are
    slipped into gradually.  Often those who use certain emotions and appeal to
    “rights”, do not even know what they have started.  They see only some
    isolated condition they want to accomplish, but have not considered
    soberly the overall direction in which things are moving.”

ven some of the Supreme Court Justices who voted with the majority opinion writer Harry Blackmun on January 22, 1973, 34 years ago, to give sanction of law to virtually all abortions, commented later that they were shocked by the numbers in the millions each year of unborn babies who were aborted.  Blackmun and the other 5 signatories to his majority opinion, which nullified the criminal abortion statutes of all 50 states, ceasing the protection of law to the unborn (which had been in effect for over 100 years), failed to address the Giant Questions about human beings which are answered by the Word of God.

Who am I?”  and “Why am I here?” are addressed by God early on in the Scriptures.  In Genesis 1:26 we read:  “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our Image, in Our Likeness, and let them rule.’”  Then, 5 verses later we see that God’s view of His creation on the 6th day is very clear:  “God saw all that He had made, and it was very good.” (v. 31)

Created to Live

We are created to live.  The unique characteristic of each human being is the reflection of being created “In His Image”.  Each of us reflects the very Image of God.  Man (woman, children, babies, born and unborn) alone of all creatures is the closest to God.  His creation alone is preceded by a solemn decision in God’s heart:  “Let Us Make Man in Our Image.”  Only man, therefore, owes his existence to a voluntary decision in the depths of God’s heart.  

Our peace (“Shalom”) is derived 1)when we recognize  that  we reflect His Image and 2) when we allow God to achieve His purpose through our lives.  If we lose sight of the value placed on human life, we are susceptible to the temptation to destroy that life designed by God.  Human Life is Sacred.  When human life is destroyed, we lose the impact of a life that could have enriched our lives and brought Glory to God.  The movie of 60 years ago, “It’s A Wonderful Life” (with Jimmy Stewart), allows a man to see what the world would have missed if he had not been born.  A similar experience might help us value our own lives and all human life.

A college professor presented this dilemma for his ethics class to consider: 

“A man has syphilis and his wife has tuberculosis.  They have 4 children:     One of them has died; the other 3 have terminal illnesses.  The mother    has become pregnant again.  What do you recommend?”

The class voted to terminate the pregnancy.  Then the professor explained that theyhad just killed Beethoven.

Ethel Waters, the great Gospel singer (who sang many times at Billy Graham Crusades) was born to a 13 year-old child who had been raped.

 Our world would have been robbed of the wonderful sacred music provided by each of these giants, if life had not been valued even under the most difficult of circumstances.

We are created to live: God saved His Breath for the creation of human beings.  Genesis 2:7 says, “the Lord God….breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being”.  We are created in the Image of God and endowed with His very Breath to Live.  That is Sacred.

Job, even in the midst of his afflictions, declares that God created him to live:  “As surely as God lives..the Almighty..as long as I have life within me, the Breath of God in my nostrils, my lips will not speak wickedness, and my tongue will utter no deceit.”  

The Apostle Paul, speaking to the men of Athens in Greece (Acts 17:25) notes that God is the Giver of life:  “God Himself gives all men life and breath and everything else”.

The Psalmist, King David (Psalm 139: 14,15) tells us that:  “My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.  When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, Your Eyes saw my unformed body.”

Isaiah speaks in the 44th Chapter:  “This is what the Lord says, your Redeemer, who formed you in the womb…” 

When we lose sight of a Creator Who has formed us with a purposeful life in mind, we may devalue life, and even be willing to destroy it.  The Roman Coliseum remains a monument to the degradation a culture or society will sink to when it does not recognize that human beings are Created to Live.  And the 20th century has places which were so evil that they are virtually synonymous with death:  Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, Treblinka, Ravensbruck, the Gulags of Josef Stalin, the Killing Fields of Mao Ze-Dong and Pol Pot.

It has often been noted that abortion and euthanasia are only symptoms of a greater problem:  our culture, which was once known as Western Christendom, no longer recognizes the Sacredness of Human Life.  Mother Teresa said, “Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use violence to get what they want.  That is why, the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.”

Consecrated for Life

We are created to live and, we are consecrated for life.  Life is sacred.  Our lives are a trust from God, and therefore should be dedicated and lived to achieve His Divine Purpose.  The music of our lives should be offered as an Act of Worship to our God, the Creator.  Life is a Sacred Trust.  Paul, in his letter to the Church at Ephesus, (2:10) notes that “we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”  Oswald Chamber says “If I will come to Jesus, my actual life will be brought into accordance with my real desires; I will actually cease from wanting to sin, and will find the Song of the Lord beginning in my life.”  When I realize that my life dedicated to the One Who created me actually fulfills the intent of my life, I discover life has great and grand meaning.

Jeremiah, the Prophet, noted that God knew him completely before he was born (Jer. 1:6).  The Psalmist declared, “The LORD will fulfill His purpose for me(Psalm .138:8) and in lst Peter 2:16 Peter challenges the church, “to live as servants of God.” 

Like a piece of art or music crafted for a specific purpose, we find that life is indeed Sacred when we allow our lives to be given to serve the purposes of our Creator God.  We are created to live.  We are consecrated for life.  HE gives  life; we give HIM our life to be His for whatever He designed us to become.

Celebrate a Lifetime!

If we understand that Life is Sacred and that we are Created to Live, and that we are called to Consecrate that Life to God’s Purpose”, then we will be able to celebrate a lifetime!  In the Book of Revelation we have a picture of 24 elders celebrating before the Throne of God.  They recognize that the Creator is worthy of praise for what HE has done through His creation.  St. Augustine understood that we were made to fellowship with our Creator.  He said:  “You made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You.”  The picture that Christ paints for us is of a son returning home to the Father.  In Luke 15 we read that there is a celebration when the son comes home.

I close with a medical doctor’s personal story, one that consumes nearly 2 decades before the celebration begins:

Several years ago, a fragile young woman came to my office, expecting her first baby.  One month before she was due, the baby was in a breech position.  The death rate of breech babies is high because of the difficulty in delivering the after-coming head and the imperative need of delivering it quickly after the body is born.

During the delivery, I waited as patiently as I could for the natural forces of expulsion to thoroughly dilate the firm maternal structures.  At last the time had come, and I gently drew down one little foot.  I grasped the other, but it would not come beside the first one.  To my consternation, I saw the other little foot would never be beside the first one.  The entire thigh from the hip to the knee was missing.

I knew what a dreadful effect this would have upon the unstable nervous system of the mother.  The family would almost certainly impoverish itself in taking the child to every famous orthopedist in the world.  I saw this little girl sitting sadly by herself, while the other girls danced and ran and played.

I could slow my hand; I could delay those few short moments.  No one in this world would ever know.  The mother, after the first shock of grief, would be glad she had lost a child so handicapped.

The little pink foot on the good side bobbed out from its protecting towel and pressed firmly against my slowly moving hand into whose keeping the safety of the mother and baby had been entrusted.

I couldn’t do it.  I delivered the baby with her pitiful little leg.  Every foreboding came true.  The mother was in the hospital several months-she looked like a wraith of her former self.  As the years went on, I blamed myself bitterly for not having had the strength to yield to my temptation.

Our hospital stages an elaborate Christmas party each year for the staff.  This past year, three lovely young musicians on the stage played softly in unison with the organ.  I was especially fascinated by the young harpist.  She played extraordinarily well, as if she loved it.  Her slender fingers flicked across the strings, and her face was upturned as if the world that moment were a wonderful and holy place.

When the short program was over, there came running down the aisle a woman I did not know.  “Oh, you saw her,” she cried.  “You must have recognized your baby.  That was my daughter who played the harp-the little girl who was born with only one good leg 17 years ago.  We tried everything at first, but now she has a whole artificial leg on that side.  Best of all, through all those years, she learned to use her hands so wonderfully.  She is going to be one of the world’s greatest harpists.  She is my whole life and now she is so happy…And here she is!”  The sweet young girl had quietly approached us, her eyes glowing.

Impulsively, I took the child in my arms.  Across her warm young shoulder I saw the creeping clock of the delivery room 17 years before.  I lived again those awful moments when her life was in my hand.  As the last strains of “Silent Night” faded, I found comfort I had waited for so long.

Life is Sacred

We are created to live, and because we consecrate our lives to the Creator, we have opportunity to celebrate what He has accomplished through the lives of those He created.

In Matthew 18, Jesus warns against harming little children.  The Psalmist (Psalm 127:3) informs us that children are a gift from God.  Hebrews 4:13 tells us that everything in Creation will be uncovered, and we will then give an accounting to God.  It will be sad to realize the beautiful music that was missed because we did not value enough, life created by God.

All of human life is sacred.  We are created to live lives that are consecrated to God, and can be celebrated in Eternity.  It all begins when we recognize that Life is Sacred. 

Politics: General, Culture: General, Culture: Religion, Feminism, Abortion, Euthanasia

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Read more articles by Pastor Stephen Alexander, J.D.