Today is Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. It’s not a national holiday, though it did originate in a presidential proclamation. It’s not a biblical feast, though it’s consistent with biblical teaching. I’ve mentioned it a few times in years past, I have not preached a sermon related to it. But it fits as the end of the series on our worship for this year.

Sanctity means not just special but sacred. It is important because it is holy. Human life is valuable, and human life is set apart more than and above any other kind of life. In the creation week God made vegetation and trees to live and bear fruit, and it was good. God spoke living creatures into being and multiplying, and it was good. But only the life of Man, male and female, is created in God’s own image, and He said it is very good.

Sanctity of Human Life Sunday came a little over 10 years after the United States Supreme Court decision in 1973 of Roe v. Wade which gave the abortion-style-murder legal protection under federal law. It is true that the Dobbs decision in 2022 overturned the federal decision, sending responsibility for dealing with abortion back to the individual states. We’ve recognized that incremental mercy of God at our June Life Jubilee the last few summers. And also, even after Dobbs, and after an estimated 65 million abortions since 1973 in the US, we have even more blood on our hands as a nation than ever.

It was horrific to see so much celebration of Charlie Kirk’s killing. But at least his truth telling made people angry; his bright light was a big target for the angry darkness. Millions of babies are aborted who are merely inconvenient. We are killing the smallest fruit of our own lack of self-control. We destroy the most defenseless, the most personal, little lives. Now you can do it by taking a pill. Hardly anyone needs to know.

TEC was well represented at the Cascade Women’s Health Gala last October, and many of you followed up at a dinner a couple Saturdays ago. The seeds of attention have been sown, and we continue to look for strategic places where our faith can bear fruit. This increased awareness is good, the increasing network of relationships is good, and while ending abortion can’t save anyone’s eternal soul, it is good to rescue the weak from death.

Not only is it good, it is required. “Rescue those who are being taken away to death” (Proverbs 24:11, see verses 10-12).

I get that it’s easy these days to be over-outraged. We have been outraged-out. All the negative news fires us up until it tires us out. As Christians we see that we live in a society that God is giving over to its lusts (as in Romans 1), and yet, the very gospel that we believe as Christians means that we have reasons not to give up. The gospel is the power of God to salvation, and so we do not need to be ashamed of it.

Let’s look at God’s Word on His knowledge of and care for humans while He knits us together in the womb. The sanctity of life from conception is a reason to protect life and, even more than that, to praise God.

Fearfully Made

Hear the lyrics of this song of life.

For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my
mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and
wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths
of the earth.
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.
(Psalm 139:13–16 ESV)

Not only because it’s not verse 1, but even the first word in verse 13 asks us to consider the context.

The Psalm itself, written by David, praises God for His knowledge. Verse 1: “You have known me.” In fact, seven times in the song, and four times in the first six verses, David emphasizes God’s knowledge. This is not just a fact, it is a comfort. Because God knows David, David knows that he is cared for.

The first stanza (verses 1-6) emphasizes God’s omniscience, that is, God’s all-knowing knowledge. The second stanza (7-12) emphasizes God’s omnipresence, that is, God’s everywhere-existence. Combined, He knows all things everywhere. There is no place, and so also no person in any place, that God does not know.

The first word in verse 13, for, introduces an illustration of that comprehensive knowing. One of the places that is hard to get to, difficult to know what’s going on in there, is a mother’s womb (it takes at least six days for the embryo to implant in the uterine wall before even our modern pregnancy tests can give just a positive or negative result, let alone any other information). God doesn’t just know what’s happening, God does some of His best work in what’s dark to the rest of us, the mother herself included.

The Lord knows exactly what’s happening: not hidden from you (15), your eyes saw (16). But this knowing is also knitting. God is more than observer, He’s the life-giver. In verse 13, you formed, you knitted. In verse 14 life is wonderfully made, considered a wonderful work of God. In verse 15 life is being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths .

This is body and soul. The phrase in verse 13 translated as inward parts, is fine, but in Hebrew it’s actually “kidneys.” When we were kids, when my sister and I were fighting, we used to joke that we wouldn’t give the other one a kidney; kidney donations seemed to be in the news a lot in those days. But the Hebrews referred to the kidneys as the seat of affections, not the organ that filters fluids.

The unformed substance in verse 16 emphasizes that even in the tiny and shapeless life, the earliest stages of the embryo, God saw. This isn’t waiting for higher brain function, self-consciousness, let alone taking a first breath or first step.

There are reasonable options about what book David is referring to. Is it God’s standard operating procedures, so to speak, of how babies are formed, or is it the narrative of the individual’s life to come? There is a bit more weight in the context that it’s the process of the life of the not-yet-born (even though we wouldn’t argue about the whole of our lives being known by God, and see verse 4 about Him knowing our words before we say them).

Human beings are “fearfully and wonderfully made,” and so God’s “deeds are awesome and amazing” (an alternate translation in the NET of some tricky Hebrew grammar). The point, however, is not tricky. We praise God for creating life!

Significant Responses

These are part of God’s “thoughts” (verse 17). God’s baby body-growing, life-giving work in every mother’s womb is more than can be counted. It’s a reason for praise, and part of praising that can’t even get a total number of reasons: “if I could count them” (verse 18).

We know the truth that God knows us, everything about us, everything whatever we will say, wherever we might go, including and starting with our smallest and most invisible beginning at conception. Praise God!

And it is a reason to pray for protection. In David’s case, he was singing this psalm as an adult, and there there “men of blood” that were on his trail (verse 19), men with no respect for life. They were men who speak against God (verse 20), men who hate God (verse 21), and one way they demonstrated that was by pursuing David. When they did so, they were attacking an image-bearer. They were ready to malign, and murder, what God had been carefully making since conception.

How much more wicked and bloody and hateful are those murdering the little lives God is intricately weaving in the womb?

Before some practical things, we should 1) hate those who hate God and God’s creation. This is uncomfortable language for many, and I think it still applies even though we are also able to love our enemies in another way (Matthew 5:44). It’s one thing when we have opportunity to turn the other check to a personal affront, it’s another thing when we see the weak targeted for death by those who declare themselves to be enemies of God. 2) We must avoid hypocrisy. The Psalm ends with a prayer that invites God to attend to our thoughts and intentions and make them right (verses 23-24).

More Responses

Pray. And pray for God to do justice to the haters, even destroy those who seek to destroy others. That’s what we sing along with David in verse 19.

Worship God. Praise God. Give Him thanks for your life, the life of your kids, the life in the wombs. When you hurt something, or do a little web md search to treat something, yeah, don’t hold back in saying that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. The details are amazing, thank God!

As you are able: Attend events. Ask questions. Consider ways you could serve. Give money. Support adoption, as well as foster care. Post about it online. Vote…. Pray that God would lead you in the way everlasting, including showing you what you can do.

Conclusion

The most significant illustration of life from conception may be Jesus Himself. Mary left to see her cousin Elizabeth immediately after the Annunciation (the traditional moment of conception), so her pregnancy at the time of the meeting in Luke 1:42-45 was only as old as her travel time, somewhere around one week. The Holy Spirit enabled Elizabeth, and John who still had another three months to go in the womb, to recognize Mary’s child. Jesus was still a week or two from his heart beating.

By faith in this Jesus, any and all sins are forgiven. By faith in this Jesus, we have life and we learn to love and praise Him for the life He’s made.

True praise destroys numbness. The more we worship, the more we recognize life as a gift from God. Sanctity of Human Life Sunday fits with our reminders of worship and liturgy because every human being, from conception, is made by God to worship God.

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Charge

You may have difficulty sleeping some night and wonder to yourself, am I just spinning my wheels? You can’t see obvious progress. But, are you sowing seeds? Are you sowing by the Spirit? If yes, there is a promise for you to hold. Your labor is NOT in vain. Wait for the WIN! (1 Cor. 15:57)

Benediction:

But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:57–58 ESV)