He Covered You In the Womb
Psa 139:13-16 GW You alone created my inner being. You knitted me together inside my mother. (14) I will give thanks to you because I have been so amazingly and miraculously made. Your works are miraculous, and my soul is fully aware of this. (15) My bones were not hidden from you when I was being made in secret, when I was being skillfully woven in an underground workshop. (16) Your eyes saw me when I was only a fetus. Every day of my life was recorded in your book before one of them had taken place.
From the Detroit News Wednesday January 5th: Macomb County Prosecutor Eric Smith said his hands were tied when it came time to decide whom to charge in the baseball bat beating death of a fetus being carried by a teenage girl. He decided Tuesday to do the only thing one state statute allowed: charge the boyfriend who wielded the bat, hitting his girlfriend in the stomach repeatedly over a two-week period. The girl, who was a willing participant in the induced abortion cannot be charged.
Miranda Massie, a Detroit civil rights attorney, believes neither teen should be charged. “My heart went out to these poor kids,” Massie said. “I believe it is a terrible mistake to be charged at all. This is a tremendous waste of public resources.”
Lori Lamerand, vice president of the Planned Parenthood Mid-Michigan Alliance said pregnant teens have safer options available than terminating a pregnancy without a doctor. “It’s always tragic when people resort to such drastic measures, when there are appropriate, safe, medical measures available.”
And so we have a Detroit civil rights attorney sticking up for some teenagers who used a baseball bat on a helpless unborn child. Civil rights attorney? Someone here care to tell me what is “civil” about that? Is this attorney serious? She wants to defend these two kids, as if THEIR rights are being trampled on?
Of course she may have a point, these kids did nothing more “uncivil” than an abortionist invading the womb with his tools of the trade. The only difference is his procedure is more controlled and his tools are sterilized. The results are the same. One cruelly murdered, made in the image of God, and loved by God, human being.
Then the attorney leaves us with the impression that to try this case in a court is a tremendous waste of public resources. “Yea, why don’t we just let them go free, after all it’s not like they clubbed a “real” person of any value to death.” I mean, we’ve already established by law that they aren’t really human beings.
That’s the mind set folks! That’s where we are headed in all of this. From the infant to the elderly, you better be a contributor, you better not be a drain on public resources or they are going to come after you with clubs. I couldn’t help but wonder as I read this story about what kind of an uproar there would be if they had done this to a pregnant cat or dog?
But then that’s where we are in this godless society. Never mind that human beings from conception on bear the image of God, and that every human being is of tremendous value to God, or that God has a plan for each one of us. That doesn’t matter to the godless. What matters is this. Are you a drain on public resources? Are you a drain on my life? Then you must be removed.
Then we have the Planned Parenthood spokesperson chip in, “there are “safer” options available for “terminating a pregnancy.” Terminating a pregnancy, it sounds so much nicer than “ending the life of an innocent human being” And safer? Safer for who? Certainly not the unborn child.
She continues: “It’s always “tragic” when people “resort” to such “drastic” measures, when there are appropriate, safe, medical measures available.” A masterful job of language usage to get the spotlight away from the murder.
Notice that words like “tragic, resort, and drastic” are not used to point to the plight of the child, rather they are pointed to the tragedy of back alley abortion. She says, “what a tragedy for these teens to have to kill this way, when they could’ve come to a clinic where appropriate safe medical measures are available to do the same thing.....kill your child.
Appropriate? Is that what we call the procedures used for ending the life of an unborn child? People, if you believe that, then you need to look at the gruesome pictures of the aftermath of an abortion. You need to be the worker who has to count all the pieces after the abortion to make sure they are all there. Appropriate?
Abortion is never appropriate! Never appropriate in a back alley, never appropriate in an abortion clinic, never appropriate in a hospital. Never appropriate as the result of a pill. It is the ending of a never to be duplicated, human life, created by God in His image and redeemed by the death of His Son to live a life “filled with good works that He has prepared for us to do.” (Eph 2:10)
What we have in this story out of Detroit is indeed a bizarre back alley abortion. Two weeks of persistently jarring the womb with a souvenir baseball bat with the hope that the mother would deliver a dead child. Imagine what that persistent pounding felt like for the unborn child!
Oh and don’t you know that little one could feel. If you look at the “Watch Me Grow” handout you received today, you will notice that in the second month of pregnancy, the nervous system of the child is functioning, and by the third month the baby has a sense of touch.
And what was this child feeling in this daily attack of a battering ram on the God made fortress and sanctuary we call the womb? Boom, boom, boom, the daily pounding by the insensitive expectant father, who is waiting for the fortress to crumble so the little one would lose his grip and die, and his sin would be covered.
Boom, boom, boom. The bat relentlessly pounds on the sanctuary. The soft lining of the mother’s womb, intended to be a place of nurture, now experiencing daily earthquakes and after shocks of deadly proportion on the embryonic Richter scale. And eventually the baby either dies and is expelled or is expelled and dies. And that’s the tragedy Planned Parenthood.
Let’s talk about the womb and see what God’s Word has to say about it. In the New King James version of Psalm 139:13 we read:
Psa 139:13 NKJV For You have formed my inward parts; You have covered me in my mother’s womb.
First of all we see here that it is God who creates us. He forms our inward parts.
Deu 32:39 GW See, I am the only God. There are no others. I kill, and I make alive. I wound, and I heal, and no one can rescue you from my power.
Our physical lives are in His hands. He decides if the unborn child is carried to term or not. He decides about our physical imperfections and our perfections. We are simply called to nurture and care for what He has created.
Now, I don’t want you to miss the importance of the next part of Ps 139:13, “You have covered me in my mother’s womb.” The word covered in the Hebrew language is the idea of a fence. A fence that is put up to protect, or defend! A hedge. Now, please note who is doing the covering, who is doing the fencing in here? God is.
Fences are put up to protect something of value to the owner. Fences are put up to keep trespassers out, and fences are put up to keep what is treasured......... safe and secure. What does that tell you about God’s relationship with what is in the womb?
What does that tell you about how God feels about the unborn child? It tells me that the contents of the womb are precious in His sight. He doesn’t want malicious intruders to come in and harm what He has created in His image and is in the process of forming. So He covers it, fences it in.
In the act of abortion, we have malicious intruders, who cut the wires in the God-made fence and attack that which God desires to protect. Whether it’s at the clinic with the curette, or a teenager relentlessly pounding away at the fence with a baseball bat, or a birth control pill that is taken to prevent the fenceposts from sticking in the ground, the result is the same.
The covering of God, the fence, is violated for the sole purpose of attacking something that God has created and regards as precious. So precious that He sent His only Son into the world to redeem it with His blood.
Life is precious and it doesn’t become precious at birth. It is precious from conception on! The psalmist writes in the 71st Psalm:
Psa 71:6 GW I depended on you before I was born. You took me from my mother's womb.
Isa 44:2 GW The LORD made you, formed you in the (fenced in) womb,
The womb is holy, fenced in territory, and we have no right to enter it for murder or plunder for spare parts as we are seeing now in this mad rush for embryonic stem cells.
Listen to what God says about the womb in Job 31:
Job 31:13-15 GW "If I have abused the rights of my servants, male or female, when they have disagreed with me, (14) then what could I do if God rises up? If he examines me, how could I answer him? (15) Didn't he who made me in my mother's belly make them? Didn't the same God form us in the womb?
Job was saying that he had no right to abuse the rights of others. Didn’t the same God form us in the womb? Yes a woman has a right to do what she wants with her own body, but in the womb, we are talking about another body, one that doesn’t belong to her, one that is being formed by God, not by her. One that God has privileged her to carry. One that is in the process of being fearfully and wonderfully made by the Master Potter!
How dare we say that any baby should be aborted when we realize that we were once in the same boat as they. What? Are we the only ones worthy of God’s protection? Are we the only ones precious in His sight? That’s thin ice folks. Did not the same God form us in the womb?
Well, what about imperfect children, malformed children? Well what about them? Have you looked in the mirror lately? What’s so perfect about you? Have you looked into your heart lately? What’s so perfect about that?
If you want to judge the value of life based on appearances, you are not in step with God.
1Sa 16:7 GW But the LORD told Samuel, "Don't look at his appearance or how tall he is, because I have rejected him. God does not see as humans see. Humans look at outward appearances, but the LORD looks into the heart."
The point that Job was making is that we are no different from any other “product of conception.” We all have to admit that at one time we were in the same position as every other unborn child ever created by God. That should be all the incentive we need to speak up on their behalf and defend them! Wouldn’t you have appreciated someone sticking up for you? God’s Word says,
Pro 24:11-12 GW Rescue captives condemned to death, and spare those staggering toward their slaughter. (12) When you say, "We didn't know this," won't the one who weighs hearts take note of it? Won't the one who guards your soul know it? Won't he pay back people for what they do?
In Psalm 139:14,15 we read of giving thanks to God because we have been so amazingly and miraculously put together, and I love the description of the womb as being God’s underground workshop.
God’s underground workshop. It is in this protected and fenced in area that we are skillfully put together. Just read about the development of the child in the womb and you will be blown away by the process. It is truly miraculous and in no way can it be relegated to anything less than the work of an intelligent, loving being.
Isa 44:2 GW The LORD made you, formed you in the womb...
That in itself should give all the value to an unborn child that is needed, but let’s talk about this idea of the unborn being of no value.
Isa 49:1,2 GW Listen to me, you islands. Pay attention, you people far away. Before I was born, the LORD chose me. While I was in my mother's womb, he recorded my name. (2) He made my tongue like a sharp sword and hid me in the palm of his hand. He made me like a sharpened arrow and hid me in his quiver.
He hid him in His quiver, because He had plans for him! And here we see something else that is going on in the womb. God records our names! And you thought you did that one night while you were eating pickles and ice cream!
Now, we are not talking about the names given to us at birth, we are talking about names that describe who we are. That’s the way names were given in biblical times. Simon became known as Peter because he was a rock. Barnabas so named because he was an encourager. Jesus, so named because He would save His people from their sins.
So the idea of being named in the womb is that the Lord is at work determining your gifts, determining what you will be in order to serve His kingdom purposes. All that you will be physically skilled with and endowed with is determined at conception. It’s all there, all that is added is nourishment, environment, and time.
God has a plan for every person who is conceived, and He brings all of us into the world “for such a time as this.”
Eph 2:10 GW God has made us what we are. He has created us in Christ Jesus to live lives filled with good works that he has prepared for us to do.
Even the most severely handicapped child has a purpose. That purpose may be to teach us to learn to love unconditionally as God has loved our own severely handicapped and sin stained souls from the beginning.
Psa 51:5 GW Indeed, I was born guilty. I was a sinner when my mother conceived me.
This verse alone should tell us about the humanity of the child from the moment of conception. According to this verse, when did we become sinners? At conception. Who did Jesus die for? He died for sinners. He didn’t die for “products of conception. He didn’t die for “contents of the womb.” He died for sinners. Sin is what truly identifies us as humans.
But God so loved the sinners He created, that He sent His only Son to die on the cross to redeem them from sin.
Joh 3:16 GW God loved the world this way: He gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him will not die but will have eternal life.
Isa 44:24a GW The LORD reclaimed you. He formed you in the womb.
Created, formed, and redeemed as our bulletin handout so beautifully expresses. And this is the final and perhaps most important item we need to talk about this morning. God sent His Son into the world to reclaim all of us from our sin. It is His desire to “redeem” us, to buy us back from the penalty of our sin.
We are all sinners and we are all in need of redemption and there is no sin, including the sin of abortion, that Jesus did not pay for on that cross. One of the most difficult things about preaching on abortion is the likelihood that many of you sitting here today have been a participant in the act in one way or another.
And as we speak about it, we bring pain to bear on your soul. When the realization hits that you have ended the life of a child or your child it can be devastating. The devil uses the tremendous guilt that goes along with such an action to convince you that God can never forgive you for what you did, but that is a lie!
Because if Jesus didn’t pay for all sins, He didn’t pay for any! Jesus paid it all, believe that! Receive that!
1Jo 1:9 GW God is faithful and reliable. If we confess our sins, he forgives them and cleanses us from everything we've done wrong.
“Everything we’ve done wrong!”
“Created in His image, formed by His hands, redeemed by His blood. Live freely in that redemption beginning today as you bring your sins to Jesus.
As we shared from that newspaper article this morning, we get a glimpse of the mind set of the world when it comes to the unborn. It tells us what we are up against. It tells us how much we need to pray and work for revival in this land. It tells us how important it is for us to train up our children according to the Word of God and the issue of the right to life.
May God help us, may He have mercy on us, and may we His church proclaim His truth concerning life and learn to embrace it, nurture it, love it, and accept it as a gift from God.
Created, formed, and redeemed.
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