Deo Gloria
January 30, 2022
Life Sunday Sermon
Pastor Martin Bentz
Text: Psalm 139:13-16
Theme: Life – A Gift from God!
I’d like to begin this morning with a story, a true story that was told by a doctor:
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 the 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 initial 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. The moment seemed to last for an eternity. What should I do? Should I let the child live and subject it and the family to a lifetime of trouble and hardship? Or should I let the child die, and spare the family and the baby?
Decisions like that are made every day in this country: difficult decisions, decisions involving life and death. How do we know what to do in situations like that? How do we know what’s the right thing to do?
The best place we can turn for guidance is God’s Word. God’s Word is a lamp to our feet and a light for our path. Here in his Word God gives us direction for our lives. He gives us fundamental truths and principles that help us in making those difficult decisions. And the guiding principle we find recorded today in the book of Psalms is a valuable one indeed: Life is a gift from God.
Listen again to the words of our text. (Read text.) From these verses we can learn three very important truths.
First, God is the one who gave me life. My life is not an accident. The fact that I am alive is not just the inevitable result of my parents having sex. I am not the latest link in an unending chain of evolution, the next rung on the ladder on the way to something better. I did not descend from monkeys and the gorilla at the zoo is not one of my long, lost relatives. God gave me life. David states it so clearly in our text. Speaking to God, he says, “You created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb”(v. 13). When I was just a tiny, little baby, so small that I could hardly be seen on an ultrasound screen, God could see me as plain as day. And he was busy, forming my tiny, little body: my heart and my lungs, my eyes and my ears, my fingers and my toes. Just like a grandmother carefully knitting a new pair of mittens or a scarf for one of her grandchildren, God knit you and me. He formed us in our mother’s womb. He gave us life.
Secondly, God made us in a fearful and wonderful way. Take the heart, for example. The heart is an amazing machine. The average heart beats 72 times per minute or about 100,000 times a day. A number of years ago doctors announced that they had successfully transplanted the first, self-contained, artificial heart in a man named Robert Tools. It extended his life another 5 months. If you were given the choice of keeping your own heart, which is still healthy and strong, or replacing it with an artificial heart, which would you choose? You’d keep your own heart, wouldn’t you? Why? Because it’s a thousand times better. Don’t get me wrong, the artificial heart is a marvelous invention, a miracle of modern technology. And yet it doesn’t even come close to the original, the one that God gave you.
Or talk to someone who has lost their hearing and has to use a hearing aid. Ask them if they had a choice between getting their old hearing back or continuing to use their hearing aid, which one they would choose. Again, the choice is obvious. If they could get their old hearing back, they’d take it in a second. Why? Because it’s so much better. Hearing aids too have come a long way. And I’m sure they’ll continue to improve. But they’re nothing like the original, nothing like the ears and the hearing God gave you.
Obviously God didn’t just take a bunch of scraps from the junk pile and slap them together with duck tape when he created Adam and Eve. God took great care in making them. God took great care in making us. He made us in a fearful and wonderful way.
Thirdly, God has a plan for our lives. Did you catch what David said in the last verse of our text? “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be”(v. 16). I imagine some of you plan on watching a bit of football this afternoon, maybe the Bengals against the Chiefs or the 49ers against the Rams. Long before those teams ever set foot on the field today, the coaches have a plan. They know which plays they’re going to run on offense. They know what kind of defense they’re going to use in various situations. They have a plan which they hope will lead their team to victory. Before I was even born, God had a plan for my life. He knew when I would be born. He knew my birthday even before my parents did. And he knows when I will die. He already knows the date that will be on my tombstone. My life, you see, is not meaningless. I’m not wandering aimlessly, hopelessly lost in this maddening maze we call life. My life has purpose and direction, because God has a plan, a plan to lead me to victory.
The most important part of that plan is that I come to believe in Jesus as my Savior and be saved. You see, my life is my time of grace, the time that God has graciously given me to hear about Jesus Christ my Savior and come to faith in him so that I might live with him in heaven. Once my life is over, though, so is my time of grace. And if for whatever reason I do not come to faith in Jesus as my Savior before my life is over, then I will not be saved. I will spend eternity separated from God and his love in hell.
That’s why God protects life. That’s why he says in the 5th Commandment: “You shall not murder.” For me to end someone’s life and cut short his time of grace is wrong, terribly wrong. I have no right to do so. Likewise, someone else has no right to decide when my life is over and end my time of grace. Only God has the right to make decisions like that. He is the one who gave me life, and he determines when my life should end. He is the author of life.
It’s rather obvious, however, as we look around at our world today, that many people do not share God’s view of life. Twenty years ago we watched in horror as some 3,000 people died in the terrorist attacks that took place on 9/11. Who wasn’t deeply moved by the pictures we saw on TV and by the many funerals that took place in the weeks and months afterward? And yet, where is the sadness and the horror when it comes to abortion? Every day more babies die in abortion clinics around the world than all those who died in the World Trade Center towers. And yet, many people hardly even bat an eye. They would not refer to abortion as a terrible tragedy. Some would even defend the practice, stating that a woman should have every right to terminate her pregnancy. Terminate her pregnancy? What happens when a woman decides to terminate her pregnancy, when she chooses to get an abortion? A baby dies. Is that her only option, though? Is there no other alternative? No, if she truly didn’t want her baby or couldn’t afford to raise it, she could give it up for adoption. But instead of giving her baby the chance to live, roughly 2,500 times a day a woman here in America exercises her right to choose, and a baby dies.
Because of medical advances, many tests can be done now days on a baby while it is still in the womb to see if it is healthy. If the tests reveal that the baby is not healthy, that it has a disease of some kind or a physical handicap, should the parents be encouraged to abort their baby? A college professor presented this challenging situation for his ethics class to ponder: “A man has syphilis and his wife has tuberculosis. They have four children. One has died; the other three have terminal illnesses. Now the mother is pregnant again. What would you recommend?” The class voted to terminate the pregnancy. The professor noted that they had just killed Ludwig von Beethoven.
But is it only the people out there who fail to respect God’s precious gift of life? Or do you and I display the same kind of attitude at times? “It’s my body. I can do with it whatever I want.” Ever heard that statement from one of your children? Ever made such a statement yourself? “It’s my life. If I don’t want to live anymore, if the quality of my life has deteriorated and I want to end my life, I should have the right to do so.” Sorry, it isn’t your life. It’s the life that God has given you, and he determines when your life is over. Have you ever hated someone else, hated them so badly you wished they were dead? The Bible says hatred is murder, and no murderer has eternal life in him.(1 John 3:15) Do you like to play video games? Do you like to play the kind where you get to shoot other people, where it shows blood splattering all over the place, sometimes even on the screen? Or the kind where you’re engaged in a knock down, drag out brawl with another contestant and at the end the winner gets to rip off the opponent’s head or rip out his heart and hold it up in the air in a celebration of victory? So what’s the message about life in games like that? Do you take care of the body that God has given you and strive to glorify God with your body? Or do you abuse your body with drugs and alcohol or use it for purely selfish pleasure? And what about abortion? Was there a time when you considered aborting your baby, or when you encouraged your girlfriend to, or when you actually got an abortion? We too have sinned, haven’t we? We haven’t always appreciated and respected God’s precious gift of life. We’ve violated the will of our Maker and disqualified ourselves from eternal life in heaven.
Thank God for Jesus Christ our Savior, the one who had a perfect respect for God’s gift of life; who never tried to harm others but always tried to help them; who never harmed his own body but always used it to God’s glory; who never hated other people, but was always patient and loving and kind! He lived the way we should have lived. He is our righteousness. And he died on the cross as well to take away the sins of the world, to take away our sins, including our sins of hatred and murder and abortion, so that we might be forgiven and enjoy eternal life in heaven.
The way to express our thanks to God is by respecting his gift of life, by appreciating the life that God has given you, by taking care of your body, by making the most of your life and living it to his glory. We can also express our thanks by respecting the lives of others and by sharing the truth about life with others: the truth that life is a gift from God; that every person is valuable and precious in God’s sight, including the aged and the handicapped and the crippled; that no one is worthless or a burden on society; and that everyone, even tiny babies, has the right to live.
So, are you still wondering, wondering what that doctor decided to do? Let me share with you the rest of the story:
I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t bring myself to let that baby die. So I delivered the baby with her pitiful, little leg. And every foreboding came true. The mother was in the hospital for several months—she looked like a wraith of her former self. As the years went on, I blamed myself bitterly for not having the strength to yield to my temptation.
Each year our hospital stages an elaborate Christmas party for the staff. This past year, three lovely, young musicians on stage played softly in unison with the organ. I was especially fascinated with the young harpist. She played extraordinarily well, as if she truly loved it. Her slender fingers flicked across the strings, and her face was upturned as if the world in 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. Remember? The little girl who was born with only one good leg 17 years ago? We tried everything at first, but now she has an artificial leg on that side. Best of all, through the years she has 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. At last I had found the comfort I had waited for so long, and tears streamed down my cheeks. My decision had been the right one. And I was so glad I had come down on the side of life.
Life—it is a gift from God! Amen.