Sermon Tone Analysis

*Who’s In Charge?*

 

(Please stand)-Our sermon text today is *Matthew 22:37* Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' 38 This is the first and greatest commandment.

39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

(sit)

 

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

We are celebrating Sanctity of Human Life Sunday because January 22 was the anniversary of the /Roe v. Wade /Supreme Court decision that effectively legalized abortion in all nine months of pregnancy for virtually any reason.

Since that decision in 1973, over 45 million babies have been killed through surgical abortion in this country.

That’s around 3,600 every day or about one every 24 seconds!...  Do those numbers make you feel uncomfortable?...

They should.

On the other hand, some of you might feel uncomfortable right now for another reason.

You have been led to believe that abortion should not be talked about in church.

It’s too political.

It’s too controversial.

And you’re /right/…at least partially.

Abortion certainly /is/ political and controversial.

But you are wrong to think we shouldn’t be talking about it in church.

Think about it.

God is the Creator of life, the Giver of life, the Redeemer of life, the Lord of life.

Abortion, that which destroys God’s gift of life, the work of His hands, is an insult to Him.

The life that we have is a gift from God.

He is the /creator/ of human life and man has never been able to duplicate this creation.

Try as we might we /need/ the “breath of life” from God to replicate this miracle.

We can take life and make other life from it but we cannot manufacture life.

It is /His/ breath and His breath alone that begins life.

We see this in the Old Testament when He breaths the “breath of life” into Adam and then countless other times when He begins life with His breath.

It is clearly /His/ breath that gives us the gift of life and it is not of man.

He is the giver of life…not man.

It is also important for us to realize that this life is a gift that God values greatly.

He has spoken of this value in various ways.

For instance, He values His human creations so much that He has made us in /His/ image and likeness!

He has also spoken against /ending/ life and how it is clearly wrong through His commandment…“Thou shalt not murder!”

He plainly articulates this value throughout His word and makes His law apparent in Genesis, that “whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God has God made man.”

Who are we to even consider extinguishing the creator’s creation?

We have stood by as some have been determined incomplete in their anatomy in the womb, and it has been/ “chosen”/ to terminate this life.

/These/ defects are the result of a sinful and broken world, yet, He has told us He has a plan for all… No matter how flawed we may think a life is, we have no right to kill His created being and end His plan for them outside of His law.

We humans have distorted His creations because of the sin of the world, yet they are still given /His/ breath and therefore hold /His/ value.

How can we possibly presume to know the art of our God who is /all powerful/ and /omniscient/?/

/How can we act as if we are the all knowing critic and His art is flawed!

We must respect our creator and His /creation/ no matter whether we think that it is flawed…loosing its wind…or just /inconvenient/ right now…

In the end it is Christ and His act on the cross that gives value to each individual life.

He gives every life value because He paid for each life with His blood.

This then gives value and purpose to /all/ the people of the earth, in that He died for all so that they might come to Him.

We limit the power of God if we say He can work and accomplish things only in people who are young and healthy and /“functioning.”/

He’s God!

He can work in the life of the disfigured at birth, chronically ill, or terminally ill.

Christ isn’t exalted because of what /we/ do.

He is exalted because of what /He/ does in us!

Remember the man born blind?

What a tragic thing this must have appeared to be to friends and family.

But this man was born blind that the works of God might be displayed in him.

He was born blind that Christ might be exalted in him.

He wasn’t aware of it.

Friends and family were not aware of it, but this man’s life had purpose and meaning…  You may not be aware of how God is at work in /your/ life, or in the life of the severely ill or disabled.

But through faith in His abiding presence, you can be assured /He/ is.

What an insult to Jesus to want to kill those through whom He is still at work.

Isn’t Christ a /perfect example/ of the indignation in man?

In the way that the people could not control or tame Him…and so they destroyed Him?

They did not understand His miracles, so they wanted to continue to have it /their/ way and killed Him! Doesn’t this issue come down to submission to God and His authority in our lives?

Aren’t we called to love Him with all our heart, all our soul and all our mind.

That’s total...

When we see trouble in the Bible, it is when God’s people don’t obey...even more, don’t /know/ Him.

This is what the whole book of Isaiah is about.

The people are constantly being told that they have walked away from God and /“know Him not.”/

This creates quite a lot of problems for the people.

They are in fact destined for a world of hurt...defeat by the sword, capture, and captivity as slaves.

Well I would propose that our world today doesn’t know God /either/.

This world has walked away from Him and has no intention of submitting to Him for any reason.

We, /as Christians/, find ourselves slipping away from Him too…through our acceptance of some of the ways the world around us disobeys Him.

I don’t think I need to give many examples of this disobedience in our society today.

But since it’s Life Sunday abortion would be a good example.

There is an abortion performed every /24 seconds/!

I didn’t know that until I wrote this sermon…but that astounds me.

A baby is killed every /24 seconds/!

This is the awful truth that has to be /ingested/ to really comprehend how /far/ we have walked away from God…respecting His creation…and submitting to His law.

We show our disrespect to Him when we disrespect His creation.

This is really at the heart of the issue.

Abortion and the other ways we are killing people in our society are only symptoms of the deeper problem.

Most certainly a heinous and tragic symptom…but that is how it is when we walk away from God.

We manifest this disrespect in many ways in /all/ of our lives.

It is a question of who’s in /charge/.

/We/ want to be the ones in charge and /we/ want to play God and /that/ is how much of the sin of the world develops.

In the case of abortion, we have no idea how this breath ignites life.

We can’t recreate it…yet there it is.

We can’t say it doesn’t have value, because we don’t even understand how it happens.

How can we throw away something that is /miraculous/ by definition and can only be regarded as priceless because of our inability to put a price tag on it?

We don’t understand how it works, and that’s just it...we want /control/ over it because we can’t figure it out.

It’s the old “God complex” thing that drives us to continue to try to tame life and control it?

Yet, life is /not/ something we can box up nor train to do what we want.

Therefore, we do the only thing we are capable of...we destroy it in any way we can.

This is how our “thought sin,” to desire to be in control, manifests itself as a treacherous and tragic mortal sin.

It’s a slippery slope!

Well, we could get political here and call for you to vote against /anyone/ that accepts abortion in any way, shape, or form.

And believe me there are a lot of ways that have been devised to get to /one death every 24 seconds/ since Roe v. Wade was passed.

But, I would like to get back to our understanding of the Word of God and how this applies to us.

We are letting this happen around us…yes.

And many of us are not even aware of what we are accepting in the different realms of the life issues of the day.

There is death all around us.

Through abortion, partial birth abortion, euthanasia, stem cell research, even invitro fertilization.

God’s human creations, that have His breath of life within them, are snuffed out in more and more ways each day…  Do we see the line anymore…or do we /know/ God.

He has told us how He gives life, He has told us how he values life, and He has told us…it is against His /law/ to take that life away from another.