A million strong, the ancient Hebrews had crossed the Sinai dessert on their way to the Promised Land. Their story was a story of deliverance. God, whose name is Yahweh, had delivered them from 400 hundred years of suffocating slavery in Egypt. They watched and learned as God hurled the 10 plagues against the Egyptians and each of their gods. The Israelites received not only Pharaoh’s blessing to leave the land, but the people gave them their gold and silver and diamonds as a traveling gift! Now free from bondage, they watched as God parted the Red Sea, delivering them from Pharaoh’s fickle whims and the spears and swords of the murderous Egyptian charioteers, and then closed those waters destroying the world’s greatest army. They met the living God at Mt. Sinai and ate the manna from God’s hand in the desert. They drank the water God provided from a rock at Meribah. Now they are encamped east of the Jordan River on the brink of entering the Promised Land they had dreamed about for over 40 years. Some years ago I was privileged to stand on Mt. Nebo, the very mountain on which Moses stood as he looked out over the Jordan River, the Dead Sea and Jericho into the Promised Land. What a powerful moment that must have been for Moses and Joshua—about to fulfill God’s vision for His people.

In Deut 20 Moses called the Israelites together in order to reaffirm their covenant agreement with God made by them at Mt Horeb. In no uncertain terms Moses spoke to them like a Dutch Uncle and recounted the multitude of blessings from God. It is at this point that Moses, the prophet, clearly and forthrightly tells them in 29:15, “See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commands, decrees, and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.” Our God is pro-choice, if I might play on words. You and I have a choice. We as a people have a choice. We as a nation have a choice. We can choose to follow our God and keep His commandments and live by His Word and live, or we can choose to do our own thing, follow other gods and be destroyed.

In vs 19 Moses the prophet calls down all heaven and earth as a witness to that choice. But then we see Moses the shepherd, the pastor, urging his flock, “Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to His voice and hold fast to Him. For the Lord is your life….”

The Bible is God’s Word and it teaches us that life not only is special, but it is sacred. It is therefore not to be treated lightly nor casually, but is to be cherished and held in high esteem. God is the source of our life and because God is pro-life, and the Bible is pro-life, and I am pro-life. Our human experience is pro-life. Everything inside of us yearns to live. Not one of us here wants to die and in fact we do what we can to stay young! Extra vitamins, gingko biloba, a variety of extracts, minerals, creatine, facial creams, derm-abrasion, facelifts, and add to that a variety of exercises and walking and we will outlive Methuselah!

Life is sacred because we are made in the image of God Himself and “the Lord God breathed into His nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.” The breath, the ruach, of God separates us from every other living creature. We alone have a soul. As humans, we alone have the ability to think and to reason. We alone have been given the terrible responsibility of choice, of being able to choose good or evil because we are a moral creation.

The entire tenor of the Bible is life. So then how do we who claim the name of Jesus live in our ever-increasing societal death-wish? From abortion and Roe vs Wade, from euthanasia and Dr. Jack, from pulling the plug and Karen Anne Quinlan and Teri Schiavo and now our US Supreme Court has upheld Oregon’s right-to-die law, we as a people are faced with the growing acceptance of “casual life.” The implications are enormous and we do not really know where this slippery slope will end up. Knowing human nature, this “ending up” is a frightful consequence! God has created us to live. Death is an intrusion into God’s original plan for His creation! Death is not of God but of the enemy of our souls.

When we lose sight of these truths, we then devalue life and are the more willing to destroy life and begin playing God. When we become our own gods (we call that humanism) we then set ourselves up as the ultimate arbitrator of the value of life. We then decide who has enough value to live and whose life is devalued making them unworthy of life!

Abortion and euthanasia are merely the results of a wrong-headed value system which is the deep abyss of the “me-orientation” and the ultimate of self-centeredness. “I can’t have this baby! It will ruin my career, my education, my girlish figure, my relationship with my new boyfriend, my marriage, my –whatever!”

And then what have we lost because a life was ended in the womb? Several decades ago, a 13-year-old living in Chester, Pa was raped. She gave birth to a bouncing baby girl. That baby’s name was Ethel Waters, one of the greatest of gospel singers and one of my all-time favorites. A college professor presented this real-life, very difficult situation to his ethics class. “A man has syphilis and his wife has tuberculosis. They have 4 children. One has died; the other three have terminal illnesses. The mother is pregnant again. What do you recommend?” The class voted that the best solution would be to abort that pregnancy. The professor congratulated the class on a job well-done and informed them that they had just aborted Beethoven.

Life is sacred and is a trust from God. As a Christian I cannot separate my faith from my actions and behavior. I cannot separate my beliefs from my lifestyle. God’s Word oozes from every pore the high value of human life. God’s Word calls us to live rightly and to walk in humility and do justly.

The bottom line is this: are we trusting in our own wisdom and intellect or are we trusting in God? Have we lost the truth that our God can take a lump of clay and remake it? Do we not know any more that the God of this universe takes trash and turns it into treasure? When we start playing God we are playing with highly toxic and flammable stuff! When we devalue life and treat it casually, are we ready for the consequences it brings?

I am pro-life. As a pastor I am called to proclaim, “This saith the Lord,” but I am also a shepherd who loves his sheep and I am aware that many of you have had abortions and you struggle with that whenever this issue arises. For some you have never received God’s forgiveness. For others you have a difficult time forgiving yourself. For some of you, you faced the difficult decisions that imperfect pregnancy sometimes brings. And you through pain and tears were caught in an unwinnable choice…both were terrible choices and you chose the lesser of two evils and terminated the pregnancy. Satan has never let you forget it! I am keenly aware that life isn’t neat and clean and packaged perfectly and beautifully. Life sometimes finds us in our own personal hell-holes and it stinks! For you I want you to know that our God loves you. I want you to know that God’s grace redeems, forgives, re-creates, makes new and washes away the guilt and the shame. I want you to know that God understands and it was for your tears that Jesus died.

The choice Moses laid before the ancient Hebrews is at our feet in these modern times: will we choose life or will we choose death?

Let me share with you the story of Dr. Joseph Wheeler.

“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 eh 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 here 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 the world’s greatest harpists. She is my whole life and now she is so happy…And here she is!’ 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.”

The ominous choice is before us. Will we choose life that we may live?

Thank You for Taking The Time to Read This Message.
May God Use These Words to Help You and Strengthen You.