“Fearfully and Wonderfully Made” (Psalm 139:13-16) | 1/19/20

Psalm 139:13-16 | 1/19/20 | Will DuVal

We are in week 3 now of our 12-week sermon series entitled TOUGH TEXTS, in which we are tackling the most difficult passages in the Bible. In week 1, we considered allegedly IRRELEVANT texts - passages that make some ask, “Why would God even bother INCLUDING this in the Bible?”, and last Sunday, we discussed allegedly INCONSISTENT texts - “Doesn’t this passage contradict science, or history, or other biblical material?” This morning we shift to our third type of tough texts: the PERSONALLY problematic. Some texts are difficult because IF they’re true, if they’re REALLY the word of God, then they ought to radically affect the way you and I live our lives, in sometimes very uncomfortable ways. 

This morning’s passage, Psalm 139, fits squarely in that category. If Psalm 139, vv13-16 is true, as I hope to show you not only biblically, but medically, as well as deductively, from pure logic and reason, if it’s true that life begins at conception, then you and I are left to face the uncomfortable reality that we have, I suspect been mostly complicit, I’ll just speak for myself, I have been MOSTLY passively unconcerned by, the most widespread holocaust in the history of humanity, happening right under our noses. Holocaust is defined as “any mass slaughter or reckless destruction of life”. Typically associated of course with Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany’s slaughter of 6 million Jews in the mid-20th c.; by comparison, if life truly begins at conception, then 42 million babies are being slaughtered every single year by abortion; Abortion make Hitler look like an amateur. 

I want to warn you of two things before we get going: 

1. Parents: we are going to be discussing and viewing some very disturbing stuff this morning. It is not too late to check them into kids ministry. But if you’ve been around West Hills for any length of time, you know I don’t sugar-coat. Abortion is gruesome, it’s horrific, it’s diabolical, it is HEINOUS; so any HONEST treatment of the subject, from the pulpit or otherwise, must deal with it as such. In fact, I think much of the reason we aren’t risking our LIVES to save these children is simply because we can’t SEE them. Or we REFUSE to see them; because it IS gruesome. If we could SEE 42 million mothers murdering their inconvenient toddlers all around us, the Church might have more to say about it. Yet for the Bible believing Christian, there is no difference between a 3-year old, and a gestational 3-month old. So I’m going to show you these babies. 

Secondly, if you have personally had, encouraged, performed, or stood silently by an abortion, I want to recognize that this is EXTRA personal for you. And I simply want to remind you of 1 John 1:9 this morning: “If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” This issue, above all others, ought to remind us of just how forgiving our God really is. Ps 103:8 “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” I think if I was God, there are some sins I would really struggle to forgive. So hear the good news this morning: I am not God! And God is able and willing to cleanse you of ALL unrighteousness! But you have to confess. You have to repent. So for us NOT to talk about it, as a church, because it’s TOO personal, or too uncomfortable, or it feels too political… listen: this is NOT a political issue, this is a LIFE issue. This is a fighting for the soul of humanity issue. And if it’s personal for you, us NOT talking about it ROBS you of the opportunity to confess and be forgiven, and receive the healing you desperately need from the Father.

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  So let me start by summarizing some of the statistics; we need to get a sense for the scope of the issue.

  - Over 600,000 abortions are performed in the U.S. each year. Worldwide, as I said, the number is “more than 42 million... That’s 115,000 abortions every single day.” Over 600 babies have been killed by abortion since I walked up to the pulpit. One every .8 seconds. (David Platt, “Modern Holocaust: the Gospel and Abortion”, article January 22, 2018)

  - Somewhere between one-third and one-fourth of American women have had (or will have) an abortion at some point in their lives. (Platt)

  -As we consider how things break down from state to state, you should know there are 7 states in which you can get an abortion at ANY point in your 9 month pregnancy (https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/overview-abortion-laws?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI8cHbseuN5wIVRdbACh2tfwG5EAAYASAAEgIOpfD_BwE)

  -17 states allow state-funding to be used for abortions; MOST states allow a woman to purchase additional abortion insurance coverage. Meanwhile, there is no such thing as infertility or adoption insurance - doesn’t exist. We will help moms KILL babies, but not have them.

  -There are 8 states in which hospitals and doctors are legally required to perform abortions, or risk losing their license.

  -In 32 states, a woman is not required to receive any counseling before receiving an abortion. And in 23 of those states, she doesn’t have to wait. She can walk in, virtually no questions asked, and have an abortion within minutes.

  -In 24 states, a minor, a girl under the age of 18, can have an abortion without parental consent, and in 13 states, she doesn’t even have to NOTIFY them.

  -Lastly, 29 states have NO state laws prohibiting partial-birth abortion

  -Partial-birth abortion is a procedure - and this is where it gets graphic, if you need to avert your eyes for a minute - but a mother is given drugs to induce labor during her second or third trimester, and during the labor process, the baby is injected with digoxin or potassium chloride to begin to kill it, and then AS the baby is being delivered, its skull is crushed with forcepts and then the remnants of its brain are sucked out to ensure death. By federal law, the baby must be killed BEFORE its head is fully out, if breech, or if head-first, before “having been extracted from the mother's body to a point "past the baby’s navel” - if you can see a belly-button, it’s murder; if you CAN’T, it’s just birth control. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intact_dilation_and_extraction)

  - This sermon - pictures over now - this was in some ways one of the most difficult I’ve ever had to prepare, research, write, and now deliver. But in other ways, it’s been the simplest. Because the issue of abortion is really very simple.

  -See, the world would have you believe it’s complicated. Satan, the GOD of this world, would love to confuse you into thinking this is a complex issue. It’s not. Satan - 2 Cor 4:4 - has “blinded the minds of unbelievers”, and on THIS issue in particular, he has even tragically blinded the minds of many who profess the name of Jesus.

  But it’s actually incredibly simple. It really boils down to just 1 question: “Is the unborn thing inside a woman’s uterus a human person or not?”

  - That’s really the only question that matters, at all. “As Gregory Koukl points out, “If the unborn is not a human person, then no justification for abortion is necessary.”

  -Indeed, that’s why the pro-choice movement eventually dropped their “safe, legal, and rare” motto from the ‘90s. If the unborn is NOT a human person, then why should abortion be “rare”. Katha Pollitt says, “Let’s quit apologizing for abortion. Let’s quit trying to make excuses for it. Instead, let’s make the point that vacuuming out your uterus is no different morally than vacuuming out your house. ” (Scott Klusendorf, “The Heart of the Abortion Debate”, Crossway podcast, Aug 5, 2019)

  -...However, “If the unborn IS a human person, then no justification for abortion is adequate.””

  -As Pastor David Platt writes: “If what is in the womb is a person, then even if someone is pro-abortion or pro-choice for any number of different reasons, all of their reasoning falls apart. Everything revolves around what is happening in a mother’s womb, and Scripture is clear: that womb contains a person being formed in the image of God.” Let’s read it for ourselves...

  SCRIPTURE: Would you STAND with me, for the reading… Psalm 139:13-16

  For you formed my inward parts;

  you knitted me together in my mother's womb.

  14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.[a]

  Wonderful are your works;

  my soul knows it very well.

  15 My frame was not hidden from you,

  when I was being made in secret,

  intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

  16 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. THIS IS THE WORD OF THE LORD...

  I don’t have any exegesis and interpretation of Psalm 139 for you. Because none is necessary. It really is that plain and simple: “you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb… I am fearfully and wonderfully made… My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. [that’s a metaphor for the mother’s womb]... Your eyes saw my unformed substance.”

  -Platt marvels: “The psalmist didn’t necessarily know how God takes an egg and a sperm and brings them together. How a few weeks later, often before a woman even realizes she is pregnant, a human heart is beating and circulating its own blood [that’s at 21 days; over 95% of abortions stop a beating heart]. Within a few more weeks, fingers are forming on hands and brain waves are detectable [that’s at 8 weeks; half of abortions stop measurable brain activity]. Before long, these “inward parts” are moving. Kidneys are forming and functioning, followed by a gall bladder, and then by the twelfth week [the ideal time, we’re told, to have an abortion], all the organs of a baby boy or girl are functional, and he or she can cry. All of this occurs within three short months—only the first trimester! A heart, a brain, organs, sexuality, movement, reaction—and the Creator of the universe is orchestrating all of it!”

  But it’s not just Psalm 139; the Bible is ABUNDANTLY clear, in passage after passage, that life begins at conception:

  Psalm 22:9-10 “From my mother's womb you have been my God.”

  Jeremiah 1:5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,

  and before you were born I consecrated you;

  I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

  Galatians 1:15 “he set me apart before I was born,[d] and called me by his grace”

  Isaiah 49:1 “The Lord called me from the womb,

  from the body of my mother he named my name.”

  Job 31:15 “Did not he who made me in the womb make him?

  And did not one fashion us in the womb?”

  Luke 1:41 - “when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb.” Not the fetus. Not the cluster of cells. The BABY. It’s the same Greek word - brephos - used in chapter 2 for Jesus AFTER he’s born.

  Exodus 21:22-24 “When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman's husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. 23 But if there is harm,[d] then you shall pay life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth”.

  In other words, if upon delivery, it is determined that the baby’s eye was injured, you put out the man’s eye who caused it. If the baby was killed, you put him to death. Biblically, an unborn baby has identical value to a 35 year old man like me.

  To summarize, then: “Conception is the act of God whereby a person is created by God’s sovereign will, a soul is breathed into the living tissue by the Holy Spirit. That soul’s destiny is already known to God and determined by Him before the foundation of the world. Abortion then becomes a violent anti-God act. It is not only a murder of the individual, it is an affront to the Creator.” (MacArthur, “The Biblical View on Abortion”, sermon on Aug 30, 1992) Abortion is the GREATEST affront to the Creator, other than perhaps blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, the unforgivable sin of rejecting Christ himself, which we studied back in Mark ch.3, but outside that, there is no greater sin, biblically, than usurping God’s Sovereign role over life and death, and taking innocent human life.

  -Now, I claimed that abortion is murder not only biblically, and just biologically, but also RATIONALLY, and here’s why I say that: there’s not a reasonable alternative case to be made for when human life begins, if not at conception. Consider with me the options:

  Is it when a fetus becomes “…independent, or “viable”; when life can be sustained outside the womb?

  My question is: for how long? Our 4-year old daughter is arguably not human by that definition! If we left her alone, independent, for a few weeks, she would not survive. We’ve got some middle schoolers in the youth group that wouldn’t count as “human” by this definition!

  Wouldn’t it ALSO hold true then, as a corollary, that the MORE independent of the support of others you are, the more HUMAN you are? Is anyone comfortable endorsing THAT position? (“You’re on govt’ assistance – I guess that makes you less human than me”?!)

  What about “…birth”:

  I’ve heard pro-choice Christians, exegetically butcher Gen. 2 to argue that it’s the “breath of God” that makes us human, that life begins when we start breathing

  I would ask them “If a mother’s breathing FOR her baby makes it less of a human being, then does an adult who gets in a serious accident and has to be put on a ventilator become less than human? Every day hospitals have to induce comas and use machines to temporarily breathe FOR people until they’re strong enough to do it for themselves again, and every day people come off ventilators. But we don’t say, “Hey - Remember that time you had that accident and stopped being human for a few days?”

  And every other arbitrary point in fetal development at which you try and argue life begins ultimately falls apart.

  Now, remember Koukl’s rationale from earlier, that: ““If the unborn is not a human person, then no justification for abortion is necessary. But if the unborn IS a human person, then no justification for abortion is adequate.”” The really terrifying truth is that not everyone AGREES. In fact, more and more abortion advocates are conceding the undeniable biological fact that a fertilized embryo is a distinct, living, whole human being; what THEY question, is its WORTH:

  -Ann Furedi, former CEO of the largest abortion provider in the U.K. (2008), acknowledges: “We can accept that the embryo is a living thing in the fact that it has a beating heart, that it has its own genetic system within it. It’s clearly human in the sense that it’s not a gerbil, and we can even recognize that it is human life… the point is not when does human life begin, but when does it really begin to matter?” (Ann Furedi, “Abortion: A Civilised Debate,” Battle of Ideas, (London, England, November 1, 2008).)

  -Likewise, Mary Elizabeth Williams, in an article entitled “So what if abortion ends life?”, writes: “A fetus is a human life… When we on the pro-choice side get cagey around the life question, it makes us illogically contradictory. I have friends who have referred to their abortions in terms of “scraping out a bunch of cells” and then a few years later were exultant over the pregnancies that they unhesitatingly described in terms of “the baby” and “this kid.” I know women who have been relieved at their abortions and grieved over their miscarriages… Fetuses aren’t selective like that. They don’t qualify as human life only if they’re intended to be born… here’s the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal… And I would put the life of a mother over the life of a fetus every single time — even if I still need to acknowledge my conviction that the fetus is indeed a life. A life worth sacrificing.”” (Jan 23, 2013)

  -So perhaps the text we SHOULD have read instead is Genesis 1:27 - that EVERY human person is created EQUALLY in the image of God, with infinite INTRINSIC worth and value and dignity. I don’t make the comparison lightly, but you really could take excerpts from that Williams article and put it side-by-side with what Hitler said about Jews and scarcely tell a difference.

  But short of arguing that all life is NOT equal, the humanity of that baby inside the mother’s womb as attested biblically, medically, and logically, really does answer the only question that SHOULD matter in this entire debate. It’s a simple, 1-answer issue: is the life a HUMAN life? Every OTHER issue is a NON-issue.

  -This is NOT an issue about a woman’s right over her own body.

  -No one, on either side of this argument, is trying to tell women what they can or can’t do with their own bodies. Unless you think a pregnant woman has 4 arms, 4 legs, and 2 heads. What pro-lifers, and what EVERYONE is interested in, is what a woman does to ANOTHER person’s body. We restrict one another’s rights every day, to do harm to others. Legally, you can’t murder people. So the debate really does just boil down to: “Is a baby in the womb a person.” A person who just so happens to be located inside another person’s body temporarily.

  -This is NOT an issue about the dangers of illegal abortions.

  -Should we legalize rape, because some people are going to do it anyway, so we might as well make it as easy and safe as possible for them? Pass out the roofies and prophylactics? Making or KEEPING something legal that is immoral because “people are going to do it anyway” is an ABSURD argument.

  - “Well you’re a man; you’re not allowed to have an opinion…”

  -Then we ought to throw out Roe v Wade too, because it was decided by 9 men. In logical argumentation, this is called the ad hominem fallacy. If you can’t poke holes in the argument, just change the conversation and attack the speaker himself. Men aren’t the only ones against abortion, by the way.

  -This is not an issue about over-population.

  - “This past year, fertility rates in the United States fell to a historic low, with the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) standing at 1.7 (that’s the number of children a woman will bear during her lifetime). The replacement rate, just to sustain our CURRENT population, is 2.1”. And that is a WORLDWIDE trend. We are on pace for the first time EVER to have fewer people on the planet soon… paying into Social Security… etc. Under-population may actually soon be a PROBLEM (Philip Jenkins, “Fertility, Faith, and a Secular America”, TGC, Oct 21, 2019)

  -This is NOT an issue about whether or not mom is able to care for her baby.

  -Listen, this one has become personal for me. The average wait time to adopt in this country is 2 ½ years. Polly and I have now 10-15x had our profile dropped in a stack with 10-15 other perfect, smiling families, willing to pay on average $50-70,000 to adopt. For babies that TYPICALLY come from crisis pregnancies, addicted to heroine. Adoption is cost-prohibitive for most people in this country today. It’s simple supply & demand economics: There aren’t enough babies to go around. I don’t know if you noticed, but orphanages do not exist in America anymore. There are just too many people struggling with infertility who would KILL for babies. If those babies weren’t being killed.

  -And EVEN IF I and millions of other Christians WEREN’T standing up and saying, “We’ll take your baby; just don’t kill her!” it STILL wouldn’t justify abortion. Klusendorf argues: “How does my alleged unwillingness to care for a child after he is born justify an abortionist intentionally killing him before he is born? ...Does anyone ever go to the American Cancer Society and say, “How come you only care about one disease: cancer? What are you doing about heart attacks? ...It simply doesn’t follow that because pro-lifers oppose the intentional killing of innocent human beings that we therefore must take responsibility for everything wrong with society.”

  -This is NOT about whether or not the baby will be born with a birth defect (That is only 3% of abortions, mind you). But regardless, Exodus 4:11 says “Who has made man’s mouth? Or who makes him dumb, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I the Lord?” If God Sovereignly ordained a child to be born with physical deformities, for His own good purposes, that is His divine prerogative as Creator. And once again, we must ask: is physical ability really the measure of a person’s human-ness?

  -And this is not an issue about the CAUSE of the pregnancy: cases of rape and incest (which account for < 0.5% of abortions)?

  -Klusendorf: “If you believe that each and every human being has an equal right to life, then how one got conceived is irrelevant to their right to life and to their value. In other words, hardship doesn’t justify homicide. If the unborn are human beings, killing them because of the sin of their father would be an egregious moral wrong. And we can’t just kill innocent human beings because it will make us feel better.” The ONLY legitimate exception would be the imminent risk of losing the mother’s life too, which accounts for less than 1% of abortions.

  -The fact is 86% of abortions occur for one these stated reasons: “Not ready for a child… Can't afford a baby… Done having children… Don't want to be a single mother… Not mature enough to raise a child… Would interfere with my education or career” (show abort73 table) Despite the fact that 64% of abortions are provided to women with a college-level education or higher. (https://www.operationrescue.org/about-abortion/abortions-in-america/)

  And Because the ONLY thing that matters is whether or not the unborn is a human person, that means not only do the abortionist’s excuses not matter, but neither do all the other good reasons pro-LIFE folks cite! There are TONS of reasons not to support abortion, that really don’t matter!

  -It doesn’t matter that woman’s risk of suicide, PTSD, depression, breast cancer, sterility, DEATH from hemmoraghing, complications in LATER pregnancies, premature births, placenta previa, pelvic infection, etc. etc. all go up after an abortion; In many cases today, it’s MORE dangerous for the mother to get an abortion, than to give birth. But that doesn’t matter.

  -It doesn’t matter that the entire abortion industry, a multi-BILLION dollar per year industry, was founded by Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, under the pretenses of eugenics; with the goal of ultimately eliminating blacks, Jews, and other “feeble-minded” races from the planet. It doesn’t matter that 80% of Planned Parenthood’s clinics today are located in primarily minority-populated neighborhoods.

  -It doesn’t matter that the LEGAL system surrounding abortion makes absolutely no logical sense.

  -That it’s illegal in this country to ship a pregnant lobster for fear of harming the offspring, but it’s legal to kill human babies.

  -That if someone ELSE causes the death of an unborn baby, they can be charged with murder; but if MOM chooses, it’s legal.

  -That if a mom takes a razor blade to her baby 30 seconds after it’s born, she’ll spend 11 years in jail; but if she or someone else took the same razor blade and slit his throat while the baby was on the way OUT, as long as you can’t see the belly-button yet, in SOME states, that is perfectly legal.

  But none of those other arguments matter. Because the ONLY issue that matters is whether or not it’s a person, and Psalm 139, science and reason alone, all unequivocally declare YES. As Horton said so poignantly: “A person’s a person, no matter how small.”

  If you couldn’t tell, this issue is personal for me. Today is my wife Polly’s birthday. But she almost wasn’t born 34 years ago today, because she was an unplanned pregnancy, my in-laws conceived on their honeymoon - JACKPOT! - and they had influential people in their lives encouraging them to just go get it taken care of it. You don’t want to start your marriage that way; you deserve some time to just the two of you. So I just want to take this opportunity to look my in-laws in the eyes and say, “Thank you”. For not taking the “easy way out,” for not doing the selfish thing. Thank you for doing the right thing.

  -Let me close with this: What can we DO about abortion? How can we respond?

  -Prov 24:11-12 says “Rescue those who are being taken away to death;

  hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.

  12 If you say, “Behold, we did not know this,”

  does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?

  Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it,

  and will he not repay man according to his work?”

  -After today, Church, you can no longer say “Behold, we did not KNOW this.” Consider yourselves INFORMED. And 2 Corinthians 5:10 - we ALL must stand before the judgment seat one day and give an account for every deed done in the body… and for every good deed left UNDONE. It’s time for the church to rise up and say “Enough.”

  -I’ll join Platt in urging you: “If you are a Christian, I plead for you to step out of a muddled middle road that says, “I may not choose abortion, but I don’t think we should take away others’ right to choose it,” and to realize how inconceivable it is for us to stay silent while millions of children—individuals made in the image of God—are dismembered and destroyed around us in the world. Such thinking is not enlightened tolerance; it is sinful indifference. Moral and political neutrality here is not an option for us.”

  -Otherwise, How are we any different than the priest or the Levite in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan? May the cries of the innocent not fall on our deaf ears!

  -Proverbs 31:8-9 “Open your mouth for the mute,

  for the rights of all who are destitute.[c]

  9 Open your mouth, judge righteously,

  defend the rights of the poor and needy.”

  So 4 ways to respond:

  -#1 - Abortion ought to affect the way we VOTE. I have to be careful here. But I can just quote Bridget, ThriVe’s president, who says, “Guess what, if I’d have been able to vote in 1864 - which she WOULDN’T have, she’s a black woman - but if I could have, I’d have been a one-issue voter then.” Christians and NON-Christians alike, will answer one day, for the way we vote.

  -#2 - Abortion ought to affect the way we spend our MONEY, (give this morning to ThriVe - I need to discuss with the other elders, but I think we ought to make this morning’s offering a special offering; we finished above budget in 2019 for the first time in my 4 ½ years at the church; we’re doing pretty good at West Hills right now; I’d love to save some babies together this morning!)

  - Ought to affect the way we ACT. We spend our free time (anyone been thrown in jail lately for protesting at Planned Parenthood? Time for us to wake up, church; preaching to myself - I haven’t been NEARLY as active as I should be, and commit to becoming…). Write your legislators. Foster unwanted kids. Adopt them. The church ought to CONTINUE to give abortionists no argumentative leg to stand on, because we are SO caring for the orphan, the needy.

  -Ought to affect the way we PRAY. Ultimately, we know “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the… cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Eph 6:12) Abortion is demonic. And as Jesus said, some demons are only cast out by prayer. We don’t have the power to change it on our own. But He does.

  “So Lord, we pray…”