January 6, 2003

LifeWay Family Bible Series for Jan. 19

Life belongs to God; our lives are not our own
___ Psalm 139:7­16; Mark 10:13­16
___By Rick Willis
___First Baptist Church, Roscoe
___Few issues are as emotionally charged as abortion, and medical technology has increasingly complicated all issues of the beginning and end of life. Responsible Christians should devote prayer, study and discussion to the issues for the sake of being salt and light to the world, as Jesus calls us to be (Matthew 5:13­16).
___Into the fray of the debates, into the chaos of a culture of sheep without a shepherd, the Bible gives a consistent witness: To delight in God leads to life, forgiveness and hope. To play God leads to death, shame and despair. These twin affirmations provide both a warning to the arrogant and a comfort to the ashamed. Psalm 139 brings them into focus.

___The sanctity of
___God comes first
___The psalmist models for us the beginning place for the true vision of life. He drew from the well of God's holi ness to slake his soul's thirst for meaning and peace. He delighted in God: "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. ... How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!" (Psalm 139:14, 17). His security came from a sense of God's inescapable presence (139:7–12).
___The psalm is attributed to David. He was a king who knew the disaster of trying to play God. David usurped God's command not to commit adultery. When his sexual sin resulted in a crisis pregnancy, he tried to manipulate the lives of the woman and her husband to cover up his sin. Failing at that, he finally sent the man to his death, but he did it not as a just commander of soldiers. He did it as a man who preferred an innocent's death over a personal scandal (2 Samuel 11).
___David had known God's presence as a stinging conviction of guilt (Psalm 51). How could he celebrate God's inescapable presence in Psalm 139? He could do it because God used guilt to lead David to forgiveness and recovery (Psalm 32). He found liberation and purpose in loving God in the midst of a world that still entails pain and sorrow (Romans 8:22­23).
___Our communities and churches include women (and men) who have faced an undesired pregnancy and have chosen or were pressured by parents to abort their child. The world convinced them that this would "cure" their problem. Instead, it compounded their problems spiritually, emotionally and often physically.
___The primary message our churches have for them is the sanctity of God--"the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God" (2 Corinthians 1:3­4).

___The sanctity of human
___life comes from God
___When a bridge is out, it's not enough to heal the casualties in the valley. Someone has to warn the motorists above. Likewise, our churches must preach and teach that playing God with human life is disastrous.
___Psalm 139 goes on to express the classic biblical affirmation of God's possession and purpose for human life as soon as one is conceived. The clear emphasis is upon God's own special involvement in the formation of the person and plans for the person's life (Psalm 139:13­16; also Jeremiah 1:5). This implies abortion is against God's will.
___The only specific reference to abortion in all Scripture is to accidental abortion (Exodus 21:22). The best explanation for the Bible's silence on elective abortion is that the people of Old and New Testament faith never contemplated such. They took for granted that all children are a gift from God, and God declares all of us belong to him; none of us is our own (Psalm 127:3; Romans 14:7­8).
___The virtually unanimous witness of Christian teaching since the New Testament is that the unjust interruption of life, from conception to grave, is wrong. Only in the modern era has the teaching been widely challenged--resulting in "the culture of death."
___Medical advances in early detection have highlighted genuine "hard cases," such as anencephaly and uterine cancer, in which sadly terminating a pregnancy may arguably be justified. But the safest working assumption for Christians remains that life belongs to God, and we are not our own.

___Seek first his kingdom
___The psalmist recognized that a battle against God's will rages on the earth, and he counted God's enemies as his enemies (Psalm 139:19­22). But he also recognized his own potential to become an enemy of God (139:23­24). This should give zealots of every stripe reason to check themselves.
___An aged professor once warned of the temptation of "single-issue Christianity." He said if there is a single issue which can carry the full weight of the Christian life, it is to walk as Jesus walked (1 John 2:6; Mark 10:13­16; Psalm 82:3­4).

___Questions for discussion
___ What does the writer mean by saying David tried "playing God"? What other examples, modern and biblical, are there of humans trying to play God?
___ What does it mean to delight in God?

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