Andy Davis preaches a verse-by-verse expository sermon on Genesis 1:26-28. The main subject of the sermon is how people being made in God’s image is the reason human life is sacred.
Andy Davis preaches a verse-by-verse expository sermon on Genesis 1:26-28. The main subject of the sermon is how people being made in God’s image is the reason human life is sacred.
– SERMON TRANSCRIPT –
So this is this morning Sanctity of Human Life, Sunday, it’s another opportunity for us to celebrate with great joy the gift of life given us by God himself to celebrate that and to find our significance there, and in the cross of Christ, as I’ve already mentioned, we are significant because we are human, we are significant because Jesus shed His blood for us, and we’ve come to trust in Him, and we’re born again through faith in Christ. People are searching for esteem, self-esteem. They’re searching for significance, that’s where we’ll find it, not in anywhere else, so it’s a time for us to celebrate those things, but it is also a time for us with sadness to look at the attacks on the sanctity of human life that are going on around us, through abortion and euthanasia. It is right for us to face that as well, because we have a responsibility concerning these things. And it’s so easy for us to start listening to Satan and get confused about what’s right and what’s true and who we are or what God’s calling on us to do. As though the ground were quicksand under our feet…well, it isn’t.
We have the unshakable Word of God under us, it will never change, and it makes great promises concerning our future in Christ, but it also lays before us great responsibilities, doesn’t it? And in order to be faithful to those responsibilities, we have to have that rock of the Word under us, and that’s what I wanna do today. Sanctity Of Human Life Sunday. I say a strong view of the sanctity, the sacredness of human life has been behind some of the most heroic moments in our history. I think it was the mentality of the founding fathers of this nation and the Declaration of Independence, as they looked at the value and worth of common people, all men are created equal, they came up with that concept and then they had to battle over racism and slavery and I think it was a sense of the sanctity, the sacredness of human life that led Abraham Lincoln to sign the emancipation proclamation, somewhat converting the Civil War into a war to end slavery, which it did. As I read the history of soldiers that have won the Congressional Medal of Honor, so many of those incidents were motivated by a desire to save life. Like there would be buddies that were out in the field and people would go out and rescue them with no concern whatsoever for their own lives.
I was reading about one soldier in the battle of Guam during World War II who rescued…he doesn’t know…somewhere between 50 and 100 fellow soldiers during that savage battle. The congressional medal of honor citation said it right in the middle. He thought humbly it was 50, others said definitely was at least 100, so they set it at 75. He rescued 75 at least soldiers under withering fire, received many injuries to himself, and he lowered these men over a cliff with ropes on a pallet again and again, one by one, one after another, till finally he was overcome by his own wounds. And that’s a story we see again and again in those accounts of those who win that highest military award. But it’s also motivated rescue teams to risk life and limb and their own security to rescue victims of natural disasters. You see the accounts of rescue workers combing over wreckage, calling for people to see if they’re still alive and they’ll do anything and everything they can to un-bury them and get them out and rescue them. Or during that earthquake in the Kashmir province of Pakistan back in 2005, there was a blizzard, it was up in high mountainous area after that earthquake, they had a great deal of difficulty bringing rescue supplies for those folks, they never gave up, they kept pressing through because of a sense built into ourselves of the sanctity of human life.
I read an account of some coast guard helicopter crew that went during Hurricane Katrina when the winds were gusting got well over 100 miles an hour, and they got in a helicopter and rescued just three sailors out 10 miles from the eye of the hurricane. Went right into the teeth of it to rescue these folks and get them out. It was the sense of the sacredness, the value of human life, they weren’t going after the boat, they were going after the people on the boat, to rescue them and bring them back. Sanctity of Human Life has moved our emotions deeply, both positively and negatively, like when we hear about a baby that’s wedged in a drainpipe and finally, they’re able to extract it safely and bring it out, we feel a sense elation. Conversely, when you hear in the inner city of a toddler killed by a stray bullet in a gang-related violence, it just crushes me when I hear that, it bothers me because of the sacredness of human life.
As a matter of fact, my first brush with human death, with seeing a human being die, was on a mission trip in Pakistan in 1987, when I saw a little 20-day-old infant who had had diarrhea and the parents cut off the child’s fluid intake, the exact wrong thing to do, and it immediately suffered from kidney failure and had double pneumonia by the time we got it, and there was really nothing we could do, and yet this eye surgeon from England labored just with CPR for four hours to just keep this infant alive, even though he knew and we knew we were not solving any of its mortal problems. And eventually he just stopped, and it died within 10 minutes, and we all cried. And there’s a sense there of the value and the worth of a human life. Emergency room doctors and nurses will labor and go to extraordinary efforts to save victims from a car wreck in an ice storm. Or in a Neonatal Unit, if the baby has been born prematurely, it’s amazing what they can and will do to keep that baby alive and allow it to survive and thrive, and I think a strong view of the sacredness of human life is behind all of these heroic moments. Conversely, the opposite view of human life is behind some of the blackest moments in our history. I will not soon forget my trip to the Holocaust Museum, and I saw one particular display of baby shoes piled up, and I just stood there and I just cried, I couldn’t believe it. Here are these shoes no longer needed at that time by the infants, the babies that had worn them into the death camps.
And it is the attack on the value of human life there that is so insulting to us as human beings. Robert Burns in 1785 wrote a poem. The name of the poem is A Dirge, For Man Was Made To Mourn, and he coined a very famous phrase that you hear frequently in the media, and that is. “Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.” Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn. Now, that phrase, man’s inhumanity to man, I meditated on this week, I started thinking about it, what I got out of it is we become somewhat sub-human when we deny humanity to another human being. It makes us somewhat less than human, beastly really. We lose a little of our God-given humanity whenever we deny full humanity to other human beings. The Nazis became like beasts when they denied humanity to those that they were slaughtering in the death camps. And so does I think any nation or government or people who denies humanity to any other human being. It’s even worse when a systematic denial of humanity gets established or enacted into law by the prevailing government, that’s a serious moment in the history of that people.
When government exploits and crushes the weak, government becomes sub-human. Daniel 7 pictured a series of human governments as beasts coming up out of a troubled sea, the fourth was the most devastating. Daniel 7:7 it said, “After that in my vision at night, I looked and there before me was a fourth beast, terrifying and frightening and very powerful. It had large iron teeth, it crushed and devoured its victims and trampled underfoot, whatever was left.” This terrifying vision of human government as beastly or somewhat of a sub-human beast has its roots in the concept of man’s inhumanity to man. We become beast-like when we enact laws that strip humanity, strip others of their humanity. And so we come to Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. Legalized abortion has been a law of the land for 12,444 days in our country, and as I’ve said, it is not a small thing when a government declares something immoral as being legal. And therefore I say to you, I cannot know. I do not know the full impact of that decision on the psyche and morality and ethics of our nation, we cannot know. It’s too complicated. It’s all woven together, what effect it’s had on families, what effect it’s had on marriages, what effect it’s had on parenting, what effect it’s had on our economy, on the environment, I don’t know, only God knows, but I do know that these things are significant.
They’re all woven together. And today, I think it is enough for us to declare again the biblical truth that all human beings are created in the image of God, and that we’re committed to that. That human life is sacred, there’s a sanctity to human life. To declare again how committed we are to that Biblical truth. To declare again that we are against the demonic spirit that attacks that concept, that truth, we’re against that demonic spirit. And to rejoice in the truth that I preached some time ago in Romans 16:20, “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.” Oh, how I yearn for that day. And I look forward to the day when the spirit of the age, which includes the spirit of abortion will be crushed forever. And I look forward to that, and so I’m preaching in hope today. I’m not ultimately defeatist, I think ultimately, abortion will be obsolete along with all the rest of the sins. Hallelujah to that! But in the meantime, we have work to do. In the meantime, we have to stand firmly, even as it seems that the ground is cut out from under our feet. Now when we come to sanctity of human life, we need to ask the question, what do we mean by sanctity? What does that mean? Well, I think it means sacredness or holiness. A sense of something set apart unto God as special to him.
“All human beings are created in the image of God, and that we’re committed to that. That human life is sacred, there’s a sanctity to human life.”
Now, frequently we use the word holiness or sanctity to refer to separation from sin, holiness from sin, I think it’s that, but I think there are times that we get indications from scripture, it also just means set apart unto God as special to him. For example, when Moses was at that burning bush, looking at the flames of the burning bush, and he was told, “Take off your sandals for the place where you’re standing is holy ground.” It is ground that is set apart as special unto God. Or we see, for example, the high priest would wear a plate on his turban that said, “Holy to the Lord.” Or it says in Exodus chapter 30, that the blood of the atoning sacrifice was “Holy to the Lord”. Or that the recipe for the anointing oil or for the incense was not to be used for common things, because it was holy to the Lord. And then the people themselves, Israel, were declared to be holy to the Lord out of all the nations on the Earth, He made them to be a holy nation, a kingdom of priests. Deuteronomy 7:6. And so therefore, I say that human life is separated and holy to God, it is sacred to God, that’s what we mean by sanctity of human life.
Now, there are many attacks in this world on that sacredness, all of them come from Satan. He is attacking it because he hates us, and so he’s attacking non-Christian religions. When my daughter, Jenny and I were in India, we had a chance to look at Hinduism full in the face. And to try to understand Hinduism, we did some study on it before we went. And I see in Hinduism, a consistent attack on the basic idea of the sanctity of human life. For example, the cycles of reincarnation blurs the distinction between us and animal life. You can be reincarnated as something less than human. And so they think it elevates the sacredness of all life. But it flies right in the face of the Genesis 1 teaching that human beings are intrinsically different, created in the image of God. And along with it in that system comes the idea of untouchability, the low castes who are not even part of God. They’re not even part of His feet, they’re not related to him in any way. And so therefore, when a Dalit (an untouchable) from that caste walks down the sidewalk, they’re supposed to sweep behind them so that higher caste people will not be defiled by their foot falls. That’s an attack on the sacredness of all human life.
We see it again and again. Those polytheistic animal sacrifice systems that we read about in the Bible, they degraded humanity as the blood thirsty gods demanded that children be sacrificed and burned, and God said something that I did not command and neither did it even enter into my mind. It’s an attack on the sacredness of human life. So also philosophies. There are philosophies that attack the sanctity of human life. I was reading about a fascinating man named Peter Singer, who is an ethicist of some sort at Princeton, and he’s advocating animal liberation. He’s got a book out called Animal Liberation. What he’s saying is that there are some animals that are just at this high level of function that we should recognize them legally as persons.
Oh, there should be more laughter there. I mean that we should recognize them legally as persons. He’s starting the great ape movement. And so there are certain great apes that should be legally recognized as persons. Peter Singer. But there’s a dark side too. Because he would deny personhood to those who, through various reasons, have lost the capacity to think and reason as human beings. Whether Alzheimer’s or birth defects, or whatever, they should not be legally recognized as persons. And you know what comes right on the heels of that is euthanasia. It’s a dark philosophy, so also other philosophies. Materialism, the idea that all we are is matter. Just stuff. And I don’t just mean materialism and that we wanna get as rich as we can, I mean just the basic idea that all we are is matter. Or pragmatism, that just looks at things in terms of their usefulness.
And so the less usefulness you have, the less value you have. These are attacks on the sanctity of human life with dark consequences. Scientific, medical and technological advances have attacked the sanctity of human life. Stem cell research, the fear there is that human embryos will be grown and harvested for their stem cells, thus degrading humanity like we’re a crop or something. Now, I know that there are other kinds of stem cells and distinctions could be made, etcetera, but I think there is that concern there that degrades the human being. Secular governments, communism, the value and worth of the individual, just submerged into a concern for the kind of iron clad, monolithic state. George Orwell wrote a book in 1984, talking about how bleak and dark that human existence is. Or, Nazism as we already talked. Foundational to that is racism, the idea of Aryan superiority, in which one race is better than another, and therefore the lower races can simply be killed. Now, there’s a decaying world view in the West, we have less and less a grasp on the sacredness, the sanctity of human life. We’re loosening our grasp under all of these attacks, these different kinds of attacks, we’re loosening our sense of it. The clearest indication of that is in the country of the Netherlands, which has had legalized euthanasia laws for a while, but in March of 2006, extended that to infants. Stop and think about that. If the infant has an incurable disease that puts it in a high level of pain, it is legal to kill, for the parents, together with the doctor to agree to kill that infant in the Netherlands.
Where does it stop? Some day, society may decide that we are obsolete. I mean, you’ve got to stand somewhere, there’s gotta be a point in which you say enough is enough. This isn’t biblical. This is wrong. Yes, it is tragic when people suffer, it is tragic when they’re in pain, but do we have the right to come and deprive life from someone else like that? It’s a terrible thing. And abortion, there’s a special problem with that, because it’s been the law of the land in this country for a full generation and more, and there’s mentalities and ethics and culture all around it, politics, and it makes it very hard for us to be. We’re very intimidated as people to wade into this again and to talk about it and say, “But it isn’t right. It’s just wrong.” And so therefore, God give us courage, God give us boldness to be salt and light here. Our country needs it. It needs the Christians, the churches, the pulpits, the pastors to stand up and tell the truth again, because all of us are together in this. We’re all degraded. We’re made inhuman by denying personality to those that God gave it to.
“Where does it stop? Some day, society may decide that we are obsolete. I mean, you’ve got to stand somewhere, there’s gotta be a point in which you say enough is enough. This isn’t biblical. This is wrong.”
I. Sacred Because Specially Made by God
And so the best thing we can do is to go back to scripture, to Genesis. And Genesis Chapter 1, I think is the best foundation for a strong view on the sanctity of human life. I’m gonna look briefly at five reasons that the text says that we are sacred. First, we are sacred because we are specially created by God. Genesis 1:26, “Then God said let us make man”. We are created and not evolved. Evolution is another one of those attacks on the sanctity of human life. Created and not evolved. Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” And again and again, in Genesis 1, God speaks in this way, let there be, and there is. You get that again and again. Let there be light, and there’s light. Let there be an expanse, a firmament, in the KJV, in the midst of the waters. Let the waters be gathered to one place under the Heavens. Let the Earth sprout vegetation you see. God said, “Let the waters swarm with living creatures.” God said, “Let the Earth bring forth vegetation.” God uses that kind of language. Not in any way that he’s not directly involved in all those things, but to create a special way of speaking when he came to the human being.
Instead of let there be, let there be, let there be, he says, let us make. Do you see the difference? And so he’s speaking very personally. He’s involved in a fascinating way. “Let us make man.” There’s a special involvement. Now, that plural has been interesting to people. Let us make man. When I was a kid, I read a book called “Chariots of the Gods” by Erich von Däniken. He said that basically, beings from outer space came to the earth thousands of years ago, and they made the first people, and there’s indications of space travelers and all that, fascinating but utter hogwash. But one of the things he said is, all you have to do is just look at Genesis 1:26, and there’s proof that there was a multiplicity of the “Let us make”. You know, there was a bunch of them making people. Others, as they come to let us make, they say that God is deliberating among the heavenly counsel with angels that are observing what he’s doing and applauding. The stars of the Heavens are applauding the creation of God, and I think that that’s true, that the angels watch, but they’re not involved in creation. And it says, “Let us make.” So the “us” that’s doing the us-ing is doing the making. Do you see what I’m saying? That’s not good grammar but you understand theologically what I’m saying. The one that God is deliberate… He is the one who makes. Let us make man in our image. Christians don’t have any problems with this. I believe this is a trinitarian statement. Father, Son and Spirit equally and passionately involved in making the human race in the image of God. That’s wonderful. Same kind of plural we get in John 14:23, when Jesus says this, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” Do you have problems with that plural? I don’t, I just understand it, it’s the best we can do to understand the Trinity. And so we use that kind of language, but here we are, we are sacred because we are specially created by God in a unique way.
II. Sacred Because Created in God’s Image
Secondly, we are sacred because we are created in the image of God. It wasn’t just that God specially created us but he specifically created us in his image and in his likeness. Now, what do we mean by image and likeness? Well, the word image was frequently used in the Old Testament to refer to little idols and figurines that were made by polytheists to worship. They would make those idols, those images and then worship them. The very thing that we were forbidden to do in the Ten Commandments. And the Jews entering the promised land, were commanded that they should destroy all of the images of the nations they were dispossessing. And that it was not within our power to make with our hands any accurate representation of God. We can’t do it. But here’s the fascinating thing, what we are forbidden to do, God in some mysterious way did by making us in his image and after his likeness. The human race in its entirety are created in the image of God, and the perfection of this was in Christ. Colossians 1:15, “He is the image of the invisible God, the first born over all creation.” And so in some mysterious way, humanity displays the Glory of God more than anything else that God has ever made. And also this word likeness, I think creates a similarity, but difference.
We are similar to God, but different too. And so there’s somewhat of a unity and a closeness, but still a separation there that’s very appropriate. And I get that out of Ezekiel Chapter 1. Ezekiel has an incredible, almost indescribable vision of the glory of God, and this is what it says at the end, in Ezekiel 1, “Above the expanse over their heads, there was the likeness of a throne in appearance like sapphire and seated above the likeness of a throne was a likeness with a human appearance. Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of God.” He’s putting words between us and the actual glory of God. He’s just saying, I can’t really describe it. And so we are in the likeness of God, we are like God. And that’s a beautiful thing. Now, what does this mean? Well, I think it means our inner being, our internal selves are created with certain capacities that are God-like. The ability to think and reason, to feel emotion, to build relationships, to converse, to plan for the future, to remember the past, to observe other creatures and understand them to take existing raw materials and shape them into something according to an internal plan and design, to choose and reject, to love and to hate, these things are aspects of the image of God.
But be careful now, let’s not follow Peter Singer. Let’s not follow utilitarianism, that if you should lose some of those capacities, you become somehow less human or less in the image of God, don’t make that mistake ’cause it isn’t true. But I think these capabilities are part of what it means to be in the image of God. I think also our bodies fit in there as well. You know, God uses what we call anthropomorphic language. He speaks as though he has a body. Have you ever noticed that? The eyes of the Lord roam to and fro over the surface of the Earth, looking for anyone who will be truly devoted to him. Or it says that God brought Israel out with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Do you imagine that God has a hand and an arm? Or the ear of the Lord is not too dull to hear, but your sins have separated you from God, it says in Isaiah. He’s not hard of hearing. In another place, he said, he who made the ear, does he not hear? And he who made the eye, does he not see? He just doesn’t need the organ of the ear and the eye in order to do what those things do for us. But we are somehow, in the image of God in all of that, created in the image of God. And the scripture clearly testifies that both genders, male and female, equally share in the image of God.
And so God created man in his image, male and female, he created them in the image of God, he created them. And so, God specifically communicates the value of both genders, male and female, and frankly, and we need to say that these days, of sexuality itself. There is a value to it. There is a worth to it. It matters to be male and to be female. And it matters in a good way because it’s all part of Genesis 1 where it says, “And God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” And so it is a good thing to be a male if you’re a male, and it’s a good thing to be a female, if that’s what God chose for you at the moment of conception. That’s when he made the choice, actually, before the foundation of the world, I believe. But physically, you were that from that very moment of conception. And it’s a good thing we embrace it, but there is an attack on gender in our culture today, and I think it’s part of an attack on the sanctity of human life. And despite our wickedness, despite all of our sin, despite the pollution and corruption that came into the human race after Genesis 3, which we acknowledge and recognize, we are still in the image of God, even still.
And so it says in James 3, speaking of the tongue, the problem of the tongue, with the tongue, we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the image of God. “Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing, my brothers, this ought not to be.” And salvation in Christ perfectly restores that image. Isn’t that magnificent? We are in our new creation self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. Oh, how beautiful is that? If you have come here today and you’ve never made a commitment to Christ, hear me now. The Lord Jesus Christ has the power to transform you and make you into a new person, to cleanse all of your sins by his blood shed on the cross and to make you to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. Isn’t that magnificent? Simply trusting in Christ does all of that for you. Through repentance and faith in Christ. But I say to you a corollary of this, the dark side is that attacks on human beings therefore are attacks on God, because we are in the image of God, and that is precisely what Satan wants to do.
The reason he attacks humanity so much, the reason he hates us so much, he wants to murder us so much is that any attack on a human being is an assault on the image of God. So all the false religions that debase humanity, all of the humanistic philosophies that degrade humanity, all of them are bubbling up out of the dark mind of Satan because he hates God, that’s what he’s doing. And thus, abortion itself, I think is a filthy attack on the image of God. The effort to call the pre-born, a fetus or even worse, a product of conception, there’s a mentality behind that to separate it from personhood. It’s not a baby anymore when you talk like that, even though the word fetus in Latin just means young one. I tell you what, instead of doing the fetus thing, let’s call it what the Latin means, young one, would they like that? I don’t think so, because they want to deny personhood, that’s why they use the word. God does not deny it. He gave it and he will not deny it, and we must not either.
III. Sacred Because Pre-Eminent Over All Other Earthly Beings
Thirdly, human beings are sacred because we are preeminent over all other Earthly beings. This should be obvious, it’s not obvious to Peter Singer. You know, the great ape movement and all that? He wants to make laws to protect animals not from cruelty and all that, which seems reasonable, but to elevate them. I don’t know if he’s gonna give them voting rights, I don’t know what… You can imagine politicians going after the ape vote, you know?
I don’t know what they’re promising, and if the apes can listen and stroke their bearded chins and say, “I’ll get back to you, I’m considering, I’m gonna listen to the other… ” It’s ridiculous, but there it is. We have a clear… Is it not clear? A clear superiority to every other created being that we see around us. Over the fish of the sea, the birds of the heavens, the livestock, the creeping things, everything. Every four years, we have the Olympics. I like to watch the Olympics because that’s the best that the human race can do in some certain measurable tangible ways. And the Olympic motto is, “Faster, Higher, Stronger”. So I started thinking about the Olympics, if we had kind of a planet-wide Olympics and invited the animals to participate too. Okay? How would we do? Let’s take faster, for example, imagine lining up next to a Cheetah, okay?
I don’t care who you are, I don’t care what university you went to, or if you set the world record or whatever, you are going to lose. If the Cheetah goes off when the gun goes, the Cheetah may go after the guy who shot the gun. But if he could be trained to stay in his lane and go, man, he’s gonna hit 70 miles an hour. You have no chance, or in the swimming, a sailfish can go 68 miles an hour, we have no chance, but the turn might be tough for the sailfish. He might wanna go 1000 meters straight and he’ll win for sure. But we will lose on the faster one. What about the higher one? Think about the high jump. The human record for the high jump is 8 feet 5 inches. A Puma can do 15 feet. 15 feet. We lose. Okay? We just lose. Well, forget that. Why don’t we just go with a bird, how high is the bird gonna go? Okay? Or what’s the pole vault record or the long jump record? You know, the human record for the long jump is 29 feet four and a quarter inches. But I learned this, a bar-tailed godwit travels 6300 miles without landing, from Alaska to New Zealand. Try beating that.
6300 miles is an awfully long, long jump. Again, we lose. What about stronger, weight lifting? The Iranian Hercules, a guy in 2004 won the gold medal, Hossein Rezazadeh. And he set the clean and jerk record, all-time record, 580.9 pounds. That’s a lot of weight to pull up, and then, you know, this guy is amazingly strong. But in comes the elephant, he’s got his trunk, he can do a ton without even sweating. I don’t know if elephants sweat, they probably do. But just straight up, again, we lose, but if the rules change a bit and we’re allowed to use not just our regular rather mediocre bodies, but everything that we can invent and create and bring that to these events, there is no comparison at all. There’s no bird ever that will fly to the moon, literally. But we’ve been there. That’s higher than anything that there has ever been of these created things that started here on Earth. Alright? There’s no bird or any animal that can fly faster or go faster than the spy plane, the SR-71, which went three and a half times the speed of sound. After all of it’s engineering problems were solved, three and a half times, it’s still a record. In terms of deadlift, I found a crane in some shipbuilding yard in Mississippi that can dead-lift 600 tons. 600 tons. It can just pick right up. Like a whole ship and just pick it up. Okay? An elephant can’t do that. This is clear evidence of the superiority of the human race over anything else that’s made. We were made better, and we have a higher value, “Of how much greater worth are you than a sheep?” Jesus said. There’s just a higher value.
IV. Sacred Because Given Dominion by God Over The Earth
Fourthly, we are sacred because with that capacity, we were given that position of dominion on the earth. It wasn’t just we’re capable for it, it was given to us. We were put in charge. Look what it says, “And God said, Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over the livestock, over all the earth and all the creatures that move along the ground.” Verse 28, “God said, Fill the earth and subdue it, rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” Notice how he talks about realms or spheres, the sea, the air, the ground, we’re in charge of all of it. The sea, fish naturally swim in the sea and feel comfortable there, far more than we ever will. But it was given to us to rule the sea, the waves. The air, birds naturally soar through the heavens, and they feel comfortable there, but it was given to us to rule the air, to be in charge.
The earth, animals roam the earth, they live a lot closer to the soil than we do, some actually live in the soil and burrow through it. But we rule it, we’re in charge over it, because God put us in that position. This is the right to rule coupled with the capacity for it. It was clearly established, and therefore there is a link between us and this planet. We saw it at the curse when Adam and Eve sinned, God cursed the ground because of him. So there’s a link, there’s a cursing of the ground because of our sin. We see it again in the flood, when everything that breathes the breath of life is destroyed except those animals that are with the man, Noah, on the Ark. There’s a link between us. We’re in charge. And therefore, we are to use our power and our influence to bless and serve and nurture, not to destroy or crush, just like Jesus did for the church. And so that’s the position we’re put in, to be that kind of leader. But what did we do? We gave it to Satan at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We gave it over, and so Satan has the temerity to say to Jesus, “I’m in charge of all these kingdoms of the Earth, and I can give it to anyone I want, because it’s been given to me.”
Who gave it to him? Well, Adam did. Handed it right to him. And you know what Jesus did? He’s bought it back through the blood of Christ, he shed his blood to get it back for us. It says in Revelation 5, “They sang a new song to Jesus, You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priest to serve our God. Listen, and they will reign on the Earth.” He bought it back, he paid a high price and bought it back. Therefore, human life is sacred because we are to rule over the Earth and everything in it. Fifth, we are sacred because we are blessed by God in procreation. “God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply.” Do you see how those two have been ruptured by the abortion mentality? “Blessed and told, Be fruitful and multiply.” We don’t look at children is a blessing anymore. I spent a whole Sunday on this last Sanctity of Human Life Sunday a year ago.
We have to work on this. Children are a blessing from God. Let’s not talk about how costly they are, how difficult or any of those things, or every child, a wanted child, like Planned Parenthood tells us, that’s ridiculous. Children are a blessing from God, we were blessed so that we could have children to fill the Earth and subdue it. It says in Psalm 1:27, “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord. The fruit of the womb is a reward like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with him with them, that he shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies at the gate.”
VI. Summary & Application
Five reasons in Genesis 1:26-28, the human life is sacred. Sacred because we are specially created by God. Sacred because we are created in the image and likeness of God. Sacred because we are, in ourselves, pre-eminent over every other created being, Earthly beings. Sacred because given dominion by God over the Earth and sacred because we’re blessed by God in procreation. What application do we take to this? First of all, can I urge you, please, to honor this sacredness in other people?
I mean, out with racism. It makes no sense at all, get rid of it. C S Lewis in his great sermon, Weight of Glory, he stated that every single human being you meet will spend eternity either in Heaven or Hell. And if you could see them now as they will ultimately be, you would see them either so glorious, you would be tempted to worship them, or so hideous you would run away screaming from them. And every significant encounter you have with another human being, hastens them in one direction or the other. That’s pretty weighty, isn’t it? There are no insignificant people. There are no insignificant encounters with other people. And therefore, one of our applications is respect and honor the significance of humanity by preaching the Gospel to them. Share the Gospel, that’s why Jesus came, because of our value, he shed his blood for human beings. And therefore, seek and save the lost. Seek them and save them. Share the Gospel with them this week. We’ve begun to pray for the cards you gave us last week, we’re excited about that, we’re already praying, we’re waiting for the stories to come back in of how God used you to lead those folks to Christ. But honor the fact that they’re created in the image of God and can be recreated by the blood of Christ. Be faithful in that. And on the abortion issue, learn how to make a defense for the truth that you believe.
I have this book here, Randy Alcorn’s book, Pro-life Answers to Pro-choice Arguments. Get a book like this. Study some of these things. Work with the mind so that you’re not ashamed but know how to give a defense for what you believe. Start with the Scripture foundationally. Look at the five points I’ve made today, establish what may have been a little murky in your mind under the rock-solid foundation of the Word of God, and be active. You have some bulletin inserts. There’s a beautiful one there from Focus On the Family, look at the pictures of the development of these babies in their mother’s wombs. It’s beautiful. Praise God for it. You have another insert there from Pregnancy Support Services, you may wanna volunteer your time or give financially to support them. There’s a pro-life ministry also in Raleigh, if that’s closer to your home. You can get involved. Pray, pray for an end to abortion and euthanasia and be willing to be faithful like the widow, persistent widow and praying until it finally goes. Let’s not give up.
“Pray, pray for an end to abortion and euthanasia and be willing to be faithful like the widow, persistent widow and praying until it finally goes. Let’s not give up.”
Let’s not get discouraged or think this is it… We’re gonna win. Abortion is not gonna be in the new Heavens and the new Earth, that means we’re gonna win. So therefore, anything we do toward that end will be successful. Please close with me in prayer.
Andy Davis preaches a verse-by-verse expository sermon on Genesis 1:26-28. The main subject of the sermon is how people being made in God’s image is the reason human life is sacred.
– SERMON TRANSCRIPT –
So this is this morning Sanctity of Human Life, Sunday, it’s another opportunity for us to celebrate with great joy the gift of life given us by God himself to celebrate that and to find our significance there, and in the cross of Christ, as I’ve already mentioned, we are significant because we are human, we are significant because Jesus shed His blood for us, and we’ve come to trust in Him, and we’re born again through faith in Christ. People are searching for esteem, self-esteem. They’re searching for significance, that’s where we’ll find it, not in anywhere else, so it’s a time for us to celebrate those things, but it is also a time for us with sadness to look at the attacks on the sanctity of human life that are going on around us, through abortion and euthanasia. It is right for us to face that as well, because we have a responsibility concerning these things. And it’s so easy for us to start listening to Satan and get confused about what’s right and what’s true and who we are or what God’s calling on us to do. As though the ground were quicksand under our feet…well, it isn’t.
We have the unshakable Word of God under us, it will never change, and it makes great promises concerning our future in Christ, but it also lays before us great responsibilities, doesn’t it? And in order to be faithful to those responsibilities, we have to have that rock of the Word under us, and that’s what I wanna do today. Sanctity Of Human Life Sunday. I say a strong view of the sanctity, the sacredness of human life has been behind some of the most heroic moments in our history. I think it was the mentality of the founding fathers of this nation and the Declaration of Independence, as they looked at the value and worth of common people, all men are created equal, they came up with that concept and then they had to battle over racism and slavery and I think it was a sense of the sanctity, the sacredness of human life that led Abraham Lincoln to sign the emancipation proclamation, somewhat converting the Civil War into a war to end slavery, which it did. As I read the history of soldiers that have won the Congressional Medal of Honor, so many of those incidents were motivated by a desire to save life. Like there would be buddies that were out in the field and people would go out and rescue them with no concern whatsoever for their own lives.
I was reading about one soldier in the battle of Guam during World War II who rescued…he doesn’t know…somewhere between 50 and 100 fellow soldiers during that savage battle. The congressional medal of honor citation said it right in the middle. He thought humbly it was 50, others said definitely was at least 100, so they set it at 75. He rescued 75 at least soldiers under withering fire, received many injuries to himself, and he lowered these men over a cliff with ropes on a pallet again and again, one by one, one after another, till finally he was overcome by his own wounds. And that’s a story we see again and again in those accounts of those who win that highest military award. But it’s also motivated rescue teams to risk life and limb and their own security to rescue victims of natural disasters. You see the accounts of rescue workers combing over wreckage, calling for people to see if they’re still alive and they’ll do anything and everything they can to un-bury them and get them out and rescue them. Or during that earthquake in the Kashmir province of Pakistan back in 2005, there was a blizzard, it was up in high mountainous area after that earthquake, they had a great deal of difficulty bringing rescue supplies for those folks, they never gave up, they kept pressing through because of a sense built into ourselves of the sanctity of human life.
I read an account of some coast guard helicopter crew that went during Hurricane Katrina when the winds were gusting got well over 100 miles an hour, and they got in a helicopter and rescued just three sailors out 10 miles from the eye of the hurricane. Went right into the teeth of it to rescue these folks and get them out. It was the sense of the sacredness, the value of human life, they weren’t going after the boat, they were going after the people on the boat, to rescue them and bring them back. Sanctity of Human Life has moved our emotions deeply, both positively and negatively, like when we hear about a baby that’s wedged in a drainpipe and finally, they’re able to extract it safely and bring it out, we feel a sense elation. Conversely, when you hear in the inner city of a toddler killed by a stray bullet in a gang-related violence, it just crushes me when I hear that, it bothers me because of the sacredness of human life.
As a matter of fact, my first brush with human death, with seeing a human being die, was on a mission trip in Pakistan in 1987, when I saw a little 20-day-old infant who had had diarrhea and the parents cut off the child’s fluid intake, the exact wrong thing to do, and it immediately suffered from kidney failure and had double pneumonia by the time we got it, and there was really nothing we could do, and yet this eye surgeon from England labored just with CPR for four hours to just keep this infant alive, even though he knew and we knew we were not solving any of its mortal problems. And eventually he just stopped, and it died within 10 minutes, and we all cried. And there’s a sense there of the value and the worth of a human life. Emergency room doctors and nurses will labor and go to extraordinary efforts to save victims from a car wreck in an ice storm. Or in a Neonatal Unit, if the baby has been born prematurely, it’s amazing what they can and will do to keep that baby alive and allow it to survive and thrive, and I think a strong view of the sacredness of human life is behind all of these heroic moments. Conversely, the opposite view of human life is behind some of the blackest moments in our history. I will not soon forget my trip to the Holocaust Museum, and I saw one particular display of baby shoes piled up, and I just stood there and I just cried, I couldn’t believe it. Here are these shoes no longer needed at that time by the infants, the babies that had worn them into the death camps.
And it is the attack on the value of human life there that is so insulting to us as human beings. Robert Burns in 1785 wrote a poem. The name of the poem is A Dirge, For Man Was Made To Mourn, and he coined a very famous phrase that you hear frequently in the media, and that is. “Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.” Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn. Now, that phrase, man’s inhumanity to man, I meditated on this week, I started thinking about it, what I got out of it is we become somewhat sub-human when we deny humanity to another human being. It makes us somewhat less than human, beastly really. We lose a little of our God-given humanity whenever we deny full humanity to other human beings. The Nazis became like beasts when they denied humanity to those that they were slaughtering in the death camps. And so does I think any nation or government or people who denies humanity to any other human being. It’s even worse when a systematic denial of humanity gets established or enacted into law by the prevailing government, that’s a serious moment in the history of that people.
When government exploits and crushes the weak, government becomes sub-human. Daniel 7 pictured a series of human governments as beasts coming up out of a troubled sea, the fourth was the most devastating. Daniel 7:7 it said, “After that in my vision at night, I looked and there before me was a fourth beast, terrifying and frightening and very powerful. It had large iron teeth, it crushed and devoured its victims and trampled underfoot, whatever was left.” This terrifying vision of human government as beastly or somewhat of a sub-human beast has its roots in the concept of man’s inhumanity to man. We become beast-like when we enact laws that strip humanity, strip others of their humanity. And so we come to Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. Legalized abortion has been a law of the land for 12,444 days in our country, and as I’ve said, it is not a small thing when a government declares something immoral as being legal. And therefore I say to you, I cannot know. I do not know the full impact of that decision on the psyche and morality and ethics of our nation, we cannot know. It’s too complicated. It’s all woven together, what effect it’s had on families, what effect it’s had on marriages, what effect it’s had on parenting, what effect it’s had on our economy, on the environment, I don’t know, only God knows, but I do know that these things are significant.
They’re all woven together. And today, I think it is enough for us to declare again the biblical truth that all human beings are created in the image of God, and that we’re committed to that. That human life is sacred, there’s a sanctity to human life. To declare again how committed we are to that Biblical truth. To declare again that we are against the demonic spirit that attacks that concept, that truth, we’re against that demonic spirit. And to rejoice in the truth that I preached some time ago in Romans 16:20, “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.” Oh, how I yearn for that day. And I look forward to the day when the spirit of the age, which includes the spirit of abortion will be crushed forever. And I look forward to that, and so I’m preaching in hope today. I’m not ultimately defeatist, I think ultimately, abortion will be obsolete along with all the rest of the sins. Hallelujah to that! But in the meantime, we have work to do. In the meantime, we have to stand firmly, even as it seems that the ground is cut out from under our feet. Now when we come to sanctity of human life, we need to ask the question, what do we mean by sanctity? What does that mean? Well, I think it means sacredness or holiness. A sense of something set apart unto God as special to him.
“All human beings are created in the image of God, and that we’re committed to that. That human life is sacred, there’s a sanctity to human life.”
Now, frequently we use the word holiness or sanctity to refer to separation from sin, holiness from sin, I think it’s that, but I think there are times that we get indications from scripture, it also just means set apart unto God as special to him. For example, when Moses was at that burning bush, looking at the flames of the burning bush, and he was told, “Take off your sandals for the place where you’re standing is holy ground.” It is ground that is set apart as special unto God. Or we see, for example, the high priest would wear a plate on his turban that said, “Holy to the Lord.” Or it says in Exodus chapter 30, that the blood of the atoning sacrifice was “Holy to the Lord”. Or that the recipe for the anointing oil or for the incense was not to be used for common things, because it was holy to the Lord. And then the people themselves, Israel, were declared to be holy to the Lord out of all the nations on the Earth, He made them to be a holy nation, a kingdom of priests. Deuteronomy 7:6. And so therefore, I say that human life is separated and holy to God, it is sacred to God, that’s what we mean by sanctity of human life.
Now, there are many attacks in this world on that sacredness, all of them come from Satan. He is attacking it because he hates us, and so he’s attacking non-Christian religions. When my daughter, Jenny and I were in India, we had a chance to look at Hinduism full in the face. And to try to understand Hinduism, we did some study on it before we went. And I see in Hinduism, a consistent attack on the basic idea of the sanctity of human life. For example, the cycles of reincarnation blurs the distinction between us and animal life. You can be reincarnated as something less than human. And so they think it elevates the sacredness of all life. But it flies right in the face of the Genesis 1 teaching that human beings are intrinsically different, created in the image of God. And along with it in that system comes the idea of untouchability, the low castes who are not even part of God. They’re not even part of His feet, they’re not related to him in any way. And so therefore, when a Dalit (an untouchable) from that caste walks down the sidewalk, they’re supposed to sweep behind them so that higher caste people will not be defiled by their foot falls. That’s an attack on the sacredness of all human life.
We see it again and again. Those polytheistic animal sacrifice systems that we read about in the Bible, they degraded humanity as the blood thirsty gods demanded that children be sacrificed and burned, and God said something that I did not command and neither did it even enter into my mind. It’s an attack on the sacredness of human life. So also philosophies. There are philosophies that attack the sanctity of human life. I was reading about a fascinating man named Peter Singer, who is an ethicist of some sort at Princeton, and he’s advocating animal liberation. He’s got a book out called Animal Liberation. What he’s saying is that there are some animals that are just at this high level of function that we should recognize them legally as persons.
Oh, there should be more laughter there. I mean that we should recognize them legally as persons. He’s starting the great ape movement. And so there are certain great apes that should be legally recognized as persons. Peter Singer. But there’s a dark side too. Because he would deny personhood to those who, through various reasons, have lost the capacity to think and reason as human beings. Whether Alzheimer’s or birth defects, or whatever, they should not be legally recognized as persons. And you know what comes right on the heels of that is euthanasia. It’s a dark philosophy, so also other philosophies. Materialism, the idea that all we are is matter. Just stuff. And I don’t just mean materialism and that we wanna get as rich as we can, I mean just the basic idea that all we are is matter. Or pragmatism, that just looks at things in terms of their usefulness.
And so the less usefulness you have, the less value you have. These are attacks on the sanctity of human life with dark consequences. Scientific, medical and technological advances have attacked the sanctity of human life. Stem cell research, the fear there is that human embryos will be grown and harvested for their stem cells, thus degrading humanity like we’re a crop or something. Now, I know that there are other kinds of stem cells and distinctions could be made, etcetera, but I think there is that concern there that degrades the human being. Secular governments, communism, the value and worth of the individual, just submerged into a concern for the kind of iron clad, monolithic state. George Orwell wrote a book in 1984, talking about how bleak and dark that human existence is. Or, Nazism as we already talked. Foundational to that is racism, the idea of Aryan superiority, in which one race is better than another, and therefore the lower races can simply be killed. Now, there’s a decaying world view in the West, we have less and less a grasp on the sacredness, the sanctity of human life. We’re loosening our grasp under all of these attacks, these different kinds of attacks, we’re loosening our sense of it. The clearest indication of that is in the country of the Netherlands, which has had legalized euthanasia laws for a while, but in March of 2006, extended that to infants. Stop and think about that. If the infant has an incurable disease that puts it in a high level of pain, it is legal to kill, for the parents, together with the doctor to agree to kill that infant in the Netherlands.
Where does it stop? Some day, society may decide that we are obsolete. I mean, you’ve got to stand somewhere, there’s gotta be a point in which you say enough is enough. This isn’t biblical. This is wrong. Yes, it is tragic when people suffer, it is tragic when they’re in pain, but do we have the right to come and deprive life from someone else like that? It’s a terrible thing. And abortion, there’s a special problem with that, because it’s been the law of the land in this country for a full generation and more, and there’s mentalities and ethics and culture all around it, politics, and it makes it very hard for us to be. We’re very intimidated as people to wade into this again and to talk about it and say, “But it isn’t right. It’s just wrong.” And so therefore, God give us courage, God give us boldness to be salt and light here. Our country needs it. It needs the Christians, the churches, the pulpits, the pastors to stand up and tell the truth again, because all of us are together in this. We’re all degraded. We’re made inhuman by denying personality to those that God gave it to.
“Where does it stop? Some day, society may decide that we are obsolete. I mean, you’ve got to stand somewhere, there’s gotta be a point in which you say enough is enough. This isn’t biblical. This is wrong.”
I. Sacred Because Specially Made by God
And so the best thing we can do is to go back to scripture, to Genesis. And Genesis Chapter 1, I think is the best foundation for a strong view on the sanctity of human life. I’m gonna look briefly at five reasons that the text says that we are sacred. First, we are sacred because we are specially created by God. Genesis 1:26, “Then God said let us make man”. We are created and not evolved. Evolution is another one of those attacks on the sanctity of human life. Created and not evolved. Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” And again and again, in Genesis 1, God speaks in this way, let there be, and there is. You get that again and again. Let there be light, and there’s light. Let there be an expanse, a firmament, in the KJV, in the midst of the waters. Let the waters be gathered to one place under the Heavens. Let the Earth sprout vegetation you see. God said, “Let the waters swarm with living creatures.” God said, “Let the Earth bring forth vegetation.” God uses that kind of language. Not in any way that he’s not directly involved in all those things, but to create a special way of speaking when he came to the human being.
Instead of let there be, let there be, let there be, he says, let us make. Do you see the difference? And so he’s speaking very personally. He’s involved in a fascinating way. “Let us make man.” There’s a special involvement. Now, that plural has been interesting to people. Let us make man. When I was a kid, I read a book called “Chariots of the Gods” by Erich von Däniken. He said that basically, beings from outer space came to the earth thousands of years ago, and they made the first people, and there’s indications of space travelers and all that, fascinating but utter hogwash. But one of the things he said is, all you have to do is just look at Genesis 1:26, and there’s proof that there was a multiplicity of the “Let us make”. You know, there was a bunch of them making people. Others, as they come to let us make, they say that God is deliberating among the heavenly counsel with angels that are observing what he’s doing and applauding. The stars of the Heavens are applauding the creation of God, and I think that that’s true, that the angels watch, but they’re not involved in creation. And it says, “Let us make.” So the “us” that’s doing the us-ing is doing the making. Do you see what I’m saying? That’s not good grammar but you understand theologically what I’m saying. The one that God is deliberate… He is the one who makes. Let us make man in our image. Christians don’t have any problems with this. I believe this is a trinitarian statement. Father, Son and Spirit equally and passionately involved in making the human race in the image of God. That’s wonderful. Same kind of plural we get in John 14:23, when Jesus says this, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” Do you have problems with that plural? I don’t, I just understand it, it’s the best we can do to understand the Trinity. And so we use that kind of language, but here we are, we are sacred because we are specially created by God in a unique way.
II. Sacred Because Created in God’s Image
Secondly, we are sacred because we are created in the image of God. It wasn’t just that God specially created us but he specifically created us in his image and in his likeness. Now, what do we mean by image and likeness? Well, the word image was frequently used in the Old Testament to refer to little idols and figurines that were made by polytheists to worship. They would make those idols, those images and then worship them. The very thing that we were forbidden to do in the Ten Commandments. And the Jews entering the promised land, were commanded that they should destroy all of the images of the nations they were dispossessing. And that it was not within our power to make with our hands any accurate representation of God. We can’t do it. But here’s the fascinating thing, what we are forbidden to do, God in some mysterious way did by making us in his image and after his likeness. The human race in its entirety are created in the image of God, and the perfection of this was in Christ. Colossians 1:15, “He is the image of the invisible God, the first born over all creation.” And so in some mysterious way, humanity displays the Glory of God more than anything else that God has ever made. And also this word likeness, I think creates a similarity, but difference.
We are similar to God, but different too. And so there’s somewhat of a unity and a closeness, but still a separation there that’s very appropriate. And I get that out of Ezekiel Chapter 1. Ezekiel has an incredible, almost indescribable vision of the glory of God, and this is what it says at the end, in Ezekiel 1, “Above the expanse over their heads, there was the likeness of a throne in appearance like sapphire and seated above the likeness of a throne was a likeness with a human appearance. Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of God.” He’s putting words between us and the actual glory of God. He’s just saying, I can’t really describe it. And so we are in the likeness of God, we are like God. And that’s a beautiful thing. Now, what does this mean? Well, I think it means our inner being, our internal selves are created with certain capacities that are God-like. The ability to think and reason, to feel emotion, to build relationships, to converse, to plan for the future, to remember the past, to observe other creatures and understand them to take existing raw materials and shape them into something according to an internal plan and design, to choose and reject, to love and to hate, these things are aspects of the image of God.
But be careful now, let’s not follow Peter Singer. Let’s not follow utilitarianism, that if you should lose some of those capacities, you become somehow less human or less in the image of God, don’t make that mistake ’cause it isn’t true. But I think these capabilities are part of what it means to be in the image of God. I think also our bodies fit in there as well. You know, God uses what we call anthropomorphic language. He speaks as though he has a body. Have you ever noticed that? The eyes of the Lord roam to and fro over the surface of the Earth, looking for anyone who will be truly devoted to him. Or it says that God brought Israel out with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Do you imagine that God has a hand and an arm? Or the ear of the Lord is not too dull to hear, but your sins have separated you from God, it says in Isaiah. He’s not hard of hearing. In another place, he said, he who made the ear, does he not hear? And he who made the eye, does he not see? He just doesn’t need the organ of the ear and the eye in order to do what those things do for us. But we are somehow, in the image of God in all of that, created in the image of God. And the scripture clearly testifies that both genders, male and female, equally share in the image of God.
And so God created man in his image, male and female, he created them in the image of God, he created them. And so, God specifically communicates the value of both genders, male and female, and frankly, and we need to say that these days, of sexuality itself. There is a value to it. There is a worth to it. It matters to be male and to be female. And it matters in a good way because it’s all part of Genesis 1 where it says, “And God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” And so it is a good thing to be a male if you’re a male, and it’s a good thing to be a female, if that’s what God chose for you at the moment of conception. That’s when he made the choice, actually, before the foundation of the world, I believe. But physically, you were that from that very moment of conception. And it’s a good thing we embrace it, but there is an attack on gender in our culture today, and I think it’s part of an attack on the sanctity of human life. And despite our wickedness, despite all of our sin, despite the pollution and corruption that came into the human race after Genesis 3, which we acknowledge and recognize, we are still in the image of God, even still.
And so it says in James 3, speaking of the tongue, the problem of the tongue, with the tongue, we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the image of God. “Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing, my brothers, this ought not to be.” And salvation in Christ perfectly restores that image. Isn’t that magnificent? We are in our new creation self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. Oh, how beautiful is that? If you have come here today and you’ve never made a commitment to Christ, hear me now. The Lord Jesus Christ has the power to transform you and make you into a new person, to cleanse all of your sins by his blood shed on the cross and to make you to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. Isn’t that magnificent? Simply trusting in Christ does all of that for you. Through repentance and faith in Christ. But I say to you a corollary of this, the dark side is that attacks on human beings therefore are attacks on God, because we are in the image of God, and that is precisely what Satan wants to do.
The reason he attacks humanity so much, the reason he hates us so much, he wants to murder us so much is that any attack on a human being is an assault on the image of God. So all the false religions that debase humanity, all of the humanistic philosophies that degrade humanity, all of them are bubbling up out of the dark mind of Satan because he hates God, that’s what he’s doing. And thus, abortion itself, I think is a filthy attack on the image of God. The effort to call the pre-born, a fetus or even worse, a product of conception, there’s a mentality behind that to separate it from personhood. It’s not a baby anymore when you talk like that, even though the word fetus in Latin just means young one. I tell you what, instead of doing the fetus thing, let’s call it what the Latin means, young one, would they like that? I don’t think so, because they want to deny personhood, that’s why they use the word. God does not deny it. He gave it and he will not deny it, and we must not either.
III. Sacred Because Pre-Eminent Over All Other Earthly Beings
Thirdly, human beings are sacred because we are preeminent over all other Earthly beings. This should be obvious, it’s not obvious to Peter Singer. You know, the great ape movement and all that? He wants to make laws to protect animals not from cruelty and all that, which seems reasonable, but to elevate them. I don’t know if he’s gonna give them voting rights, I don’t know what… You can imagine politicians going after the ape vote, you know?
I don’t know what they’re promising, and if the apes can listen and stroke their bearded chins and say, “I’ll get back to you, I’m considering, I’m gonna listen to the other… ” It’s ridiculous, but there it is. We have a clear… Is it not clear? A clear superiority to every other created being that we see around us. Over the fish of the sea, the birds of the heavens, the livestock, the creeping things, everything. Every four years, we have the Olympics. I like to watch the Olympics because that’s the best that the human race can do in some certain measurable tangible ways. And the Olympic motto is, “Faster, Higher, Stronger”. So I started thinking about the Olympics, if we had kind of a planet-wide Olympics and invited the animals to participate too. Okay? How would we do? Let’s take faster, for example, imagine lining up next to a Cheetah, okay?
I don’t care who you are, I don’t care what university you went to, or if you set the world record or whatever, you are going to lose. If the Cheetah goes off when the gun goes, the Cheetah may go after the guy who shot the gun. But if he could be trained to stay in his lane and go, man, he’s gonna hit 70 miles an hour. You have no chance, or in the swimming, a sailfish can go 68 miles an hour, we have no chance, but the turn might be tough for the sailfish. He might wanna go 1000 meters straight and he’ll win for sure. But we will lose on the faster one. What about the higher one? Think about the high jump. The human record for the high jump is 8 feet 5 inches. A Puma can do 15 feet. 15 feet. We lose. Okay? We just lose. Well, forget that. Why don’t we just go with a bird, how high is the bird gonna go? Okay? Or what’s the pole vault record or the long jump record? You know, the human record for the long jump is 29 feet four and a quarter inches. But I learned this, a bar-tailed godwit travels 6300 miles without landing, from Alaska to New Zealand. Try beating that.
6300 miles is an awfully long, long jump. Again, we lose. What about stronger, weight lifting? The Iranian Hercules, a guy in 2004 won the gold medal, Hossein Rezazadeh. And he set the clean and jerk record, all-time record, 580.9 pounds. That’s a lot of weight to pull up, and then, you know, this guy is amazingly strong. But in comes the elephant, he’s got his trunk, he can do a ton without even sweating. I don’t know if elephants sweat, they probably do. But just straight up, again, we lose, but if the rules change a bit and we’re allowed to use not just our regular rather mediocre bodies, but everything that we can invent and create and bring that to these events, there is no comparison at all. There’s no bird ever that will fly to the moon, literally. But we’ve been there. That’s higher than anything that there has ever been of these created things that started here on Earth. Alright? There’s no bird or any animal that can fly faster or go faster than the spy plane, the SR-71, which went three and a half times the speed of sound. After all of it’s engineering problems were solved, three and a half times, it’s still a record. In terms of deadlift, I found a crane in some shipbuilding yard in Mississippi that can dead-lift 600 tons. 600 tons. It can just pick right up. Like a whole ship and just pick it up. Okay? An elephant can’t do that. This is clear evidence of the superiority of the human race over anything else that’s made. We were made better, and we have a higher value, “Of how much greater worth are you than a sheep?” Jesus said. There’s just a higher value.
IV. Sacred Because Given Dominion by God Over The Earth
Fourthly, we are sacred because with that capacity, we were given that position of dominion on the earth. It wasn’t just we’re capable for it, it was given to us. We were put in charge. Look what it says, “And God said, Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over the livestock, over all the earth and all the creatures that move along the ground.” Verse 28, “God said, Fill the earth and subdue it, rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” Notice how he talks about realms or spheres, the sea, the air, the ground, we’re in charge of all of it. The sea, fish naturally swim in the sea and feel comfortable there, far more than we ever will. But it was given to us to rule the sea, the waves. The air, birds naturally soar through the heavens, and they feel comfortable there, but it was given to us to rule the air, to be in charge.
The earth, animals roam the earth, they live a lot closer to the soil than we do, some actually live in the soil and burrow through it. But we rule it, we’re in charge over it, because God put us in that position. This is the right to rule coupled with the capacity for it. It was clearly established, and therefore there is a link between us and this planet. We saw it at the curse when Adam and Eve sinned, God cursed the ground because of him. So there’s a link, there’s a cursing of the ground because of our sin. We see it again in the flood, when everything that breathes the breath of life is destroyed except those animals that are with the man, Noah, on the Ark. There’s a link between us. We’re in charge. And therefore, we are to use our power and our influence to bless and serve and nurture, not to destroy or crush, just like Jesus did for the church. And so that’s the position we’re put in, to be that kind of leader. But what did we do? We gave it to Satan at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We gave it over, and so Satan has the temerity to say to Jesus, “I’m in charge of all these kingdoms of the Earth, and I can give it to anyone I want, because it’s been given to me.”
Who gave it to him? Well, Adam did. Handed it right to him. And you know what Jesus did? He’s bought it back through the blood of Christ, he shed his blood to get it back for us. It says in Revelation 5, “They sang a new song to Jesus, You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priest to serve our God. Listen, and they will reign on the Earth.” He bought it back, he paid a high price and bought it back. Therefore, human life is sacred because we are to rule over the Earth and everything in it. Fifth, we are sacred because we are blessed by God in procreation. “God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply.” Do you see how those two have been ruptured by the abortion mentality? “Blessed and told, Be fruitful and multiply.” We don’t look at children is a blessing anymore. I spent a whole Sunday on this last Sanctity of Human Life Sunday a year ago.
We have to work on this. Children are a blessing from God. Let’s not talk about how costly they are, how difficult or any of those things, or every child, a wanted child, like Planned Parenthood tells us, that’s ridiculous. Children are a blessing from God, we were blessed so that we could have children to fill the Earth and subdue it. It says in Psalm 1:27, “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord. The fruit of the womb is a reward like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with him with them, that he shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies at the gate.”
VI. Summary & Application
Five reasons in Genesis 1:26-28, the human life is sacred. Sacred because we are specially created by God. Sacred because we are created in the image and likeness of God. Sacred because we are, in ourselves, pre-eminent over every other created being, Earthly beings. Sacred because given dominion by God over the Earth and sacred because we’re blessed by God in procreation. What application do we take to this? First of all, can I urge you, please, to honor this sacredness in other people?
I mean, out with racism. It makes no sense at all, get rid of it. C S Lewis in his great sermon, Weight of Glory, he stated that every single human being you meet will spend eternity either in Heaven or Hell. And if you could see them now as they will ultimately be, you would see them either so glorious, you would be tempted to worship them, or so hideous you would run away screaming from them. And every significant encounter you have with another human being, hastens them in one direction or the other. That’s pretty weighty, isn’t it? There are no insignificant people. There are no insignificant encounters with other people. And therefore, one of our applications is respect and honor the significance of humanity by preaching the Gospel to them. Share the Gospel, that’s why Jesus came, because of our value, he shed his blood for human beings. And therefore, seek and save the lost. Seek them and save them. Share the Gospel with them this week. We’ve begun to pray for the cards you gave us last week, we’re excited about that, we’re already praying, we’re waiting for the stories to come back in of how God used you to lead those folks to Christ. But honor the fact that they’re created in the image of God and can be recreated by the blood of Christ. Be faithful in that. And on the abortion issue, learn how to make a defense for the truth that you believe.
I have this book here, Randy Alcorn’s book, Pro-life Answers to Pro-choice Arguments. Get a book like this. Study some of these things. Work with the mind so that you’re not ashamed but know how to give a defense for what you believe. Start with the Scripture foundationally. Look at the five points I’ve made today, establish what may have been a little murky in your mind under the rock-solid foundation of the Word of God, and be active. You have some bulletin inserts. There’s a beautiful one there from Focus On the Family, look at the pictures of the development of these babies in their mother’s wombs. It’s beautiful. Praise God for it. You have another insert there from Pregnancy Support Services, you may wanna volunteer your time or give financially to support them. There’s a pro-life ministry also in Raleigh, if that’s closer to your home. You can get involved. Pray, pray for an end to abortion and euthanasia and be willing to be faithful like the widow, persistent widow and praying until it finally goes. Let’s not give up.
“Pray, pray for an end to abortion and euthanasia and be willing to be faithful like the widow, persistent widow and praying until it finally goes. Let’s not give up.”
Let’s not get discouraged or think this is it… We’re gonna win. Abortion is not gonna be in the new Heavens and the new Earth, that means we’re gonna win. So therefore, anything we do toward that end will be successful. Please close with me in prayer.
