Issues Of Life

1. In a country that values an individual’s rights, we’ve lost sight of the most important right of all – the right to life.

2. What have proponents of abortion done in the past several years.

1) They have fought and continue to fight in favor of the barbaric practice of partial birth abortion.

2) Planned parenthood has supported abortion by selling their “I had an abortion” T-Shirt.

3) On March 17th in England a doctor aborted a baby simply because it had a cleft lip and palate, a condition that is correctable by simple surgery.

4) In China abortion is practiced simply to choose the sex of the baby.

5) In Kansas City there is a doctor who commits partial birth abortions and afterward put clothing on the children and returns them to the parent.

6) The “morning after” pill is just another method to commit abortion.

3. What does the Bible say…

1) Psalm 139:13-16 “For thou didst form my inward parts: Thou didst cover me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks unto thee; For I am fearfully and wonderfully made: Wonderful are thy works; And that my soul knoweth right well. My frame was not hidden from thee, When I was made in secret, And curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see mine unformed substance; And in thy book they were all written, Even the days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was none of them.”

2) Notice Ecclesiastes 11:5 “As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything.” (ESV)

3) Jeremiah 1:5 “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee, and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee; I have appointed thee a prophet unto the nations.”

4) Children in the womb are known of God, God’s creation, and formed by God.

4. A List of Abortion Wrongs

1) Abortion puts man in God’s place.

2) Abortion ends human life and so it is murder.

3) Abortion sheds innocent blood, something God hates.

4) Abortion is ingratitude for God’s gift of a child.

5) Abortion is an effort to eliminate the consequences of sin.

6) Abortion is covetous.

7) Abortion is selfish.

1. Kate Adamson

1) Had a deadly double-brain stem stroke at 33 years old.

2) She was completely and totally paralyzed.

3) But in her own words she says, “I could blink and think – the world was mine!”

4) But her feeding tube was removed for eight days; days that she describes as excruciating agony.

5) Fortunate for her that she had a husband who fought for her right to live.

6) She recovered and today tours the country telling her story.

2. Terri Schiavo

1) Terri suffered massive brain damage when she lost oxygen 15 years ago.

2) But her husband refused to fight for her right to live.

3) Shortly after he won Terri’s litigation, he started the process of Terri’s death.

4) In the intervening years, this man would commit adultery and have two children out of wedlock.

5) But instead of divorcing Terri, he chose to remain unmarried to this other woman until she died.

6) Terri died last week after her husband got a court order to remove her feeding tube.

7) But she didn’t have to die.

8) Nurses that cared for her stated that she could eat Jello and drink water.

9) Her parents voluntarily offered to care for her.

10) In her last moments of life, she was even denied ice to sooth her parched lips.

3. Some say…

1) If I were artificially supported I would not want to live.

a. She was not hooked up to machines.

b. She was not unable to breathe on her own.

c. She was not unable to digest food and water.

d. How would you like it if you were conscious but unable to breathe without oxygen and someone took your oxygen away saying that if they were in your situation, they wouldn’t want to live?

2) If I can’t feel anything, then I don’t want to live.

a. How do we know what another person is or is not feeling?

b. We assume she couldn’t think or feel because of physical analysis of her body.

c. But what do we truly know about how the soul interacts with the body?

d. Terri was conscious and responding to stimuli.

e. The fact is, we couldn’t say what she felt; only Terri could experience that.

3) If I had such brain damage I wouldn’t want to live.

a. Who are we to determine our own life or death?

b. Are we God?

4) You don’t play politics with human life?

a. The fact of the matter is that this is a self defeating position.

b. If you don’t, then why do we have laws against murder?

c. Our government is supposed to uphold the right and oppose the wrong.

d. The government has a RIGHT to intervene when that which is wrong is being done.

5) I don’t want the government being involved in my relative’s death.

a. 76% of Americans said the government should have stayed out of it.

b. Since when does the government have no business involving itself in murder?

c. But the people who support death in these cases WANT the government involved.

d. They WANT the government to intervene and make these decisions of death.

e. This is EXACTLY what happened; the liberal courts ruled for Terri’s death.

4. Hoyt McDowell

5. The Bible teaches…

1) Life is a gift from God. “And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” (Genesis 2:7).

2) So long as man has the capacity to breathe on his own, he has the right to God’s gift of life and no one has the right to take that away.

3) Those who take innocent life are murderers; God hates hands that shed innocent blood (Proverbs 6:17).

4) No matter what kind of “quality of life” an individual is living, we have no right to do anything but to love that individual. Romans 13:8 “Owe no man anything, save to love one another: for he that loveth his neighbor hath fulfilled the law.” We don’t owe anyone the right to die.

1. Assisted suicide…

1) This is not really suicide, but just a politically correct term for Euthanasia.

2) In 2 Samuel 1, David deals with a man who claimed to have assisted Saul in suicide.

3) Notice specifically 2 Samuel 1:10

4) Yet what was David’s righteous response?

2. Someone says, “Well where does the Bible say suicide is a sin?”

1) Exodus 20:13 “Thou shalt do no murder.”

2) Suicide is self murder.

3) It is a failure to love thy neighbor as thyself (Matthew 22:36).

4) It is that action by which Judas died (Matthew 27:5).

5) The Bible consistently portrays suicide as an action only the wicked commit.

3. But what does our society do?

1) We glorify suicide by celebrating the untimely deaths of the famous.

2) We glorify suicide through movies like “Million Dollar Baby.”

3) We candy coat death to be something that it is not.

4. The truth is that death is not supposed to be something that mankind in general ought to desire.

1) It is supposed to be scary, foreboding, and frightening in order to motivate us to live righteously.

2) Suicide ought to scare our socks off because it is a one-way ticket to hell.