God Knows You From the Womb
On February 25th, the U.S. Senate voted down the “Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act,” a bill sponsored by Senator Ben Sasse. This bill would have required a health-care practitioner to “exercise the same degree of professional skill, care, and diligence to preserve the life and health of the child” as he or she would to “any other child born alive at the same gestational age.”
The failure of this bill exposes yet another aspect of our truly depraved and gruesome culture.
As we have been studying together in our Sunday morning sermon series “Genesis: Blessing,” children have played a prominent role. The first blessing of God upon humanity is “ …to be fruitful and multiply.” Then from the promise of a child-redeemer in Genesis 3:15, to Seth, Noah, Ishmael and Isaac and throughout the remainder of Genesis, children are described as a blessing and gift from the very hand of God.
What is perhaps most striking is that God knows unborn children. Take for example God’s promise to Hagar:
And the angel of the LORD said to her, “Behold, you are pregnant
Genesis 16.11-12
and shall bear a son. You shall call his name Ishmael, because the LORD has listened to your affliction. He shall be a wild donkey of a man, his hand against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen.”
God knows the sex, the name and the future of Hagar’s unborn child. Ishmael is a unique person with a God-given purpose in life. The same is true of Sarah and Isaac in chapter 18. God says, “At the appointed time I will return to you, about this time next year, and Sarah shall have a son” (18:14). God appointed Isaac’s birth.
The Bible is clear: children are unique individuals created by God with a divinely appointed purpose in life. As such, human life is sacred and Christians ought to pray for and work towards the protection of every child: unborn or born, wanted or unwanted.
— Pastor David
Header image by Martin Falbisoner
