THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR
"God at Work in Every Womb (1)”
Rev. Carl Haak
January 21, 2007; No. 3342
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prca.orgDear radio friends,
Today and next time I would like to call your attention to
Job 31:13-15:
“If I did despise the cause of my manservant
or of my maidservant, when they contended with me; what then shall I do when
God riseth up? and when he visiteth, what shall I answer? Did not he that made me in the womb make him?
and did not one fashion us in the womb?”
I am speaking today
on the evil of abortion—from the Word of God.
That means from the cross of Jesus Christ especially. Perhaps there might be an
uneasiness about that. Ought
there to be a sermon on a social issue?
Is it proper for a minister of the gospel to address such a topic from
the pulpit? Is it not the task of
the pulpit either to feed the flock of Jesus Christ or to preach the gospel to
the unconverted?
Our answer is that
abortion is not a social issue. It is
not a constitutional issue. It is not a
woman’s issue. It is not a health issue. It is God’s issue. The abortion of a life that God has created
within the womb, a human person made by God, is to sin against God. He said, “Thou shalt
not kill.” And God must be known as
sovereign, for He alone rules over all nations to determine right and
wrong. He will teach the nations
justice. And He will teach us today from
His Word what is our calling. It is
proper and it is important that we as God’s people on this day that is called
the “Sanctity of Life Remembrance,” that we hear the Word of God on abortion.
The apostle Paul, in
Philippians 2:15, 16,
gives this purpose for the ministry: “That ye may be blameless and harmless, the
sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation,
among whom ye shine as lights in the world; holding forth the word of life.” There is nothing that shows that we are
living in a crooked and perverse nation as does the evil of abortion. We are called, according to that Word of God,
to hold forth the word of life as we stand in this present world. We must hold forth the cross of Jesus
Christ.
There are
specifically three reasons why it is upon my heart that I would preach on this
truth. The first is that we be not
conformed. The second is that we be not
deceived. And the third is that we be
not silent.
We must not be
conformed to this world (
We must not be
deceived. For, as in all things, the
Scriptures tells us that the devil, our adversary,
plots against the
And we must not be
silent. We read in the Scriptures that
Enoch witnessed against the ungodly deeds that were committed in his society. We are a confessing church before the
world. Our confession is not
democratic. It is not republican. It is not pro-choice. Our confession is this: The most important, vital thing is the grace
of God—to be justified before Him alone in Jesus Christ, through the cross, and
then to live the life of love and sacrifice in His name.
This text will be
looked at under the theme: God at Work
in Every Womb. We will see Him at work
as the creator. We will see Him at work
as the avenger. We will see Him and love
Him as the sovereign.
We read in verse 15 of
Job 31,
“Did not he that made me in the womb make him? and
did not one fashion us in the womb?” And
the answer is: Yes. For Job, by the question,
means to confess that God is the creator of life within every womb.
In this chapter,
which is Job’s last words before his three friends, Job is saying to his three
friends that he is finished with the discussion with them and that he now seeks
to expose himself to the scrutiny of God.
His friends have been telling him that the grievous woes that have come
upon him are due to his unconfessed sin. And Job, rather, has sought to explain to
them that it was due to God’s own secret will.
But no longer will Job present himself to the approval of man’s opinions
or the eyes of men. He says in verse 4
of this chapter: “Does not God see my
ways. And does not God count my steps?” He will ask his Maker to be his judge.
Beginning in verse
5 he mentions different sins, sins that you could not really tell if a person
were walking in them, that God alone must know them. He says, “If I have walked with vanity; if I
have been proud, or my foot hasted to deceit; if I lied and connived—will not
God know that? If my step hath turned
out of the way and my heart walked after my eyes (he goes on in verse 9); if
mine heart have been deceived by a woman; or if I have laid wait at my neighbour’s door (if I coveted my neighbor’s wife and tried
to take her from him)—will not God know this?”
Then in verse 13 of
our text he says, “If I did despise the cause of my manservant (that is his
slave) or my maidservant, when they contended with me.” If I did that—that is, if I despised the
grievance of one of my servants or of one of my employees who had reason to
complain how I had dealt with him. I
simply thought I was better than that slave, than that servant—that I had the
right because I was the employer, I was the owner and the boss, and I could
simply do what I wanted and could treat him unfairly—will not God know this, says
Job? Did not He who made me make also
him, my servant? Did not one God fashion
us? Are we not alike answerable to God?
Job is then saying
that God is at work in every womb. He is
creating, He is fashioning a human person, a human person who stands answerable
unto God as his creator. Job is saying
that that is the case—whether one be a slave or a free man. Did not one God fashion us in the womb, he
asks? Whether the mother expecting a
child is in the hut of a slave family of Job, or is in Job’s own house, did not
God alike create that human life? Is
that not a life created by God? That is
the Word of God. God is at work in every
human womb—white or black, Chinese or Indian, high income or
poverty-stricken. Even in slum areas of
cities where agencies use government money for funding abortions because, they
say, we must not allow those who are on welfare or those who are in the lower
classes of society to have more children because this would simply perpetuate
the problems of our society. And thus
our country becomes guilty of sins of genocide and infanticide. In other countries, in
Notice that Job
does not pay any attention to what his parents contributed to his conception,
or, for that matter, what the slave’s parents contributed to his
conception. He does not say, “I came
from parents who were landowners, and he came from parents who were
slaves.” He does not look to the
parents. He does not say, even from that
point of view, that the parents determine the destiny of the child. He does not look at the parents as
decisive. He says, “Did not God make
us?” God did this in the womb.
Yes, in the beginning (
Gen. 1),
God said that He made them male and female. And He said to the man and to the woman, “Be
fruitful and multiply.” Yes, according
to God’s Word conception is the result of the female egg and the male sperm
being united. But God says,
nevertheless, “This is My work, My work
alone.” Did not God make me in
the womb, just as He made him? Did not
one God fashion us? God is at work in
every womb.
This is
staggering. This is awesome. This is what happens in conception whenever
conception takes place. God is at work! God is at work in the creation of our human
life. He remains the creator and the
owner of that life.
We may document
now, through science, the various processes that God uses, the zygotes and the
embryos, and we take pictures and we marvel at the stages of pregnancy and the
development. But if that is all we see,
we do not see what is happening in the womb, in every womb—God is
creating a human person. God made me,
not it. God made him.
Let us be very
clear, as we stand before the Word of God, that God is
at work in every womb. And as the One
who giveth, He alone is the One who may take
away. In the beginning of the book, Job
confessed concerning the death of his children:
“The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” When you are pregnant, the Lord gave. A great creator! When you miscarry, and the baby dies through
what we call “natural courses,” the Lord took away. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy
sight. But a woman, a boyfriend, a man,
a government may not play God over the life.
There is sometimes
an appeal made to the Scriptures to say that the Scriptures say at times that
life in the womb is not necessarily to be considered a human life. Open your Bibles to
Exodus 21:22, 23.
As is so often the case, when we study the
Scriptures we find that the very text that is being used against the truth is a
text that is proclaiming the truth that it seeks to deny. Perhaps this will be helpful for us also to
understand our King James Version. In verses 22, 23 of
Exodus 21
we read: “If
men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and
yet no mischief follow: he shall be
surely punished, according as the woman’s husband will lay
upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. And if any mischief follow,
then thou shalt give life for life.”
“And yet no mischief follow” has been falsely interpreted to mean: if
she (that is, the mother) does not die.
And then in verse 23: “And if
mischief follows [that is, if she, the mother, dies], then it shall be life for
life.” But that is not the meaning of
the Scriptures here. When verse 22 says
that they contend, they strive, and hurt a woman with child so that her fruit
depart from her, it is not a reference to a miscarriage. It literally says, “And her child come out.” The
child is born prematurely, and “no mischief follow”—that is, the child
lives. Born early, but the child
lives. The child is fine. Then the husband and the judge shall
determine the penalty for the fight that resulted in the risk of an early
delivery. But “if mischief follow,” that
is, if the child is born and the child dies. That is the point. The child, not the mother, dies. Then thou shalt
give life for life.
God counts the life
in the womb as the life of a human being.
God is at work in
every human womb. In this work, as the
creator, His work is mysterious and wonderful.
Yesterday morning we were greeted, when we woke up, by the snow and by
the clear sky and the brilliant sun. And
in our back yards, as the snow was upon the trees and began to melt, each drop
of water caught and became a prism of the sun’s light, and our back yards
became a theater of praise to God. But
God’s theater of praise is not only in the brilliance of the sun. It is also in those places where no eye can
see. In secret, says the psalmist, in
the womb. Job said, “He made me.” That word “made” means to create, or to cut
after a pattern. That is, God did
something according to a predetermined plan.
And then that word “fashion” refers to what is done with skill, with the
skill of a great artist or the skill of a great worker. He fashioned me. He fashioned me in a marvelous way. He created us. He created our human life. That is marvelous and beyond the ability of
man to comprehend. For the Scriptures
say, “Thou knowest not how the bones are formed in
the womb of her that is with child.” The
marvel that God has created in the bloodstream and in the lungs and in our
minds and all the rest—the great marvel of God at work in conception in the
life in the womb.
Let us pray.
Almighty God and
Father, we pray for Thy Word and Thy Word alone to be our light. Send forth Thy Word and humble us before
it. In Jesus’ name,
Amen.