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If You Are Thinking About Aborting Your Child — Read This

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Recently I wrote an article entitled “The Sanctity of Human Life.” I won’t repeat the Biblical arguments for avoiding abortion here, but two true accounts should give anyone pause who contemplates ending the life of the baby in the womb. We will call the unborn child in this recent story “Michael.” His mother was my wife’s friend. Each day the father would spend some time speaking to the baby in her womb, bending down to her tummy, and calling him by name, saying “Michael, I love you” and “I am looking forward to seeing you soon,” as well as other conversational words of endearment.

When baby Michael was born, the father was right there. Naturally Michael cried when he drew his first breath, but the crying continued. Finally, the father got close and said, “Michael, it’s OK, I am here with you. I love you.” Instantly little Michael’s crying stopped, and he listened! Overjoyed, the mother and father continued to soothe their newborn, who was still listening.

My point for you, if you are thinking about aborting your child, is this: He or she hears you in the womb. Your child, even now, is a living human being – not a tissue mass, and not something to be discarded. God bless you for pausing to hear this true account of young Michael.

Consider a Biblical account of another child in his mother’s womb, the prophet John the Baptizer. In Luke’s gospel, after the angel Gabriel announced that Mary would conceive the Christ Child by the Holy Spirit, she visited her relative, Elizabeth, who was in her sixth month of pregnancy with baby John. Filled with the Holy Spirit, Elizabeth said to Mary,

“As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.”

-Luke 1:44

The child in the womb is not some blob and not some “choice.” The child is a person, even in the womb. Let us praise God the Creator for the wonders of His creation.

The Book of Genesis – The Masterful Beginning

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Genesis begins with this seminal, authoritative statement: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” It is arguably the most famous, all-encompassing opening sentence in all of literature. It establishes God as the Creator, eternal and almighty, yet caring. He established the earth first, before the vast universe, which came later in the six days of creation. God built the universe around the earth, which is the focus of His creative power, the place where His ultimate creation, man, would reside. Much later, King David of Israel asked, “What is man that You [God] are mindful of Him?” (Psalm 8:4) The answer rests on God’s loving care for that part of His living creation that He deliberately made in His image, after His likeness: human beings.

The history presented in Genesis accounts for Adam, the first man, all the way to Jacob’s sons settling in Egypt, around 1,866 B.C., a span of about 2,100 years. Some of this history, including customs such as contracts, the Great Flood, and the names of the patriarchs, are corroborated by ancient clay tablets of Mesopotamia and Syria. The Great Flood in particular is the theme of the legend of Gilgamesh, a Mesopotamian account as told in a pantheistic culture. But Genesis is more than a dry history. It is divided into ten memorable accounts, each beginning with the word “account.” The accounts tell of people and events that are best described as fascinating stories of human nature as people struggle with obstacles and opposition, even as God plays a sovereign role of guiding them, answering prayers, giving visions, and making promises to a the patriarchs. Ultimately God makes covenant promises to Noah, then Abraham, and then reaffirms the covenant to Abraham’s son, grandson, and great grandson.

Genesis runs a long narrative of God’s creation of the world and all life, assesses the nature of mankind, and relates the history of a family which God calls into a special relationship for the purpose of founding a holy nation. His plan alludes to the possibility of a Messiah, a specially anointed One to bring us back from the abyss of sin and conflict against God. The subtle assumptions within single words of Genesis point to the promise of the concept of the Trinity, God as One, yet comprised of three perfectly united persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is suggested by Elohim, plural yet meaning God. God created, ba-ra Elohim, uses the plural noun with ba-ra, a singular verb. Furthermore, God’s Spirit hovered over the waters of earth, in Genesis 1:2. In Genesis 1:26, God said, “Let us make man….” By “us” God did not mean God and angels, but God Himself with Himself.

This statement, “Let us make man in our image,” establishes mankind as the image bearers of God on God’s nascent earth. The full meaning of image bearers becomes inextricably intertwined in the Genesis narrative history as characters attempt to honor God, while others do not. The imperfections of human beings – their sins – call into question good versus evil, why God allows evil, and whether this state of affairs is a permanent problem. Is the world to be forever tainted? Genesis raises such questions and more, and has therefore been labeled a narrative text on philosophy.

Humans are unique in creation, possessing superior intelligence, a sense of what eternity means, self awareness, and the capacity to reason, create tools and subdue the earth to their purposes. Even further, humans have a moral conscience, a will to choose either good or evil, and the capacity to worship God and choose the attributes of their holy God. Such attributes include the fruit of God’s Spirit listed in Galatians 5:22-23, which include love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. In Genesis we read of such marvelous attributes and their opposite, the capacity for evil, and we discover God’s dealings with both good and evil. We learn that there exists a representive of evil, Satan, who tempted the first man and woman to sin and fall.

As mentioned, Genesis has been called a book of philosophy in literary form as the book weaves stories of families and generations. The reader asks, will Noah and family survive the Great Flood? Will Lot, Abraham’s nephew, survive the wickedness of Sodom and the judgment that would rain down on that city with fire and sulphur? How can Abraham save his precious son, Isaac, the child of God’s promise, and still obey God’s demand to sacrifice the boy? Will Jacob overcome his brother Esau’s determination to kill him for tricking him out of his birthright and stealing his blessing, and how can Jacob ever repay Esau his debt to his brother? In the next generation, how may Joseph survive slavery and prison, and ultimately, how will he find a way to forgive his brothers, especially his worst betrayer, Judah? From the answers to these questions we find dysfunctional families whom God blesses and teaches and accompanies (e.g., God was “with” Joseph and blessed everything he did). The philosophical questions are answered by the presence of God and the faith of the people whom He blesses. The people of truth and faithfulness receive honor, at times in spite of their imperfect demonstration of honor: e.g., righteous Noah got drunk and naked; faithful Abraham lied about his wife, Sarah; and persevering Jacob began as a deceiver who learned the better way, even wrestling with an angel to receive a blessing.

The longest account in Genesis (Gen. 37:2-50:26) focuses on Joseph, the eleventh son of Jacob and favored above the others by his father. Joseph the Dreamer had God-inspired visions of grandeur about himself, which he naively shared with his jealous brothers, resulting in Judah and the others selling him into slavery in Egypt. God was with Joseph as he rose from slave and prisoner to ruler of all Egypt, second only to the Pharaoh. Now Joseph had a chance to seek vengeance on his brothers, but he chose to forgive them! The word forgive is not even found in Genesis and seems to be a new principle. However, in order to forgive, Joseph felt compelled to exact a price: Judah’s offer to sacrifice himself – to voluntarily become a slave at Joseph’s mercy (Genesis 44:33). This is the turning point of the saga of Joseph and his brothers, the exact moment when Joseph revealed his identity and offered forgiveness.

Today we have two opposing perspectives of culture: the culture of shame and the culture of guilt. With shame there is no remedy, no remediation, no atonement; it perpetuates a permanent fallen condition that cannot be resolved. Hence a violator against correctness is “canceled” – relegated to the fixed status of outcast for his sin. The other cultural perspective is guilt for which a remedy may be obtained by repentance and the forgiving act of the offended party. Joseph, having God with him, chose this second alternative, the better way. For this reason, as well as the compelling story in itself, Joseph’s forgiving act makes his life the most prominent of the Genesis accounts. Therefore, Genesis establishes the precedent for grace: the unmerited restoration of the offender by reason of his repentance and faith. The climax of Joseph’s story provides a kind of reverse type for our restoration under the grace of Jesus. Joseph’s brother, Judah, guilty of selling Joseph into slavery, offered himself as a slave to save his innocent brother, Benjamin. In contrast, Jesus, innocent of all charges, Judah’s descendant, gave His life as a ransom for guilty souls.

Almost unwritten in the Genesis history, a moral code seems woven into the fabric of the riveting narrative long before the code is written in the Ten Commandments and the religious and ethical mandates of Exodus and Leviticus. Before Moses and the priests and the written law, Abraham tithed his booty from a righteous battle, giving it to the kingly priest, Melchizedek. Joseph answered the sexual temptress, Potiphar’s wife, “How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?” Human beings even then had what the forbidden tree foreshadowed before the fall of Adam and Eve – the knowledge of good and evil. Yet characters in Genesis did not have a written Law from God. The Mosaic Law would eventually come, when sin and righteousness would be spelled out vividly to Jacob’s untrained and pagan-influenced descendants: righteousness including “Love the Lord your God” and “Love your neighbor,” and sanctions against wickedness in X-rated explicitness.

More than philosophy, and more than a moral code, Genesis is the forerunner of the Messiah as Savior of mankind. Early in the Genesis narrative, after the fall of Adam and Eve, God predicted that Eve’s descendant would crush Satan’s head, and the devil would bruise his heel. The outcome alluded to in Genesis 3:15 gives the answer to the age-old problem of humanity’s finding redemption and restoration. The works of the devil, the heel bruising, put Jesus on the cross; the work of Jesus, the bruising of Satan’s head, was finished on the cross and by His resurrection! Redemption, the answer, came by God’s grace announced at the outbreak of the First Sin, in Genesis 3:15. Genesis became, therefore, the beginning history of God’s redemption of mankind. First, God’s plan provided for a people from Abraham, then a culture by Abraham’s descendants, then the God-ordained moral code, then a land for the people (the Promised Land), and then a kingly lineage leading to the Messiah as predicted in the prophets. Genesis laid the groundwork. The reshith, the beginning, already prepared the way for the King of Kings. Malachi, the last book of the Tanakh, the Jewish Bible and our Old Testament, concludes with a prediction of what Genesis began. Malachi ends the Old Testament saying Elijah would come before the “great and dreadful day of the Lord.” Jesus interpreted Malachi’s closing sentences, saying that the Elijah who was to come was John the Baptizer, who came to prepare the way for Jesus. As John said, this One (Jesus) would baptize the people “with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” As early as Genesis, God’s Spirit and fire, representing grace and judgment, counterbalance each other as God showed two sides of humanity’s ultimate fate: grace for the faithful, and judgment for the unfaithful.

Genesis 9:4 – The Life Blood

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The Rainbow covenant that God made with Noah and his family, the survivors of the Great Flood, included a stipulation of great interest to the Abrahamic people groups and their respective faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. God commanded the abstention from the lifeblood of animals when He allowed the eating of meat in the human diet after the Flood. To Noah and his wife, their three sons, and their wives, God said: “But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it” (Genesis 9:4).

God further required an accounting from any human or animal that took another human life: capital punishment.

5 “And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being.

6 “Whoever sheds human blood,

by humans shall their blood be shed;

for in the image of God

has God made mankind.”

– Genesis 9:5-6

Two points come to mind from this passage, Genesis 9:4-6:

  • Respect for the lifeblood of an animal whose meat is eaten by humans.
  • Accountability for the shedding of human blood by another, whether by an animal or a human.

The lifeblood sustains the life of both man and beast, sending oxygen, nutrients, and antibodies throughout the organism. The blood of both humans and animals truly sustains the life of the organism. The Hebrew Torah gives further rationale for respecting the blood of animals, whether by animal sacrifices on the altar to God, or whether by consumption of meat for food.

11 “For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life. 12 Therefore I say to Israelites, “None of you may eat blood, nor may any foreigner residing among you eat blood.”

– Leviticus 17:11-12

Deuteronomy 12:24 further prescribes how to treat the shed blood of the animal consumed for food; its blood was to be poured onto the ground, leaving the meat free of its blood. The reason for this care becomes clear from the principle of sacrificial atonement. The innocent animal sheds its blood for the life of the person offering his gift at the altar. Indeed, vicarious atonement, a life for a life, provided the forgiveness in the Israelites’ covenant with God. The covenant emphasized that sin promoted death, and without the shedding of blood, there was no forgiveness. The priest sprinkled the holy articles and the altar with blood from the sacrifice. In Egypt during the plagues against Pharaoh and the Egyptians, the Israelites sprinkled the doorpost and lintel of their homes with the blood of the Passover lamb, which prevented the angel from killing the firstborn of their household.

In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. – Hebrews 9:22

Non-Christians do not understand the nature of Jesus’ sacrifice of Himself on the cross. He is called the Lamb of God, because He is the atoning sacrifice for all the sins of humanity. Our only contribution is faith in His sacrifice as Son of Man and Son of God, the sinless One who took our sins upon Himself.

Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself. -Hebrews 7:27

Thus the sinless Son of God offered Himself for us, conquered death through His resurrection, and gave us eternal life through His atoning sacrifice of grace and our faith in Him.

Jacob Wrestles with God – Genesis 32

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Moses is credited by most scholars, and Jesus Himself, for the writing of the book of Genesis. The Israelites heard the reading of the Torah in the days of the wilderness wanderings. When Jacob wrestled God in Genesis 32, the hearers were surely able to remember that God wrestled Jacob by the Jabbok River, because the words sounded alike. In English the wordplay might be said as God Jabboked Jacob by the Jabbok.

Jacob had struggled against opposition for most of his life, first with his brother, Esau, and then with his father-in-law and uncle, Laban. Now as he came near Canaan at a tributary to the Jordan River, the Jabbok, about twenty miles north of the Dead Sea, he had an encounter with a “man” who was really God in human form. The wrestling match lasted the evening, and Jacob was successful, for God allowed it. The lengthy wrestling match emphasized the point that Jacob’s real struggle was with God Himself, for the Lord was the true source of Jacob’s destiny. In the struggle Jacob must have realized this, for he sought a blessing. “Let me go, for it is daybreak,” said the “man.”

Jacob answered, “I will not let you go until you give me a blessing.” Twenty years earlier he had stolen his brother’s blessing, and Esau threatened to kill him. Listening to his parents, Jacob fled about 500 miles to northwestern Mesopotamia, where his mother’s family lived. Now twenty years later, he wanted a legitimate blessing from the Source of all blessings. His audacity came in desperation as one who had struggled all his life, yet with dubious success, for his reputation as the Heel Grabber – the deceiver – followed him everywhere, even in his very name, Jacob, which meant He Grabs the Heel. The Lord touched Jacob’s hip and wrenched the joint, showing He had control at will. The encounter with God had huge implications for Jacob and for humanity.

We may ask, why did they wrestle? Did God have a motive for appearing in human form? Why did they not strike one another, or box? Athletes are aware of something profoundly intimate about a physical struggle, man to man. If they are not trying to kill each other – and sometimes if they are – there is a certain bond in the common struggle. For example, in boxing, Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney, and Mohammed Ali and George Foreman exhibited friendships born of such sports rivalries.

No, Jacob and God in human form – a Theophany – wrestled over an issue that did not involve life or death between the two. Their motives are not discussed in Scripture, but we can look at the circumstances at hand. This could well have been an answer to Jacob’s prayer, when he asked the Lord to protect him from Esau and continue to honor His promise of blessing in the face of apparent, imminent danger.

The danger began in this way. Possibly inspired by angels that appeared to him en route to the Jabbok River, at Mahanaim, Jacob felt the urge to make amends with his brother Esau after twenty years. He sent envoys to the land of Seir, to Edom, his brother Esau’s homeland, saying he was seeking his favor. The messengers told Esau that Jacob had an abundance of flocks and herds. But when the messengers returned, they told Jacob that Esau was coming out to meet him with four hundred men! Now Jacob feared for his life as never before; hence he prayed to the Lord in earnest for protection of his life and his wives and family.

He had sent his family, flocks, herds, possessions, and servants ahead of him across the river. Now alone, Jacob encountered the “man” whom he recognized as more than a man. God showed up. We do not know what they may have said at first, or how they began to wrestle. Simply wrestling without weapons and without blows would probably signify something other than trying to kill. No, Jacob, the heel grabber, did not want to let God slip away. God condescended to show himself in a physical presence.

Now Jacob had struggled with Esau and with Laban. Laban, his father-in-law, had worked him hard for twenty years and tricked him into marrying Leah first, instead of the beloved Rachel. Talk about poetic justice – the deceiver was deceived! Jacob’s struggle with God came at the aftermath of fleeing from Laban. He was fresh from a victory of sorts against Laban, as his wealth grew enormously in spite of Laban’s opposition. For certain Jacob was aware of God’s hand in his wealth and success. He had tried superstitiously rigging the mating of his flocks and herds to maximize their numbers; however, eventually he acknowledged that the Lord had made him successful (Genesis 32:12; 33:11).

God for certain had a point to make, too. Through God alone Jacob had overcome adversity so far, and it was for the reason as big as God’s plan for the redemption of humanity. God chose Jacob to pass on the offspring and the spiritual legacy leading to the nation, the people who would bring the Messiah into the world. It can be no small plot from the mind of God that He now appeared as a man to bring about the resolve in this focal man, Jacob, to carry on God’s mission.

They wrestled; they bonded as two men in competition do, until the sun was about to rise, when the “man” said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.” It is now in this fear-induced match that Jacob spoke his mind. He could not let the Lord escape him. “I will not let you go until you bless me” meant more than a perfunctory “Bless you,” and farewell. He wanted yet again to see the working of his God in his life, even as all the signs pointed to death instead. Just as a desperate father pleaded with Jesus for a miracle, he could have been saying, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief” (Mark 9:24).

God asked him, “What is your name?” It was not a question seeking the answer but to make a change to the One Who Grabs the Heel.

“Jacob,” he replied. Then the “man” made a proclamation. “You will no longer be Jacob but Israel, for you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.” Now Israel in Hebrew probably means He Struggles with God.

Next Jacob posed the same question to his rival. “What is your name?” The reply came from God as a question, “Why do you ask my name?” The answer needed no clarification; Jacob had been calling Him Yah-weh El-o-he already – The Lord my God. This was further clarified when an angel of the Lord later said His name was wonderful, beyond understanding (Judges 13:18). God now blessed Jacob and departed. We do not know the specific blessing, but can imagine the Lord repeated what He had said twenty years before, when Jacob had his dream of the angels ascending and descending on a staircase that led from earth to heaven. That former blessing said he would produce a multitude of offspring like the dust of the earth, through which all the peoples of the earth would be blessed; that Jacob and his descendants would possess the land of Canaan; and that God would watch over him so that he would return safely from his long journey (Genesis 28:13-15).

Jacob, “in great fear and distress,” apparently needed this reassurance as he prepared to meet his brother Esau for the first time since he had swindled him twenty years before. He named the place Peniel, or Face of God, saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared” (Genesis 32:30). With the sun rising in the sky, Jacob continued his journey, now limping from his wounded hip, and rejoined his family and the entourage.