If I have despised the claim of my male or female
slaves when they filed a complaint against me, (14) what then could
I do when God arises? And when He calls me to account, what will I
answer Him? (15) Did not He who made me in the womb make him, and
the same one fashion us in the womb?

The Quietness Now

We live in an amazing time in regard to the unborn. These times
seem quiet compared to the late eighties when rescues were
happening everywhere and some of us were going to court and going
to jail for sitting quietly in front of abortion clinics like
Planned Parenthood in St. Paul (2,916 abortions in 1999),
Meadowbrook Women's Clinic, now at 8^th St. and Chicago
(4,117 abortions in 1999); Midwest Health Center for Women, now
downtown at 5^th and Hennepin (2,462 abortions in 1999);
Mildred Hanson's clinic at 24^th and Chicago (1,418
abortions in 1999); and Robbinsdale Clinic (1830 abortions in
1999).

But don't be deceived by the quietness. Both disease and healing
make their greatest progress in the body quietly and unbeknownst to
the patient. Cancer spreads quietly, but antibiotics also triumph
quietly. Great cultural shifts can happen in the upheaval of
revolutions; and great cultural shifts can happen in the quiet
conquering of truth (or error) through a thousand conversations and
pictures and books and films and lectures and billboards and
sermons and speeches and statutes and prayers and experiences and
scientific disclosures and medical events.

For example, in the quiet absence of the street conflict, more
and more stunning evidence emerges year by year that the human
being before and after birth is a person in his or her own right.
You see this in medical and legal developments. At both the state
and national levels, bills have been weighed and some passed that
treat the unborn as persons; for example, giving parents the right
to sue for wrongful deaths of babies in the womb; and prohibiting
the execution of pregnant women.

In medical developments, for example, in the summer of 1999 an
unborn child named Marie Switzer, 24 weeks after conception, was
operated on for spina bifida. A photograph of her tiny hand
grasping the surgeon's finger was published in Life
magazine. It captured the world's attention and won Life's
award for picture of the year in science and technology. Sarah was
put back inside her mother and was born two months later, nine
weeks premature. That same year there was another baby, Samuel
Armas, operated on for the same condition. Chuck Colson described
it this way,

As the surgeon was closing the womb, the miracle happened. Baby
Samuel pushed his hand out of the womb and grabbed the surgeon's
finger. Photographer Michael Clancy caught this astonishing act on
film. And in that instant, Clancy went from being prochoice to
being prolife. As he put it, "I was totally in shock for two hours
after the surgery. . . . I know abortion is wrong now – it's
absolutely wrong. (Quoted from Colson's Breakpoint
Commentary in Randy Alcorn, Prolife Answers to Prochoice
Arguments [Sisters, OR: Multnomah Publishers, 2000], p.
33)

Of course, alongside these kinds of developments there are the
horrific fruits of thirty years of minimizing the worth of
helpless, unborn life – the emergence of legalized
physician-assisted suicide, newborns being abandoned in public
places, presidential vetoes of a nation's will to ban partial-birth
abortions.

Compassion for Parents

My point is not to predict which side is winning the silent
struggle for the mind and heart of America. My point is simply to
say: Don't be deceived that nothing is happening in these years.
Plenty is. And you can be a part of it for the sake of life –
moms' lives and dads' lives and children's lives.

One of the greatest developments quietly in the past 15 years is
that the prolife movement has been so pervasive and grass roots and
diversified and compassionate for mothers and fathers and children
that prochoice people almost never say anymore, "You people have a
love affair with the fetus and don't care for children outside the
womb or mothers in crisis." That is so blatantly and manifestly
false now that hardly anyone dares to say it. Not only are moms
cared for as aggressively as the unborn, but adoption is exploding
as a preferable option to disposing of the unborn. And way ahead of
the prochoice people, who have a hard time being honest about the
crisis, hundreds of support groups around the country are caring
for women after abortions because of the painful effects left by
the act – sometimes coming out only decades later.

So my prayer for us this morning is that all of us in this room
will find in Jesus Christ not a politician – and surely not a
republican or a democrat – but a Savior. All of us are
sinners. That is the most important fact to know about us –
not who is prolife and who is prochoice. And Jesus came into the
world to save sinners (1 Timothy 1:15). To give his life a ransom
for many. To bear the wrath of God in our place. To become for us a
righteousness that God would honor as the basis of our acceptance.
The most important thing that could happen this morning in this
room is not that anyone become prolife, but that everyone be
justified before God by faith alone in Jesus Christ, the Son of
God, crucified and risen.

But I speak mainly to believers this morning – and the aim
of the believer's life in Christ, as a justified, forgiven,
accepted child of God, is to become, in attitude and practice, what
we are in Christ Jesus. So I want to urge us, because of Christ,
and by the power of the Holy Spirit, and for the glory of God, to
greater and greater passion and sacrifice and love in the cause of
life – born and unborn, male and female, mother and father,
temporal and eternal.

Eternal Life or Temporal Life – Which Is More
Important?

Eternal life is more important than temporal life. But the
effect of really believing that we have eternal life in Christ is
that we spend ourselves in this life not maximizing our
comforts here, but showing his love here – especially for the
weak and helpless. Oh, how often we read in the Bible words like
Psalm 82:3-4, "Vindicate the weak and fatherless; do justice to the
afflicted and destitute. Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them
out of the hand of the wicked."

If someone says, "Let's concern ourselves with eternal life, not
with doing justice for the weak and the fatherless," they don't
have the spirit of Jesus. Because Jesus said, because you
will be raised from the dead and have eternal rewards with him in
the age to come, therefore use your time and energy and
money here "vindicating the weak and fatherless, doing justice to
the afflicted and the destitute, rescuing the weak and the needy"
(Luke 14:14). "Let your light so shine before men that they might
see your good deeds and give glory to your Father in heaven"
(Matthew 5:16). The hope of eternal life is to make us aliens and
exiles here doing as much justice and love as we can, not
comfortable citizens here who live as if heaven had arrived.

Well, I have gotten carried away from our text. Very briefly
consider with me the words of Job 31:13-15

If I have despised the claim of my male or female
slaves
When they filed a complaint against me,
What then could I do when God arises?
And when He calls me to account, what will I answer Him?
Did not He who made me in the womb make him,
And the same one fashion us in the womb?

Connection Between Sanctity of Life and Racial Harmony

I will try to address the issue of slavery in our racial harmony
seminar in coming Wednesday nights. But here simply notice that,
even though slavery is probably assumed in that culture, the seeds
are sown that are going to explode it. And the seeds that will
explode it are planted in the womb.

Notice what Job says: If I ignore or despise the grievance of my
servants, God will call me to account and I will be guilty before
him. What is at stake in verse 13 when the slaves plead their case
to Job is not just something on the human level. God is involved.
That's one of the things that makes a Christian. God is always
involved. All your business, all your leisure, all your life has to
do with God. So verse 14 says, "What then could I do when God
arises? And when He calls me to account, what would I answer him?"
Human justice is crucial for the Christian because God is involved.
God cares about these things. He will call to account.

Now what is the basis of Job's sense of helplessness and guilt
before God if he has treated his slaves unjustly? If he has ignored
their cry and complaint? Why is he trembling here at the prospect
of despising their claim?

God at Work in the Womb

Verse 15 gives the answer. "Did not He who made me in the womb
make him, And the same one fashion us in the womb?" Notice four
things.

First, Job traces the rights of his slaves back to the womb. He
doesn't just trace it back to their birth as humans, but before
birth, to the womb. What we were in the womb is the ground of our
inalienable human rights, Job says.

Second, notice that Job stresses a fundamental equality between
him and his slaves. "Did not He who made me in the womb make him?"
He and
I both are utterly dependent creatures. We owe all we are to
God. We are derivative. We are not absolute or self-sufficient. We
both belong to Another, our Maker. We are not our own. We don't
have self-existence. We exist by and for another. In this we are
equal.

Third, notice that Job does not pay any attention to what the
parents contributed to his conception and his slave's conception.
Someone might argue: You, Job, have a divine right as the offspring
of a free man and woman to be the master; and your servants,
because they are born of slaves, are destined to be slaves. But Job
pays no attention to the seed of the mother or the seed of the
father at all as if the parents were decisive here at all. He says,
"God made me in the womb and God made him in the womb."

This is staggeringly important. What it means is that what is
happening in the womb is centrally and essentially and crucially
the work of God, not mere natural development. We document
stages of gestation – trimesters, zygote, embryo, fetus. We
take pictures and marvel at the biological development. But if that
is all we see, we miss what is central and essential and crucial.
For Job 31:15 says, "Did not He who made me in the womb make him?"
What is happening in the womb is God's work.

There are many reasons that abortion is wrong. But ultimately,
abortion is wrong because it is an assault on the person-forming
work of God in the womb. This is God at work doing what he
alone can do creating a person in his own image; and to attack this
little person being completed by God is to attack God.

But Job's main point here is that the rights of his slaves are
based squarely on this pre-born person-creating work of God.

And fourthly, notice that Job underlines the point by stressing
that one and the same God made slave and free in the womb. One God
is at work making Job and the same God is at work making the slave.
Job stresses this: Verse 15b: "And the same one fashion[ed] us in
the womb."

So Job trembles before God at the prospect of neglecting or
despising the rights of his servants. Verse 14: "What then could I
do when God arises? And when He calls me to account, what will I
answer Him?" Why this trembling reverence and fear? Because he and
his servants are persons created in God's image by God himself in
the womb.

So I conclude that this issue of abortion – the taking of
the life of the unborn – is a very important issue. It is not
just a social issue, or a justice issue, or a woman's issue, or a
children's issue, or a health issue; it is, beneath all those and
more important than all those, a God issue. And therefore a big
issue.

Our Response

What can you do in response to this message?

1. Pray that God will deliver children and parents and doctors
and nurses (and our culture) from the assault on God. And pray that
you will know how to help.

2. Consider joining the sanctity of life task force at BBC. See
Pastor Kenny Stokes.

3. Volunteer at a crisis pregnancy ministry and get into the
lives of those in need.

4. Dream of creating such a ministry in our neighborhood.
Meadowbrook Women's Clinic, four blocks from here did 4,117
abortions in 1999 (on average 16 every working day of the year,
almost 30% of all the abortions in Minnesota). What if there were a
caring, full-service crisis pregnancy center on the first floor of
the building where that clinic is housed, so that everyone who is
going to the clinic would walk by the life-giving clinic first?

5. Consider adoption.

6. Speak out in conversations about what really matters –
and do it with patience and compassion and conviction and
knowledge.

7. Read. Few things make us passionate and intelligent like
passionate and intelligent books. David Reardon, Making
Abortion Rare (Acorn Books, 1996); Randy Alcorn, Prolife
Answers to Prochoice Questions (Multnomah Publishers, 2000);
George Grant, Third Time Around: A History of the Pro-Life
Movement from the First Century to the Present (Wolgemuth and
Hyatt, 1991); John Ensor, Experiencing God's Forgiveness
(NavPress, 1997).

8. And finally, don't just read about forgiveness: receive it
now. None of us in this room has done all we should regarding this
great sin in our land and our world. We all stand in need of
forgiveness. So remember the word of the apostle Paul in 1 Timothy
1:15 "It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance,
that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners."