Albert Mohler: The Sanctity of Life

well good morning it is wonderful to be here with you at the Ligonier ministries national conference for 2019 I love being with the people who want to be here and I look out at you and I just recognized what a blessing of God you are and this is and this national conference annually is not just a conference it's kind of a reunion of folks who want to just come back and say do it again do it again do it again reformed theology biblical orthodoxy personal holiness one of the things I thought of just recently when I was looking at some older material from Ligonier national conferences is is how well it ages you you can't say that of many conferences there's a there's a there's a certain Wentz factor when you look at some conferences in the evangelical world and you look at the archive material and you wonder why why would you save this but it is wonderful to be in a place where everything's worth saving and to God's glory savoring we are here of course drawn by the theme of the holiness of God and what would draw us more powerfully than that theme what would be more paradigmatic or fitting for this national conference than for us to return to the theme that was dr. RC Sproles theme throughout so many decades of ministry the holiness of God but my assignment is the sanctity of life and there are so many who would not even understand what that phrase term there are others who without understanding all that it means hate what it must mean and there are many who use it with affirmation without the slightest clue of what it means and hopefully we'll be able to deal with all of that in the course of the message this morning I want to invite you to turn with me to the 139 Psalm Psalm 139 and we will look at the first 18 verses together this is addressed to the choirmaster it is a psalm of David keep that in mind this is the psalm of David O Lord you have searched me and known me you know when I sit down and when I rise up you discern my thoughts from afar you search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways even before a word is on my tongue behold O Lord you know it all together you come in behind and before and lay your hand upon me such knowledge is too wonderful for me it is high I cannot attain it where shall I go from your spirit or where shall I flee from your presence if I ascend to heaven you were there if I make my bed in Sheol you are there if I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea even there your hand shall leave me and your right hand shall hold me if I say surely the darkness shall cover me and the light about me be night even the darkness is not dark to you the night is bright is the day for darkness is as light with you for you formed my inward parts you knitted me together in my mother's womb I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made wonderful are your works my soul knows it very well my frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret intricately woven in the depths of the earth your eyes saw my unformed substance in your book were written every one of them the days that were formed for me when as yet there were none of them how precious to me are your thoughts Oh God how vast is the sum of them if I would count them there more than the sand I awake and I am still with you this passage from God's Word is majestic it captures our attention immediately it is first and foremost a testimony to the sovereignty and to the omniscience of God to the identity of God as creator and to this text we will shortly turn but before we turn to the text we're going to take a look at the moment where do we now stand on this issue the sanctity of life well we stand in a place shockingly more threatening than even we knew mere weeks and months ago we're standing in a place of an unprecedented threat to human dignity into human life and an unprecedented is an amazing thing to say to anyone who has the slightest awareness of the 20th century there or even the first years of the 21st century but just in the last several weeks consider the news coming out of the state of New York where this one state through its assembly and through its governor has adopted the most radical pro-abortion law imaginable more radical than would have been imaginable just last year a law that removes abortion altogether from the criminal code such that even shortly after the passage of this legislation the murder of a pregnant woman was accounted as the murder of one in New York not the murder of two the the unborn simply disappears into absolute nothingness and non-existence in the law it allows for abortion even through the third trimester and this is this is not to say that a baby is of greater Worth and dignity and and bears greater sacredness of life and the third trimester it is to say that even if you look at the tragedy of roe v wade there was an acknowledgment even in this artificial division in two trimesters that when you are dealing with a baby at the late stages of gestation you are dealing with a baby with an increased likelihood even a viability outside the mother's womb and furthermore you are dealing with a baby that even those who don't want to call it a baby have to increasingly call it a baby because it's baby 'no siz becoming ever more apparent and and immediately there was the explanation well well that this is only going to be allowed abortion will only be allowed in the third trimester in this very late term if the mother's life or health is at stake but you understand going all the way back to the Doe v Bolton decision that came fast on the heels of roe v wade in 1973 health was defined in such a way that it includes emotional health which is defined in such a way that if this pregnancy is going to create some kind of emotional distress then it can be understood as a threat to the health of the mother and thus the abortion can be in that sense legally justified so what it really amounts to is abortion on demand throughout the entire pregnancy even people who had been pro-abortion for decades in Congress had not yet publicly supported such a law until in New York it was not only supported it was not only overwhelmingly passed it was not only signed by the governor it was celebrated with a horrifying applause that took place when the assembly took the action and then you say well that was just a few weeks ago that's that that's that's such recent history that you really can't even call it history yet and and yet the culture of death is moving so fast that within a matter of days from the state of Virginia we heard the governor basically authorize infanticide which is the killing of a baby born and you say this hasn't seemed conceivable and the governor himself was a pediatric neurologist of all things and and then very quickly even as that controversy was swept aside by a controversy more popular to the press and then very quickly there was a bill initiated within the United States Senate a bill that would have required medical treatment for a baby who was the victim of an attempted abortion but the baby lived it was the human baby born alive Protection Act well certainly we're a people that would say that a baby born alive must receive medical care and be protected but it failed in the United States Senate so just understand we are now that country we are now that country people people who lived in in New York had to say we are that state but the rest of us and the other 49 states said we're not New York well we are the United States of America this is now who we are as a nation so we're in a radical age in which the sanctity of human life is being threatened and not only on the front of abortion mr. in the beginning of life but as we shall see also at the end of life where headline after headline comes to us about euthanasia and assisted suicide what we are witnessing is the press to what I would call a total abortion culture a total abortion culture in which abortion becomes so normalized within the culture that it is unhindered and unrestricted by any laws and it is normalized morally within a secular society in such a sense that it becomes just the expected option if in any way for any reason at any time an unborn baby is not wanted in any way in this total abortion culture there would be no restrictions and just just notice what's going on every time a state legislature adopts the most common sensical restriction it is immediately appealed in the courts because the pro-abortion culture cannot allow for any restriction whatsoever on its primary claim of the right to kill the child so attempted restrictions for instance to limit abortion in the presence of a fetal heartbeat or with the demonstration of what we now know with the fetuses the babies experience of pain or even viability all of these have to be opposed with every energy of the culture of deaths spirit and they are adamant there have been wake-up calls about this in 2003 the United States Congress finally passed and President George W Bush signed into law the partial-birth abortion ban Act and without going into detail you remember what partial birth abortion is in all of its horror it is delivering a baby almost entirely leaving the baby's head in side the birth canal and then with a blade killing the baby in order to remove the baby calling it an abortion and not murder the American people confused as the American people can be on these issues recognize that this is murder and there was at least enough public outrage that the the bill passed in Congress but what we need to note is that it passed in one sense barely if you had had then just a few different people in the Senate then were sitting in the Senate and if you'd had a different president it never would have happened and we would still be that nation that would be characterized by the acceptance of partial-birth abortion but we are the nation that is moving back right into that direction with an even greater fervor if with different techniques so this press to a total abortion culture means no restrictions and also now means no cost within just a few years after the Supreme Court's decision in roe v wade the United States Congress overwhelmingly passed what is known as the Hyde Amendment because the moral argument was that the American people are deeply divided on abortion and as the American people are deeply divided on abortion they're confiscated taxes that are paid by coercion should not be used for the payment through federal programs for abortion the Hyde Amendment has been in place but we need to note that one of our major political parties has set as one of its main platform objectives to eliminate the Hyde Amendment and with us to use the vast confiscated trillions of dollars of the federal budget in the service of the culture of death so first no restriction second no cost and third no shame this is something that has emerged in just the last few years because there is an effort now to normalize which means to to create a situation in which abortion is no longer more least scandalous or seen as even morally problematic normalized means it becomes a new norm it becomes the new normal and there is now an effort to try to normalize this and so you have Hollywood celebrities coming out to brag about their abortions the the moral argument being that if we are ashamed of it that implies there's something to be ashamed of oddly enough and so the argument is we have to demonstrate that there is no shame and we have to come out and we have to claim our abortions and be proud of our abortions in order that we can be a model to others of how they also can liberate their lives through abortion the abortion industry in America is just that we need to note and this is where we who operate with a Christian biblical worldview and an understanding of sin we understand how sin becomes institutionalized and how sin becomes commercialized and how sin becomes industrialized because there is big money to be made in sin there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to be made in destroying human life in the womb the abortion industry has its allies in its primary engines such as Planned Parenthood the most obscenely named organization I can think of at the moment because the one thing that organization does not plan is Parenthood it is the largest industrial complex of the culture of death and the murder of the unborn and frankly we can't talk about this when we think about the challenge before us about recognizing that abortion has now become not just an issue in American life it's it's become something far more than that it's not just an issue it is now one of the hinges upon which our entire political system swings something that wasn't a parent even in 1973 when the Supreme Court handed down the road wait decision interestingly enough the the majority of the justices who voted for the roe v wade decision and justice Blackmun who wrote the decision he said that this decision in its logic will put to an end the controversy over this question he meant it when he said it because representing an elite he believed the American people would fall in line the American people did not but we need to recognize that there has been an enormous three shifting and an abortion becomes one of those issues without which you cannot explain the the current political terrain or landscape in the United States because if you go back to the early 1970s abortion politically was not that divisive an issue now I recognize that over time fewer and fewer people can look back to 1973 and say oh I remember that but nonetheless we need to remember for just a moment if you go back to 1973 here's the haunting thing the major leadership in both political parties were at least mildly pro-abortion the major leadership in both major American political parties was at least mildly pro-abortion now why would that be so well for one thing if you're looking at the Senate just to take one 1/2 of the Congressional equation you're looking at a very elite group especially if you go back to the 1970s you're looking at people who are produced by all the right universities they they had had all the right experiences they were they were from all the right families they were all the right people and they were very much infected by the idea of eugenics eugenics the idea of good genes or good breeding but we're not talking about cattle here we're talking about human beings but there was the understanding as Margaret Sanger the founder of what became Planned Parenthood said we need more children more babies from the fit and less from the fit well you can guess who the fit are and you can guess who the unfit are we need more children from our kind of people we need fewer babies from those kind of people and it wasn't just in the United States of America this became a major issue in American foreign policy where the Republican and the Democratic political establishment heavily pushed a population control issue on the international sphere including abortion in the case of some nations even tacitly encouraging coerced abortion because again the American elite said we need more babies from the right kind of people we need fewer babies from the wrong kind of people we need fewer babies in China so it was the United States government that in part put major political pressure on China to limit its population growth and thus China came out with its own horrifying one-child only policy the haunting thing for us is that though Americans did not generate the idea the American political elites were for it but since the 1970s there's been a huge realignment and it's been a realignment that has gone in two directions since the 1970s especially since the late 1970s the pro-life movement which began to gain energy roe v wade was the catalyst that brought about the beginnings of an organized pro-life movement that included evangelicals who had been largely out of the picture because that this was not seen as an evangelical issue it wasn't an evangelical issue until evangelicals had to make it an issue because the Supreme Court nationalizing the question in 1973 had made it an issue abortion was not existent largely or had recently become legal largely in the areas of the country with less evangelical population a less evangelical engagement but all that changed in 1973 when the roe v wade decision was handed down and an organized pro-life movement came along and it required arguments argue arguments it required arguments that evangelicals had not made before because evangelicals weren't having to deal with this issue it required arguments some of those arguments came and had to be had to be hammered out in the white-hot heat of controversy you know one of the things I appreciated about RC sprawl when I first came to know him is he was one of the early evangelical voices to be clear as a bell on the sanctity of life when so many others were either ignorant of how to defend it or scared to engage the issue in the public square we're now in a situation without going into political detail we're now in a situation in which you have two major political parties and at least at the present at least at the present following a trajectory of recent decades one party would not dare nominate or or seriously consider as nominee a candidate who did not support a pro-life position the Republican Party meanwhile on the other side of the political equation there is no possibility of anything that might be described I would have to say anyone who might be described as a pro-life democrat even receiving attention or being allowed to speak at the Democratic National Convention so my point here is not so much politics it is to say we are looking at a division amongst the American people over one of the most basic issues of human dignity that is now so great that our two political parties that were not distinguishable in any major way on this issue just a few decades ago now represent an absolute unconditional polarization and understand we're talking about a worldview distinction here that is so big it's so massive it's so unavoidable that we have to face the fact that we have in this country a division especially amongst the elites especially when you get to politics especially when you when you understand the way the culture is organized the people who have tenure at the major universities the people who are the cultural creatives in Hollywood and in the entertainment and media complex the vast majority of them do not believe that unborn life is life is a person is a human being and they are evidently ready to deny that right up until the baby is born and maybe even thereafter and we're looking at other Americans who operate from a dramatically different worldview who believe that every single life every single human life is sacred from the moment of fertilization until the moment of natural death it's hard to imagine two worldviews in greater contrast and now two worldviews in a more cataclysmic inevitable collision but that raises another question what is the fundamental distinction between those two worldviews well we need to think for just a moment how did we get here how did we get here abortion was illegal throughout most of of the 20th century certainly it is interesting to note as a historical footnote that at one point the New York Times built its circulation over a century ago by writing expose zuv abortion the the New York Times at one point built its editorial reputation on opposition to abortion it has since clearly repented of that and now as a part of the abortion rights radical argument that it is interesting when the roe v wade decision was handed down in 1973 and when Doe v Bolton came just just a matter of a very short time later and then with the reaffirmation that came and Planned Parenthood versus Casey in 1992 and I I was in the Supreme Court chambers for the oral arguments on that case and III was I was a close friend of the of the lawyer making the pro-life argument in that Supreme Court case and had the opportunity to to witness that that was an eye-opening experience for me because to be in that room I recognized that on that court you are looking at men and women who look at the world not just at the text of the Constitution they look at the most basic issues of reality in starkly different terms they they wear the same robes but they do not inhabit the same intellectual worlds there's a logic that emerged long before roe v wade and this is something we just need to give a little bit of attention to it was the logic of this regime of invented rights and and so you see this vast worldview shift in the twentieth century in the United States we we went from a conversation about right and wrong to a prevailing cultural conversation about rights Mary Ann Glendon to the Harvard Law School says that American language has shifted merely into rights talk it's now just a debate about who has the right whose rights are being trampled upon whose rights need to be asserted it's just all rights talk and the interesting thing there is that rights talk sweeps aside the fundamental question of right and wrong it's a complete new moral logic you have to go back especially to 1965 to get the start and in a case before the Supreme Court known as Griswold versus Connecticut and Griswold versus Connecticut the issue was not abortion was contraception and in in Connecticut contraception was illegal and the Supreme Court overturned that Connecticut law and it couldn't do so because the Constitution mentioned contraception if you're scratching their heads wondering where in the United States Constitution is contraception to be found it is to be found largely because it didn't exist and certainly wasn't considered a matter of constitutional interest it's also interesting let's just put a little footnote here that until the late 1920s not one historic Christian body had supported contraception not one or birth control not one not one not Eastern Orthodoxy not the roman catholic church not any branch of Protestantism not one Christian body or claiming ties to historic Christianity claiming Christian identity not one anywhere had authorized contraception and birth control that changed with the Church of England in the late 1920s it opened the sea gate and and by the time you get to to 1965 the Supreme Court knowing that it's not in the Constitution has to find some way to justify what they're determined to do which is to overrule this Connecticut law and so Justice William O Douglas he he came up with a legal theory saying it's not in the Constitution it's not in the words it's not in the text it's it's in the spirit of the Constitution it's in penumbra's of meaning emanating from the words seriously penumbra's of meaning emanating from the words penumbra's of meaning no he came up with the right to privacy which isn't in the constitution but he came up with it saying that it's one of the penumbra's of meaning emanating from the text you will notice that you can do anything you can output number the next justice the next time and and and so it was basically an invented right an invented right that led very quickly to other invented rights or expressions of that right by the way when Griswold v Connecticut was handed down in 1965 it overthrew a Connecticut law this is 1965 I'm alive then it's 1965 it overturned a Connecticut law that made it illegal for a married couple to use contraception all the Griswold decision did was to allow married couples to have access to birth control that is a different America but you can see how the new America begins to take shape because very quickly after that in 1972 in Eisenstadt versus baird the law was overthrown that it would now allow unmarried persons to have access to contraception needs a constitutional argument and the sexual revolution can't have a constitutional argument from the Constitution so it's got to invent penumbra's emanating from the Constitution that leads directly to the right to privacy that was claimed as the foundational right in roe v wade in 1973 and that led to the overthrow of all legislation against homosexual acts in Lawrence v Texas in 2003 the same right became the fundamental issue in the 2015 decision obergefell vs. Hodges that legalized same-sex marriage all across the United States the same logic it's the same right that's not in the Constitution was claimed by the way little footnote here we don't have time but this gets to the authority of text and the interpretation of text and and and so you have justices you have the rise of the textualist and the strict constructionist such as most famously the late Justice Antonin Scalia who said is in the text it's in the text the words matter it's grammar there are words they're propositions and and that's it it's the judges responsibilities to interpret the text and others who said no we have meaning we bring to the text and we extrapolate from the text meaning and let me just tell you this at the very same time people are doing that with the Constitution that's exactly what liberal biblical scholars are doing with the Bible yeah okay here's a text yes yes we'll deal with it because there are penumbra's of meaning that are emanating yes I know it says this we can make it mean the opposite like I said we don't have time we have to move on you can't have the moral revolution without the separation of sex for marriage you can't continue the sexual revolution without the separation of marriage and procreation and watch this what's coming is the separation of sex and procreation that's the new thing well one of the sad things is to recognize that the pro-abortion movement was aided and abetted by liberal Protestantism who were so committed to feminism and to personal autonomy that they supported and support abortion as a matter of fact it's an interesting alignment between whatever remains of liberal Protestantism the few of them that can meet in the subway car but they give the legitimacy to secular liberalism in its effort to try to to push all of this and it is interesting it is very interesting to note that abortion has become their only remaining sacrament they treat it as so sacred it's the one thing they must insist upon at all times one of the things we need to note and this is very important is that a humanism a secular humanism always turns anti human it always turns into a deadly anti humanism in the name of humanism with deadly consequences because ideas always have consequences and the deadliest ideas have the deadliest consequences look at the fragile status of human dignity you know human dignity europe's trying to have human dignity without knowing what a human being is and and separated from creation and separated from the imago Dei and separated from the Christian worldview there's no way to support a regime of human rights and unless we see it collapsing all that remains is personal autonomy in the regime of Rights it won't last can't last it's a catastrophic cascade of death abortion infanticide embryo research euthanasia assisted suicide the logics just from the right to die to a duty to die it takes us right back to you you would think one of the great horrifying lessons of the 20th century in vimar Germany before Nazism vimar Germany a liberal secular government in between the two wars and Germany and the vibe are doctors who came up with the medical principle Levens and their Tunes labels life unworthy of life and you know and I know where that led and where it leads the sanctity of life human life is most threatened in a secular age and by the secular worldview and it's not an accident it makes perfect sense secular and sacred are two words which cannot be used together look at the text of Psalm 139 we read it at wonderful testimony to the omniscience of God to the sovereignty of God David says you know when I sit down and when I rise up you discern my thoughts from afar I love verse 4 even before a word is on my tongue I behold O Lord you know it all together you ever thought about that in prayer you're never gonna surprise God with a syllable he knows what you're gonna say before you say it because he knows all things perfectly pray anyway use words I love David saying I can't escape from you you hit me in behind in before you lay your hand on me such knowledge is too wonderful for me it's too high I can't attain it he says I can't flee from your spirit wherever I go wherever I go you're there God's omnipresent and I love the statement where David says even the darkness is not dark to you darkness is light with you and then he gets to where you might think even David's imagination could not go there was so little biological knowledge of the development of the human baby he writes with an inspired divinely inspired knowledge here you formed my inward parts you knitted me together in my mother's womb I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made he doesn't say look how great I am but how wonderful you are is create or my soul knows it very well my frame his body was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret intricately woven in the depths of the earth your eyes saw my unformed substance in your book were written every one of them the days that were formed for me that's how a human life comes to be the very God who said let there be and there was says let there be life and there is David knows that with all the day said that before this is a testimony to God's sovereignty is omnipotence is his omniscience it's it's all a part of David's confession but embedded within this is such a powerful testimony to the sanctity of human life what human life all human life we come to understand in a biblical worldview human life is sacred not because it's an achievement of which we are capable but because it is a status that is defined by our Creator Psalm 139 reminds us that there are two different categories human dignity and the sanctity of life and the sanctity of life is the prior issue and the sanctity of human life points to the sacredness of human life which again only makes sense in a biblical worldview only makes sense an atheistic worldview only makes sense if the existence of all things every atom and molecule of the cosmos but in particular the existence of human life as it is the only anchor the meaning of human life is in a creator who made us in His image what sets in is so it's not just we believe in this in this in the sanctity of life we what we really mean in this context is the sanctity of human life we believe that all life is God's gift but we believe there is one creature and only one creature made God's image and that is the human being and and thus we come to understand that human dignity is derivative because of the imago Dei it is not something that is achieved it is something that is true for every single human being regardless of capacity regardless of of the degree of development regardless of age regardless of any characteristic any capacity human dignity sits upon the foundation of the fact that a holy God created us for his glory therefore dignity sacredness it points to the holiness of God so now we come to understand why this theme belongs in this conference with the overarching theme of the holiness of God human life is not sacred because we're human human life is sacred because God made humanity in His image and and we are not inherently sacred it is it is derivative of the holiness of God and only a theology that affirms the holiness of God can sustain the claim of the sanctity of human life and that encourages us it encourages us who are committed to biblical Christianity knowing that the affirmation of the holiness of God is one of those ideas that has consequences indeed one of the consequences is the fact that we will never look at any human being as anything other than an image-bearer of God and thus defining human dignity entirely by the Creator the thrice holy God who made human beings human beings every single one of them as his image bearers bearing his glory we are speaking of the sanctity of human life a human life is sacred because we belong to a holy God now very quickly just look to the text again because I stopped at verse 18 and I did so on purpose most preachers preaching this text would just stop there but the psalm doesn't stop there look at verse 19 oh that you would slay the wicked O God o men of blood depart from me they speak against you with malicious intent your enemies take your name in vain do I not hate those who hate you O Lord and do I not lo those who rise up against you I hate them with the complete hatred I count them my enemies search me O God and know my heart try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any Grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting we need to heed the Puritan warning when we look to this text that we take care when we pray the imprecatory solves and we make very clear that the primary issue is the vindication of God and not the vindication of we ourselves because if we're not careful we're gonna read the imprecatory psalms primarily concerned with our vindication rather than the vindication of the character and the righteousness and the holiness of God but you'll notice we have to finish the psalm this is the inerrant and infallible Word of God notice the language that is used look at verse 19 o men of blood depart from me brothers and sisters we are surrounded by an entire industrial complex of a death culture men and women of blood let us at the very least have the courage to understand how the Scriptures define the reality even as we end as David ends this prayer search me O God and know my heart try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting know this there will be no recovery of the sanctity of human life without a prior recovery of the knowledge of the holiness of God there can be and there will be no recovery of the affirmation of the sanctity of human life until there is a prior affirmation and knowledge of the holiness of God so what's at stake here in the holiness of God well we know that the main issue at stake is the glory and honor of God but I'm gonna leave you with these words it turns out that without the holiness of God the human race turns deadly on itself so when we talk about the holiness of God yes we are talking about the honor and glory of God at stake but make no mistake in this the very survival of the human race is at stake father we thank you for this incredible testimony through your servant David of your wonderful creation of every one of us and every human being who ever has or ever will exist it father may we see your glory may we defend the sanctity of human life and may we more than anything else defend your own holiness for it is in your name we pray amen [Applause]

Channel: Ligonier Ministries

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Keywords: mohler, albert mohler, dr mohler, genesis 1:28, psalm 127:3, psalms 127:3, abortion, pro life, prolife, reproductive rights, albert r mohler, albert, sanctity, sanctity of human life, sanctity of life, unborn, unborn children, children, al mohler, pro-life, planned parenthood, right to life, r. albert mohler jr., children are a blessing, the blessing of children, fetus, women's rights, roe vs wade, roe v wade, pro choice, abortion debate, roe v. wade, human life, life

Id: IygumURnrOo

Length: 46min 13sec (2773 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 21 2019