Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Jeremiah 1:4-10: The Word of the Lord came to me, saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you. Before you wer born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” This is our text.
Jeremiah didn’t ask to be a prophet. He didn’t want to be a prophet. He knew very well he wasn’t qualified to be a prophet. But God made him a prophet anyway. God told Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” Jeremiah was a lot like Jonah, except even while Jeremiah wept and lamented and complained about God’s call – he went anyway – no big fish required.
The prophet Jeremiah preached during Judah’s darkest days to a society completely materialistic and immoral to the core. Take away the I-pods and I-pads and technology and our decaying culture would in many way resemble Jeremiah’s audience. They were a society whose moral foundations were crumbling. Judah had the whole civil religion thing – the “God bless America” piety that we’re used to – but it only masked a rotten, corrupt soul – a country under God’s judgment. And God told Jeremiah, “I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.” In other words, Jeremiah’s ministry was largely calling the people to repentance. But his message wasn’t only Law – “tearing down”, judgment and damnation(v.10), but also Gospel hope, building and planting new life through Jesus and His new covenant.
Speaking the truth for Jeremiah, as in our own day, often makes one unpopular, but God knew how to carry Jeremiah through those troubles. God knew Jeremiah would serve his Lord on earth with suffering but then rejoice with his Lord in heavenly joy. “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you,” God told Jeremiah. And God did know Jeremiah. God had a gracious, loving plan for Jeremiah. And – as heart-breaking as the books of Jeremiah and its companion book Lamentations are – I guarantee you that, right now in heaven Jeremiah is eternally grateful for what God allowed him to go through.
“Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.” Those words were true not only for Jeremiah, but for Jesus who took up human flesh in Mary’s womb in order to redeem our flesh. But those words are true for you also, and for every child who has ever been conceived. God has a plan for every child He has ever formed in the womb. “I know the plans I have for you,” Jeremiah 29 says, “Plans to prosper you and not to harm you; plans to give you a hope and a future.”
You heard this week a Kansas jury convicted a man for killing an abortion doctor. The doctor made his living legally murdering babies. Scott Roeder walked into Dr. Tiller’s church and shot him. It’s important for us to recognize that God Himself gives life and only delegates authority to end life to our rightful governing authorities as they punish crime and defend their people. Romans 13 says, “Submit to governing authorities… But if you do wrong, be afraid, for [rulers] do not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.”
For those who love God’s Word and love God’s gift of life, we can only abhor our nation’s culture of death. And we won’t justify Scott Roeder’s evil, by pointing to Dr. Tiller. Sin is sin. The evil of Scott Roeder’s murder is compounded in that it foreclosed Dr. Tiller’s opportunity for repentance. Our witness to life must never be hate and violence, but a genuine, faithful speaking the truth in love as we invite others to join us miserable sinners at the foot of the cross. Yes, we want to protect life, but we also want to point people to Jesus – who loves and forgives all who repent of their sins and turn to Christ as our heaven-sent Savior. We pray God the Holy Spirit can continue to work such repentance in us, and that through us others might be drawn to want God’s message of life in Jesus.
Sometimes we think of abortion as a political issue that has no place in the pulpit. And if abortion were a purely political issue, it would have no place in the pulpit. But God’s Word has something to say about abortion. If life is important to God, such that He protects it with His Divine command, shame on the church, pastor or Christian who refuses to speak. It’s cowardly and loveless to refuse to speak God’s call to repentance.
37 years ago this past week, on January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that unborn children are not persons “in the whole sense.”[1] Not persons in the whole sense? That’s essentially what the Supreme Court said about African Americans in the Dred Scott decision a century-and-a-half ago—that they aren’t persons in the same sense as white folks. That’s essentially what Adolph Hitler said about Jewish people—that they aren’t persons in the same sense that Aryans are.
We aren’t the first society to go down the dark road of defining life in terms of its convenience or inconvenience to ourselves. In Roman society during the first few centuries after Jesus’ resurrection, if a father didn’t want his baby, he simply threw that child on the trash heap outside the city.[2] That’s what happens to one baby in the United States every twenty-two seconds[3]–she or he ends up on the trash heap outside an abortion clinic. One baby every twenty-two seconds – nearly 50 babies during this sermon!
But not all the children discarded in Roman trash died. As the Gospel of Jesus Christ spread, hearts were changed. The value of each human life as created in God’s image and redeemed in Christ’s blood caused Christians to arrive at night, rescuing those little children, and caring for them, and bringing them into God’s Church. These “trash heap babies” weren’t just bodily washed they were washed in the sanctifying waters of Holy Baptism. Who better to show God’s grace and love for those babies than Christians who knew God’s grace first hand? We know something about being God’s adopted children. That’s how God is with us. He adopts us dying sinners into His family by grace.
Since God gives life and only God has the wisdom and authority to take life, we have the privilege like those first Christians to speak and vote for life, to support crisis pregnancy centers and Lutheran Child and Family Services and other adoption agencies, or to adopt ourselves. We have the privilege to support life by joining with agencies like LCMS World Relief in sending aid to Haiti. We have the privilege of joining hands with elderly saints and caring for the elderly as they walk through the valley of the shadow of death. I know some of our members are very involved in hospice care. No one is disposable. All are loved by God for Jesus’ sake. But, friends, we’ve got to get out of the devil’s lie that what we’re talking about today are political issues. Christians don’t live for Christ only in church and then it’s something different outside. God’s truth is God’s truth in every time and every place.
And let’s be honest with each other – often we’re like Jeremiah in our text. Now, later Jeremiah became a bold and powerful prophet, but you’ll notice he had a lot of excuses not to speak: “I don’t know how to speak; I’m only a child.” Too often we haven’t lived for God and spoken for God and stood courageously for God. We’re one way and believe one thing in church and another way outside of church. Confessing one thing in church and living something else outside.
But you know what else is true… like Jeremiah God knew you and me before we were born that you and I were going to be one more horrible sinner added to a totally corrupt human race. God had every reason to give up on us, to wash his hands of us, to simply scrap this world, but instead of aborting us worthless people, He decided to adopt us.
Before you were born, before you were even conceived, God knew you. Psalm 139: “He knit you together in your mother’s womb; you were fearfully and wonderfully made.” God knew how he was going to bring you to faith. Maybe it was when he adopted you by water and his Word in Baptism. Or maybe someone told you that Jesus died for your sins. Maybe you don’t even remember when you first came to faith. It doesn’t matter. God remembers. He had it all planned out. Before your parents ever laid eyes on each other, before your grandparents had ever heard of each other, God knew how he was going to make you his child. Your lives and mine are scarred and marked by terrible sins – maybe even sins against God’s gift of life, but you have a Savior who is greater than your sins… Whose love triumphed over death and calls you His beloved, forgiven child. That’s why Jesus came.
What a blessed gift we have in God’s gift of repentance! No sin is beyond God’s grace… No sin is beyond God’s ability to forgive – not the sin of abortion – not our failure to speak out against abortion. Even as we join the Psalm-writer in his repentant prayer: “Oh Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to my plea for mercy”; believe and know Jesus died for you so that you can live with Him. 2 Corinthians 5 says, “Christ died for all.” Before He formed you in the womb, He knew how best to save you. Amen.
And now may the peace of God which surpasses human understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
[1] Quoted from a sermon for 2001 Sanctity of Human Life Sunday by Francis Monseth, titled “Choosing Life in a Culture of Death,” p. 1. The sermon was distributed by Lutherans for Life. This sermon was taken extensively from Pastor Bruce Keseman’s sermon found on LCMS – WR & HC.
[2] Aadlund, p. 4.
[3] Statistic from Monseth, p. 1.