13 For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb. 14 I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well. 15 My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth; 16 Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Your book were all written The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them.
In this Psalm, David makes many astounding claims about God’s character and attributes, including God’s personal involvement in the formation of the human body-David’s body, to be precise! Despite its location in the womb, his body was not hidden from God. As a matter of fact, David states that God had seen David’s unformed substance. The ramifications of such a truth are startling.
Your eyes have seen: God Himself, the Creator who exists without beginning and without end, personally looked upon, viewed, took into account and noted, David’s unformed substance. This unformed substance is the basic, material elements which, with conception and growth, would become a human body, David’s body. Think of it! While still in its unformed, or, unassembled, state—God saw and recognized the unique person that existed in them—David, the future king of Israel. The simple word my tells us that this unformed substance was not simply molecular components without identity to God, but that it was a person, known and seen only by God, but still a person. I’ve often wondered why, given the truth of Scripture concerning this issue, we Christians have found ourselves debating and arguing and struggling to determine the exact point of the beginning of a human life. According to David, the human life begins at the instant it is recognized by God, and God recognizes human life before it even exists in a form that humans themselves can discern! Could it be that we’ve been seduced by arguments and microscopes into thinking that life formally begins at the moment we determine it does, through our limited powers of observation, and not when God says it does?
On January 22, 1974 the Supreme Court of the United States of America decided that the formed substance of the child in the womb was not worth fighting for or protecting, and that the alleged “right to privacy” of a mother trumped the rights to life of that child. Almost all state and local laws that protected the life of the unborn from elective abortion were overturned. The supreme lawmakers of the most powerful nation on the planet formally determined that they were unwilling to recognize the dignity and value of a living person, simply because the size, substance and stage of development of the child were beyond their limited powers of observation and comprehension. God sees the unformed substance—people and judges cannot. And so, many children today live in one of the riskiest places on earth—the human womb.
Father, forgive them, for they truly know not what they do.
downtownpastor