Prolife Kitchen Table
Join us as we share information and answer your questions about life issues from fertilization to natural death.
All of the materials used in this podcast are the product of four decades of work and research by Presbyterians Protecting Life – www.ppl.org. This isn’t just a podcast for Presbyterians – all of our materials are useful for anyone with an interest in protecting human life at every stage from fertilization to natural death.
We’ll use both scientific and philosophical sources, and for our Christian listener, there will be plenty of grounding in Scripture and a Biblical worldview. The show notes in each episode contain links to articles and scripture references. With the average 15 minute podcast length, and the addition of the list of scriptures and articles, each episode can be used for older student and adult Sunday Schools, group studies and personal study.
Most of the weekly topics will be available in hard copy from the PPL.ORG website and will cover a variety of subjects. We’ll talk about what it means to be human and how everyone is human from the moment of fertilization, and that our time in the womb is only a stage of development like being an infant, a toddler, a child, an adolescent, a mature adult and, if we are blessed with a long life, becoming elderly and how all those categories are categories of personhood and deserving of life and human rights.
Prolife Kitchen Table
Episode 31 - Stand Fast - Baby Chris Week 31
The story of Abraham and Sarah's twenty-five year wait for a child is such a hopeful one! Even though they had God's promise that it would happen, they didn't know about the long wait. In a similar way, we who are believers have the certainty that our faith will be rewarded by an eternity in heaven with the Lord, but only when we look back on our lives will we be able to understand the circumstances of the winding road that led us through sanctification and growth at the hand of the Holy Spirit.
Resources included in this episode include:
"In Bible Times They'd Break a Lamb's Leg: Developing a Historical Sense of Smell About One of the Biggest Bible Turkeys" by Dr. Laura Robinson
Scripture References included in this episode include:
Genesis 11-21 Hebrews 11 Romans 4
Luke 19:21 Matthew 16:24 John 8:12
I Peter 2:21 Genesis 32:25 Deuteronomy 8:2-3
I Samuel 2:7 Isaiah 55:8-9 I Peter 5:5
Genesis 32:25 Hebrews 12:1 Philippians 3:14
2 Timothy 4:7 Deuteronomy 5:32; 28:14
Proverbs 4:27 Exodus 12:43-46 John 19:31-36
Isaiah 40:31
https://www.ppl.org/baby-chris
Abortion Pill Reversal https://abortionpillreversal.com 24/7 Helpline at 877.558.0333 Email: help@apr.life or Chat at the weblink above
Post abortion recovery for both women and men at https://www.rachelsvineyard.org
Life Training Institute https://www.prolifetraining.com
Charlotte Lozier Institute https://lozierinstitute.org
Guttmacher Institute https://guttmacher.org
Compelled by the gospel, PPL equips Presbyterians to champion human life at every stage. PPL.org
Welcome back to the ProLife Kitchen Table. I'm Deborah Hollifield, your host from week to week, as we equip Christians to champion human life from fertilization to natural death. That mission statement sounds like an impossible task, but these podcasts are your weekly bites of words about life so that you can have great conversations about life issues at your own kitchen tables. One of the ways that we can equip each other is by exploring the attributes of God. For me, knowing that for those who love God, "all things work together for our good according to God's purposes," that's found in Romans 8, 28, gives me confidence when things happen that I can't explain, or when the circumstances of life take a turn for what looks like the worst. The profiles of the pregnant women in Scripture help us to see that God is a God of grace, hope, faith, love, provision, protection, renewal, and blessing. We've been using Marie Bowen's book, Pregnant with Promise, to explore the lives of the pregnant women recorded in the Scriptures. We've already seen how God revealed his attributes in the stories of Eve and Hagar, and today we focus on Sarai, whose pregnancy will soon be followed by a new name and identity. In Genesis 12, when Abram was seventy five years old, God made a promise to him, saying, "I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." People have always wondered about the long lives of the people who lived in the earliest days of the world, but everyone also acknowledges that seventy-five years old is an advanced age for a man to father a child. So it is completely reasonable to expect that if this is going to happen, it's going to require the hand of God in his life. And it appears that Abram also believed it was going to require the hand of God in his life, because he believed God, and he and Sarai left their home and set out toward an unknown destination. Genesis chapters 13 and 14 record the challenges of that journey, and in Genesis 15, God comes again in a vision to Abram and repeats the promise, saying, Fear not, Abram, I am your shield, and your reward shall be very great. In the same vision, God informs Abram that his descendants will spend 400 years as slaves in Egypt before returning to take possession of the land that he has promised, and he specifies the boundaries of that land. But back to the promise of fatherhood. Not only was Abram advanced in years, but so was Sarai. Sarai means princess, and she was also beautiful and Abram loved her. And we know that she was brave and assertive. But bravery, beauty, assertiveness, and love still had not brought her a child because she was barren. Barrness is a repeating theme in the Bible. Rebecca, Rachel, Hannah, and Elizabeth are others whose pregnancies came after a time of struggling with barrenness. It was especially painful for Hebrew women to be unable to have children. Their culture and faith led them to see children as a blessing from God. A barren woman might question why God would withhold the blessing of children from them. In the cultures around them, wives were often divorced if they could not give their husband an heir. But we see Abram behaving differently towards Sarai, because in spite of his desire for an heir and for children to take care of them in their old age, Abram loves Sarai and does not divorce her or take a second wife. But both Abram and Sarai remain faithful and remember the promises of God, even though there was no way they could imagine how such a promise would be fulfilled. Nearly twenty five years after God first made his promise to Abram, God reiterated his promise for a third time when Abram was almost 99 years old. This time he also gives him a new name. Instead of Abram, which means exalted father, he will now be known as Abraham, meaning father of many. But this time, God also makes a specific promise to Sarai and gives her a new name as well. Her new name will be Sarah, which also means princess, but her new name signifies that God is also giving her a new identity. She will no longer be a barren woman. God said to Sarah, I will bless her, and moreover, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she will become nations. Kings of peoples shall come from her. In chapter 17, after receiving the news of the promise again, the Bible says that Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, "Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Should Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?" And then later, in chapter 18, when the Lord appears to them again at the Oaks of Mamre, the Lord said, "I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah, your wife, shall have a son." And Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him. The Bible says that the way of women had ceased to be with Sarah. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, "After I am worn out, and now that I am old, shall I have pleasure?" Then the Lord said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh and say, 'Shall I indeed bear a child now that I am old?' Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you about this time next year, and Sarah shall have a son. But Sarah denied it, saying, 'I didn't laugh, for she was afraid.' And the Lord said, 'No, but you did laugh.'" I have to say that looking back at my life, there are plenty of times that I have laughed when I have seen how the Lord answered my prayer, or how the Lord provided for me something that I desired in a way that was so different from anything I imagined, that there was no question that the answer was coming from the hand of God. I think there's going to be a lot of laughter in heaven. Well, as we skip ahead then in Genesis chapter 21, verses 1 through 7 read, "The Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised. And Sarah conceived and brought Abraham a son in his old age at the time of which God had spoken to him. And Abraham called the name of his son Isaac, and it fits, because the name Isaac means 'he laughs.'" The Bible is not explicit about why God waited until Sarah was ninety and Abraham 100 before giving them the child they had been promised. But it is easy to see that it was quite the test of Abraham and Sarah's faithfulness to God after all those years of waiting. And at such an advanced age, to have a child has no other explanation than the hand of God provided a miracle. All children are miracles, every one of them. I think we forget that too often. But throughout the generations and world around the world, there are parents who wondered and prayed about their children, born and unborn, and who would be quick to stand up and testify to the miracle of the presence of those children among us. And each one of those children is a time of testing of faith. Can you think of times in your own life when you have believed God without any evidence? The growth that God gives to us in childbearing gives another dimension to God's command to be fruitful and multiply. We call Hebrews chapter 11 the hall of faith because it lists the names of the faithful followers on whose shoulders we stand. The definition of faith in verse 1 reads, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." The writer of Hebrews then goes on to list the people of old who have received commendations for their faith, including Abraham, who obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance, and he went out, not knowing where he was going. It says that "by faith Sarah herself received power to conceive even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore, from one man and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven, and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore." This has been the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Host:The story of Abraham and Sarah is such a hopeful one. It makes me think that when the Lord told them when they were sixty-five and seventy-five years old, that they would finally bear a child, but that they would have to wait another twenty-five years until that happened, that that foreknowledge would have been destructive to their faith. Not the certainty of it, but that it would have been easy to grow resentful of knowing they had to wait a quarter of a century for what would seem to them like no apparent reason.
Host:In a similar way, we who are believers have the certainty that our faith will be rewarded by an eternity in heaven with the Lord. But only when we look back on our lives will we be able to understand the circumstances of that winding road that led us through sanctification and growth at the hand of the Holy Spirit. And I expect that when we do, there will be plenty of cause for laughter. I hope this lesson triggered a happy memory of answered prayer for you. And so now you can take a minute to stretch or just sit back and think about how great and powerful our God is, and then come back to learn about Baby Chris's 31st week in the womb.
Announcer:Presented by a five-member ensemble cast, Viable leads the audience through a journey of healing and restoration for post-abortive women and men through the love of Jesus Christ. Viable is endorsed by the National Right to Life Committee. You can find out how to present Viable to your church or pro-life group at ViablePlay.org.
Host:This week 31 devotional is called Stand Fast.
Host:At 31 weeks, the uterus may tighten and contract periodically in false labor, known as Braxton Hicks contractions. Baby's nervous system is now controlling his body temperature, rather than relying on the temperature of the amniotic fluid. Still laying on fat, his weight will more than double between now and birth, but he still has space to stretch his legs out and cross or curl them up over his head. The human leg is a complicated machine made up of different components. Bones provide rigid structure, muscle provides ambulatory power, and the tendons and ligaments tie everything together. Our legs are the foundation of our bodies used for standing and locomotion, running, jumping, lifting weight, and dancing. The forefoot of a 150 pound runner can experience forces of up to seven times his body weight, a thousand pounds, at the point of the power surge that propels the foot off the ground. During the course of any day, our feet sustained forces of thousands of tons. We even communicate with our legs. Standing with one's feet together communicates anxiety. Legs planted apart communicate strength and dominance. Cross legs with one bobbing up and down signals impatience. Our knees shake and turn to jelly and give way when we are frightened. Scripture describes legs of faith, standing, following, and running. We are to follow after Jesus, but sometimes God finds it necessary to hobble us to keep us from running ahead, wandering off, and to teach us to trust God. You may have heard a story about ancient shepherds breaking the leg of a wandering sheep so that the animal would have to be carried to learn to trust the shepherd. Nathan Griffith, the editor of Sheep Magazine, writes, It's not true that any shepherds ever broke a lamb's leg on purpose. What they sometimes do in certain sheep raising nations is brake B-R-A-K-E, a leg. This means they attach a clog or a weight to the animal's leg, which keeps certain rogue sheep from getting too far from the shepherd until they learn their names and not to be afraid of the shepherd. God hobbled Jacob. In Genesis, Jacob was afraid to meet with his estranged brother Esau. The night before their meeting, Jacob went off by himself and began wrestling with God, who eventually dislocated Jacob's hip. After God hobbled him, Jacob had no other way out than to trust his life to God's grace for the outcome of meeting his brother.
Host:Following after Jesus is sometimes described as a foot race. The writer of Hebrews describes the Christian life as a long distance race to be run with endurance, and Paul likens it to a cross-country marathon. No marathon runner wants to be hobbled. The key to finishing the race is to keep your eyes on the goal and press on towards the prize without veering to the left or the right.
Host:The bones of the Passover sacrifice could not be broken. Fifteen hundred years before Christ, God decreed that when a Jew killed a lamb for the Passover sacrifice, none of its bones should be broken. John emphasizes that during his crucifixion, "Jesus' legs were not broken. Therefore, because the body should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath, the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken to hasten death in anyone still left alive. Then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who was crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus, they saw that he was already dead, and they did not break his legs. For these things were done that the scripture should be fulfilled, not one of his legs shall be broken." This is in John chapter nineteen, verses thirty one through thirty six. If the soldiers had broken Jesus' legs, then Jesus' death would have been the work of humans. Jesus' death was the work of God alone. They did not murder Jesus, he gave his life voluntarily, out of love for you. We are not expected to be fast, but we are urged to run. We are not all strong, but God has promised to help us stand. Whether we are called to run or to stand, the goal is Jesus, and the prize is eternal life. We can trust that our Savior will carry us over the finish line, on his shoulders, on unbroken legs.
Host:Hear the word of the Lord. "They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint." Isaiah 40:31. Thanks be to God.
Announcer:We hope you enjoyed this week's reflection. We encourage you to share it and join us next time on Pro Life Kitchen Table. May God bless you.
