Word of Salvation – Vol. 31 No. 03 – Jan 1986

 

The Quality Of Life

 

Sermon by Rev. A. I. De Graaf on Lord’s Day 40

Readings: Matt. 5:17-26, 38-48; Jonah 4; Rom. 12.

Singing: P.H. 304, 249, 329, 484, 478.

 

In the intensive-care ward of the hospital lies an old man.  He had a stroke, four months ago.  Ever since, he is unconscious.  A machine breathes for him, and an intravenous needle feeds him.

Other tubes and pipes take care of his body wastes.

It is very unlikely that he will ever be able to think again, or feel.

He does not taste his food, and does not see the light of day.

Yet they keep him alive… but what quality does his life have?

In that same hospital, a few floors away, a doctor throws something into a waste bucket.  It is a human embryo that could have grown to become a baby, a human child able to breathe, eat, drink, laugh and sing.

But there are already three children in that family and so the parents decided that this life had better not be.  For, you see, they wonder if they are able to give the child all the necessary items like good education and a room of his own.  They wanted rather to make an end, for they wondered about the QUALITY of the life that child would have to lead.

This is no silly story.

These things happen… today, in our Western world.

In our own, Australian hospitals.

Yes, we are wondering a lot these days, about

            THE QUALITY OF LIFE

You hear that expression a lot these days.  Somehow we see that life alone is not enough.  It must be worth living, they say.

The quality of life…!  You hear that expression in protests against our materialistic life-styles: we are beginning to see that there is more to living than getting your food and drink on time, your dollars and your things.

Even many dollars and a lot of stuff do not necessarily make the quality of LIFE.

Life itself has quality because it is a Gift of God.

It really ought to make us think, that the same society that argues that everybody must have dollars – whether he works or not – and everybody must have stuff, is a society that puts on pressure for abortion.

And that it is a society that makes such a lot of money out of violence… violence on TV and violence in growing armaments.

Yes, and when someone in that society wants to be heard – or HIS POLITICAL CAUSE to be seen by others, he puts a bomb in a supermarket, killing a bunch of innocent bystanders, whether it be in Jerusalem or in Dublin.

God our Creator, whose Idea life is, has quite another idea of the quality of life.  It is more than clothing, He says, more than food.  He is the Only One who can give –
            …give BACK…!

…the quality to life that makes it worth living.  The quality we keep looking for after we gambled it away.

You see, the sixth commandment cannot be seen away from the first.

A godless society can still forbid murder – thank God when it does! – but it turns into a murderous society all the same because it cuts life loose from its Fountain.

No wonder the quality of life then becomes a riddle.  Only God the Lord shows us the quality of life.  It has pleased Him to show it to us in His Son.  And to restore that quality of life for us through the violent (!) death (!) of that Son.  And so He asks His Christians to respect the life He gave – not just because it is His creation – that were already reason enough! – but above all because in Christ Jesus He gives it back.  therefore, let us think first about:

1.  THE QUALITY OF MY OWN LIFE

Life as he gave it to you… and to me.

You see, we can be rather rough with that!

We despise the quality of our own life by taking unnecessary risks on the road just for kicks or because we got up too late.

And we do it by unhealthy habits, eating the wrong food.

Yes, we do it even by not going to the doctor when there are tell-tale signs that something is wrong and maybe it is serious.

But I want to dig deeper now.

We are rough on the quality of our life when we give in to hopelessness, when we allow ourselves to be bored, when we allow ourselves to be listless … which is just the first step to suicide.

Mind you, that can have deep-seated reasons.

Bitter disappointment can have brought us there… disappointment maybe at our own achievements: “Is that all that has come of my dreams, my ideals?”

It can be intense grief… utter loneliness… an unhappy marriage… a broken home…!

You can be tired of trying, and feel like a prisoner in an environment where you no longer feel you fit.

You do no longer see a way out.

That is for some people a reason to go and try the drug scene.

Others do not go that far, they just flee into sickness, or into growing old as a sour misfit.  Either screaming for attention or keeping all others at arm’s length: STAY OUT PLEASE!

You then carry life on your back as a weary load.

And now I must tell you that the sixth commandment simply forbids this.  You simply are NOT allowed to give in to this kind of thing.  And before you now say that this is a cruel statement to make, let me remind you that also above THIS commandment God wrote that introduction, that statement of liberation:

            “I AM THE LORD YOUR GOD
             WHO HAS LED YOU OUT OF THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE
             OUT OF THE LAND OF SLAVERY!”

And so if you are stuck in the sin against the sixth commandment and you wonder how to get out, your God invites you to read yourself rich in the Bible, yes in that part of the Bible that tells you of the love of God, of the life Jesus Christ gave for you to make you a child of God, a partner of the Lord, an heir of eternal life.

Before God asks you to accept the life of your neighbour, and protect his life, He invites you to accept your own life.

Each day His grace is new, in forgiveness for Jesus’ sake.

Each day His presence to go with you while you were so undeserving.

Each day above your doings the opening symphony of Romans 12:
            THEREFORE, BY THE MERCIES OF GOD,
              offer up your bodies as an offering of thanksgiving to God.

You begin to obey in gladness the life-commandment, this sixth commandment of God, by saying to Him before you get out of bed in the morning:
“God I thank you that you wiped out my terrible sin of yesterday, that I am no more a prisoner of my past.
Lord Jesus, make me, also today, Your servant, that Your life may throb in mine.
Lord thank you that I may live and that you love me …love me in spite of all my sin.!”

Only then, having thus accepted life as God gave YOU it, you will be able to begin to respect life as God gave it to your neighbour, – and that is point 2.

2.  THE QUALITY OF MY NEIGHBOURS LIFE

And that starts then in my home.

I get a place under the sun – so I then WANT to share that with my neighbours.  My parents who gave me the life I am now thankful for, or my children, whom I again can see as a blessing, the fruit of love, heritage of the Lord – instead of seeing them the sour way the godless world does: as eaters of MY food, and competitors for a narrow place at the trough.  He who begins his day thanking God that he may be there at all, will be responsible when it comes to begetting children – after all God DID give us that responsibility – but he shall no longer be negative and surely not be materialistic when he – and she – wrestles with the question: shall we stop…?

The quality of life does not depend on things or even on money.

It depends on gratitude for that life, AND FROM THERE ON: an ability to share it.

The world is better off with some extra children who have this ability than with a select few who are used to getting all they want.

From there on the circle widens.

God gave me a place under His sun, now I strive that others also have such a place.

So I strive to give my neighbour a place on the road, for instance.

Then I am not merely a DEFENSIVE driver (Watch it: what may he do now to me?) but what is more: a COURTEOUS driver: “Welcome my friend!  Be my guest!.  You want to go first?  Go right ahead and good luck to you!”  Then I strive to root out aggressiveness in myself, and back up government when IT tries to curb aggressiveness.

When it even bears the sword to do that.

This is a difficult problem, that sword, that deadly weapon the government must use both in punishment – (Capital punishment!?) – and in war.

You see, God has given this commandment to His children but He has also given it in a sinful destruction-filled world.

Even when a Christian personally would shrink from using the sword to defend himself or even to defend his wife and children (and of that latter I am not too sure, either) against wanton aggression, what is the task of the rulers God appoints to restrain evil, and keep life liveable?  Today we remember how 40 years ago the world’s first nuclear bomb thrown in anger wiped our Hiroshima.

We also realise the agony of President Truman when about to sign that order: NOT to throw that bomb would surely mean the conquest of a Japan armed to the teeth, and the death of millions upon millions MORE people.  Japan would have died completely… now it lives.  Yet who dares to say: Thanks to the Atom Bomb?

Already for years we live in the so-called balance of terror: Both the United States and the Soviet Union have refrained from open aggression – because they know that to win a nuclear war is to lose it: the arsenals are too gruesome to contemplate: thus these very arsenals thus far have helped to maintain the peace.

Must we mine Uranium in order to create energy for people to be able to live and work?

But what about the risks we run that way?

OK then: would we have been right to develop the automobile if we would have known of the pollution it has brought, and the thousands killed yearly on the roads?

What place does my neighbour have under the sun, if he is bitterly oppressed by a system that took away his freedom, and takes away from him his children, his right to serve the Lord?

Clean air, yes, and drinkable water.

But how about the spiritual atmosphere, and the availability of the water of life?

A place under God’s sun for my black neighbour according to his lifestyle, sharing with him what God gave me, too.

The dignity of human life accorded him as well as me…! And that in a world where the Enemy still goes around like a roaring lion, knowing his time is short.

A world where sin is still a reality, even though God’s child knows it to have lost its claim on HIM….!

You know, it used to be a public show when someone was hanged at Tyburn.

There was even an entry fee.

That was when violence could not be had in its rich, blood-be spattered technicolour variety that TV now offers you at home.

A Christian rightly learns to get sick of this sort of thing.  Too much he loves the life God gave him – and gave him back! – to get any kick out of that.

But to allow the evil One and his willing servants to destroy life on his streets he cannot do either.

The government must govern!

If need be with the sword, to prevent that.

Something you love you are willing to defend.

God loves life, he loves it passionately.

He gave it quality.

And does so again.

And he calls people like you and me to work at that quality.

Life is doomed when there is no eternal life.  And eternal life is knowing God and Jesus Christ whom He sent.  If “Thou shalt not kill” then it is also true that “we shall not willingly leave our neighbour in eternal death.”  What is the use of keeping alive a patient who will no more be able to think, no more be able to feel?  We wonder if the doctor then is not better advised to pull the plug of the machinery that keeps the man breathing.

Yes, but by the same token what would it profit your neighbour if wonder-drugs would keep him alive and bread would still his hunger, if poverty be kept from his door and an old-age pension give him dignity in his old age, if no more war would ever plague his nation and clean air would fill his lungs… only to only to see him go to everlasting pain and death because no-one told him of the Lord Jesus?

We talk a lot about the quality of life these days.

But outside of Christ it just is not there.

Humanistic education tried to tell our children there was.

But there isn’t.

He who believes on the Son has life, says God.

He who does not believe in the Son does not have life.  But the wrath of God abides on him.

And so it says in Isaiah 55:
            Listen to Me that your soul may live.

We talk about the quality of life.

I hope that you know for sure what God means when He talks about THAT.

He who edges the Prince of life out of life is the most murderous killer of all.

Jesus is the fulfilment, also of the sixth Commandment.

AMEN.