Psalm 139
I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works;
and that my soul knows right well. (v. 14)
Why is human life so sacred? What makes it so? Why is every child in every womb so precious? For that matter, why is every human being, or any age, so important? Why are murder, euthanasia and abortion so very wrong? Psalm 139 declares the wonder of God’s creative power in each and every human being – born and unborn. Each one is fearfully and wonderfully made.
Fearfully: Using the same word, Psalm 33:8 commands, “Let all earth fear the Lord…” We could say it this way: “Let all the earth stand in awe of the Lord.” The word “wonderfully” conveys the idea of “extraordinary” or “almost beyond comprehension.” What does Psalm 139 mean when it says that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made?”
Each human is a created being: fearfully and wonderfully made.
That Skin You Are In
Your skin is the largest organ in your body. Depending on your size, it weighs 8 to 9 pounds. If you were to spread it out, it would cover about 2 square yards. One of the most surprising functions of your skin is this: waterproofing. Skin keeps most of your body’s moisture inside – which is important because your body is about sixty percent water. But it also let’s moisture out, in the form of sweat, to keep your entire body at the right temperature.[i]
That Breath You Breathe
The lungs of an adult can hold no more than 6 liters of air. (That’s the amount of space in 3 two liter pop bottles.) It has been estimated that you take about 20,000 breaths each day; that’s 7.3 million breaths per year.
Each day, you breathe about 4,000 gallons of air, but if you dwell in a city area, your air is full of foreign particles; it’s been estimated that you breathe in 20 billion foreign particles per day, including smoke, dust, mold spores, pollen, etc. So how do you keep from choking on all those particles?
You have an amazing respiratory system that includes moistened projections that look like hairs, but are called “cilia.” These cilia contain goblet cells which secrete mucus, and this moisture helps you capture those microscopic particles and microorganisms.
Your body comes with the ability to cough up these particles and pathogens and spit them out. But what if you swallow them? What happens to those billions of dangerous, swallowed particles? The gastric juices in your stomach include hydrochloric acid which dissolves them so that they pass harmlessly out of your system. And we’ve barely begun to describe your amazing respiratory system. We have to agree with the psalmist that we are fearfully and wonderfully made.
The Human Complex
Dr. Richard Swenson gives us a little glimpse of just how complex our bodies really are: “The body contains between 10 and 100 trillion cells (and each cell contains approximately a trillion atoms). These cells, like just about everything else in the body, are continually being torn down, remodeled and replaced. Think of it like this: If your body were a house, and the house were the size of Texas, imagine knocking down the walls in a million rooms every second and hastily rebuilding them again with new materials. Every couple of days we replace all the cells that line the intestine – faster if we eat Mexican food. Every couple of weeks we replace all the cells of the skin – where do you think all that house dust comes from? Every seven years we replace the entire skeleton.”[ii] Swenson goes on to say, “The mystery of cell functions is both stunning and inspiring.”[iii] If you unwound all the DNA from one single cell and tied it together, it would stretch out to more than 5 feet. But it would only be 50 trillionths of an inch wide.[iv] The psalmist expressed this amazing mystery with the words “fearfully and wonderfully made.”
The Creator became a Human Being
All of these wonders pale in comparison to the wonder of Jesus Christ. The Second Person of the Godhead became a human being. On this earth, the way He lived His life was carefully examined by the two greatest justice systems in world history: Jewish (based on the Old Testament) and Roman. These two systems examined the accusations made against Him and found them to be false. Though He was sinless, Jesus lived a perfectly righteous life, and then in your place He died the horrible death of a criminal. But He rose again from the grave to show you His amazing power over death itself.
In his or her soul, each human being knows these things to be true.
David wrote, “and that my soul knows right well.” Romans 1:18-19 puts it this way: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold [down] the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath showed it unto them.” Verses 20-21 go on to explain that the creation around us testifies to us (as created beings) about the invisible things of God. In our inner beings, each of us knows that God is our marvelous Creator. Some “hold down” (or suppress) this knowledge. But way down deep inside, they know it to be true. Those who promote abortion – the killing of a child in the womb – have to deny what their consciences are telling them. But they have to wrestle with their overwhelming guilt because they know it is wrong. After watching a baby boy being aborted, one abortion clinic director prayed, “God, I don’t know how to keep going on with this burden…” and she turned to Christ.[v]
The right response to this truth is to praise God, the Creator.
As the psalmist wrote, “I will praise Thee!” Whether it is a child in the womb or an older person in a hospice room, life is precious. And this knowledge of God’s marvelous works ought to cause each one of us to praise the Lord! We are fearfully and wonderfully made.
Pastor Gordon Dickson, Calvary Baptist Church, Findlay, Ohio
[i][i] Richard A. Swenson, More Than Meets the Eye, Fascinating Glimpses of God’s Power and Design. Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2000, 79-80
[ii] Richard A. Swenson, More Than Meets the Eye, Fascinating Glimpses of God’s Power and Design. Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2000, pp. 20-21.
[iii] Ibid. p. 21
[iv] Primer on Molecular Genetics, Human Genome Project, the United States Department of Energy, June 1992 accessed at https://web.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/publicat/primer2001/primer.pdf
[v] Q&A with Abby Johnson accessed at https://clmagazine.org/topic/pro-life-champions/q-a-with-abby-johnson-former-planned-parenthood-director-saves-abortion-workers-through-and-then-there-were-none-ministry-and-unplanned-movie/
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