12th November 2025

12th November 2025


Pray (ACts)


Read (Exodus 20:13)


Message (Alan Burke)


If you can remember Monday’s devotion I began by giving some extreme examples, at least I hope they were extreme and I’ll never see them in my lifetime but if the past is anything to go by I’ll not hold my breath. The reason why I gave them was to challenge you to ask who has the right to decide the value of human life? If value is found upon what society decides or the government then euthanising those with mental ill health, euthanising those who require adult social care and shooting the small boats out of the water can be reasoned and justified for economic reasons at least. Yet the LORD our God forbids murder, not only intentionally but by carelessness or negligence. 


To help us to understand the fullness of why God forbids murder we need to go back. The first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis give us a foundation and interpretive lens in how we understand the rest of scripture. They teach us about life itself, our purpose, how this world is far from how we want it or desire it to be with the coming of sin and then how that sin taints every part of life from that point on. While in the beginning the LORD made the creatures according to their kinds (Gen 1:11, 12, 24, 25) he made man in his image (Gen 1:26-27). Man speaking of the human race was made in the image of God not like the animals and the LORD God gave the first man, Adam a soul, a mind to think, to reason, to understand, to imagination, to create, we were given dominion over all of creation, over all the creatures and their kinds, we were the custodians of all of creation. 


We are not like the rest of creation, we were made in the image of God we bear the image of God. Even after the fall although that image has been marred by sin we still nonetheless bear the image of God (Gen 9:6). Men and women are made in the image of God, no matter how marred it is by the subsequent fall, we bear the image of God, all people, all over the earth, it doesn’t matter the colour of their skin, their social or economic background, their age, their infirmity, their love for their neighbour or the lack of love that they have for their neighbour, they are all, each one and there is no exception made in the image of God. 


This means that there is no basis for saying that a man is worth more than a woman, or that a child is worth less than an adult, or a child worth more than an octogenarian, someone with lots of letters after their name is worth more than someone without. No, each one of us before God we are irrespective of all these things the image bearers of God and because of that we are set apart by God, there is a sanctity of life. It doesn’t matter if you’re sitting in your home alone thinking that you’re a burden to your children or that you haven’t anyone who cares, or if you’re struggling to see any colour in life and all you see is grey, whether your self esteem is in the toilet or some idiot has robed you of your dignity you bear the image of God and are worth more than you can begin to understand. You are an image bearer of God and are of worth than all the other creatures that the Lord God has made and our lives, the life of a human being is of immense value, the value of human life. 


So much so that the Lord God would bring redemption to us, that he would be moved to redeem us by sending his Son to die for our salvation. Christ took on our sin and shame so that we might become the children of God. We are not his children by nature, we are his enemies yet Christ died for the ungodly so that we may be justified and saved from the wrath of God (Rom 5:6-11).


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q17 Into what estate did the fall bring mankind?
A. The fall brought mankind into an estate of sin and misery.
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