me to repeat questions before I answer them so you could remind me to do that. Some people have asked me that because they're not able to hear the questions. Some people have asked me that because they're listening online and they aren't able to hear the questions. So don't feel bad if you ask me to repeat a question when we answer questions later on. The second matter is Matter of logistics, I am admittedly way behind in this class. I think we have two weeks of Sunday school left. Wait a second, one week. This is the, yeah, two weeks including today, that's what I was counting, two lessons. And so I don't see my good friend Ryan here. Ryan McGraw is scheduled to begin again in the fall to teach theology. I believe he's going to teach through the Apostles' Creed. We've been doing classes. Years ago, we did the Confession of Faith, and we've done the larger catechism. And Ryan finished that with a series on prayer a few weeks ago. So I have a couple options for this class, because I'm not even halfway through. One would be to keep going in the summer, and just if you can make it, you can make it and we can record it. I am leaning towards picking up in the fall. And the reason I want to do that is because I also picked a time to do it when lots of our families are on vacation, which is probably not the brightest time to do a parenting class. So I'm thinking we'll do one more week and pick up in the fall and then take our summer break as usual. But we'll have to see how that's scheduled. I haven't talked with Ryan yet to see if we can move some things around. I have a lot more. It looks like we're going to get to next week. I want to teach on the child rearing and infancy in the young years, the little ones. And then I want to move to some patterns of family life. I'm looking at stages. I love the line from 1 Corinthians 11 where Paul says, does not even nature itself teach you? And Paul is assuming that we would have a mindfulness that natural revelation teaches. And I think it teaches us a lot about child rearing. And it's very different to raise and parent one-year-old than it is a 17-year-old. Two different skill sets, and if some of you have had an 18-year-old, you know what I'm talking about. And if you only have children under 10, you don't know what I'm talking about yet, but you will one day. And everybody who's had older children will know the difference between the two and you're all smiling at me and the rest of you still have maybe blank faces. There are some things that can only be learned by experience. Though, if you have a good memory, you might remember what kind of teenager you were. And that might help you project your future. Anyway, there we go. So those are just some housekeeping thoughts before I begin. And I will get back to you next week on the plan. Let's pray together and then turn to the word. Lord our God, we are grateful again for your day, so full of richness and gladness. A day when we remember that we have peace with you, our God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died and rose again. And we pray that our attention to these grand truths of the gospel would be blessed by you today. Lord, we know that your church in Thessalonica long ago, they not only received the Word, but they continued to receive it. And that Word worked in them and changed them over time. We're not only bringing new life at the beginning by the power of the Gospel, but shaping and forming your people for your glory. Lord, we long for that to happen again here this morning. We pray that as we deal with topics that are often difficult and weighty, that you would help us to do so carefully. Lord, with due attention to your word and a willingness to submit to it in everything, and we pray in Jesus' name, amen. A little bit of review I'm going to do, and then we will jump into our lesson. We've been looking at the Christian household. First lesson I taught was on the idea of the household from the scriptures, and that there is this basic unit of human society which figures prominently across the entirety of the scriptures from the first creation, Adam and Eve, and the command, be fruitful and multiply, all the way through the epistles, and especially this is important in Colossians and Ephesians, and I would go, and there's more in 1 Peter, for example, but to give you an example, the epistles, so the word of the Lord to the church, almost the end of the New Testament era, actually Paul and 1 Timothy, has much to say about what it means to be male and female, to be married, and to have children. that grace restores nature. Especially, I would point you to this fact, this truth, that in Colossians and Ephesians, Paul begins these letters with the preaching of the Gospel and the grand themes of the Gospel, the great indicatives of the Gospel. And in both of those letters, he, without missing a beat, considers that this same powerful gospel that only makes alive the dead but then transforms us, Galatians, to be more and more like our Lord Jesus Christ, changes marriages and the relationship between parents and children. That there are effects of the Word in history. The Apostle Paul assumes those effects to be the restoration of marriage and that it will affect child rearing. and that the household under the sound of the gospel and by the power of the word is a place where God is specially at work for saving purposes in history. This, of course, we understand to be God's way of working in the covenant of grace. I wanted to read one little section that I haven't, or maybe I've read in passing, but at the beginning of this, This particular lesson, this is a passage I'd like to read. The setting here is Prophet Malachi, it's the end of the Old Covenant, and at the end of the Old Covenant we have problems in Israel, and they're pretty basic problems. They have bad marriages, and they have broken families. And you'll see the language in Malachi. I'm going to read a few selections. So, God is indicting through His prophet Malachi in Malachi 2, Israel for verse 10, dealing treacherously with one another. Abominations are happening in Israel. The Lord's holy institution which He loves is being corrupted. In verse 13, the second thing you do So that's a broad category. There's abominations and infidelity in Israel, but what's one of the evidences of this? We read at verse 13. This is the second thing you do. You cover the altar of the Lord with tears, with weeping and crying, so he does not regard the offering anymore, nor receive it with goodwill from your hands. It's a problem in Israel. They're offering worship. They're going through the outward motions. And the Bible says something remarkable. God's not interested. He's not receiving it. Why? Yet you say, for what reason? There's the why question. Because the Lord has been witness between you and the wife of your youth, with whom you have dealt treacherously. But she is your companion and your wife by covenant. And then this little phrase, which is so important to today. But did he not make them one, having a remnant of the Spirit? And why one? He seeks godly offspring. Profound. Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. He speaks godly, he seeks godly offspring. Therefore take heed to your spirit and let none deal treacherously with the wife of your youth. For the Lord God of Israel says that he hates divorce, it covers one's garment with violence, says the Lord of hosts. Therefore take heed to your spirit that you do not deal treacherously. And then the end of Malachi 4, beginning at verse 4, promise here in the early part is that the Son of Righteousness, the Lord Jesus Christ, will come and what will the Messiah do? Verse 4. Remember the law of Moses, my servant, which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord, and he will turn, and listen to this familial language, he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse. That goes all the way back to the law of Moses, which says that if there's a rebellious son, for example, a brokenness in that household. God is not pleased, he would judge such. And so you see here, the Lord has not only made the family, but under the economy of the gospel, he is seeking to restore its harmony in marriage, to bless it with children, and to have relationships between parents and children, the fathers and the children, and children and the fathers, which are flavored by the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. How far we fall from these, categories, but yet we can pray for grace that the Lord would bless us for Christ's sake. So, two weeks ago, Christian marriage. Two sessions ago, Christian marriage. Last week, we started on Be Fruitful and Multiply, and I never finished it. And here we'll do a little bit of review. We're picking up now, I believe, on your handout, 1C. And I want to remind you that this is the first commandment in the Bible. I think it's astonishing how little we think about it. As a culture, far less obey it. This is the first thing God said to humanity. The very first thing. We talked a little bit about our culture, not thinking about this. It's interesting, I gave you examples of America and Korea and the decline in our population because of a disinterest in children. And this week, I was reading the news, and Japan, the government of Japan this week, anyone see this story? I just happened across it. The government of Japan is now in a desperate race to try and save their nation because 30% of Japan is going to disappear by 2070. Wow, if it goes on, if people continue not to have children. Young people are not getting married at rates that are astonishingly high. And guess what the government's getting into the business of? I'm not sure it's going to work. They're quickly moving into the business of matchmaking. And they're trying to set up a certified sort of dating app where approved people And why are they doing this? Like the other countries, I noticed, because they are considering that if they lose 30% of their population, that means 30% of their houses are empty and 30% of their factories are shut down. And they will not have people to take care of the elderly in hospitals or pay pension plans. that are based on future earnings. Not the best system, but it's the system we've adopted. And so there's a new, I just happened to read this week, that the population pyramid collapse in Japan has the government very concerned. The big question is what happened. Last week I mentioned technology. And this isn't the case for everybody in every case. The Lord opens the womb, he closes the womb. Barrenness has always been a thing. We're talking about broad cultural trends. We're not talking about individual cases. Remember that carefully. This is not, there is so much more, and I tried to say that last week to this, than just these broad trends. But we can't ignore broad trends. They are really happening. I did mention last week the invention of the pill. Profoundly convenient way to separate marital intimacy from procreation. Private and discreet. Many more studies are indicating long-term health and societal effects for doing this. And the change in our culture and society from these technological changes. You know what another one is, actually, against marriage? It's the proliferation of pornography. The ability to go onto a device and have some level of ungodly, wicked, evil. I want to just keep piling up adjectives, but this is not a class on pornography. Satisfaction, sexual satisfaction. Without any work or commitment required has meant that there's a whole generation, first of young men, but increasingly young women, who have no ability or interest in establishing normal human relationships, because it's all mediated through technology, and the sexual reality is satisfied through technology. And this is another huge technological shift in our age. You know that the single biggest thing, the single biggest industry on the Internet is only one thing. It's the selling of sex, by a huge margin. Billions and trillions of dollars are spent around the world on this one thing, on the internet. Okay, back to the class. Technology. But I wanted to say a little bit more about philosophy. Massive movements, philosophical movements in our society. How many of you have heard of first, second and third wave feminism? I don't have time to get into them entirely. But the movement of a wife and mother from a biblical primary place and role, Titus chapter 2, says the older women should teach the younger women to be workers at home. Proverbs 31, which describes an industrious woman who is actually capable in business, buying and selling field, and using all of her gifts, yet she is focused on the home. And this is being lost, and second and third wave feminism especially have basically said that you are wasting your life if you stay home with children. This goes against Titus 2, Proverbs 31, Genesis 3, which even in the curse assumes that child rearing is central to what it means to be a woman, fatherhood to a man. The fruitful multiply goes against this. It goes against Psalm 127 and Psalm 128, the pictures of the blessed man and the blessed household. The Bible is undeniably home-centered, and that's not just for women. It is for men and women, fatherhood and motherhood, but particularly the care of children. Paul goes on to say in Titus 2 that the older women have to teach the younger women to love their husbands and their children. It's not instinctive. and surely not in Greco-Roman culture when the household value was very low. Feminist philosophy says that the position of being at home is lesser, backwards, uneducated, poverty-stricken, and for some people, they think it's embarrassing. What do you do? Well, I just stay at home. Like I said earlier, Proverbs 31 gives a broader view the industry and labor of a gifted woman, but the idea of staying at home being some sort of social, I don't know what the word for it is, you know, backwardsness, needs to be resisted by the church profoundly. There's a companion idea that we're going to get into, which is the idea of birth control, which is actually an interesting phrase. Anyone listen to Al Mohler, The Briefing? Anyone listen to Al Mohler, president of Southern Seminary? He's got a daily podcast. Christian News and Events Podcast, which is better than any news source I think that I've, regular news. If you wanna get news from somebody who's thoughtful and has a good grasp of history and has a lot of good balance in what he says, he's not prone to extremes. But like everybody, you gotta be discerning. Moeller on Thursday actually had a, I listened to it Thursday morning and he had a great talk on this topic that I'm talking about today. and helped me, so I'm gonna tip my hat to Al Mohler. He was talking about feminism and the idea of birth control, which are companion movements, and that goes back to Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood, and the idea of, this idea of liberating women from the burden of children. The Bible says something else. Motherhood is a high and noble calling. Fatherhood is a high and noble calling. We need a recovery of this. To have children, I mean, this is the womb of the nation and of the church. And without children, there is no future, especially for the church. And I want to say this, mothers have a colossal influence on the course of history. There's almost no greater place of social power and influence, contrary to the world, than to be busy as parents in the raising of children. You have to see through what the world is saying and reject it. This is the way God has often worked powerfully in history. I think of two examples of mothers. Tanner Turley wrote a biography of Octavius Winslow. His father, I believe was a sailor, if I remember correctly, who traveled a lot, maritime trader. He wasn't home very much and he wasn't a believer. And his mother was just a remarkable woman, very busy, industrious at home, helping keep the whole family economy afloat, but also particularly devout. And her devotion to Christ shaped Octavius Winslow profoundly. Can anyone think of perhaps the most famous person in church history whose mother was probably the most obvious cause, secondary cause, under God, of his devotion to Christ and his usefulness in Christ's church. Anyone know the biggest name you could think of? Saint Augustine. Mother Monica, devout Christian, who prayed earnestly through all her son's wanderings that he would turn to Christ. And this influence on the entirety of church history And then you think of the most blessed mother in Israel, Mary. Carrying our Lord Jesus Christ, an exaltation of motherhood for the salvation of the world. Now we're not gonna go down Roman roads here. But sometimes we overreact against Rome, and what I mean by that is we like not to think about Mary at all. But Elizabeth said she was the most blessed among women. I mean, very strong language, the mother of my Lord. This is beautiful language, and it reminds us of this association between these two great principles. Okay. The creeping effects of American, particularly technological brilliance, to summarize here, on sexual and family ethics have influenced the evangelical church as well. And I also mentioned last time that there's profound desires for convenience and pleasure, which are interwoven into all of this. Not always. Sometimes it is the hard providences of this life, but often decisions are made out of a desire for convenience and pleasure, which really are not things that are not grounds for Christian decision-making for the Lord, especially not in these areas. Okay, this brings me up to, let me see here, life in the womb. This is a little bit more review, but I did this only in two minutes last week. I wanted to turn to Psalm 139 and be reminded of this in a little more detail. How does the Bible view life in the womb? And if you are parenting, parenting begins with life in the womb. I think I, maybe I said this last week, I'll say it again. When Josiah was born, everyone was congratulating me, you've become a grandparent. And I kept saying, no, you're nine months late. And no one usually congratulates you that I'm becoming a grandparent when they hear that your child is expecting. But I was thinking about it ever since Joseph and Emma, some months into pregnancy or weeks, let us know and asked us to pray. And at that moment, I was filled with this awe and wonder that though in God's providence, in the mystery of providence, I may never meet this little one because of all the sadnesses of a fallen world, I am now a grandparent. Full stop. I have a grandchild. And safe delivery is another blessing. But that life began a long time ago. And I was thinking and praying about that the whole time, and already praying about a life made in the image of God, yet unseen. And that is, I think, what Psalm 139 tells us. Verse 13 and 14, for you formed my inward parts, you covered me in my mother's womb. I want you to notice the very specific language of David. It's interesting in Psalm 22, he'll continue this kind of very personal language of communion with God in early infancy, where he talks about praising God already on his mother's breast. that he is one who has, here, you made me trust while on my mother's breasts I was cast upon you from birth. From my mother's womb you have been my God. Whoa, now this of course is the language of the Messiah. This is David foreshadowing Christ, and this means that Christ's consciousness in prayer was that he was a living soul, mysteriously having communion with God and believing Already then, from his mother's womb, there was communion with God. These are mysteries that are beyond our capacity to fully understand. I think the closest analogy, and I mentioned it last time, is that John the Baptist leaped in his mother's womb. Another text. Talmud 39, I will praise you for I'm fearfully, verse 14, fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are your works that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in secret, skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance being yet unformed and in your book they were all written. The days fashioned for me when as yet there were none of them. Have you ever thought like David that you were once in your mother's womb and that God was fashioning you there? And that he know not only how he would make you, but your days with all the mysterious providences that would come your way. Ever prayed like this? Thought about the beginning of your own existence? And that God was there? Because he seeks a godly seed? These are profoundly important things. Something powerful, new life, a creative act of God. A providence active with power and glory, new life being made in the womb. This life is in the image of God, it is the image of God, designed to reflect His glory. Fully human, worthy of all protections of life. We are deeply counter-cultural people, marriage and children. Now, we're gonna go back to last week and I talked a little bit about the question of How many children? Which we said was a difficult and complicated question, but the Bible does speak to it. Now I want to put some things together and get into some details which I think are important. Christian ethics concerning life in the womb. Separate but related question to last week, which is if there could be reasons that a Christian couple might limit the number of children they would have, that's last week's lesson. Listen to that again. Today's question is, with all that we've just talked about, what methods might be used for such? The first I would note is the following, based on what we just read from Psalm 22, Psalm 139, and Luke chapter one, about life in the womb. First thing we can say as Christians, and I'm sure you all know this, but it's worth saying again and drawing a line in the sand. First, the answer to that question, nothing that would either abort a child or cause conditions of the womb to be less than ideal in receiving the life of such a child. And I will say that again, nothing that would end the life of a child or nothing that would cause the conditions of the womb to be so changed that a child so conceived would not be received by the womb. I'll explain that a little more. If God is in the business of knitting life together, we are in the business of receiving what he gives. So if God is in the business of knitting life together, we are in the business of receiving what he gives and caring for that life. And now we'll talk about two great acts in conception that lead to birth. There's two of them that we have to think about when we think about the medical ethics of life in the womb. Number one is fertilization, sperm meets egg, the wonder of new life. Not potential life, new life. There's a DNA fingerprint of a new human being. And what is a mystery about this, I was talking to a friend who's a pastor a few weeks ago, and without getting into all the details, but, you know, if that life was an hour later or an hour before, it wouldn't be the same person. It might be a girl instead of a boy, or a boy instead of a girl. What I mean by that is there's this precise moment in the history of providence when a particular person whom God knows, sees, is brought into being. There's a mystery here of providence. We are passionately, unashamedly, gloriously, we're happily pro-life. All children in the womb, regardless of the difficulties that come with that, sickness, miscarriage, sometimes our children are stillborn, all life in the image of God. Despite the sadnesses that come by the fall, we think about these as Lives given by God. The fall makes the world a sad place in many ways, but it does not change the first principles of life in the womb. Whether fully developed, whether strong or weak, whether a disability of one sort or another, and by the way, we all have disabilities of one sort or another, if you haven't noticed as the years go on. It's life and it's fully life, it's glorious life, it's the imago dei. to be defended, loved, cherished, rejoiced over, and prayed for. That's fertilization. Then, implantation, which is the reception of that little life by a mother's womb. As that life begins to travel to a place where it would hope to receive, and again, the mysteries of providence in a fallen world, this doesn't always happen, but we have to think about two things as Christians. Two actions, fertilization and then the nourishment of life. And I'll put it this way as plainly, a Christian should know sooner, do anything that would cause such life to pass through the womb or be dislodged from the womb in any way, then I would stop feeding Miriam at one year of age. Does that make sense? There's a life and that life is to be received. It's made by God. And these two things, let's say if I would let my little one-year-old starve, that would be a morally equivalent action to taking some act that would make the woman inhospitable place, whether that be abortion or some chemical or device that would change the conditions of the womb such that life would not thrive. So, these are the ethics of life. Christians ought to be about prizing both of these realities. Back to Al Mohler in his briefing this past Thursday. Help me, because he had two words that he talked about that we often use. One is contraception. What does contraception mean? Well, you have a word, conception, which is coming together and fertilization of a new life, a new life conception. Contraception would be that coming together would not happen and so you don't have new life. You don't have the joining of the two that is required to have life. So you have this idea of contraception. Then you have another word that we've used a lot of which is called birth control, which is actually subtly troubling language. Why would I say that? What could it comprehend? abortion. that control over that. But also, it's a subtle shift in language that says, you could have life in the womb, but you could do something later to control birth, whether or not that life is birthed. Does that make sense? We have to think about the way our culture uses language. Moeller was very helpful to me on this, and it just happened in God's province to listen to, and it came on, but we have to think very importantly. Even though we use that language, I'm not saying it's entirely wrong. You have to realize it's weighted language. We're not really in control in the first place. And secondly, we're not about controlling birth. That's way down the line. That language is way down the line of already perhaps having life. So let's think about carefully how we use our language. Make sure we never slowly fall into thinking, I heard of, I heard of two times in the last two years, a PCA, church in Florida not picking on the PCA because I'll talk about the OPC in a moment, but I've heard of two confessional Presbyterian churches where discussions were happening like this. Is abortion always wrong? There was a youth group in Florida. Another one was an OPC elder I heard about who was asking, do we really know when the soul comes into the body? Those things profoundly trouble me, both cases. So we need to think biblically, and there's tremendous cultural, social, and philosophical pressure on the church. And those aren't public statements. I'll have to say that those were private statements. Doesn't make them any better. But I don't have footnotes for them. Let me keep going. This is why we have to be careful in thinking biblically. That means that if there were, if going to last week and this week, let's pull some things together, if there would be a reason, a biblical reason why a mother couldn't bear more children, the only way that that could be undertaken would be a method that would prevent fertilization. So there wouldn't be life. Does that make sense? You all tracking with me? This would be keeping in the principle thou shalt not kill. It might not be keeping in the principle of be fruitful and multiply, but we talked about that last week. Again, I'll refer you to last week. I'm talking particularly about the question of how many children could a woman bear? This would mean that there's a very limited number of ways, biblically, that someone could answer that question. And it would only be those things that prevent fertilization. And other things, particularly chemical methods, I'll say this even, if you read the fine print on the pill, it says it may prevent implantation. So, Laura and I read the fine print, which I think all Christians should do, and we said, we're never gonna use that. Never, ever. Maybe it wouldn't, maybe that wouldn't be the case, but I don't know, and because I don't know, if God gives us a life, we're gonna receive that life with open arms, and we're gonna rejoice. I could say, Loralee and I have researched all of these things diligently, and I've covenanted before the Lord not to use anything that even had a remote possibility of not receiving a fertilized egg with love, nourishment, and life. Again, Psalm 139, God sees a human life from the womb, so should all Christians, and anything that does not care for that life would be unethical. I would say the following, back to technology, the creeping effects of American technological brilliance, I said this earlier, I'll say it again. has made it difficult for people to think about the sexual and family ethics, sexual and family ethics biblically, or always promised some technology. I'll say this, this is an interesting thing I've reflected on in history, that no matter how many technologies we have, you know, it's even language. You read about them, failure rate. I mean, what kind of language is that? How can that be a failure rate? What I mean by that is, it means you are viewing the gift of a child as a failure of some sort of thing. Not a failure, it's a gift. You know, this is language where we think backwards. In our technological era, in our philosophical underpinnings, means that we are often driven again by convenience and pleasure rather than by biblical calling. Let me go third, question of in vitro fertilization. Anyone remember when in vitro fertilization became a big thing in culture? Anyone old enough to remember when the word test tube baby was thrown around with reckless abandon? Anyone try and give me dates? Yes. This was the big debate. So this means that I was one year old when this debate began. What? Anyone old enough to remember that debate? What was the universal response of the Christian evangelical Christianity to this debate? At the beginning, what was it? Negative. Universal. Without exception. What do you think the evangelical position is now on in vitro fertilization? Almost universally accepted. What happened? What happened? Did we make a good change or did we make a bad change? I would say here that Christians have to think, again, about medical ethics very carefully. In vitro fertilization involves regularly the practice of fertilizing multiple eggs, embryo selection, embryo freezing, and thawing. It could be done other ways, but the standard practice is an expected loss of life along step by step by step as an acceptable casualty rate. I would not want to answer to God for Back to the principle of receiving life. Every one of those is life. How many of you have heard of embryo adoption? Why is there embryo adoption? This will get me perhaps into hot water, but let's think about things biblically. What is embryo adoption? It's when you adopt an embryo, when a mother takes an embryo that has been fertilized. Where is that embryo stored? It's frozen, right? And it is, why is it frozen? Anyone know? Why do they exist? Why are these freezers full of embryos? Anyone know? Well, they're initially spares. Yeah, they're spares. So that means people were willing to fertilize an egg and then put it on ice. First of all, let's forget all the ethics about that process for a moment. Without a plan or a commitment to nourish that life. You realize, last week I preached from 2 Samuel 21, when there was blood guilt on Israel for breaking the covenant with the Gibeonites and God put a famine on the land. There are millions of embryos in America on liquid nitrogen. You realize what we're doing? It's astounding what we'll have to answer for. We could never care for them. When you freeze them, some die. When you thaw them, more die. You realize that? Every time. So, fertilize some, some die before they're frozen. Freeze them, some will never come back to life. Thaw them. Every single time, if our principles of life are right, all these stages, there's death. These things ought not so to be. This used to shock us, now it's commonplace. Now back to embryo adoption, there's many good motives. And in the pro-life world, this is seen as a way to care for some of those lives. And I can understand that motivation very profoundly as a pro-life principle. However, there still are some profoundly unanswered ethical questions, like the decision to thaw embryos, a bunch of them. It means that your decision may kill some. And again, I think the church, what's happened to us in the last 35 or 40 years is technologies have rushed upon us And there's a time where we could go back and think, Lord, are we doing the best we can with these decisions? Now, let me say one more thing. All of life, in the mystery of providence that comes through all of these ways, is life made in the image of God to be cherished and loved. Every life that God has made in every woman history, a Christian receives that life and that person with open arms and love. Okay? So we are asking hard ethical questions, but we are also at the same time profoundly pro-life and thankful for every life spared, saved, brought into this world. And we as Christians of all people, you know that it was, in the Greco-Roman world, infanticide was a common reality. Nancy Peercy writes a book called Love Thy Body. She's somewhat of a feminist author. She's a Christian. It's a lovely book in this regard, that she goes through the Greco-Roman world. in its history of the hatred and discarding of children. There was an entire culture that cared not for little life. You could leave an infant out to die. No consequences. And it was Christians that said, no. No, we are different people. Every life that God makes, we value. We honor with dignity. And this should so infuse our decision making that our desires, even strong desires, should be subsumed under these principles of life and the providence of God in creating. Fourth, more substantially the matter of abortion, this should be obvious by this point, always wrong. And I might encourage you to engage with pro-life causes and ministries and there's actually a few people that sometimes go to the local place where baby's lives are ended and sing psalms on the street corner. And you wouldn't believe the profound hatred and vitriol that is received for singing, just singing on the side of the street. The culture of death that so pervades America. You have to understand it's remarkable that God has not judged us massively for the bloodbath of history. It's remarkable that God has not judged us. He is very patient. Christians of all people should love life and little life. A little excursus here on the forgiveness of sins. I'm talking about hard things that affect real lives. One of the hardest things to do in repentance, and especially what I would say, personal repentance or cultural repentance, either one, is to acknowledge that we've got something wrong. To look back over life and face sometimes mistakes we've made. And sometimes we've made them inadvertently. I think of very well-meaning Christians who have gotten advice of doctors that were wrong. They didn't realize it. And they didn't understand the intricacies of what was happening. In the Old Testament, the Lord has a category for unintentional sins. It's remarkable. Sins done in ignorance. Things that were wrong, but we didn't know. The mercy of the Lord is that he forgives all of our sins through the Lord Jesus Christ, even when we didn't know or understand. If you're here this morning and you're listening to these things, I would urge you not to first say, you know, I just don't agree because that's something I think everyone should be able to do. to search the scriptures and then say, if I was wrong, Lord, please have mercy on me and forgive. I was profoundly moved when Jeff Thomas was preaching about parents receiving their children if they've wandered. And he mentioned abortion in that list of sins. And it was appropriate to remind the church that the Lord Jesus Christ came to forgive all of our sins, even heinous sins. And I'm picking the very end of the line where it's so obvious, but there's something in between where we say, no, I shouldn't have done that. Then like all of life where we sin in so many ways, we go back to the Lord and we ask him for mercy. And he forgives our sins. Difficult matter here, let your conscience be your guide, informed by scripture. I'm not talking about the particulars of each family here. We talked about that last week. Last week, someone came to me sometime after the class with tears and told me just a tragic story of hardship. And I am not making judgments in any way, shape, or form on all the different families of our church. In no way. But I am saying that the Word of God does speak to us. And regardless of your particular place, we're in a cultural moment where life is not valued. See the difference between those two things? And the church should speak to this. But if our motives or methods were unbiblical, then simply remember that Jesus Christ came into the world for sinners, and ask him for forgiveness, and he forgives. But I do think that there's some, particularly in American evangelicalism, which looks much like the world in its sexual ethics, pornography, and all kinds of other places, that we have some repenting to do broadly. Fifth word on the adoption, the option of adopting children. Some Christian couples, wonderfully so, whether or not they've been blessed with naturally born children, life in the womb through marriage, have resources, time, and gifts that they share with others. and they choose to receive children into their home by adoption. And I preached on this some years ago when we had a baptism of a group of adopted children. And Genesis 17 says that the promises of the covenant of grace were for all of Abraham's household, whether legally or naturally born. No difference. The same mercy of God, the same love of God. This is a matter of Christian liberty. It will not change the hard providence of barrenness. I would say this, if this is done in order to find some sort of self-fulfillment, that would be a problem. It's not for you, it's to serve others. You'll have trouble then, but the open-hearted desire to serve a little child with a warm Christian home runs close to the heart of what the gospel is. As a matter of fact, I was reading a theologian this week, I can't remember who it was, maybe it was B.B. Warfield, that adoption is a closer picture to the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ than natural birth. It's a profoundly warm statement. It's a hard thing to do. It's like a raid on the kingdom of darkness. Satan's not interested in the one who Jesus even said to the Pharisees, you are your father, the devil. They had covenant promises. But generational effects of sin perpetuate through history. But it's biblical and right to adopt. And we should have much love and prayer for those who adopt little ones. And as a church, We rejoice in the providence of God in the different ways that he provides homes for little ones. He's very good. I would say back to the ethics of embryo adoption, I would say here that there are none of the ethical issues that I mentioned earlier in this option. None. They don't exist. I would say that it would be a good thing for Christian families to think and pray about the resources and time that God has given you. And to think about this in an age where we value life and we honor life. So that is a, I would say, something highly commended by the scriptures. A few more things, I have only four minutes. Parenting of life in the womb. The care of the life of a pregnant mother. should be a high priority. There's a glory to pregnancy. The beauty, glory of a pregnant woman, a woman doing all that work to bear a child should be prized and honored by the church. And especially by husbands as they care for their wives. Second, parenting of an unborn child. How do you parent an unborn child? What options do you have? Prayer. There's the care, I would say the high duty of loving a mother. Giving her everything she needs, and rest, and nutrition, and care, and encouragement through something in a fallen world that's hard. And this should be honored, especially by husbands, by whole families, and by the church. Physical care of that life and anything you can do. And if you're not the mother, the only thing you can do is support the mother. But that's a big thing. Encouragements, love, and care. Second thing is prayer. Prayer for development, number one. Prayer for safe delivery, first Timothy two. There's a promise mysteriously of those who continue in faith, hope, and love to be saved and childbearing. God is the Lord over not only development, but birth. Prayer, ultimately for spiritual life. The minute you hear of a new baby in the womb, and we as a church hear of a new baby in the womb, I said this last week, the great text of John 3 should be in your mind, you must be born again. Holy Spirit. Be so kind we humbly ask to work in the inner life of this new life for your glory. And pray that every day for your unborn child or grandchild. What is within has been made by God, an image bare with a never-dying soul. Pray for covenant mercies. I can't imagine beginning this without the promises of the covenant of grace, a project so grand with eternal implications. Pray. And then finally a challenge. After you've heard all this, I challenge you to go home and pray and think. I can imagine that some of this is difficult to think about. All of us. This is a very difficult topic. Child-rearing literally can take the life out of us, bring us to our knees, show us as parents our own sins in new and remarkable ways. In a fallen world, there's nothing easy about it. But I do hope that after hearing these two classes in particular, you would think and pray again about new life. The hardness, the heartaches of this state I can sympathize with. I think I said this a few weeks ago, but Laura and I have rejoiced and we've wept. We lost a baby at 13 weeks, and my son Peter, right back there, had a twin. A little boy or girl that we never met. And mysteries of providence. It's not all easy, but is it worthwhile? And if you're going to spend your life, Loralee and I often say, life is short, how might we spend it for God? One of the ways is to care and nurture for new life. Miriam for us. ways that are hard to express has been an unbelievable blessing for our home. And we are thankful to God for her character and beauty and glory and eternal destiny that our whole family is invested in again. And I encourage you to think and pray about these things. And rejoice and turn to the children that God has given you with warm affection and new thanksgiving. Thank the Lord for them all. And then pray, Lord, to you be the glory. Questions? I'm at my time limit. The Sunday school teachers are angry with me. Maybe next week questions that I can stay out of trouble. Let's do that. Text me, email me your hardest questions from this lesson or bring them next week and I will open with a question time. I'd love to have 10 questions, 20, but think and pray about it. Let's pray. Lord our God, we ask now that as we have considered profoundly countercultural and weighty things that you would give us grace to think again about life in the womb. And Lord the gift of all new life and the wonder of how you've made us fashion to each of us individually and wonderfully. And that you knew us already and our days before we were born. That our Lord Jesus through the prophet David could profess that from his mother's womb, you were his God and father. Lord, we pray that you would help us to think like this about life. And so bless us as we seek to follow you in a fallen world of many tears, even in these things. Lord, we pray for these blessings in Jesus' name, amen.