Yes, I am. The electrons are flowing. I am live. Good morning, everybody. Just a couple of housekeeping things before we turn to the Lord in prayer. Number one, you have a bulletin that approximates a book. And I have noticed a good number of you reading. And I'm going to say it again before worship, but there's a number of announcements in here from your elders. So pick it, take up and read. Number two, this is the last week of our Sunday school program for the summer. It is our practice to take off from now till mid-August. So if you come next week, you will be lonely. You may find some friends in the parking lot that missed this announcement. You can fellowship together for an hour. Third thing is that I will be The Lord willing, at the General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, which starts on Wednesday and continues through the following Tuesday, maybe the Tuesday evening, see how it goes. So tomorrow, actually, I'll be traveling out west. I have a few appointments. Actually, a day of work for the assembly before the assembly starts. And I and Matt Holst, who is the pastor of our church in Raleigh, between the two of us, as a team we have to present four things on behalf of our presbytery. You're not familiar with how Presbyterianism works. Matters that happen in local churches, if there's a decision that someone doesn't agree with, it can be complained against or appealed to a Presbytery. Or discipline matters can be appealed to the Presbytery. And then if the resolution in Presbytery is not satisfactory to the appellant, it can be appealed to the General Assembly. And we have four such cases coming from our Presbytery. And I'll give you some examples. of what we have. We had a man who was arrested and tried in civil court for a significant, at least what the court found, a significant infraction of the law. He was actually involved in the January 6th protests, and he was arrested. The church disciplined him, believing that he had been rebellious. He disagreed, but he was in prison. So when the church met to consider his discipline, he couldn't be there. So he was disciplined in what we call absentia. He disagreed with that procedure. So he appealed at the Presbytery. The Presbytery half-agreed, tried to get a representative to talk to him, couldn't do that. The Presbytery, after months of consideration, decided to uphold the local church, and now he's appealing to the General Assembly. And that's, it sounds all very complicated, but it's one of the ways that our system works, so that somebody who perhaps is disciplined, or there's another case out of one of our churches in Tennessee, where a session had asked those who were members and had not baptized their children to baptize their children. And our precedent in the OPC is every session has the right to admit members. And they were saying, we're no longer going to admit members who do not agree with this. And they appealed to the presbytery. And the presbytery said, our practices, every local church, every local session makes up their own mind on that question. And they appealed that to General Assembly. So, and by the way, that one is not a huge fight. It's kind of, it's a lot of brothers that are wrestling with a hard thing with a lot of love for one another in a local church in Tennessee. What I'm getting at is some of these things from local churches can get all the way to the General Assembly. We have four such. So I will be presenting on the behalf of the Presbyterian of the Assembly for two of those and Matt Holz for two of the others. So pray for us, and then there's many more things happening at the assembly that we have to be busy with. We generally meet from I think 8 or 8.30 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day. We worship on the Lord's Day, and there's a tremendous amount of work that happens there. I hope to be back the following Tuesday, next week, Mr. Mooney. Lord willing, we'll be preaching morning and evening. And one more thing about him today, he's in Neal, Kentucky, serving one of our mission works and preaching there morning and evening. And he will be back next week. Well, let's take some time now for prayer and then turn to the Lord and then turn to the word. Lord, our God, we are thankful for a day of rest and worship and instruction from your word. We are thankful that you are a God who looks on your people in mercy, Lord, that as a father pities his children, so you pity those who fear you. Lord, we are thankful for your spirit, spirit of adoption that enables us to cry to you, Abba, Father. And we also understand that you have made the natural family, but in some way, Lord, reflects your fatherly love towards us. And the ultimate end of all things, when the family of God, brothers and sisters in Christ, will be with you, the Lord. forever. We pray that you would give us grace to think then about this very important reality, the family, and the Christian household. And as we return to your word again this morning, we pray for grace to receive its truths and live by them. We ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen. I just wanted to read a few words from Matthew chapter 18. I've entitled this letter, Early Parenting Infants and Toddlers. I don't know how helpful it's going to be in the long term. I'm actually, to give you a sense of what I want to cover, and in a parenting class, maybe this is surprising to you that I would want to cover this. Now we're moving into parenting proper. Maybe everything before you would start correcting a child before you have that conscious ability to have what I would call meaningful decisions about sin and repentance. I think that's actually an important category. I think nature teaches us that a very young baby, there are some people who try to correct very, very young babies. I get nervous about that. Such little ones cannot communicate yet. I think communication is important, but you can ask me questions about that. But I want to talk about this period of what you would call, what you might call the helpless, non-communicative baby. Now babies do communicate. They cry. And I've heard a bit of that in my life. I heard a bit this morning actually. And little ones are able, they have a will and they have affections. But they are also helpless and needy. They are also a profound picture of what we are before God. I like to say this often to parents to help remind you of how profoundly fitting it is for you to think of yourself when you look at a little child. As a matter of fact, from Matthew chapter 18, Jesus was asked this question. At that time, the disciples came to Jesus saying, who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven? Then Jesus called a little child to him and set him in the midst of them and said, assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. That's extremely strong language. Saying that there's something about a self-awareness and a disposition of humility and dependence that is right for the Christian so that you are to think of yourself before God as a little child. A little child. Therefore, whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. I can think of an Old Testament passage which has the same sense in it, and it's actually very instructive. It is David's meditation on his place before God, Psalm 131. He says, Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor my eyes lofty. Neither do I concern myself with great matters, nor with things too profound for me. David's acknowledging that there's a lot of things about the ways of God and God himself that he is incapable of fully comprehending. And he's saying in this psalm that he's fine with that. He's okay with being humble and having limited understanding. He goes on to say, and remember this is the king of Israel, the man who occupies the highest office in the land, the throne. Surely, I have calmed and quieted my soul like a weaned child with his mother. Like a weaned child is my soul within me. O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forever. So I not only want to talk about parenting of infants and toddlers, and we'll get into correction in the next sessions in the fall sometime. I want to think about this stage of life and how Christians can particularly receive a little child and take care of very little life, the care of very little life. However, I got into my introduction and I forgot something. I had questions from last week that I was going to answer. So you're going to have to remember all of what I just said and hang on to that for about 10 minutes. Let me try and answer some questions from last week first, which I totally forgot. I had a helpful comment emailed to me last week. When we were thinking about the divine action of God, let me just deal with these questions and comments quickly. Someone wrote to me, when you use the expression divine action, truly it is, and this was a reflection that I thought was helpful, we primarily and often think of God's divine actions in terms of his Awesome power, doing great things like making billions of galaxies and placing them into existence. I'm summarizing here. Dividing the waters of the Red Sea, stopping the Earth's rotation so the shadow on the sundial went back 10 degrees. We often think of God's actions in terms of his mighty, most obvious acts. However, the words fashion, form, made, and wrought, Psalm 139, are words that apply to God's hidden divine actions in the womb, which are not so public and powerful that we would maybe immediately notice them. Perhaps we could miss them if the word did not tell us to look. And just a little bit more from this note. When we hear these words, our minds can picture our grandmothers, mothers, wives, and daughters, even granddaughters with planning, thought, and care, tenderly knitting or weaving or embroidering a sweater or blanket. These are the words in the text used to describe how our God fashions life in the womb. That's a good meditation. Divine action in his tender actions. Our God is the most amazing God. A question that I got from last week. What would be the biblical justification for life beginning at fertilization? You made a strong case for life beginning well before birth, but why did you make the case for fertilization? Is it more of a logical deduction or is there a specific scripture that points to fertilization as the beginning of life? And this is a good question and it's worth asking. It's worth asking because we should think very carefully and there's good reason to think carefully and ask ourselves why we believe what we believe. And yes, I do believe that Christians should consider life to begin at conception and that there is a good biblical argument for that, but I would say something else. We don't only learn from scripture. We also learn from nature. One of the great terrorizing realities of our age is that we're being told to deny nature. In other words, there's two things. God speaks in us two ways. He speaks to us in general revelation and special revelation. And when someone tells you that you are to say that a man is a woman, for example, You are being asked to deny very clear, vivid, divine revelation. God speaks in everything that has been made. And that's the reason for the whole thing. It's because men suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Men will never be satisfied with simply getting rid of the Bible. They would want to deface all of God's handiwork, and paradoxically, that would mean, even at the end of the day, to kill humanity itself, because we are made in the image of God, male and female. And that's where the satanic root of all of this is coming from. We learn from nature. Creation is the authoritative voice of God, Psalm 19. We need scripture as the lens through which we interpret nature. Calvin has that great opening section in the Institutes where he calls the scriptures the spectacles through which the believer views all of God's works. However, it's important to see that in his illustration there he's saying that by word and spirit we rightly can interpret all of God's revelation. Now, not perfectly. His ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts. His ways are past finding out. His greatness is unsearchable. We have limits to what we can understand, but we can truly know about God, and you have to remember, we can truly know about God and His works by the Word and Spirit, by reading the book of Scripture and the book of nature. So, back to the question, when does life begin? That's a little bit foundational. And so from nature we understand something simple. The chromosomal union that happens at fertilization produces a new distinct being with the encoded characteristics of a unique and distinct life. The earliest formation of this life is long before quickening. It's interesting that nations and days gone by have been profoundly pro-life. I'm gonna read you a section from William Gouge, his book on domestic happiness. And it's interesting, in the 1600s, he's actually speaking about abortion and how Christians ought to be against it. I'll read you the passage in a moment. But all the way to the early church, the idea of infanticide or doing anything to hurt life in the womb. But one of the things that we didn't have long before is we didn't know quite when life began. What I mean by that is quickening was the moment when a mother could feel life. But now we know a lot more. We know that long before quickening, there's profound development of life in the womb. And we trace that back, I think rightly by the light of nature, to the moment of conception. There's so much wonder about this moment. Sperm latches on to an egg. At that moment, it's incapable of receiving any other fertilization. And then there's that wonder of this chromosomal transport to the nucleus in a union and life. And we as Christians would do well to mark what nature says and receive God's revelation there and to understand that that is a new human being. But let's move also on to the biblical data, and I have a lot of texts on this one. I think this is actually important enough to go through some of them with you, because the Bible supports this idea of life beginning at conception, not at birth, and it says it over and over again. Let me just give you some text, Genesis 25, 21. Now Isaac pleaded with the Lord for his wife because she was barren, and the Lord granted his plea, and Rebekah, his wife, conceived. The answer of God to the prayer for life was conception. And this is important. The Bible is so abundantly clear about life being life in the womb and that God being the God of conception, so the very beginning of that life. Miscarriage is described in Exodus 23, 26 as a great sadness, and implied there is a loss of life. There's another clear text that links the marital union directly to the divine blessing and action of God in conception, and that would be 1 Samuel 1 and verse 19. And they arose early in the morning and worshiped before the Lord and returned and came to their house at Ramah. This is after Hannah has prayed for a child. Listen to these words. And Ocana knew Hannah his wife and the Lord remembered her. So it came to pass in the process of time that Hannah conceived and bore a son. And there the language of scripture relates actually the marital union to divine blessing and conception. And so later she bears that son, but the activity of God, the blessing of God is the Lord remembers her. This is how close the connection is. And Hannah knew, Elkanah knew Hannah his wife and the Lord remembered her. His blessing was upon that union and that union brought life. linking the intimate act to the divine action of conception. So not, again, not birth, but that brings God's action to the very, very beginning in the blessing of giving new life. I could give you a few more. In Judges, because Samson was to be a Nazirite, his mother was not to drink wine or strong drink. In other words, the vow under which Samson would live, there were implications for how his mother lived while Samson was in utero. And that's interesting because that's a spiritual vow. The Lord didn't just say that she needed to eat well for good nutrition, which is a good thing to do. The Lord said that there's some connection between the way you live and my purposes for this life within you. And so God is already thinking and revealing that this is life and a special life to be that special church. I think of the language of conception, particularly surrounding the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ and actually John the Baptist. And let me see here, Luke 1 and verse 24. I know I'm spending a bit of time on this. I'll probably have to do one more and then we'll move on. Now, after those days, his wife, Elizabeth, conceived. The language of conception, again, in the scriptures. Christ's virgin birth is instructive. A virgin shall conceive and bear a son. This language, I think, is very important. That which is in her is of the Holy Spirit. That which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. And so here we have now direct divine miraculous action, meaning that that life within and its beginning is, in one sense, we're getting a window into God's purposes and how he works. here in an unusual circumstance outside of the ordinary channels of nature, but the important thing is that the conception brings into being the life of the Lord Jesus Christ in the womb, and that's how God communicates that reality. The Holy Spirit did something in the womb. We have the same thing again going back to Luke. Elizabeth is being addressed. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a son, and he shall call his name Jesus. And again, you'll notice that the text, just like in 1 Samuel, differentiates between conception and birth. So this is a drumbeat through the scriptures, just again and again, that God sees this as two divine actions. And this is actually why, when you hear me pray, when a new baby is brought into the world, I've used for years the language of thanking the Lord for the safe delivery of a child. Not for a child, because we've been thanking the Lord for that child for nine months. Now, you understand what I'm getting at? We've already been thinking about that as life. And now what God has given is this wonderful delivery, especially in a cursed world, from the womb to the happy arms of mom and dad and the whole extended family and the church. But it's not. As a matter of fact, I said this a few weeks ago. Someone said, people saying, congratulations, Peter, you're a grandparent now. And I was like, well, I've been praying about that for nine months. And I'm deeply grateful that God gave to Joseph and Emma the safe delivery of little Josiah. But he, the Lord has been fashioning him for months. in the mystery of God's providence. I became a grandparent a long time ago. And the same is true for anyone who's ever had a child who's miscarried. I mean, the Lord, that's a life. We consider that to be fully a life made and fashioned by God. Psalm 139 verse 16, I'll say one more thing. Oh no, two more things I'll say because there's two important verses. Psalm 139 and verse 16, the Lord, when there was even unformed substance, to use the language of Psalm 139, unformed substance, the very beginning, The psalmist says, you knew me. And how much did the ancients know about life in the womb? I don't know, but the psalmist knows by the inspiration of the spirit that as it were from the very beginning, there was God's knowledge of the same. And this brings us all the way back to the divine action of God in creating humanity. That's what I wanted to go back to. God made, humanity. It's a divine creative act and he continues to give life. He is the God of life, and it began with him, and every life begins with his divine action. I hope that helps answer that question. Okay, third question. Oh boy, we're gonna have to keep moving. For a couple that is healthy with no fertility issues, is it ever okay to use otherwise ethical forms of contraception? I won't describe the whole list. Well, can I? Well, maybe I have to think about my audience. We talked about what it means to value life in the womb, which means that any fertilized egg, any new life, that a Christian ought not to use any means that would do anything to either alter a mother's womb, or harm that life in any way so that it is not received with love and affection. Which means you'd have to think about that before conception happens and that if the Lord gives new life that you would rejoice when you receive it even as you pray for it. So we talked about that last time, you can listen to my last lesson, which means that a Christian couple, married couple, is reading the fine print on everything they take into their body. before, during pregnancy, so they do nothing in any way, chemically or any other way, to alter the conditions of the womb. What I'm getting at, if there's any abortive side effect of anything that Laura Lee could take, for example, any drug, any so-called birth control method, it's not happening because we will do everything within our power to receive that life with thanksgiving from God. from the very beginning. However, we did say that marital intimacy is not only for procreation. We're not Roman Catholics. Itself, it is a good gift from God, an expression of mutual communion and love. So, now we get to the heart of the question, healthy with no fertility issues, complex phrase. I'll explain why I say that in a moment with a few things, again, from the scriptures. Motherhood is a difficult task. We ought to be mindful of the curse. In Genesis 3 and verse 16, the curse is heavy on childbearing. The curse is heavy on childbearing. To the woman he said, the Lord after the fall, I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception. In pain you shall bring forth children, your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you. And so that tells us that in a fallen world, there's a lot of pain. The book of Genesis tells us that there's a lot of pain. Rachel died in childbirth, right? Ichabod's mother died in childbirth. Isaiah talks about the grief, the griefs that come with labor pains. And our Lord even used the picture of labor pains in their extremity and acknowledged in John 16 the reality of life under the curse. There's a few other texts we should think of that Paul said the Lord Jesus when he did that in John 16 21 also reminded the church that on the other side of that is a joy, a wonderful joy that makes the pain fade so quickly, the joy of new and wonder of new life. Paul says that God looks down on his people in mercy and remembers that it's a cursed world. He says that if a couple continues in faith and hope and love that there will be God's salvation help in childbearing. However, the thing I'm trying to communicate here is we do recognize it's a fallen world. About health, it's a difficult question. I'm getting back to the word health here, it's a broad term. Husband and wife ought to be, I think it would be right to be mindful of the full breadth of that term. There's a difficult, careful balance here, I would say, where God commands us to be fruitful and multiply, and he also commands us to nurture life. These are not intention, but wisdom says consider both. I could imagine, as a husband and father, as a Christian, situations where it would be very hard Dangerous for a woman to bear a child? In a fallen world, this is a very complex question. And that could be from profound weariness. It could be from sickness. I can think of a hundred categories that would make it very difficult. Perhaps dangerous or just very hard at that point in time to bear a child. Could a couple say, for that reason, using a biblical, let's say we would say something like, just to get all controversy out of the conversation, natural family planning. Something where there's no doubt that there's nothing harming life. I would say that it could be used. There's a place here for Christian liberty that belongs to a couple before God to make decisions that protect life upon conception, that are willing to welcome all life, but are mindful of the limits of each family, and particularly, I would say, a mother's strength and health. And there's liberty. I didn't give any numbers and answer to that question. But I hope you see there's principles to think and pray over. I want to say a few more things. In our day and age, people make financial arguments. Did I mention that Wall Street Journal article that said you should have like a million dollars liquid cash before you have a child? I was like, we have nine children. And I can tell you, this never happened. I don't think this is not a category. If God gives you the child, he'll give you the food. Don't worry about that. These aren't lifestyle arguments about whether or not I can go on vacations. As you can imagine, with our family, we don't fly places. That's a limitation we'd be happy to take. There's too many children and I couldn't love them all. These are not the things we're talking about. It's a narrow focus on pro-life and what's best for mother and any children and Christian liberty. And we take these three principles and we pray before the Lord and families make their own decisions. A word of caution here, many folks are tempted to extremes. Two extremes that I think we should be very careful. There's no possible way I could ever have another child or we could ever have another child. Or the other side is no consideration of mothers. These extremes, neither of those are compassionate, biblical Christianity. And that's the best answer I can give. So principles for life, including life of a mother, were biblical, but life beginning at conception, and there's a matter of Christian liberty. Pray and seek the Lord. Okay, we're back to a brief review of Infancy. But questions here. Ryan. Just to mention one thing. And all these issues, as you know, are potentially controversial. Yes. But in terms of the principle of preserving life, that's the one side. But in terms of the principle of making a home that's welcoming to children, at least one other thing people should read labels on, at least some research about, is a lot of people go into birth control. It alters hormones and then creates a long-term So light of nature, as a matter of fact, this topic which is a big controversial topic, This used to be a topic that only Christians might talk about. Actually, right now, the whole world's talking about it. There is a flood. There are a flood of studies now have gone on long-term influence of some of these decisions. And it's not just like Christian evangelicals talking about it. It's a whole lot of medical professionals and researchers saying, has this been good for general health? When I said read the fine print, and last week I talked more about these issues, so go back and listen to last week, but what I'm saying is you would do well to pray over these profound questions very carefully. Last week I talked in far more detail about those things. But also ask questions. I'd be happy to answer questions. And again, I said last week, These are some of the most challenging things we can talk about. The second thing is our culture has weighed so heavily on us. And we have made so many decisions downstream of what the culture's influence has been. Sometimes it's hard to even think about reconsidering. But I would urge you all to be calm and careful and prayerful and think, what does the word say? I started this section on child rearing saying that our we're headed to a population collapse in the Western world. And the light of nature would tell us that that's also a bad thing. And so I'm talking, how did we get to where we are now? And how much did the world influence the church? We have to be able to have those conversations. and probably would involve some reevaluation on some of the things we've done. And the Lord is pleased when we do that. We don't need to be afraid of Him, and we certainly don't have to be divisive and angry with one another. We just need to be thoughtfully prayerful and say, when the Lord calls us to reconsider or turn, that's always mercy, and take it from Him as mercy. Any other questions on this complicated topics? talking with close friends and other Christians who don't have a thought through this in this particular way and are on a pill or whatever, simply because they're afraid of having kids at this point in their life and they don't want it to end at work. Yeah. Afraid of... The question was, if you know people are perhaps doing things that you might think are harmful to health or maybe even unethical, how would you talk to them? It's a good question. People tend to be almost more sensitive about this topic than anything else you can possibly talk about. And let me take a step back. As I said last week, and I'll preach this morning, Christians understand that in the forgiveness of sins, there is liberty to look back at your life and ask questions, did I do things the best way? That knowing that we've been received by God in Christ, we have a liberty to think back. And we also should have some liberty to speak to each other and remember that We're all those who sin in many different ways or don't see clearly because of our fallenness. And so I think there's a carefulness here. I wish I had on the tip of my tongue. There's a lot of good resources, Ken. Yeah. why I'm different, and at that point, they've given me the opportunity to speak to them about that in a more direct way. I still try to be very careful in how I speak, and discernment of how they need to ask the question, but there's also a directness that's possible when they ask to explain why I might have different virtues. I find that it leads to not just the first conversation but a dialogue with them over many different issues because there's a craving that a lot of people have for deeper conversation once they feel like they have a rapport with you, once they realize that you have a concern for them, it goes beyond just an argument. Correct. And that's really how the world works in conversations, is it becomes a healthy conversation, not just, you know, winning a debate or speaking about a particular issue. So that's one thing that I would say. And the other thing that I would say about this is I've learned so much over the years, you know, maybe in the context of, like, the pro-life argument. You know, I always thought that, I mean, the Dobbs decision was one of the greatest, like, milestones in my life as a person who went to March for Life many times and participated in different kinds of advocacy for pro-life movement. And it's been one of my greatest disappointments to see how much believers I'm realizing what a gap there is in the broad culture and how they view life versus winning a decision. when you're having these conversations with people, that what they're asking is from a deeper part of their being, and that they're really seeking to have a heart change over something, not just a mindset change, and that that is really where the work works. And he does look through conversations. He was typing here. Yeah, very good. I think James also, he had the narrower thing about a close friend. We have a lot of friends. It's one thing to have a person at work. When I have to deal with hard topics, I often ask people questions. I say, have you thought about this? And maybe hand them a resource to read with a lot of prayer. But it's worth doing. It's worth doing. But a gentle question and then a resource. Good questions. Okay. The idea of the rest of the lesson, wait till the fall, I guess. We'll skim through a few things. I'm going to move on. You can ask me questions afterwards. You can still text, email, et cetera. About the care of infant life. It's interesting. I'm going to jump ahead. First year of life, six principles to live by. Maybe I can make it through these if I go rapid fire and you can ask me later. I find it interesting that the Apostle Paul in Titus chapter two and verse four says that the older women should admonish the younger women, listen to this language, to love their children. Whoa, you would think that this is the most natural thing in the world and you wouldn't have to learn it. But Paul understands that on the island of Crete, in a culture of death, which is what the Roman Empire was. that there was not an open-hearted love of children that flowed from mothers and fathers, but that this actually had to be recovered and taught, which is why the commands Paul gives for marriage and child-rearing are repeated so often, same as the Apostle Peter, and written to both Timothy and Titus. In other words, this was an area where Paul understood that the world does not love children and that a new convert would have to learn how to love children. It's interesting that there'd be something that would have to be learned and that there could be old sins from before conversion like we struggle with other sins. One of them could be that I don't rightly love children and so Paul understood that there should be a culture of the older women teaching the younger women, which also tells us something about motherhood. It is learned and passed down. There are some things about motherhood that are learned and passed down generationally, like every other skill in the world. If you think about the Bach family and their love of music, we know the name Johann Sebastian Bach, but the Bach family was huge and had piles of brilliant musicians, and they poured this generation upon generation as a family skill. And parenting is a similar one where you learn a lot from previous generations, But if the previous generations don't have it, Paul understood that word and spirit could create what was not there. And one of the ways was teaching young women to love their children. I'd say you would think this is natural, but many young women, or many women, I've known women to be harsh and impatient with very young children, like getting angry at them when they cry. It's not a good thing. How could you possibly get angry with a crying baby? But if you've had a baby crying long enough, and you've never heard it before, at a certain point, your nerves may get on edge. And I don't know if anybody here has felt this reality. I don't think, I was gonna say, Loralee and I are wired differently. There's been times when I'm like, just, can I bring this child to mom? Because I am completely unable to fix this problem. Laura Lee has a very happy disposition to take any crying baby into her arms. She's just drawn to the cry. But if you've never experienced it and how incessant it can be, it can be also hard to deal with. It can wear you down. The world, there's something, everyone heard of shaken baby syndrome? You know what that is? When people get mad at an infant and shake it because they're irritated that it's crying. We need to learn not to be like this. Christians can be tempted to do these things, to resent this great change of life, the endless drain of resources, the lack of sleep, the time lost, energy. I love this. No, I don't love this phrase. I don't like it at all. I just need some me time. That is not, I don't believe that's Christian vocabulary. Now, is it wrong to get rest? Is it beautiful to get rest? Orly and I sometimes go away, the two of us. Yeah, that's right. I'm not saying that rest and refreshment is not good, but the idea of it being couched in the language of me time, that's the issue I have with that. Not rest, getting away for a while. It's good for a mother and a father. But the idea of this is inconveniencing me. Or a dad who's like, I can't take it anymore. I need to leave the house. Dad, repent. God has never left you when you are crying. Never. You should repent and learn to be drawn to that cry. And so that you and your wife arrive at the same time. She's going to be better at it, I guarantee that. But that God changes your heart so that the needs of the helpless drive you to respond to the cries. Rhonda. Relating that to the responsibility I think when I had my fifth baby and I felt like sometimes I might be drowning, it was such an encouragement to hear these older women, not even much older in age, but maybe just further down the road of parenting than I was, to remind me that this is my life's work and it's going to be hard. It's not all, you know, roses and unicorns and glitter. and that that season will transition eventually. Otherwise, I would have been left out with two babies. And what you hear from the world is, I mean, I remember grocery shopping with two cars, kids in one, and food. And I was looked at like I had a third eye. And all the comments, just wait until, oh, just wait until they're all teenagers. Just wait until they're all getting in college and you have to pay for them. All this negativity coming towards me, it would have been really easy for that to take root. Very good and I know, I can imagine, Rhonda, that that encouragement gave you joy in the present work and you look back on all that sacrifice very differently now. Matter of fact, you look back on it and you realize it's gone like this and it was a tremendous privilege. But let me get to number one here. Some principles to live by. I'm in trouble, but we'll get one or two. First, it will be hard. It's profoundly other-centered work. Raising of an infant requires you, calls you, to be profoundly other-centered, to be wearied, and to embrace difficulty every day. One of the things I think that, you know, you got all these wedding magazines and child-rearing websites and Instagram and Facebook, you just shut it all off. None of them, well, every now and then you get this blogger who's like, okay, here's another terrible dirty diaper and here's this and here's that. The raw reality of raising infants is, number one, it's a kind of hard work that perhaps is unmatched to anything you've done before. Like a marathon, what is it, 26 miles? How long does it take? How long does a marathon take? I don't even know. Hour and a half, two hours, two and a half hours? What is it? Okay, let's say average, a very average runner. Four hours, okay, four hours. Four hours is not very much of your life. You have a child, any parents? How long is that marathon? Like, yeah, it's 18 years plus the rest of their life. And you parents who've done it know that you've been running this race for a long time, and there's always curveballs, heartaches, burdens. You're laying awake at night, 40 years later, praying. It's one of the biggest projects you could ever undertake. And it will ask you to lay your life down. And you will be drawing from the fountain of love of other in Jesus Christ every day. And you need to know that at the outset, we think realistically, not sentimentally. America is very soft. I would say men and women. I don't know if we would have ever settled the frontier with our present cultural moment. We were in, where were we? Botanical Gardens, South Carolina Botanical Gardens. My mother is here, by the way, in the back. She's hearing me talk about all these things. She'll be able to tell me what I should have said. She's been doing it for a long time. Great grandmother now. We're in Botanical Gardens. We went to this hunt cabin. It's a one-room cabin with a loft. They had 12 kids. Whoa. 70 years ago, that wouldn't even be surprising to have a two- or three-room house and have 10 kids. would not have even been unusual. Now we're like, I need 7,000 square feet to have two. Matter of fact, years ago, Orly and I were, when we were shopping for a house, we could not find a dining room big enough to seat our children in houses that were 3,500 or 4,000 square feet. Like, the architecture was matching the culture. And I was like, I just need a whole lot of bedrooms. That's what I need. I need lots of bedrooms. And a long, skinny room big enough for a long, skinny table. That's the dining room. Didn't have it. Not thinking. We're thinking so much about our own pleasure. Again, imagine the hardest thing you've ever done and do it for 18, 20 years without any breaks. The temptation to self-centeredness is profound. Actually, I said to Emma this week, Joseph and Emma are over, and I was looking at Emma with Josiah, and Joseph and Emma are looking a little bleary-eyed. I saw Joseph somewhere here. There he is, looking a little bleary-eyed. I asked Joseph, do you think now you can live with less sleep? And he said, I've learned I can live with a lot less sleep than I thought was humanly possible. And then I said to Emma, you realize how much work And I wasn't trying to look for accolades, but now you understand a little bit, maybe, of something that none of your siblings yet understand, or any of them here, sorry. But you only learn by experience. It's a lot of hard work. How much time, effort, pain, labor, sleeplessness, and uncertainty. Again, I want to apply this to teenagers. Teenagers and young children who are looking at your parents and you're like, I can't believe all their flaws. Well, they're flawed. And I need this, this, and this. I want to remind you that your mother, for you, bore you, carried you. If she could, she nursed you. She spent years of her life pouring all of her energy so that you would have life. And you would do well, before you decide to talk back, to try to at least remember what your mother's done for you. It's a tremendous labor of selflessness. Okay, well, we got to one out of six, and the Sunday school classes will be coming. I guess we'll wait for the fall, and you'll look for a new schedule. But at least I think the conversations we've had this morning are still helpful, even if we didn't get as far as we needed to. Boy, I am, I'll just say this, I was thinking about doing this through the summer, but I'm at General Assembly and then, as I said a few times in the last weeks, the elders have granted me a three-week extra rest this summer. I will be gone for that three-week sabbatical and one week of vacation, so a month. So I will not be around. I'll be away for a week and then back for two weeks and away for four. Then we'll be back in the saddle regularly, but I'll have to get back to you on when we pick this class up. Otherwise, I'd be happy to do it all summer, but it's just not going to work. So I'm going to leave you in suspense for the next five headings and next five classes. Any questions at this point? Let me Maybe I will say one more thing. I don't want to just leave it on the note of it's going to be impossibly hard. It'll also be the most rewarding thing you could ever do with life. It's both. And it will teach you. There's one thing I want to circle back to. Every day you see these children, I want you to remember The distance between, there's a great passage in the Confession on the Covenant of Grace, the distance between God and the Creator is so great that unless by some voluntary condescension on the part of God, by way of covenant, we would have no knowledge of Him or His blessedness towards us. And you parents, especially with an infant, you know what we tend to think? We tend to think this. Here's an infant, so helpless and small. Here's me, and here's God. We look down and we tend to think, I'm so much more than this life. What's really true is here's an infant, newborn, and here is me, and in relation to God, there is no measurable difference between those two states in terms of our helplessness, neediness, or even our ability to comprehend God's glory. And so when we look at our children, especially the littlest ones, you need to think every time, and this should temper your anger and your impatience. God forbid that we have it, but sometimes we do. And remember, my Father in heaven loves me and is patient with me. Unless you become like a little child, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. Let's pray. Lord our God, we think on these things and we pray that you would soften our hearts. That as we look, especially at the youngest and most helpless among us, that our disposition would be to give all for them as you have given all for us. Lord Jesus, you have loved us and you gave your life for us. And that in the mystery of the family, that there's some communication of the love of God even in a nursing mother and a tender father. Long before words have even been exchanged. And we pray for grace that we would represent your mercies well. We pray for forgiveness when we've been impatient, short, unkind, and self-centered. We pray for grace to give up our lives for others. Lord, we pray also for the eye to see the joy of all the blessings that come with new life, and that our focus would be in the labor and tears or to lift our eyes to you with thanksgiving for the wonder and privilege of children, our children, who are a heritage from you. And we pray for forgiveness and mercy and grace and help. In Jesus' name, amen.