Well, welcome everyone. We're continuing our class on the Christian family, the Christian household. And we're going to pray and dive right into the teaching. Let's pray together. Father in heaven, we're grateful to you. You are God and our God. And you look down on us in mercy. You give us another day. We thank you for the refreshing rain and we think of the beauty of spring and we think even of the mercy this week of some cooler temperatures where we could enjoy and rest and be reminded of your exquisite care of all things. Lord, you are our creator. We particularly remember this morning as we turn to your word that you made the Christian home and family, and that you have made us to live in communion with one another, and especially so in marriage and with children. And Lord, that this is a prototype of something bigger and better, the family of God and life in your church. We pray for your blessing on Your word as we study it now that we might take it to heart and live by it and we pray in Jesus name. Amen So you have some handouts there in front of you and Today We will be talking about, a little bit more about the Christian household. And I'll give a quick review on where we've been and then today where we're going is the matter of children, be fruitful and multiply. And particularly we're going to look at life, just life in the womb. And I was thinking to myself this morning that perhaps I should have, we should have timed this better. We have a lot of our families on vacation right now. We're getting into vacation season and summer season, but hopefully this will be recorded and people can still make use of it. I think today's lesson, which will be perhaps challenging to some of you, It's going to be very much countercultural, and it is going to be something where we ask ourselves perhaps this basic question, how much has our present culture affected the way we think about life in the womb and children? A little bit of review, some basic principles. We've been looking at the building blocks of a Christian household. biblical concept of the Christian household from Genesis all the way through the epistles. And we've seen one consistent theme throughout the scriptures that God has always had dealings with the household. And he made the household, and in a fallen world, Even after the fall, he continues to deal with the Christian household. And I think I used a phrase that goes like this, and his grace runs in the channels of nature. Now, it also runs against fallen nature. In other words, he restores fallen nature. But we have to remember this, that God did not make a world and then worked to redeem in that world against the patterns that he made. but very much his saving work and principles run in line with the patterns that he made in nature. There's a famous line from Herman Bovink, the Dutch theologian, that grace restores nature. Now this does not mean, particularly in the Christian household, that it's inevitable that across the generations there will be that every one of a believing family's children would be ultimately saved because there is another thing the scriptures teach. And perhaps you know that we had the joy of hearing the news this week of the safe delivery of our first grandchild. And it was sort of an ironic night because, as you know, we have a number of children. And I was up with one of them, a one-year-old, that night, waiting, knowing that Emma was in labor. Loralee was up with Naomi because she had had 104.2 degree fever, which might be the record for a fever in all the years we've been raising children on Monday night. And Miriam was upset because she had had that fever. That's why Loralee wasn't here last weekend. Loralee was taking care of her. And so we were busy taking care of children. And in all that busyness of responsibility and care, we went to sleep knowing that the Lord in his providence had It was the time for Emma to be delivered, and somewhere around five o'clock in the morning, little Josiah Daniel was born safely. And I woke up to that news, because I had gone to sleep, and the first thought that came to my mind was little Josiah was born. The next verse that came to my mind, and it was interesting, was you must be born again. This idea that simply nature in a fallen world is not enough. We need to pray for supernatural work of God in the next generation. And these words of our Savior in the conversation with Nicodemus were the first things I was thinking of Tuesday morning, where Nicodemus was confused. How can a man enter his mother's womb and be born a second time? And Jesus says, no. What he was talking about is the work of the Holy Spirit of God to make true new life in the hearts of our children. And we're going to talk about all of those things, particularly as it pertains to life in the womb this morning, these grand themes. This is the second part of the review. I've talked there a little bit about the doctrine of the covenant and a right view of covenant theology, particularly as it pertains to the family. Great and precious promises. God does not work against nature. He hasn't changed the way he works from the original creation from his old covenant. And in the new covenant, he works very much so in family lines. Not only, but very much so. And when there's a new conversion that affects a family line, 1 Corinthians 7, one believing parent, your children are holy. And a key text we looked at is Genesis 18, 19, I've chosen him in order that he might instruct his children and household after him in the way of the covenant. Abraham was chosen by God, given a task, and God which was gospel preaching to another generation. That task the Lord had designed to be the means by which, just like preaching is in a broader sense for salvation for the world, for salvation for the household. Last week we looked at Christian marriage. And we're looking, this is a class that's focused on child rearing in one sense. And we looked at the matter of marriage, and I can't stress this enough, that that covenant is the, to use a common phrase, but I think in a better way, the safe place that children long to be reared in and under. That place where they can say, okay, mom and dad have made promises and I see they're going to keep them. You're not pretending you're perfect. But you are saying, by God's grace, this is such a high priority for each other, for God's glory, and for you children. We're going to do everything we can to keep those promises. And that's what the little lives under our care long for. And I know it's not a perfect world. It doesn't always work that way. And the Lord still, in his mercy, overcomes even our significant sins and failings and shows mercy and covenant mercy in generations when that doesn't stay together. But there is something about nature and the covenant of marriage, and the blessing of the Spirit in that union that God uses powerfully. Especially since marriage is what? A picture of? The Gospel. Christ and His church. It's the living picture of the Gospel that children grow up under. It's not only the thing they long for, but it teaches. And so marriage is important for child rearing. And we saw that you should keep your marriages. especially, and if you are struggling there, that you should get on your knees and ask the Lord for help, that it might be a sweet thing to bring God glory and happiness to husband and wife, and then the joy of children looking at that marriage and seeing something of the security of a covenant and what it means in history. Again, in a broken world, The Spirit is able to overcome all such obstacles and we keep praying despite the sadnesses that we often experience. But the way it was made was that this would hold together and be the umbrella or the soil in which children would grow up. So now we're really going to start to get into child rearing directly. And if you look at your handout, we're going to talk about the questions related to having children necessary to think about, or maybe not necessary to think about, because there's been many couples who have a child before they've really thought about the fact that they were planning to have children. I remember Loralee and I, when we got married, we said two things. We said thing number one was we were both still in college, Orly was finishing her undergraduate degree. I was finishing my undergraduate degree in engineering. And we were unusual. We were on a secular Canadian college campus. It would be similar in cultural milieu to being maybe at Harvard. It wasn't a Harvard-like school, but a progressive liberal campus, maybe a California school, in which there was a young Christian couple that were not yet finished their undergraduate degree and married. That was already crazy. The second thing that was even crazier is that, for our fellow students, is that we didn't think this would happen so soon, but almost immediately after we got married, Loralee was pregnant. And now we have a young couple that's expecting a child during her undergraduate degree. As a matter of fact, our second child, Charity, Laurel was eight months pregnant, I think, with Charity when she graduated, though it was not as evident under graduation gown, but maybe when she walked across the stage, but she was bearing her second child, our second child, when she graduated with her undergraduate degree. And we were, in God's providence, we thought this might be a little later in our marriage, and it wasn't. But one thing we had purposed before we got married is we said, if God gives us children, when he gives us children, We will rejoice. We will give thanks. This is a gift of life. It's the most extraordinary gift. You have no idea when you get married what the Lord's going to do. In a fallen world, sometimes there's a praying over barrenness, and sometimes there's many children. I can say the same thing. Our little Miriam came six years after Naomi, and we already, as you know, had eight children. And we were somewhat surprised. Nobody thinks you can be surprised by a ninth child, but I'm here to tell you, you might be able to be surprised by a ninth child. And so the Lord had called us to do this again, and we had the same conviction. We just blessed the Lord. This is life from Him. And we need to think before, maybe before we even have children, what it is to have children and what this means. Western civilization, I want to say something about this. We are in a desperately anti-child era. Everything around us is screaming at us that children, and having children, is probably going to ruin your life. And I'm going to argue this morning in this class that we have been more affected by this than we realize as the church. And I'm probably going to say some challenging things this morning, but I think what has happened, probably since maybe the 40s or 50s, we have moved more and more into an anti-child kind of thinking. And I don't mean that necessarily for Christians as hatred of children or not wanting or not being thankful, but the cultural milieu has pressed pretty hard on us and really not helpfully, and I don't think biblically. We're in crisis, as a matter of fact. We've been told for probably 30 years I think there was a famous book in the 1970s, what was the guy's name? Paul something, it's going to come to me. Ehrlich, what was it called? Yeah, Ehrlich, that's right. Basically, we're all going to die because we're going to have a global overpopulation, and there's going to be so many kids, we're going to eat all the food, and we're all going to be dead, right about now. And as those predictions go, we are also going to fry. Actually, in the 70s, we were going to freeze by now, and then the 90s, we're going to fry by now. Behind all these things there is no doctrine of providence. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't be stewards. We should be stewardly. That's good. We should think as stewards of God's creation. But these wild fear-mongering predictions have not come to pass. Matter of fact, in Western civilization, we have the exact opposite problem right now. In developed countries, I could put it more broadly, we have a crisis. We're actually not having enough children to keep up the population. Matter of fact, I have some neighbors who probably do not share my worldview. That's a broad generalization. But we're friends. And when they heard that Orly was pregnant with Miriam, they were like, oh, you guys are a little crazy. And then they said things that people often say to us, like, do you know how that happens? And I always want to say, and I might get in trouble for this, I always want to say to people who have very few children, and why that isn't God's providence, Sometimes I think if you have two and we have nine, and you're telling me, I don't know how this works, that might be an odd thing to say. Anyway. But anyway. There we go, I'll just leave that one. Cause and effect seems to be obvious to me, but anyway. The whole world is saying, okay, you basically have too many, right? And then I pointed to this article that I had just read, I think it was in the Wall Street Journal, saying we're in the opposite problem right now. I said, I'm helping you. I'm helping you, your pension, your children's pensions, And they laughed because they actually were saying, you know, there's something, even with a very different worldview, they were saying, maybe we've gone too far in the other way. They were actually sympathetic. And we had a good conversation together. Fertility rate in the US hit a record low, I think in 2020. And then people think that COVID has accelerated the decline. 1.64 children per woman in the US right now, which is the impending implosion of a population, interestingly. This is just nature. Paul says, does not nature even teach us? We can learn from nature. This is the lowest rate since the government began tracking these statistics since the 30s. Anyone know what replacement level fertility is, that number? Yeah, 2.1. I think 2.1. Why is it more than two? Because there's infant mortality. There's children who die before before they're able to bear children. So for a population to continue, it has to be a little over two. We are, today's babies are tomorrow's workers and taxpayers. I'm reading this from a news article from just a few years ago. They not only staff the hospitals and nursing homes we'll use in old age, but also sustain the economy by funding our pensions when we retire, paying the taxes that finance social security, Medicare, many other government programs we rely on, buying the homes and stocks we invested in to build our savings. This is a worldly way of thinking, but there's a spiritual analogy. I want to jump to another country, South Korea. Guess what their fertility rate is right now? 0.64. And the city of Seoul is 0.55. And by 2072, it's estimated that it will lose 30% of its population. It's remarkable, 30%. We like to think that the greatest threat to the family is the trans lobby, what's happening in terms of the ungodly perversions of our age, and that's a great threat to the family. But I would suggest to you that there's a way of thinking that has, entered into our entire developed world and Western civilization that is profoundly, was profoundly maybe anti-child before that. And the greatest threat perhaps has been ourselves. What is a key biblical verse that tells us otherwise in the scriptures? I want to turn back to Genesis. In Genesis chapter one. And there are some profound verses that come from our Lord and God. that teach us a different way of thinking. Then God said, let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God. He created him, male and female, he created them. And then here's the key verse. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves on the earth. I want to look at a number of things from this verse and to start thinking biblically about life. First of all, God made us after His image and His original design was that there would be a great humanity that would reflect His glory. I think in Psalm 110, the great psalm about the Mediator King, the Lord Jesus Christ, when He is seated at the right hand of the Father, And He is given the scepter of joint rule of the Father and the Son. We read next, your people shall be volunteers in the day of your power like the dew of the morning. This great army of youth actually. And the picture there, Calvin says, is that as the morning sun rises and reflects in all the millions of points of dew on the grass, so the glory of God is reflected in there, the new humanity that comes by redemption through Jesus Christ. That there is something about this poetic picture of these millions of points of reflected glory. that was God's original intent before the fall when he said, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, that these image bearers would be such that would fill the earth and reflect God's glory and praise back to him. Hermann Bavink, in his writing on the image of God, has a profound section where he says that the image of God is the whole person, which is very interesting, body and soul. You are made to be the image of God. not just part of you, not just spiritual qualities or characteristics, but the whole person mysteriously, which is why our Lord, when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, He was taking to Himself a nature that was the image of God. and so consonant with this grand truth which we call the incarnation. And you were made to be image bearers and God's design was not that there would just be one image bearer, but back to Hermann Bavink, but that the whole of humanity and redemption, the whole of redeemed humanity with the renewed image of God by the power of the Holy Spirit, it was not lost in the fall but broken, solid and polluted, but not lost, that it's renewal by the power of the Holy Spirit, and us being conformed to the new man, Jesus Christ, that there would be a renewal of that reflection of God's glory back to Him. And again, going back to Baalbek, and that the fact that we all differ, none of us are the same. If you look around here, every one of us look different, have different gifts and talents, and we're male and female, all image bearers, and that there is something about the reflection of God's glory, also in this natural diversity, which says something about the breadth of that glory of God as it's reflected back to Him. This original command, be fruitful and multiply, was that this would be what would happen across the earth for God's glory. Second thing I want to point out from this text is that we read that God blessed them and said, be fruitful and multiply. This is not just a bare command. It's not even a command that has, for example, the flavor of the Ten Commandments, which says things like, you shall not commit adultery. Why is that? Because we're sinners. And we have to be, the law is our tutor and it teaches us what is sin. Now we understand there's duties commanded and sins forbidden, but this is a command that is in a world without sin. And so it actually teaches us something about God's commands. There are always blessings, even in a world of sin, but here it's a command in a holy realm. And it's introduced by the language of blessing or blessedness. And God blessed them and said, be fruitful and multiply. Third thing is what does it mean to be fruitful? Well, we already know from the text that God had made the trees the garden to be fruitful, and that there would be this principle in them of multiplication, that they would be those things which in the creation would grow according to their nature, making fruit. Here, I'm losing myself here. Verse 11. Then the Lord said, let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself on the earth. And it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. There's this principle of fruitfulness built into all creation. and that there would be a fruit that has a seed that produces more of the same. And then when God made the fish of the sea and the birds of the earth, he said, he blessed them saying, be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas and let the birds multiply on the earth. So now we have the principle of fruitfulness, which is evident. And the only context for this command for Adam and Eve was the fruit trees and the creatures that had already been made for them to understand what these words would even mean. And you are to be like this, filling the earth. And this is my blessing on you. This is my divine favor towards you. This is what I made you for. This is goodness. And God saw everything at the end of this week and saw that it was very good. This is how we are to think about new life. The third thing is that God not only blessed them, He not only said, be fruitful, but He said, multiply. If you remember learning math in school, we have addition and subtraction, then we have the next level, which is multiplication, and that's more than adding. The idea here is, it's very simple, the idea here is that there's a fruitfulness that has the idea of abundance in it. Now again, in a fallen world, we're gonna get into this. There's a lot of things that we take into account and we think about. The Lord opens the womb and closes the womb. We'll see that from the scriptures. But in the original world, let's think about the original world before we get into these somewhat difficult questions in a fallen world. What's the weight of the blessedness? Like the trees of the garden, like the birds of the heavens and the fish of the seas, so you are to be fruitful and multiply, and if you wonder, the idea of abundance, and fill the earth. Now the globe is a big place, and there were only two people. And this, if you're the only people that exist in the entirety of the universe, This is clearly, with all of its language piling up, blessedness, abundance, image bearers, fruitfulness, multiplication, fill the earth. There's a weight and intensity. There's a river that flows through this command which is towards new life. God blessed them and said, be fruitful and multiply. Now, we next note in the Scriptures that there was a fall. And clearly that which was good has become painful and dangerous and often infused with much sorrow. And it's not what it was. To the woman the Lord said, Genesis 3.16, 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 then to the man. Cursed is the ground for your sake, and toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life, both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground. For dust you are, and to dust you shall return." So now we have death. And now we have a curse that particularly pertains to the fruitfulness of the earth, thorns and thistles, and to the fruitfulness of humanity and sorrow you shall bring forth children. And that changes a lot of things and Christians ought to be mindful of that. We're now in a fallen world. I think about things that we don't often think about anymore. Peter Jr. and I were up on Glassy Mountain a few weeks ago, and we came across an old cemetery. And that cemetery is overgrown with weeds. It's on a ridge. It's in the middle of nowhere in the woods. I don't even know who was living there, but it was from about late 1800s, early 1900s. And years ago, I walked through that, and I looked at the gravestones. And it was just humbling to read how many young children had died and how many mothers had died with them. We are in an era now where there's this remarkable help. It used to be just not at all uncommon for a mother to lose her life in the delivery of a child. and for many children to die very soon in their young life. Now still in a fallen world, we experience that and seen it in our own congregation and miscarriages and the loss of a little life. Paul and Hannah's little girl in the fall, Zoe, and we weep. It's not what it was. And we ought to think of that, secondly, when we think about be fruitful and multiply. There is a devastating sadness that is often connected now to family life because of the fall. But I want to study this mandate to be fruitful a little bit more and also talk about biblical obedience to that command now in a fallen world. So we have these two things, this command, and then this realization that in a fallen world, not everything is the same. So how do we put these two together? But we already saw that the command itself was to multiply and fill the earth. I think I got a little bit ahead of myself here, but let's jump to 3B, the means by which this command is achieved, human sexuality. Marriage is designed to bring forth children. It's pretty simple. Husband and his wife, Adam and Eve. Man and his wife, they were both naked, Not ashamed, Genesis 2.25. And God had designed them to come together, and in that coming together, life. I don't know if you've ever thought about these things that are so natural that they often escape our attention, but this is an extraordinary power. This is the power to bring into being a soul that will never die. Think about that. It's an astonishing power. The power to bring into being a soul that will never die. Intimately related to marital love and this act of marital communion, which is also good and part of a good world, blessed by God. But God has made two things to be connected, marital intimacy, marriage itself, and children and child rearing. Little aside, I think someone told me a quote from Joel Beakey this week. I think it was Johnny Serafini, pastor of our church up in North Carolina, Marion, North Carolina. If you're not ready to have children, then maybe you're not ready to be married. as a principle, because these two things go together. They're designed to go together. Now, we'll talk about that quote a little bit later, but just put this very first thing. Marriage and children were always designed to go together. Now, in a fallen world, there are conditions, barrenness, God closes wombs. Peninnah noticed that God had closed Hannah's womb. That's the language of 1 Samuel 2. Mystery. Closed the womb. He also opens the womb, mysteriously. You think of Sarah and Manoah's wife, Samson's mother. You think of Hannah later, opened her womb. You think of Elizabeth, Zechariah and Elizabeth. I mean, there's amazing testimonies to God's ability to both close and open the womb. And we need to remember that. We're in a scientific age and we think we've got it all figured out. And we have to remember that providence and blessing and the mystery of providence is not surprisingly directly linked to new life, because he's the creator of life. We have to think about the fact that God has linked marital intimacy to child rearing. This gets to a question that's on your handout. How many children, therefore, if this is a link together and would be fruitful and multiply, how many children should a Christian family have? Now, if you would think I'm going to come up with a number, then you're going to be disappointed, because I'm not. I've come up with some biblical principles to try and answer the question. I said earlier that I think we're in a culture and a time, even in evangelicalism, where the church has wandered from biblical principles here. And I think, as I said earlier, 40s and 50s, I think this is a multi-generational wandering. Probably two generations ago, maybe longer. The social scientists and historians of an unbelieving bent will tell you that the introduction of the pill in the 1960s dramatically changed culture and civilization. people who share none of my convictions, just watching cultural trends. What technologies affect human society? And this is, again, just a broad sense. The connection between intimacy and life was, in a more profound way than in all of previous human history, severed. could be severed anyways. So I want you to think about that. We'll get into the fact, well, let me ask another question. Surely you're asking a question, does every sexual union have to be for the purpose of having children? The answer is no, we're not Roman Catholics. Roman Catholics believe that, in essence, their view of sexuality is that it's only for having children. The Bible says something else. Sexuality is for companionship. It is in and of itself a thing that can be enjoyed by a husband and wife. And we are not those who would say, for example, strict Roman Catholic teaching would be that it should only be for having children, and that it cannot in and of itself be enjoyed as an act of communion between husband and wife. And that is wrong. The marital intimacy and communion are in and of themselves good blessings to be enjoyed in the confines of marriage. Hebrews 13, the marriage bed is holy and undefiled. 1 Corinthians 7, not to deprive husband and wife or not to deprive one another because the gift itself is good even when it does not bring forth children. Genesis 2, 25, and they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. that this is part of joy of marriage, and it is not necessarily so that every time it would be for the purpose of having children. Again, we're not Roman Catholics. But this brings us to the sensitive topic, but important topic of birth control and family planning. What does the Bible say about this? Admittedly, you might think I have a biased position, but we'll get into it. I want you to just track with me when it comes to principles of life. We had no idea that we would have nine children when we got married. We had no idea at all. It wasn't in our plan. We're thankful it wasn't the Lord's plan, despite the hard work it brought to us. But every family is different. I want to say this at the outset. Every husband is different. Every wife and mother is different. There are reasons for couples to prayerfully consider those differences before the Lord. and consider health of mother or health of a child, for example, before having children. There's things where there's some liberty here. We can take principles. So I'm not going to... I don't actually... Have you ever heard of the quiverful movement? Just have as many kids as you possibly can have, regardless of anything else? I'm not a fan of this. I don't think it's a Christian way to think about having children, and I don't think it's a Christian way for husbands and wives to think about each other. and especially when we think about the different capacities and places that God has given us for childbearing. But the principle of life, combined with God's covenant purposes, we should side with life. And I will say the following. I can guarantee that this will mean the following. More work, more sacrifice, more labor, more sleepless nights, more self-denial, more sorrow, and more pain. It's not the easiest life. It's a hard life. But it also means a life of blessing and joy. And God blessed them and said, be fruitful and multiply. I have never heard anyone regret having too many children. And just once, we were talking to some people early and I who said, you know, are you crazy? And we said, well, you know, I said this, I said probably something. I shouldn't have said like the earlier thing, but anyway. I think of things that you probably shouldn't say, but sometimes I say them, which was, okay, you know, we've come to agree with you, which one do you not want to see anymore? Which one of our children? Well, we like them all. We weren't saying that. Say, well, so do we. And in God's providence, every family is different, but the gift of life is always a gift, always. and fills our hearts with joy and goodness. As a pastor, I've never heard anyone regret having their children. I have heard a good number of people say, I wish 20 years ago we would have thought differently. And I've heard other people say that in God's providence, he gave us perhaps two, one or two children. He opened the womb and that was his plan and we're so satisfied and grateful. For that, again, every family's different. There's tremendous liberty, but how we think, we should think biblically. Let me, I'm looking at my time, and we might have to have two lessons on this. The weight of the scriptures I want to put before you, we're not talking about narrow application right now. We're talking about paradigm, how we think. Behold, children, Psalm 127, are a heritage from the Lord. The fruit of the womb is a reward. You need to believe that. You need to believe that it's a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them. They shall not be ashamed, but shall speak with their enemies in the gate. Or, Psalm 128, blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways. When you eat the labor of your hands, you shall be happy, and it shall be well with you. Your wife should be like a fruitful vine in the very heart of your house, your children like olive plants all around your table. Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord. The Lord bless you out of Zion, and may you see the good of Jerusalem all the days of your life. Yes, may you see your children's children. Peace be upon Israel." These are blessings from the Lord, and we need to think about these things with the Scriptures in mind. I want to talk a little bit about reasons why people decide that they've had enough children. I had the question. The question I had, which I don't think I'm going to be able to look up, but I wanted to read it. And I cannot find it, but I think I remember it. One of the questions I had was along the lines of this. What if parents were concerned that to have too many children meant that they would not be able to rightly pour their hearts and lives and their energies into their children individually and care for them? And that's one of the many questions I get regarding child rearing and having children. I want to answer some of those. I'm not going to answer that question first. I'm going to talk about some of the arguments that people decide that they've had enough children and trying to think biblically in light of Genesis 1, Psalm 127, and Psalm 128. There's a very common one, perhaps the most common one, and I wouldn't say in Christ's church, but one I often hear is, it's just too hard. It's just too much work. And I don't mean medically hard or dangerous. That's a different category. Life of mother and life of child are to be defended. and there's all kinds of things and medical realities that Christians should take into account when they have children. I'm just talking about the fact that children are a massive, life-changing inconvenience. Anyone agree with me? Anybody notice this trend? And what I mean by inconvenience is that the things you want to do You won't be able to do. And I don't know if I gave, did I give the fishing illustration in this class already? When you go fishing with children, you're not fishing. It's not even, it doesn't even resemble the original activity. It's a mixture of first aid and patience. And that's your life. Yourself. will die, and you will give to others. And it is not ease, and it is not convenience. And like I said, last Monday night, I was up at 1.30 AM, and Naomi was sick, and Miriam was sitting on my lap in my bed. I'm sitting up, Laura leaves beside me, and she's like, I'm going to change her diaper and see if she sleeps. She walks out of the room. Lurly walks out of the room to get a diaper. And what does Miriam do? I am like, I'm not even third rate. I'm like hundredth rate in her mind. And I'm her father. She screams, murder, because Lurly has stepped out of the room. And I can't do anything to keep her quiet. And I would love to sleep. I'm not sleeping at all. I love her just the same. And she loves her mom, and I'm thankful for that. Yeah. But you have to understand, if you've been a parent, you know about this. It changes your life. And part of you, your heart and your life and your energies is poured into another person. And all of your parents here, you know that it doesn't matter how old your children are, this thing that the Lord gave you, doesn't matter how many he's given you, this thing is now in your heart. And it always will be. And part of you will be forever devoted to the good of the other, to your own sacrifice. That's not an easy life. It's a life of self-denial. And there's a lot of people that just say, I don't like that much work. And I hear a lot of people complain. I hear people complain sometimes with a child in the womb, they're like, I can't believe I was terrible. And I'm like, Lord just gave you a child. That's an amazing gift. It is a fallen world. And then one-year-old and two-year-old, people say terrible twos and threes. They're driving me nuts. Well. Miriam is trying to take over our house right now, I'm noticing. We're entering into a new phase of willfulness that's going to require me to do some careful things and help her realize that she can't run the house, but she's terribly spoiled by the whole family. She can't do anything wrong. She's carried and held and laughed at and talked to every minute, such that if I say her name, she won't even turn her head. She's like, maybe, you know, eight people have already talked to me this morning, and I'm eating. There's a lot of work involved, a ton of work. But not to like the work is not a good reason not to have children. Second is, I want to focus on my children, so too many won't help me do that. That's the text question I had this week. This is more difficult. I think we have to be careful to recognize that God makes every family different, and that we have different limits. But I can tell you this at least. We being surprised by Miriam, she has filled our home with light and blessing. far beyond what Lorelei and I and the rest of our family could ever dream of this year. And we're grateful to God. And if there's something, if you've seen a Christian family, you'll see that something happens when there's another, one thing I wondered is when Emma was born, Your heart expands. You know this, you have a child, and you love this child, and you don't even know where you've got the capacity to love. Like, there's something in you that pours out of you into someone else. And then the Lord gives you a second one. And the question I had is, where in the world am I going to get more? Because I thought I gave it all. There's number two. Cherish more. And you do it again. But then something else happens. You watch the two of them together. and they have a relationship. And then there's another one, and there's a multiplication, actually, of love and affection that happens. Not a decrease, but an increase. And we need to remember that. The glory, there's something wondrous about this. Again, every family's different, but more does not mean less love or capacity. The Lord gives capacity as needed, and the love increases in a Christian home. You look strange with so many children. Well, we had to get over that one, but I already talked about this one. Financial pressure. How in the world am I going to raise them all? And here's a question I would ask. If God gave you the child, when you think of all the gifts God could give you in the world, That is a very precious gift. I mean, salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. If he gives you one child, what a gift, right? Did you think that if he gave you the greater gift, he wasn't also thinking that he would give you food and shelter and clothing for that child? Do you think he doesn't know that you have a child? Do you think he gave you a child to be destitute? It could be hardship, it could be famine, I'm not saying, but the way we think about God has to change. His interest in Miriam's food is far greater than mine. And we trust him. We trust him. The world's saying, I saw an article in Wall Street Journal two years ago, I think it was, where it was like, how much money should you have saved up before you have your first child in New York City? It's like a million dollars in cash. It's like, wow, wow, liquidity, million dollars in liquidity before you have your first child because they were counting on everything all the way to graduating with a master's degree from Harvard funded by their parents. I mean, we'd have zero. We'd have zero. This is not the way the world thinks. This is the way the world thinks. It's not the way the Christian thinks. God will care for you. Trust him. Don't be one of little faith. And also, you can live with less than you think you can live with. There are good reasons. I said them earlier, health of a mother, the very difficult questions Husband and wife, you ever see these tragic stories that carry maybe a profoundly difficult genetic combination that leads to the death of all their children? Well, I think there's a lot of times and places where a husband and wife together praying before the Lord, having a whole lot of information that you and I don't have, are going to make some decisions. before the Lord in free conscience, Christian liberty, that would differ from maybe the way you would think. You would make your decisions. And I think we have to be careful not to become legalists on this question. And remember some big principles. Be fruitful and multiply. Marital communion is not only for the having children, but also for intimacy, and that every family is different. And there are matters that I can think of reasons where we need to be thinking about the principles and then praying. Even in this one, however, there's sometimes when I see the following, sometimes I talk to a woman who will say, you know, Loralee and I, you know, we'd love to have more children, but my husband, you know, he's tired of them. If that's you as a husband, you just need to repent of that. That's not a reason because you've had enough inconvenience. It certainly would not be, that's a bad reason from earlier. But prayerful consideration of capacity of a family before the Lord, it could be very good reasons to think about these things. But let's see here. We're looking at the time. Let's say a little bit more. Questions here. Why don't I ask questions and I might just continue next week. Are there any questions to this point? Nothing. Well, I can keep going for, what's the time? For one minute. Okay, let's just do a little bit about life in the womb. Let's move on to how we think about a baby's life in the womb and just get that started. We'll pick up next week. Psalm 139. This is not about all those previous questions, difficult questions. This is about how the church and how the family thinks about this news. The pregnancy test is positive, right? What are your next thoughts? Psalm 139, for you formed my inward parts, you covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are your works, and that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in secret and 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. One as yet, there were none of them. That is perhaps one of the most profoundly beautiful insights into the reality of a mother carrying life in the womb. And the viewpoint, from the viewpoint of the God who inhabits eternity, made the heavens and the earth, and has covenant dealings with sinners. He is speaking of his intimate knowledge and divine activity in that process. which means that as Christians, without reservation, full stop, life begins at conception, and it is the work of Almighty God. You ever think about this? When that sperm finds that egg, and there's the mystery of new life, there's the mystery of new life, it is something new in the creation. And though it is right to think about it as ordinary providence, it's also right to think about the remarkable power of God at work making and fashioning that new life. The Bible is profoundly pro-life. Jacob and Esau, two nations are in your womb. They're fighting. Two individual characters, twin brothers, whom God already knew, who the Bible says were living boys, doing what boys do out of the womb as well, wrestling with each other. God's view of that life in the womb was real life. Two individuals from which would come two nations. John the Baptist leaped in the womb in the presence of Christ. Wow. That indicates a recognition of Jesus Christ by a baby in the womb by the power of the Holy Spirit. How's that for a mystery in a high view of life in the womb? It's astonishing. And this is God's view by His Spirit of what's happening in a mother bearing life. There's a glory that belongs to a pregnant woman. It's in the Scriptures, a remarkable glory, the glory that she carries life. Life after the image of God, designed to reflect that glory, fully human, worthy of all protection. We are deeply countercultural people in our present age concerning marriage and children and life. I'm going to have to stop there because I am at time. I can answer some questions, maybe a question or two, but next week we'll have to finish this up. Any questions? I've covered a lot of topics. Next week, I'm going to get into some more controversy when I talk about family planning. But that might be a whole class in and of itself. It's remarkable on topics like this, there's not a single question. Might be one in your mind. Text it to me, Tim. Yeah, so I think the first thing we have to remember is The reasons for that, back to the idea of Christian liberty, we don't know why people make those decisions. So let's be very careful not to make judgments as to why. I can think of 10 different reasons right now. Some would be outside of their control and some under their control, where Christian liberty under God, decisions have been made that I could understand. However, if it's just, If this is a royal pain, then probably some royal repentance is in view. How to teach that, model that is important, but what I'm getting at is a very tender topic where we as Christians, prizing life, do not make the opposite error. Does that make sense? That's the first thing. I'm very careful never to make any assumptions. The second thing is, I think one of the things that might help people in a second way is a model. We've lost almost all our models. Some people can't even, no pun intended, conceive of the idea of joy in having more than two children. And it could be a lot of reasons. It could be heartache. Maybe they grew up in a broken home and never thought about it. There's just so many reasons. You might not know what's behind it. Maybe it's profound medical reasons and there's a lot of tears. Maybe there's regrets years later that things were not done differently. So I want to be very careful first. But it's obvious when I go back to the statistics that something is in our culture where if you get down to South Korea where you're having 0.55 children per woman in Seoul, the city's going to disappear, something happened, and it's not a good thing. And in evangelicalism it is as well. I think a return to the broader principles, a thankfulness, that's what I'm trying to do in this class. But does that help? I don't want anyone to walk away just judgmental view, but to recover the thing that is good and right is important. I saw a hand at the back and in the front. Yeah, actually I have that under 4b too, so we'll talk about that next week. You know, wonderfully I think for Christians. Clay? Right. You're welcome. And I think one of the reasons why people are so, and what I want to warn people is, it's so easy. These are things that are related to our deepest, intimate realities of our life, especially husband and wife together. And I think there's been a profound culture of just wild, unwarranted criticisms on the one hand. But then on the other hand, an unwillingness just to talk about it and think, have we lost something? Why are we where we are? And I think we should be able to do both, not just one or the other. I think we've defaulted to just saying nothing. James, and then Mr. Ellis had something. Go ahead. Mine's kind of piggybacking on Tim's. But maybe on an earlier note, because Emily and I are earlier in our marriage, a lot of our friends use birth control, all that kind of thing, things that could possibly be abortifacient. but how do we address that? How do we engage with that? So next week, that topic will be covered. Again, there's liberty here, but I'm laying the groundwork of the principles of life. I'll get back to Psalm 139 next week and cover that, and then that will affect the way we think about that next question, which I think there's biblically permissible things, but we have to put them within the bounds of what scripture teaches about life. but next week more on that topic. Mr. Ellis. Yeah, good question. Those who are not married are they incomplete human beings? No. And I think I touched on that a couple of weeks ago, but to answer that quickly and we'll stop here, we have to remember what our Savior says in Matthew 22. that in heaven we are neither married nor given in marriage, and that there is a thing that supersedes the natural family, which is the family of God, in which we are brothers and sisters of one another, and God is our Father, Christ our elder brother. Yes, our Savior's example, the Apostle Paul. Paul teaches very clearly about singleness. Yes. I think the church should be careful to remember that we are a family and not just become so focused on our immediate families that we cannot see others. Matter of fact, I think one of the great blessings is to invite people into the life of your own family that maybe do not have one. that they might enjoy together with you some of those things. So open your homes and share. We have a good number of friends, singles that are still friends of ours over the years, and friends of our children. And I think in the church of all places, a sharing of that life together with a knowledge that there's something bigger than the nuclear family and the purposes of God. TJ, you're going to get me in trouble, but one more question. Depends. Try it. As a single guy, I think often single people can get, I don't mean this offensively, but we can be really selfish. And thinking that almost, you know, that victim mentality goes both ways, where we think of ourselves as victims, where When people invite us to their homes, it's an awesome opportunity to practice these things that you one day want to have yourself, like loving kids, like nurturing people. And as a caregiver as well, a lot of the things that you were saying about how you view children is how I view my patients. And so it's much less in a lot of ways. I don't want to take away from that, but also saying that we can apply as single people the same mentality that parents would towards the kids here, especially as we do baptisms and we take vows as a congregation to help raise these kids and encourage them. I'm just in charge for single people. They need to, as well, take that responsibility and pour into these kids and see a great opportunity in that. And what a great time to practice it. And not just training wheels for future. I would say more than that. And first, in principle, that there is a direct blessing, life in the body, for a child to know someone who's unmarried and have that friendship. Even if the Lord never blesses that person with children, there's a profound spiritual blessing of being together in one fellowship. And there's not an incompleteness. Back to Mr. Ellis's question. There is not an incompleteness. to the single life. As a matter of fact, if you read Paul, he would say something very opposite. He would say there's a usefulness for kingdom glory. Anyway, one of the things, it's good that you picked up this idea of caregiving. This idea of the way we view life is bigger, it's gonna go all the way to the end of life, and the way we think about the elderly, not just those in the womb and little ones, but all the way to the end, that we care for one another, and that we love to nourish, sustain, and help life. Hmm Yes, the Lord above all the Lord does let's pray what our God we thank you for life. We know that each one of us here We are here Because you knit us together in our mother's womb By your divine Action. Lord, you formed and fashioned us. Lord, we think of all the different ways that that happened to every one of us with a different story. Yet you made our lives. You gave us our gifts and talents. Lord, you placed us in the homes in which we live. Lord, you gave us your word that we might know Christ and eternal life. Lord, we think of your grand providence as you superintend even a groaning fallen world to bring goodness. We pray now that you would help us as we think about these things to think your thoughts after you, be conformed to your word. Lord, we pray for your spirit's help and we ask it all in Jesus' name, amen.