Mutual Spousal Authority: Fruitful Bodies

Please now turn your Bible to 1 Corinthians chapter 7. That can be found on page 955 if you're using the

Bible in front of you. Once you have that, go ahead and stand and I will read verses 1 through 5.

Now concerning the matters about which you wrote, it is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman, but because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband.

The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband.

For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.

Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer.

But then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self -control.

Amen. You may be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for your

Word and we ask that you would help us as we draw the implications from this passage of Scripture. We ask that you would help us to understand marriage and that we would honor it, whether we ourselves are married or not.

In Jesus' name, amen. So we are now in the second week of this,

Lord willing, four -part series on mutual spousal authority. If you've been a student of the

Bible for some time, you know that the wife is supposed to submit to the husband. Yet, in this one area, there is a difference between that general rule, and that is when it comes to the body, that the husband has authority over the wife's body, and the wife likewise has authority over the husband's body.

There is a mutual spousal authority in this one area. So we looked at what that implied for marital intimacy last week, the issue directly in the passage, but now this week and subsequent weeks,

I'd like to point to several things that are necessarily contained therein.

So not the primary thing that Paul is bringing up this truth for, but if this truth is true, and it is, it implies several more things.

So here, we will be discussing, we'll be looking at what the body says about the nature of fruitfulness, that man and woman called together for the purpose of fruitfulness.

And in particular, I'd like to ask you the question of how should a couple go about deciding whether or not to have children if they are at odds about the matter.

There are four different strategies that people have with this, and I'd like to walk you through each one and show you why only one of them is biblical.

The first is that the wife has veto power over the husband's wish for children.

She's the one who is going to have to do the most work carrying the child. She is going to have to bring it to her, is going to cause the most trouble for her.

And then in addition to that, when it comes to raising the child, it will be the most work for her. And so a lot of people decide that when it comes to deciding whether or not to have a child, the wife has veto power over the husband because she will have to do most the work.

Yet, if the husband has authority over the wife's body, this is not the case. Likewise, many people come to the conclusion that the husband has veto power over the wife, such that he could say, well, you want kids, but I don't, and I'm the husband and the husband has authority over the wife, so therefore

I can say no. That is not how it works. The husband does not have authority over his own body.

The wife has authority over his body. And so if she wants his body and all the fruit that would come from that, this passage is not just talking about the pleasure of marital intimacy.

It necessarily implies all that pertains to it when it speaks of the body. The husband cannot veto the wife.

And likewise, there are people who would make it symmetric, who would say that, well, in this case, the husband can veto the wife and the wife can veto the husband's wish for children.

And so both of them have to be in agreement first. Once again, if they have authority over each other's bodies, then they can both make a claim to each other's bodies.

Just as we looked at last week, when it comes to the pleasure of intimacy, so it is with the fruitfulness of intimacy necessarily the case.

And so the only appropriate strategy is the final one, which is that neither spouse has veto right over the other, since they both have claim over each other's bodies.

This is very contrary to what is practiced in the world and is very contrary to what's practiced by many

Christian couples even, because they do not understand the implications of this mutual spousal authority.

There are several other things that we should consider here. One is that this is part of the purpose of marriage.

If you look at our confession, it outlines three different purposes of marriage. One is the mutual help between husband and wife.

Two is the prevention of sexual immorality. And the third is the increase of legitimate offspring.

Malachi 2 .15 said, Did he not make them one with a portion of the Spirit in their union?

And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit.

Let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth. What was God seeking when he brought

Adam and Eve together with a portion of the Spirit in their union, a blessing on them? Godly offspring.

This is the purpose of marriage, is godly offspring, especially among believers.

Offspring in general is God has blessed mankind, said be fruitful and multiply, but godly offspring when it comes to believers.

And so if this is the purpose of marriage and man and wife come together to fulfill the purposes of marriage, then for one to deny the other is not just to deny someone else their preference and take their own preference for themselves, though that would be bad enough, but rather it is to deny the very purpose of the covenant that they entered into.

That has serious implications. One of them is that someone who is not capable of fruitfulness by outward significance, what

I mean by that is I'm distinguishing someone who is outwardly known to be impotent versus one who is barren, because barrenness has no outward sign to it, that one who is a eunuch, as Jesus said, is not fit for marriage.

Matthew 19, verse 10 onward says, the disciple said to him, if such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.

But he said to them, not everyone can receive this thing, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been made so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have been made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.

Let the one who is able to receive it, receive it. And so Jesus explains here, after the disciples saying it is better not to marry,

Jesus equates one who is not to marry as a eunuch. Eunuchs are not fit for marriage because they are not capable of in good faith entering into a covenant whose purpose would be for fruitfulness.

You can't enter into a covenant that you have no capacity to be able to pursue.

And the reason why a eunuch could not enter marriage is because the nature of the covenant is to pursue this kind of fruitfulness.

The other very serious implication of this is that one who denies their spouse offspring is severely violating this covenant, such that if they were to do this in a full and final way, absolutely rejecting their spouse in a way that cannot be undone, in a way that is intentional apart from the consent of their spouse, that would be such a full and final violation of it that it would be an undermining of the covenant.

It would warrant divorce should the other party pursue it. These are serious things.

This is not a small thing, though it is so common in our culture. If that is the purpose of marriage, if that is one of the three purposes of marriage, legitimate offspring, then we should pursue that wholeheartedly.

Now this is not to say that those who are unable to have children, there's any fault on them for that, or that if there are some extreme health reasons that would make it deadly that one should still pursue children, those things might trump this obligation.

However, apart from any of those things, God commanded man be fruitful and multiply.

Consider the various reasons why people choose not to pursue this. First of all, it is simply the case that we live at a time in history where we are so, our culture has shifted the norm so much that most people don't realize how distorted their own view of this matter is.

They think that they are thinking about things objectively, but are they really thinking about things objectively? The pill came about in 1960, and since then it has become normal for this to be just a part of marriage.

Before that, it was really not a thinkable thing that could just be kind of ongoing without more extreme measures.

There's a phrase that I like, which is the plausibility of morality. There are certain things which it's just not plausible that they would be moral until they become normal.

Intentional barrenness is one of those things. Think about the different ways that government has stepped in to replace the role of the family such that families do not need to be large in order to survive.

In fact, government fills in so many of these roles that it seems that there's no point in having a large family in order to be a very prosperous family.

One of those things is public schools. In 1867 in California, it was the first public school, so once you have taxpayers, neighbors, being compelled by the government to provide education for other people's children, for their neighbor's children, what is happening there is the government is saying, okay, we're going to step in where the family is not doing the job well enough, we're going to step in and do the job.

All the different provisions for the homeless, et cetera, doing the same thing.

You have Social Security, 1935, to provide for the elderly in case the children aren't going to provide for the elderly.

So the government steps in where the family may not be able to, and then what happens after that? Well, now you don't need the family to do it, and so family becomes far less important in all of these things.

And I don't think we are aware of how many societal things have reduced our sense of the goodness of children, how many different factors have caused people not to pursue fruitfulness and multiplying.

There is a paper, and you've talked to me several times, I hear people chuckling, you've talked to me for long enough, you know that I will reference this paper occasionally.

There's a paper called Car Seats as Contraceptives. You don't have to read the paper, just go read the abstract of the paper.

They did a study on when car seat laws rolled out such that, you know, if a car can only seat five people, you have to only have five people in it.

And, you know, laws about kids' car seats, things like that. They did a study to look at the different districts where laws were being rolled out and how this affected fertility rates, how this affected the number of children that were being born.

And this study decided that in 2017, those laws prevented 57 deaths.

Okay, because you didn't have extra people where there weren't seat belts and car seats or whatever the case may be, it prevented 57 deaths.

All right, good thing. They also decided, based on the numbers that they had, looking at all these different districts, that it prevented 8 ,000 births.

8 ,000 people decided not to have a child because it would be too inconvenient given the laws.

Now it's not clear to me that that's a win. Okay, so since 1980, there have been 145 ,000 fewer births, according to that one study.

And 90 % of that decline has been since the year 2000. There are just all kinds of things affecting our views that we aren't aware of.

Things as simple as seat belt laws, right? And it just doesn't enter our mind how distorted our views may be from previous generations.

And this has been going on for a while. In 1798, there was someone named Malthus who wrote about overpopulation.

And his theory was that population increases exponentially, but resources only increase linearly.

So as the number of people increase, you'll get to a point where there's not enough resources. And of course, there's all kinds of sci -fi that's been created around this.

You might know the movie Soylent Green and things like that. But there's a lot of evil policies that have come out of that too, very intentionally.

Look at the original literature on euthanasia and the original movement to increase abortion and provide abortion access.

Where do these things come from? They come from the idea that the earth is overpopulating and we need to stop these things.

People are very persuaded that this is the case. But has that been the case? Actually, the amount of food per person has increased over time.

It has not decreased, it has increased. Look at Japan. Japan in 2016 began selling more adult diapers than child diapers.

In 2016, over 25 % of the population is over 65 years old.

And I don't even know what the stats are. I got these stats a while ago. When they first came out.

That decline has led to the GDP of Japan decreasing from 6 .2 in USD trillion dollars to 4 .2

over 10 years, from 2012 to 2022. This is not for the prosperity of society.

When you imagine that hospitals have the elderly in it and less young to take care of it, this can't work this way.

It is not... China realized this too, right? They had the one child policy and they realized they have to roll this back.

This is not good. Overpopulation is not a real problem. If you were to take all of humanity and let them live with the density of Manhattan in New Zealand, they could all fit in there.

I'm not suggesting we do that. I'm just saying that there is more than enough space. And God increases the ingenuity of man that he would be able to continue following God's intention that we be fruitful and multiply.

Of course, people have a lot of difficulties that they're afraid of too. There's money. This is an expensive area.

It'd be... It's expensive to take up space around here. Yet at the same time, necessity is the mother of invention.

A lot of times once people begin pursuing those things that God has called them to pursue, they will find out how to do it.

And you can speak to many people about their pathways of faithfulness and how they have found exactly that. People are concerned about the heartbreak they'll feel from either miscarriages or whether or not they'll have enough love.

That these are not reasons to be scared of following what the Lord has called us to.

It is still a good thing to be fruitful and to multiply. So why, why is this?

Why should you think this way about the purpose of marriage beyond simply what we've already covered?

First of all, it is natural and to resist fruitfulness is unnatural.

God didn't just command be fruitful and multiply. He made people fruitful so that they could multiply. That is the natural state of the body.

To take something good that God has given and then to intentionally cripple it such that you are not fruitful is to resist the natural thing that God has put in the world.

So, many contraceptions, contraceptives that exist are abortive.

A lot of people don't realize this and unfortunately a lot of Christians have pursued certain contraceptive methods that they don't realize kill the embryo before it implants in the uterine wall.

There are, a lot of times doctors will, doctors will say that it prevents pregnancy but really what they mean is not preventing conception.

They're talking about a later stage and so it is still abortive though doctors will tell people that it's not abortive because they are defining that differently.

And many Christians will participate in this not realizing. Really the only thing that is not, the only things that are not abortive are barrier methods but even those are unnatural as they go against the natural capacity of the body for fruitfulness.

Then people talk about natural family planning. Once again, very unnatural. You take the most fertile times of the month, the times when people are most ready for marital intimacy and you take that away.

It doesn't matter what the name is, that's still unnatural. And children are a blessing.

God says this repeatedly in his word that they are a blessing. They are a blessing in your old age and they are a blessing in their older ages.

Proverbs 17, 6 says, grandchildren are the crown of the aged and the glory of children is their father's.

This is the crown of the elderly. When you are old, you will desire, you will desire children and grandchildren.

Then Psalm 127. Consider what this is saying. I'm sure you've heard this before but consider what this means.

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord. The fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one's youth.

Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them. He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.

Okay, what are the children of one's youth? Most people think of these things as when they hear of one's youth, they think of in one's youth.

Of one's youth means something very different than in one's youth. This is not talking about little babies being a blessing.

This is talking about grown men and women being a blessing. The children of one's youth are the ones that you manage to enjoy in older ages.

Okay, just like it says that you should delight in the breasts of the wife of your youth. That is not a command to enjoy your wife while she is young.

It is a command to enjoy your wife while she is old. Solomon, writing this, having many wives. Who's the wife of his youth?

It's the wife he married first, right? This is, and then when it speaks of being put to shame by your enemies in the gate, think about the nature of the gate.

It's a place of judgment. The Bible talks about the orphan and the widow not needing justice because they have no one to defend them.

This is speaking of the elderly that have no one to defend them or otherwise would if they have children. If they have children, then those children can represent them in court such that they are not ashamed.

Because this is talking about adult children, it is not talking about small children. So do not, when you think about children being a blessing, do not think primarily about babies being a blessing.

I wouldn't deny that babies are in a way a blessing, but if you think that that's the

Bible's primary message to you about children being a blessing, it will be very hard to swallow that pill because children are difficult.

The fruit of children is later on as they are adults.

So, yeah, don't try to convince yourself that that's a blessing and then later on they're gone. And this is what a lot of people say, you'll long for those years later.

And, you know, there are ways that you'll be nostalgic, et cetera, but if you look at it as those are the good years and then the later years are harder, you know, the teen years are all just rebellious and awful, and then the adult years, they're just gone.

And then you're not thinking about the way that the Bible is calling you to think about it, okay? You're thinking about it in reverse of the way that the

Bible's calling you to think about it. It's calling you to think about the hard work that's involved in rearing them coming with great reward at the end, okay?

Now, next I would like you to consider the covenants that God has given. And the Noahic covenant, which is in Genesis 9.

I'm going to go ahead and read this large passage, so you might as well turn there. Genesis 9, verses 1 through 17.

And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea.

Into your hand they are delivered. Okay, so first of all, I'm going to point out that he says, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth.

This is what God had already told man in the garden, but now after the fall, there may be the concern, well, now that everything is sinful, now that everything's difficult, is this still the case?

God blesses them again, reaffirms this is the case, be fruitful and multiply even after the fall.

He says, every moving thing that lives shall be food for you and as I gave you the green plants,

I give you everything. If you think that this has lapsed and is no longer the case, you need to switch to being a vegetarian.

Okay, because God has, he authorized meat eating in the Noahic covenant. And if you think that this is no longer something that he's commanding, fruitfulness of the body, then he's no longer permitted meat either.

But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is its blood. And for your life blood, I will require reckoning from every beast,

I will require it. And from man, from his fellow man, I will require reckoning for the life of man.

Whoever sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed for God made man in his own image.

Now you have the provision for government, for justice. This is something that still exists as well as affirmed by Romans 13.

And you be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it. So at the end of the covenant, he ends with what he began with, which was the most important aspect of the covenant, his blessing on the fruitfulness that comes from marriage.

And then verse 8, then God said to Noah and to his sons, behold, I established my covenant with you and with your offspring after you.

Okay, so this includes all of Noah's offspring. You are a son of Noah. Maybe you've thought about yourself as being a son of Adam, but you are likewise a son of Noah.

And with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark, it is for every beast of the earth.

I shall, I established my covenant with you that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.

This is a promise that still stands. Second Peter affirms that. And God said, this is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you for all future generations.

I've set my bow in the cloud and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds,

I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh and the water shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.

When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.

God said to Noah, this is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.

Have you seen a rainbow recently in the past couple of months, even or past year? Then covenant still stands and all people see the rainbow.

The rainbow is the sign of the covenant. God has not taken the rainbow away. That means that this covenant still stands.

Now, when you turn, if you turn to Acts 15, or you don't have to turn there because it's just a short passage, but in the

Jerusalem council, the apostles are asking themselves what is required for the

Gentiles who have become Christians. Do they need to get circumcised? Do they need to keep the

Mosaic covenant or that Abrahamic covenant that was the covenant of circumcision?

The conclusion that they have in verse 19 is, therefore, my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the

Gentiles who turn to God. Okay, so they don't have to get circumcised. Gentiles don't have to keep the Mosaic covenant.

Then it says, but should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols and from sexual immorality and from what has been strangled and from blood.

For from ancient generations, Moses has had in every city, those who proclaimed him for he has read every

Sabbath in the synagogues. So now they're going back to Moses to explain the context of why they need to address

Moses. But what was that middle part? That middle part was, okay, they don't have to obey the

Mosaic covenant, but what do they have to obey? Do you remember that statement about keeping from sexual immorality, not eating things that are strangled or from blood?

That was all the Noahic covenant. They're saying, okay, not the Mosaic covenant, but they still need to keep with the

Noahic covenant that was made with all flesh. Okay, the Noahic covenant still stands.

Now there's some people who think that, sure, that was the old creation, but we have been made a new creation.

And so the Noahic covenant gets rid of this necessity. The fruitfulness that happens in the new covenant happens through the great commission, and that supersedes the need for fruitfulness in families.

Consider what the Bible says about the nature of the new covenant and marriage. It says in Ephesians, in Ephesians chapter five, therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ in the church. So Paul tells us that the reason that man needs to love his wife and wife needs to respect her husband even more for the

Christian, if it could be said more, more because it is being illustrated more, just like Jesus said,

I give you a new commandment that you love one another even as I have loved you. It's a new commandment. It's the obligation is greater having seen the example.

The obligation in marriage is greater because of Christ in the church.

Now, this is a mystery, which means that Paul doesn't even know all the different ways that it refers to Christ in the church.

He is not just making an analogy. He is showing that there is a real connection between the two such that the one is informed by the other.

Now, what is the nature of the of the union between Christ and the church? Is it a fruitless union or is it a fruitful union?

What is the nature of the new covenant? It says in Galatians 4, verse 24.

Now, this may be interpreted allegorically. These women, that is, Sarah and Hagar, are two covenants.

One is from Mount Sinai bearing children for slavery. She is Hagar. Now, Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia.

She corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free and she is our mother, for it is written, rejoice,

O barren one who does not bear. Break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor. Children of the desolate one will be more than those of the one who has a husband.

The picture here is of Zion, who is described in Revelation 20 as the bride of Christ.

OK, this one being the mother of many children. This is the most fruitful marriage that exists.

So if the new covenant demonstrates how we should go about our marriages and it implies an even greater way that husbands should love wife and wife should respect husband, then an even greater way shows that those marriages should be fruitful.

The new covenant does not supersede the command to be fruitful and multiply. The Great Commission does not supersede it.

It reinforces the command to be fruitful and to multiply in a greater way.

If this is not how you have approached this matter, whether you are married or unmarried, whether it is just a matter of having oriented your thoughts in the way that God would have you orient your thoughts, whether it's an actual matter in your marriage, seek forgiveness from God.

He will forgive you. Seek forgiveness from your spouse if you have denied them children that they wanted. Seek forgiveness.

I will not guarantee that everyone that you would need forgiveness from would give it, but God will graciously give you forgiveness.

Christ has died for us. That is what has brought us into this city to be her children.

It is by that mercy. There's no need to hide from these things. Many people try to deal with their guilt by denying the law that makes them guilty.

You don't need to do that. You don't need to run from this. You can simply confess, and God forgives sin.

And then if you are able, you can pursue the fruitfulness that God has called you to.

Those of you who have not yet been married but will be married, prepare for this now, whether it be taking the

Bible's teaching on marriage seriously and children seriously, and considering those things, whether it be reading good

Christian literature to prepare for the matter, whether it be financially saving up for something more than you were initially planning for.

And for those of you who are beyond your childbearing years, encourage those who are younger to pursue the fruitfulness that God has called them to.

This is not something where you have no opportunity to participate. You have been brought into a family where you can encourage those who are younger to pursue that kind of fruitfulness.

May God bless the fruitfulness of the marriages in his church, and may

God bless the fruitfulness of the union between Christ and the church. Amen.

Dear Heavenly Father, we pray that we would follow your commands, even those that are very countercultural.

We ask that you would grant us a clear understanding of these things, that we would in our marriages reflect

Christ in the church, and may glory come to you through Christ in the church.