Basic Truths Procreation Is Not Optional

If you do have a Bible, turn to Genesis, chapter 1, and we're going to be continuing our study on Genesis about basic truths. The basic truth that we're going to be talking about today is the truth that procreation is not optional.

So, again, if you have a Bible, turn to Genesis 128, and when you have Genesis 128, go ahead and stand for the reading of God's Word. Genesis 128,. And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heaven, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

This is the word of the Lord.

Let's pray.

Lord, we do thank you for the opportunity that we have to come and to think about the scriptures you've given to us, which are life to us. Pray that you bless our time here today and help us to understand you better and why you've made us.

In your son's name I pray, amen.

You may be seated.

Now, as Christians, we face a great enemy who seems to have declared war on children. One of our jobs as pastors is to tell you about the nature of the schemes of the devil that you face, and as the apostle says, we are not ignorant of his schemes.

And it's fascinating to note that so many of his schemes seem to center around children. Satan was a liar from the beginning, but he's also a murderer. If you think about the nature of Revelation and the nature of his assault upon human beings, it seems that his assault from the very beginning was focused on children in a way that's somewhat.

Remarkable.

So Jesus tells us that Satan was a murderer from the beginning, and what he's referring to is Satan's plan to destroy the offspring of the woman in the garden. So we know that in the aftermath of the fall, there was a message of hope.

The woman's pain would be made more difficult and childbearing, but there would be a seed that would come from the woman who would triumph over the seed of the serpent. There was going to be this great battle, this great antithesis.

The woman would bear an offspring. We know that that offspring ultimately points to Jesus Christ, who will be our salvation. But this seed also refers to the godly line that comes from Adam and Eve, and the ungodly line that comes from Cain.

We know that Cain murdered his brother in rebellion to God's purposes. That was the first act of murder that Satan was behind. And when you notice Satan's plan over the course of the Bible, it often centers around the destruction of children.

Satan has declared war on the seed of this woman, as is evidenced by his interactions within the Exodus, where he seeks to destroy the godly offspring of Israel. You see this same pattern working itself out in the New Testament as you open the pages of New Testament and see that Herod has the same kind of plan of trying to exterminate all the children of Israel in order to put an end to the Messiah.

Satan's plan is often involved trying to kill children. And when you think about the world that you live in today, so much of the schemes of the devil seem to be centered around this basic objective, don't they?

We face a holocaust as it relates to the topic of abortion, and it's not just a small holocaust. I mean, it is over 60 million children today have been killed in accordance to this plan by a great enemy of our souls that we should, as Christians, be very much aware of.

That's 10 holocausts, brothers and sisters. That's a lot of children that have been killed by virtue of this all-out assault on children. Think about all the confusion that surrounds you today in the world.

So much of it is, as I said, a direct assault on children, viewing children as an inconvenience, viewing children as a burden. Think about the transgender confusion that's happened. What is that if not a plan that is designed to eradicate children?

So Satan's plan is to kill children. You see that in abortion. His plan with transgenderism is to keep them from being born in the first place. But that's not all of his plans. He has many plans that involve trying to persuade Christians that it's fundamentally, morally irresponsible to have children, even.

You know, what I'm trying to say is so many of his plans are centered around the destruction of the family and the prevention of the formation of new life. I don't need to tell you these things.

You know these things.

You've heard these things. You hear and are aware and live in an environment where there is great pressure to have children. And if you haven't experienced that pressure, then it's very simple. Just try to get married early and start having children very early.

And what you'll realize is that seemingly heaven and earth stand against you, trying to keep you from having those children. But then in reality, it's not heaven that stands against you. It's only earth that stands against you.

God has given us in his word instructions to have children that couldn't be any more clear than what they are. And yet Satan has persuaded us through a great many means that having children is just some optional thing that couples might pursue if they feel led to have them.

But as I said, I mean you're living in a world right now that is very hostile to these notions. There are many, there are very many significant voices in the world that are trying to persuade you that this is just some optional plan, almost as if it's immoral at times.

So here's a few quotes. Bill Gates in a 2010 TED Talk, he says, the world today has 6 .8 billion people. This was, you know, 2010. That's heading up to about 9 billion. Now if we really do a great job on the new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we can lower that by perhaps 10 to 15%.

So you're living in a world that thinks that overpopulation is the major problem that we have to face. We have to stop the children from happening. Here's Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Our planet is going to hit disaster if we don't turn the ship around.

And so it's basically like there's a scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult. And it does lead, I think, young people to have a legitimate question, is it okay to still have children?

Here's primatologist and environmental activist Jean Goodall. It's very clear that we have a finite planet with finite resources. It's very clear that we cannot push population growth indefinitely. The more people there are, the more they consume, the more environmental destruction there is.

Here's Paul Urich, author of The Population Bomb, 1968. The mother of the year should be a sterilized woman with two adopted children. So as I said, I mean, you live in a world where, I mean, this is just a quick search of quotes that I've given you, but this message is pervasive, it's persistent.

Satan has a plan. He has a plan to try to destroy children if you happen to have them. He has a plan to try to keep you from having them, which you should be actively aware of. And then if you do have them, he wants you to hand them over to him in order for him to teach them what it means to be a human being.

So he has a unique and intentional focused assault on children in contrast to Christ who instructs us to let the little children come to him. But as I said, perhaps one of his most sophisticated schemes as it relates to this topic is the lie that procreation is just some optional endeavor that people might pursue if they are so inclined.

If the Spirit moves them, if they feel led, procreation is optional. So one of the things that we want to explore today is we want to explore this question from the opening chapters of Genesis. Is procreation optional?

Is the world right? Do we need to have less children? Has humanity failed its mission? Is there even a mission to have children? What does God say about these things? We're going to talk about some of these things today.

Now when you think about the passage, it seems like you're reading a passage that Genesis 128 that couldn't be more clear. There's nothing grammatically complicated about this passage. It's a passage that really seems to be about as clear as it can possibly be, and yet at the same time, the confusion related to this passage is not just present in the world who rejects it outright, it certainly is present in the church as well.

And so what we want to do is I want to spend some time thinking about what you find in this passage. So I want to present to you today a survey of this passage and just give you some basic thoughts about the passage itself.

I want to spend a little time after that talking about the current situation we find ourselves in, the pressures that we uniquely face as a society. We do face some very unique questions. I then want to answer some objections and then talk about God's broader purpose for procreation beyond just the fact that it's not an optional thing that He's put forward.

And so that brief outline will govern the thoughts of our time here today, and we will begin these thoughts by paying careful attention to the passage itself. Now Genesis 128, it comes in a particular context, and I suppose I could read the whole chapter of Genesis 1, but if you do turn to Genesis 126, I think this will suffice for our time here today.

Genesis 126 says this, Then God said, Let us make man in our own image. Now notice this is after the creation of animals. God says, Let us make man in our own image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heaven, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

So God created man in His own image, and the image of God He created him, male and female He created them, and God blessed them. And God said to them, Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heaven, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

So this is a passage, as I've said over the course of this study, that's designed to answer some basic worldview questions. This is a book of origins, brothers and sisters, it's a book of origins, it's intending, God is intending in this book to tell the Israelites in the first instance, and by extension you, who you are, where do you come from, where are you going?

So let's try to answer them, let's try to answer these questions.

Who are you?

What does the Bible say? You're man, right? So notice how it said in Genesis 126, then God said, Let us make man in our own image. Man refers to everyone in the room, mankind.

Who are you?

You are a member of the human race. You are a special creation of God, created in His image, in contrast to the animals.

Who are you?

You're man. You're either male or female. You have a unique purpose, a unique design. You are created in His image. So God determines to make image bearers who are going to represent Him. And He obviously had a plan before the foundation of the world to make these image bearers.

He's letting us know, like in a temporal way, how He unfolded out this plan that He had before the foundation of the world.

But who are you?

Who are you?

God decides to make man in His own image, either male or female. And what does He do? He decides to make them and bless man with the blessing of responsibility. That's what He's done. So notice what it says in Genesis 126.

God says, Let us make man in our own image after unlikeness. So this is before He made them. He's saying, Let us make man in our own image after unlikeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heaven, over the livestock, and every creeping thing.

So God makes them, and then He blesses them with this plan that He has for them that He had before their creation.

You understand?

So who are you?

You're man. You're made either male or female. You're created in the image of God.

Why are you here? Why are you here?

Obviously the atheists have no answer to this question. They don't know why they're here. They try to derive some kind of moral imperatives from what is. They try to derive an ought from an is, but they don't know why they're here.

They blame it all on natural selection, which sounds a whole lot like divine intelligence, but that's neither here nor there. They don't know why we're here. They have no decisive answer to why they're here.

Why are you here?

This passage is telling you why you're here.

Why are you here?

Because God made you to fulfill your created purpose. This, brothers and sisters, is not just some arbitrary, random thing that God decided to say to the human race. This is the primary message he has for the human race upon their creation.

This is a big deal. It's not just some random thing that someone found in the Old Testament. Think about its placement in the creation narrative. These are unique statements. Do you understand what I mean?

They're unique statements that are given at the beginning of creation that are designed to tell you something about why you're here. These are not simply just words given to Adam and Eve as the first human beings.

These are words that are given to man. So God created man in his own image. These are words given to all image bearers.

Why are you here?

Because God made you to fulfill your created purpose. What is your purpose in the passage? To be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it to have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heaven, over every living thing that moves on the.

Earth.

What is your purpose? God tells the human race right here what their purpose is. Now notice, I said, who are you? You are man. You are created in the image of God. What does God do? He gives you a purpose.

He blesses man with the blessing of responsibility. What is this responsibility that he has blessed man with? So what we'll notice is God's blessing comes in the form of five second-person plural imperatives.

I know I'm not allowed to say anything related to grammar without turning this out of the realm of a sermon and into the realm of lecture, but God blesses you in the form of five second-person plural imperatives.

Brothers and sisters, these are imperatives in form. Pay attention to the imperatives. So notice what Genesis 128 says. It says, God blessed them and God says to him, he's blessing them with the blessing of responsibility that comes in the form of these imperatives.

Look, what are the five imperatives? One, be fruitful. Be fruitful. Now this is a second-person plural imperative in the English language. We don't have ye's anymore. To accomplish this purpose, the South still has a second-person plural, y 'all.

So if you want to understand what this is saying, it's saying, y 'all bear fruit. That's what it's saying. Be fruitful. Y 'all bear fruit and multiply, right?

That's what it's saying.

Y 'all bear fruit and y 'all multiply and y 'all fill the earth and y 'all subdue it and y 'all have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of heaven and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

There's this blessing that comes in the form of five commands. Now notice the imperatives, they center on procreation, don't they? It's not just one imperative that is centering on procreation. I mean, it's difficult to imagine how God could be any more clear about the nature of what He's telling the human race.

It's not one imperative that we can arbitrarily cut out of the list about man's created purpose and created function. It's not just like one that you may think, oh, well, you know, maybe there's confusion at that point.

God gives us three of them at the very least of these five that very much center on the primary purpose of procreation. So think with me about the nature of these imperatives. One, be fruitful, right?

Be fruitful. If that wasn't enough, and multiply. Isn't that kind of saying the same thing? Be fruitful and multiply? And if that wasn't clear enough, and fill the earth full of people. So be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth full of people.

When God gives you three different ways of saying the same exact thing, He's doing that because He wants to make it abundantly clear what He's trying to say and avoid all kinds.

Of confusion.

Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth full of people, and then once you've done that, what are you supposed to do? You're supposed to subdue the earth and rule it. That's what you're supposed to do. So fill the earth, subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the heaven and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

How are you going to have dominion over every living thing that moves on the earth unless you fill the earth full of people who exercise that kind of dominion over all the earth? So here's the point here, it's just to say that God's blessing to the human race comes in the form of five second person plural imperatives, and these imperatives center on procreation.

Now, when you read the passage right there, it's a passage that's exceedingly clear. There's no real confusion. Any confusion we might have about this passage is not coming from exegetical concerns. This is a very clear passage.

Everyone throughout history has known what this passage means. The animals are not unclear about what their blessing to them is at all. I don't know if you've thought about that before. They got the same blessing, and they seem to know what that means, and they seem to engage in this task.

But at the same time, we're living in a world right now that hates that message. And so as Christians, we're tempted to look at those words and treat them as if they're almost an incomprehensible riddle at times, and more conservatively, we treat them as if they're just kind of optional maybes for us, provided that you have some additional revelation that tells you specifically that for you.

And a lot of that is related to the nature of the current situation that you face. Brothers and sisters, I don't know if you are aware to what degree your impulses on this topic have been influenced by the nature of the technology that is available to us at this time and place in history.

So technology has fundamentally changed our basic impulses related to childbearing in ways that are staggering and remarkable, and there's not a person, I'm not a prophet or the son of a prophet, but there's not a person in this room who their impulses are not affected to some degree by the nature of the technology that we have today.

And I'm thinking in particular of the birth control pill, okay? So I want to give you a brief history of the birth control pill to consider, and then we're going to talk about how that's influenced us.

So the birth control pill, commonly referred to simply as the pill, was invented in 1950s with clinical trials starting around 1956. It was developed through the efforts of scientists like Gregory Pincus and Dr. John Rock, funded by birth control activist Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, and philanthropist Catherine McCormick.

The U .S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first oral contraceptive pill in 1960. This was a major event that has shaped our impulses as Christians in dramatic ways. So notice the effects of the birth control pill on childbearing and family size.

The availability and the adoption of the pill had profound impact on family planning, leading to notable changes in birth rates and average family sizes. So here's a summary of how it influenced children and children count, okay?

So there was, first, a decrease in fertility rates. So between 1960 and 1970, the U .S. total fertility rate dropped from 3 .65 to 2 .48. That's in the first 10 years post-birth control pill, okay? What do you think it is now?

By 1980, it fell even further to about 1 .8. So with the advent of the birth control pill, you go from 3 .65 down to 1980, it's 1 .84, where it's stabilized, if that makes sense. That's a remarkable development, do you understand?

That's a remarkable difference. In other developed nations where the pill became popular, similar patterns have emerged. So that's Western Europe, Canada, Australia, saw birth rates declining significantly from the 1960s through the 1980s.

So what has been the effect of the birth control pill? Decreased fertility rates. Later ages of first birth, so as women gained access to effective contraception, many delayed marriages and childbirth to pursue education or careers.

We see that happening. We see that happening as a result, because the birth control pill made that possible. In the U .S., the average age of first-time mothers increased from around 21 in the early 60s to approximately 29, and this is among women in 29 and 20s.

So prior to the pill, families, like larger families, four or more children were more common in many countries. By the 1970s, two or three children family became the norm in most Western societies. The proportion of women with three or more children declined steadily, for instance, by 2006 to 2010, only 27 of American women had three or more children, compared to about 50 in 1960.

Long-term socioeconomic impact, the pill's availability allowed more women to enter the workforce, pursue higher education, and achieve greater financial stability before having children. This led to increased economic independence and shifts in household incomes and gender roles in family.

Global patterns. Countries where access to contraception, especially the pill, became widespread saw a stabilization or decline in population growth. This shift influenced global demographics, with many developed countries now experiencing either very slow population growth or natural population declines.

There's a broader shift to basically delay marriage, so people began marrying later. Traditional family structures evolved. By delaying childbearing, couples could focus on establishing their careers, achieving their personal goals.

The invention of the pill is viewed by many as one of the key catalysts for demographic transition seen in many parts of the world throughout the 20th century. So think about what this means. I spent some time on the situation.

Most Christian husbands today are not entering into marriage ready to provide for three people.

They aren't.

Now, I mean, I know that we live in a weird area here where you have very high incomes that some people have and other people are very much struggling, and so they may be financially ready to take on three people, but they're not necessarily mentally thinking that that's what they should be doing.

So most Christian husbands are not entering marriage ready to provide for three people. You think about the past churches I've been in, this is obviously true. Most Christian couples are not entering marriage hoping that God would bless the consummation of their union with God's intended outcome for that act, namely pregnancy.

In my last church, the first batch of young people, they all thought of childbearing as some additional thing that they may choose to be ready for later after marriage. That was universal, that's ubiquitous in every church I've been at, the first generation of young people, that's the way they thought.

They thought, I'm going to be counter-cultural by getting married, right? I'm going to be counter-cultural by getting married maybe a little bit earlier than what is expected of me, even though mostly we're following the same patterns that the world is following at that point.

But then the decision to be mentally ready to have children is an additional consideration that in their minds should happen at some point after consummation. That's normal, that's normal. It's abnormal for people to think, oh I need to go into marriage, let's try to have kids right away, unless they're marrying really late, at which point their biological clock is ticking, they're trying to figure out how to get as many children as they can before they run out of eggs at that point, right?

But most Christian couples are not entering marriage hoping God would bless the consummation of their union outcome by the act. The decision to have a child, in the minds of most Christians today, is a completely separate decision a couple makes at some point when they feel ready, and ready is not being defined as when they say, I do.

Now I'm saying that summary is an accurate summary that you can test empirically with.

Data.

But here's the thing, this calculation is almost unthinkable in most periods of history prior to the invention of the pill, do you understand? If you don't have some medical means of preventing pregnancy and you're told to engage in a biological act that is designed to produce children, obviously by God, and you faithfully participate in that act, the natural outcome of that would be children.

You're living in a time right now where that's a completely separate consideration. You think that you have to make an additional choice to have children in a way that most people throughout the history of the world didn't think.

Do you see what I mean? This new way of thinking about children is only possible in a world where you have technology that allows you to think like that. And if you take that technology away, you very quickly will realize that most people will think about these things the way that they thought about them throughout the history of the world, okay?

Which is how God tells you to think about these things, which is how the animals think about these things, if it could be said that they think rational thoughts in the same way that we think. So what I'm trying to say is that our impulses as Christians are very much affected by the situation that I described in a moment.

So that when we read a passage like Genesis 1, 28, God blessed them and God said, Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heaven and over every living thing that moves on.

The earth.

It doesn't necessarily register to us what is actually being said, and it's not because God was not clear, I mean, he gave us multiple commands that are very clear. What's unclear is that you're living in a world that hates these things, that is being influenced by an enemy who hates these things.

And so we're tempted to, as we read these things, have the very same impulse as everyone around us has and read the passage in a way that's just remarkably different. So what I want to do is I want to answer some objections to the straightforward interpretation of the passage that I have supplied.

So I've heard many pastors when they teach on this topic, they say, Hey, be fruitful and multiply is not a command but a blessing. So the text says, And God blessed them and said, Be fruitful and multiply.

What they tried to do to get out of the force of these commands is to say, Well, it's not really a command. I mean, there's five commands, but they're really a blessing. It's not a command, it's a blessing.

What's the problem? The problem is that God's commands are blessings. God's commands are always blessings. All of God's commands are blessings, you understand? God gives you words which are blessings to you.

Not only they're blessings, but they will provide blessings when you obey them. When you obey God's commands, you're going to experience good that comes from that. When you disobey God's commands, then you're in the same situation that Adam and Eve were.

In.

You're going to experience consequences that come from that. And obviously Jesus has come to help forgive us for all the ways in which we transgress God's commands. Jesus is the fount of every blessing that comes from us.

All the blessings that come to us are blessings that come for us in Christ, but God's commands in and of themselves are not curses. God's commands are blessings. Be fruitful and multiply. It's a blessing that takes the form of five commands.

And this is what the Bible teaches over and over and over again. As you read through Ecclesiastes, you'll see that the preacher in Ecclesiastes understands these commands to be blessings. And he's phrasing them in the language of command and in the language of blessing, right?

So Ecclesiastes 9 .9, enjoy life with the wife whom you love all the days of your vain life. I love how he says, enjoy life with the wife whom you love all the days of your vain life that he's given you under the sun because that is your portion in life and your toil with which you toil under the sun.

Notice how he's telling you to enjoy life with the wife you love all the days of your vain life he's given you because that's your portion, that's your blessing, that's the blessing of responsibility that he's given you.

Ecclesiastes 5 .19, everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them and to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil, this is the gift of God. God takes man, he says, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth as we do it.

He puts man in a garden to work and to keep it. Those responsibilities that he's given to man are blessings to man. The author of Ecclesiastes, the preacher, understands them to be blessings. They're saying, this is God's gift to you.

He's given you something to do. He's given you responsibility. This isn't, these aren't chains. This is not slavery. This is his gift to you that you have something productive to you. When people don't have something productive to do, they give themselves over to depression.

That's the natural result. We're made for a purpose. There's nothing more hopeless and filled with despair than taking away someone's purpose or feeling like you have no reason for existence. God has given the human race things to busy themselves to do and those are blessings to them.

Satan wants you to think that God's commands are curses, not blessings. This is a passage which refutes that notion. Imagine a hat maker who doesn't have any hats to make, a servant who has no one to serve, or a car which has nowhere to drive.

How depressing of a thought is that? God has made you as distinct, special creations. He's given you something to do and you thrive when you give yourself over to what God has told you to do and you experience all the negative that comes from rejecting that.

So be fruitful and multiply isn't a command, but it's a blessing response. There are five commands in this passage and God's blessings to mankind is the blessing of responsibility. The commands are the blessing.

Two, it was just to Adam and Eve. Well response, it was also given to Noah. See simple. Genesis 9 .1, God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth. But, alright, alright.

So it was only given to Adam, Noah was given to Adam and Noah. It was only given to Adam and Noah because the world was empty at the time.

Right?

So it was only given, it was empty, it's no longer empty. Like we're in danger of destroying the place, right? So we've got to slow it down. Response, notice the original command is given to image bearers, isn't it?

So God created man in his own image. In the image of God he created them, male and female he created them. These are commands given to man, mankind, as image bearers. These apply to all the image bearers.

Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heaven, and over every living thing that moves on the earth. It would be very odd, wouldn't it, brothers and sisters?

Be very odd to treat the first three as having no more application to the day, but then the last two do still have application. Do you notice what I'm saying? There's five commands there. Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, have dominion.

Why are we treating the first three as if they're different than the last two? Do we still have dominion over the animals? Are we still called to subdue the earth? So we only have to do the last two, not the first three?

That really doesn't make any sense because everyone knows that these are commands given to image bearers, don't we? Notice three, so it's only given to Adam and Noah because the world was empty. Three, there was a similar blessing given to animals alive at that time, which I've.

Already said.

Have you thought about that? A similar blessing given to animals? You see that in Genesis 1 .22, and God blessed them saying, be fruitful, multiply, fill the waters of the sea, and let birds multiply in heaven.

There's no indication that the animals today consider their blessings to have been accomplished, is there? You know, the animals, they're a rebuke to us. They know what they were made to do. They must not have gotten the memo from Senator Ocasio-Cortez.

They know what they're designed to do. They're faithfully obeying God and what they're designed to do. They know what they're designed to do. I'm not saying that there's not weird situations out there, like random weird situations where you can put forward, like refute the general point that I'm trying to make, but animals know what they're designed to do, and they're doing what God designed them to do.

Notice that blessing is given to animals, not just the original animals that existed at that time. It's given to all of them, just like this blessing is given to mankind. And you know what? Despite all the pressure that people have today to reject any notion of imperative to these things, we can't help but still follow God's pattern for us.

Think about it.

You exist today because someone didn't get that memo that you weren't supposed to exist. Or even if they got that memo and felt really guilty for having you, they couldn't fight their design. They knew what they were designed to do.

They may not be able to communicate that design, but think about the nature of the way that you're made. Your body screams at you that you're made to be fruitful and multiply in a variety of different ways, a lot of which are related to hormones, and you can't seem to stop trying to obey that command.