Wonderful Are Your Works

So our first text this morning is Psalm 127, verses 3 to 5, and it says this. This is something that you often want to talk to young couples as they're getting married about. Psalm 127, 3 to 5 says, Behold, children are a gift of the Lord. The fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth. How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be ashamed. when they speak with their enemies in the gate. Now, I want to start by asking you a simple question. And you don't all have to call out and answer it, but I want you to be thinking about it to the extent that you know. You may not know the answers to the questions. How many siblings do you have? Compare that with how many siblings your parents had. Compare that to how many siblings your grandparents had, and then your great-grandparents. Now, while you may not know all of the numbers,

I think that you would all agree that there's a trajectory that we find in those numbers. And the trajectory is from great-grandparent to grandparent to parent to us, the trajectory is downward in terms of numbers of children. We have less siblings than our parents did, and our parents have less siblings than their parents did. I am an only child with 11 half-siblings, which is an interesting story, but not for today. I grew up as an only child. My mom had three siblings. My father, I don't know how many siblings he had, but I know that he had ten kids. And he's Israeli, Palestinian, where they have kids. Vanessa's mom is one of seven, right? When you talk to people your parents' or grandparents' age, it's common for them to say, oh, I'm one of six, I'm one of seven, oh, I'm one of ten. Why is that not common today?

Today, if you have six kids, people will look at you like you're strange. But you do realize that the idea of only having one or two kids is actually the strange thing. That historically, that is not at all normal. I'm hesitant to quote a stat because I don't know that I remember it correctly, but I read a while ago. I think this is correct. I may not be right exactly. But it was about 100 years ago, in 1900, the average live births that a woman had was seven. That was normal just a little over 100 years ago in our country. That was normal. And now we would look at that and go, what happened? Why are you doing that? Now, why am I bringing this up? The reason I'm bringing this up is to show you from the very beginning how our mindset as a society and as a result, the church has changed. How far it has shifted away from this passage that I just read to you. Children are a gift from the Lord. Fruit of the womb is a reward.

Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth. How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. And now, some of you may be familiar with what's called the quiverful movement. And there's a small minority that look at that and they say, yes, that's us. But the vast majority of people, including Christians, look at that as though they're crazy. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. We don't believe it anymore. We don't believe that as a society anymore. Our parents and grandparents, at least great-grandparents, they understood this. We don't. And we learned this lesson without so much as a word being said to us. We can just look around at the size of vehicles and realize this isn't what people do anymore. And so without a word, just by living and breathing and looking around us at one another, we're being taught what's normal, what we should aspire to, and what is acceptable in our society.

It ought not to be this way, and it wasn't this way from the beginning. In the beginning, God said to Adam and to Eve in Genesis 1, Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him male and female. He created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.

and subdue it and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth. This is what's known as the cultural mandate. In our society, we aren't multiplying. We're not even adding. Our birth rate is a subtraction. We have a negative birth rate. We are not even replacing ourselves, let alone adding by multiplication to the earth. Why? Well, because the earth is overpopulated. Not true. And I could talk about it more. It's not the point this morning. But that's just simply not true. Why does God tell us to be fruitful and multiply? In this text, there's two reasons at least. The first is that we're to rule over the earth and that we need people to do that. But here's a more foundational reason and one that I think that we miss often or have disassociated in our minds. And it's that God is fruitful and that we're made in his image.

And if we want to be like him and look like him, we need to do the things that accomplish that in us. He says this on the tail end of creation. He spoke into being everything that exists and says, go and do the same thing to your ability. But we've said, collectively as a society, no, we will not. And in so doing, we've denied God's image in us. We are most like God. When we're seeking fruitfulness. And I realize that saying that might set your teeth on edge or make you feel like you shouldn't. Am I wrong in saying that biblically? I don't think I'm wrong. And I'll tell you, when I say I might be setting your teeth on edge or I might be making you uncomfortable, please don't for a second think that it hasn't ever done that to me. I'm not all that different than you in terms of my apprehensions and my thoughts.

Look around you and see the fruitfulness of God. And then ask yourself, how am I doing what he said to do? I think many churches would say, well, we're going out and we're discipling the nations. And what they have are childless congregations. And what I'm convinced of is that you will not minister to the nations if you don't multiply in your homes. Because what keeps you from multiplying in your home is what will keep you from multiplying in society. And that is selfishness, as we'll get into in a moment. This is the foundation, this idea of being fruitful and multiplying, that children are a gift from the Lord and a reward. This is not how our society sees children, as a reward. Do you talk to people about children, those of you who have them in your society? What do they say about children? A lot of work, real expensive, inconvenient. Then they grow up and then they're rude and disrespectful.

They cause you grief and headaches. They're not seen as a reward. And it is true that oftentimes you can turn a child into a curse and not a reward by the way you raise them. And so it's not to say that the person who's lamenting their own children's behavior is lying to you. They're probably telling you the truth, but what they don't realize is they're acknowledging their lack of faith in God and their lack of obedience to him. They've not made effort to see their children be a reward and a gift from God. Does that mean that our society doesn't want rewards anymore, that we've given up rewards and cast off the whole system? No. We've just swapped out what the rewards will be. It's as though we've gone to the carnival and we've received this reward and we say, well, I don't like this, and we've gone back up to the desk and said, can I trade this in for the thing I really want? So how have we come to despise children as demonstrated in the birth rate of our society?

I realize inside these four walls, things are different. There's more kids proportionally, and I get all that, but which one of us doesn't feel the pressure and feel the weirdness of all the kids or the amount of work that they require in our homes and here on Sunday mornings? We all feel it. We're all tired. The truth is that we want rewards, but we want rewards that don't need us and that don't inconvenience us. So largely, children, the closest thing you're going to find is a replacement for children in our society is what? Pets. Absolutely. Pets. If Martin didn't breed dogs, I ask him, how much do people pay for dogs? They pay a lot of money for dogs. Lots. Like, not three digits. Four. And depending on the type of dog, maybe five. Yes. Do you not know? Now, these are special.

Thoroughbred, you know, pedigreed, fancy. This isn't the shelter dog. Why pets? Well, because pets don't require nearly what children require of you. You go and go about your normal life, for the most part. You don't really have to be inconvenienced. And then when you get home from wherever you've been, you get a snuggle. And the same again before you go to bed. You want a vacation? Why don't you get a dog sitter? Pets rarely demand anything of you. Now we could tell the stories, my dog got sick and puked all over the carpet, or we were potty training and it was a hassle, or they chewed up my couch. I mean, they can cost you something. But compared to a child, what do you do with a dog if you get mad at it? Get fed up with it. I've had enough of you. You open the door and you say, go outside in the yard. Close the door. You can't do that with your kids. CPS will get called.

The dog does something you don't like and there's not people around watching you, what do you do? You hit it. Smack it on the nose. Kick it. I know nobody actually does that to dogs, but I'm here to tell you, I had dogs until I was growing up, and I know how people treat their dogs. I worked in a kennel for two and a half years when I was in high school. I know what dogs are like. I know how people treat their dogs. And it's not what they put up on social media. They view their pets as something that simply gives to them, but that they don't have to give to unless they feel like it, unless it suits their desires, then they'll give it to it. And they don't require nearly as much time and energy as a child. And yet they're treated like children. They're called children. What's going on when people do that? I'll tell you what's going on. There's a leak in the pipe. They're suppressing the truth and the desire for children.

And their desire to care for something is leaking out in the care of an animal. That's not going to heaven or hell because it doesn't have a soul. It's going to die and it's going to be buried. And you may cry if you were close to it, but your life will go on. And so this desire toward children is suppressed. And we've traded out children for animals. And so while we suppress it, we can't eradicate it. The Bible says in this passage that children are a reward. Do you think it's possible that there are rewards we don't want to receive because of the amount of work that they are? When you think of Bible times, what was it that was left as an inheritance from the father to the child? A name, a livelihood, I think, mostly. Land, animals, the ability to survive and to produce an income.

That was your inheritance. It wasn't a retirement account full of millions and millions of dollars. It was a bunch of work. A bunch of work that the son had spent years watching his father maintain and learning how to do it so that when dad died, the son was able to receive his inheritance and he was able to go to work and to pour his life out. I think many of us today would rather just get a big check. It's a whole bunch of money. So we can just spend and do what we want with it without any responsibilities to it. What happens when you get a big check? What happens when people win the lottery? They go bankrupt. 100% of the time, they go bankrupt. Because they haven't got a clue what to do with it. But we think that would be better. We don't want rewards that come with work. And children certainly are work. When you have children, how are they a reward to you? How are they a reward?

One way is that they keep your family line from going extinct. That's one way. I know Americans don't think that way, and it was strange, wasn't it, when Luis said, they give you a name. Because in America, we don't think about our names. But in other countries, they think about their names, and they think about their parents and their grandparents and the family land, and there's heritage. There's pride. In America, not so much. In modern America. They give us a name. They keep us. in existence. And for Christians, they allow us the ability to continue to build God's kingdom and to advance his gospel after we're gone. You remember Paul said in Corinthians, he says, I planted and Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. And then in Timothy, he says, Timothy, entrust these treasures, this mystery, to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

Why would he say things like that? Well, it's because he knew that he wasn't going to be there forever, but the work that he was engaged in needed to continue beyond his life. But we don't have this view of our families. We think our life is our life, and our kids' life is their life. And if their life is an inconvenience to our life, then their life won't exist. But at the end, we go extinct. And so the ability to raise up the next generation, to continue the work, of building God's kingdom, loving and serving and glorifying him, is just about the most Christian thing you can do with your life. If you refuse God's reward of children, you won't go without a reward. You'll swap children out for something else, and you will immediately start to seek something to replace it with. And that's what I want to talk about next, how we do that as a society. Our next text is Psalm 139, verses 13 to 16. It says, For you formed my inward parts.

You wove me in my mother's womb. I will give thanks to you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works and my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in secret and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth. Your eyes have seen my unformed substance and in your book were all written the days that were ordained for me when as yet there was not one of them. Now the greater context of this passage is suffering that David's enduring. And this section right here is sort of, he steps aside from his suffering and his sorrows and the depth of his trial. And he says, you'll be with me in my trials because you were with me when you made me in my mother's womb. And he compares his mother's womb to the deepest, darkest recess where no one but God could see and could work.

You remember the Bible says, in him there is no darkness, that he's able to go into the darkest, blackest recesses, and he's able to do his work, and that is exactly what he does in creating life. No one can see when or how, and so this text teaches us that God is the creator of life, that he sees us when we are still, as the passage says, an unformed substance. In our society, there's been a lot of discussion about when life begins. There's words that get thrown around, and I'll tell you, in arguments, arguments are not common today. Reasoned-out arguments where we actually work to understand how we're using words doesn't happen. Certainly doesn't happen much on social media. But we need to talk about how words are used and what we are meant by them. So historically, the idea of when life begins or conception, We're understood by everybody to be when the egg and the sperm come together and create a zygote. As soon as that happens, even though we don't know when that is, exactly, a woman can't say, it was yesterday at 2.35. She can get within a few days, probably, if they keep a good calendar and stuff, they might be able to say, we think it was last weekend.

But we can't say this is the day and this was the moment and this was when it happened. God can, but we can't. Up until about the mid-50s, 1950s, there was no question in our society or any other about this idea of when life began. Life began at conception, and conception was understood to be at fertilization. When does life happen now? It's still at conception. Our society will still say, it still happens at conception. The question is, what's conception mean? Conception used to mean, prior to the mid-60s, but I'll explain some of the history of it in a moment. Prior to the 1960s, it was understood to be a fertilization. In the mid-1960s, like 1965, the American College of Gynecologists, ACOG, changed the definition of conception from fertilization to implantation on the uterine wall.

Why'd they do that? After a long, long, long time, years and scores and decades and generations, why all of a sudden in the 1960s did they change it from fertilization to implantation? Well, here's why. Because in the 1950s in America, we started prescribing birth control. And the prescription of birth control, hormonal birth control, created a problem. Okay? Because the way that hormonal birth control works, whether we're talking about an IUD, a pill, a patch, an injection, they all work in three ways. And if you were to do a quick Google search, how does hormonal birth control work, the thing that will pop up right at the top is a list of three functions. The first one is, it will stop the woman from ovulating. No egg comes down. No egg comes down, no pregnancy.

The second way is it will keep the sperm from being able to get to the egg through thickening of the vaginal secretions. I know, no one wants me to talk about that, but the fact is you'll all go read it online in worse things. So shouldn't I say something about what you should know? This is what you should know. This is how it works. No egg. Keep the sperm from the egg. If those things don't happen, then the third function is that it will thin the lining of the uterine wall, such that the fertilized egg, is what they will call it now, can't implant on the wall of the uterus. So what happens? A woman's cycle just goes on like nothing happened. Just normal. It's like clockwork. There's no noticeable anything. Nothing's different. Why do they call it a fertilized egg?

Or maybe a better question is, what is a fertilized egg? This is the question that is under hot conflict in our society, is whether you should call that or consider that a baby. And this is why it's important for us to go back to the question of when does life begin? If it begins at fertilization, then what you have traveling down the fallopian tube and through the uterus is a human life. And if you take medication, to keep that human life from being sustained, then you have taken steps to kill that life. Now this is a very gnarly thing to say and a very hard thing to understand because there is none of us who haven't taken those medications, promoted those medications, or known people who are on them currently that we love. And it's untouchable in our society. You can't touch this because people are like, you're saying I've killed my baby, a baby of mine, and I'm saying I don't, I can't guarantee you have.

But I can tell you statistically, if you've been on them for a few years, depending on what type you're on, the statistics say it's possible. And most of us say we will not bear that. We cannot bear that. I'm pro-life. Is it a baby? I think the Bible teaches us that it is a baby. And I think the example of Elizabeth and Mary is the text that we go to. You remember that the angel comes to Mary and says to her, you're going to conceive. by the Holy Spirit. And she goes, how's this going to happen? She says, you're going to have a baby. How's it going to happen? The Holy Spirit's going to come, overpower you, and you're going to conceive and bear a son, and you should call his name Jesus. All of that's happening before she gets pregnant, right? And at the very end of that, what does the angel tell Mary? Elizabeth is pregnant. Now, who's Elizabeth? Yeah, she's Mary's cousin, right? Say again? Yeah, yeah, John the Baptist's mother. That's right.

Now, Elizabeth is old. She and her husband, Zechariah, past childbearing years, and God sends an angel to them, tells Zechariah, you're going to have a baby. Zechariah says, no way. Zechariah is judged for his, you know, for his faithlessness, but his wife conceives. And so Mary, at the tail end of being told she will become pregnant later, at some point, finds out her cousin, Elizabeth, is pregnant, about six months along. And then the Bible tells us that what Mary does is she goes in a hurry to go visit with Elizabeth because she's happy. And when she gets to meet with Elizabeth, and if you were to study it out, we can't pin down exactly how far away it is, but from all we can surmise from the Bible and history, it was probably somewhere around 80 miles. It was probably about a week-long journey for her to make it, okay? So if we do the math and we say, okay, she was told you'll get pregnant.

By the time she gets to Mary, which is, let's say, seven to ten days later, she is pregnant, and we know she's pregnant because when she meets Elizabeth, Elizabeth's baby, John, leaps in her womb at the presence of the Savior. So sometime between you're going to get pregnant when she leaves, and she arrives, seven to ten days is a long estimate, she gets pregnant, right? Now, why do I bring all this up? Well, I bring all this up to say, how long does it take a baby? From fertilization to implantation. About a week. About a week. It's very likely, though we can't know for, you know, I can't tell you exactly how long it is. The Bible is not, God hasn't given us that amount of clarity on this. But it's plausible and even likely that Jesus was not, was fully God, was fully man, was conceived, was traveling through his mother's fallopian tubes and uterus, even as his mother was traveling to her cousin.

And that John the Baptist reacted to his life, the Son of God, when Mary entered the room. Life begins at conception. And by conception, we mean fertilization. And that means that as Christians, it's incumbent on us that we do all we can to protect life in its very earliest, most vulnerable stages. When the death is undetectable, we take precautions. Some Christians would argue against this and they'd say, well, we do things that are risky all the time. And I'd say, you're right. We live in a world that is laden with risks. It's true. Our kids do things that are risky. One of my sons just came to me this last week and he says, I went over the handlebars of my bike. Again, it's not an uncommon thing. They go and ride on ramps and do things like risky. What's that? They don't have helmets.

I do have one. We've had discussions about getting helmets if we're going to continue over the handlebars way of riding bikes. But if you told me that I could send my kids to do something, and I could be assured that if I let them do it long enough, it will kill them, I would not send my kid to do it. I can send my kid. My son, Joseph, just got his learner's permit. He drives around sometimes with me in the car, right? And it's dangerous. And he drives around with me so I can teach him and I can train him so that at some point he can drive without me or Vanessa in the car. And that's dangerous. That's scary. He could die. He could kill somebody else. But most of us have driven for years and decades and none of us have died. Some of us have been injured and been in bad car accidents. But if I told you, if you put your kids in a car, they will die eventually. Statistically,

One of your children will die. Would you let your kids drive? I wouldn't let my kids. I'd be like, no, you're going to have to get somewhere some other way. You'll have to get an airplane because it's safer or something. You will not drive. That same logic applies here. That we as Christians must do what is necessary to protect the life of our children. The reason ACOG changed the definition of when life began in the mid-60s was because We started issuing out birth control, hormonal birth control in the 50s, and they realized we have a problem in people's perception. Well, what they realized, we have a problem, and if we change people's perception, we will do away with the problem. And so it's incumbent on us as Christians not to do things that put our children's lives at danger, at risk. There are other ways to prevent pregnancy that don't carry any of the risks of hormonal birth control. None of them.

I could talk a lot more about the details and the history of this, but I don't think that this is the right time for it. What I will tell you is the same thing I told you last week. You have to read Abortion in the Church, the document that our presbytery just released. It deals with this statistically with footnotes and builds the case for everything I've just said to you. And throughout it, time and again, it will say, this is overwhelming to us. Dear reader, dear Christian, Don't turn away from this. Pay attention to it. See how it works. And then extricate yourself from it. I'm happy to talk further about the details of it if you want. Very happy to. But what I will say to you by way of exhortation and warning is that if you're uncomfortable or disagree with what I'm saying and you refuse to read what I've just told you to read, then your lack of love and care for your children, the most vulnerable ones, is quite evident.

to me and it should be to you as well. And your lack of love for your unborn children will bear itself out in the lives of the children that you've decided to let live. And I choose my words carefully and that's exactly what I mean to say, is that you're treating the fruitfulness of your home like a faucet that you turn on and off at your desire and in the way in which you desire to do it without any regard for the life of your child. Loving and having children is a life-encompassing pursuit, and it is the very foundation of Christian faithfulness today. It will be your greatest witness, but only if you do it. Now, did I say you all have, have I said anything about you may not ever use contraception? Never said it. Never said that, okay? Happy to talk about it on a detailed...

Case by case, what do you think? It's the sort of question that would make all the sense in the world for you to talk to your pastor or pastor's wife or your elders or elders' wives about. It's awkward and weird. We'd never want to. Why? We love you. And we love your children. Why would you not talk to us? Well, because it's embarrassing. It's about sex. We know. We all have kids. I think that fruitfulness, fecundity. is the thing that in the years and decades to come will be the thing that distinguishes Christians from unbelievers more so than anything else. More so than their political commitments, more so than their love for the Constitution, more so than their wealth or their suffering or anything else. Their desire for and their pursuit of fruitfulness will be the thing that sets them apart.

The unbelievers can be very honest. The ones I've talked to and read are very honest. I don't want to have kids because they're expensive and they're an inconvenience and I want to do what I want to do. It's time and again the sentiment of what they say. And if something slips through the cracks, that's what we need abortion for. And so many of you are young. You're in the beginning of your childbearing years. You've just gotten married. And you look out and you say, I could end up with half a dozen or more kids. Good. Good. It's the Lord that opens and closes wombs. It's the Lord who blesses and who gives. And I realize that saying this, there are those among you who will very much desire and not be able to have the children that you would like. As I say this, I realize there are those of you who've given yourself to this pursuit and what the Lord's given you is sorrow and grief through miscarriage and through barrenness.

And I realize that it's painful for me to put my finger in the spot and say, this is important. There's others among us who are going, I don't know if we can have more. I don't know if my wife's body can sustain it. These are the things you should talk to your pastors and elders about. I realize everything I've just said is represented in this room. And I don't mean to put any inappropriate pressure on you to be unwise. with regard to childbearing. But I do mean to put pressure on you to say if you do love children, you had better do everything you can to protect the lives of the ones most directly under your care. That I do want you to feel the pressure of. Because it is your work. The final thing I'll say to you from Proverbs 21 verse 1 harkens back to last week's sermon somewhat. It gives us a little bit of hope for the future. Proverbs 21 verse 1 says,

is like channels of water in the hand of the Lord. He, the Lord, turns it wherever he wishes. I think part of the reason that we despise authority so much in our society is that we think that there is no check and balance for it. That it's just free to roam with no limits. That is not true. That is not true. You have, as an example, Donald Trump being the king of our land. being the primary instrument that God used by appointing justices to overturn Roe. None of us could have written that story. But God in his mercy did. And so we ought not to simply look in the rearview mirror and say, praise God. We ought to look into the future and say, praise God. We need you to take the king's heart and we need you to turn it. And you'll pursue that or the governor or the city council.

or the state legislature. And there's at least two ways you can pursue that. The first is that you should pray that God would do this. The second thing you should realize is that with Roe being overturned, it's up to the people who meet just a few miles from here and who are meeting on Wednesday to talk about this, to decide what will be done in our society. Do I think they're going to hit a home run? Nope. I have no confidence that our Indiana state legislature is going to hit a home run. Here's what a home run would look like. No abortions. I think they'll say that, but I don't think they'll mean by it what I want them to mean by it. What I want them to do, what I would love our legislature to do, is outlaw hormonal birth control and no longer make it legal. Now, I know, I just grew a second head by saying that.

But you do realize that our parents were all born when that was the state of things in our society. It's not so far-fetched that it would be such government oppression and overreach for them to do things like that in the interest of protecting life. I don't expect that they will do that. I expect that we'll end up with heartbeat legislation or that we'll end up with a certain week or time frame. But even without those laws coming into place, what you need to realize is the prevalence of hormonal birth control paired together with abortions, especially in the first trimester, being caused, done medically, it's a chemical or medical, it's a pill. Here's a pill. Here's another pill. You do it at home. You take the pills at home. You pass the baby at home. No one's the wiser. How do we get our legislators to care?

about that. Are they going to turn the hearts of the fathers back to their children? No, that's the Lord's work, which is another way of saying that's our work. But we should have an interest in teaching and in helping and in strengthening those who can do their part to do their part. You and I, we can't overturn Roe. We're not the Supreme Court. You and I, we can't write laws because we're not part of the Indiana legislature. But we are the constituents of Indiana. And I have a friend, a dear friend of mine, down in Louisville, who a couple of years ago was very involved with the governor's office down there in Kentucky and helped put pressure and educate and everything to get their trigger laws in place that now have shut down the abortion, the one abortion clinic in Louisville. And there wasn't droves and droves and droves of people. There was a couple of faithful men.

who went and who ministered and who taught and who instructed their governor, their legislature. And that's our work. That really is our work now. We can't hide, but we can say, oh, well, the politicians have been hiding behind Roe. And I'm saying, well, there's probably truth to that. But my question is, have we been hiding behind Roe? Or will we continue to hide behind and say, well, there's nothing for me to do? No, there is. There really, really is. Now more than ever, you should know what the commitments of your legislators are. Now in the Republican primary where there's two candidates running, you should know what their commitments are and what they will do on this issue now that Roe's overturned. And you should vote for the one who's going to do the right thing. That's what you should do. And if your guy doesn't win, you should go meet the guy who did win and you should teach him and talk to him and help him and strengthen his knees so that he can stand up. Because the only path...

Forward is not, I got to get my guy and everything's got to fall in place. Donald Trump is a perfect example of how we didn't get what we thought and what we wanted. This wasn't the game plan, but we got the result. So when the rhino Republican wins and you're like, oh, he's this and that and the other. If what you do is throw your hands up in the air and say, oh, he's this and that and the other, and then you just go back to your own life, you're no better than him. And you're doing no more for the babies in our city than he is. A vocal minority can have a huge impact.

on the laws governing the majority. That's religious oppression. I wouldn't say it's oppression, but it certainly is religious. And yes, yes, when the righteous reign, the people are glad. A rising tide raises all ships. Some people would prefer to sink and drown, but they're fools. And it would be good for us to say, I don't want you to die. And I don't want your kids to die. And so, yeah, I'm going to do that. I want things that are objectively good for all of us. even if it requires that we have to say no to some of our desires, some of our impulses, some of our wealth, some of our time. So what is the work for us to do going forward? Get married. Have children. More than two if you can. Trust God. You will be scared when you have your first child. You'll be scared when you get pregnant.

You'll be scared when you feel the baby move. You'll be scared when you have the baby. You'll be scared when they kneel and when they stand and when they walk and when they ride their bikes and when they climb trees and when they play sports and when they drive and when they graduate. It takes faith from the beginning to the end. And then you have to do it again with grandkids, Lord willing. It takes faith, but it also takes conviction, that you would actually have a conviction about these things. And not just like, well, you know, it's just what all the people at church do. If that's your conviction, I can tell you, when your kids get to be like two or three years old, that conviction will be evident because your kids will be miserable. And you'll know it, and so will we. Get married. Have children. Train them up in the Lord. And you know the work that you do? If you do that work, the fruit of it, God will see. You probably won't. But you will have made your...

you will have placed your stone in the work that God's doing and said, you know, here's what I have to build, to contribute to the building of God's kingdom. And it was being built long before I came around and it'll be built, continue to being built long after I'm gone. Here's my contribution to it. Here are my children. Here's the instruction that they've received. Get married, have children, train them up with faith and conviction. and petition your rulers, your leaders, to do their job in the fear of God. It's very easy to look at them and just say, oh, stupid politicians, they know better. I don't know that they know better. I don't know that many in our society know better. There is a need for teaching and instruction and warning and encouragement. If they feel the pressure, yes. Yeah.

I do very much believe that we have the leaders that we want collectively. And any one of us can say, not me. And I say, yeah, but you're, listen, you're a part of us. And we have who we want leading us. And if all we do is complain about it, then we will continue to have what we want. We'll reap what we sow. Our God is a faithful God, a loving God, a merciful God. He loves life and he's fruitful and we should be too. Things that you have to sacrifice, in pursuit of that end, I exhort you, sacrifice them. God is no man's debtor. Let's pray.