Fruitfulness and Parenting
Notes
Transcript
Intro
Intro
What does changing a diaper have to do with the Glory of God?
What do labor pains have to do with the Great Commission?
Do those questions seem strange?
As American Christians:
We have a strong sense that “family” is important…
But if you poke us about it… why?
The Bible has a very particular story to tell about “family”—gives us:
Not just a sense of the importance of family
But why family is important
Also what it means to do family to God’s glory…
We’re going to do something different this morning…
Not staying in one passage, but about three…
With reference to others…
God’s Design for Fruitfulness
God’s Design for Fruitfulness
Story begins in Genesis:
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
28 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 heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
To be human is to bear God’s image—what does that mean?
Can talk about: bringing glory to God/relating to each other = the purpose/the way in which imaging is done...
The job itself—image God by:
Subduing the earth (i.e. reigning over it, reflecting God’s sovereign reign)
Being fruitful and filling the earth (i.e. procreating, reflecting God’s act of creation)
To be human is to bear God’s image—part of imaging God is being fruitful!
This is the foundation of human family life—fruitfulness is part of how God has designed us to live as human beings/part of how we image God!
Filling creation with little image bearers.
Now some of you are about to zone out/others feeling uncomfortable:
Feeling uncomfortable b/c your attitude toward children has been shaped more by culture than by Scripture…
Sounds like I just said that, if you’re single or unable to have kids, you’re not living out a full human life, fully imaging God…
If being fruitful and multiplying is part of what it means to be human… where do you fit in?
A very satisfying answer to that question is coming…
Zoning out b/c you don’t have kids or they’ve all left the home
You’re still a member of the family of God… God may call upon you to give some encouragement to a young, struggling parent… pay attention so that you’ll know what to say!
Grasping the Bible’s story of “family” will give you a deeper grasp on the gospel itself...
The Curse and the Promise in Fruitfulness
The Curse and the Promise in Fruitfulness
Beginning of the story was “being created to be fruitful”
What happens next?
Things get bad fast:
Eve listens to the Serpent and believes him instead of God
Adam and Eve rebel against God and eat the fruit
Whole human race cast into sin and darkness
God confronts/curses Serpent/Eve/Adam
As part of the curse:
15 I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”
16 To the woman he said,
“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be contrary to your husband,
but he shall rule over you.”
Strife: as a result of sin, children are born into relational strife: “Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.”
Mothers dominating and dishonoring fathers
Fathers oppressing and dehumanizing mothers
Children are born into a context of selfishness and pride...
Pain and suffering: the word translated “pain” in Genesis 3:16 has the sense of difficult, painful work
Applies to actual childbirth
But implies sorrow in the raising of children as well
So—fruitfulness is part of what it means to image God
Yet—fruitfulness is now carried out in the context of relational strife, pain, and sorrow
War: (vs. 15) the offspring of the Woman and the offspring of the Serpent will be bitter enemies...
Cain vs. Able
The Jerusalem crowd that wanted to kill Jesus...
Salvation: the offspring of the Woman would one day be wounded, while crushing the head of the Serpent
A child, born of a woman, would one day come to destroy the works of the devil
In other words, salvation would come to the world through childbirth
This is why Adam reacts to all of this by naming his wife, Eve (meaning, ‘life’)—he recognized that she was the mother of all living (Gen. 3:20).
So, context of childbirth and parenting is:
relational strife
pain and sorrow
spiritual warfare
salvation
***the womb is a weapon!***
This all has something crucial to say to us about the sorrows of being a parent:
Postpartum depression
Infertility
Miscarriage
Wayward children
Fatalities in childbirth
Maybe we need less books on how to have the perfect Christian family, and more books on how to trust the Lord in childbearing and parenting.
Fruitfulness and the Covenant
Fruitfulness and the Covenant
***I promise I’m not trying to scare off the singles from getting married and having kids***
The value of having kids is unfolded as the promise made to Eve becomes the covenant made with Abraham:
4 “Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. 5 No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. 6 I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you. 7 And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.
This promise is carried through Isaac and Jacob, whose twelve sons settle in Egypt.
People of Israel increase and multiplied in Egypt (Exod. 1:7)
Pharaoh not happy, makes war against Israelite babies/offspring of the woman...
What role is Pharaoh taking here… ?
God redeems Israel from Egypt, establishes covenant w/ Israel through Moses (partly an extension of covenant w/ Abraham)
***What role does family play in this?***
7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.
The family is a central way by which the truth of the covenant is to be passed on to the next generation
Spoiler alert: it’s the same for us, members of the New Covenant.
So what does this look like?
“teach them diligently” is translated from a word that has the sense of “repeat them”—teaching by repetition
Kids don’t need to hear about the glory of God, etc. just once
There may also be a sense of depth here—as you repeat it, you chew on it/consider it from different angles/teach your children that there is a depth/richness to the Word.
When? Sitting in your house, traveling, going to bed, getting up…
Often! (convicting)
How often do I pass by a moment…
In reaction…
Sin: confront with both law and gospel
Planned: family discipleship
Hard to read Deut. 6:7 and not think that at least some of this covenant instruction was do be done regularly (vs. in reaction)
How should it look? A bajilion ways to skin a cat… advice:
If there’s a believing father in the home, it’s his responsibility to lead this…
Mom, if you’re alone, God’s grace is sufficient…
Read the word/pray… singing later…
Don’t over-complicate it…
Don’t be ashamed to ask for help…
Stakes are high:
Can you think of anything else which accompanies your family “when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when rise”?
School, friends, books
Screens: podcasts, social media algorithms, political pundits, etc.
You as a parent have a unique door into your child’s heart—but you must use it diligently…
And this kind of family spirituality is not optional—it is commanded
Only one small problem will all of this… it didn’t work.
The Failure of Fruitfulness
The Failure of Fruitfulness
The wisest king that Israel had—Solomon—was such a bad father that his son’s foolishness split the kingdom in two...
Things generally devolved from there...
A couple hundred years later, Hosea prophesied this against the Northern Kingdom:
12 The iniquity of Ephraim is bound up;
his sin is kept in store.
13 The pangs of childbirth come for him,
but he is an unwise son,
for at the right time he does not present himself
at the opening of the womb.
***What’s going on here?***
Israel was the offspring of the Woman/line of promise/people of God
In a sense, their work was supposed to be making war against the Serpent and crushing his head:
By obeying God’s law
By worshiping God rightly
Essentially, by succeeding where Adam failed...
Israel (called Ephraim here) was supposed to be “born” into his role as the Serpent-crusher
His failure is a failure to be fruitful, in the fullest sense of the word:
A failure to produce and be the offspring of the woman who would turn back the work of Satan and restore all things.
Using their fertility to worship idols/conceiving children as part of ritual worship to Ba’al
Seeking fertility/fruitfulness wombs from Ba’al instead of the Lord.
Participating in child sacrifice…
In doing all of this, Israel had become like a stillborn child…
Israel’s sin accumulated, until finally God’s justice reached a tipping point, and he stopped protecting them from the nations around...
If you keep reading in that passage in Hosea, what is depicted is the utter end of fruitfulness:
God permitted the wicked Assyrians (remember Ninevah?) to destroy the Northern Kingdom (Jonah’s homeland)
It was gruesome and terrifying… but:
Because Israel disregarded its place as the offspring of the women/children of the promise
Because Israel abused its fruitfulness
Its fruitfulness came to a horrific end…
That was the Northern Kingdom… Southern Kingdom failed just a couple generations later...
Perhaps it seemed, at that time, that the promise of God for a child of the Woman to crush the snake had also failed
Are we any better?
How are we going to do well where Israel failed?
The Promised Child, The Fruitful One
The Promised Child, The Fruitful One
***That was the story’s low point***
Need to hear that to grasp the grace of what comes next:
1 And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. 2 She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. 3 And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems. 4 His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it. 5 She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne,
Who is the woman?
Crown with twelve stars: matches 12 tribes of Israel and 12 apostles…
Woman = the people of God/line of promise
Why is she in labor?
Represents the agonizing battle of the offspring of Eve to finally produce the One who would crush the Serpent…
Finally, the Messiah is about to arrive on the scene
Who is the dragon?
The word translated “dragon” here is connected to the word translated “serpent” in Genesis
Seven heads/ten horns/seven crowns = power/king of the domain of darkness
What is he doing?
Trying to devour the promised Child, just like he devoured Adam and Israel with sin
What happened?
The dragon failed!
The Child, Jesus, defeated the dragon by dying on the cross
Therefore, he was caught up into heaven in triumph
He will return to rule the nations with a rod of iron and finally and fully undue the works of the devil.
***from another angle***
Our fruitfulness and our families failed
But God himself, God the Son, became one of us and died—in a sense—to restore true fruitfulness to the human race
Jesus himself is the Fruitful One!
10 Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him;
he has put him to grief;
when his soul makes an offering for guilt,
he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;
the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
Or again,
24 Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
***What is this telling us about true fruitfulness?***
Fruitfulness in God’s eyes certainly includes making babies, but it is also much more than that.
Fruitfulness, in Genesis 1, was about filling the earth with image bearers to the glory of God
But the image of God in humans has been badly vandalized by sin
So, true fruitfulness is raising up more image bearers of God, but whose hearts are turned to God in faith and worship, and who therefore image him rightly to the glory of his name.
***For Christian parents, biblical fruitfulness means raising up children, working and hoping and praying for the image of God to be restored in them through faith in Jesus Christ***
Parents: this takes you right out of the driver’s seat and places you squarely in the category of “instrument”. We cannot make our children follow Christ. But we can be diligent to make ourselves available to God to be his instruments in their lives.
An aside: This also makes sense of Christian singleness. How can a single person be fruitful? B/c as they labor in evangelism and discipleship, they are being used toward the restoration of the image of God in others… you are causing the earth to be filled with restored image-bearers of God… spiritual fruitfulness. And not just the single person, but also the empty nester, the barren womb, the eunuch, the de-transitioning (formerly) transgender believer, the same sex attracted believer…
The New Covenant Home: A Place of Spiritual Fruitfulness
The New Covenant Home: A Place of Spiritual Fruitfulness
With all this in mind, read with fresh eyes:
1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), 3 “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.” 4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
Kids, there is a word to you here:
God commands you to obey your parents
But not just any kind of obedience will do
“Obey your parents in the Lord”
“In the Lord” means:
Put your faith in Christ, who stands ready to wash away your sins of disobedience
The Holy Spirit will then live in you, and help you learn to obey
What happens if you obey in this way?
You’ll be prepared to do God’s work of preaching the gospel to the nations.
Fathers, there’s a special word for us here (though the spirit of it applies to mothers also)
Do not provoke your children to anger… what?
By disciplining them for your own selfish reasons…
By teaching them God’s law without God’s grace…
By pushing them harder than they can bear…
By disciplining them in anger…
By idolizing their success so that they carry the weight of your approval/disapproval on their shoulders…
Bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord
Just another way to say what we saw in Deuteronomy…
We are to be channels of the Word of God, teaching our children about:
God’s glorious character
his good law
their sinful hearts and need for grace
his perfect grace, found in Jesus Christ
(so when you discipline them, you don’t just tell them what they did wrong, but you remind them of the grace of the cross)
Concluding Thoughts
Concluding Thoughts
You can’t save your children
You aren’t commanded to save your children
You are commanded to be faithful parents:
Channels of the Word
Displays of God’s goodness in your character
Helpful tips?
Match discipline with love
Practice family discipleship
Get help when you need it
Be ready to confess your sins to your kids when you sin against them
You will fail, many times. Confess your failure to God and rest in his grace as you strive to be faithful.
Entrust yourself to the Lord in your labor as a parent, and leave the results to him.
Don’t put your hope in your family, but in the Lord Jesus, the Fruitful One:
Who by his death on our behalf has redeemed us and is restoring the broken image of God in us
Who, when we labor as parents, works along side us with much greater power through the Spirit
Parenting is a critical part of a greater work—the work of preaching the gospel to all nations. As we labor in it, let us look to Jesus and trust him.