Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

Psalm 127. Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh, but in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows, for so he giveth his beloved sleep. Lo children are inherited to the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man, so are children of the youth.

Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them. They shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate. Children may be dismissed now to go down to their Sabbath school. The younger ones with their parents willing.

Seems like my topics are a little out of sync these days. They had a good object lesson this morning. I guess I don’t know if it actually occurred or not. They had planned to blow up a building in Portland this morning. That would have been a real nice object lesson for last week’s talk “Shaking the Nations.” You know, the purpose of tearing down a building like that and moving the rubble is so that a new work might be built or something better might be put in its place. And so the shaking comes upon our nation. We talked about last week. The important thing to remember from last week’s talk is that it’s God’s hand at work removing the old rubble and the old abandoned forms as it were that his church might shine forth gloriously again in this land.

I think we’re going to be moving on to the book of Micah in 3 weeks. This morning we’re going to be talking about conception, or contraception rather—a biblical perspective on contraception. Next week, we’ll be talking about what the scriptures have to say about the subject of divorce. And then after that, we’ll be talking about the tension that exists in the scriptures as a result of being a true picture of our world in the world today between natural families and a spiritual family in the church. These will be the final three talks in the series of talks going through the responsibilities relative to the husband and wife and then limitations of the family that we’re talking about.

Now, I mentioned a great skipper last Sunday after someone’s house, but I might be going to the book of Micah after these three talks. And I mentioned what the next three talks were. And he said, “Well, that’s if we still have a church after those three talks.” These are controversial subjects. And what we want to do hopefully is provide some food for thought out there. We’re not going to be giving the final word on any of this stuff. But we are going to try to look at the scriptures very closely to see what the biblical teaching is on these three subjects.

We actually began a series of four of these talks a couple weeks ago with a talk on childbearing. I just bring that up briefly to mention that I mentioned in uh where talks from the problems about training the child the way he should go—that word train has the idea to consecrate or to initiate. I mentioned that very few commentators had mentioned that. If they did they just mentioned in passing and didn’t really develop it. A hard over one night who pointed out that Rushdoony’s Philosophy of the Christian Curriculum on page 28 has a paragraph or two about that very thing—that word means to initiate or consecrate—and he develops that a little bit in that book. And so that made me feel a lot better.

Whenever you come up with something and an emphasis on a particular passage that you don’t see a lot of commentators speaking about, you get a little bit nervous. So I was kind of relieved to see Rushdoony bring that out. And I think that it’s important to remember that as we consider that verse. We said at that time that while it’s true that no false child rearing is manifestly unbiblical, in that it rejects the clear responsibilities the parents have to train up their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord, nevertheless, we can see no ironclad promises from God’s word that if we do our jobs correctly, we are assured of the salvation of our children.

We can and should presuppose their moment of participation in the life of faith, but no guarantees are given. Rather, the very act of baptism in the Old Testament—for baptism, circumcision—is given at least in part to remind us that we might forswear all beliefs that regeneration can be achieved through generation or through the acts of man.

This morning we’ll move on to contraception. And I would just remind you again that this is a controversial topic. There are probably going to be different opinions, different shades of opinions within our church even. And what we want to do is look at some biblical reasoning from the scriptures relative to this topic to see if we can get a little bit better overall picture of what the scriptures say. But I guess I just remind you again as I said a couple of weeks ago, we don’t want to be sophomoric. We don’t want to take a little bit of scriptures that we get this morning, a little bit of thinking it through, and think we’ve arrived now at a final position in terms of the Christian and the need for childbearing. We’re just going to scratch the surface.

I’d also mention at the outset that there are several—there are very few books on the subject of any value. But there are several papers that have been given to me and I’ve accumulated over the last couple of weeks that I’ll just mention now. One is by Jeffrey J. Meyers written at Covenant Theological Seminary this last year entitled “Does the Bible Forbid Family Planning?” That’s a good paper. There is a master’s thesis written by Samuel Owen at Western Conservative Baptist Seminary in the last couple of years. Mark McConnell has written a paper on contraception—maybe one or two of them. It would be good reading for you. Another paper that I have, and all these I bring up so that if you want to do further study on your own, you can borrow these from myself or other men of the church who have these papers.

There, like I said, there just isn’t much material out there. Another paper is written by Philip Kaiser three years ago called “Birth Control Isn’t Biblical.” And that’s the extent of the papers that I consulted doing this research as well as a few books that aren’t really particularly helpful. And I would mention those also to point out that some of the things I’m going to talk with you about are contained in those papers, that they’re not original with me, and I won’t want to take the time to reference all the citations as we go through. I want to give those people credit now for helping me think through this stuff.

Now the first point we’re outlining is the context of the discussion. Remember these are—this is the same point we had a couple weeks ago when we talked about childbearing and whether or not we can be assured of Christian children as we raise our children according to God’s instructions. We talked about the context being in Psalm 127. First of all, God’s sovereignty. Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh, but in vain. It’s vain for you to rise up early. The scriptures say, for so he giveth his beloved sleep.

And we said before that verse has the indication that he giveth to his beloved, as it were, while they sleep. In other words, that even in a totally passive almost death-like position that we assume when we sleep—total lack of control over our lives—still God’s sovereignty is stressed in giving us the blessings that we seek when we do our work unto him. And so, in three different verses there, three different occurrences in those first two verses rather, the sovereignty of God is stressed. And that’s very important to understand. We’ll talk, we’ll reference back to that toward the end of our talk this morning relative to contraception and biblical childbearing. But these verses also, I think, talk about—and this is the other side of the coin—as we’re talking about man’s responsibility.

After all, these verses aren’t saying not to labor to build the house, meaning we must labor. We must labor in God, or we labor in vain. We must labor. It’s not that Psalm 127 doesn’t tell us not to watch the city. Many verses in scripture tell us they have specific responsibilities in terms of guarding. The watchman is supposed to keep awake and to watch, but unless he does it in the Lord, he does it in vain. It’s certainly not a bad thing to rise up early and get to work early and get working on the day’s tasks that God has stretched out before us, but it’s wrong to do that in vain—to do that if we don’t do it realizing that God is the one who provides blessings.

And so, man’s responsibility is the flip side of the coin that’s talked about in Psalm 127. Certainly, God’s sovereignty is stressed, but also there are specific references to our responsibility in terms of action as well. And then the third point of the basic context of our discussion this morning is that children belong to God. Verse three: “No children are the heritage, are the heritage of the Lord and the fruit of the womb is his reward.” God is the one who owns children, not the state, not the church, not the family. Children are God’s possessions. God puts those children in the stewardship of families for training and for bringing up in the faith. But we must remember that children are God’s inheritance. Okay? Children are God’s reward. That’s general the context of our discussion.

Now, specifically what I want to talk about this morning is this particular thesis: The Christian parent should make no effort to prevent conception. Okay? The Christian parent should make no effort to prevent conception. To this basic thesis, someone would add a corollary that we should indeed attempt to have as many children as is physically possible. Not all people would put that second corollary on, but many would who hold the first position.

Now, before we get to talking about this, I want a general disclaimer here. Obviously, if you’ve been in this church any length of time, you know that we don’t count abortion as acceptable and that we are specifically commanded in our covenant statement to actively work to oppose abortion. Any form of contraception or birth control that includes destruction of the fertilized egg—the child, in other words, that is not developing in the womb of the mother—is manifestly unbiblical. Well, that’s not into consideration this morning. We’re not going to talk a lot about methods. We’re going to talk about whether or not any effort—I suppose, one way to think of it—any effort to either space children or to plan the number of children that we have. Are any of those efforts biblical or acceptable according to the scriptures?

Mark McConnell makes a good point in the paper that he wrote also relative to mutilation—that there are prohibitions in the scriptures against mutilation of one’s body and some forms of birth control also would have to take those specific prohibitions in God’s law very seriously in terms of applying it to what they’re doing to achieve control over one’s offspring. I am also not talking this morning about deliberate barrenness—no children, in other words. We’re talking about the basic thesis: Should a Christian parent space or plan the number of children that they have?

Now, the reason this is an issue—I suppose—and several people over the last three or four years have asked me to talk about this, so it seemed appropriate now to do it. One of the reasons we have this issue is that Mary Pride in her book The Way Home is a proponent of the thesis that I just read—that the Christian parent should make no effort to prevent conception—and even insinuates that she accepts the corollary as well that we should attempt to have as many children as possible.

For instance, on page 26 of her book she says this: “All forms of sex that shy away from marital fruitfulness are perverted.” All forms of sex that shy away from marital fruitfulness are perverted. Now the context of that remark goes on to talk about activities that most of us would indeed regard as perverted. But the problem with that statement is that she then places any attempt to space women children in the context of all these other things that are perverted—that are perversions before God in detestable form. She takes a very strong statement.

In other words, again on page 76, she says that limiting—and by limiting she’s talking about limiting the number of children that we plan to have to four, six, or I suppose even 12. Any form of limiting, in other words, separates sex from reproduction. Okay. And by her earlier statement then that all forms of sex that shy away from marital fruitfulness are perverted, I would assume that she believes that limiting is also perverted in that sense. She goes on to say that limiting separates sex from reproduction and encourages an anti-motherhood attitude. Okay. So she’s quite strong in condemning limiting of children.

On page 77 of the book, she also refers to spacing of children—just, you know, try to get your children a year or two or three years apart, whatever you want to do—the spacing approach. He says on page 77: “Spacing is the attempt to usurp God’s sovereignty by self-crafting one’s family.” I offer those quotes to just again point out that we don’t want to attack a straw man position here. What we want to do is consider the position that a person that we all know, respect, and probably all of us have gleaned a great deal of good information from. We want to examine what her position actually is. And that’s why I quote the book.

I’d also reference now, and I’ll say it again, later probably several times that obviously many of—most of us in this church, probably all of us—think that her book was an excellent corrective to the tremendous problems in our society relative to the role of women. And so we’re taking one little position here of her book—although it’s probably not a little position—but it’s one that people in our church have read, been exposed to, and want more teaching on to see if this is correct or not. That’s what we’re going to try to do this morning. But again, the context of all this is that Mary Pride has done a great thing in writing her books. It’s a very healthy corrective, and overall her book is a fine book to read and to have and to recommend to others. Okay.

There are various reasons posited for the thesis that we’re going to consider this morning, and I will attempt to address most of the major arguments that I’ve read or come across that have been put forth against contraception. There are some rabbinic arguments against contraception which I will not take the time to talk about because they’re fairly goofy. If you’ve ever done any writing or reading of rabbinic commentaries, you’ll understand what I meant by that remark. But they go to an awful lot of detailed analysis. It’s interesting to note that the Jewish rabbis are consistently anti-contraception. Almost—there are very few exceptions they would allow contraception to be used for.

And if anybody has spent time trying to come up with good biblical reasons against contraception, the rabbis have for thousands of years literally. And we’ll mention this later, but I’ll mention it now that basically the only their basic line of reasoning has to go back to Maimonides, who said that there is no specific biblical text to specifically deny contraception, but any couple of minutes—but some of these arguments come from them. Most of these arguments should be the major arguments posited by people who believe that contraception is always wrong.

First of all, we have the story of Onan in Genesis 38:8 and 9. You might put a piece of paper there or something to go back to these considerations to look at them a little bit deeper. But first, I just want to go through the basic reasoning behind people who believe that contraception is always wrong.

Genesis 38, verses 8 and 9 says the following. Well, let’s see. Let’s start at verse 6. “Judah took a wife for his firstborn whose name was Onan. And Judah’s firstborn was wicked in the sight of the Lord and the Lord slew him.” Okay. So you have Onan and Tamar here married and Onan is slain by God. So Tamar is now without a husband and without offspring.

Verse 8: “Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother’s wife and marry her and raise up seed to thy brother.” This is referred to as the levirate, from the Hebrew word for brother.

Verse 9: “And Onan knew that the seed should not be his. And it came to pass when he went in unto his brother’s wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest he should give seed to his brother.”

Verse 10: “The thing which he did displeased the Lord, wherefore he slew him also.”

Okay. So the reasoning here is that we have a specific instance—the only one that people can clearly point to—of an attempt to prevent conception, to prevent children as a result of the conjugal relationship of husband and wife. And the direct thing that God does in relationship to that is to execute the one who does such a thing. And so the reasoning is that here we have a specific biblical example that could then be produced as case law in relationship to it that says that contraception is punished by God with the death penalty. Okay.

A second line of reasoning to support the thesis is that the destruction of seed is the destruction of life. The idea is that the sperm of a man is life in God. And to destroy seed is to destroy life itself. And of course, destruction of life would be a specific violation of the commandment against not murdering.

A third line of reasoning is that the very purpose of marriage itself is procreation. Mary on page 20 of the book says, “The biblical reason for marriage is to produce fruit for God.” Point blank statement. The reason for marriage is produce fruit for God. Page 22, she says “We’re both all models of marriage about one little ingredient that makes marriage different from all other human relationships: children.” And so on the basis of that statement, if there are no children, then the marriage is not different from all other human relationships.

Page 23 of the book, she says that “children are the essential fruit of marriage, not accidental side effects—essential fruit of marriage.” Page 31: “Marriage is more than just a man and a woman. Okay? Marriage is a family, a husband, for the wife and all the sweet little children God gives them.” And so Mary obviously believes that the very—the basic purpose—the most essential purpose of marriage is procreation. And of course if one accepts that the purpose of marriage is procreation then any attempt to reduce procreation would be against the purpose of marriage. That’s how the reasoning goes.

Samuel Owen, whose master’s thesis from Western Baptist Seminary I mentioned earlier, also uses this as his basic reason to avoid contraception—that the purpose of marriage is procreation primarily. As a result, the primary purpose for conjugal relationships—that is, also seen as procreation. Now he quotes from Packer Hughes’s book Christian Ethics in a Secular Society saying the following: “Sex without reproduction is subversion of the primary purpose of sex. Sex merely for the pleasure of the individual is the perversion of sex to selfish and licentious ends which will soon fall in surfeit and disgust.” Okay. So that’s one big reason. The whole purpose of marriage and the purpose of marital relationships between man and wife is to produce children.

A fourth line of reasoning is that children are blessings. It’s from Psalm 127 we read earlier. You know that happy is the man who has his quiver full. Children are a blessing from God. Psalm 128 makes that point as well. The reasoning there is that if children are a blessing, and that the more children we have, the more blessing we have—that to reduce the number of blessings we get from God is sin. Okay. That’s the reasoning. Owen again in his master’s thesis at Western Baptist says that if children are a blessing why don’t we want to have them? A specific question he says that should be asked of anybody looking at contraception: if children are a blessing why don’t we want to have them? Okay. So the idea is children are blessing; therefore any attempt to prevent conception or attempts to limit offspring is wrong.

The fifth line of reasoning is that multiplying is specifically commanded of God in Genesis 1:28. God creates man and wife and he says to them, “to be fruitful and to multiply and fill the earth.” And the idea is there that if it’s a specific command of God, then we better do it.

And finally, the sixth line of reasoning is that there’s an untenable antithesis posited to the thesis that one should always try to have as many children as possible or at least should not attempt to avoid having children or spacing them. The untenable antithesis put forward is that when man engages in contraception, he usurps God’s authority and sovereignty. And the reason you’ll read in paper after paper—these ones that I’ve read and written and read rather—and the other ones that they quote, you’ll read continually that if God opens the womb and closes the womb, okay? God closes the womb and so we’re to leave the determination of an open and closed womb to him, anybody practicing contraception then is not trusting God and is guilty of unbelief and lack of faith.

Mary Pride uses this argument quite frequently. On page 78 she says specifically, “Let God plan your family.” And if you read the book you’ll note that’s a big point of her reasoning. Owen in his paper again quotes Gangelo favorably saying, “Man may talk about action and birth control but it is clear that God is in control of fertility.” Owen goes on to say then based upon this quote: “Thus the tenor of scripture is that the presence or absence of children in a marriage and how many are present is to be under the sovereign control of God.” Okay.

So we have there the idea that God is sovereign over the world. Then he asks the specific question in the thesis: Can we not trust a sovereign, good, wise God, to give us the right number of children, if any, at the right time? Applying, of course, if you practice contraception or spacing, you’re not trusting God. Then he asks the question: Whose job is it really to determine the size of the quiver? Obviously, the expected response is: It’s God’s choice. It’s God’s job, not ours.

This position accuses anybody who would take the negative side of the question of moving from a god-centered to a man-centered position relative to childbearing. Okay, so let’s sum up these six arguments that are put forward in opposition to spacing or limiting the number of children we have by a self-conscious effort.

We seem to have a good biblical example of anti-contraceptive law in the scripture supported by the destruction of life that would accompany any method to deter contraception. We have the very purpose of marriage itself told us as procreation and the obvious statement that the blessings of the product of procreation are indeed great for us to manifest from God. And who would want to limit the blessings that children are to us? Additionally, we have a specific positive command to multiply. And finally, it appears that anyone who wishes to use contraceptive techniques—and by the way, even that term, of course, rather puts us off, doesn’t it? Contraceptive techniques is rather a disgusting term. We start thinking about what we’re talking about here. The very term becomes medical and of the almost it almost runs into the jargon of the—anyone who wants to use contraceptive techniques, it says, seems to have moved to will worship instead of trusting in a sovereign maker and creator who opens and closes wombs.

It sounds like a pretty convincing argument, but let’s just wait a minute before we jump to conclusions. Let’s go back over these six propositions and look at them more in depth to see if they’re as airtight as they appear to be once you string them all together like that. Let’s examine the six arguments with a closer look at the biblical and practical implications of them in some detail—problems with the thesis.

Then first of all, on Genesis 38, the two lines of thought that one of the questions you have to answer when you come to the Onan passage: Why was death the result? Death—the penalty for Onan for what he did? Okay? That’s the big question. Some believe that the death penalty was for the violation of the procreative mandate that God gives us to multiply. And finally I would just mention that we’ll get to this in a little bit, but what people posit—the basic purpose of marriage is procreation. That’s basically a Catholic position, and there’s been centuries of articles and thinking to try to support that position in the Catholic Church.

So Catholics believe that the death penalty was given for violation of the procreative mandate. Protestants generally believe the death penalty was for violation of the levirate law. The context of this—the death of Onan of course is a specific violation of the levirate law. When God says it’s detestable what he did, the specific thing that he did—besides engaging in some form of contraception—was to avoid the levirate responsibilities that he had to raise up seed for his brother. And it specifically says that’s his motivation for the contraception is to avoid raising up seed that would be his dead brother’s seed and not his own children, as it were. Okay.

By the way, I mentioned earlier the funny ways that the rabbis handle some of these passages. The rabbis look at this passage and say that the death penalty was just a natural result of trying to do something that was so nerve-wracking and so tension-producing on the part of Onan himself that he just had a heart attack. It was so overwhelming for him. But any event, also by the way, the rabbis look at this passage and say we have an inference here, and the reason it’s only an inference against contraception is because it’s such a detestable thing that God doesn’t want to specifically give a negative command against it. It’s that detestable. He just wants to address it by way of inference.

So the rabbis are interesting in their attempt to come up with some concrete statement from scripture against contraception. Well, I think that the solution to this problem can be seen by remembering that what Onan did here was to violate what God had told him to do in terms of levirate. Now, the specific—it’s interesting that—well, Leviticus 18:16, the degrees of consanguinity are laid forward for prevention of people marrying close relatives. You can’t marry your sister or your brother or that kind of stuff. And those are prohibition of consanguinity—consanguinity coming from the terms meaning one flesh. And so there’s prohibitions against that.

The only exception to that prohibition is the levirate exception, the one we’re dealing with here. In other words, apart from the levirate law, Onan was specifically prohibited by the degrees of consanguinity from marrying or having relationships with Tamar. Okay. Now, he violated that exception. He didn’t engage in the exception of the levirate. And so what Onan did was he put himself back in a position—since he was not fulfilling the responsibility of the levirate to raise up godly seed for the family. What he did then was he was now in a prohibited relationship in terms of the laws of consanguinity. He now was marrying his sister not for the purpose of the exception of God’s law. Okay.

So the reason why this is a problem is that for violating the levirate responsibilities the scriptures do not mandate a death penalty. The scriptural penalty for violating the levirate laws is that the man is marked. He becomes known as the man of one sandal. He takes the sandal off and it’s a shame to him that he doesn’t do it. But that’s about it. He’s publicly shamed. But the violation of the degrees of consanguinity carries with it guess what? The death penalty. Okay.

Onan had not involved himself in the levirate exception. And so his relationship with Tamar was a violation of the degrees, the prohibition of the degrees of consanguinity. And so I believe that is clearly what the scriptures tell us. His penalty should have been from God for involving himself in that sort of relationship with his sister apart from a levirate exception. The specific biblical penalty for that is death. And so God executed him for it.

As I said, even the rabbis who want this passage badly to be a specific prohibition of contraception see only in this passage what they would call an inference—an intonation of a more general prohibition of this method of birth control. Now what I’m saying is there’s no reason to assume from this text that Onan’s sin was one of contraceptive technique or involvement. Onan’s sin was failure in terms of the levirate, and then as a result of that his sin was a violation of the prohibition of consanguinity, and as a result the specific biblical penalty in Leviticus 18 that’s meted out for that sort of relationship fell upon Onan. He was executed by God for violation of that specific law. Okay? So there’s nothing in the Onan passage on Tamar in that relationship that would indicate a prohibition against contraception. It’s simply not there.

By the way, one other information of this passage is that biblical—or rather the birth control was understood in practice. In other words, Onan knew what he had to do in order to avoid having a child. You know, we don’t want to buy into these evolutionary thought patterns before our era that people didn’t know anything about where children came from back then. They obviously did. A lot of this I bring this up because if birth control techniques were known this far back in history and if they’re as vile and as terrible to merit God’s death penalty, we would certainly expect to find within this revelation from God, even in that cultural context, a specific statement relative to the prohibition of contraception. If it’s a death penalty sin—which is what the reasoning is—then God certainly would have given a specific command to avoid that terrible heinous sin.

So the Onan passage is not a biblical example or case law example of the invalidity of contraception. It rather is an example specifically of the violation of the degrees of consanguinity and the violation of levirate law.

What about the argument that destruction of seed itself is destruction of life? Well, you know, this really proves too much, of course, because if you think about it a little bit, you’ll see the fallacies of that particular line of reasoning. If for instance one has a barren wife, then every time one enters into marital relationships with his wife, he is destroying seed or destroying life. And so, the very act itself would be illegitimate.

What about relationships with the wife after menopause? Again, this would be a prohibition. By the way, these same lines of reasoning that show the invalid—so this particular line of reasoning also could be talked about in relative to the statement that the purpose of conjugal relationships is offspring. Okay? If the only purpose for conjugal relationships is offspring and that to engage in conjugal relationships without production of offspring is evil, then what about relationships with the wife after menopause? What about relationships with a barren wife? What about relationships with the wife who is pregnant and already bearing a child in her?

You see, it really proves too much. It goes way beyond the scope of what the possible line of reasoning could be. Additionally, of course, even the marital relationship that produces offspring results in the destruction of literally millions upon millions of seed. And so, that line of reasoning obviously can’t be supported because the scriptures nowhere condemn marital relationships. In fact, the scriptures tell us specifically to engage in them. And God wouldn’t tell us to engage in something that is destructive of life. And so, since every bit of marital relationship results in destruction of seed, then that line of reasoning is contrary to scripture.

The scriptures of course actually tell us that the life of the flesh is in the blood, not in the seed. Okay.

What about the third line of reasoning—the purpose of marriage being procreation? This is the basic Catholic position, the position of many of the church fathers. Additionally, this seems to be Mary Pride’s biggest argument against contraception and at least one of if not the biggest reasons for Samuel Owen’s position in his master’s thesis at Western Conservative Baptist Seminary.

Now, there is some more to this position. Malachi 2:15, we’ve talked about this verse before: “Why does God make them one? Talking about the marriage relationship for the purpose of a holy seed.” And so, certainly, and of course, obviously, one of the specific reasons for marriage is the production of children. But the point I’m trying to make here is: Is that the primary reason for marriage? Is that a necessary accompaniment to marriage in order to have biblical marriage? And I don’t believe it is. The scriptures tell us that—I think well let’s go through several things—other reasons for marriage.

First of all, there’s companionship. After all, in Genesis 2:18 with the creation of Eve for Adam, he says specifically: “It’s not good for man to be alone.” Okay. And so he gives him a companion. Psalm 68:6 says that he sets the solitary in families. And he certainly did that with Adam—sets him in a family, gives a wife for companionship. And so it’s not good for him to be alone. So companionship is certainly one of the reasons for marriage. And with or without children, still the marriage relationship is blessed because it’s now two people working together and the man is no longer alone.

Secondly, that verse in Genesis 2:18 goes on to say: “It’s not good for man to be alone. I will make him a not a child-bearer and helpmate—one opposite him, one to assist him in his task of dominion.” That’s the reason why God gives us a wife—one specific reason. Marriage is to assist the husband in his exercise of dominion. When we look at Proverbs 31, of course, the Proverbs 31 woman in terms of accomplishing and doing the things that God says makes her an excellent wife, a mighty warrior for the kingdom of God. You know, most of those things do not relate specifically to having children. She does much more than that. And so, the purpose of a wife is not limited, or even primarily, one to produce children, but companionship and to assist in dominion work of the man is also very much in mind. And in fact those are the two things put forward by God in the creation of woman in Genesis 2:18.

A third reason for marriage and for marital relationships between husband and wife is found in Proverbs 5:19 where we’re specifically instructed to be ravished with our wife’s love. The Song of Solomon—read through that once in a while and you’ll see that the enjoyment of the marital relationship is a reason, one reason why God gave us that, to cause us to rejoice and to enjoy the good gifts of him and a good wife. Ecclesiastes 9:9 says: “to live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest.”

And you’ll see in these first three reasons here for marriage, you’ll see the Westminster Shorter Catechism: “What’s the purpose of man? To glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” So, we glorify God by doing our work and doing our dominion. And part of that, of course, with some families is the production of children, but not all families. And the other side of what we’re here to do is to enjoy God forever and enjoy the gifts he gives us. And so, marriage is to serve God essentially. And some people serve God with children. Some people serve God without children. But marriage is not reduced through the lack of children.

The barren couple is certainly married and certainly blessed by God, and they don’t have uh a somehow unmarital state between them. They have companionship. They have work together to accomplish dominion under God. And they have the enjoyment of their marital relationship that God gives them.

The fourth aspect—one more reason I could go with lots of reasons. Another reason for the marriage relationship is completeness—there’s one flesh, there’s covenantal union. And probably this is—though I would pose that this is probably the primary purpose of marriage—is to demonstrate, to teach us about, and to image covenantal union one with another. And in doing so, we image the relationship of Jesus Christ and his church.

Remember, we talked a lot about Ephesians 5 the last few months. And the whole point there is not that God finds some sort of common ground with man in marriage relationship, he then can tell us about himself. Remember, God’s the one who creates all this. Ephesians 5 says specifically that the marriage is here to image the church’s relationship to Jesus Christ. And of course there’s no procreative imagery involved in the church with Jesus Christ. There’s nothing different or combination of the two to come out of that marital relationship—is there? You see, it ends there with the marital relationship. And so the production of children is not essential to marriage. It’s not essential to image Jesus Christ’s relationship to his church.

And I would posit that the idea of covenantal union and the imaging of Jesus Christ in the church is the primary purpose of marriage—to illustrate that, to demonstrate that, and to teach that to ourselves and to others. And that can be accomplished without children.

The Westminster Larger Catechism in question 138 says, “The marriage was ordained for the mutual help of husband and wife.” I’m sorry, that wasn’t question 138. That’s the Westminster Larger Catechism. I think it’s section 24 where it says what’s the purpose of marriage, and it says the marriage is ordained for the mutual help of husband and wife, and then it lists secondarily then for the increase of mankind with a legitimate seed. Question 138 of the Larger Catechism says that marriage is for quote conjugal love and cohabitation. Okay. And most of the reformed catechisms you’ll see do not posit the production of children as the primary essential purpose of marriage.

The people that take an anti-contraception position posit—there are practical considerations that we’ve talked about already. The barren couple—aren’t they still married? Isn’t it still a family? In that sense, there’s no indication that barrenness excluded the barren couple from full participation in the visible covenant community as being a household to be represented in the covenant community both ecclesiastically and civilly.

Even if marriage did have as its central purpose the production of offspring, what does that prove? Well, that doesn’t prove that we should have as many children as possible or that we shouldn’t seek to limit the number of children. Even if, which I don’t think it is, and I think I’ve demonstrated that pretty well here, even if the primary purpose of marriage is the production of children and offspring for God, how many? It doesn’t logically follow from that it’s wrong to limit the number of children. If you have children, then you’ve accomplished that purpose. Okay.

Another line of reasoning is the blessedness of children. Psalm 127 says the children are happy as the man that had his quiver full of them. And there’s a blessedness talked about here. By the way, when we start talking about the quiver, you should realize that most scholars of the period believe the quivers held roughly 25 or 30 arrows. And so that being the standard, I guess we don’t have anybody who’s blessed in the full sense of this congregation. Yeah, I guess the Browns are working on it down there. So, you know, this is not meant to the literal thing we have to have 25 or 30 children to be happy and to be blessed by God.

It does certainly commend the general fruitfulness of marriage and the commendation it commends children to us in large families. But the reasoning here is that children are a blessing. More children are more blessing. Therefore, it’s sin not to try to take advantage of all the blessings God gives us. And of course, there are problems.

First of all, children are not always a blessing. Calvin commenting on Psalm 127:4 and 5 says, “It be better to be barren that to have numerous godless offspring.” Okay. Children are not always a blessing. Job 5:4 we’ve talked about that before talks about how the foolish man is slain, as it were, and his children are slain in the gates. The gates where the godly children are in protecting the man, those children are slain in those very gates of the foolish man. Children are not always a blessing before God.

Jeremiah 7 says that she that has seven languishes comes close to dying. And the idea there is of course in a time of cursing that’s what comes upon the person has lots of kids. So children are not always a blessing. And specifically we said several weeks ago we cannot guarantee that our children will be a blessing.

It’s interesting that the person that—let’s see—did David write this psalm or believe he did—if David wrote Psalm 127 then we would know that David specifically was not particularly blessed by his children. Many of his children met him in the gate seeking to overthrow him and to kill him. Okay. So children are not always a blessing.

Children generally are a blessing. We would certainly say that. But first of all, the very first part of that analysis that I give—that children are a blessing—is a conditional statement from God, and it’s not a guarantee. It’s not a promise. It’s not always that way.

Secondly, that even—that the fact that your children are a blessing and that blessings are normally the position of children in a godly household—and by the way, David’s problem was failure to discipline children. I wanted to mention that because the scriptures say specifically that David couldn’t really find it in him to discipline his children. Well, and wives, if you get a little discouraged or husbands don’t take a more active part in discipline, pray for them. Encourage them in a godly fashion. Try to get other people to encourage them as well. I mean, you don’t want—you want to be careful about that. Pray for them. But I’m saying is be somewhat understanding as well. I think it’s a natural sin for a man to fall into to be too soft on his children. We see it in David. We see it in the sons of Eli as well.

And so I would just encourage you not to think your husband’s the only one who doesn’t want to discipline his children regularly and consistently. Pray for him and encourage him because he needs that. But any—even if the children are a blessing, is it true then that more children are always more blessing?

In other words, if something is a blessing, is a loss of that something a blessing as well. Not necessarily. When we look at, for instance, the blessing of the promised land that God gave the children of Israel, what did he say? He said it’s a land flowing with milk and honey. Milk and honey are blessings from God. That’s the whole point. Wine’s a blessing from God. Does that mean that lots of wine is a blessing and more blessings? Well, if you’ve been around anybody who’s drank lots of wine, you’ll know that’s not particularly a blessing. He can be very foolish. And specifically, it’s specifically prohibited—God drunkenness.

Milk itself—what about the person who always drinks milk? Well, it’s a baby. It doesn’t move on to solid food. And so, too much milk is a bad thing. Honey is a blessing from God. It’s an indication of the great fruitfulness of the land, the blessings he bring us into. But the Proverbs tells us specifically not to eat too much honey because it’ll make us sick and unhealthy. And so, it’s not true that even if children are a blessing, that means that 100 children are going to be 100-fold, 100 times the blessing. The logic doesn’t hold.

Throughout the passage in Psalm 127, additionally, is a general commendation of large families. No doubt about it. We don’t want to restrict the idea of the text, and that’s certainly the point of it. It’s a general commendation of large families. But I do not believe that we can take—I’ve talked about this before with the childbearing passages—we cannot take these passages and make them specific to every individual. They are general commendations of blessings. They’re general covenantal statements to covenantal groups of people. They’re not to be taken individually in every instance. They’re covenantal in nature and not individualistic.

Generally, it will be true that many children are a blessing to a family. Not always. And God certainly doesn’t hold that blessing from the couple that doesn’t have children today into the new covenant.