Sermon Tone Analysis

/God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.

Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”/

/Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it.

They will be yours for food.

And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.”

And it was so.

/

/God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.

And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day./

/Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array./

Christians believe all mankind is created by the hand of the Living God.

Created by the hand of the Living God they are convinced that man is thus responsible to rule over His creation.

Consequently, Christians are not intimidated by environmental and ecological problems but rather they view all such problems as part of the challenge of divinely mandated rule.

Evolutionists believe man is a product of time and chance blindly operating over countless aeons.

Consequently, evolutionists believe man is an intruder who ought not to tamper with nature.

The source of contemporary eco-terrorists and supposed harbingers of eco-disaster is the faith of evolutionists that man is an intruder with no legitimate right to a presence within nature.

The faith of the individual determines the response seen when confronted by a changing environment.

The Christian Faith predisposes mankind to seek solutions to problems which may occur, though they prefer to avoid problems in the first place since their mandate is to rule over creation as caretakers.

The evolutionary faith predisposes mankind to despair, crying out that eco-disaster and devastation are coming, even while denying that man has any right to even be present.

God’s Blessing demands that we obey the Creator.

Be fruitful and increase in number…  I question whether we Christians believe this imperative to be in force in this day.

I suspect that we are uncomfortable whenever we read these words much less defending them before a world prone to ridicule us are hopelessly naïve if we think they actually constitute a blessing.

Regardless of any statements we may advance concerning the blessing of God, we are unconvinced that children are a blessing.

Throughout the account of the growth of the patriarch Jacob’s family, Leah is presented as dependent upon God as one who thought children were a gift from God.  Her first child is named Reuben because, she said, the Lord has seen my misery [*Genesis 29:32*].

She attributed the birth of her second child, Simeon, to the hand of the Lord, saying his birth was because /the Lord heard that I am not loved/ [*Genesis 29:33*].

Consider the situation when her fifth and sixth sons were born.

When Issachar was born, her response was to say, /God has rewarded me/ [*Genesis 30:18*].

When Zebulun was born she rejoiced, saying /God has presented me with a precious gift/ [*Genesis 30:20*].

Rachel, her sister, is presented as so desperate to have children that she considers her life to be utterly unfulfilled and no longer worth living if she cannot have children [*Genesis 30:1*].

When at last a son is born to her she acknowledges that God has blessed her.

The Word says, /Then God remembered Rachel; He listened to her and opened her womb.

She became pregnant and gave birth to a son and said, “God has taken away my disgrace.”

She named him Joseph/ [which means May He add], /and said, “May the Lord add to me another son”/ [*Genesis 30:22-24*].

I don’t want to read too much into the belief of these mothers in Israel lest someone think me presumptuous.

Nevertheless, we cannot question that the Bible presents Leah and Rachel as women convinced that it is God who gives children.

Furthermore, it is obvious by even a casual reading of the account of Jacob’s family that these wives considered the absence of children to be a divine curse.

They were not alone in this view.

Hannah, mother of Samuel, was likewise disconsolate at the thought that she had no children.

She thought herself cursed until God at last intervened and gave her a child [cf.

*1 Samuel 1:1-20*].

We begin to occupy more solid ground when we read of Shiphrah and Puah, Hebrew midwives who honoured God by refusing to kill the new-born sons of the people of Israel.

Because they disobeyed the Pharaoh and spared the children born to the Hebrew women, we read that /God was kind to the midwives … because the midwives feared God, He gave them families of their own/ [*Exodus** 1:20a, 21*].

I cannot help but wonder if we would consider children a reward from God.

Of course, the clear statement of the *127th Psalm* is that God does bless those in whom He delights by giving them children.

/Sons are a heritage from the LORD, /

/children a reward from him.

/

/Like arrows in the hands of a warrior /

/are sons born in one’s youth.

/

/Blessed is the man /

/whose quiver is full of them.

/

/They will not be put to shame /

/when they contend with their enemies in the gate/.

[*Psalm 127:3-6*]

 

Similar blessings for obedience are pronounced in *Deuteronomy 7:12-14 *and* 28:11* where we read that children are the blessing of God.

The obverse of this position is that the absence of children is a curse.

When the curses are being presented for dishonouring the command of the Lord, childlessness is frequently the curse pronounced [cf.

*Leviticus 20:20, 21*].

When Moses warns the people against disobedience, one of the serious consequences of disobedience is childlessness [*Deuteronomy 32:25*].

When God curses Jehoiachin through Jeremiah, it is with a pronouncement that he will be considered /as if childless/ [*Jeremiah 22:30*].

Similar warnings against disobedience carrying the sentence of childlessness occur in Ezekiel’s writings [*Ezekiel 5:17; 14:15*].

Those who sacrificed their children were said to despise God’s gift and were thus under most serious censure from the Living God [e.g.

*Isaiah 57:3-5*].

I suggest to you that a nation which slaughters its unborn and rejects its infants is a nation guilty of grossest idolatry and under the condemnation of Holy God.

Clearly the whole of the Word of God considers children to be the richest of God’s blessings upon a nation as well as to an individual.

We are compelled to agree with the assessment of Moses the man of God who wrote the words of our text in presenting the blessing of God as encompassing a fruitful womb and an increase in number to fill the earth and to subdue it.

Though our minds accept this as a blessing we are too often driven to a state of confusion because we live within this present culture which resists this biblical view.

Consequently, we are torn between Christ and culture, and we live as though we were unaware of the conflict.

David Suzuki is a popular commentator on the Canadian scene.

He questions whether man actually has a place in the universe, espousing that man must yield to the environment.

Paul Watson, erstwhile Greenpeace activist and now head of the radical environmental group known as the Sea Shepherd Society, is on record as saying that man is a cancer infecting the environment.

Pete Singer considers that a human has no more right to life than does a mouse or an elephant.

In fact, he proposes that children not be consider alive until twenty-eight days have passed to give parents the opportunity to decide if they want the child or not.

Each has indicated either in clear language or through implication that man must reduce the population or face environmental disaster.

Each of these eco-philosophers espouse a worldview based on the concept that increased pleasure and happiness are motivating forces for our choices.

Each unwittingly demonstrate the veracity of the Word of God which warns that /in the last days people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God — having a form of godliness but denying its power/.

Let there be no mistake that the people of God are to /have nothing to do with them/ [*2 Timothy 3:1-5*].

For at least thirty years I have heard the message of massive famine and ecological disaster preached by fear mongers who demand that we respect their opinions as accomplished fact.

The predictions were advanced over thirty years ago, without any opposition, that Asia would experience famine as the populace outgrew the capacity to provide food for the people.

Where are the harbingers of fear today?

Asia exports food.

The nations of Asia are giant economic engines driving world economy and the people are better fed than ever we could have imagined.

Miracle crops ensure that small plots and small fields produce ever-greater amounts of food.

Europe was the object of dark predictions as we were assured the populace would outgrow the capacity to provide.

Again, the story of rich provision belies the tales of woe which were preached.

I am not exalting man, but I am stating the obvious that the ability to provide more from less advances at an exponential rate.

Fewer Canadians farm the land today than ever before and there is an ever-decreasing land base for agriculture, and yet we produce more food today than ever before.

There is sufficient to feed our people and to export enough for the nations of the world.

God would not command man to do what God was unable to ensure would occur.

Man is responsible to fill the earth and to subdue it.

I can only take from this that God is well able to supply knowledge of the means by which we are to employ the earth to His glory and to our benefit.

I do acknowledge that this does not give us a right to abuse the environment nor does it give us license to waste and destroy what God placed under our rule.

It does impose on us responsibility to wisely reign over the earth.

I am astonished as I read of the conflicts resulting from an ageing population in Canada.

Ours is a greying nation.

The baby boomers are entering the years when they are considered to be seniors.

Already politicians and economists are struggling with the fact that our governmental pension plan is overdrawn and nearing collapse.

Already politicians and economists are voicing deep concerns over continued funding of the social programs we have assumed as our heritage.

There are insufficient children being born to sustain these programs and the birth rate is too low to permit continued economic growth.

Canada, as is true of all western nations, is compelled to open its doors to ever more immigrants from foreign cultures in the hope of continuing funding of the programs we cherish.

The consequence of these actions is that Canada is changing perceptibly as the foundations we have taken for granted are eroded.

Though Canada was never a “Christian” nation, our laws and our national consciousness was founded upon Christian precepts.