Be Fruit­ful and Multiply

A long time ago, in a blog far, far away — in other words, lost in one of my old blogs’ archives — I’ve writ­ten a vari­ety of things regard­ing the early chap­ters of the Book of Gen­e­sis. I plan to even­tu­ally migrate that con­tent over to KingdomGeek:Disciple, but until then, I want to keep those types of posts com­ing as I think of them because I can’t help but find the Book of Gen­e­sis — espe­cially chap­ters one through eleven — captivating.

Let’s start out with Gen­e­sis 4.

Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she con­ceived and bore Cain, say­ing, “I have got­ten a man with the help of the Lord.” The Book of Gen­e­sis, 4:1

Adam & Eve are famous for their dis­obe­di­ence. Their names are vir­tu­ally syn­ony­mous with the for­bid­den fruit, with orig­i­nal sin. That’s under­stand­able enough — what tran­spired in the gar­den of Eden fun­da­men­tally changed humanity.

But what we have here in the first verse of the fourth chap­ter of the first book of the Bible is obe­di­ence, obe­di­ence to the com­mand issued in Gen­e­sis 1:28 to “Be fruit­ful and multiply.”

To this com­mand, there has never been a retrac­tion issued by the Lord. “Be fruit­ful and mul­ti­ply.” It was the com­mand given to Adam & Eve — to human­ity as a whole with our first par­ents as our rep­re­sen­ta­tives. The com­mand was reit­er­ated to Noah & his fam­ily (Gen­e­sis 8:17), with them again being rep­re­sen­ta­tive of human­ity. And again, there is no retrac­tion of the command.

Be fruit­ful. Mul­ti­ply. Fill the earth.

That’s inter­est­ing, isn’t it? Just think of some of those early fam­i­lies. These were typ­i­cally not fam­i­lies of one or two; fam­i­lies grew to be quite large. It was seen as a sign of God’s bless­ing. “I have got­ten a man with the help of the Lord,” Eve declared. Chil­dren then were seen for what they truly are: lit­tle bun­dles of joy from Heaven… or, more prop­erly, they were a her­itage of the Lord.

If Chris­tian­ity entails hav­ing the mind of Christ — con­form­ing our world­view to that of the Lord’s as described in the Scrip­tures — then doesn’t it make sense that we as Chris­tians view fam­i­lies as God does?

The world says that fam­i­lies should be planned and that any method — con­doms, morn­ing after pills, even abor­tion — be used to stick to the plan. Con­trari­wise, God says, “Behold, chil­dren are a her­itage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward” (Psalm 127:3).

The world says that small fam­i­lies are best, that two is all you need, but God says, “Like arrows in the hand of a war­rior are the chil­dren of one’s youth. ⁵Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them!” (Psalm 127:4 – 5).

The world says that we can slaugh­ter our unborn, self­ishly send­ing souls into eter­nity to suit our own damned agen­das. Yet God unequiv­o­cally declares, “I call heaven and earth to wit­ness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, bless­ing and curse. There­fore choose life, that you and your off­spring may live, ²⁰lov­ing the Lord your God, obey­ing his voice and hold­ing fast to him, for he is your life and length of days” (Deuteron­omy 30:19 – 20).

But today, how many big fam­i­lies do you know? Off hand, the biggest fam­ily I think I know per­son­ally is the pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion in my own, my dad hav­ing four sib­lings. While I don’t know her well, I’ve had some con­tact with Amy Scott, mother of six — I also read her blog; per­haps you should to!

How many “Israels” do you know today, though? Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Dan, Gad, Ben­jamin, Joseph, Issachar, Asher, Judah, Naph­tali, and Zebu­lun. Those were his kids… well, the boys anyway.

I hope & pray that God blesses me with mul­ti­ple chil­dren. They are bless­ings to me from God for God, and know­ing that, I can­not fathom how fam­i­lies — espe­cially Chris­t­ian fam­i­lies who should know these things — would want to some­how pre­vent such blessings.

More often than not it seems a mat­ter of con­ve­nience, as men­tioned before, and finances, but what would amaze some is just how lit­tle we actu­ally need to sur­vive and how much we could actu­ally afford if we had our pri­or­i­ties in order.

We are liv­ing in a world wherein peo­ple, unlike Adam & Eve, refuse to obey God’s com­mand. Every con­ceiv­able method of avoid­ing obe­di­ence is used, includ­ing the whole­sale slaugh­ter of the unborn… and every con­ceiv­able excuse is used to jus­tify not even try­ing to obey, the most com­mon excuses being dri­ven by our culture’s love affair with Mam­mon (1 Tim­o­thy 6:10).

I’m not say­ing birth con­trol is a sin — unless, of course, it causes an abor­tion — but what I def­i­nitely am say­ing is that by doing down that route, you’re miss­ing out on real life, tan­gi­ble gifts from God and, per­haps more impor­tantly and to the point, the oppor­tu­nity to obey Him by being fruitful.

I encour­age you, brethren, to take God’s com­mands, His wis­dom to heart, trust­ing that He knows bet­ter than any of us how fam­i­lies ought to be “planned.”

As the hymn says, “Trust and obey for there’s no bet­ter way”!