In Genesis, chapter 3, the verse that I wanted to focus on is there in verse 16, where the Bible reads, "Unto the woman, he said, 'I will greatly multiple thy sorrow and thy conception, and sorrow thou shalt bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.'" I want to preach tonight a continuation of my sermon that I preached this morning. I preached long this morning, but I still didn't get through all of the material that I wanted to preach about. I'm going to pick up where I left off and continue the sermon that I preached this morning.
This morning I preached on the subject of birth control, and why, according to the Bible birth control is not right, it is a sin. It is not something that Christian's should be practicing, although 99% of our nation today believes that it's acceptable. 99% of Christians and Baptists believe it's acceptable. Let me tell you something, that doesn't make it right. The Bible, crystal clear this morning showed us what God thinks about that subject.
I'm not going to re-preach this morning's sermon, because we already saw all those scriptures this morning. If you missed it you can get the recording and listen to it. I want to preach a sermon tonight just about what effect birth control has had on women, on our society in general, on our churches today, on families, on marriages. I want to pick up where we left off, but first of all let me point something out here in Genesis 3:16.
This is after Adam and Eve have sinned. They've taken of the forbidden fruit, and God is judging them. God is placing a curse upon the man, for example, saying that for the rest of his life he's going to have to till the ground, and there are going to be thorns. He's going to have to work by the sweat of his face. Then he speaks to the woman, and in verse 16 he says, "Unto the woman he said, 'I will greatly multiple thy sorrow and thy conception. In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.'"
Sometimes it's easy to read over things in the Bible, and not really stop and slow down, and let them sink in. This verse is packed with information, in verse 16. This is a verse that we should not take lightly. It's a verse that contains a lot of truth that is later reiterated and dealt with in the Bible. In fact, in a moment I'm going to take you to John, Chapter 16, and if you want to start turning there you can. I'm going to compare for you what we see here in Genesis 3 with what we see in John, Chapter 16.
What is saying here in Genesis 3:16 to the woman? "Unto the woman he said, 'I will greatly multiply thy sorrow, and thy conception." Two things are being multiplied in that verse, are they not? He says I'm going to multiply your sorrow, and I am going to multiply your conception. Yet today, Christians believe that it's just fine to say, "Oh really God, you're going to multiply my conception? Well it's my body, it's my choice, and I'm going to take contraception." Look, that is a mockery of this verse.
Forget all of the proof that I laid out this morning. All the different scriptures from Genesis or Revelation proving that birth control is wrong. What about just the fact that birth control makes a complete mockery of this verse. When God says, "This is what I've ordained for women going forward is that their sorrow and their conception will be multiplied." Then they go out and take drugs, or use appliances, to stop that conception from taking place that he said would happen. Think about that, let that sink in.
What does it mean when he says, "I will multiply thy sorrow and thy conception." The sorrow that he's referring to is pain in childbirth. Let me prove that to you from the Bible. Look at John, Chapter 16, Verse 20. It says, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, that ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice, and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy." Verse 21, "A woman, when she is in travail," and the modern word we would use for that is being in labor. When the Bible says being in travail, it means being in labor.
It says, "A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour has come, but as soon as she is delivered of it she remembereth no more the anguish for joy that a man is born into the world. And ye now, therefore, have sorrow, but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you." Jesus Christ is using an illustration about childbirth to talk about the sorrow that they're going through over the fact that Jesus is going to die on the cross.
He says, "You're sorrowing right now, but your sorrow is going to turn into joy." Just like when a woman is in labor, when a woman's in travail, she has sorrow, but as soon as the child is born she forgets all about that because she's so happy that the baby is born into the world. This proves right here that the sorrow that's being referred to is that agony of childbirth when we compare John 16 and Genesis 3. Whenever we want to define words in the Bible we just compare scripture with scripture, and let the Bible define itself.
If you've ever been there when a woman gave birth, you'll know this is true. Childbirth is a very painful, agonizing process. Yet, as soon as that baby is born that pain and suffering is just immediately replaced with joy. It's a really beautiful thing to watch. I've see, I watched, thank God, I haven't missed any of my children being born. All seven of my children, I was there when they were born. It is literally a life changing experience to be there at the birth of a child.
To see my wife in so much pain and suffering, and agony, but then the moment that that baby's born it's over. She's so happy, and there's so much joy. It really is life changing, it really is a powerful feeling when you're there. That's what Jesus is talking about here, that's what we see here.
What I want to show you from this is that also using birth control, it robs us of a lot of joy in our lives. Yes, there is sorrow associated with childbirth. Yes, it is painful. My wife is expecting our eighth right now, and she's dreading going into labor. She's saying, "I don't want to go into labor because it's so painful. I don't want to do this again." She's already done it so many times. When the time comes she always does it, she always does great, it's over, and she has the joy.
It robs us of joy in our lives, because the Bible tells us, and if you would turn to Psalm 113. Psalm 113, but let me read for you from 3rd John, Verse 4. John said, "I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth." According to John there's great joy when a man is born into the world, when a baby's born. Then later when that child grows up and lives for the Lord, and serves the Lord, there is no greater joy than to have your children walking in truth and to raise up children that would serve the Lord with their life. There's nothing greater than that.
Psalm 113, Verse 7, says this. "He raiseth up the poor out of the dust and lifteth the needy out of the dunghill that he may set in with princes, even with the princes of his people he maketh the barren woman to keep house and to be a joyful," notice that word, "a joyful mother of children. Praise ye the Lord." Children bring joy to our lives. They bring joy to a mother's life. They bring joy to a father's life. I can't tell you how many times per day we rejoice in our children. It's fun to be around them. They bring joy, they bring smiles to our face every single day. We love having our children.
Those who practice birth control are being robbed of the joy of having children. Sure, they get to skip the sorrow that comes with having children. They get to skip that sorrow that was prescribed by God, by the way, as His will, but they're also missing out on the joy. Sometimes we have to go through sorrow in our life to get to the joy. Sometimes the pain leads us to joy. If you would, look back to Genesis 3;16. We're not done there. I want to point out one other thing about this verse. Then I'm going to get into the effects. The harmful effects on our society, on mothers, on churches, et cetera.
Look if you would at Genesis 3:16, it says, "Unto the woman, he said, 'I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception. In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children and thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee.'" If you look at the birth control movement, which really began in earnest in the early part of the 20th century. Before that, birth control was very rarely used in this nation. It was pretty much condemned by all religions of our nation and our culture did not accept it until the early 20th century. At the same time was the feminist movement.
These two things go hand in hand because the teaching behind birth control is that it frees women of the bondage of being strapped to the house with all these children. In reality, there is some truth to the fact that having a bunch of children does tie a woman to her husband. But that's a good thing. It does tie a woman to that household. That's good. That's the will of God. That's a family. That's what we're supposed to be. Not just having women going out and doing whatever. Just living their life freestyle, free as a bird. That's not the plan in the Bible.
You see that it's mentioned in the same verse. He's telling the woman, "Look, you're going to have a lot of children. I'm going to multiple your conception." The average woman has about eight children if you just look at countries where birth control is not practiced. If you go back in history in the United States before birth control became prevalent. Eight or nine children. That's a lot of children. He says, "I'm going to multiple your conception. You're going to have a lot of children. You're going to have desire toward your husband and he is going to rule over you."
It's the same movement that says, "Husband's should not rule over their wives." That's the exact same movement that's going to say, "Don't multiply conception." Do you see how those two things go ... It's the same verse. These are the things that women today and the feminist movement are rebelling against. Genesis 3:16 is the antithesis of everything that they believe in, but if we're Bible believing Christians, this ought to be a verse that we memorize and love and follow. It's the word of God. It's what God has spoken.
We see that those two things go hand in hand. Number one, let's look at the effect of birth control upon the mother. We're going to look at different areas that are affected. First of all, we see the effect that basically the woman now is quote-unquote liberated or freed of the bondage of having all these children. Now she is one that cares more about a career and has all these other plans in her life. Are you there in Genesis 3? Jump down to verse 20. Look at verse 20 of Genesis 3, it says, "And Adam called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all living." What I want to point out about that verse is that even her name is derived from the fact that she's a mother.
She's called "Eve" because she's the mother of all living. This is where women have derived their identity throughout history. This is an important part of being a woman. Being a mother. Yet today, because of birth control, because we've basically given women the power, we've empowered them to decide, "Hey, I don't want to have children. I want to wait a long time to have children." This becomes a part of their life that goes on the back burner. It creates a mentality that says, "My primary role is not to get married, bear children, and guide the house" as 1 Timothy, chapter 5 teaches, "but rather my main goal is my career. My main goal is to go to college and to graduate from college and I'm going to be a lawyer, and I'm going to be a doctor, and I'm going to be a marine biologist. That's my main thing. When I'm ready I guess I'll also have a husband too, while I'm at it. My main thing is to be a politician. My main thing is to run a business. My main thing is my career, but I guess I'll add a husband into the mix and I guess, if I want, I'll schedule a few children. Maybe one, two."
This is not the way that the Bible looks at this and this is not the way that we should look at this. But it's the way the world looks at it now because of birth control. It used to be a young woman, she gets married, she has children, and that's her job. That's how she's going to live her life. That's the way God designed it. You say, "Ah, that's terrible." Actually, it's joyful. Actually, being a mother, being a housewife, that's a very good job to have. It's an honorable way to live your life too. Don't let the world tell you, "Oh, you're just a housewife? Oh, you're just a mother? You're unemployed?" They literally count my wife as unemployed. She's not unemployed. She doesn't want to be employed.
She's a mother. She's a wife. She doesn't need to go out and get some other job. That's the way our society has become. That's the way women have become. We already talked about it this morning. I'm not going to talk about it again. We talked about some of the physical health effects, for example, the birth control pills, all the damage that they do to a woman's body. I'm not going to rehash that, but I forgot to mention this. Brother Joe Rodriguez, he mentioned to me. He worked at a plasma donation center where you go and they take your blood and you donate the plasma and they do all that. He said that normally the plasma is orange or yellow, the plasma in the blood, but he said that when women are on birth control, their plasma is green.
They come in and their plasma is glowing green. He's like, "What in the world?" It turns out they're on birth control. Women who take birth control pills, heir plasma is green. That shows you ... Remember the life of the flesh is in the blood. When your blood's turning green, that shows you the systemic effects that birth control is having on your body. People say," It's green but it's harmless. Don't worry about it." Right. Okay. Sure.
Do you trust them? I don't know. Not only ... Go to 1 Timothy, Chapter 5, if you would. 1 Timothy, Chapter 5. Not only are there physical health effects of these birth control pills, they cause all the things that we talked about this morning. I'm not going to rehash all that, but not only that, they have effects on their character as well. Okay. We already talked about the fact that it causes them to look at child bearing as a side issue to more important things like the career and everything else that they are doing. When in reality, Eve derived her very name from the fact that she was a mother. That was her primary identifying feature is that she was the mother of all living.
Look if you would to 1 Timothy, Chapter 5, Verse 13, it says, "And withall, they learned to be idle." What does "idle" mean? It means you're not doing anything. You're sitting around. A car's idling when it's not going anywhere. He says, "Withall they learned to be idle, wandering about from house to house, and not only idle, but [tattlers 00:16:28] also and busybodies speaking things which they ought not. I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully for some are already turned aside after Satan."
We see here that women who are not busy about being married, busy about having children, and busy about guiding the house, they will get into sin, the Bible says. They become idle, they become lazy, they become tattlers, they become gossips. Let me tell you something, a woman who is having children is not idle. It's pretty much impossible to be idle when you have a lot of children because you're going to be busy. We live in a society of idle women because of the fact that they don't have children. Again, if God hasn't blessed you with children yet, or if God has only blessed you with one child, that's a whole different scenario.
That's God's choice. That's God saying, "Okay, I'm going to put you in this position." God can get you through that and God can allow you to live a good Godly Christian life and find other things to do and so forth. When women are just setting out to go against God's will and to hinder having children, that's something else altogether. They step outside of the will of God. They become idle, they become tattlers, they become busybodies because they just don't have the work that women have that are having children that they're supposed to be having.
Not only does it affect the mother, it affects our whole society. Go to Leviticus, Chapter 19. Leviticus, Chapter number 19. Not only does birth control do damage to women, it hurts their body if they're using the pills and it also affects their character, causing them to be an idle, tattler, gossip, turning aside after Satan and everything else. It changes their mentality and the way that they look at having children. In fact, here's a perfect example. I've got some advertisements for birth control from some magazines from this week.
It's easy to find this stuff. If you just grab a few parenting magazines or family magazines, just leaf through. You'll find this stuff pretty fast. Let me just show you how perverse the view toward children is today. This is a birth control ad, it says, "Maybe it's time to break up with your current birth control and ask about the 100% hormone-free, more than 99% effective Paraguard. Intra-uterine copper contraceptive IUD." Here's what I want to point out about this ad. You look at that ad and say, "Oh, what's the big deal? It's a piece of copper that you're putting inside your body to stop you from getting pregnant. So what?"
Okay. Well, what about the fact that this drug is called ... I'm sorry. This device is called "Paraguard." Stop and think about that name. "Paraguard." I remember one time seeing a product on the shelf called "Paragone." It was telling you how to get parasites gone. You buy a product, for example, let's say your dog has pinworms or let's say a person has some kind of intestinal parasite in their body, they'll buy products like Paragone. This is called Paraguard. This will guard you from having a parasite in your body known as a child. Isn't that just a bizarre name?
Why is it called Paraguard? It shows you psychologically what they're doing. They're telling you it's a parasite. I've even heard pregnant women refer to it as having a parasite. Have you ever heard that? The baby, this parasite in their body. This woman looks like she's experiencing all this freedom.
Here's another ad. I found this at ... Here's a vintage birth control ad. This is from, I don't know, I guess the 60's or something. It's Annette Funicello. Who knows who Annette Funicello is? Okay. Nobody? Two people. Annette Funicello. Anybody know who that is? Wasn't she on the Mickey Mouseketeers? She was a child star on the Mickey Mouseketeers and then later she was an actress and this and that. Here's an ad with Annette Funicello. She's in a bathing suit surrounded by four men. Four different men. These blond haired beach guys and she's got her hand on one and she's talking to another one. It says, "That's right boys. I'm on the pill."
Now think about that. Not, "That's right, my husband," "That's right boys." That's right boys, I'm on the pill. M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E. I'm a whore. I'm on the pill. Come fornicate with me. This is what birth control does to our society. Not only does it affect women, not only does it affect the mother, it corrupts her view of childbearing, it corrupts her character, it corrupts her blood plasma, it corrupts her health. This is what it does to our society. It promotes promiscuity. It promotes whoredom. It teaches this mentality of, "Hey, I'm on the pill, boys."
What kind of an ungodly, wicked advertisement is that? What kind of a woman would want to be associated with that type of advertising to say, "Hey, all four of you. I'm on the pill"? "Don't worry about it. I'm on the pill."
Look what Leviticus 19:29 says. I'm turning to Leviticus 19:29. We could pretty much turn to a hundred different verses right now if you want. Just about fornication, and whoredom, and harlots, and all that, but here it says, "Do not prostitute thy daughter to cause her to be a whore lest the land fall to whoredom and the land become full of wickedness." I just used that verse just to point out the fact that a land can fall to whoredom. The United States today fits that bill. If anybody has ever fit that bill it's the United States of America.
He says, "I don't want the land of Israel to fall to whoredom." We're there in America. We have arrived at that point in the United States. He says, "Don't prostitute thy daughter to cause her to be a whore." Stop and think about the fact that in public schools today they have education classes. You know what education classes. These classes teach the children how to use what? Birth control. That's the purpose of the class. You say, "Well, that's not true." I went to public school and I opted out of the class because they said if you have a religious objection, you can opt out of the class.
I was in sixth grade. I knew that I wasn't supposed to be going to this class. I knew my parents didn't want me to go there. I knew that it was not right. I brought home the form to my parents and had them sign the form so that I could opt out of the public school you-know-what education classes. Here's the thing. I got it all secondhand from all the kids who went there. They told us all what it was about, of course. For weeks afterward they were all talking about it. Even though I didn't attend the classes themselves, they're talking about it for weeks afterward.
They were taught how to use contraceptives. They were taught how to use. What is that saying? They say, "Well, they also tell them abstinence." This is what it is. "All right kids. Abstain, but if you don't, use this." It's like hint-hint, wink-wink, nod-nod. "We're kind of supposed to tell you to abstain, but here's the green light because we're teaching you how to do it and to avoid the consequences." In time past, there were consequences to those who would fornicate. In time past, the young child, the teenager who would fornicate would face the consequences of the teenage pregnancy.
They would be a shame and an execration to the whole community when a girl would get pregnant and it was something that people really looked down upon. Now they are teaching the children at age 10, 11, 12, 13. Even before they are even to that point yet. Training them and teaching them so that as soon as they get to that point, they are able to do it quote/unquote safely. No, there's no safely. You know what safely is? After you're married. That's what's safe. Anything else is whoredom and fornication, and it is harlotry, it is wickedness, it is ungodly. The Bible calls it uncleanness and yet today in our public schools birth control is being taught unto young children, thereby teaching them that they can go out and do all this stuff and have no consequence for their actions.
You know what? There's a consequence with God Almighty. You can never escape God's consequences even if you think that you've escaped man's consequences or physical consequences. Not only that, but our society has become so degenerated that we think that birth control today is like a human right or something. We probably have all heard about the Hobby Lobby lawsuit and situation. Who's heard about the situation with Hobby Lobby? Most of the hands in the room are going up.
What it all boils down to is that Hobby Lobby doesn't want to buy birth control for their workers. They don't want to pay for their workers to use birth control because they don't believe in it. They don't believe in these pills and they don't want to pay for it. The way that the media will try to spin this is "They're not letting these women use birth control. They're trying to force their workers to live a Christian life." That's a lie. That's not even true. What it really is is they just don't want to pay for it. There's nothing stopping any worker at Hobby Lobby from going out and buying whatever birth control they want to buy. If they want to go to the store and they want to go to the doctor and the pharmacy and buy birth control, they can go knock themselves out and do that. What it is is that now businesses that don't even believe in it are being forced to pay for it.
They call this an attack on women. The war on women. They call this a violation of women's rights. "You won't buy my accouterments, so I can go be a whore. You won't buy them for me." They had this lady come testify before Congress about Obamacare. Okay? I forget. What was her name? Does anybody remember? This horrible ... I'm trying to think of a word that's not too offensive. I want to use a word that's offensive, but not too offensive. You know? This whore. Whatever she is. She was a college student. She's not married. She's testifying before Congress about how she just couldn't afford all her birth control through college. She's trying to put herself through law school at Georgetown and she just can't afford all the birth control and it's not fair and it's not right and somebody needs to pay for my birth control.
You're not married. You're supposed to be a virgin. You're not supposed to be doing that. Yet today our society is degenerated so much that we think that that's a human right. It's like food, [raiment 00:28:21], and birth control are the three basic needs apparently of our lives. It's bizarre. Then there's this whole slew of new advertising. Okay? These Obamacare ads that promote promiscuity and talk about birth control. For example, I saw this ad and it's this "Got Insurance" campaign. It's put out by these different liberal groups and progressive groups in Colorado and different places. It's a pro-Obamacare advertising of the liberals.
In this ad, it shows a picture of a man and a woman and it says "OMG he's hot. Let's hope he's as easy to get as this birth control. My health insurance covers the pill, which means all I have to worry about is getting him between the covers. I got insurance. Thanks, Obamacare." These are the type of ads that these groups are putting out to promote Obamacare and to get people to sign up for insurance. Another ad showed a guy doing a handstand on top of a beer keg and he says "If I fall and hurt myself, I'm covered because I have insurance thanks to Obamacare." I'm not even joking.
You'd think it was a parody. You'd literally think that this is a mockery that Christians are putting out just to make fun of our sinful world or that conservatives are putting out to attack Obamacare. No, these are liberal progressive groups showing, "Hey, I can get my flu shots and I can take shots of hard liquor." It's showing all these women and they're drinking and they're all covered and they have insurance and it's great. They're drinking and fornicating and they're saying, "Hey, baby." It shows men and women chatting each other up like, "Hey baby, I've got insurance. All we have to worry about is getting it on because we've already got all the Obamacare covering our birth control."
Then it says at the bottom. "Warning: it's not going to protect you from STD's. You still got to buy more stuff." But your insurance will probably cover all that too. It's sick. It's disgusting. It's wicked. It's evil. Let me tell you something. This is what our country is becoming. You know what Christians want to do? They want to get as close to it as they can without going over the cliff. If we would have been on God's program all along, if we would have had a Biblical view of marriage, if we would have had a Biblical view of child-rearing, if we would have had a Biblical view of birth control, our society wouldn't be going to Hell in a handbasket. God said, "If my people which are called by my name shall pray and humble themselves and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their [limb 00:31:22]." If the light that is in us be darkness, how great is that darkness?
Even God's people and even churches today are totally in defiance of God's program for the family. Obviously the world's going to take it a step further. We see that birth control has had a destructive effect on women and their mentality and on their attitude and on their lifestyle. We see that it's physically damaged their bodies. We see that it's had a horrible effect on our society turning our country over to whoredoms in general. Not only that, thirdly, it has had a negative effect on marriage today. It effects marriage adversely when birth control is used.
Let me just point out a study that was done in August of 2013. I thought this was interesting. A new study conducted by Ohio State University. They studied 57,000 adults between 1972 and 2012, they found that children who grow up in large families have lower rates of divorce. Children who grow up in a large family are less likely to get divorced. They said there is a meaningful gap in the probability of divorce when you compare children with large families to those with one child. Every child you add up to a certain point keeps on getting you're less likely to get a divorce. If you came from a family of three versus two, four versus three, five versus four.
You have seven kids in the family, you're less likely to get a divorce. Why? Because large families are preferable to small families. Again, it's different if God gives you a small family. That's God's will. God knows what he's doing. God is in control. When we take God out of control, it doesn't make any sense to just have a small family on purpose when a large family has benefits. When you see a statistic like this, it just shows you. Not only that, if you think about it, having children together is going to draw the family closer. Using birth control creates a selfish mentality of we're all going to do our own thing.
I don't really have this in my notes but I think another thing to consider when you think about the effect of birth control on a family is that the children that you have, they see you using birth control and saying, "Oh yeah, we're done. We don't want any more. We're done." How do you think that makes the children feel? Again, if your child knows my parents only have one child, two child, three child because that's all God gave them, but they love us and they want more, no problem. When your children just know that you stopped after them. You're having children, having children, and then they're born and you're like, "We're done."
It's got to make them feel a little bit bad like maybe they're not that ... Think about this. What if you find out that you're expecting another child, right? Let's say you've got four children and you find out the fifth child is on the way. You call your parents and say, "Hey mom and dad, I've got great news. We've got another child on the way." What if they said to you, "Another one? You guys are having another one?" Wouldn't you be offended?
You're like, "It happens all the time." If your brother or sister acted like, "What? You're having another one?" The thing that's so offensive about it is ... Here's what I've often even said to people when they act like, "Oh, you're going to have more?" I always say, "Well, which of my children would you prefer that I had not had?" It stands to reason that if you love your children, if you're deriving joy from your children, if children are a blessing as the Bible teaches, then you'd want more. If children are a pain in the neck to you, you don't want more because why would you want another pain in the neck?
By the way, if you raise your children right, you'll have joy of them. If you spare the rod, you'll hate your son. You have to understand that if we raise our children right that's part of wanting more. If we raise our children the way the world tells us to raise them, I wouldn't want more of those either. When we bring them up in the nurture and [admiration 00:35:59] of the Lord, when the discipline them and teach them right, they will give us rest. They will bring us joy in our lives.
I remember one time my dad making a statement one time when I was growing up about ... I'm not going to repeat the exact statement that he made, but my dad made a statement one time something to the effect that he was really glad that he had the children that he had. I remember feeling so loved thinking to myself, "Wow, my dad really gets a lot of joy from the four of us children." He made a statement, I'm not going to repeat exactly what he said, but it was a statement that basically showed that he got a lot of joy in his life from the fact that he had had four children.
I remember feeling very loved hearing him say that. Our children, they perceive whether we love them or not and how much we love them and I think that we're sending them a message that says, "We don't love you that much because we don't want more like you." Whereas, if you just want to keep having more they feel like children are an asset in this family. We're a blessing, we're loved, we're welcome in this family. Some people literally say to their child, "You were an accident. We didn't even want to have you." What an awful thing to say. "I was going to abort you. We didn't even want to have you." That's a horrible thing to say to your child, but there are people who say things like that to their children all the time.
I've known people who have said things like that to their children. Obviously less extreme, but when you have two and then you start using a bunch of birth control, you're kind of saying that in a sense. Like, "Hey, we don't want more. We don't want children. We have our two obligatory children and we're done." Number one, it has a negative impact on the woman, number two, it has a negative impact on society, number three, it has a negative impact on marriage. Did I have you turn to Proverbs, Chapter 5?
Proverbs, Chapter number 5. We already talked about the fact that there is a study out that said bigger families, lower divorce rate. We've also seen the statistics that say the most common time to get a divorce are in the first two years of marriage and the first two years after the last child leaves the home. That shows you that the children are a factor. A lot of people stay together for the children. Have you ever heard that? People didn't get a divorce. They're going to stay together for the children.
Here's how marriage works. Marriage has low points. Marriage has ups and downs. Anybody who's been married for any length of time knows that you're not always doing great, everything's awesome, we're like newlyweds all the time. That's not reality all the time. There are times where you go through a low point in marriage but if you hang in there, if you stick it out, if you love the Lord, if you love your spouse, you'll get through that and, honestly, I can say that I've had many times in my marriage that were much better than being a newlywed even 13, 14 years in. You can get to the point again where the love is rekindled in a greater way than it ever has been.
I honestly can say that my marriage has been better in the last year than in the whole time leading up to that. Even better than when we were first married. Our love is stronger. Our relationship is better than it has ever been. People who quit during the low points, they never get to that. They think it was good when we got married, it went downhill, downhill, downhill and then they quit. There's such a great joy in going through the hard times, going through the trial, going through the valley, going through the low point, and coming out the other side to reach all new heights of marital bliss.
That is the reality of those who are in it for the long haul. They enjoy marriage in ways that other people can never even understand who've never gone through it. People saying, "Oh, that's just horrible if they just stay together for the children." Here's the point, if they stay together for the children, in that time they can fix things often. In that time, the love can be rekindled. In that time, they can both grow in the Lord, grow in wisdom, grow in grace, and once again have a great marriage and say, "Man, I'm so glad that we stayed married, so glad we didn't quit when it was rough. We stayed married."
Children are a reason why people stay together. That's why when the last child leaves the home they look at each other and say, "Well, we're not staying together for the children" and they get divorced. I could name for you many people that I know who got divorced within two years of the last child leaving the home. It's true. Not only is the statistic there, I could give you the stories from my own life that I know. People that I know.
Not only that, it can have other negative effects on a marriage. Not only does it increase the divorce likelihood, not only does it also ... If a woman is taking the birth control pills, for example, because she's having all these hormonal imbalances from the pills and becoming a basket case, that's not going to help your marriage. That's just going to create all kinds of friction and problems right there. Not only that, one of the popular methods of birth control that Christians will use, and I briefly touched on this this morning, but I want to mention it a little bit further tonight, a lot of Christians will say, "Well, okay, birth control pills are poisonous, they have all these bad effects, and they also cause a lot of early abortions, a lot of times the egg is fertilized but it just dies because of the effects of the birth control. I covered that this morning and I've got all the science on that.
They'll say, "Well, we don't do that stuff and we're not going to be like Onan because God killed Onan." They'll use what's called natural family planning. This natural family planning is a pretty popular birth control method amongst Catholics and amongst Bible believing Christians. Catholics are not Bible believing Christians, just so you know. Anyway, Catholics use it also a lot of evangelical Bible believing Christians use it. It's pretty popular today amongst people who don't want to use the really bad forms of birth control but they still don't want to have the kids and multiply and so forth.
They use what's called natural family planning. It's also known as the rhythm method. What this refers to is the fact that they will calculate using an app or software when the time of the month is that the woman is mot likely to conceive, when the egg is being released. In a month's time, they'll have a black out period of, say, five to seven days and they'll say, "We are going to abstain from any physical activity between the husband and wife during these five to seven days. We're going to abstain from a physical relationship in order to avoid pregnancy. Again, this still violates God's commands to trust him, be fruitful and multiply.
Let me tell you how this could be detrimental to the marital relationship. First of all, look at Proverbs, Chapter 5. It says in verse 18, "Let thy fountain be blessed and rejoice with the life of thy youth. Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant row. Let her breasts satisfy thee at all times and be thou ravished always with her love. And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger."
Verse 20 right there explains to us that if we are having the proper relationship with the wife of our youth, we will not desire to be ravished with a strange woman. Do you see that? He says, "Enjoy your wife and then why would you even want to go to a stranger because you're satisfied with what you have." This is exactly what 1 Corinthians 7 teaches when it says, "Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife and let every woman have her own husband." The Bible says that to avoid fornication, have that proper relationship within marriage to avoid the temptation to fornicate. He reiterates that in 1 Corinthians 7:5 when he says, "Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer and come together again that Satan tempt you not for your inconstancy."
God is warning us that people will be tempted by Satan if they are abstaining from a physical relationship with their spouse. If the husband and wife are not having that relationship, that gives Satan the opportunity to tempt them. That's why he said it's so important not to defraud one another in that area. He says, "Only would you separate if it be with consent for a time to give yourselves to fasting and prayer." This natural family planning or rhythm method, it is not saying let's take five days of fasting and prayer. It's not a week of fasting and prayer. You're not going without food for five days. You're not going without food during that time.
What you're doing is skipping that relationship during that time just to not get pregnant. You say, "Well, Pastor Anderson so what? What's the big deal? You got the whole month laid out. You got all these other times that you can do it. You just don't do it during that time. What's the big deal? So what? Just skip it for those days. You got all these other days to work with." Here's the problem with that. Number one, there's another black out period each month that the Bible talks about. Now you've got two five to seven day blackouts each month. Now you've just chopped off half your month right there, gone.
That doesn't necessarily mean that every other day is going to work out either but here's the most damaging aspect of all is that it is a scientifically proven fact, as well as just can be anecdotally observed in anyone's life, that the black out period, that natural family planning recommends, while the woman's ovulating, is the best time to have that relationship because of the fact that that is when women are most interested in that relationship because it's a natural process of their body that when they are the most fertile, that when they release that egg, that is also when they have the most desire. That is also when they are the most attracted to their husband.
Scientifically proven fact that women are more attractive to their husband during that black out period, the ovulation time, the time when they could get pregnant, and they are more attracted to him during that time. Basically, the time when both husband and wife are the most attracted to each other and would have the most enjoyment from that physical relationship, would enjoy it the most, is the time that they're being told don't do it during that time. That's not going to help your relationship. How can that be helpful to your marriage that the time that you want to do it the most is when it's off limits? It just doesn't make any sense. Not to mention that half the month is off limits practically. By the time you factor in the other black out period that everybody knows what I'm talking about.
Of course when you follow God's plan, when you live your life according to God's will and you're having a lot of children, you're wife's pregnant a lot and your wife's breastfeeding a lot. When your wife's pregnant or breastfeeding, there's no blackout period of either kind. Therefore, it's better for marriage. You can have a better relationship within marriage. This is a detrimental effect on marriage when you use that method.
Lastly this, we talked about the detrimental effect on women. We talked about the detrimental effect on society. It gets turned over to promiscuity and whoredom. We talked about the negative effect on a marriage, whether it's by turning the wife into this hormonal, upset, whatever, mood swing, all the different things that come with the pills, or natural family planning. Just having to skip all this physical relationship that's supposed to be there. Fourthly, birth control has had a very negative effect on churches. What am I talking about?
Churches are devoid of young people. Why? Because they were never born. Go to Judges, Chapter 14. Judges, Chapter 14. Think about this now. If you go to the average independent fundamental baptist church across America. I'm not talking about our church. I'm saying if you go to the average independent fundamental baptist church, you will find a lot of elderly people in that church. A lot. A lot of elderly people and very few teenagers. Have you noticed that? Tons of elderly, very few teenagers. Why is that? That's not normal.
There's a problem there. Why isn't there an even distribution of men, women, children, teenagers, elderly? We love the elderly. The Bible says the hoary head is a crown of glory if it be found in the way of righteous. The Bible says we should rise up before the hoary head and honor the face of the old man. We love the elderly, but let me tell you something. Something is wrong in a church that is just filled with elderly and you don't have the young there. There's something wrong there. There's something wrong with that picture.
Let me tell you something. There's a story that is being played out across America in churches everywhere, independent fundamental baptist churches. You can deny this all you want. You can say that's not true. Yes it is true. Across America today you have young people and teenagers in independent baptist churches and they have no friends to fellowship with or very few and they don't have anyone to date and marry in these churches. The youth is just not there. Where are they all? I like this verse.
Look at Judges 14:3. This is Samson. Samson wants to marry a Philistine girl. Samson wants to marry a heathen girl. Is that right? Is it right for him to want to marry the heathen? No. Look what his parents tell him. "Then his father and his mother said to him, 'Is there never a woman among the daughters of thy brethren or among all my people that thou goest to take a wife of the uncircumsized Philistines?' And Samson said unto his father, 'Get her for me for she pleaseth me well.'" Samson's wrong here. He's doing wrong, he's committing sin, but let me say this though, a lot of our young people are going to the world and dating liberals and dating unbelievers and I'm not condoning it. I'm not making excuses for it.
They're wrong to do that, but at least, wouldn't it be nice if we could look at our children and say, "Look, Johnny, look Susie, why are you going out and dating the unsaved when we've got a church full of young people for you to be dating? Look at all these Christian girls. Look at all these Christian young men. Why don't you spend some time with them and why don't you get to know them? Why don't you marry one of them? Because they're not there. It's a sad condition today in churches when there's so few young people. Aside from a few major mega churches and Bible colleges where all the young people from the whole nation congregate ... You go to your average baptist church when your 16, 17 years old and you're looking for friends, you're looking for fellowship, you're looking for somebody to date and marry so that you can follow God's plan for your life. You sit there and there's nobody there. There's barely anybody there.
It's obvious why. If people are having two children on average instead of nine children on average, which would be the average if you're not using birth control, 8 or 9. There's going to be less young people. It's just simple math folks. If God's people would actually reproduce we'd have four times as many young people. Where are they all? They weren't born. You look around our church on a Sunday morning. This morning we had 112 people or whatever. There's 30 some kids. Of that 112 people, 35 of them are 12 and under.
In the age bracket of eight and under, kids that are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, we have little kids running around all over the place. One thing that our kids can't complain about here in this church is that they don't have friends to play with. There are friends everywhere. Now look at all the teenagers our church has. There aren't any. You say, "Well why do you have all these kids then?" I'll tell you why. Because I've been preaching against birth control every year for the past eight years. That's why we have all these little kids here. You say, "Well, why are there all these little ... You just happen to have a lot of little kids at your church." Uh, no.
I'm not going to ask for a raise of hands, but if I asked for a raise of hand, who in here had more kids because they heard sermons about birth control. A lot of hands would pop up and say, "Yeah, that's why I have five kids." One day, I want to just get a ... People are always contacting me saying I had more kids because I heard your sermon. One day I want to get a photo album of all the kids that were born because of this kind of preaching that would have never even existed. What I'm saying is I've been preaching this for eight years because I've been pastoring for eight years.
We, in our church, yes, we are changing the trend. Yes, in our church, we're doing right and we are producing a generation of godly young people. When our kids grow up, they're going to have a church full of teenagers. You know what the sad thing is? The churches across America, they're not doing that. Some families in our church will move away to other churches and then other families will move here in their place. The reality is that everybody suffers. All baptist churches suffer because the youth is gone because they had so few kids that there's just a smaller youth group than there should be. You can say whatever you want, you can say, "Well, these young people just need to do right." I know they need to do right. I know they should never date a non-believer. I'm not making excuses for them, but wouldn't it be easier to serve God if you had a church with 30 young people in it?
They could have all kinds of young men and young ladies to fellowship with. You say, "There's one girl in the church that's single that's your age." That might not be the person that you want to marry, that one person. You probably want to have some choices. Young ladies probably want to have a choice of young men and young men probably want a choice of young ladies. Not just "I'm single, you're single, we're the only ones in the church, I guess this is meant to be. This is destiny. This is fate. We are the only singles in this church. Let's set a date."
Do you see how birth control can have far reaching effects that we don't even think about? Destroying the demographic of the local church. Destroying the demographic. If every church in America were doing what we're doing and had the preaching that I did this morning and the preaching that I did tonight, you know what? Every church would be filled with a bunch of little kids running around. Every church would be filled with teenagers. If this preaching had been going on for the past 20 years, then all that generation 20 years ago would have had a bunch of kids and then they'd all be grown up, they'd be teenagers, and then there'd be fellowship, there'd be opportunities, there'd be a better youth group, and everybody would be blessed.
Everybody would be better off. Even those that have a big family suffer by everybody else using birth control because then it's like their kids grow up and it's like, "Okay, we're here. We exist. Where's everybody else?" They were never born because mom and dad were too busy with everything else that was more important to them than doing what God told them to do and raising children. It's had a negative effect on the church. It's ruined the demographic. That's why churches are filled with elderly people because birth control has been going on heavily for the last 60 years. That's why you have all these people that are 70, 80 years old. Then you have less and less as you go down.
It dwindles as you get to the younger and younger generation. Obviously, our church is changing that because we have this baby boom that could be happening in every church in America right now if pastor's would just get up and preach the Bible. It has a negative effect. Again, if you missed the sermon this morning, I highly recommend you listen to it, but between this morning and tonight, I hope you get a picture of why this is so important, why this is a big issue that will really make or break us in a lot of ways in our marriages, and in our church, and in our society. Let's get a Biblical view on this and not be deceived by the world.
Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for your word, Lord, and we thank you for the truth. God, I pray that, not only our church, but other churches would begin to wake up to the deception that the devil has successfully carried out over all these years and that there would be a generation of young people that would be raised up, a great army of Christian soldiers, that would be able to serve you and fellowship with one another and marry one another and not be defiled amongst the heathen, Lord. Please help it to start in our homes and in our church, in Jesus' name we pray-
