(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Well, here we are in Deuteronomy chapter 25, kind of an obscure passage, a little bit of an odd passage. These are some of God's laws from the Mosaic law. Of course, the word Deuteronomy, the first part of Deuteronomy, comes from the Greek word death Torah, which means second, because Leviticus was the giving of the law, the main body of the law, and now also in Exodus, and then in Deuteronomy, it's basically a second time through or synopsis of the laws that God already gave in Exodus and Leviticus. So it's basically going through and filling in gaps in the law and completing God's laws for the children of Israel. And so he's getting into some very specific situations, some very obscure laws that maybe you were reading this and you thought, man, I've never even heard of that. That doesn't sound like something I'm familiar with, unless you've read the Bible cover to cover. If you've never read the Bible cover to cover, any Christian should read through the Bible at least one time, cover to cover, I mean, and you say, well, I just got saved a week ago. Well, we've got these charts right out there on the bookshelf. You can take this chart and it'll show you how you can read through the Bible cover to cover in one year. And if you read about 15 to 20 minutes a day, depending on your reading level, you'll be done with it in a year's time. And so it's not a question of something that you don't have time to do. It's just something that you got to set your mind to do and have as a goal and work toward it. And I've said this often, and I'll say it again, there's a very big difference in the mentality and in the understanding of a person who's never read the Bible cover to cover and a person who has read the Bible cover to cover, because this isn't the type of thing that you'd usually hear taught in Sunday school or preached on, what we just read. But I preach on it tonight. You go to Faith Ward Baptist Church, but nevertheless, I'm not going to preach everything to you that you need. You need every word of God. The Bible says man should not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeded out of the mouth of God. And so it's your job to daily search the scriptures, whether these things be so that I'm preaching to you tonight. That's what the Bible says. Now, I'm preaching tonight, and turn to Genesis 38. That was just a preface to what I'm actually preaching on. I'm not preaching out of Deuteronomy 25. There's one part in there that I wanted you to see that I'm going to reference in a moment, but turn to Genesis 38. And I'm just going to warn you tonight that I'm preaching on a subject that's probably one of the less popular subjects that I preach on. Okay? And it's something that this can be offensive to a lot of people, and it can be kind of a sore spot with people. And my goal is never to offend or to hurt anybody's feelings. My goal tonight is to educate and to teach you what the Bible says, and to preach to you God's word, the whole counsel of God. Now, I don't sit around and decide what I'm going to preach based upon maybe what a specific person or persons in this church needs. I don't sit here and think, well, you know, oh man, Amanda needs this one, or oh man, I got Brother Colby, Brother Colby is in town, I know what he needs. That's not the way that I decide what to preach. The way that I decide, and I'm just telling you, I don't sit around and dream up what different people in the church, what I need to straighten them out, or whatever like that. When I decide what to preach, my goal is that if you came to this church for, say, maybe a two or three month period, and you came Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, that you would just get a very balanced diet, okay, of just a whole picture of everything that our church is about, of everything that the Bible's about, of, you know, just a balanced diet of preaching. So some of the preaching is going to be motivational type preaching. That was like this morning's sermon about preaching the Gospel to these distant towns and villages, and about our new soul-winning program that we're going to put into practice later on this year and next year, in addition to what we're doing. A motivational sermon, sermons on soul-winning, sermons that teach Bible doctrine, hey, sermons on the great doctrines of faith, eternal security, right, a whole sermon on, hey, that's a great sermon. Sermons on salvation doctrine, sermons on the second coming of Jesus Christ, sermons on all these different doctrines, sermons on the Word of God, the inspiration of the Bible. And I'm going to tell you something, many people are goofed up on doctrine today because it's not being taught, because the exact reason I'm talking about pastors willing to preach on relevant sermons, how to get your little pick-me-up for the week, or this is going to get you through the week. I'm not trying to get you through the week. I'm trying to get you through the rest of your life. And so that's why I just try to preach everything. And by the way, let me just clear up for you this whole thing about inspiration, because people are so confused about it. And by the way, this church is King James Bible only, okay? If you didn't see it on the sign on the door, okay, because it says it on the window if you didn't see it. The King James Bible only. And I've heard people say, well, is the King James Bible inspired? And people go back and forth about it and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Let me just clear it up for you right now. The word inspiration means breathe, okay? And if it was given by inspiration of God, it's God-breathe. That's what it means. And the Bible says all scripture is given by inspiration of God. Let me sum it up for you with Exodus 20, verse 1. Don't turn there. But it says, and God spake all these words, saying. Now that's inspiration. God spake it, okay? Now if God didn't speak all these words, then the Bible is not accurate. I mean, it's not accurate if God, because it says that God spoke it, either he spoke it or he didn't speak it. And so is the King James Bible inspired? Well, did God speak these words? Yes. If he spoke different words, then it's not inspired. If he spoke these words, then it is inspired. Does that make sense? And so I love teaching Bible doctrine. And so sermons on Bible doctrine, inspirational sermons that'll get you going, that'll get you want to be motivated, you know, to get out there and win the souls and knock doors and preach the gospel to your friends, your family, your loved ones. Hey, then there are sermons rebuking sin, you know, where we just go down the list and we preach against all the different sins that the Bible talks so much about. Why? So that you can clean up your life and be holy and draw nigh to God and cleanse your hands and walk righteously and godly in this present world, okay? And then there are sermons on, you know, encouragement, kind of like last Sunday night. Remember the last Sunday night sermon about the thorn in your flesh like Paul had? Well, tonight's sermon, while it may not apply to everyone in the building, is nevertheless important because it's in the Bible and it's a theme throughout the Bible and it's something... It's a story that I'm teaching in the Bible and it's a concept that is very prevalent in the Bible. Whether or not it applies to you is irrelevant. You need to learn it, you need to know it because it's in the Bible. But look down, if you would, at Genesis 38, that was just kind of an introduction to why I preach these things, but look down, if you would, at Genesis 38, we're going to see an interesting story. It says in verse 1, it came to pass at that time that Judah went down from his brethren and turned into a certain Adolomite whose name was Hyrum, that's a woman's name by the way. Judah saw there a daughter of a certain Canaanite whose name was Shuah and he took her and went in under her and she conceived and bare a son and he called his name Er. And she conceived again and bare a son and she called his name Onan and she yet again conceived and bare a son and called his name Sheila and he was at Pezeth when she bare him. Now, here we have Judah. This is one of the sons of Jacob. Remember Jacob has the 12 sons, the 12 patriarchs of Israel? One of them is Judah, who's actually the progenitor of Jesus Christ. Well Judah goes and he takes a wife and he marries Er and he has a son named Er and then he has a son named Onan and then he has a third son named Sheila, okay, and it says in verse number 6, and Judah took a wife for Er his firstborn whose name was Tamar. So Er marries Tamar and Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the Lord and the Lord slew him. Now, do we know what it was that made Er so wicked? The Bible doesn't see fit to tell us, it must not be something that we need to know. And so Er was wicked for some reason and God killed him. But look what happens next. In verse number 8 it says, And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother's wife, because Onan was unmarried at this point, and marry her and raise up seed to thy brother. 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 that he should give seed to his brother. And the thing which he did is pleased the Lord, wherefore he slew him also. Now, follow the story here, Onan is unmarried, okay, he gets married, or I'm sorry, Onan is unmarried, Er was married, God killed Er, Tamar, Er's wife, is a widow. Judah says to his second son, You should marry this widow of your brother and raise up seed to your brother. Now the reason that I had you read before Deuteronomy 25 is because, do you remember the part where it said in verse 5, If brethren dwell together, and one of them die and have no child, the wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger. Her husband's brother shall go in unto her, and take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of an husband's brother unto her. And it shall be that the firstborn which she beareth shall succeed in the name of his brother which is dead, that his name be not put out of his grip. So basically, try and follow the story here, Er did not have any children, dies, Tamar's the widow, his brother Onan marries his widow, okay, now he is supposed to raise up seed to his brother, that means that the first child that's going to be born from this marriage is going to be named Er, you know, and it's going to carry on his name, if you will, and it's going to take his inheritance and his land and so forth. And then all the other children that they have will be called, you know, after the name of Onan, okay, and so that was the tradition and that's what God said is the right thing to do, and he gave allowance for the fact that somebody might not want to do that for some reason, or if he doesn't want to marry Er, you know, that's fine, but he said this is what they could do in order to help preserve his name, this is the honorable thing to do to give him, you know, an heir, basically, that would carry on his name so that it wouldn't be the end of the family line. Now, the thing that I find interesting about this story is that Onan could have said, no, I don't want to marry Haman, I don't want to raise up seed to my brother, I don't want to be married to this woman, I think I'm just going to go marry who I want to marry and be done with it, but he didn't. He said, okay, I'll marry her, I'll raise up seed to my brother, but when he went in and consummated the marriage, you know what he did? Well, it says what he did, I'm not going to go into it, I'm not going to be graphic tonight, but it says what he did, because he didn't want to raise up seed to his brother. Now, here's what's interesting about this, and this is just the preface to my sermon, did you know, and I, if you can prove me wrong, please come to me after the service, or jump up during the service, no, I'm just kidding, but come to me after the service and tell me if I'm wrong, but this is the only time in the entire Bible that anybody uses birth control, period. Now, you can say what you want about that, you can get mad at me, or get upset at me, but that's the truth. This is the only instance in the entire Bible when somebody goes into their wife with the intention of saying, I'm going to do something here to make sure that this woman does not get pregnant. I'm going to go into my wife, I'm going to consummate this, I'm going to have a physical relationship with my wife, but I'm going to do something to prevent a pregnancy here. Now, can anybody tell me of another example in the Bible where somebody did something to prevent their wife from getting pregnant? Put up your hand right now if you got one. I don't think you do, because I've studied the Bible for years and years, and I'm not infallible, I'm not all knowing, but I just can't find it. This is the only time I can find it. Now, let me teach you a sermon tonight, and please just sit back and put aside all preconceived ideas, and let's just let the Bible teach us tonight, and let's go through this subject, and the title of the sermon tonight is The Sin of Onan. What was the sin that Onan committed that made God so angry that he killed him? Now, that's what happened in this story. I mean, because of this one event, because of the fact that he did this, God slew Onan. Ask yourself this question, how many people did God personally kill in the Bible? Really not that many, where it just says, the Lord slew him. I mean, for God to come down and kill you himself, it means that you've done something wicked. But number one tonight, let me give you some points, number one, God is the one who opens and closes the womb, okay? Let's see that from the Bible. Look at Genesis 11, 30. We're in Genesis 38, just go back and look at Genesis 11. Genesis 11, 30, and let's see what the Bible says tonight. The Bible says in Genesis 11, 30, it says, but Sarai was barren, she had no child, okay? But now look at Genesis 18, verse 10. Genesis 18, verse 10, we're just going to go through the book of Genesis and see a lot of different scriptures, but Genesis 18, 10, the Bible says, and he said, I will certainly return unto thee according to the time of life. Verse 10, and lo Sarah thy wife shall have a son, and Sarah heard it in the tent door which was behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old and well stricken in age and ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. Therefore, Sarah laughed within herself saying, after I am waxed old, shall I have pleasure, my Lord being old also? And the Lord said unto Abraham, wherefore did Sarah laugh saying, shall I have a suraky to bear a child which I am old? Is anything too hard for the Lord? Remember that statement. At the time appointed, I will return unto thee according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son. Why? Because God said that she was going to have a son. Look at chapter 20, verse 18. So we see, Sarah was barren, and God said, yet she will have a son at this time of year, next year, 12 months from now, I'm going to open her womb and she's going to have a son. Now look at this, it says in verse 18 of chapter 20, for the Lord had fast closed up all the wombs of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah. Look at Genesis 29 and 31. So we see in chapter 20 where we just looked at God closed up the wombs of an entire household. The women were barren because God had pronounced it, but look at Genesis 29 and 31. And when the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. Look at verse 2 of chapter 30, the next chapter. And Jacob's anger was kindled against Rachel and he said, am I in God's stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb? Why was Sarah barren? Why was Rachel initially barren? Because God had withheld the fruit of the womb. God had closed their womb. And why did Leah give birth to children? Because God had opened her womb. He hearkened to her. She prayed, he opened her womb, he made her fruitful, she had many children. You don't have to turn there, but 1 Samuel 1, verse 5 says, but unto Hannah he gave a worthy portion, for he loved Hannah, but the Lord had shut up her womb. And her adversary also provoked her sore, for to make her fret, because the Lord had shut up her womb. Now let me ask you, doesn't it seem like, from what we just studied, that God is the one who decides who has children and who doesn't? Yes, God is the one who decides. God can make a woman, I mean, is anything too hard for the Lord? I mean, God can take any woman that he wants, even a woman who is beyond childbearing age, he did it before with Sarah, he can open her womb and give her a child. He can give a child to whoever he wants to give a child to, okay? And he also has the power to close up the womb of whoever he wants, for whatever reason he has, and cause them to not be able to have children. Now listen to this interesting verse, 1 Chronicles 25, 5. All these were the sons of Haman, the king's seer, in the words of God, who lift up the horn. And he was a preacher named Haman, not Haman and She-Ra of the cartoon, but this is Haman, and he was a preacher that stood before the king David, and the Bible says this in verse 5, God gave to Haman 14 sons and 3 daughters. So why did this man have 17 children? You think that's a lot of kids? That's a lot. 17 children? I mean, that's almost unheard of. Why did Haman, why did he have 17 kids? Because God gave him 17 kids. Now, how many kids did God give to Abraham with Sarah? One. So it's not really a matter of how many kids God gives you, okay, is what we're talking about. We're just talking about God's the one who's going to give you the amount that God's going to give you. I mean, that's what the Bible says, okay? Now obviously there's a human element involved. If you want to purposely say, well, I'm going to make sure that I don't have any more kids, I'm going to do something to stop the fact that I'm going to have more kids, that's available to you. It's called what Onan did. It's called the sin of Onan. It's where Onan said, I'm going to decide whether I have this kid or not, I'm going to do what I want to do here with this woman, but I'm not going to have the children that God's going to give me or not give me. Now this is the hypocrisy of the day that we live in. We live in a day where churches that are called old-fashioned, that are called fundamentalist, right, going back to the old ways, the old paths, the old KJV, are very modernized in many different ways. And here's one of them. You see, if you go to the average fundamental Baptist church or independent Baptist church, this is what they're going to tell you. They're going to tell you, it doesn't matter what you want to do with your life, it matters what God wants you to do with your life. Right, have you ever heard something like that, preached, right? Hey, it's not about what you want to do, it's what does God want you to do. Now I say amen to that. This is what they'll even say this, it's not about, you know, necessarily always the woman that you want to marry, hey, who does God want you to marry, have you ever heard that preached? Right? Or how about this, don't say to your kids, you can be whatever you want when you grow up, you know, be what God wants you to be when you grow up. Right, I've heard that preached many times. Or how about this, you should live where God wants you to live, right? But then all of a sudden, you'll hear this exact same question asked, how many kids do you want to have? Now, to me that doesn't make any sense. So I'm supposed to live where God wants me to live, do for a living what God wants me to do for a living, you know, and the bumper sticker says attend the church of your choice, I've heard probably five different preachers get up and say, don't attend the church of your choice, attend the church of God's choice, and I say amen to that. So attend the church that God wants you to attend, go to the job that God wants you to go to, live in the town that God wants you to live in, be married to the person that God wants you to be married to, read the Bible that God wants you to read, but have as many kids as you want to have. Now what do you think is more important? How many kids you have, or whether you live in Phoenix, Arizona, or Tucson, Arizona, or Flagstaff, Arizona, or California, or Nevada, or South Carolina, to me I think a bigger decision is how many kids you have, and yet that's the one that we're supposed to make by ourselves, and God has no bearing on it, God has no say in it. I find that hard to believe. When God said he's the one who opens the womb, he's the one who closes the womb, he gives to one one child as he sees fit, he gives to another two children like Isaac and Rebecca, Isaac and Rebecca had two children, Jacob and Esau, in fact turn if you would to Genesis chapter number 25 and we're going to see that story about Isaac and Rebecca because it's a fascinating example of what we're talking about tonight. See what was the great sin of Onan? The sin of Onan was seeking to prevent a pregnancy by artificial means, and we'll go more into that later on in the sermon, but look if you would at the story here, this is the story of Isaac and Rebecca, and look at verse 20 in Genesis 25, the Bible reads, and Isaac was 40 years old when he took Rebecca to wife, so he was a little older when he got married, the daughter of Bethuel, the Syrian of Pedanarim, the sister to Laban the Syrian. And Isaac entreated the Lord for his wife, so he's begging God, he's praying, he entreated the Lord for his wife because she was barren, and the Lord was entreated of him and Rebecca his wife conceived. So here we have a woman who's barren, we have Jacob begging God that he would please give him a child, but look down at verse 26, we'll see when this prayer was answered, and after that came his brother out and his hand took hold on Esau's heel and his name was called Jacob, and watch this, Isaac was three score years old when she bared him. So how old was he when he started praying? Forty. How old was he when his prayer got answered? Sixty. Can you imagine that? I mean can you imagine, a 40 year old man, I mean the clock's already working against him, you know people were a little healthier, lived a little longer back then, but still he's 40 years old, he gets married, he's trying to have a child with his wife, he knows the promises of God that were made to Abraham and that he'd be a great nation and so forth, he's the only one in this family line, it's really important to him to have kids, and so he's praying and begging God, would you please give me a child with this woman, and for 20 years he prays and asks God that. And 20 years later when he's 60 years old, that's pretty old, is when God answers his prayer and gives him two children, the only two children that he had, Jacob and Esau. So again we're not talking about necessarily having a certain number of kids, you need to have this many or you need to have at least this many, we're talking about having the number that God gives you. Oh man, but then I'll have too many. Well that just shows that you don't trust God to give you the number that he wants to give you, what's too many? Now you say, Pastor Anderson, you're out of your mind, okay, well okay, but you know, let me tell you how I came to this conclusion. I remember I read the Bible and I struggled with this, you know, because I was taught my whole life, I mean it was just a given, I mean just, you have two, you have three, you know, whatever, and then you draw the line and you quit, you know. And I was taught that my entire life. But as I read the Bible I began to see that it was a little bit different than I'd been taught, okay. And I remember there was one thing that really pushed me over the edge, when I finally realized that this was the truth, what I'm preaching tonight. I sat down and I took out a pen and a paper, and I wrote down a list of all the reasons not to have kids, okay. And I thought to myself, why, because I thought to myself, okay, if birth control is a sin, that's why I'm preaching tonight, if it gets anybody in here it's kind of slow, okay. But anyway, if birth control is a sin, you know, or if, you know, if I think it's a sin or what have you, okay, well then why are people doing it, you know, maybe that'll help me determine whether it's a sin or not, if I can look at the motive a little bit, okay. So what I did was I got off the piece of paper and I got out of the pen, and I started writing down all the reasons not to have kids, or not to have more kids. So the first one that immediately popped in my mind is money, good, now it's expensive. I mean, you got to get a bigger house, and boy, if you have kids you know it's expensive. I mean, you got to get a different, you got to get a bigger vehicle, bigger house, and you know, with the price of gas right now, the food prices, have you noticed how they've gone through the roof? I mean, a gallon of milk now is what, $5.50 a gallon, $6 a gallon, give me a thumb up or a thumb down, it's like the price is right, about $4 a gallon, okay, $4 or $5. Eggs have gone up, cheese has gone up, and just feeding children can be expensive. You know, when kids are growing sometimes, they eat a lot of food, and then little kids, what do they do? They spill a lot of food, okay, and then you got to feed them again, okay, because you know, you pour them a big bowl of Cheerios, and then it just spills everywhere, you know, and there goes a couple bucks right there. But the point is, you know, diapers, you know how much diapers are in case you don't have kids? About 25 cents a diaper is how much it costs for a diaper, and they go through them like that. It's like, it's like, you're just going, change, change, change, change, change, change, you know, you change it, and then five minutes later, oh, man, that's 25 cents a pump, literally. That's good money you're going through. But you know, money, bigger house, you need a bigger vehicle, more food, I can't even get by with the kids that I have, or just, I can barely even support my wife, I can't even think about having another child, or having a child, is what people think. So the first thing on my list was money, okay, pretty obvious. Number two, I was thinking about just too much work. I mean, good night, being up all night with them, and they're throwing up, and the midnight feedings, and just having to change the diaper, but I don't do the feedings, you know that. People always ask me, so are you sleeping, are you, is the baby sleeping through the night? I don't know, I'm sleeping through the night, you know. Honey, so how'd last night go, honey? No, that's what I asked her in the morning. So how'd it go last night? Did you sleep? No, I'm just kidding. Anyway, you know, it's a lot of work, changing the diapers, you gotta carry them around, and you know, I don't know about you, but my kids, they just want to be carried all day. And when Miriam, my fourth back there, when she was little, I mean, she was like an appendage that just came off my body. I mean, she was just always there. And sometimes I would forget that I was even holding her, I'd hold her for so long, I'd hold her for three or four hours, I'd forget she's even there, because I'm just going about my business, and she's just kind of hanging over my arm, you know, and I'm doing this, doing this, and you learn to do things with one arm. But anybody knows that having kids is a lot of work. Cleaning up behind them, cleaning up all the messes, dressing them, you gotta dress them, you gotta cloth them, you wanna go somewhere, you gotta load them into the car, one after the other, strap them all in to their car seats, it's a lot of work. So I thought to myself, okay, it's gonna cost money, it's gonna be a lot of work. Number three, yeah, it's gonna take a lot of time. I mean, this is gonna take away from time that I could be doing other things, you know, I'm gonna be dealing with them. Number four, this is gonna cut into, you know, this is gonna basically, well, I'm not gonna go on and on, but the point is, I went through this whole big list, and I came to the conclusion that everything on the list was just a selfish reason, you know, more money for me, less work for me, that's not like laziness, you know, or I can't trust God to provide. That's a lack of faith, saying like, I can't afford it. If God said this, I've been young, and now I'm old, but I've never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed baked in bread. If the Bible says, but my God shall supply all your need according to his riches and glory, then God will provide for the kids that he gives you. And so, I said, okay, if I love more money, if I'm lazy, if I have a lack of faith, if I wanna do something else, then God wants me to do it. These are all selfish reasons, they're all wrong reasons, I couldn't think of one legitimate reason that said, okay, this is why I should limit how many kids I have that's a godly righteous reason. You say, wait a minute, Pastor Anderson, and I heard, this is what I was taught in Bible college. They said to me, well, and they actually, sometimes they would even preach against having a lot of kids. I've been in churches that preach against having a lot of kids. And this is what they said, yeah, you know, you think you're gonna go out there and start a church, you better think before you have all these kids you're gonna have to pay for. And they say, if you have all these kids, you're not gonna have any time to go out and serve God, because you're gonna be so busy taking care of your kids, you're not gonna be able to get out there and serve God as much. So instead of being able to go soul hunting for, you know, eight hours or four hours, you're gonna be able to go for one hour or two hours because you gotta take care of all these kids. But didn't God say to obey is better than sacrifice? I mean, didn't He say that obedience is more important than some kind of sacrifice at the time? I mean, I believe this, and if God can multiply the loaves of fishes and feed 5,000, I believe that if I give God whatever time I do have toward winning souls, I believe God can multiply that more than if I disobey God in order to create a bigger window of time. You know, I just believe God can do more with obedience. I mean, I've been out soul hunting, and I promise you this is true, I've been out soul hunting for eight hours straight. And by the way, when we talk about, when we go soul hunting for three hours, we're not counting all the time at the restaurant and blah, blah, blah. We're talking about actual, I'm talking about actual time doorknocking. I mean, where the time starts at the first door, okay? And I've been out soul hunting for eight hours and had nobody saved before, in my life. Okay, brother Dave and I have been out soul hunting, he's personally been with me for about four hours straight with nobody saved. And yet other times, we've walked up to the first door and started seeing people say, next door, sure, tell me how I can, you know, they just want to hear it. Why? Because God is the one who gives the increase, okay? God's the one who has the power, okay, to win. So God can take what you give him and multiply it. It's not about just how many hours you put in. I'm all for putting in the most hours that you can and the long hours, but if you give God everything you've got, he can multiply it. Hey, I'd rather be obedient to God than to rationalize in my mind. Well, if I just have one kid, then I can have more time to go out there and knock the doors. Well, stop, because let's say I can do three times as much if I didn't have my kids, which I don't believe that's true, but let's say I could. Let's say if I didn't have my kids, I could do three times as much. But what if I raised my kids to be just like me and to win souls for their whole life? And let's say I have 10 kids. I'm doing 10 times as much, see what I'm saying? And then they're raising their kids, and they're doing 10 times as much. You see, we can rationalize things in our mind, but when the Bible's clear teaching is showing here that it's a sin, it's a sin. Now, let me give you some reasons why it's a sin, okay? First of all, because it's a command of God to have children. You say, well, where's that? Well, open your Bible, and you won't have to look far. It's in Genesis chapter 1, okay? And so you don't have to get very far in your Bible reading to find this one. And you say, well, what's the first command that God ever gave to man? Oh, that's easy. He told him not to eat of the tree, the garden, the good and evil. Wrong. That's not the first command that he gave to man. The first command that he gave to man is in verse 28, when the Bible says this is the first command out of God's mouth in the entire Bible, okay? Tell me this isn't important. In Genesis 1, when God blessed them and God sent them to them, be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. Now, what does it mean to be fruitful and multiply? Well, when you multiply, it's like two times two is four, okay? If there's two of us and then there's ten of us, would you say that we multiply? Absolutely. That's what multiplying means. Now, you say, wait a minute, Pastor Anderson, I think that God was just telling this to Adam because Adam was the first man and there's only two of them. They better multiply. They better make something happen here because there's only two people. But now, the world's overpopulated and so now, we need to back off on that and that's why God has blessed us with birth control, okay? Well, look at the word here and I'm going to prove to you that this verse is not just talking to Adam. I'm going to prove it to you right now. Look at that word that starts with an R. Be fruitful and multiply and replenish, okay? Now, the word replenish, only in the King James, if you're in an NIV, it'll just say fill. The word replenish doesn't just mean to fill. It means to fill again, okay? That's what it means, replenish. Like rewind, you know, you wind the tape again. Okay, replenish. And so, if he's telling Adam to replenish the earth, had the earth ever been filled before? No, it hadn't. Because here's the thing, God created Adam and Eve, the first man and the first woman, okay? He's telling them that they need to replenish the earth. No, he's telling all of mankind to replenish the earth, not just Adam and Eve. Because here's the thing, replenish is a continual process of filling it and filling it again and filling it again and filling it again and filling it again and filling it again. Now, if he was just talking to Adam, he'd say, all right, fill this place up. But if he's talking to all of mankind, he's going to say, fill it again and again and again. Keep on refilling the earth with people, okay? So, that's why we know this command is not just given to Adam, because if it was just to Adam, Adam cannot refill that which had not been filled. But every human being of all time is in a refilling process. Adam, Adam's children, their children, all the way down to us. We are refilling and refilling and refilling and refilling and refilling. Look at Genesis chapter number nine. Look forward just a little bit in your Bible. Genesis chapter number nine, it says in verse number one, and God blessed Noah and his sons and said unto them, be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, okay? Now, it's the same thing here, except here the earth had been filled before and he's refilling it. But you know, we're still refilling it today, okay? Because guess what? If all of us stopped having kids, the earth would be empty in about 100 and some years, right? I mean, if nobody ever had kids again, given about 120 years, the earth would be completely empty. Now, a lot of people believe in what, who's ever heard of this? The Gap Theory. Put up your hand. The Gap Theory. Okay, look at Genesis 1-1, because a lot of people will try to take the word replenish and say, well, Adam was refilling the earth because of a previous civilization or previous human beings. But look at Genesis 1-1. It says, in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and the darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, let there be light, and there was light. And this is what they say. Well, there's a gap between Genesis 1-1 and 1-2. In the beginning, he created the heaven and the earth, and then much, much later, the earth was without form and void, and he started this creation process. Part of this is to reconcile fossils that are supposedly millions of years old. Trying to kind of reconcile the two ideas. Well, turn to Exodus. Keep your finger there. Turn to Exodus 20-17, and let's see if that's true or not. Let's see if there's a gap between Genesis 1-1 and 1-2. Let's see if that gap really exists. If we go to Exodus 20, and we look at verse number 11, Exodus 20-11, we're going to see if the gap is really there between Genesis 1-1 and 1-2. It says, for in six days, the Lord made heaven and earth. Now, what verse did that happen in? That was Genesis 1-1, right? In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. For in six days, the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea. Which verse was that in? That was down a little lower in the chapter. The sea and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day, wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. So we see here that God created the heaven and the earth, verse 1, the waters, verse 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, all that stuff, all in six days. So there's no gap there. See what I mean? Because if there were a gap, it couldn't have all taken place in six days. And so we see here that God is telling mankind. He tells it to Adam. He tells it to Noah. But it's a command for all time. He's saying, you are to be fruitful, you're to multiply, and you're to replenish the earth. Now, there's a teaching that's in colleges, and I went to a secular college for a while, and this teaching is rampant that the world is overpopulated. And I remember we watched this video in college, and this video showed a map of the world. And it showed a light bulb, come on, for every one million people in that region of the world. And it played, it had the sound of a beating heart in the background. And it was showing at the bottom what year we were in. So it started out, you know, thousands of years ago. And there were just, you know, several million people. And then you get around, you know, the time of Christ and so forth, you get to about a hundred million people. So it started, the heart speed moved faster. When you're seeing light bulbs light up, there's a million people inhabited in parts of the earth, in continents. Then it starts getting into the, you know, the dark ages. It stays pretty stable. In fact, a few lights went out during the Black Plague when 40 million people died out of 120 million in Europe at that time. And it's going. And then it gets to like the Industrial Revolution, the 1800s, 1700s, 1800s, 1900s. And pretty soon it starts going really fast. And you know, the earth's population is climbing to, you know, 40 billion, all in the 20th century. You know, 3 billion, 4 billion, 5 billion, 6 billion, 7 billion. And it went beyond, like we're in 2008 right now. This video took me to like 2050, you know. So it's going like. And then it's just like. It started out like a slow heartbeat. And it's like, boop. At the beginning it was boop. Boop boop. But then it's just. And it's just lights were just going. And so the whole globe is just light. And they're like, the world is overpopulated, like we're all just gonna, like we're all just gonna jam up against each other, you know. Because the world's overpopulated. Now, turn to Deuteronomy chapter one, and let's see if that's true, okay. Let's see if the world's overpopulated. Now here's the funny thing about it, and while you're turning there, I showed you the first command in the Bible, didn't I? Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, the first command out of God's mouth. Now I'm going to show you the largest number in the Bible. That's got to be significant, right? The biggest number. I mean, the Bible has all kinds of numbers. This is the biggest number in the entire Bible, and I think it's very significant. I mean, I don't think anything in the Bible's a coincidence. The Bible's written by God, and nothing's a coincidence. Listen to Genesis 24, verse 60. You're going to do wrong, and we want all to read this for you. It says, and they blessed Rebekah, and said unto her, Thou art our sister, be thou the mother of thousands of millions. Okay, that's the biggest number in the whole Bible. Thousands of millions. Okay, you know how many that is? Billions, all right? Thousands of millions. Billions! So when they blessed Rebekah, they're telling her, I hope that your descendants are in the billions. So it's basically in excess of two billion. Thousands of millions. So you've got at least two billion. Okay, now remember that number two billion. Now here we are in Deuteronomy chapter one. Now, if you remember in the book of Numbers, and tonight's kind of a Bible study more than a sermon. This morning was a true sermon. Tonight is a Bible study. But, do you remember in the book of Numbers, the first thing in the book of Numbers, and this is where the book of Numbers gets its name. In chapter one, remember he said, they had to count all the men of war that came out of Egypt, and they counted them by the families and by the tribes. Well, when they counted them, who remembers approximately the number that they came up with? 600,000. Men between the ages of like, I think 20 and 50 that were fit to go to war. 600,000. Now, if you got 600,000 men between the ages of 20 and 50, how many people do you think there were total? That's tough to speculate. But, you know, two million would be a really low number, I would think. I mean, that'd be low. I mean, it's probably more like five million. You know what I mean? If you really thought about it. But, you know, even if you just took the lowest possible two million or three million, I mean, that's a very low number, okay? And, you know, we're not going by any history books. I didn't cite any historical sources here. I mean, we're just comparing scripture with scripture. Just the Bible. I mean, 600,000 men between the ages of 20 and 50 that are fit to go to war. So, we got at least two, three, four, five million people here. Look what Moses says here in verse 10 of Deuteronomy chapter one. It says, the Lord your God has multiplied you. And behold, now who multiplied them? God did. And behold, ye are this day as the stars of heaven for multitude. The Lord God of your fathers make you a thousand times so many more as ye are and bless you as he had promised you. So, how many times did Moses say God wanted them to be? A thousand times as many as there were right then. Okay, so what's that add up to? If it was two million, that's two billion. If it was five million, that's five billion. And we're not talking about in the world. We're talking about the nation of Israel. Who's the one who divided the world and the nations? God did in Genesis chapter 10. God divided them up into nations and families. And he divided these nations. And the Bible says he set the balance of their habitation, this is in the book of Psalms, according to the number of the children of Israel. So God looked at the children of Israel and he carved out their piece of land first. And then he carved out a piece for all these other people based on that around it, okay? And so we see here that God is the one who divided people into nations. And he said, here's my will for one nation, the nation of Israel, five billion, okay? Now how many people are in the world right now? Seven billion. So we're not even close to being overpopulated because he said, I want one nation to be five billion. And there's a lot of nations. Now you say, wait a minute, we are overpopulated. You must have never driven around the United States before. Now I have driven around the United States so I know that we're not overpopulated. Arizona, here, let me break it to you. Arizona is empty. There's a couple big cities, the rest of the state is empty. Drive through New Mexico, it's empty. You better know New Mexico's empty. They have one area code for the whole place. 505, all right, the whole place, 505, okay. Texas, you want to talk about empty. Good night, that place makes New Mexico looks like New York City in some place. I mean, that place is empty. I mean, I've driven through Texas and it just goes on and on and on, there's just nothing. You say, well, California. Well, California's the most populated state in America. You better know how empty California is, okay. This is the way California is. The northern one-third of California, everything north of Sacramento, is just forests. And it's empty. There is no major city north of Sacramento, because I know, because I was born and raised in Sacramento. Reading is the only somewhat city, it's tiny. It's like smaller than Flagstaff, about the size of Flagstaff, okay, Reading. And then there's Eureka, and that's it. I mean, other than that, there is nothing out there. It's just forests. And then the whole central California is just none of the farmland. It's the breadbasket of the world. Produces, I think it's the eight largest food producer in the world, the state of California. And then the southernmost third of California is desert. And a lot of it's empty, aside from the big metropolises around Los Angeles, San Diego. I mean, America's empty. I was just out in South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa. Those places are empty. And even on the eastern seaboard, if you drive from Philadelphia, if you drive to Baltimore, if you drive through Maryland, so much of it's empty. And that's the most densely populated part of the whole country, is in those original 13 colonies in that area, it's empty. Go to Europe, the very populated continent, it's empty. We were driving through Germany. A month and a half ago. And you're just going on and on, just farms and towns and tiny little towns. The whole world is empty. It's a lie. But when you're sitting in a classroom in some big city somewhere, they tell you it's overpopulated, you're just like, uh-huh. You know? These kids go to school and, whatever the teacher says, is just, whatever it is, it's just the truth. These kids need to get out and see the world a little bit. And see, how about this? Here's a statistic for you, this is a fact. Somebody told me this, and I mathematically tested it, and it proved to be true, that you can fit every person in the entire world within the city limits of Jacksonville, Florida, literally. Every human being, seven million strong, could fit within the city limits, if they were just standing side by side, could fit within the city limits of Jacksonville, Florida, which is the largest city in America, size-wise, not population-wise, but size-wise. You fit everybody in one city, okay? So, obviously, you wouldn't want to live like that, but the point is, hey, the world's far from being overpopulated, but all of this goes back to taking it into our hands instead of letting God handle it. You know, God can't handle the world being overpopulated. We gotta stop it, we gotta slow things down. God can't take care of my family, so I gotta slow down and not have to make any, you know, when my wife got pregnant with Solomon, our first son. Do you think we could afford that? We couldn't even hardly afford just living, the two of us. I mean, when we got married, we were dirt poor. I mean, you can't even imagine how poor we were. We never went out to eat. I mean, tiny grocery allowance. We literally had no furniture. We slept on a twin bed, both of us, okay, when we got married. Twin bed, okay? We ate off of the floor. I mean, we ate off the floor, but we sat on the floor with plates and ate because we didn't have chairs, because we didn't have a table. For Christmas, we got a table and two chairs. We got married in August, okay? That's how long we didn't have a table and chairs. We had no sofa. We finally got a, I don't know when we finally got a sofa. Okay, we were poor, and we didn't know how we were gonna afford that job. But you know, God provided, it seemed like I made a little more money, I got some raises, and God provided. And then when we were ready to have the second one, there's no way, we were scraping by. We didn't have an extra dime. I remember around that time, I got a raise at my job. And then the health insurance that was taken out of my check every week was jacked up the same week. So I've been looking forward to this raise, looking forward to this raise, looking forward to this raise. I got the raise, I got my paycheck, it was $1.50 less than my last paycheck, because the health insurance increase was exactly the same as my raise, in fact, it was $1.50 more. It was like only $1.50 difference or something. So I ended up making $1.50 less. And I was like, this is my raise. I can't even keep up with the cost of living, you know? And I couldn't afford the third one. I couldn't afford Miriam, couldn't afford the fourth one. And I sure can't afford the ones on the way right now, okay? I mean, honestly, I don't see how I can even afford it. But it doesn't matter, okay? I'm leading up to God, okay? Now look, if I'm gonna expect God to guide me and direct me in other areas in life, the Bible says this, trust in the Lord with all their heart and lean not unto your own understanding. Watch this, in all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths. I want God to direct my paths outsole in him, yes. I want God to direct my paths in my preaching, yes. I want God to direct my paths in my child, Miriam, yes. I want God to direct my paths in my friendship, yes. I want him to direct my paths in my marriage, yes. I want him to direct my paths in my business, yes. But I want God to direct me how many kids he wants me out of. I'm not smart enough to decide how many kids I should have. Who am I to arbitrarily pick some number? Two, three, four, five, six, seven, who am I? Nobody. Who am I to decide, well, I'm ready for another one. I'm not ready. God's gonna have to decide. I mean, think about how important it is to bring into this world a never-dying soul. Wow. I mean, think about it. My children will exist forever. I mean, God willing, they'll all be saved and go to heaven. But if one were not to be saved and go to hell, they'd still continue to exist for all eternity, in one place or the other. What a responsibility. What an awesome power that God has given to us to bring life into this world. And yet we're so flippant and careless about it that we're gonna let some magazine, some TV show, some Oprah Winfrey, or some guru somewhere tell us how many kids we should have. Some book somewhere by Dr. Spook, or some lady somewhere that writes books about, and she has her blog and her magazine, and she'll tell you about how to have a family, and whatever. God's gonna tell you how to have a family, and God's the one that opens the womb, he closes the womb, he gives, he takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord. I don't think there's anything radical about what I'm preaching right now. I mean, it's just the old-fashioned Bible truth. You say, I can't, you're crazy. Okay, well, how's this quote for you? This is from Theodore Roosevelt. Remember Teddy Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States? Here's a quote from him. Birth control is sinful. That's what he said. He just writes it, birth control is a sin. He said that in a speech to ladies, okay, while he was president of the United States. He said, birth control is a sin. He said, you're like a traitor to the United States if you practice birth control. That's what he said. I mean, that's Teddy, that's not me saying that. That's Teddy Roosevelt. But here we are, what, 100 years later, 100 and some years later. Now a preacher can't even say that. What the president used to say, okay. Do you know who made birth control legal in the United States? Because let me tell you this. Birth control was illegal until 1936 in the United States. All birth control was illegal. It was against the law. But there was a lady by the name of Margaret Sanger and she fought to make birth control contraceptive devices legal in the United States. And only the final ban on birth control was not lifted until 1965. But they started removing laws against it in 1936. It took until 1965 to completely legalize birth control. But this lady, Margaret Sanger, who legalized birth control in America, she started an organization that you've probably heard of. It's called the Birth Control Federation of America. You say, I've never heard of that. Yes you have. It's called Planned Parenthood today. You know, it started out being called the Birth Control Federation of America. Let me tell you a little bit about Margaret Sanger. She was a racist. She hated black people and people of other races, okay. And so this wicked racist, Margaret Sanger, wanted to get the minorities on birth control so that they quit having all these kids. And not only was she a racist, but she was a murderer. She taught people how to kill their child. I mean, she taught people, she wrote books. Back in those days, I mean, the early 1900s, about how to give yourself an abortion. And she wrote books about herbs that you could take that would kill your child and other disgusting ways that I'm not gonna mention about how to kill your own child and wound purposely. Margaret Sanger, I mean, it's a wicked woman. And you know what, she died all alone. All by herself in a nursing home. Nobody to take care of her. I think she had what, one child? Two children, one died, the other one had no kids. I wonder why. Her mom's this birth control Nazi, you know. And so she had no kids. And her own daughter wanted nothing to do with her. So she died all by herself in a nursing home. Back in, even back in those days. It's a wicked person. So let me ask you something. Is birth control of the Father or is it of the world? I'm talking about the source tonight. That's what of means. Is it of the Father or is it of the world? Did it come from God? Did it come from the Word of God? Did it come from the people of God? Or did it come from the world? It came from the world. You see, in Exodus chapter one, I'm just preaching the Bible tonight. This is just the truth of the Bible. This is something that's all throughout the Bible. In Exodus chapter one, you have to understand that the children of Israel, when they went into the land of Egypt, how many did they number? 70 out of the loins of Israel. 70. But just a few hundred years later, the Egyptians said the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we. How can that be? How could 70 people go into a country that was the most powerful nation in the world and in just a few hundred years, outnumber that nation? Because the Egyptians were practicing birth control, obviously, because otherwise they'd be keeping up. They'd be keeping pace. God's people said, we want to have children. Why? Because the Bible says children are an heritage of 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. Oh, you need to wait until you're older to have kids. No, children of the youth, okay, yeah. Happy is the man that had this quiver full of them. They should not be ashamed that they shall speak with the enemies in the gate. God says, you'll be happy, you'll be blessed. Hey, God said, surely blessing I will bless you and multiplying I'll multiply you. He said, multiplication and blessing is a synonym. And so the children of Israel multiplied and were fruitful because God told them to. The children of the land of Egypt were worldly, ungodly, and they limited the number of children they had. And you know, historically, I went on Planned Parenthood's website and on Planned Parenthood's website, they said on that website that birth control was invented in ancient Egypt, as far as, that's the furthest back they could find. They said the IUD was invented there and birth control methods were invented. It's on Planned Parenthood's website. Look it up, it says Egypt. I didn't make that up. And so it makes perfect sense. It jives with the Bible here where the Bible is saying that they outnumbered the children of the land of Egypt. Why? Because they were godly and righteous. The children of the land of Egypt were wicked and ungodly and worldly. So is birth control of the father, is it of the world? You see, if I wanted to, I could limit God. The Bible talks about they turned back and tempted God and limited the Holy One of Israel in Psalm 78, 41. You can limit God. I could limit God's ability in my life to, we could limit God's ability to build this church by being lazy, by not going soul-willing, by committing sin, by having sin in our lives. Our church is gonna die. You could limit God tonight. You could say, you know what, maybe God wants to give you all these kids and you say, I'm gonna limit that. I'm gonna limit how much blessing I want from God. That's what Onan did. And you say, wait a minute Pastor, you're taking that story out of context. That was because God was angry because he wouldn't raise up seed to his brother. Look, the problem with Onan was his selfishness. Okay, that was his problem. He said, I don't want to raise up seed to my brother. My brother doesn't matter to me. This kid doesn't matter to me. I don't want kids. And it sounded like I was the only kid he was gonna have. I mean, he chose to have no kids. I mean, he could have just had the one kid, named it after his brother and then had his own kids. He said, I don't want any kids. I'm gonna spill it on the ground. That's good. Look, you say, well, it was because of the reason that he did it. That's why God got mad. Look, everybody's got a reason why they use birth control. And it's always a selfish one. Whether it be Onan's reason, whatever his motive were, I don't know exactly what was going through his head. What was, why he, but I guarantee it was selfishness. But you know, I think that not having kids for your own financial gain, I think that's selfish. And you know, what do you think would be better for the kingdom of God? If every Christian had eight, 10 kids or two, and raise them for God. You know, the Mormons are having 10 kids each. The Islam, look at Islam, look at the Muslims. They're having 10 kids each. Go to Afghanistan, where the fertility rate is nine, nine average, okay, in Islam. So we're filling the whole world with a bunch of Muslims, filling the whole world with a bunch of Mormons. I mean, how many people do you know that converted to Mormons? Nobody converts to that crazy religion. It's a religion that believes in many gods. They believe in thousands of gods and galaxies and universes. It's not, it's a religion that you gotta grow up with. I know this firsthand because my great grandfather came over on a boat from Sweden because the Mormons paid his way over. They said, we'll pay you to come to America. All you gotta do is be a Mormon. He's like, sure, I'll take it to America. Mormon, moron, whatever, you know. He just wanted to come to America. And so my great grandfather and his parents, this is Gustav Anderson, okay, you know. So Gustav and Maria and their son Gustav got on a boat and came to America because the Mormons paid their way and paid for them and gave them money. Paid them to be a Mormon in America. They didn't believe in the Mormon religion. They were what's called Jack Mormons. Who's ever heard that term? They're a Mormon in name only, okay. They didn't believe in it. They just went along with it for the money. But guess what happened to their kids that were raised in the Mormon church? They became dying, old Mormons. And so I have second cousins all over the place because my great grandfather's still talking about it. So I got second cousins all over the place that are Mormons. And I tried to give the gospel to them before. And I remember I sat down with one particular cousin, or second cousin that is, once removed. And I sat down with my second cousin once removed and I gave her the gospel and I showed her for two hours everything from the Bible, how Mormonism was wrong and the Bible's right and salvation through Jesus Christ. I went through the whole thing with her. And I showed, and she didn't have an answer for anything. And I was practically in tears begging her to be saved. This is when I was a teenager. I was begging her to be saved. And she said, you can show me anything you want. She said, no matter what I see in the Bible, it's not gonna change what I believe. Because I know what I felt. You know, because they've had this burning in their bosom. Have you ever heard of that? They had this burning, have you heard of it? The burning in the bosom, you know. And she said, I know what I felt, no matter what you show me from the Bible. I will not change. So what happened, they became dying Mormons and there's a whole bunch of them. Because you know how many kids they had? Like 15, they had a lot. So is that because they were Mormons? No. I've traced my ancestry back, and this is just a hobby. It's not a religious thing, you know. The Bible says not to mess with these genealogies and stuff. This is a hobby in my family tree and everything. I've traced some of my ancestry back to the 1400s, literally. And many of them to the 1500s and 1600s on different lines. And you know, if you go back in my family line, you go back a couple generations, everybody had like 10 kids, everybody. Poor, rich, Mormon, Baptist, Catholic, all the religions that are in my family line, they all had about 10 kids. Then you get into the 1900s, all of a sudden it goes down to like three, four, you know. That's just reality. I mean, back then they had to get, but look, you see how these Mormons are just brainwashing kids and just sending them out by the droves on their bicycles. And the black trench coat and a bicycle, you know. And man, the Muslims are sending them out by the droves. Millions of them. And here we are with the truth of God's word. The whole book of Proverbs that tells us how to rear our kids. God's spirit living inside of us. The word God being preached at a pulpit in a town right near us. Sunday night and Wednesday night, we could have kids, we could be raising them for God, we could teach them how to win souls, and we could send them out to turn the world upside down. But instead, we're buying a boat, we're buying an RV, we're buying a house, we're buying this, we're buying that. And we're taking vacations and we're backpacking all over the world. And we're doing everything that's fun and cool. And we might have one or two kids. Not me, my friend. And you know what, I've got four kids right now and a fifth one on the way. And you know what, if that's all God gives me, blessed be the name of the Lord. Hallelujah, I thank God for every one of them. And I prayed so many times, said, God, thank you for each one of my kids. I love each one of them so much. I thank God for every single one of them. And you know, I just said, God, would you please bless me with more children? I mean, I prayed that hundreds of times. That's my birth control. You say, do you practice birth control? Yes, I do. I get on my knees and beg God to give me more kids. That's how I'm gonna control it. I say, you know what, God, if you would see fit to give me another child, that would be a great blessing. I would appreciate that gift. You can give somebody a gift and they don't appreciate it. The Bible says that children are an inheritance of the Lord. The fruit of the womb is his reward. It says that God give, behold, I am the children which God has given me. Okay, so have you ever given somebody a gift? They're like, open it, open it. You know, and they open it and they're like, oh, thanks. They're like, good night. I spent a lot on that gift. You don't feel good when a gift's rejected. How do you think God feels when you reject his gift? He wants to give you more children and you say, oh man, the two that I have are such a pain in the neck. You know, that's not right. You should say, thank God for my, and you know, if you only have one child, well thank God for your one child. If you have two children, thank God. We're not talking about a number of children. However many children you have, you gotta thank God for them. And you know, the older you get, the happier you're gonna be that you have those kids. I've never met somebody in a nursing home yet that was 80 years old and says, my only regret is that I wish I would have had less kids. Never, but I've met people that said, I wish I would have had more. And so you gotta understand that if God wants to give you a gift here, you know, there's another gift, salvation, the gift of God's eternal life. People reject that gift all the time. Why do they reject it? Because they don't understand it. They don't get the value of it. They don't see what it's really worth. They don't even believe that it's real. And when you start to believe that children are a gift from God, okay, and when you start to understand the value of that gift, that's when you're gonna want to receive that gift from God and say, you know what, I would love to have another child. Now, God is not unable to plan out your family. You know, the family planning, you know, you hear these terms. You don't think God is able to plan out your family, right? I mean, look, I think that God is more than capable of giving me the right children at the right time and the right proximity and age. Now, have you ever, have you noticed that my kids are not nine months apart? Now, I've known people whose kids are nine months apart and that, you know, that's not healthy. I mean, you could die giving birth every nine months. Say, oh, Pastor David, you must practice birth control to space your kids out like that. No, I use no birth control whatsoever. You know, but it's amazing how God has a way of planning out your family and spacing out your children. You know, and God has created through nature, through his design, through science, a way to where a woman doesn't get pregnant too soon. It's called nursing a baby. And because my wife nurses our children, she can't get pregnant until she stops nursing. And you can ask her more about that. She'll give you all the details. But it's just a fact of science. If you do things a certain way, follow the Bible, do it, there's things teaching you the Bible, do it God's way of the Bible, and you know what? They'll be spaced out nicely. Mine are spaced out, and you know what? At least a year and a half in the, I don't even have either a year and a half, right? I mean, they're a couple of years apart each, okay? And so God knows what he's doing. Don't lean on your own understanding. Trust God to give you the family that he wants to give you. You say, well, I'm already past that age, or I'm already done with that, or it doesn't matter. That's where we got it at the beginning of the sermon. You need to learn the Bible too. Somebody might ask you about this. You need to know about this. You could teach this to somebody. Whether you need it or not, it's my job as a preacher to preach it, the whole counsel of God. Because if nobody else heard it tonight, hey, my kids heard it in the back, and I want to have a lot of grandkids for my kids. I want them to get it, because I want them to be blessed like I've been blessed. And I'm going to tell you something. Nothing has enriched my life more than having my kids. I mean, it's very enriching in your life. I mean, it's great. You know, I don't have a TV. I just play, you know, the kids are much more funnier and entertaining than anything on TV. I mean, and if you raise them the way God wants you to raise them, they're much more of a blessing to be around than, you know, these monsters. But that's another sermon. Let's go ahead and have one prayer.