Should we still be fruitful and multiply?

Watch the complete sermon here: https://www.bridges.church/messages/singleness-and-marriage-sermon-1-corinthians-6-12-7-40/

Hey, thanks again for sending in questions related to our recent sermons. This last week, we’re in the last half of 1 Corinthians 6 and then all of chapter 7. And we mentioned how Paul, in his view, it’s actually better for people to stay single than to get married because they can focus more on God’s wider mission of in the world.

He’s very careful to delineate that this is his thoughts, not the Lord’s thoughts. So they’re not commands from the Lord.

It’s the way Paul views it himself, which is kind of interesting. I might have asked a question about that. It’s like there’s scripture that isn’t scripture, but nobody asked about that, so we don’t have to cover it. No, I’m just kidding. I would say Paul truthfully inerrantly records what his thoughts are.

And so we still say all of Scripture is inerrant, but it defines what it means in this case, as it’s Paul’s ideas, not the Lord’s ideas. Nevertheless, it brings up kind of a wider question of going back to the Garden of Eden. God commands. Genesis 1:28. God commands man and woman to be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, subdue.

It gives all living creatures kind of under our headship, our stewardship. We have responsibility for everything on this Earth. And we are told to be fruitful and multiply, make a lot more humans, because there’s a lot of work to do if we are going to subdue the Earth. And so the question is, are we still supposed to be fruitful and multiply?

Because that seems like if we’re single, if the preferred thing is for us to be single, then how could we be fruitful and multiply?

Right? And so does Paul negate Genesis? How does all of this fit together? And so first we’ll look at Genesis, and I would say it has to be true that the command to be fruitful and multiply extends beyond the first man and woman. It has to be more of a generic command for humanity going forward.

Because the goal of being fruitful and multiplying is to subdue the whole Earth. One family can’t do that. It’s going to take a lot of people. You know, our goal, our task here is really to be like gardeners. You know, the world out there is kind of wild, chaotic.

You go hiking and there’s just things that grow with and overtake other things. And it needs management. Right. The whole Earth, we could say, needs management. The beauty of a garden with somebody working all the particular areas has order to it that the kind of wild nature doesn’t.

And so our responsibility is to kind of bring order to everything around us. Interestingly, that means we’re not supposed to be just totally hands off with nature. We’re supposed to engage with nature. The ideologies of our day of just be better. If humans weren’t here and nature could do its own thing, the Bible would stand against that.

We’re supposed to engage with nature, make it better. It’s our responsibility to manage this. I mean, of course we can’t abuse it. We can’t raid nature for our own benefit. That’s not being good managers either.

But neither are we totally hands off, okay? And that’s going to take a lot of people. So we do need to multiply. It has that command is more than just the first man and the first woman. However, by the time we get to the New Testament, of course, there are many people in the world.

And the thrust of the New Testament is not while there are commands for fathers and children and mothers and children and families, and God ordained the family. And the family is certainly this building block for all of civilization, right? What happens in the home has influence over all of society.

And if all of homes are healthy, then probably all of society is going to be healthy. All of that’s true.

But there’s much more of a focus in the New Testament on evangelism than on having children. Having children is fine. And if you have children, it gives very specific instructions for how to parent children, how to raise children. But I mean, you can tell the wider picture is the church spreading the message of Jesus.

You know, our multiplication seems to become much more go out and make disciples rather than go out and make children again.

Not that there’s anything wrong with having children. I have children, love children. And the Bible gives commands for that. But it gives a lot more attention to creating more followers of Jesus.

You can think Matthew 19, Jesus talks actually about marriage, man and woman becoming one. But then later in that chapter, he says, for all of you who have left, fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, for my sake, you will receive a hundredfold more. And in the next life, eternal life. He’s talking about the church.

He takes the same language that we find in Genesis 2, that man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife.

He takes that which he’s actually just quoted earlier, Matthew 19, but now he’s taking that when you leave father and mother, sister and brothers, all these other people, what you’re going to be unite, united to is the church. You’re going to have all these sisters, brothers, fathers, mothers, way more than you could ever have in a biological family.

Right. The focus seems to be shifting toward make disciples, make church. All these people that have been born in the world.

What we need to do now is go get all of those people to be Christians. That seems to be more primary than being fruitful and multiplying. That, again, doesn’t mean we can’t be fruitful and multiply. Great. And there’s commands for that.

But the bigger picture seems to be go out into the world and make followers of Jesus. And so we wouldn’t say those things contradict one another. We could say those things complement one another. It’s a shift in focus rather than a refuting of one thing and establishing a new thing. But for all of us, whether we are married or Single, it’s Matthew 28.

None of us are free from the command to go out into the world, make disciples, teach them everything that Jesus has commanded, and baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That’s a task for all of us. And for those of us who have families, that task, especially in the family, teach our children, grow them up in the way of the Lord.

And for those of us who are single, we probably have more time to go do that in the wider world. So we hope that’s helpful.

We’ll see you next time.