Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost- God: The Co-Creator with Babies

Unedited Transcript Follows:

In the name of God, the Father, the Son and the Holy. Oh man. As we hear the kiddos leaving, it's I, we had, uh, we got together with a family after church last Sunday. Um, our children were like a train wreck uh and which sometimes happens and uh and so they were Be in a pain.

Um, really all of them but particularly the youngers, which is kind of normal. But um, Like, it's so easy to be in a spot where we say, hey, like the kids are in the way. Uh, like like if you've worked from home you've probably experienced the feeling of like, can you keep the kids quiet?

So I can get something done like Uh, like can can we just like keep them quiet for a minute so I can get something done and forgetting that, like, they are the something to be done, you know? They, they, they're, they are like, the thing to accomplish and, uh, the The crown of Our Lives, you know, in a lot of ways.

So like and the fruit of what God's doing through us which is a beautiful thing and I I it got me reflecting on the readings just reflecting on my life, as a dad, and having five kids and living life on hard mode. Is just recognizing. The, the beauty of children and their place in the Kingdom of Heaven.

So what we really see in these passages particularly in the psalm, it just jumped out of me but is that God has chosen to make himself the co-creator of babies. He he co-creates with babies is what he does and and that's what our Psalm tells us, the psalm is this powerful proclamation of co-creation with The Sovereign Lord, who rules the entire world?

That's what this Psalm was Psalm 8, right? It's a good one and and Yahweh is addressed as our governor, right? Because of the, we follow the tradition of not pronouncing. The Divine name, when we see it in Hebrew, in, when we in our translations, I just said, Yahweh. But in our translations, we don't pronounce the Divine names.

We're following that tradition. We have something like Our Lord. So what we're seeing is this like Both this objective element and this subjective element. So like oh Lord Sovereign King over all the universe. Our Lord, my Lord. Lord of my life. Lord of Our Lives. So we have both this objective.

God is Sovereign over all subjective. And then, how great is your name? Over all the world, right? The Lord, the one who's objectively Lord is our Lord. Our Lord. He shines gloriously reigning above the heavens. And he chooses to relay. With his creation. And ultimately, he pulls his creation into being co-creators along with him.

They're invited to be co-creators along with him. Verses 5 through 6 say what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you visit him yet. You made him lower little lower than the Angels to Crown him with glory and honor. You have made him have dominion over the works of your hands and you've put all things in subjection under his feet.

Now, these words are about Jesus. Right? We should learn to read the Psalms crystallogically. That's how the church has always read them. So the songs are songs about Jesus, Jesus taught us that we don't understand the law of the prophets or the writings the Psalms. If we don't understand them to be a book about him, they're a book that testifies to him.

So this is uh, this is definitely about Jesus The son of man. Who has made little lower than the angels, in order to be crowned with glory and honor and have all things put in subjection under his feet. Obviously, that's about Jesus. But they're also about all of humanity.

They're also about all of humanity. And the words in verse 2 are also about all of Humanity, too, and all of Humanity's role, Being co-creators with God and they jumped out of me. In bold in italics out of the mouth of babes and infants. You have ordained strength because of your enemies.

So again, obviously we think of Jesus The one who came as a babe and an infant and because and dispelled the enemies of chaos and darkness and death and Satan, right? So obviously this is about Jesus. But what does it mean? That God ordained strength to come from the mouth of babies because of his enemies nearly a thousand years before.

Jesus, these were the first people to read this Psalm, what's it mean that God had babies, he put strength in their mouths because of his enemies. God's not only co-creating. With Humanity. He's a co-creator with little babies. With the weakest among them. And he's ordained strength and honor. To come out of the mouths of babies and he's ordained to.

To be the type of God to push forth Darkness With babies. Listen, every single baby is a sure sign that God isn't finished with Humanity yet. That he's not done. You want a sign that God is for us and that he's not just wrapping up the project and saying, never mind.

Look at the swollen bellies of expectant mothers. Look at the crying babies. In the hospital Wards God hasn't left us yet. He can't he couldn't have because he's still bringing forth children, he's still ordaining strength in the mouth of babes. Because of his enemies. And God told human beings to fill the Earth and subdue it, right?

That's what he said. To the man and the woman. Fill the Earth and subdue it and God set things up. So that there's a relationship between the extension of human beings people and the extension of his creative work to push back chaos and darkness and to bring forth order and light.

And it's the way he chose to do it, and it's wonderful. He chose to expel darkness and chaos. By image, bearers bearing children. It looks so. Impossibly ineffective. And pushing forth the powers of darkness and evil, right? I mean like these big ominous powers and yet, God saw fit to make this.

The very way that he pushes back. The darkness is through babies and infants and extends his kingdom over the face of the Earth. Because of his enemies through the mouths of babies and infants. And he ordains to bring this strength about And to birth it out of holy matrimony.

That's what the rest of our passages are about, right? Now the rest of our passages talk a lot about holy matrimony. One flesh. Union between a man and a woman, right? And we, we see. Several things from these passages. But the first thing we see is that marriages enduring It's meant to be this enduring institution.

When Jesus is approached in Our Gospel passage today, he asks them What Moses said to them about divorce, right? Their response is really telling because they quote Deuteronomy, 24, Deuteronomy, 24 is a law to protect women, from frivolous divorces at the hands of men. So what it says is like they they only hold on to one part of it and it's actually the premise of the argument.

So the premise of the argument is You can't do this, right? And so they they jump on the, if you do this part of it, where it says, give someone a certificate of divorce, they say see, ah, Moses permitted that we could give a woman a certificate of voice.

What the law actually was is, if you give a woman, a certificate of a bors, you don't get any takebacks if she ends up going and marrying someone else and he decides, he's just gonna pass her along. You don't get her back. You like, if you give her a certificate of divorce, no take backs.

And what that was meant to do is to make the men who had the only means of provision and strength in their culture to take seriously, if they're going to offer a certificate of divorce and not do it because you didn't like dinner one night, right? So, so, it was looking at the men and saying, hey, take this seriously, if you're going to divorce a woman, don't think you can just have her back on a win.

Is he said you could give her a certificate. Of course, and send her away. It's good telling, right? Maybe missed the point. Maybe they missed the point. Yeah. And so, what Jesus does is he raises the stakes? On marriage. And he does it by dealing with the real issue that God is dealing with in the law, which is Hardness of heart.

He says God gave you this law or Moses gave you this because of your hardness of heart. Holy matrimony is a serious call, that ought to be discerned. Well, It's like it's much like a call to the priesthood or the diaconate like we should be thinking about it as a vocational calling marriage is a vocational calling and it's not just one that we should assume that everyone is called to like in our culture we just assume everyone's called to get married.

Like when your kids being antisocial, You're tempted to say, oh, how will they ever find someone? Not even to ask the question? Are they meant to find someone? Maybe they're meant to be celibate which would be wonderful and a wonderful calling, right? But it because it's a vocational calling to be called into holy matrimony, to be called into a one flesh Union.

This is a vocational calling So marriage shouldn't be assumed. And In this passage here, we should recognize remarriage shouldn't be assumed after divorce. You know, the acna doesn't even permit remarriage after divorce without special permission from the bishop. A priest can't just decide to marry two people who have been married before.

He has to get special permission from the bishop to do that, right? And the point of all, this isn't to discourage people who have been divorced or even those who have been divorced and remarried, it's not the point. The point is to discern on the front end of marriage.

So it's not about looking back in the rearview mirror of your life and Condemning yourself like for something that you can't change today, right? This is about Discerning, on the front side of marriage. It is a unique vocational calling that's enduring And lifelong. And we discern that on the front end of marriage, right?

That this is a lifelong vocational call. One thing really cool about this passage is that they When they're talking about marriage and divorce, they immediately bring a child to Jesus. Connecting, you know, marriage and children, right? Which shouldn't be a surprising connection, our culture, it's becoming a more and more surprising connection of marriage and children being and I think it's telling Because God ordains like we talked about strength from the mouth of babies.

Because of his enemies. Marriage is about creating a stable environment for babies to be born, grow and Thrive. Who is impacted by temporal marriage with quick, frivolous divorces more than children. Who's impacted more than children with, from that being the flavor of the culture? That we have frivolous divorcing and people divorcing.

Talk to anyone with a blended family and talk to them about it, go deeper than asking them. Hey are you allowed to get remarried after divorce? Ask This question, ask them about the difficulties of co-parenting through children through divorce and how hard it is. It's challenging. It brings a lot of challenges and difficulty.

Marriage is meant to be enduring. Because marriage is meant to produce. Stability. For Generations, right? Because out of the mouths of babies, God ordained strength because of his enemies. And so he's created an institution that's enduring that's meant to last so that it can be stable for for who for the babies that he's ordained strength uh, to go forth.

And because of his enemies like this is why marriage is enduring. This is why divorce shouldn't be frivolous. This is why Serious. And it should be looked at, as a vocational call, that is lifelong. But related to that marriage being enduring for the sake of the babies marriage is also meant to be fruitful this whole passage in Mark, the last two chapters in Mark has been surrounded with children.

There's children everywhere. People are bringing children to Jesus. Jesus is holding up a child. They become like, one of these to inherit the kingdom. There's children all over the place in these two chapters. Right? And right In this passage, we read, let the little children come to me. Is what Jesus says, let the little children come to me.

Now, I'm a weirdo. I have five kids and we like homeschool them. We're weird. Now, it isn't that weird in Utah. You know. That's a, that's not. I'm a lot less weird in Utah than I was in California. I assure you. But I was weird in California. I, I was a weirdo with five kids.

Now you should see the looks when we get like when we say, hey, we're gonna We're gonna stop, we're gonna have a cheap room in, uh, in Circus, Circus in Vegas. And so that we can not drive through the through the night with five kids, right? Uh, and we're parading our five kids through the Vegas casino and they have their blankies.

And like look at us weird. And maybe that's weird because it's a casino. But it's also weird because we have five kids and really anywhere except Utah, right? Or even in the grocery store. The looks that you, you get anywhere in Southern California, like when we added a third kit people looked at us like we were out of our minds.

Like three. What are you like, like are you crazy? Do you know where that comes? How they come? You know. Yeah. Yeah. You know what? You know, how that happens. You know what I like to do? When someone does that? Is I say, no. Can you tell me? And then they walk away.

Yeah, I know. Can you explain it? As Saint Augustine right? Saint Augustine. Said this, he said these this is a challenging quote to listen to well. He said, it would hardly be the case that he talks about this helper, that's made fit for him for made for the man, right?

And he says, it would hardly be the case that she would be made to till the Earth with him. For there was not yet any labor required, to make her help necessary. In any case, if there were any such need a male Harper, would be better. And the same could be said of the comfort of another's presence.

If Adam were perhaps weary of solitude how much more agreeably could two male friends rather than a man and a woman, enjoy companionship and conversation through a shared life together. Surely no one will say that God was able to make from the rib of the, man, only a woman and not also a man if he had wished to do so consequently, I do not see.

In what sense, the woman was made a helper for the man, if not for the sake of bearing children. Oh now I just made you guys all mad right now. Here's the now, but listen. I don't need a redeem Saint Augustine for, you see, one of the beautiful things about reading the church fathers.

Is that we don't see them as like, prophets that spoke the word of God. So like giving us unquestionable word of God. So if you think he's wrong, you can just say he was wrong about that last bit about what's the best way that they could be a helper except by bearing children.

You could just say oh, he was crazy about that, but I'll tell you this. I must admit that I find that the way he's saying that the way he just said that was maybe crude and Grading to Modern ears. But just With that being said, just a cursory, look at the body.

And at the differences between male and female, Should lead us to say that one of the main ways and likely the main way that the man and the woman correspond to one another in creation is in the procreation of children Like that if we just look at our bodies, the way that we're different, the way that we correspond each other is For pro-creation of children.

So that should come out to us in that, you know, in the chapter Right before. This is spelled in right before the one we're reading in Genesis. This is spelled out even more explicitly. When right after God makes a man and a woman, he tells them be fruitful multiply and fill the Earth.

Right. Make babies. Make babies together. Augustine and our fathers other Church, fathers had things to say about the one flesh Union and I'd be willing to Grant that. They May have been a little bit too preoccupied with Union between man and woman in a negative way. They were a little unsure about the bodies and all that.

And a little distrustful. That being said in our age, the preoccupation was sex is every bit as strong and the error is that we almost always view it positively. So ICS Lewis told us every age has its own Outlook. It's especially good at seeing certain truth and especially liable to certain mistakes.

We all therefore need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period and that means the old butts. So they might have made that they might have had their problems in. Saint Augustine might have said it wrong, but we have our problems and reading the old books.

Helps us see where we have our own blind spots. Right? That's what C.S Lewis told us. So, read the old books, read Augustine. Even if you think he's wrong, see somewhere down the line. Two. Major shifts happen. First, we saw the union of man, and the woman is primarily about personal fulfillment.

Fulfillment of appetite. And divorced it from procreation. And secondly, we saw babies and human beings as liabilities rather than assets on the on the balance sheet. And that's what happened over the course of the last 50 years or so. These ideological changes have a wide range of impact. It runs the gamut from abortion and sterilization to restrictive immigration policy.

If people are viewed, as co-creators of God with God, we welcome both the baby and the Sojourner with open arms. If they're viewed as another mouth to feed. Then we want them away whether they're the babies or the sojourners, right? Satan and the Demonic forces hate babies because God has ordained strength to come from babies and infants.

Sterilization, either through hormones or surgery or from inspiring sterile unions between people of the same sex or any other form of sterilization that makes Union all about meeting and fulfilling our desires. That's a Playbook of the Demonic. When you see moves towards sterilization, you should oppose them with every ounce of your being, Because God ordains strength to come from the mouths of babies.

Reading old books would help us out here. So I'm not going to give any hard and fast rules. But realize that the intent of the one flesh Union between, man and woman is to produce the fruit of children. And that questions about individual Family Planning or family sizing or actually discipleship questions.

And one that should not be viewed as completely privatized in a matter of individual conscience, which we just said, hey you do you on that? The church doesn't have anything to say about it. And that's cuz marriage is a picture of Christ in his church, right? We know this.

Scripture lays out this connection between God's Union and with his people. As as a husband's Union and his wife, all over the place, all through the prophets, right? And what we see in this Pat in these passages is that imprecisely what we've been talking about that? Marriage is a perfect picture of Christ.

And his church, our Union with God is enduring, nothing can separate us from God's love it lasts, it's stable. Our Union with God's, also fruitful bringing forth disciples who will fill the Earth and subdue it and extend God's Reign and rule over the face of the Earth. Our Union with God, works out God's plan to ordain strength from the mouths of babies because of his enemies.

So God is pushing back, darkness and Chaos. He's bringing light in order to the world and he chooses to do this and maybe one of the most surprising ways imaginable through the mouths of babies, he's ordained strength because of his enemies. When he sends his Christ, he sends his eternal son to take flesh as a helpless baby.

And when he does that, he points us toward the purpose for all babies to be part of making the world new. Every single baby is a sign that God hasn't given up on us yet. Because it's God's plan to work together with babies, he set up, stable fruitful unions to bring forth these babies Marriage is something that is supposed to endure for life and is something that God's intends to bring forth the fruit of more co-creators.

For him to co-create along with more babies. May we participate with our Lord Jesus in pushing back the enemies of chaos and darkness participating with our God who was willing to make himself a co-creator with babies. Amen.