God Is Good All The Time!!

Birth Control

My wife and I have been discussing birth control and if it is something that God really wants us to do. You can read her blog on this topic by clicking here.

First, here is a sermon I found about Birth Control...then I did a search on LifeChurch's page and found a sermon video. So first, a sermon I found....then beneath that, it is also talked about on the LifeChurch video. (hint: LifeChurch video doesn't agree with Genesis 38 verses about Onan being applicable here...also it deals with a few different questions, so only the first 11 minutes are dealing with birth control directly).

Let's dive on in...

1. Children are a blessing from the Lord
Scripture is full of such verses; it doesn't take much scratching to dig up a host of passages which refer to children in this light.

Psalm 127:3-5 Sons are a heritage from the LORD, children a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate.
Genesis 25:21 Isaac prayed to the LORD on behalf of his wife, because she was barren. The LORD answered his prayer, and his wife Rebekah became pregnant.
Exodus 23:25-26 Worship the LORD your God, and his blessing will be on your food and water. I will take away sickness from among you, and none will miscarry or be barren in your land. I will give you a full life span.
Genesis 33:5 (Jacob meeting Esau)Jacob answered, "They are the children God has graciously given your servant."
Psalm 128:1-4 (ESV)1 Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways! 2 You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you. 3 Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table. 4 Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord.

These are general statements of God's attitude toward children. There are those who would say that we can limit blessings, that the Bible refers to many things as blessings, including wealth and belongings, and that we definitely should limit such blessings.

It's all in what you compare the blessing of children to that this argument rises or falls. Which of us would suggest we limit our blessings when it comes to forgiveness of sins? If you compare children to money, then, by all means, limit it. But if you compare them to forgiveness of our sins, they're a blessing to seek without number or end. If we compare God's gift of children only to material blessing, we make an inherently biased comparison.

Those who would still argue that it is appropriate to limit the Divine blessing of children must at least admit that only some blessings are limitable. If you choose to include children among blessings such as possessions and wealth which are limitable because of their negative potential, on what basis do you do so? The Bible clearly warns against the pursuit of material items. Where does the Bible warn that love of children is a root of any evil?

Finally, sometimes, limiting God's blessing is sin. The prophet Elisha urged King Joash to strike the ground with the arrows as a sign of his defeat of the Syrians. Joash hit the ground three times and Elisha rebuked him for not doing so five or six times. By hitting the ground only three times he brought Israel just three victories over the Syrians rather than five or six. When God seeks to bless, who are we to limit His blessing?

2. Fill the earth and subdue it still applies
Children are a Divine blessing. They are eternal beings created in the image of God. They bear the image of God. This much is positive instruction on our topic. But there is more from a positive point of view. There is the command of Genesis 3 that man should fill the earth and subdue it. Have we finished this task? Is the world filled and subdued? If every man and woman on earth were placed in the state of Texas, the population density would be less than that of New York City. Fly over the west or over Canada or over Alaska and you will see that despite the fear-mongering prophets of Malthus spreading their messages of doom, the world is far from full. World population density today is 30 people per square mile. That's less than half the population density of the USA where we average 75 people per square mile. And the USA is far from over-populated.

Moreover, the story of the 21 st century, if you have read any recent demographic studies, (see Atlantic Monthly article from August, 1999) is going to be a story not of population explosion, but of worldwide population decline beginning in about 2040. In fact, the increase in world population over the last century was not the product of increased fertility, but of increased lifespans.

3. The Law specifies times of impurity that coincide with maximal fertility
We learn still more about God’s attitude toward birth-control from other passages. The Levitical laws of purity address the proper time for sexual union. From the onset of menstruation, we are told in Leviticus 15:19-24, a woman is unclean. She remains unclean throughout the issue of blood, and for seven days after the issue has stopped. Thus, for an average of 12 to 14 days from the onset the woman is impure. The net result of the seven-day post-menstruation unclean period is this: according to an obstetrician/gynecologist...

The "normal" menstrual cycle is supposed to occur every 28 days. Day 1 marks the first day of the cycle. 7 days of bleeding. Ovulation occurs only once a cycle and in the normal cycle will occur on day 14. If conception occurs then no more periods for 9 months. If conception does not occur then two weeks go by and the lining of the uterus is "shed" or expelled and the process begins again.

It is interesting that with the Levitical laws, God has insured that sexual relations are timed to occur at the best time for ovulation and conception. Andrew Folley, M.D.

These are passages from which we begin to extrapolate God's attitude toward birth control, and there are many more like these. But is there a passage which actually addresses the issue directly? We see God's "yes" to children in Scripture, and on that basis alone we can say a great deal. We see God's desire for children, His positive approach to pregnancy and childbirth, his proscribing sex during menstruation, and during the least fertile period immediately after menstruation. But is there more in God's Word? Specifically, is there a Divine "no" to birth control?

Scripture's Explicitly Negative Statement
Genesis 38:1-11 (ESV) 1 It happened at that time that Judah went down from his brothers and turned aside to a certain Adullamite, whose name was Hirah. 2 There Judah saw the daughter of a certain Canaanite whose name was Shua. He took her and went in to her, 3 and she conceived and bore a son, and he called his name Er. 4 She conceived again and bore a son, and she called his name Onan. 5 Yet again she bore a son, and she called his name Shelah. Judah was in Chezib when she bore him. 6 And Judah took a wife for Er his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. 7 But Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord put him to death. 8 Then Judah said to Onan, "Go in to your brother's wife and perform the duty of a brother-in-law to her, and raise up offspring for your brother." 9 But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his. So whenever he went in to his brother's wife he would waste the semen on the ground, so as not to give offspring to his brother. 10 And what he did was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and he put him to death also. 11 Then Judah said to Tamar his daughter-in-law, "Remain a widow in your father's house, till Shelah my son grows up -- for he feared that he would die, like his brothers. So Tamar went and remained in her father's house.

This passage is often presented in churches as addressing something other than the issue we are considering. To grasp the purpose of this passage it's vital we understand correctly the sin Onan commits. We are told in verse 10: "10 And what he did was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and he put him to death also."

What did Onan do that was wicked in the sight of the Lord? This is the vital question we are left to answer at the end of these verses because we're not given an explicit answer in our passage.

Two theories have come to dominate thinking about this passage today: one a modern explanation and one the explanation of the Church universal for 1900 years up till the mid-20 th century. In recent years, many have suggested that the sin of Onan was his failure to provide offspring for his dead brother.

The second explanation is the one which has dominated church history, yet it is almost unheard-of in circles today. By this explanation, what Onan did which was wicked in the sight of the Lord was his specific method of denying Tamar a child. This explanation says that it was Onan's practice of coitus interruptus, the only common and universally available form of birth control in ancient times, which lies at the root of his sin. By this view, God punishes Onan with death not for denying his brother offspring but for spilling his seed upon the ground.

Some people mention a third theory about the sin of Onan, but it's narrowly held and seems to have arisen largely as a result of people rejecting the first of the explanations without being willing to embrace the second. This theory says that Onan is punished because, in effect, he commits adultery. Had he done his duty in regard to his brother in good faith, he would not have been guilty of adultery, but because he does not do his duty, he is guilty of adultery.

Whatever Onan's sin may be, it is certainly a grave offense in the eyes of God. God puts him to death for it, causing him to join the select ranks of Nadab and Abihu, Ananias and Sapphira, Uzzah, the sons of Korah and just a few other individuals whom we are specifically told in Scripture God punished with death for their sins. We need to understand this about this sin of Onan at the outset: it is not one of those sins worthy of "few stripes" in the judgment of God. This sin is deeply offensive to God, so offensive that God does not permit Onan to live after committing it.

Would God treat adultery in this fashion? Yes. After all, the penalty for adultery in the Mosaic Law is death by stoning. But it diminishes the likelihood that this is the sin for which God puts Onan to death when we read on in Genesis 15 and find that after these things take place, passing his daughter-in-law, Tamar on the road and thinking her a prostitute because of the way she has disguised herself, Judah has relations with her without being put to death by God. If Onan's sin was adultery, then certainly his father Judah should die by the hand of God when he commits the same sin with the same woman -- a sin, compounded in the Law of Moses by the fact that intercourse between a father and a daughter-in-law is condemned as incest. But Judah lives.

Further reducing the likelihood that adultery is the sin of Onan... By the Levitical law of levirate marriage, Tamar becomes Onan's wife when he goes into her--the surviving brother takes the widow as his wife and then goes in to her according to Deuteronomy 25:5-6,
If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead man shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband's brother shall go in to her and take her as his wife and perform the duty of a husband's brother to her. And the first son whom she bears shall succeed to the name of his dead brother, that his name may not be blotted out of Israel.

By the levirate code, marriage precedes the sexual act. It's not the lack of a legal relationship between Tamar and Onan that's the problem in our passage, it's something done within that relationship.

I will spend no more time on this third explanation. It has never gained traction for the simple reason that it's illogical -- forged, I believe, out of a need to explain Onan's sin as something other than birth control by those who admit the difficulty of explaining God's wrath upon Onan coming down as a result of his failure to do his duty to his brother.

Judah lives after committing adultery and incest with his daughter-in-law while Onan dies: either God is simply treating them differently despite their committing the same offense, or the offense in each case is different.

Is there a clear distinction between the offense of father and son in Scripture? In fact there is. One spills his seed, the other does not.

Which leads us back to our original two choices. Either the sin Onan commits is his failure to give his brother an heir, or it is his spilling of his seed, intentionally committing a sexual act without permitting a child to be born of it. Let's assess these two possibilities individually beginning with the first, the failure to give his brother an heir.

Onan's sin his failure to provide an heir for his brother…
Is Onan's sin his failure to provide an heir for his brother? Think with me about this for a moment. On what basis would we say that it was Onan's duty to do this? The Levirate law of marriage? The law we find in Deuteronomy 25?

Deuteronomy 25:5-6 (ESV) 5 If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead man shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband's brother shall go in to her and take her as his wife and perform the duty of a husband's brother to her. 6 And the first son whom she bears shall succeed to the name of his dead brother, that his name may not be blotted out of Israel.

It's all right there the evangelical world says today. He has a duty. He failed his duty. He dies for his disobedience.

But there are problems with this approach. First we have the problem of an anachronistic reading of Scripture: what is the Biblical timeframe in the story of Onan? The days of the patriarchs, right? When is the law of Levirate marriage given to Israel? Over four hundred years later when God gives His law to Moses. The Levirate laws simply do not exist at this point. There is no written command from God demanding that Onan fulfill such a duty.

Of course, it doesn't have to be written to be true. There was no written law against murder either at this time, yet God still held men guilty of it and punished men for it. God's law existed before He gave the written law to Moses. How did man know God's commands before He gave His written law? They knew it, because in the words of Paul,
Romans 2:12-15 (ESV) 12 For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. 13 For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. 14 For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them.

Before the law was given, man had the witness of God in his heart, upon which God had written His precepts. This is the testimony of Romans 1 and 2. But here's the problem. All law prior to the giving of the written law to Moses was moral law. None of it was ceremonial or civil. Ceremonial and civil law came down from the mountain with Moses. If God held a man guilty of lawbreaking prior to giving His written law to Moses, it was not for violating ceremonial law or civil law, but for violating the moral law which He had written upon the human heart.

And that law has not passed away. It remains written on human hearts to this day. Nothing written on human hearts then fails to be written upon the hearts of lawless men today. Those today who do not have God's law are still punished by God for breaking the precepts and commandments written upon their hearts that existed before the Mosaic law. That law stands for all mankind until this very day. It is the basic moral law of God. It is universal. It is unchanged and undiminished.

But if it's true, as Evangelical preachers of the last century have nearly-universally suggested, that Onan's failure to provide an heir for his brother was the sin for which God put him to death, why do we not fulfill this law in our own day? Why are we not adamant that living brothers must provide heirs for their dead brothers in this same way? If this is truly why God put Onan to death, then this is a timeless principle for all mankind which obtains today every bit as strongly as it did in the day of Onan.

We must understand this about the Law: ceremonial law is fulfilled in Christ and thus no longer is required of us today. The civil law of Israel, laws of the nation such as the years of Jubilee and so forth have also largely passed away.

Whatever law Onan broke, it is certain that it was moral. It was the will of God written on the human heart. And if the law he violated was a pre-Mosaic requirement by God that brothers provide heirs for their deceased brothers, then it remains binding in our own day. It has not lapsed. It has not been rescinded. If it was written on the hearts of men before the law of Moses, then it is written on the hearts of men today. It is non-civil, non-ceremonial, timeless moral law, preceding both the nation of Israel and the written law of Moses.

The question of timeframe is a serious blow to the position that Onan's sin was failing to provide an heir for his brother. Most Evangelical interpreters of this passage never seem to recognize the anachronism implicit in their applying the levirate code of marriage to Onan. So here's the question -- is the levirate law of marriage (found in Deuteronomy 25:5-6), that a brother must marry his brother's widow to provide for his brother an heir, moral or civil law? If it's civil law it didn't exist before the Mosaic law was given. If it's timeless moral law, written on men's hearts, then we are as guilty as Onan if we fail to heed it today.

Things get still harder to explain for those who hold to the position that Onan died for failing to do his duty to his brother… What punishment does the Law of Moses specify for the man who fails to do this duty?

7 And if the man does not wish to take his brother's wife, then his brother's wife shall go up to the gate to the elders and say, "My husband's brother refuses to perpetuate his brother's name in Israel; he will not perform the duty of a husband's brother to me." 8 Then the elders of his city shall call him and speak to him, and if he persists, saying, "I do not wish to take her," 9 then his brother's wife shall go up to him in the presence of the elders and pull his sandal off his foot and spit in his face. And she shall answer and say, "So shall it be done to the man who does not build up his brother's house." 10 And the name of his house shall be called in Israel, "The house of him who had his sandal pulled off."

The punishment for such sin in the law of Moses is an act of public humiliation. Yet in Genesis Onan is put to death for his sin.

The more we examine the question of whether Onan was put to death for refusing to give offspring to his brother, the more untenable the position appears. At the very least we must say that if it was sin before the written law was given, it remains the requirement of God today. Yet I don't hear proponents of this view arguing for a return to the Levirate law of marriage.

Onan's sin his spilling of his seed…
It would seem that this leaves only one possible explanation for the sin of Onan, yet shoot down one bird and a dozen more appear. Once they discard the theory that Onan's sin was his failure to provide an heir for his brother due to their recognizing the anachronisms and faulty assumptions required to hold such a view, they don't necessarily automatically embrace the classic view of the Church. Instead they say, "Well, all right, if it wasn't his failure to provide an heir, it was his disobedience to his father… it was his unkindness to Tamar... The list goes on and on. And of course, the problem of this one deed being pulled out for such negative note in the Word remains with any of these other arguments. If this is failure to respect his father's wishes, why does Onan die for it when Ham, who uncovers his father's nakedness -- showing much greater disdain for his father than Onan -- does not?

We could go on and on. But we don't need to. And the reason we don't is that there is one explanation for God's intense wrath at the sin of Onan that coheres logically and Scripturally, that fits all the conditions of our passage and that flows perfectly from the historical setting of these early chapters of Genesis. Surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly, the one explanation we are left with is the universal understanding of the Church of the sin of Onan prior to the 20th century. This position understands the sin of Onan -- his wickedness in the sight of the Lord -- as his deliberate engagement in sexual union without permitting the procreation of a child from that union: his spilling his seed upon the ground.