Please turn with me in your Bibles to First Chronicles, Chapter 1. First Chronicles, Chapter 1. We will pick up our reading again with verse 8. The sons of Ham, Cush and Mitzrayim, Put and Canaan. and the sons of Cush, Seba and Havala, and Sabta and Ra'ama and Sabteca, and the sons of Ra'ama, Sheba and Dedan. And Cush begat Nimrod. He began to be mighty upon the earth. And Mithraim begat Ludim and Animim, and Lehabim and Naphtuhim, and Pathrusim, and Kasluhim, of whom came the Philistines, and Kaphtarim. And Canaan begat Zidon his firstborn, and Heth, the Jebusite also, and the Amorite, and the Girgashite, and the Hivite, and the Archite, and the Sinite, and the Arvidite, and the Zemorite, and the Hamathite. This is the word of the Lord. I don't know about you, but I find our public discourse ever more frustrating. As I try to analyze the various levels of frustration, It seems to me that I can identify at least three levels of things. One, we have intellectual confusion and a confused way of discussing issues as a people, as a civilization. We also have the problem of values that poor thinking or lack of clarity does affect our values. We'll come to that. And then once those Once those values are misdirected, at least in some measure, our affections likewise become misdirected and positively harmful. All of that strikes me as being terribly abstract. So let me give you an illustration, one very pertinent to our text. And I think that you will be aware of these issues alive to them. As you no doubt know, not too long ago, Our Supreme Court, the Supreme Court of the United States of America overturned Roe versus Wade. And like all Christian people, I meet that with a large measure of thanksgiving and rejoicing, largely because of the practical matter that no doubt lives are being saved, and precious lives, little tiny sweet baby lives. But I also have kind of a mixed reaction because while on the one hand there's thanksgiving and rejoicing, I find that there's confusion in the way that it is discussed. By those that I would be inclined to, well, those that would share my conclusion that this great ungodliness ought to be taken away and banished from the earth, I find it defended on grounds that are irrelevant, and so all of the argumentation is irrational. And it then raises the question, how long will a conclusion abide if the argument that's used to produce that conclusion is fundamentally irrational? And my concern is that it will not abide very long. So let me try to illustrate this. political commentators, conservative political commentators anticipated the complaint and even now we're hearing it. There's a shrill objection, you have outlawed abortion and made it dangerous for women. But then there's the defense by the conservatives. This is probably the principal area of frustration and why this is happening. At the first founding of our nation, the simple fact of the matter is Christians compromised, and we entered into a conspiracy not for, but against King Jesus. We entered into this unholy agreement that we're allowed to be religious and God-fearing in our homes, in our churches, and so on, but When we do things, like really important things, politics, economics, foreign policy, war making, and so on, we all have to pretend like there's no God in heaven, and act as if Christ is not on the throne. So, as soon as that great fact and reality is acknowledged, this becomes easy, right? You have outlawed abortion. I hope that we have. King Jesus says no. No law of man can ever make this lawful, the end. But since we have entered into this conspiracy that we're not allowed to talk about God or God's Christ in these sorts of matters, Rather than conservatives rejoicing, they say, you have outlawed abortion. Rather than responding, well, we hope so, or we wish we had, we respond, no, we haven't. That's a most unhappy thing. It's actually, with respect to our national law, it's true. But then we say, it's been referred to the states for decision. We believe in democracy. Wow. Really? It's as if we forgot our reasons for arguing against this altogether. The original objection was, it's murder, right? These are people, these are human beings created in the image of God, and so the federal government can never make any sort of law that will make this lawful in the sight of God. The federal government can't do it, and the states can't do it either. Right? If you think about it, having objected that this is murder, you can't then go say, and now we're very happy for the states to decide whether or not we're allowed to kill unoffending humans. That's bizarre in the extreme. There is no earthly power. Not the state governments, not the federal government, not all of the federal governments together on planet Earth. No earthly power can set God's commandment at nought. And he said, Thou shalt not kill. There's not going to be any murdering or executing of unoffending humans. So you see the problem of the confusion of thought And it makes its way into the values, right? So it's interesting that this rarely gets talked about. Again, we usually end up talking about a very small percentage of the total cases, like what are we going to do then if If there's rape or incest, if we have understood the originating argumentation that this is murder and God says no, then those things have their answer. Even while acknowledging the human pain and difficulty that can be involved in such things, We're talking about a human being. So when conservative people compromise and grant exceptions in those cases, they've forgotten their originating argumentation and the position becomes fundamentally irrational. But setting aside the issue pertaining to the rational cogency of the argument, we start to see values are being very much affected because we know, everybody knows, that abortion is by far and away used most often as birth control and it's manifesting something with respect to values. Babies are killed because they are not wanted. and they're not unwanted usually because they are inexpensive, inconvenient, or whatever. So in our selfishness as human beings, we don't want the other human beings because it's inconvenient and costly to us. In history, This is not an altogether uncommon attitude toward children when cultures become decadent. They are wealthy, affluent, comfortable, selfish, self-absorbed, and so in such an environment where when people are running about simply to please themselves, generally speaking, children are not valued. But in this particular, we need to remember as Christian people that we want to be careful not to imbibe the values of the culture around us. This is certainly not safe, but to adopt God's values. And in all of the scripture, children are treated as valuable. a great value, something to be highly desired. If children are not a desirable thing, you can see how just so many statements of the scripture from Genesis to Revelation become unintelligible. I think of Psalm 127, Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is his reward. A statement altogether unintelligible unless children are valued. It's almost like, of course they're valued. And so this statement becomes exceedingly precious to us indeed. So confusion of thinking leads to a confusion in the system of values, and then our affections, our emotions become perverted. But we'll come back to that in just a few moments. Right now you're probably asking, well, what does all of this have to do with our text? And actually quite a bit. So remember where we are. We are in the genealogy of Noah's son Ham, and we have been told that he had four principal sons, Cush, Mitzrayim, Put, and Canaan. We've already covered Cush, Kush's inheritance, for the most part, was in Arabia. And we traced him down to his greatest son, Nimrod. But now we are probably looking at the greatest of Ham's son, at least in those early generations. The greatest of Ham's son was probably not Kush, but rather Mitzrayim. Mitzrayim is the Hebrew word everywhere translated in your English Bible as Egypt. Interestingly enough as we get to verse 11 and we see the offspring of Mitzrayim You notice the "-im-" endings on the names? That's a plural ending in Hebrew. So we're told that Egypt, the Egyptian people, also begat many other peoples that you would expect to be surrounding them there. Great multiplicity of children. So we have the Ludim, probably the people group south of Egypt, people in the Sudan and Ethiopia proper. So these are probably rightly historically understood as Ethiopians. Then we had the Anamim, as we said last week, probably the Ammonians of Libya, so this would be west of Egypt. And now as we're going to look at three more people groups, the evidence is becoming more scanty. The Lehabim from Lechava in Hebrew, which means flame or heat, these appear to have been descendants of Egypt on the eastern extremes of Libya. So like the Annamim, these appear to be Libyans, but very close to Egypt proper. and also moving north, if not at the coast, pretty close to it. And a similar thing can be said about the Naftuhin. Egyptians, interestingly enough, would call a person living at extremities naftis, naftis, and it is likely that these were Right on the Mediterranean coast, the extremities, the far western edge of Egypt or perhaps the far eastern border of what is now Libya. So these two new people groups appear to be maybe properly considered Libyans. And now we'll take the first people group out of verse 12, the Pathrusim. Concerning them, there is significant speculation, but out of all the different options, my own summary is that the most probable would be that they're the inhabitants of Pathros, which would have been located in Upper Egypt. Don't get that confused. Upper Egypt would be the southern portion near the fountain or the source of the Nile. The northern part where it empties into the Mediterranean is considered Lower Egypt. And interestingly enough, in scripture, sometimes they are treated as a part of Egypt and sometimes as distinct from Egypt, and thus you might might see the rationale for this. They are, in one sense, Egyptians and descendants of Mitsrayim, but perhaps a distinct people group in their own right. You see this in, say, Isaiah 11.11. Let me just read it for you. from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea. I just want you to notice there that Egypt and Pathros are there contemplated as being distinct. But sometimes they can be treated together as if they're being used almost synonymously in Ezekiel 29 verse 14 we read, and I will bring again the captivity of Egypt and will cause them to return into the land of Pathros, into the land of their habitation, and they shall be there a base kingdom. So here we have the restoration of Egyptians from their captivity They are caused to return into the land of Egypt, here characterized as Pathros, which would be Upper Egypt. Now, just to make express why my thoughts traveled in this direction, as I mentioned earlier, decadent cultures tend to devalue children, but cultures that are thriving, advancing, growing cultures even if that's all that we can say about them is that they're growing, they're swelling, they're thriving, they're advancing, even if that's all the good that we can say about them, they tend to value children very much. Here we have a great truth communicated to us that many peoples descended from Mitzrayim. So And we know that for Egypt, that thriving population and empire was valued. So I wonder if you could have gone back to that first and original descendant. His name probably wasn't Mitzrayim, but maybe Mitzor or Menes, one of those other traditional names given for the first father of Egypt. Just imagine you could have opened the future to him the way that God did to Abraham, and how he would have felt and reacted if you could have told him that like Abraham, he would be the father of many peoples, many nations. This would not have been esteemed to his dishonor. He probably would have recognized this as being a great benefit and blessing, a great honor being conferred to him. He would have valued that. And his offspring certainly did, as the Egyptians gloried in the fact that they were a a large, thriving, advancing people and culture, kingdom, and empire, and so on. And so from this, I wanted to just take one simple use. We should value children. So again, cultures have by turns valued and devalued children. But like thriving cultures, Christians always ought to value children, and we have a greater wealth of reasoning just beyond sort of the the glory and honor that comes with numerous offspring or a thriving house and then eventually a thriving people and nation and so on. First and foremost and very straightforward, God portrays children as a blessing. And so there is nothing for us to do but add our Amen. They are a blessing and value them. The case for this from the Bible is a very easy one to make. From the very beginning, human fruitfulness as well as animal fruitfulness is characterized as a blessing. In God's law, in Deuteronomy, chapter 28, you think about the blessings and curses that God declares upon the keeping or breaking of His covenant, respectively. Deuteronomy 28 for you have blessed shall be the fruit of thy body and the fruit of thy ground and the fruit of thy cattle and the increase of thy kind and the flocks of thy sheep if you scan down to verse 18 Upon disobedience, cursed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy land, the increase of thy kind, and the flocks of thy sheep." We also earlier looked at Psalm 127, Psalm 128, everywhere God portrays them as being a blessing. And so part of the reception of God's Word and faith, even if you don't understand anything else about it, we add our Amen and we say, God says they're a blessing, so they are a blessing indeed. We value them. But we can also see other reasons. As believing people have children, there's the multiplication of the children of the covenant in the earth. We raise them in the hope of their true conversion, at the very least, they are brought up under the influence of the true religion, which is going to have its good effect. At the very least, it limits sinfulness and tends to put a restraint upon it. So the multiplication of the children of the covenant is a good thing. All children are created in the image of God, and as God's image bearers, they are valued. But then also we, as God's people, we take up God's end in the multiplication of children. So turn with me to Malachi chapter two, God here characterizes himself as seeking a godly seed, and so should we. Both their multiplying number and their godliness. Malachi 2, we pick up in the midst of God's complaint concerning their unlawful divorces. The Prophet continues in verse 14, Yet ye say, Wherefore? Because the Lord hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously. Yet is she thy companion and the wife of thy covenant. Did not he make one? Yet had he the residue of the Spirit. And wherefore one? that he might seek a godly seed. Therefore take heed to your spirit and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth. For the Lord, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away. For one covereth violence with his garment, saith the Lord of hosts. Therefore take heed to your spirit that ye deal not treacherously. So here, God complains against their unlawful divorces. Because God has an interest in the marriage contract, he will only release that marriage contract on very specific conditions. The man and the woman can try to walk away from the contract, even by their common concurrence. But if God does not release, then the marriage still stands. And you see the problem, Malachi's reasoning here is almost directly that of the Lord Jesus in the Gospels when he was presented the problem of divorce. So if you unlawfully divorce and God does not let go of his right, his claim in that marriage, then when you go and marry another one you actually have a polygamous situation that is adulterous and unlawful and and inconvenient." So he goes back to the beginning and he says, "...and did he not make one? Yet had he the residue of the Spirit?" This is very cryptic and there's a lot that can be said, but I think likely what he's getting at is the idea that if God had wanted more than one wife, for Adam, he could have created more than one. He hadn't run out of spirit, as it were, when he invested Eve's body with the spirit. He could have made more, but he didn't, and that becomes a normative and binding pattern. To gloss it using the words of the Lord Jesus, it was not that way from the beginning. One man and one woman is that context that is most conducive to the production of the godly seed, which is something that God is portrayed here as seeking. If this is his aim, if he's endeavoring after it as his people, what else can we do except add our amen? So we desire seed and and we teach them and and train them trusting in the Lord that they might lay hold of these things themselves and be and be godly indeed. So in all of this hopefully this clarifies with with clearer thinking that our values are supposed to be shaped by the Word of God and not by culture. And as we turn that thinking to God's Word, how we're to think about children just couldn't be more clear. So we get clearer on our values, and then that has a bearing upon our emotions, upon our affections. So this brings up a particular problem in our culture. We might put it something like this intellectually. If we devalue what God values, then we must repent of our perverted perspective. We need to change our minds. And that's an important place to begin because one of the cultural hindrances is one of our great myths. You can't help how you feel. And so if a woman conceives a child and she or the baby's father have conflicted or negative feelings about this, well then you really can't help how you feel, right? And, I mean, it's great. Children are sometimes conceived in difficult circumstances. Maybe, unless you're really, really wealthy and affluent, almost always. But when we find a poor attitude toward children, this ought to set off an alarm bell for us and we need to challenge this cultural maxim that you can't help how you feel. Obviously God doesn't think so because he makes commandments with respect to our feelings all the time. You might just think about The low-hanging fruit. Paul is in prison in Philippians. He tells the Philippian Christians that they can expect like suffering and yet in the imperative he calls upon them over and over again to rejoice. There's a commanding of the affections there. To help understand, to get rid of this cultural hindrance and to get greater clarity, it is helpful to recognize that there is a connection between the affections and the intellect. And that connection is one of dependence. The affections are dependent upon the intellect. And in two regards, first of all, before you have a feeling or an emotional reaction, the intellect must first identify the object And then the intellect renders a value judgment upon that object. Basically, this is good for me or this is bad for me. And then you will have an emotional, an automated emotional response, both in kind and intensity. This is good for me or this is bad for me. To see the To see the connection, because people can have differing value judgments, they can end up having very different emotional reactions to the same object. You might think about, let's imagine two children. One grows up with dogs and has wonderful experiences with dogs and loves dogs. And so let's imagine that that person, now an adult, pulls up into a yard and a dog unknown and large comes running toward the car, maybe perhaps not in a threatening manner, maybe manner is not apparent, but just comes running toward the car. That person probably as a positive emotional reaction. This is a dog. I love dogs. The emotional response is automated. This is good for me. Now imagine a different child who, let's imagine, had a very bad interaction with a dog, was bitten by a dog, and so a value judgment is made. This is bad for me. And so, put that same person as an adult in that same context. He steps out of a car and a dog comes charging toward the car. The emotional reaction is automated based on the preceding value judgment. This is bad for me. But you see, it's not the dog charging that produces kind of a standard emotional reaction from people. It's grounded in a value judgment, and value judgments are things that are done by the intellect. The intellect assesses, this is good for me, this is bad for me. And so then when we apply that to our present case at hand, if a person agrees with God about the value of children, this is good for me, then the emotional reaction will be consistent with that and proportioned to just how good you think it is. So I remember, of course, I never had much in the way of money, although I do soberly recognize that in the grand scope of the history of the world, I have been marvelously wealthy, but by our culture's assessment, not so much. Well, at any rate, Whenever I would receive news that my wife had conceived, in spite of the fact that we were constantly trying to figure out how to get all of the bills paid, my emotional reaction was always a very positive one. In spite of the practical difficulties, This is a great thing. And if I might give you proportion or an illustration, it might be something like a man who has just received news that he has inherited a hundred million dollars, right? So like, this is a good thing. Value judgment. This is good. This is good for me. So there's the happiness. The practical difficulties are more along the lines of you have inherited a hundred million dollars, but you're going to have to come and fill out some paperwork to claim it. I don't like paperwork, but what is that compared to the value of what I have received? And so my emotional state was always very much that. Some of the practical questions and difficulties that would arise receded into the background as of not very much importance, especially compared to the great good that I had just received. But if your value judgment is out of step with God's, if you're really disagreeing with God and saying children are not good, then this is bad for me, then the emotional reaction is going to be consistent with that in proportion to just how bad you think this is. And once that happens, and I'm not going to develop all of this, I would just have you think about it. But when the values are skewed, maybe never carefully thought about even as a Christian person, so like it starts in this intellectual cloudiness and then you get misdirected values and now you're having inappropriate, even perverse emotional reactions, then all kinds of temptations begin to crowd in, special argumentation for destroying the life of the child, and so on. So, intellect, values, affections. And so what we need to do, I think, is already implicit in what I've said. One, as our culture is in a fog, and even Christian people, because they're not thinking about these things in a Christian way, they don't feel like they can step out into the public sphere and talk about these things like Christians. They feel like they can step out into the public sphere and only talk about these things as Republicans. So then we talk about these things in irrational and silly ways because we're hoping that the culture will receive that. But that leads to a cloudiness in our values. In other words, our values are not being shaped by the Word of God, at least not exclusively, but also by an incompatible culture. Then we have misdirected and perverted emotional reactions that lead to temptations. So let us seek to get clear, and this much is clear, God would have us to value children. If we are valuing them properly, then our affections will rightly be directed, and then it will be much easier for us to engage in our duties. All of this is Glorifying to God it is good for us and in this way we can bear a consistent testimony to our culture concerning these things.