From the beginning, God's plan A has been the family.
In the beginning, God made a garden. God then made a man out of the garden. He then made a women out of the man. He placed the man into the garden and then out of the man God made a woman with a garden inside of her. The mission He gave them was to expand the pattern. The garden was the blueprint of what was to be done to the untamed wilderness of the rest of the world. In other words, gardenize the world. This was the mission and the team He assembled to accomplish this momentous task was a husband and a wife. God's plan A was the family.
Genesis 1:28
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Fruitfulness and multiplication were the marching orders of marriage. Make more of the same and do to the rest of the world what you've seen done here. Conquer the world for the glory of God by multiplying the image of God everywhere in the form of children. Pass along the mission and vision and watch these children produce more children. The fruit will produce more fruit.
Genesis 14:14-16
When Abram heard that his kinsman had been taken captive, he led forth his trained men, born in his house, 318 of them, and went in pursuit as far as Dan. And he divided his forces against them by night, he and his servants, and defeated them and pursued them to Hobah, north of Damascus. Then he brought back all the possessions, and also brought back his kinsman Lot with his possessions, and the women and the people.
Abram began as one man. He expanded his household. He had 318 men whom he had trained. He was prepared for difficulty by having planned for difficulty. He raised up his men and taught them the skills required to fight and the loyalty by which to fight for his household. One man's household defeated four king's kingdoms. One family was the end of four kingdoms.
Genesis 46:26-27
All the persons belonging to Jacob who came into Egypt, who were his own descendants, not including Jacob's sons' wives, were sixty-six persons in all. And the sons of Joseph, who were born to him in Egypt, were two. All the persons of the house of Jacob who came into Egypt were seventy.
What began as Abraham and his one, true son, Isaac, grew to two with Jacob and Esau and then through Jacob expanded to twelve sons, a daughter, their wives and grandchildren for a total of 70 persons. Yet this family continued to grow.
Exodus 1:5-10
All the descendants of Jacob were seventy persons; Joseph was already in Egypt. Then Joseph died, and all his brothers and all that generation. But the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them. Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, “Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and, if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.”o
One family grew so large that the most dominant dynasty the world has ever known was afraid of them. Imagine Europe fearing your family. Imagine empires anxious at the thought of your relatives. This monolithic mega-power passed legislation based on the presence and impact of one family. Egypt was worried about one man's family reunion. Israel had been so fruitful and multiplied with such veracity and faithfulness, that they constituted a large enough voting block to strike fear into the heart of Pharaoh. Israel had sway. And all because of one family. God can change nations and the history of the world by merely multiplying one family.
Imagine what He would do if we took fruitfulness and multiplication seriously. Imagine if within a few generations those bearing your last name were a large enough constituency of common belief and committed practice that they could move the mountains of magistrates. Imagine if your descendants all voted with one voice in one direction for the glory of the one true God and the good of their neighbor. One family could do serious damage to the darkness.
And that is exactly what my family is hoping to accomplish.
We see throughout Scripture the principle repeated, "A little leaven works its way through the whole lump."
But principles can work in either direction.
We see it used to explain the spread of sin and the kingdom of darkness.
Galatians 5:9
A little leaven leavens the whole lump.
1 Corinthians 5:6
Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?
And we also see it employed to describe the spread of the kingdom of light.
Matthew 13:33
He told them another parable. “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.”
If God's people spent more time and energy discipling their own children, we would see the leaven spread in the right direction. So instead of investing so much time and thought into discipling other people's kids, we should disciple our own and save the extra time slots for those who legitimately have no one else. Just imagine how the leaven of light would spread if families took responsibility for what God had made them responsible. Imagine if families made as first priority the priorities assigned to them by God.
Leaven doesn't have to spread slowly. While it is a reformation and not a revolution, it doesn't have to reform at a snail's pace. It has the ability to increase inertia and gain momentum as we return to embrace the good, simple work of being fruitful and multiplying our households under one Head.
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