Three Babies And A Man Series

Maybe some of you saw the Donahue Program where he wore a special outfit designed to help

men feel what it is like to be pregnant. It was an awful experience for him as he felt the pressure and

the pain involved in bearing a child. The whole idea is that men just do not understand the cost of

new life for a mother. Men create things too, but as Mike Nichols says, "The Golden Gate Bridge

does not give you stretch marks, the Hover Dam will not wet the bed, and the Chrysler Building

never needs to be burped."

But let's not write men off as wimps when it comes to giving birth, for there are other things

besides babies that need bearing and birthing. There are churches as well as children, and the

Apostle Paul gave birth to a number of churches, and it was after a painful labor, and they did leave

stretch marks. Listen to Paul as he has to go through the pain of labor the second time for the

Galatian Church. Gal. 4:19 says, "My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth

until Christ is formed in you." Paul had to go through labor twice, and not for twins, but for the

same baby. Can men have babies? In some sense they can, and they can also know the problems

and pressures of raising them up to maturity.

Listen to Paul as he writes to another of his brood in II Cor. 11:27-29: "I have labored and toiled

and have often gone without sleep." If that is not a man experiencing motherhood, I don't know

what is. And after listing other sacrifices he says, "Beside everything else, I face daily the pressure

of my concern for all the churches. Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I

do not inwardly burn?" This is no mere spiritualizing the idea of motherhood, for Paul actually felt

the physical and mental anguish involved in giving birth to and raising these baby churches. He felt

just as Jesus did when he cried out over Jerusalem in Matt. 23:37, "...how often I have longed to

gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing."

The male is capable of having many of the emotions of motherhood. The whole book of Acts is

really and account of the babies of the Apostles. They went everywhere giving birth to churches,

and Paul was the most fertile of them all. In Acts 17 we see Paul giving birth to three new baby

churches-one in Thessalonika, one in Berea, and the third in Athens. Many feel that he had a

miscarriage in the Athens pregnancy because we have no letter of Paul to the church there, but this is

true of Berea as well. Others feel it was premature, but did survive. Whatever the case, we have an

account here of three babies and a man, because in all three places the new birth took place and

babies were born into the kingdom of God.

If you saw the movie Three Men And A Baby you know you learned more of what not to do

with a baby than what to do. But here in this account of three babies and a man you learn what to

do to be a reproducing Christian, that is, how to have babies and help them grow up to have babies

of their own. This, after all, is what Christianity is all about. Jesus took a bride because He wants

to have a large family, and the church is His bride, and so all Christians both male and female are to

fulfill His purpose by bearing much fruit, and that means to be having a lot of babies for the King

that His kingdom might be populated. Paul says in Gal. 4:26 that the church is our mother. All

people are born into the family of God just as was God's Son. He was born into the world by the

Holy Spirit and an earthly mother. So also all Christians are born of the Spirit through the earthly

mother of the church.

The church, composed of both male and female, is the bride of Christ and the mother of all His

children. Male and female are equal in God's plan when it comes to having an raising babies. In the

kingdom of God this is not the exclusive realm of the female. Males are also baby-makers. The

fascinating thing is that the New Testament tells us that the process of reproduction in the family of

God is just like that of all life. In other words, eternal life though super natural is just a continuation