Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

Uh two weeks ago we talked about the privileges—the tremendous privileges of childbearing—and also some obligations and blessings and cursing that God speaks of in his word regarding childbearing. We talked then just by way of review about the centrality of God’s law. Remember we talked about the last passages from the book of Malachi and the first few verses—the first 20 verses—out of the book of Luke, and we talked about how the restoration of families is part of, is the lynch pin between the old covenant and the new covenant.

And is essential to the work of John the Baptist and then of the person that he was witnessing to, which is Jesus Christ. So the centrality of the law was talked about there, and you remember in Malachi 4:4 the admonition was to remember God’s law. And then in Luke specifically, the parents of John the Baptist were identified as those who were upright and who had remembered God’s law and who were walking in obedience to God’s law.

And so they had this blessing of being the parents and of rearing John the Baptist. And I’m sure that’s part of one of the blessings of obedience to the law—is that God will give you children that you’ll raise up in that law and they’ll do tremendous things for him as well. We also talked from those verses about the implications in terms of cursing. It says in Malachi, “Lest I come and smite the land with a curse.”

Talking about turning the hearts of the fathers back to the children—that if that wasn’t accomplished, God would curse the land, and if it was accomplished, that there would be a people prepared for the Lord, which is what happened in the book of Luke. And we talked about how out of that New Testament times, the first 30 or 40 years of our Savior and Lord as he walked on the earth, there were two groups of people. Some did turn the hearts—the hearts of the fathers were turned back to their children in restoration of the covenant relationship that God had ordained for the family. And that was the church, and they received tremendous blessing. There’s a tremendous amount of evangelism and the church grew and turned the world upside down.

But there was also a group who did not turn the hearts—their hearts back to their children, did not restore their family relationships and obedience to the covenant—and that was the unbelieving Jewish population of Jerusalem, which was destroyed in AD 70, a generation 40 years after the rejection of Christ, the fruit as it were of their disobedience in terms of relationship to their children.

So it’s a tremendous responsibility and obligation we have. And we talked about in terms of our day and age—we see a nation that has forsaken God, forsaken his law, and we see results of that being curses upon our land. And many of us are very concerned about the judgment of God. Is it going to come upon us? Are we going to be able to turn the nation quick enough? And this kind of thing. And we get involved in a lot of activity, some of which is good.

But I think it has to—you have to remember in all that activity the primary means by which God turns cursing from a people is by restoring the hearts of the fathers back to the children, by building strong covenantal families based upon the word of God. So if we’re concerned about judgment in this congregation, that should be one more further impetus for us to work with our children and raise them in the fashion God has told us to raise them in.

And if we’re concerned about evangelism, we want our church to grow. We want the kingdom of God to expand in this country. We want to see more and more people converted. We know that’s the way of victory in Jesus Christ. The book of Revelation talks about his tongue being a two-edged sword—the preaching of the gospel, the means by which he slays his enemies today. So we want that kind of thing in our land.

And again, we’re told that if the hearts of the fathers are turned back to the children, then they’ll have a people prepared for the Lord. So the best way to further evangelism, prevent the curses of God upon our country, is to build strong, godly families. It should be the number one priority in our lives. And I quoted from Dabney two weeks ago along that line. I found, as I was reading this last week, I found another quote from James B. Jordan out of his commentary in the book of Judges, and I thought it was real applicable to what we were talking about.

“Scriptures make it plain that there is no more important task any man or woman has than teaching his or her children about the Lord. The very last verses of the Old Testament tell us that the whole purpose of the Messiah’s work can be summed up as starting family life under God.”

So now we have that confirmation of what I said last week from our full-blown theonomic postmillennial Calvinist reconstructionist as well as the southern Presbyterian Dabney from 100 years ago.

Finally, we talked about an example of that being Abraham. And in Genesis 18:19, God says he’s going to reveal his plan about Sodom and Gomorrah to Abraham. Why? Because Abraham would command his children after him that they would keep God’s word and way, that they would do justice and judgment, and that therefore the promises given to Abraham would be received by him. So again, it’s very important, and Abraham was a good example to us.

Another quote I found this week that talks about this—and this is one of the reasons why I decided to return to this topic and kind of flesh it out a little bit more—we’re basically going to have another baptism service here today, of course. And what I wanted to do then is talk more about the specifics in terms of what we should be teaching our children. We know it’s important. We know there are blessings and curses.

We know there are obligations and privileges. What should be the content of that teaching of our children? How do we go about doing that? And one of the reasons this quote really puts it in good perspective—since you know this is the third child—the Lord says, and I’ll just read this quote from David Chilton. This is out of one of the journals of Christian Reconstruction:

“Covenant responsibility is a major reason for the scriptural emphasis upon godly instruction within the family of the covenant children. The head of the household in consecrating himself to God has taken a serious oath binding himself and all he has to the Lord. And with each successive baptismal consecration, that oath requires increasing depth as the vessel undertakes responsibility for the training of yet another unit in the next generation.”

So I think it’s very important that we remind ourselves that as we baptize more and more of our children, as we have more children, that our responsibility increases before God with the number of children that we have. Our blessings increase as well. Children are blessings, and with them come responsibilities. So I’d like to move on then to the verses today and talk some about the specifics of what we’re supposed to be teaching our children, the content of what we’re to teach them.

Verses 9-11 kind of sum up Psalm 78. When we hear about the children of Ephraim being armed and carrying bows, but they turned back in the day of battle—what did they do? And this is an analysis of their failure. They kept not the covenant of God. They refused to walk in his laws, and they forgot his works and his wonders that he had showed them. Okay?

They didn’t keep the covenant. They refused to walk in the laws. And they forgot God’s wonderful works. By implication then, by inference as well as by the verses just preceding that, we see that the godly way, the way of covenant responsibility for the families, is to teach their children the covenant of God first and foremost. Most importantly, the laws of God that they might walk in them. Secondly and thirdly, the works of God. Those are the three basic elements of what we’re to instruct our children, our covenant children, in the faith.

First of all, the covenant of God. It’s very important that we recognize that the scriptures are not primarily a book giving us idle information about something. The scriptures are a revelation, and they’re a revelation primarily of who God is to man. God reveals himself to man. And in that revelation, we will always be dealing with a covenanted people from Adam on through. The Bible is a story of God. It’s a revelation of God, and specifically it’s a revelation of God in relationship to a specific group of people that are part of his covenant. It’s the story of God and his covenant people.

What is a covenant? We probably should—it’d be interesting to keep the little kids up here. Can anybody tell me what a covenant is? Any of the children that are present here? Anybody who’s been studying this little catechism book? No. Well, if you want to know what a covenant is and you’re using this little booklet for your kids, you should know by now probably because it’s question number—well, it’s in here somewhere, 22 early on. This is a condensation of the Westminster Catechism for Children.

There’s a Westminster Larger and Shorter Catechism. This is really a pared down version. And if you’re going to use this, that’s good, but you gotta watch it somewhat. It’s pretty good, but there are a couple of questions that I would agree with. Any event, question number 22 says, “What is a covenant?” “A covenant is an agreement between two or more persons.” And then it goes on to talk about various questions about the covenant of works that God made with Adam and the covenant of grace that he makes with this covenant people after Adam’s sin.

So a covenant basically is an agreement between two or more people. But we know that the covenant of grace is a special kind of a covenant. And we’re to teach our children it’s different from all other covenants. And one of the ways it’s different is that it’s a covenant between a vassal and a Lord, an underling and a superior. The covenant of God is initiated by the superior.

We’re not on an equal plane with God. If we make a covenantal obligation in marriage or in a purchase order or something like that, it’s a covenant between equals. But this kind of covenant is a covenant between a superior and an inferior. That’s very important in teaching our children. Furthermore, the covenant of course has terms to it as all covenants do. And the covenant has blessings and curses. These all are implications of the covenant that we’re to teach our children.

There are also three aspects to the covenant. The covenant has a legal aspect. In other words, when we baptize Abigail this morning, she will—well actually it’s a recognition that she has been placed in that covenant relationship to God. Okay, that’s one aspect of it. There’s another aspect of that covenant though that is a personal application of the covenant to the individual.

We don’t know if Abigail is going to be regenerated by God or if she already has been, for that matter. And there will be a personal relationship there that either will develop or won’t develop as she manifests her inclusion in the blessings or the curses of that covenant obligation. And then finally, there’s a structure to the covenant. There’s a law structure that tells us the terms of that covenant and how we’re to walk therein.

It’s a way of life. The covenant is a way of life. So the first thing we’re to teach our children in terms of raising children for the faith is the covenant. The Westminster Confession says this:

“The distance between God and man, God and the creature, is so great that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience unto him as their Creator, yet they could never have any fruition of him as their blessedness and reward, but by some voluntary condescension on God’s part, which he hath been pleased to express by way of covenant.”

Simply put, that says that God’s blessings are only available through the covenant. God has condescended to man, and he has decided in his own sovereignty and will to make that in the form of a covenant. The covenant of grace is the central teaching of the scriptures then as they reveal who God is in relationship to his covenant people. All the Old Testament stories and all the Old Testament covenants that are repeated there all picture the coming of Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of that covenant.

An example: when you tell the children the story of Abraham and God’s cutting a covenant with Abraham by taking various portions of animals, cutting them in half—you remember that story? Cutting them in half, and then Abraham goes into a deep sleep. And what happens, normally what would happen under that procedure in that time period, would be that the two people making the covenant would walk between those two cut animals, saying “May this happen to us if we break this agreement.”

But Abraham doesn’t go through those animals. A fire does—a fire which represents God. God himself is the one who initiates the covenant. God is the one who completes the covenant. We cannot give the perfect righteousness required by God. And we can’t provide perfect satisfaction for our sin—atonement. Only Jesus Christ could. And so the covenant of grace is consummated in the coming of Christ, his death on the cross, his journey into hell, and then his resurrection on our behalf. You understand? He took the curses of all our sin at that particular point in historic time.

All those Old Testament feasts were by way of provision until Christ came to complete that covenant of grace. It was in effect, but it was in effect provisionally through signs and seals and various other formats. But now we live in the new covenant because Christ has come and completed that work.

So, well, how does that relate to children? What it relates to children is: when you teach kids Bible stories—which is one of the first things we do of course with children—when you look at a Bible story, you want to look at it covenantally. What does it say about God first and foremost? The Bible’s a revelation about God. What does it say about the mediator of the covenant who is to come—Jesus Christ—if you’re talking about the Old Testament stories?

And finally, what does it say about that covenant people? Examples: when you tell the story, for instance, about Joseph—rather than telling about how bad Joseph’s brothers are, what a good guy Joseph was, and as a result, he got blessed by God and got to rule Egypt—what you want to focus on first of all is: what does it say about God? It says that God is sovereign in the affairs of men and he brought that to pass for a specific purpose.

So he’s sovereign. What does it say about the mediator? Joseph is a type of Christ. Joseph saved his people, the covenant people, from starvation by being sold into Egypt by his brothers, and then by succeeding there, and as a result then being able to feed his brothers later on. So he’s a picture of Christ. He teaches about the mediator of the covenant, Jesus Christ to come. And finally, what does it say about the covenant people?

It says that God did all this for the sake of his covenant people. The very ones who sold him into slavery were part of the covenant, and they’re the ones who God saved through this whole action. So every Bible story should teach some element of those three things. Those three points are brought out by a man named DeGraff in a book called “Promise and Deliverance,” a four-volume set.

I highly recommend those. They’re not perfect. We’ve been using them with the primary age kids for the last year or so here in Sabbath school, and we have to change the stories sometimes—they’re not perfect. But boy, they’re real good. They’re real good because they focus—the introduction to those volumes talk about how he focuses on the Bible revealing God, the mediator, and the covenant, and he brings everything back to those things. Very important. So we should teach our children about those things as well.

We should teach our children the covenant then through use of Bible stories and other mechanisms. Another mechanism to teach your children about covenant is the catechism of course—drill them in it. David Chilton, in an article on teaching Bible stories, talks about his four-year-old who heard a tape that talked about, “God made Adam because he wanted somebody to talk to.”

And Chilton turns the tape off and he asks his child, “Well, now is that true?” His child says, “No. Why did God make Adam?” “Well, he made Adam for his own glory.” How did he know that? Because he’d been drilled in a catechism. He may not understand what that means yet, but he understood falsehood already because it didn’t jive up with what his father taught him was the word of God as expressed in a catechism.

So catechisms are very important. It’s another very good way to teach your children about the covenant. Lots of other ways as well. Of course, your marriage is a covenant. You can explain covenant to them through that method. There are other kinds of examples as well. You can talk about your marriage, for instance, having those same elements as our covenant of grace.

You’re married to your wife legally. You’ve gone into a legal covenant there with her when you got married. But there’s a personal side of that as well. There’s a relationship between you and your wife. The same way there should be a relationship between God’s covenant people and himself and a devotional aspect to that. Then there’s a structure to your marriage as well. There are certain structures that are carried out in your household.

You rule the house, your wife as your helpmate. There’s a definite position there, and there are laws that govern the household. Economics comes from those two terms, meaning the law of the household. There are various laws there, and it’s another way to teach the children about the biblical concept of covenant. There are many other ways as well. Of course, memorization of scripture is a good way.

You know, I remember seeing an interview with Mike Wallace from 60 Minutes. He was raised Jewish, and of course he isn’t real Orthodox or anything, but I remember in this interview he said the only thing that had stuck with him was a little prayer in Hebrew, and what it was of course is the Shema—”Hear O Israel”—which is “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy might.” He had been drilled in the repetition and the memorization of that verse.

That verse speaks about covenant here. “Hear O Israel”—Israel is the covenant people of God. It’s the New Testament church. “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God”—God has pledged himself to be our covenant God. He had pledged himself to the nation of Israel. Okay? “The Lord is one,” and “thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, and might”—obligations of the covenant, to love God. That’s the summation of the law.

So in a simple one-verse memorization there, you’ve taught your children the basic elements of the covenant. You can start that when the child is two years old, two and a half years old—soon as they can start talking, you can start to teach them that memorization process.

And finally, of course, you should actually teach the idea of covenant as being not just restricted to the covenant of grace, but as seeing the covenant of grace and God’s covenant with us as a model for our entire lives. We have a covenantal church here. We have covenantal obligations to people that sign the church covenant. And we’re going to have that in this morning’s service as well—people doing that. So you want to teach your children their relationship to their fellow man should be on the basis of covenant as well.

Why? Because we’re analogy—his creatures—we’re to be understood in relationship to God and who he is. God is in a covenant relationship with himself. The Trinity is covenanted together to do certain things functionally. There’s a relationship there amongst the three persons of the Trinity that is based upon covenant. So the covenant should pervade everything that we do and say.

And then finally, of course, what you should teach your children about the covenant is that there are blessings and curses. That’s real important in a church that teaches the correct understanding of the visible church. It’s very easy in our congregation to assume our children are saved and elect. And we teach that presumption is the way they should be treated. Our children should be taught, for instance, if they’re dealing with other children who have been baptized and are in a church, they should be taught to treat those people objectively as children of God, as saved. Okay? But that doesn’t mean necessarily that those children are.

And it doesn’t mean that our children are. We don’t want to presuppose it and as a result overlook sin and disobedience to the covenant in our own children. We have to be careful to examine our children to see where they’re at spiritually in their growth, and we have to teach them to begin some of that examination process as well, and examine themselves in the light of God’s word. It’s very important, particularly in churches that understand the biblical doctrine of the visible church and therefore include children in baptism and in communion, to not let that be some sort of form that we rely upon.

The last two months of tapes from Reverend Rushdoony should by now have really sunk in and keep us away from that terrible sin which has beset the Reformed faith throughout the last hundred years. Very important to stress that in our own lives with our children—to stress the devotional side of this thing, and that it isn’t just a legal relationship. There is a personal relationship with God involved in it as well. Okay.

So the first thing we’re going to teach our children, the covenant children, our covenant obligations to our baptized children, is the covenant itself. The second thing is God’s law. And God’s law is the basis for the blessings and curses we’ve just been talking about. The children are to examine themselves in light of their obedience to God’s law. That’s the terms of the covenant. That’s the stipulations of the covenant life that we’re to live out.

Basically, to summarize, James B. Jordan talks about there’s a four-fold division you can look at in terms of the law. The basic law is to love the Lord thy God. An aspect of that and a further breaking down of that is to love your neighbor as yourself. Those two statements are a summation of the Ten Commandments. And then the Ten Commandments are fleshed out through various case law applications.

So I think that—now he doesn’t draw this inference, but I think that’s a good way to start with teaching our children. When they’re young, you begin to teach them to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. You teach them the devotional aspect of loving God. As they get a little bit older and they can begin to have interaction with their brother and sister, you talk about loving their neighbor as themselves, but they don’t know what that means yet. And so you have to move on quickly to the Ten Commandments as the basic teaching of God’s law.

Our children should know the Ten Commandments. They should have them memorized, known by heart, and then they should begin to be able to apply those things in specific situations based upon God’s case law. So in our covenanted households, we should teach our children the law of God through that kind of a process—building slowly, precept upon precept, looking at their developmental ages and what part of the law of God is pertinent to them at that specific point in time that they can understand.

Always recognizing that you don’t grow unless you have stress. Okay? You don’t grow unless you put something out there that they have to strive to achieve. You don’t want to dumb it down so much that you restrict growth. You know, Elijah is a year and a half old now, and he wants to know a lot. He is ready to learn a lot of things right now. He can’t verbalize much yet, so it slows you down a little bit, but boy, they’re really ready at a very young age to move right on and start learning an awful lot of things.

Another way of teaching God’s law, of course, to our children is by example and our own character in the way we run our households. Again, our households should be run covenantally. They should be run in a legal fashion. I don’t mean you have to have signs posted everywhere, but you should show your child that you’re not capricious in your discipline of them. That there are certain structures to that, so that they understand that there are laws that they have to work and that they have to live by, and everything isn’t just kind of an experiential emotional trip, you know, with you and your reaction to them.

So the basis that we discipline our children on, the basis by which we run our household—timeliness, all these things—are very important ways of teaching children the character of God. Okay.

One of the ways that we’ve begun to teach our kids the law of God that I just want to pass on—it’s nothing really much to it. Fortunately, I’ve got a job where I’m living close to home. When I come home at lunch every day, but you could do this at dinner as well. I just decided to begin with the case law in Exodus 21-23, and we just read one law every time at lunchtime. No big deal. We’ll sit down and we’ll pray and we’ll start eating lunch, and I’ll get out the Bible. I’ll read just one law, and we’ll talk about it a little bit.

You know, restitution, slavery, whatever it is—murder, abortion—whatever the subject happens to be. You just go right through it, one verse at a time, and read it. And you might want to consider doing that with your children. It’s going to be hard, too. Of course, all this stuff is difficult because what we’re doing is we’re reforming our own way of thinking. I talked about Bible stories and the covenant. It’s hard for us to see those relationships in the Bible stories. We’ve got to think that stuff through. They come to a verse about, you know, four or five-fold restitution for sheep and ox.

And you think, well, what does that mean? Well, I don’t know. Probably means you maybe ought to study a little bit before you start talking to your kids about just what it means. And I found what I’ll do is I’ll use Jordan’s book “Law of the Covenant.” I’ll use the Institutes and look up references to that specific case law in there, or what other helps I have at home that deal with that portion of the law. And if it’s too difficult, don’t let it throw you.

Just say, “Well, I’m going to let Daddy look into this some more. We’ll talk about it some more tomorrow about why maybe there’s four-fold for one and five-fold for the other.” Just begin to do it. That’s the important thing. And of course, you know, Abraham taught his children that they might obey him and might do justice and righteousness. And we’re teaching the law to our kids that they might do it. And you want to begin to help them make application of specific areas around them, right?

Restitution is the obvious one. And if you have children, you have broken things involved. You know, kids break things occasionally. And that’s a great time to teach them restitution and the importance of that. Build that into the family structure. Teach applications. The scriptures talk about the law. In terms of the Old Testament, they were to bind the law upon their forehead and upon their hand. And I’ve talked before about how, you know, that indicates that everything that we do, our knowledge is supposed to take action and responsibility in action.

Everything that we think is to be governed by God’s law so that everything we do is governed by God’s law. Everything we put our hand to do.

And in relationship to that law as well, again, I’d stress the idea of self-examination. Throughout the scriptures, God commands his people to do certain things, and they either act in obedience or disobedience, and God evaluates their performance and says, “What have you done here?” Adam, where are you?” You know, he prompts Adam to make self-examination. Why is he hiding? And he wants Adam to evaluate himself in the basis of his word to Adam. He wants Adam to be aware of what he’s done in terms of his sinfulness. He wants Adam to repent from that sinfulness and turn back to him.

You can’t repent until you’ve been brought to a position of awareness of your sin. Teach your children to examine their actions in the light of the scriptures. If they violated a biblical commandment, ask them about that commandment. Ask them if they understand their violation of that commandment. Bring them to the point of repentance first and foremost by teaching them the law of God. They’ll know what to repent from and what to repent to, then in terms of doing the right thing. That is our obligation as covenant parents to teach God’s law.

Chris W. wrote a paper for Good Report when we still had that thing going years back, and she talked about beginning with beginners or something like that. And a friend had asked her how she should begin teaching her children. And so Chris did a Bible study as to teaching kids and what they should be taught. And she found that repeatedly the instruction was to teach them the law. She thought it was going to be to teach them to love God first and foremost. Well, that’s true.

But it taught them to teach the children the laws so they know how they’re to love God, in what way that love is to be manifested. And she had an example, another practical example of a child that is a tattletale. You know, children come and say, “Well, this person did that or this person did that.” Use those sort of situations that come up as a way to first of all discipline yourself to think of that situation in terms of God’s law.

What does God’s law say about if one person has something against another person? Well, it says first and foremost to try to work it out amongst themselves. So you tell that child, you go back and tell them that, and see if you can work it out first. If not, then come back and get me, and we’ll go through the laws of the scriptures regarding witnessing and testifying. And I hold little courts in our home, you know, nothing formal, but I’ll try to bring all the parties involved there, listen to the testimony involved, and then give them a ruling so that they know that I’m trying to rule on that thing on the basis of God’s word instead of on the basis of what’s convenient for the parent.

So there are lots of other applications, I’m sure, that we’re all doing in our households, but that’s very important to teach God’s law and application.

And the third thing this psalm talked about was that they forgot the wonderful works of God and the wonders that he had showed them. Now, I think that there are some implications to that beyond just the fact that we have a great big wonderful God—a great big powerful God. That’s true, of course, and it’s important that our children understand that God is the sovereign of all creation. But I think also what’s going on there—if you look at these verses then the very first verse he talks about after that is about what God did in the land of Egypt. He divided the sea. The context of that is the deliverance of his covenant people from an enemy, and the wonderful works that God has done for his covenant people of Israel that are recorded in the Psalms are primarily works of deliverance from enemies.

And so the nation of Israel was to remember their history as a covenant people and how God acted with them. Number one, of course, to recognize God’s victory, but number two, to recognize that there’s a war involved, that there are enemies out there, and that God will deliver us from those enemies. That’s real important because the nation of Israel continually, when things were at peace and safety, would start to make covenants with the ungodly nations around them.

They got that wrong—those guys were the enemy, that they shouldn’t be making covenants with them. They should be converting them. Okay? So the same thing is true today. We live in a nation filled with this myth of neutrality. Why? Because we’ve forgotten that there are real enemies out there and that those enemies are self-consciously, in many cases, devoted to our destruction. Now, there’s a lot of other people out there operating on the same myth of neutrality.

But behind all these things, there is a battle going on. There are two kinds of people in the world. I talked to my brother Mike last night, and I guess there’s a new Clint Eastwood movie out, and I guess Clint Eastwood says to Eli W., “There are two kinds of people in the world: those who have loaded guns and those who have shovels.” I guess the idea is making the other guy dig for you. Well, there really are two kinds of people in the world.

There are Christians and non-Christians. And there are two forces in the world. And those forces are in opposition. Those forces are all in the context of God’s plan for history, however. And so what I’m trying to point out here is that we should teach our children that there are battles to be fought and won in and through Jesus Christ. We’re to teach our children that we live in a land of ungodly people, and that those people—some of those people—are devoted to our destruction and the destruction of Christianity.

That we remember those things. We remember that those people use deception. Many of God’s enemies in the past used deception as a primary tool of fooling God’s people and of stopping them from doing God’s will. So we should teach our children as well the mighty works of God. We might understand that war—that God means business in terms of conversion of people. It’s not an optional activity. We’re to go out there and convert those people because they’re enemies of God now. And that the opponents mean business and that they want to defeat the people of God.

And then of course we want to remember the victory of Jesus Christ. That God’s wonderful works teach about his victory as superintending of all things to his purposes, and that by the preaching of the gospel we will have victory as well. God’s presence with his people also is a central element of that teaching. Are you—remember in relationship to this—a news story I saw a few months back on Moscow and how they teach their children in the public schools in Moscow, and they were contrasting. In this country, you know, there’s been a lot of teaching about nuclear war, and the kids are all frightened. They don’t want to live anymore. You know, they think it’s going to be a terrible time. Nobody’s going to have any kids. And on the other hand, the people, the kids in Moscow, they’re not frightened about all this at all. They’re being trained that they’re going to win. They’re being trained that there’s an enemy out there that they’re going to defeat. That enemy. And they show all these little, you know, third and fourth and fifth grade kids.

They take them once a year to the big military establishments, fill them up with the idea of national vigor and pride. They’re training their kids to be hopeful for the future, that they’re going to win, and that they’re going to defeat us. This nation is training these children in our country that we’re going to lose, that there’s no hope for the future. Well, that’s deliberate, of course.

Well, we’ve got much more hope than the communists have. The communists are fighting God. They’re never going to win ultimately. Okay? Our children then should be the children of this country who have hope for the future. And if the pagans are going to teach their children there’s no hope for the future, fine. And if they want to engage themselves in zero population growth, that’s fine with me. But the people of God should teach their children that children are a blessing, that there’s hope for the future, that the next generation is going to have victory through Jesus Christ.

Our children should be filled with hope—much more hope than communist Russia. And by the way, it’ll be our children who will probably meet those Russians someday somewhere. And we’ll have to teach them that they’ll be delivered from that as well—victory in Jesus Christ.

We’ve been taught by Rushdoony and others that the family—the family rather—is the child’s first and best church, school, and government. Well, the family is God’s plan, and the family is the child’s first church, school, and government. May not be the best one, though. What I’m saying this morning is that as covenant parents, we have covenant obligations to make sure that our church in our home—the child’s first church—is their best church. We’re not to teach our children religious truths based upon other materials and other viewpoints that are humanistic.

We’re not to teach our children Bible stories from a humanistic perspective because then we’ve done a disservice. We’ve taught them from their very earliest age that their relationship to God is for their benefit and not for God’s benefit, for man’s glory and not God’s glory. We’re to teach our children in our schools that there is no neutrality in subject material. If we teach our children in our first and best schools in terms of language and math and all these other things as if they can be known apart from the word of God, then we’ve done a disservice to our covenant obligations.

We’re to be our children’s best government. We are their first government. They learn about the civil authorities from us—how we discipline them, how we punish evildoers in the home and reward the righteous. If we don’t do that according to God’s word, we’ll be their first government, but we will not be a good government for them. And they’ll learn incorrect principles to civil authority. We then should go forth in obligation—or in obedience rather—to these obligations, so that we can be our children’s first and best church, school, and government and all else.

And we’ll do that if we teach our children from the very, very earliest ages the concept of the covenant, God’s law, and his victory over all his enemies.

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for yourself. We thank you for your scriptures. We thank you, Lord God, for blessing this church with many children. And we acknowledge before you, Lord God, the responsibility that comes with those children. We bend our knee before you, Father, and ask for your help in meeting those responsibilities. We thank you for the finished work of Christ and that ultimately all these things were accomplished in him. But we thank you for commanding us to go forth in the power of the Holy Spirit to do these things in our families.

We pray, Lord God, for the families of this congregation that you would strengthen us in our obligations and in our commitment to fulfill those obligations according to your scriptures. Help us, Lord God, to be a Reformed church, continually reforming. Help us to reform our own minds and hearts first, that we might teach these things to our children from a better perspective. Help us, Lord God, to raise these children in the fear and admonition of you, recognizing your covenant obligations over them, recognizing your law, and recognizing your finished victory in Jesus Christ.

In his name we pray. Amen.