Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
Pastor Dennis Tuuri

with that portion of our covenant document that talks about church authority and church leadership and the membership of the church and participation in the government of the church. This morning then we continue on. You might not remember by now, but we actually were at one time beginning going through the confessional statement of Reformation Covenant Church, and we’re in the final portions of that now. Going through the covenant document for the next few weeks, we’ll be talking about the clause there that says that you’ll agree to instruct your children in the fear and admonition of the Lord.

And after that, we’ll talk about the implications of the Sabbath, which is the concluding statement of our covenant statement. And then we’ll be done with the covenant statement and go on to other things. So this morning, we’re shifting gears from the institutional church, the church in general, and the government of the church, leadership of the church to families, and specifically to the education of children.

I’m going to begin this morning this series, and by the way, this series may be interrupted. It will be interrupted several times over the next month or two. Reverend Norman Jones will be here in two weeks sharing with us. He comes out once a year. I always have a great time talking to him in the afternoon after the sermon, and hopefully—well, I think he’s been around in the area three or four days, and hopefully those of you who know him can get to know him a little bit better when he’s here. Great man, and we’re happy to have him here preaching two weeks from today.

Then additionally, there may be other interruptions as we go into the next couple of months in terms of vacation and this kind of thing. But anyway, the basic structure will be on the institution of the family and the education of children.

Now, last week I concluded the portion dealing with church government by talking about the importance of the institutional church, and it is important, and we’re going to do that kind of reverse this time. We’re going to begin by talking about the importance of educating your children. I know that we recognize that to a great extent in this church, but it’s important, I think, that we hear it again and understand the tremendous importance of nurturing our children and what that entails.

We also, in our last series on church government, began in the Old Testament. We’ll do the same thing this morning, as you’ve already seen from the Scripture selection. We’re going to start in the Old Testament and see what the basis is for the statement in Ephesians 6 about raising your children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. What all that encompasses in terms of the rest of the Scriptures. We’ll start with the Old Testament again.

We’ll be singing at the close of the service a song taken from Psalm 144. And in Psalm 144:12, that talks about one of the blessings of God being daughters that are like cornerstones that grace the palace of the king. We know that the palace of the king has reference to the dwelling place of God, the institutional church. And so the Scriptures sort of combine these two areas—well-instructed children and as being adornment, as it were, to the institutional church as well. And so again, we want to see there’s some continuity in terms of the institutional church and the family as well.

Having said that, then I just want to do one other thing before we actually begin the text before us. If this last week or two of study for myself is any indication, for myself personally and probably for you as well, as we go through many of these aspects of instructing our children, there’s going to be some conviction that’s going to occur as a result of this, because we all fall short in many things. And certainly in our day and age, it’s easy to fall short in the instruction of our children. And so what I’m trying to say here is don’t be discouraged.

As we talk about the importance of educating your children, today we talk about the implications of the content of education—what school should be like ideally. We’re going to talk about, I believe next week, about the content of what we’re to educate our children in. We’ll be giving one other message, I know, about Molech worship in the Old Testament—what it was and what are the implications for today?

As we go through these things, I don’t want you to be discouraged. I want you to be convicted if you’ve fallen short, but I want to use an object lesson. You know, teaching kids—and we’re going to talk about over the next few weeks—it’s important to remember that one of the great things the Scriptures give us, particularly all of the Scriptures, including the Old Testament, are good, many stories and object lessons from history, from God’s people and his interaction with people, that we can use to teach our children.

I mentioned before the comparison in the Scriptures between King David and King Saul. And we use this with our children repeatedly. Now, I got that illustration originally first from Reverend James B. Jordan going through 1 Samuel. But, you know, he pointed out some interesting things about King Saul that we don’t normally think about. King Saul was chosen by God, anointed by God. It says in the Scriptures he was even given a new heart by God as well.

He was not a bad man originally. The people didn’t choose him because he was like the pagan king. God put his hand upon King Saul because he was to be a good king, a mighty king. King Saul was big. David was big, too. Not as big as Saul necessarily, but he was a big man. He was to be an ideal person, ideal king for the covenant community. King Saul, before he became king, went about the business of taking care of his father’s goods and caring for his father and his father’s animals as well. Just like David did. There’s a lot of similarities between Saul and David.

And there’s a similarity also in that they both fell short and they both sinned at certain portions of their public duty. The difference was, though, that King David repented of that sin. King Saul—I’m sorry, King Saul did not repent of that sin. He made excuses for his sin before God. When he offered the sacrifices before waiting for Samuel to come back to where he’d been told to wait by Samuel, when he offered them presumptuously, taking over the job of priest as well as king, he was called out by Samuel for that.

He didn’t repent of that sin. He dug his heels in. He made excuses for it. David, when he sinned, was brought to repentance by God. And so David’s reign continued, although with effects from God, of course. What I’m trying to point out is it’s a good thing to remind your children all the time to be like King David and not like King Saul—to repent and turn back to God and to acknowledge that we’ve done wrong, and then move on with an increased vigor to do what’s right.

And that’s true of ourselves as well as we go through this series of thoughts. If you find things in this that are uncomfortable for you and yet you’re convinced the Scriptures teach them, don’t be like King Saul. Don’t dig in and make excuses for yourself. Be like King David and turn and try even harder to do what’s right.

Having said that, let’s turn to the text before us: Deuteronomy 6. The outline for this talk is in the announcement sheets, which I hope you have a copy of. I’m not going to go over that really, but you can just follow along with that outline if you have your announcement sheets and then make notes on the back of that or wherever you have the place to make notes.

We’ll begin by talking about the Great Shema and the implications of that. Then we’ll talk in the second half of the service about the importance of childbearing.

Beginning with the Great Shema, then. The word Shema is the Hebrew word for “hear,” and Deuteronomy 6 verse 4 begins with “Hear, O Israel.” Shema is the Hebrew word there. And so this is referred to, in rabbinic literature and in the Orthodox Jewish tradition, as the Great Shema—”Hear, O Israel.” It’s an important part of Scripture that sums up really most of the rest of what God requires of us.

I see it taught in the New Testament as well. Jesus used the Great Shema. The Great Shema. Jesus repeatedly referred to it as the first and great commandment, in which everything else hinges really upon this commandment. It comes forth from it. So this is a capsulization, as it were, of the faith.

In Orthodox Judaism, the Great Shema—you know, the first two verses of this—are repeated daily, two times a day actually, in morning and evening prayers. The faith is focused around this thing. I remember seeing an interview with Mike Wallace about his Jewish background, and he said really the only thing he retained of it was these twice-a-day repeating of these verses in Hebrew. That’s how firmly it is ingrained in Orthodox Jewish children—these two verses in Hebrew, how firmly that’s ingrained in them. Even Mike Wallace now, who has become totally apostate from a rabbinic or Orthodox Jewish position, yet he retains and still recites those prayers two times a day.

Well, let’s get some implications of this for us today. First of all, the Great Law begins with the central message stated in verse 4: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.” Simple statement, right? And yet it has tremendous implications. The Lord our God is not many lords. He is one Lord. This verse denies polytheism—that there are many gods. The verse says there’s one God, one lord, one king, as it were, one sovereign over us, one ruler who determines everything that we have to obey. One God, one creator, not many. That is essential to our faith as Christians, and it’s essential to what we’ll follow in the next few verses we’re going to look at. It forms the basis of everything else that’s developed in this portion of Scripture.

Now, this word “hear,” by the way, has the idea of obeying. It doesn’t just mean, now kind of listen to this sometimes, but it means “hear” with obedience being your result. It means Shema is to be stated strongly—to hear this fact. Idolatry is not to be partaken of by God’s people. Many gods are wrong. Polytheism is wrong. And so this begins with the statement of God’s sole claim to being our God, our savior, and our Lord and our King.

Now I always think, when I talk about this Shema of Israel, of Steve Samson. Steve uses his children when he really wants his children to listen to what he’s saying. Children can kind of get distracted and whatnot. He says “Shema” really loudly in his household, and they come right to attention. And this verse wants us to come to attention. God says, “Hear, O Israel, our Lord our God is one Lord.” Okay? One God, no idolatry.

Now, the words here: “Lord” is the name of Yahweh or Yahweh, the covenant God of Israel. “God” is the word Elohim, or “strong one.” One way we remember that in our family is we named one of our boys Elijah, which is a contraction of Elohim and Jehovah/Yahweh into two words. And this is really right from this verse here. The name Elijah is “our strong one”—our Elohim, our mighty one, our defender, our protector—and our Lord is Jehovah God, the covenant God of his people. And so the covenant is stressed here, and God’s strength and God’s sovereignty is stressed as well.

Now, the implications of this are mighty, because if we have one God who is going to call us to hearing with obedience, that means we have one set of instructions, one law, one word from God that we’re watching obedience to. And that’s what we develop in the rest of this passage. And as a result of that, then we see that we do indeed live in a universe, a world that’s controlled by one person, Almighty God himself, the creator of it. We don’t live in a multiverse of different disciplines ruled by different gods or different areas ruled by different gods. We live in one world. No neutrality in this world. No division of secular and spiritual in the sense of one being controlled by God and the other not. One God, one command word, and as a result, no neutrality, no multiverse, but a universe. Very important.

God, on the basis of that, then, is going to give us a response to God’s declaration that he is our God and our savior. He is our covenant God and our strong one as well. Our response, then, that is required from us begins in the next verse, in verse 5: “Thou shalt love the Lord your God with all thine heart, with all thy soul, with all thy might.”

Our response to God’s declaration—that we are to hear with obedience, that he is the only God, no idolatry—our proper response to that is love. There’s an Old Testament verse I’m reading, okay? But the central fact of the faith in the Old Testament, as in the New Testament, in terms of our response to God, is love. We don’t have a Bible of, you know, non-love in the first two-thirds and then love in the second third or the last third of the book. Love is all the proper response of God’s people. But love has to be defined by God’s law.

And if we see here God’s word, if we see that love is the proper response to a commanding and obedient—a commanding to obedience—God who commands to obedience, then love is the proper response to that and would have to yield itself to obedience to God as well. And he stresses in verse 5, we’re to love God with all our heart. Okay? With all our soul and with all our might. That makes sense, too, doesn’t it? We have one God over all of life. And every portion of our being—in our heart, our soul, our might, our physical strength, what we think, what we are as people, our spirit, if you will—all that stuff is to be focused toward God in terms of loving him. One God, no neutrality in our own being either. Then we have to respond to him totally in love.

Now, that’s true of our children. By the way, this forms a basic pattern. God is our Father, isn’t he? And we’re the children of God. And the same thing is true. In our families, it’s probably good to note that as we go through this, there are many correlations in the way that God commands his people to respond to him. In the same way, those patterns for response should be set up in our families.

We’ve talked a lot in this church about the proper response. We have a response of reading. God declares the first half of the verse. We echo back to him his declaration with our words that he has given us to speak, and our lives are to be an antipodal response. Same thing’s true of our children. We’re to command our children and they’re to respond to us. They’re to respond to us in love and obedience to us with everything that they have. And so that sets the pattern for our families as well.

The second response, then, is one of obedience. On the basis of this love is obeying God. It goes on in verse 6: “These words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart.”

God commands us here to respond to him on the basis of love, but also on the basis of love that obeys. And of course, this is in the New Testament as well. Jesus said that if you love me, you’ll keep my commandments. The proper response to God, and our way to demonstrate our love to God, is the obeying of his commandments.

He gives us here a command word. He says, “These words which I command you this day shall be in your heart.” So God here again—he says, on the basis of his creation of us and his lordship of us, he gives us a word that commands, a command word, a law word. To use the phrase “revelation,” he uses that. It sounds so strange to most of us when we first hear it. Why should it sound strange? This verse tells us that God’s word is a command word. And so we are we are expected by God and demanded by God to obey that law word of his.

What here again is the purpose of obeying these things? It’s non-negotiable on the part of God. That same thing’s true of our children when they’re young, isn’t it? We give our children a law in our household to obey, not to negotiate with us about, but to respond to us in love and obedience. And they’re to do that. And that’s how we should run our households.

It’s interesting here that he just told us to love him with all our heart. And then in verse 6, he says that these words, the command word of God, where should it be? In our heart. The seed of our love for God has also to be the seed of our obedience to God. We’ll talk more about that next week when we talk about grace and law and the combination of those two things in the book of Deuteronomy and how we’re to teach our children those things. But it’s important to point out here again the relationship between love and obedience. Those are our two responses to God.

There’s a third response that God requires of us in this passage of Scripture. And if you think about it, it’s kind of incredible that it’s here. Verse 7: “Thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children.”

It’s not enough to respond to God’s command, authoritative word with obedience and love. Simply stated, he goes on to say there’s a third response that’s required of us who have children, of course, to him. And that is to teach these things diligently to your children.

Now, I want to point out a couple of things here. First of all, it’s you who are taught who are expected to teach these things to your children. “Thou shalt teach them to your children.” It doesn’t say the state should teach them to your children. Doesn’t say the civil government is responsible to educate your children, does it? No, it doesn’t. What it says is that you’re the one responsible. Okay? That’s very important in our day and age, because the civil government has all but taken over every aspect of education in this country. But that’s not what God requires.

Now, he’s like, “Can’t we just voluntarily hire people to do these things for us?” Certainly, we can, can’t we? But if we’re going to hire people to take our place in educating our children, from a godly perspective, what does it mean? It means that they better do what we were expected to do by God in terms of content, in terms of the authority of God being the basis of that content, and in terms of that word being a command word from God.

If we don’t, if we hire tutors to come in and teach our children and turn that response to people who teach the children from another perspective—not only in the God of Scripture, but from another god—then we taught our children that there is a multiverse, that there are more gods than one out there who are going to form the basis of everything that they are and everything that they know and understand about the world.

You see, this follows upon the admonition against idolatry and other gods in the first verse of this Great Shema. The Great Shema insists that we’re responsible to teach our children. We’re responsible to teach them that God has given us a command word that affects everything in this universe, and it affects every part of their being. And if we turn over a portion of their being—whether it’s their mind, whether it’s their heart, whether it’s their drive—if we turn any portion of their being over to somebody else to teach, whoever we turn it over to better be doing it from these same principles and precepts.

Yes, it’s okay to hire tutors. No, it’s not okay. It’s not okay to hire tutors who aren’t going to teach them from this perspective. And of course, that’s exactly this flies right in the face of current beliefs in terms of education.

I don’t know if most of you saw it or not. There was a letter to the editor in the Oregonian this week about homeschooling, about how terrible it was and how archaic and what a throwback to the stone age it was. The telling part of this letter—which by the way, I wrote a response to. I posted the letter and my response to this letter on the bulletin board downstairs. Really a stupid letter. I mean, just filled with errors. But anyway, you’ll see why they make errors because their presupposition.

The last sentence shows why they don’t like homeschooling. The last paragraph rather. Here’s what she says. A lady’s name is Dawn Marie Zarki. If you know anything about that lady, let me know, because I don’t understand where she’s coming from. But anyway, she says: “To impede social interaction at tender ages destroys the possibility of a true meshing of cultures, races, and religious philosophies, which is the melting pot ideal we boast of to the world and will only cause a further gap in communication.”

Now, that may not mean much to you, but what that means is, if you think about it, is that public schools—the government-run schools—what they want is a melting ideal where you’re—where what you teach your children is to be a combination of all these different influences. The multiverse idea instead of the universe idea. Okay? That’s what’s going on in our government schools today. That’s the thing specifically prohibited by this portion of Scripture, that says that everything we teach our children must be on the basis of God’s word.

We are to indoctrinate our children. That sounds terrible, doesn’t it? But think about that word. What does “indoctrinate” mean? It means to inculcate in those people a set of doctrine and beliefs, and that’s what the Scripture says is our responsibility. And it’s every male head of household’s responsibility in this room to fulfill that responsibility before God. “Thou shalt teach them diligently.” You can certainly hire people to do that, I suppose, but they have to share these same sets of presuppositions.

The public schools—tremendous quote by Dr. A.A. Hodge in the late 1800s, Princeton theologian. He said this, and I’m sure some of you have heard this before. I think it’s worth repeating:

“I am as sure as I am of the fact of Christ’s reign that a comprehensive and centralized system of national education separated from religion as is now commonly proposed will prove the most appalling injury for the propagation of anti-Christian and atheistic unbelief and of antisocial, nihilistic ethics, individual, social, and political, which this sin-stricken world has ever seen. It is capable of exact demonstration that if every party in the state has the right in excluding from the public schools whatever he does not believe to be true, then he that believes most must soon give way to him that believes least. And then he that believes least must soon give way to him that believes absolutely nothing. No matter how small minority the atheists or the agnostics may be, it is self-evident that on this scheme, if it is consistently and persistently carried out in all parts of the country, the United States system of national popular education will be the most efficient and wide instrument for the propagation of atheism which the world has ever seen.”

That’s what’s happened because they deny the principles in Deuteronomy 6—the Great Shema or “Hear, O Israel.”

You are to instruct your children. If you don’t instruct your children in the things of the faith, either individually or to the people you turn them over to, you’re going to be recalled on by God for responsibility for that. See what I’m saying? If you’re going to hire somebody to teach your kids, make sure what they teach will meet God’s criteria, because if it doesn’t, you’re going to be the one that God holds responsible. God will bring judgment upon you.

Now, I say that it’s your responsibility, not the state’s. Another implication of this, though, is it’s not the church’s responsibility either. Okay? It doesn’t say turn them over to the institutional church to have them taught religious things. No, it says you teach them diligently. The purpose of the institutional church is not to instruct children.

Now, we have a Sabbath school here. Every Sunday we take the children out while the sermon is being taught. Why do we do that? Well, we do it because in the book of Nehemiah, when Ezra preached from the law, the little ones who could understand would be in there, and they would hear and understand it in front of Ezra while he preached the law. The little ones who were without understanding would be taken away and cared for someplace else. And we anticipate then that Scripture says that parents can, if they so desire, remove their children from a service they won’t be able to understand or comprehend, out of that service so that they then can attend to a different level of teaching which they can understand.

There’s nothing wrong with that. But it shouldn’t. The problem with Sunday school in this country is that Sunday schools have supplanted parental education of children in terms of spiritual truth. And while what we start here is good and proper and biblical in our opinion, in my understanding of the Scriptures, it can turn into a very disastrous thing if the parents involved with those children see it as—that’s the responsibility now for religious education of their kids. “We got Sunday school. We don’t have to worry. If you don’t give them a Bible story tonight, don’t have to worry if you don’t go through the catechism this week. We got Sunday school down there that’ll do that and the learning portions of the catechism down there.”

But that’s to be a supportive effort, folks. And we don’t do anything in Sabbath school there every week. That’s okay. We’re not—I don’t believe we’re then violating anything that God has told the institutional church to do, because God has given the institutional church the responsibility to teach adults. And those adults then are responsible for teaching the members of their household. That’s what Scripture is saying.

Same way as here in this passage of Scripture. God taught Moses with uninstructed heads of households. And he didn’t tell his household of households, “Bring your children to me. I’ll teach them the law.” He said, “I’m going to instruct you, and your responsibility then is to communicate that down to your own family, the people within your household.” Okay? But the same is true today.

The Levites were set up by God in the institutional church in the Old Testament to provide education for adults. But the fathers still were commanded to teach their children, not to turn it over to a state institution, not to turn it over to the institutional church. That’s why we don’t have church-run catechism classes for the church children here. We believe that fathers should make that determination—of if they’re going to use a catechism or not, which catechism they’re going to use. We’ll help in that, whatever way we can.

It’s the responsibility of the church to assist the fathers in doing that, to some extent, but it’s not the responsibility of the church to do it for the family. And the fact that the institutional church has done that for the last 100 years in this country means now we have a group of people who turn their kids over to the state for secular education and over to the church for religious education. And as a result, those children are being taught not biblically. Okay? Not from God’s perspective.

God’s perspective says it’s ultimately the responsibility of the parents to educate their children, not the church, not the state.

The third aspect of this, though: you are to educate your children, but you’re to educate them in what God tells you here, not as a result of your own mind or your own feelings about things.

Calvin has a great quote. I don’t want to belabor this point. It’s a great quote from Calvin on this subject. Actually, he’s talking in the quote I’ll be reading here about numbers and the wearing of fringes. I guess it wouldn’t be bad to read Numbers 15:38. If you don’t bother turning to it, I’ll read it for you.

Numbers 15:38 reads: “Speak unto the children of Israel. Vision that they make them fringes in the borders of their garments throughout the generations, that they put upon the fringes the borders a ribbon of blue. And it shall be unto you for a fringe, that you may look upon it and remember all the commandments of the Lord and do them, and that you seek not after your own heart and after your own eyes, after which you used to go a-whoring.”

That’s an interesting verse, isn’t it? Remember the law of God to obey it; you don’t seek after your own eyes, after your own heart, after which we used to go whoring.

Calvin says about this: “First of all, by contrasting the hearts and eyes of men with his law, he shows that he would have his people contented with that one rule which she prescribes, without the admixture of their own imaginations. And again, he denounces the vanity of whatever men invent for themselves. And however pleasing any human scheme may appear to them, he still repudiates and condemns it. And this is still more clearly expressed in the last word, when he says that men go a-whoring whenever they are governed by their own councils.

“This declaration is deserving of our special observation. For whilst they have much self-satisfaction to worship God according to their own will, and whilst they account their zeal to be very good and very right, they do nothing else but pollute themselves by spiritual adultery. For what by the world is considered to be the holiest devotion, God, of his own mouth, pronounces to be fornication.”

By the word “eyes,” he unquestionably means man’s power of discernment.

What I’m trying to point out here is that the instruction of your children—these verses tell us that you have to do it, but you don’t do it according to what you think might be right or proper. You’re doing it according to what God says is right and proper. And if you teach them instead your own counsel and your own idea of what might be good and proper, quite apart from the Scriptures, you’ve gone whoring, and you’re not—it’s just as bad as bringing them over to the state to educate your children. Okay?

When you’re homeschooled, remember that these things we teach them must be based upon God’s word.

Secondly, the verse tells us you must teach them diligently to your children. Now, that implies there’s a lot of work required to teach your children, isn’t it? Isn’t there? You bet there is. As a result of that required diligence, we often fall short of that.

Now, you know, I’ve told people in this church before—I’ll tell it to you again—by nature, I’m a very slothful person. I put things off. I know you do, too probably. It requires a great deal of diligence to do what you’re required to do.

An example of that, in my own case, are the songs that we pick for the worship service. And we have two pianists: Valerie and Jane. And it just so happens that Jane has never had much problem if I get the songs to her pretty last minute. Valerie would like to have them earlier in the week to practice and to get ready for Sunday. And that’s just the way they approach their piano playing differently.

But as a result of what—why do I talk about that? What I come with that for is this: when it’s Jane’s month to be playing the piano, I find myself slipping, and I don’t have the songs ready a week ahead of time anymore. And a lot of times it’s Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday before I call Jane to tell the poor lady what she’ll have to be playing for all of you in two days.

Well, with Valerie, because she really wants them a week ahead of time, and I—you know, I’m that much more strongly motivated to get them here by Sunday. It’s Valerie’s month. And today, I not only have the songs done, I have this week’s order of worship already printed out and ready, and I just have a copy for it today. So, the point is that we tend to put things off.

Another illustration, if you want to know how terrible I am, is teaching my children math. I’m supposed to teach my children math this year. And you know, we got real busy with that child abuse thing with affairs of the church and whatnot. I didn’t teach them math yet. I began about three weeks ago. We finally moved to our new house. We didn’t teach them math for the whole year. Now Chris had already arranged to have our children tested with the annual test in June. And I said, “No, you can’t do that. I haven’t taught them yet.”

If I would have known it was in June, I probably would have started in April or May. I didn’t figure that we’d have them tested in September. And I figured, well, I don’t get to it till June first. I know I can do it in three or four months. See, I put it off to the last minute again. Well, you know, that’s not a good thing. You’ve got to be diligent. These Scriptures tell us perpetually working at this thing. And if you find yourself falling short the way that I do with some of the songs, the math of my kids, repent, turn, and go back and be more diligent when instructing your children. It’s hard work.

By the way, this word “diligence” in the Hebrew also has the implications of sharpening or wedding in terms of using a whet stone. That’s interesting, too, to think about. The implications of our children being arrows in the quiver, as it were, we’re teaching our children diligently, sharpening them, as it were, for their use in the battle of the propagation of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which will bring victory to his people. Diligence.

Third, this particular portion of the verse tells us we’re to do these things in all of our life: “Thou shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house. When thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, when thou rise up.”

Well, that actualization—that is, everything that we do is supposed to become a teaching device whereby we teach our children the commands of God. Now again, this is one more indication we live in a universe. God’s word, one word that controls all of life. And as a result of that, every bit of life can be used to teach our children about God, about what he’s instructed us to do in the Scriptures.

You know, we’re not talking about the Scriptures commanding spiritual training for your kids and everything else for somebody else. No, we have the universe here, and everything that we do—whether in our house, leaving our house, sleeping, waking up, the way, which refers to the general course of our life—and all these things, we’re to be instructing our children.

We’ll have more to say about that later on too, when we talk about methods in the next couple of weeks in terms of teaching our children. But begin to think about that as well. The method prescribed here in this verse reminds us of responsibility for all the training of the children. And again, there is no idolatry or neutrality specified in this passage before us. And specifically, the idea of neutrality is killed by these verses before us, and they tell us that we’re to teach the children the commands of God in every area of life—in the way, in the house. Everything, all of life, is religious in that sense, based upon God, based upon his revelation of himself.

And all of life, that has to be governed. All the education of our children should be governed by that word of God. That has tremendous implications that we can’t spend a lot of time on this morning, but I know that for myself, when I finally became convinced of the necessity to teach my children in a biblical worldview—you know, many years ago, I don’t know, five, ten years ago—it was difficult first to see how it related to various areas of endeavor: mathematics, history, whatever.

And yet all those subjects have a basis in theology and the understanding of who God is and what he’s doing. Look at history, for instance. That’s one example. We talked last week about history should be “His story.” And there’s a great tape, “Easy Chair Tape” recently put out from Chalcedon, a very good tape. And if you want a copy of it, let me know. I’ll try to have Keith make a few copies. But R.J. Rushdoony and Scott are talking about history, and Rushdoony concludes the conversation, the tape, by saying that the Bible is really the best and first textbook a child should have for history, because the Bible gives us history, doesn’t it?

And it gives us history in an inspired way that tells us that the events of man are governed by God for his purposes. There’s a revelation of who God is. History is a history of the covenant people of God. And that’s what this book tells us about, too. This book should form our basis for our philosophy of history and our philosophy of every other subject area that we’re going to teach our kids. Come out of this book and ask to apply this book to every area of life.

History can be very confusing to children if you try to use a lot of the secular texts—names, numbers, this kind of thing. Remind me too of one thing they talked about in that tape about how wars are very confusing things. Battles are confusing. There’s no—it’s hard to see how anybody controls anything in a big battle in a war. I’ve never been in one, but I have to take people’s word for that.

And Rushdoony was talking about the fact that he once talked to this real old Indian on the reservation when he was a missionary to the Indians, and how this guy apparently had survived and had been there at the Battle of Little Bighorn where Custer was killed. And they asked this Indian, he was trying to get from him an account, a firsthand account of what had occurred then. And the Indian was quite old and feeble. This was many years ago, quite old and feeble. And finally, he said a few things. He said, “Big battle, much dust.” That was his whole account of the battle. A world of dust.

Well, a lot of times history can seem that way to us. There are all these various events going on that don’t seem to be controlled by anybody. Big battles and much dust. But if we understand God’s providence as driving all history, and step back from it and see God as supervening and superintending all these events, then we teach our kids biblical history.

All areas of life are to be governed by God’s word. And that’s what this portion of the verse tells us.

Fourth, this verse tells us all of our being is to be in—is to be part of the instruction we give our children: “Thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes.”

All of our being—our hands, our eyes, our forehead—where this is applied, is to be governed by God as his word. And we’re to teach our children that all of their being is to be a response to God, to his Scriptures, to keep those ever before us. The way the ribbons of blue that Calvin talked about would remind us not to mix God’s teaching with our own thoughts or our own desires of our hearts. That’s idolatry and whoring.

Now, Scriptures tell us that God and his word are to direct everything that we put our hand to do in terms of what we do as people. Our hands are to be governed by the law of God. We’re to teach our children that everything that our children do is to be governed by God’s word. Everything their eyes see is to be understood in light of God’s word. Everything they put their minds to think must be governed by God’s law.

It’s a sad thing that the evangelical church by and large—you know, great majority of people—still see the sign of the beast as somehow some number—stamped, literally stamped, or well, put by a soldering gun or something—on your forehead, 666, on your forehead, on your hand, where it’s obvious that what God says in the Scriptures is that Satan or the great beast or the men then substitute for God. They do that when they worship the beast and they substitute man’s law for God’s law. Instead of having God’s law bound to their hand and upon their forehead, they have the mark of the beast instead. That’s what the Scriptures are plainly teaching, and it’s just a pity that the evangelical church doesn’t read their Bibles more holistically and understand these things.

Because as a result, they’re worried about numbers and credit card numbers and whatnot instead of worrying about obeying the law of God. While they worship the beast, they’re worried about what his sign might be and how it might appear on their forehead or on their hand.

This reminds me—I was watching yesterday a Disney thing about a boy. I didn’t quite understand the whole story, but somehow he had dreamed about having a battle with a shark, and sure enough, he was out in this boat and the shark came along and his dog fell off. He had to rescue his dog. So he killed this shark. And afterwards, the boy then encountered this shark and had successfully gotten through that ordeal, and then from then on he wore a shark’s tooth necklace to remind him that he had overcome.

Now, well, we’re to keep the law of God wrapped about our necks, as it were, ever before us to remind us of the same thing—of God’s deliverance first of all and the implications of that deliverance for our lives. And again, more about that next week. Visual reminder. Jesus Christ, who walks in obedience to all of God’s law, undoubtedly had such a device on his forehead—that all we possess is to be instructed from God’s word.

“Thou shalt write them upon the post of the house and on my gates.” Upon the post of the house. By the way, the blood of God was applied at the time of the Passover, wasn’t it? The blood of the of the lamb, rather, that God made provision for, pointing to the coming of Jesus Christ as the covenant mediator. As blood was applied upon the doorpost of the house. Same word being used here. Remember last week we talked about the pillars of the temple, and sometimes those pillars are used—the same word “doorpost” of the temple. And those two pillars were named Jachin and Boaz: “He shall establish” and “in strength.” And so the same things should be true and would be in our houses.

We see our houses as consecrated to God, then, and everything that we possess as well. Now I, when Chris and I first got married, we moved into this little rail house in Beaverton. And the couple that had been there were charismatics. They moved out, and we went to look at it once, and it was kind of an interesting thing to go see. If I remember correctly, it was quite filthy. But they did have all these verses up all over their house—you know, verses here, verses there. Every room had maybe five, ten, fifteen verses plastered all over the house. And I thought, “Gosh, you know, it’s kind of funny.” And it was.

I mean, they were, as I said, charismatics. And they were a particular group of charismatics that seem to follow their emotional leading. And these verses somehow, I think, just kind of produced emotional responses, which would follow. But you know, that isn’t so weird. It sounds real strange and radical to have a bunch of Scripture verses around your house. But why do we think it’s radical? Well, because we become so secularized in our perspective of our dwelling places. Our houses should be, if not literally, at least mentally, in our minds, pictures to us of God’s permanence and stability and of the possessions that he gives us. And it should be a reminder to us to obey his law. That house is there as a blessing of God. And if we don’t obey his law, he’ll take that house away from us. He’ll take our heritage away from us as well and take us from off the land.

So it shouldn’t be seen as radical necessarily to have Scripture verses on your house. But of course, their verses weren’t really so much related to the law, the commands of God. They related to other things. But we’re to have the verses of God, God’s law, always before us.

Now, I know that we no longer are obliged to have consecration of physical dwellings or consecration of churches necessarily. We don’t have to have houses cleansed in that sense. Jesus Christ has come and made atonement for the sins of the world. But I don’t think there’s anything at all wrong with consecration in terms of dedicating or understanding that God requires us to use our house for his purposes.

Again, let me tell you one of my failures again this morning. Was that Chris and I used to, in the last two houses we moved into, we did this. But this house, you know, we’ve been in the house we’ve been given by God now for a couple of weeks. Maybe a week or so. And Chris said, “You know, we haven’t prayed about this house yet. We haven’t really got down and thanked God and consecrated it to him.” And you know, I just again—I—some of these things have distracted me so much, and I’ve sinned to fall short of God’s purposes in this.

I think it is important that we see our houses as God’s vessels for use for his purposes. And then we did. We prayed over the house. It’s a great way to teach your children as well. We’re talking about the important things this morning—the importance of teaching your children, to instruct them, that this house is God’s house, and we thank him for it, but we recognize that with this house comes responsibilities in terms of using his and everything that we have for God’s purposes.

Let’s get radical in that sense, you know? Let’s see everything that we are as being controlled by God for his purposes. That’s part of the education of our children. It’s absolutely an essential part of the faith.

That’s what we’re talking about here: the Great Shema or “Hear, O Israel.” The centrality of that. Okay?

Now, the second point, then, on the basis of all this, is the importance of educating our children. First, educating our children is important for the covenant community.

Deuteronomy 6:20-25, we read the following:

“When thy son asked thee in time to come, saying, ‘What mean the testimonies and the statutes and the judgments which the Lord your God hath commanded you?’ Then thou shalt say unto him, ‘We were bondsmen of Egypt, and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. And the Lord showed signs and wonders great and sore upon Egypt and on Pharaoh and upon all his household before our eyes. And he brought us out from there so that he might bring us in to give us the land which he swear to our fathers. And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes to fear the Lord our God for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as at this day.’”

The preservation of the Catholic community—the preservation of the institutional church, then, in terms of our lingo today—preservation of the community that owns covenant with Jesus Christ and see themselves in covenant relationship to him is predicated upon children who understand the word of God for the purpose of obeying it.

If we don’t instruct our children, then the institutional church will be taken away in our particular geographic setting. God says the continuance of the covenant community is tied to the importance of the education of our children according to these requirements that God has just laid out for us in Deuteronomy 6 and the Great Shema.

It’s interesting, too, by the way. Hey, that—a couple of things. First of all, this shows a covenantal nature to God’s judgment, doesn’t it? The whole group doesn’t have to apostatize before God’s judgment comes upon a nation. Remember the sin of Achan led to the defeat of all Israel. Individual actions we take in this church as heads of households in terms of not teaching our children can have implications for the entire church, because God’s judgments oftentimes are covenantal in origin. They’re not specific. They’re not strictly oriented to a specific group. They’re oriented at the whole group.

That’s one of the big reasons why we fence the table, as it were, downstairs. We try to talk to people before they come to communion and make sure that they’re a professing Christian and not under discipline from anybody else, any other church groups. Because we know that if we allow people to come in and treat the Communion unworthily, then we’ll suffer judgment from God as a whole church. God judges covenantally.

Well, it’s interesting, by the way, that’s one of the very things that the Children Services Division prohibits in terms of rearing your children. They define as harsh and severe discipline—discipline the whole group of children for the actions of one. So if you’ve got four or five kids, you say, “I don’t know who did it, or they don’t come forward. You’re all going to be punished.” They say that’s cruel and severe discipline.

But that kind of discipline is really oriented in the scriptural understanding. God disciplines covenantally. And so it’s important that we in the same way teach our children the importance of covenantal judgments.