Dennis Tuuri

# Cleaned Sermon Transcript

talked about the great Shema, “Hear O Israel” from Deuteronomy 6:4-6. “Here, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might. These words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart, and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them. When thou sitest in thine house, when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.”

We talked about the importance of the education of children, the rearing of children as it were according to biblical norms. We talked about the importance of that in relationship to what this passage tells us specifically—that it is the parents’ responsibility to teach their children, not the state’s, not the church’s, and not the parents in terms of their own understanding but according to the word of God.

By the way, one thing that came up during the questions and answers was the church’s responsibility in terms of education of children during the teaching time. I won’t elaborate on this, but one thing you might want to keep in mind about—and we’ve talked about this before—we went through the confessional statement in terms of attending church on Sunday.

Church New Testament meetings, Sabbath meetings are the bringing together, I believe, of both the synagogue aspect of the old covenant and also the temple worship service. So both those aspects are brought together into one institutional church today on one Sabbath day that we commemorate every seventh day. Sunday is not strictly speaking a worship service along the lines of the temple worship service strictly and only. It’s not strictly speaking a synagogue meeting that we know started from the earliest times where Moses was taught.

But instead, it brings those two things together. And so that portion of the time that we’re spending now, for instance, is more along the lines of the synagogue system than it is the temple worship system. That has implications in terms of the presence of children during worship or during instructional times.

But in any event, the passage did say that it’s a primary responsibility of parents that it can be delegated but only in accordance with God’s law.

Secondly, we said that parents had to teach their children diligently in relationship to all of life. I just wanted to mention there that the passage I just read really has a couple of aspects to it. First you’re supposed to teach your children diligently and you can see that involving formal instruction in terms of the teaching. Then it says you talk about these things in the way, in your house, when you’re lying down, when you’re rising up, and when you’re going in and coming out.

And so there’s a formal and an informal aspect.

Now we know that typically in the history of the world and of course the time of the writing of the Old Testament was no different. People were very busy. They didn’t have much of the luxury time or leisure time that we have today. They worked six days a week, which is what we’re supposed to do as well, and have one day for rest. And those were long, hard days, particularly in an agricultural community. And so the people didn’t have a lot of time for formalized worship.

Now, why am I bringing that up? I’m bringing that up because as we become dominion Christians—and by that I mean productive Christians, okay?—as we see once again the need to apply God’s word in everything that we do, many of us in this church are becoming very busy and so it’s easy for that busyness to crowd out the teaching of our children. But remember that this verse talks about the informal training as well. It puts more of an emphasis on that really than the formalized instruction.

Those are important words for us to hear because we find ourselves having less and less formalized instruction time with our children. But what I’m saying here is that we have to adopt this same pattern of informal teaching as well if we’re going to be in obedience to the scriptures, particularly in our day and age when we’re getting very busy as individuals within this church.

What I’m saying is that the scripture model of informal teaching is very important for us as a church and for the men of the church.

Now, it tells us certain things about that informal teaching that you’re supposed to do it while you’re sitting in your house. Normally you’d be sitting in your house eating, wouldn’t you? It’s a normal time for sitting in the house is when you’re eating your meals. Otherwise, you’d be out tending the farm or whatnot. And so, meals are an important time to take advantage of the informal teaching situation you have with your children. You’re going to teach them during those times.

It says when you wake up and when you lie down. And we talked about the fact that when you get up in the morning, you should thank God for that day and teach your children to pray to God and thank God for the day. And that’s another way to teach them informally what the requirements of God’s law are in terms of all that day. And then when you lie down at night and when your children go to bed at night, you should pray with them then. And then if there’s some time to give them a little evaluation—to have them evaluate what they did during the day in terms of their obedience to the scriptures—when they did well, when they fell short of the mark.

So getting up, lying down, times of prayer, times of thanks and evaluation of God’s law, its relationship to their life. And then in the way—all of us are spending lots of hours these days in the way as it were, and I don’t mean in the way of people. I mean in the way in terms of conducting business. We find that our work day as a man is becoming much broader than a simple eight hours a day. We’re all doing things in the evening that are very important for us to be doing in terms of political action or furthering our career or whatever else.

Those things are important but it’s important that we don’t lose sight of the children during that process. One way to ensure that is to bring our children with us into the way whenever possible. And if you’ve got a home business, of course, that’s an ideal situation. But if you have other activities you’re involved with—meeting with other men to get together for certain things or whatnot—try to find a way to begin to take your older children with you on those trips and even some younger children as well.

Again, use that time while you’re driving or traveling or while you’re sitting around during a break at the meeting you’re at to instruct your children the relationship of God’s law to whatever activity you’re performing.

So what I’m saying is we find ourselves busy. It’s not an excuse. It then means we have to really fully implement more these informal teaching times that God has already given us that were taught us in the great Shema, “Hear O Israel.”

We talked about the importance of correct child-rearing in terms of the covenant community and in terms of the civil government. The fact that we quote a passage of the Old Testament about the beauty of God’s laws for the nation but that passage goes on to talk about the importance of teaching those things to your children. Don’t think we can have theonymy in terms of the civil government if we don’t teach our children. We won’t be able to accomplish that, or if we do in our lifetime it will fall apart as soon as they are up and in control.

Civil government rests upon the proper education and the proper diligence of fathers in terms of training their children.

We talked about covenant obedience itself is predicated upon the men teaching their children. That’s why God established the covenant with Abraham and the implication there was that if Abraham didn’t teach his children, he wasn’t part of the covenant community.

We talked about the fact that we sang last week, as we do once a month or so, “the glorious gates of righteousness throw open unto me.” And if we don’t teach our children, what I said was that characterizes a life that is excluded from the covenant of grace and indicates and is evidence of our nonparticipation in that covenant. What I’m saying is if you don’t take these things seriously—it’s so important—if you don’t educate your children, God tells us to presuppose then that you’re not part of the visible covenant community and the glorious gates of righteousness will be closed to you. You won’t get entrance into the eternal kingdom nor into the visible church if there are evidences that you’ve not been fulfilling your responsibilities correctly.

Important stuff.

In other words, we ended up by quoting from Dabney about the importance of teaching your children. And I pointed out we didn’t just quote from some modern day evangelicals, so you won’t suspect my sources. It was a southern Presbyterian who was a great man taught around the time of the Civil War.

I’m going to give you a couple more quotes now in terms of the importance of child-rearing just to show you that there are people today who are reclaiming a biblical view of the family and the importance of the family.

James B. Jordan in his book, his commentary on the book of Judges, says the following: “Scripture makes 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, and we pointed this out last week, the very last verses of the Old Testament tell us that the whole purpose of the Messiah’s work can be summed up as restoring family life under God. Satan loves to see Christians who think that the kingdom cannot wait and that they must be busy. Satan has time. He thinks, and he is willing to wait in the confidence that the next generation will be his. The older generation worked hard to occupy that part of the land they had conquered. But all their labors came to not because they did not train their children and the land was conquered by enemies.”

Again, stressing the importance of it. And practically in the Judges, what we see was their failure to teach their children even though they’re out exercising dominion over the land led to the very next generation being conquered by enemies of God.

David Chilton writing in the Journal of Christian Reconstruction some time ago said this: “Covenantal 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—of which many in this church have gone through several now in our families—with each successive baptismal consecration, that oath acquires increasing depth as the vessel undertakes responsibility for the training of yet another unit in the next generation. Education of children is of primary importance to us and we should do well in our land if we neglect it.”

We also talked about the importance of the family in terms of the institutional church. Two weeks ago we talked about the importance of institutional church being the pillar and support of the truth and that’s only true as we teach our children. They’re going to be the next institutional church and if we don’t teach them correctly they’ll no longer hold up and support the church. So the correct child-rearing has relationship also with the importance of the institutional church. It’s extremely important.

So this Sunday we want to now turn to what do we teach our children? Fine, it’s real important. You’ve got us all kind of nervous about the fact if we don’t do it right, we’re getting in a lot of trouble. What do we have to do? What is the primary content of teaching our children?

And so we’ll now move into a discussion of Psalm 78:1-11, a discussion that I’ve titled “The Essentials of Biblical Child-Rearing.”

Now Psalm 78, as you must have seen as I read through it now and probably in your own studies in the past or we’ve talked about it in the past in this church, really gives us a prescription for defeat, doesn’t it? It’s negative psalm. It says that we didn’t do these things and as a result our generation has gone the way of all flesh as it were. We turned back on the day of battle and so we’re now under the oppression that’s due to covenant breakers.

It’s a prescription for defeat but as well it then gives us by implication a prescription for victory. He tells us we didn’t do these things, so we failed. And so, if we look at the things he didn’t do and the importance that God ascribes to them, we’ll see that if we do those things, we won’t fail. So it’s a prescription for victory as well by implication.

This psalm is a central psalm then in the education of children and has always been seen as such by the church. We’re going to talk primarily about verses 9-11, and we’re going to go to a lot of other scriptures to flesh out what we read therein. But I’ll just read it again now.

“The children of Ephraim being armed and carrying bows turned back in the day of battle. They kept not the covenant of God, refused to walk in his law, forgot his works and his wonders that he had showed them.”

That’s a prescription for defeat. And many people think that the reference here to Ephraim referred to the whole of Israel for various reasons in terms of the kingly line at that time was in Ephraim, etc., etc. But in any event, we see here the importance of doing these three things that is on the outline before you.

The essentials of the faith are teaching our children about the covenant, about the law of the covenant and then about the mighty deeds of God. And we’ll move through those now.

First of all, the covenant. Verse 10: “they kept not the covenant of God.” These are armor that God has given us for battle. Don’t think that the scriptures are primarily concerned about how sharp your arrows are or how big your bombers are. The scriptures say they weren’t armed because they didn’t do these things. Okay? They were armed with the covenant, with the law, and with the mighty deeds of God, but they didn’t take advantage of that armor by taking it into battle. The covenant is armor for us as we go into battle. It is central to the teaching of our children.

In Deuteronomy 4, I pointed this out a little bit last week. We’ll look at these verses again. Deuteronomy 4:9, the second half of Deuteronomy 4:9. God tells them to instruct their children in all these things. “Only take heed to thyself and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life. But teach them thy sons and thy sons’ sons.”

Then verse 10: “especially the day that thou stoodest before the Lord thy God.”

And we’re told in verse 13 what the importance of that day was. Verse 13: “he declared unto you his covenant which he commanded you to perform even ten commandments and he wrote them upon two tablets of stone.”

So he says here, teach your children and especially teach your children about the day that you took covenant oath with God, that he brought you into covenant relationship with him as a people. The covenant is central then to our education of our children biblically speaking.

Deuteronomy 5:2 shows the obedience then of this instruction and Moses calls together all Israel and the very first thing he tells them in terms of the statutes and judgment which God gives them is verse two. “The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb.”

That’s where our instruction of our children should begin—with an emphasis upon the covenant of grace that God has given to us. The covenant is central to our teaching.

Now, you might say, “Well, that’s just the old covenant. What about the New Testament teaching about that?” Remember, of course, the scriptures are broken up into old covenant and new covenant. The very nature of the scripture itself is described in terms of a covenant. And so the covenant is a central concept, of course, but we have explicit evidence as well in Hebrews 12.

We’ll be going to Hebrews 10 and 12 several times this morning. In Hebrews 12, verses 18-19, I won’t bother to read all these verses, but in Hebrews 12:18-19, what’s happened here, and we’ve talked about this many times in our church, is contrasting the old and the new covenant. “You haven’t come to that mountain at Horeb that burned with fire and where there was a fiery voice, the people were afraid and everything. You didn’t come to that mountain, he said, but you have come to Mount Zion, okay? And the church of the firstborn.”

And what he’s saying is, and he goes on to say that we’ve come to the mediator of a new and better covenant, Jesus Christ.

So again, the emphasis in terms of our position as a people is not covenant then and something else now. It’s covenant then and new covenant now—expanded because we have a better covenant mediator than Moses who administered the covenant in the old covenant. We have a new covenant in the sense of being new and better in terms of a better mediator, better blessings and has now been fully put in force with the accomplishment of the covenant mediator on our behalf.

So the scriptures tell us the covenant is important. Now we know that it’s been important in terms of the reformed faith as well. The Westminster Confession says this in chapter 7: “The distance between 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 it 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.”

The distance is so great between creator and creature. The confession is saying that God is only understood and known through his condescension which takes the form of covenant. So what the confession is saying and what I think the scriptures say both in old and new testament is that God is known in covenant relationship and not outside of it. God manifests himself to us in the covenant. And that’s what we’re supposed to teach our children, right? Who their creator is.

We can’t do that if we don’t teach them the covenant which exemplifies his condescension to man to make himself known to man although he is their creator. We’re going to look now at three aspects of that covenant that is important to teach our children.

Fine, you say it’s a covenant, but what does that mean? What can we tell our children about that? And first of all, it’s a covenant of deliverance.

In Deuteronomy 6:21, we read about the fact that the education of children is an important. This is another verse we’ll be going to several times this morning. Deuteronomy 6:21: “when the son asks you” (verse 20), “what do these things mean?” In verse 21, “then thou shalt say unto thy son, we were Pharaoh’s bondsmen in Egypt, and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand.”

The covenant that’s talked about here, remember we said the primary thing they were to teach their kids was the covenant. Now, the kids are saying, “What does all this mean?” They’re saying that covenant meant deliverance. God brought us out of bondage to Pharaoh in Egypt. So the covenant is first and foremost a covenant of deliverance. Okay?

And of course, we know from 1 Corinthians 5:7 that Jesus Christ is our Passover and that he has been slain, that he also has achieved deliverance then from bondage. Egypt and Pharaoh signified to the people of old sin, another god, another culture built upon another set of presuppositions that enslaved the people of God.

Deliverance is one of the keynotes of the covenant. And that deliverance is deliverance from idolatry and from sin. And so we’re to teach our children that they have covenant relationship with God. And that covenant is a covenant of deliverance. And that deliverance has been accomplished fully and completely and once for all in the coming of the covenant mediator Jesus Christ.

The resurrection then is vitally important to the education of our children in the covenant. The resurrection demonstrates their deliverance from bondage to sin. And when we teach our kids about the covenant, one way to do that is to remind them of their sin and of the deliverance from domination of that sin—or the domination that sin would exercise over them—now through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, the covenant mediator. They have covenant relationship to God and as a result they have deliverance from the power and the dominion of sin.

The covenant of deliverance is central then to the teaching of our children. It’s the centrality of the resurrection of the covenant mediator and its effects of deliverance from bondage to sin and death that must characterize the early training and the perpetual training of our children. They must be taught that they’re now freed from bondage to sin. And if they sin, they should recognize that the covenant has now released them from the bondage to that sin.

It’s important to do that.

The covenant is a covenant of deliverance. But it’s also important that we teach them it is a covenant of grace.

In the old covenant, there are many references. I’ll just read these. We won’t look them up. Deuteronomy 4:37. It’s a reference you can look to. Deuteronomy 7 and 8. Deuteronomy 10:15 and 33. God repeatedly says throughout the old covenant deliverance of his people, he says it’s not because you were better somehow that I chose you. It’s not because you were more numerous or better somehow that I chose you. He chose them of his own choice. He chose them. They had nothing to merit God’s gracious favor toward them. His favor was unmerited. That’s why it’s called grace. Okay? Unmerited favor from God. They had nothing in them that merited God’s favor, but God chose them sovereignly for himself.

It’s a covenant of grace. It’s characterized by grace. And of course, one of the pictures we can use to teach our children about that is the covenant that God cut with Abram. And remember, we’ve talked about this many times. The animals were cut into and placed under. Abram went into a deep sleep. And normally in those forms of covenant taking, the two parties would walk down the middle of the slain animals and say that if I don’t obey the sanctions of this agreement, the covenant of this agreement, the stipulations rather, the sanctions that will fall upon me is the death and destruction, is the tearing apart of these animals.

But Abram, remember, didn’t walk through those cut animals, did he? No, he didn’t. He saw a light going through there, a fire going through there. God fulfills the terms of the covenant for us. It’s a covenant of grace. And that’s a great picture. You’ve got to, you know, the scriptures give us lots of pictures by which we can teach our children these things of the faith. And that picture of Abram not going through the cut animals, but being in covenant with God because God does it himself.

God selects Abraham sovereignly, graciously. God then fulfills the terms of the covenant sovereignly and graciously. And so the covenant is characterized by grace.

Now one implication of this of course is the depravity and fall that necessitates a covenant of grace. Now I’ve been accused once at the graduate center of being a chauvinist. And when I looked up that term I guess the technical definition—and some of you can correct me if I get this somewhat wrong—but I guess a chauvinist is somebody who thinks that members of his group are better than members of another group. A male chauvinist would be somebody who thinks that males are better than women. A racist is somebody who thinks in the intrinsic value of his own group.

Well, Christians aren’t chauvinists. We do believe that God has placed his special blessing upon us. We’re the apple of his eye. But we’re not chauvinists because we don’t believe it’s because of our own merit. See, if we did, then we’d be chauvinists. But the scriptures say, “No, no. God has done this graciously because you had no merit. And in fact, if you were going to get what you deserved, you’d get hell forever in judgment because we’re sinners.”

If we teach our children that the covenant is a covenant of deliverance and also of grace, then we must instruct them in their own sinfulness, mustn’t we? Otherwise, there’s nothing—there’s no application of grace if they have intrinsic value to themselves.

So we have to teach believing children that they’ve been freed from bondage to sin and that freedom has been given as a free gift of God—based not upon any merit of their own, but based upon the unmerited favor shown to them by God and mediated through the covenant. We’re to teach our children that they’re sinners saved by grace.

Now, we teach all of us that at every Sunday when we get together. We read the scriptures. We call ourselves to worship as it were, and we immediately go into prayer of confession before God in this church to remind ourselves that we’re here by the grace of God, not by our own merit. And we remind ourselves of our own sinfulness.

Again, in the communion service, we have a time of confession of sins and then an absolution given—not that it is affected at that particular point in time, but it’s important for people to recognize that they are sinners, but they’ve been brought into gracious covenant with God.

There’s another object lesson to teach your children. You can teach them when you go home this afternoon. Why do you think we pray when we start church service in the morning? We do it because we’re sinners, but we do it also because we have a gracious relationship with God mediated through the covenant. That’s supposed to be central to the teaching of our children. And as I said, one of the great pictures God has given us is the picture of Abram and the covenant God made with him.

But the covenant is not just a covenant of grace affecting deliverance from sin and bondage. The covenant is a covenant of victory.

The scriptures don’t just show God as freeing the people of Israel from Egypt and then saying, “Well, go do your thing now,” maybe good or maybe bad. No, the scriptures say that deliverance from bondage graciously by God is given to the people that it might be the basis then for victory as they move into a new and promised land. Okay? A land flowing with milk and honey. That grace demonstrated then moves them into further victory and blessings of God into the land.

And again, in Deuteronomy 4:23: “Take heed unto yourselves, lest you forget the covenant of the Lord your God, which he made with you, and make you a graven image of the likeness of any such thing which the Lord thy God hath forbidden thee. For the Lord thy God is a consuming fire.”

They’re to be careful not to forget that because if they forget that, then they will not enter into the land.

In Deuteronomy 6:23, we read: “And he brought us out from thence that he might bring us in to give us the land which he swear unto our fathers.”

He brought us out of the land—or delivered us rather out of bondage—so that he might bring us into the land of blessing. So the covenant is a covenant of victory as we move out into the blessings that God has given to us.

Deuteronomy 7:17 and 18. I won’t look it up but Deuteronomy 7:17 and 18 tells us that Egypt is just a down payment of future victories as they move into the land. We’ve talked about that to homeschoolers with the fact that we have to look forward victoriously toward conquering in terms of legislature. But all that is based upon the fact that we’re not fearful as we go to Salem. They weren’t supposed to be fearful as to the promised land. Why? We remember God’s deliverance with a mighty arm from the hand of Pharaoh—from the hand of Pharaoh, the land of Egypt.

That deliverance then is the basis as we move into further victories and blessedness that God has prepared for us.

The covenant is a covenant of victory.

In Ephesians 6:4, we have the same emphasis. We’ve talked about this several times now. The fifth commandment is repeated with the promise attached to it that you will go on into the land and live long in the land—not just the world, the land now, but actually the whole world.

In Romans 16:20, it says that the God of peace—that’s real important—our peace is a covenant peace that we have with God—that the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. Remember that the people in the old covenant were taught that wherever their foot went down, that land would be theirs. And now, that was into the going into the promised land there. Now, we go into all the world that Jesus has commanded us to do.

And he tells us in Romans 16:20 that the God of covenant peace, of covenant grace, and the deliverance from bondage to sin is also going to give us victory. Wherever we put our foot, we’ll be crushing Satan’s head. We’ll be moving forward into further victories.

Now, the covenant then is a covenant of bondage released from bondage and of grace and of victory. What are some examples that we can use to teach our children about the covenant?

We mentioned one of them earlier. Meal times are an extremely important thing that God has given to us that can be used for a pedagogical teaching device to our children. Meal times when we have meal with God downstairs today, we have a meal of covenant renewal and we emphasize all these aspects that we come before God in as a result of his grace—being delivered from sin and bondage to sin and being given the victories that God has given to us.

And we celebrate downstairs, recognizing that celebration was bought with the precious blood of Jesus Christ affecting covenant peace for us. That meal should then form a basis for how we see all our meals. When we’re given food by God tomorrow or this evening when you have dinner together, it’s not communion, but communion sets up a pattern for us in terms of our appreciation of those meals and a reminder to our children that we eat dinner in a special way with God once a week to remind us of these three central elements of the covenant and to teach our children about those things.

Sin: our children sin. In our household, they do. I suppose they probably do sometimes in your household. And of course, sin should be used by us as an excellent time to teach our children about their deliverance from the bondage to sin affected by the covenant and about covenant mediator’s work—Jesus Christ—in terms of achieving that peace and then going on into victory and dominion over that sin.

We meet together in resurrection power every Sunday. We said on Easter Sunday that Sunday forms the basis for every Sunday throughout the rest of the year. It talks about the victory of Jesus Christ over sin and death. Sunday itself—we should talk about the Sabbath to our children—should be a reminder to them of these same elements of the covenant. It’s a special covenant day and it’s a teaching device we can use with our children.

In the past we’ve recommended, and I would highly recommend it again this morning, Gentry’s books *Promise and Deliverance*. Those books go through the entire Bible chronologically and his consistent attempt in those books—and most of the time he succeeds—is to demonstrate that all the scriptural messages that we have are stories of covenant mediator, mediatorial work on the part of God. That whenever we look at a Bible story then we’re to look at aspects of the covenant. How does God reveal himself in this story? How is the covenant mediator revealed in some way in this story? And then how is that covenant of peace revealed in that Bible story as well? Those books are excellent in terms of accomplishing that end. And they’re a good teaching device for us as well.

The covenant community we have at Reformation Covenant Church is another important teaching device for your children. Hopefully during some part of the week, you’ll pray for members of the covenant community. And you’ll teach your children that we have special relationship with these people because we’re in covenant relationship to them. We have a covenant bond to them. That covenant we have with God then becomes the basis for all our actions with each other as well.

The law of course is summed up in loving God and as a result of that loving our neighbor. We have relationship with God through covenant and then that forms the basis of our relationship with everybody else. And so we can teach our children to respect—to see the importance of—their covenant family here at Reformation Covenant Church as well.

Our own households of course are governed by covenant. The marriage relationship is a covenantal relationship and should also form a teaching—also be a teaching device—then to our children that maybe mommy and daddy might get mad at each other sometimes and we don’t leave each other because we’re in covenant relationship in the sight of God and we’re bound by that covenant to the betterment of each other.

Our the baptism of our children, of course, which is an important thing to remind them of when they sin as well—that God has put his mark upon them—that it’s a covenantal sign and seal of the covenant of grace. And so the baptism of the children itself serves as a teaching device that we should remind them of throughout their young childhoods.

Now the covenant, as we teach these things to our children, forms the basis of our knowledge of God and it has great blessings attached to it. Blessings of freedom and deliverance and victory. But the covenant has obligations to it as well.

And so the central set—the second central aspect that Psalm 78 tells us about in terms of the instruction of our children is the law. Psalm 78 it says that they did not walk in obedience to the covenant and they kept not the law of God. “Kept not the covenant of God. Refused to walk in his law.”

The covenant has with it obligations and those obligations are the law of God.

Now in this regard, it was interesting. Tony gave me some tapes by R.C. Sproul from Ligonier Ministries this week to listen to on ethics. They’re real good tapes. And one of the things he said was real interesting there. He said that many of the modern day marriage ceremonies, he doesn’t particularly like them. He said it’s okay if he thinks the old forms are really rather excellent, but he said most of the new forms, they hit some elements of central doctrine in marriage, but he said almost consistently they leave out the wonderful phrase that the old form had in it.

And that was the phrase that the marriage is regulated by the law or commandments of God. “The marriage is regulated by the law or commandments of God.” It’s an important truth. It’s important truth that we don’t forget in this church. And it reminds us, of course, of the fact that most of the truths of the scriptures are somehow twisted today because they’re seen apart from the regulation of the law commandments of God. They’ve been denigrated in our time, particularly in the churches, of course, that are supposed to hold them up.

Well, Sproul pointed out another point, though, in terms of the importance of the law and its relationship to our marriages and everything else that we do. He also pointed out that we’re not to add to the authority of God’s word. And I thought in that relationship was interesting that in Deuteronomy 5:22, we read that God gave the ten commandments to Moses: “these words the Lord spake unto all our assembly in the mount, out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness with a great voice, and he added no more.”

He added no more. Gave 10 words, ten commandments, and he added no more. Now, we know that God will go on to explain the implications of those ten commandments in various ways. But it’s important that we recognize that when God closes his mouth, the deliverance of commandments, that we stop our mouths as well in terms of judging our children or judging other people in the covenant community. God adds no more to it than the ten commandments in the explanation of those ten commandments in the case law.

And we also then would be in sin. And as Sproul correctly pointed out that to add additional laws into the scriptures is to show that you have no respect for the authority of the lawgiver himself, which is Jehovah God.

Well, let’s look at three aspects of that law that is central to the covenant and is also central to the education and upbringing of children, which is what Psalm 78 tells us is a way to teach children correctly.

First of all, the law is to be a loving response to God’s grace.

Going back to Deuteronomy 6 again, as we said we’d be doing, Deuteronomy 6:23 and 24: He “brought us out from thence that he might bring us in to give us the land which we swear unto our fathers. And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear our Lord, the Lord our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive as it is at this day.”

The law was given post deliverance. Okay? God delivered the people. This is what Deuteronomy 6 is to teach our children. We were delivered through the covenant God, Jehovah. And as a result of that deliverance, then God gives us laws or stipulations which we are to obey. Our obedience to those laws then is characterized by the old covenant here as a loving response to God—to his covenant grace and mercy and deliverance and victories that he’s given to us.

And that’s what we should teach our children. We should not teach our children laws are onerous or burdensome somehow or a heavy weight upon us. We should teach our children that they are a loving response of theirs to the grace of God. And if you’ve taught them well in terms of the grace of God and the great blessings he’s given to us, they’ll understand than the loving response required of the law.

The law follows deliverance of covenant grace.

Now the same thing is true in Hebrews 10. We said we would be going back to that passage as well. Hebrews 10, where we talk about the covenant here we read in chapter Hebrews 10:22 onwards. “Let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed pure water. We go into the life that God has given to us on the basis of the covenant peace bought by the blood of the covenant mediator sprinkled with that blood. Our hearts are sprinkled from an evil conscience.”

Then verse 23: “let us hold fast profession our faith without wavering for he is faithful the promised. And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works.”

What are good works? Good works are works done in obedience to the scriptures, obedience to God’s law. And that obedience to God’s law is put alongside of love. We’re to encourage each other in the keeping of God’s law.

And a part of the keeping of God’s law is that love in the midst of it that is the proper response to God’s grace. It’s a loving response then. And the scriptures tell us the importance of that.

Now, it’s interesting too of course that as you probably noted back in Deuteronomy 6 verse 24 that he goes on to say that “law Lord God commanded us to do all these statutes to the Lord our God for our good always that he might preserve us alive as it is this day.”

And so the law also is to be taught to our children as a gracious gift of God. We should lovingly respond in obedience to it because it is for our good—that it might be well with us all our days. The law is not to be seen as onerous or burdensome. Then we have to teach our children the law. The law is a gracious gift of God.

How else would we know how to accomplish good works? Okay. And the scripture says if we go on sinning willfully there’s no longer any sacrifice for sins. If we willfully fall short of God’s law it’s a denial of the grace of God and it will end up to our own detriment. The law is graciously given by God as a blessing to man.

He gives us the covenant. He brings us into deliverance and he then gives us his law and we’re to respond lovingly to God by obeying it. The law extends the grace of the covenant into all the rest of the areas of our life. Okay.

The law is given for instruction as we go about living the life in victory and deliverance that God has given to us. And the law then takes that grace of the covenant and extends it out into the rest of our life. To walk in God’s grace then means to know and understand the application of those ten commandments, the 10 words that God has given to us, into the rest of our lives. A life characterized by grace is a life characterized by obedience to the law that extends that grace into every area of life.

And if we want our children to walk that way, we have to teach them this law of God if they might know the grace of God in all these areas.

But secondly, the law is not simply a loving response. It is a demonstration of our own covenant participation.

Now last week I guess some people were a little bit concerned, maybe not a lot concerned, a little bit concerned that I was talking about the glorious gates of righteousness being closed to people if they didn’t instruct their children. And they thought, well, maybe you know, if I’m not careful, we could go cross implicating that it is our works that opens those gates of righteousness to us. And I don’t obviously don’t mean that.

And yet the scriptures do tell us back in Deuteronomy 6 that we’ve been looking at that the Lord commands us to do these things for our may preserve us alive for our good always. And then in verse 25: “and it shall be our righteousness if we observe to do all these commandments before the Lord thy God as he hath commanded us.”

We do have that verse in the scriptures. “It will be our righteousness for us.” And it’s easy for people then to twist that out of its context and say the old covenant talk works righteousness, which is obviously not the case. The context of that remark is the covenant of grace and deliverance of God’s initiation of that covenant, the giving of his law graciously.

And so that’s not what the implication of it is. But what does it mean? I think what it does mean is that if we don’t obey the law, then we are not—we are demonstrating to ourselves, to God, and to the covenant community that we are not part of that covenant of grace. We’re not part of the true covenant of grace and that true covenant community that God has established.

Obedience to the law is a demonstration of our covenant participation and our children should be taught that.

Now, unless you think that’s just an Old Testament hangup, of course, we have those same sorts of I remember what Gordon Rogers used to call scary verses in the New Testament as well.

Hebrews 10:26 that I just made allusion to says the following: “For if we sin willfully—and of course is defined by disobedience to the law of God—If we sin willfully after that we’ve received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and of fire indignation, which shall devour the adversaries.”

He that despised Moses law died without mercy. The scriptures say the same thing. If we sin willfully, if we willfully disobey and break the commandments of God, and that would include, of course, one of the central commandments—to teach our children the law God—if we sin willfully, these verses say there’s no longer remains any sacrifices for sin.

Says that hard passage to deal with for some of us but I think if we understand what’s being said here it isn’t that difficult. He isn’t saying that the sacrifice for sin applied to your account through the blood of Jesus Christ is somehow removed but he’s saying that if you sin willfully you demonstrate that you’re not part of the covenant of grace and that there never was a sacrifice for sin and so no sacrifice for sin remains in your mind in terms of your assurance in the church’s mind or in God’s mind. Okay?

You’re not part of the covenant community. And in fact, he goes on to say, he relates it back to Mosaic law. “He that despised Moses law died without mercy. But now we have a new mediator of the covenant, Jesus Christ, that Moses prefigured and pictured.”

He said, “if you—if you thought that the Old Testament was works righteousness, that the New Testament was you could just slip by without obeying that law, forget it. Because if you break the law in the new covenant, you’re despising not Moses now who administered the old covenant. You’re despising the blood of Jesus Christ. And you’re despising the blood of the peace that he has bought through his shed blood—the peace that he has bought through that shed blood. And you’re despising the Holy Spirit himself.”

He goes on to say in this passage, “You’ve trotten underfoot the son of God. You have counted the blood of the covenant wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing and hath done despite unto the spirit of grace. Spirit of grace. Okay.”

So the scriptures tell us that obedience to the law is a demonstration of our covenant participation to us, to the covenant community, and to God as well. And we must teach our children these things.

If we’re going to teach them the law, we better teach them that obedience to it is a demonstration of their participation in a covenant of grace.

As we said, the law extends grace into the rest of the area of life. And it demonstrates to us, to the covenant community that we stand in that covenant grace.

Furthermore, the law is given to us of course as our wisdom. The law is given—as the grace is extension of God’s covenant grace—is responded to lovingly. We’re supposed to respond to God lovingly by obeying the law. Our participation and obedience of that law demonstrates our participation in the covenant of grace. And that law then becomes our wisdom.

Now, I bring this up because of course the essence of biblical child-rearing is to raise up wise children. Proverbs, which is probably our inspired catechism—nothing wrong with the rest of them, but that’s an inspired one. Proverbs continually contrast the wise child and the foolish child. We’ve talked a lot about corporal punishment over the last six months. And of course, corporal punishment is really in the scriptures ideally suited for fools. “It’s the back of the fool that receives the whip or the beatings.” And when our children are young, “there’s a lot of foolishness bound up in their hearts. The rod of correction will beat it out.”

While the children are young, they’re fools. Now, that doesn’t mean they’re—I used to think for a long time this meant they were sort of stupid acting. But of course, that’s not a biblical fool. That’s our modern day version of a fool.

But the scriptures gives us a definition of what a fool is. Of course, God tells us in the scriptures that “the fool is one who has said that there is no God. He said in his heart, there is no God.” That’s a fool. And when our children are born, believe me, they’re fools because they’re born thinking that they’re the only God around that matters. And that’s—you know, if you’ve had children, you realize that truth of that remark of course as well. We realize that truth from God’s scriptures that says that we’re born in depravity and resistance rebellion to God.

But we believe that we’ve been born into the covenant of grace and we’re to train our children away from that foolishness. And so the scriptures talk about corporal punishment applied to children because they’re fools resisting the law of God and resisting saying there is no God in terms of their ethical relationships as well.

The scriptures say repeatedly throughout them—just one reference—Psalm 111:10: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. A good understanding have all they that do his commandments.”

The scriptures are quite clear that the law is given to us that we might be wise—acknowledging God in terms of our actions. That law then becomes our wisdom in the sight of God and in the sight of man as well.