Dennis Tuuri

It’s a delight to be here today. Most of you know that for the better part of the last three weeks I’ve been ill. I am much better. You know, it’s the season of Lent—suffering in various ways—and we probably suffer a lot of times in our lives, but during Lent we think about it a little more. We think today of the others who have been suffering physically: Teresa Anger and Gregory Crawford, probably others.

I know lots of people with this cold, fever, flu—strange thing that’s been floating around. So I’ve been very appreciative of your prayers and comments. I appreciate Elder Shaw last week filling in at kind of last minute for the sermon. And I appreciate Elder Wilson’s solicitous care of me and prayers for me the last couple of weeks. And here comes Elder Shaw right on cue. Thank you very much. I love March.

We get to sing the Lorica of St. Patrick’s Breastplate that we just sang. You know, today’s sermon is about the identity of who our children are in terms of God’s festivals and God’s children. We sing these songs to remind ourselves who we are in the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. The great, strong affirmation that all things work together for our good, expanded out into many different diverse ways by St. Patrick in his confession and then put to this wonderful tune and setting that we sing every March as we reach towards St. Patrick’s Day.

Trinity Sunday is another Sunday when we typically sing this song. “Who is it who binds unto themselves?” It’s a baptismal song really, and it’s frequently sung in Reformed churches. Churches have baptisms, and our children are included in what we just sang. Our children are those who in God have found shelter according to Psalm 91. Our children also are those who trample underfoot scorpions and insects and actually the head of Satan itself is crushed under our heels as we obey the Lord Jesus Christ. Praise God for the wonderful promises to the church for reminding us through these great songs and scriptures who we are.

And may we today look at how the Lord Jesus Christ does indeed bless little children. May we have a sense of the identity of who they are and who we are, as our care of them is an obvious result of this as well.

We turn to the scriptures once more. It’s our privilege today to have a representative from the Gideons with us. He’ll be bringing a presentation on the work of the Gideons during our meals. So this Sunday we won’t have our normal announcements and prayer requests and birthdays. If you have something important you can make known then, but we’re going to be giving most of that time over to the Gideon speaker, and we have a handout that we’ll be handing out downstairs as well on the work of the Gideons.

I was thinking of Amy H. Her grandfather and I went with her grandfather, who was a Gideon, as was my wife’s father, into—they have a prison ministry—and for several months one summer I went with Amy’s dad into the prisons in Washington County and greatly appreciate the work of the Gideons for their prison ministry. And of course, they’re well known for their Bible distribution as well. When I was in Poland several years ago, one of the Brethren churches I spoke at is the main point of distribution—at least it was three years ago—for Gideon Bibles in Poland, and they had just gotten the news that they would be able to give Bibles to every one of the armed services in the Polish army as well. So we’re really happy to have a man here representing this work that’s been going on for a long time in this country to distribute the word of God.

That’s our basis for knowing everything that we know—the Bible. And so we turn to the Bible once more to correct us in what we think about our children. Today’s sermon text is 1 Corinthians 10:1-4. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

“Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud. All passed through the sea. All were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. All ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ.”

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for your most holy word. Thank you for the work of the Gideons and bless the presentation this afternoon and bless their work, Father, here in Oregon City, in the greater Clackamas County region, in Oregon, throughout the country and along the world as well. Be with the brethren in Poland, Lord God, be with their Bible distribution ministry there, being the point of distribution for the Gideon Bibles in Poland. Bless them in that work. Bless us now, Lord God, as we attend to your word. Help us to understand who we are, who our children are, and what our obligations are relative to that through your word. In Jesus’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

God’s children at God’s festivals. This is part two of a sermon on why we bring children to the Lord’s table. Why we believe in paedocommunion. You know, we’ve said that really what happens every Lord’s day is we gather to take the Lord’s supper. That’s what it tells us in Acts chapter 20. Paul said—or Luke wrote this rather—on the first day of the week when we were gathered together to break bread. We’re gathered together on the first day of the week, the day of the resurrection.

I’m going to be speaking on the resurrection in two weeks, of course. Such a tremendous, important truth in the Christian faith. But we gather on the first day of the week, the day of resurrection, and we can, by way of shorthand, say that for everything that we do, we break bread together. We come together specifically to eat the Lord’s supper. So it’s pretty important to understand what that supper is.

We have in 1 Corinthians a description of the Lord’s supper. There aren’t very many texts that really tell us much about the supper. We’ve got the accounts in the Gospels of the Last Supper, and that we can take by way of inference. It’s a little different, of course, but we can take by inference some of that stuff into our Lord’s supper celebrations. But here in 1 Corinthians chapter 11 and 10 as well—that I just read from—here we have an extended discussion. Now it’s a corrective discussion, as much of the epistles to the Corinthians are filled with correctives. They’re not commending, but Paul is correcting, and because of his correction he deals with what this Lord’s supper is.

We come together every Lord’s day to have the supper, and he tells us in 1 Corinthians 10 and 11 some things about that. What he does specifically is tell them: you’ve got a problem here at Corinth. You’re coming together and some of you are actually dying. Some of you are sick, some of you are weak, and some die. And it’s because you’re not doing this right. You’re sinning at this Lord’s supper. That’s what he says.

And what they’re doing—and what he addresses the entire epistle about, really—the basic context for this instruction is that there are divisions amongst the Corinthians. There’s body sins. There’s sins against each other. And this is primarily seen at the Lord’s supper and the accompanying agape meal as well. And so he brings some understanding to them about this meal.

We’re looking at this in terms of saying: Well, what was he teaching them about, and what’s its application to our understanding of whether our children should take the supper or not? I mean, we’re a historical anomaly in America, right? We know that for the last 2,000 years in the Eastern church, children have always taken the supper. We know that for the better part of the first 1,100 years of the Western church, children took the supper. So we know that we’re in a historical anomaly now. We’ve kind of gone backwards somehow. We’ve done something different.

Now, tradition itself doesn’t answer the question. Only the Bible does. But tradition should tell us that, you know, that for over three-quarters of the times when Christians gathered together on the first day of the week to break bread, their children were part of the breaking of that bread. That should tell us something. It doesn’t answer the question, but it should cause us to question, as it did for the founders of this church: Why are we not bringing our children first to the waters of baptism as infants and then secondly to the Lord’s table as baptized into the body of Christ? It’s a very important question.

Remember Paul says you’ve got a problem here. Curses are happening, and they’re happening because you’re sinning against the body. R.J. Rushdoony, in commenting on this verse, said this: “Where the church fails to be a community and when any member thereof is negligent of his family responsibilities to other Christians in the local church, there the body of Christ is not discerned and communion is taken unto damnation and judgment.”

Read it again. Where the church fails to be a community. So this is the implication in 1 Corinthians. Where the church fails to be a community—when any member of that community is negligent of his family responsibilities to the other Christians in the local assembly—so where we fail to be a community and specifically where we fail to be a community by seeing—not seeing—our obligations or we’re negligent of our obligations to others in the family of God in the context of the church, there he says the body of Christ is not discerned, and as a result communion is taken unto damnation and judgment.

We don’t want that happening to us. We don’t want to be taking communion under damnation and judgment. We want to properly discern, understand, and practice what the Lord’s body is, and as a result of that make application to our children.

Now we said that the problem in 1 Corinthians was that there was a curse. The curse was many were getting weak and sick. He then gave them a corrective to that curse, a critique of the problem. He said: your problem is there’s divisions amongst you. Some eat and some don’t get to eat. Some get drunk and some don’t get any wine at all. So he says there’s a problem. The problem is identified specifically as sinning against other members of the body of Christ, the church.

And then he gives them a corrective, and he says: “Well, therefore, to answer this problem, to take care of the difficulty, wait for one another.” So this is the context for the discussion of and examination of—a discernment of—the body of Jesus Christ.

What we’ve said is the body of Jesus Christ can mean different things in the scriptures, but in Corinthians, very specifically, over and over again as we just read, and in chapter 13 where he says you’re all baptized into one body and he says you all eat from the same loaf, therefore you’re the same body. What he’s saying is a failure to discern the body—a failure to act with responsibilities to other members of the church—to discern the body—to know that others are equal with you and to be loved by you practically. A failure to do that is what has affected them. That is what has brought God’s judgment upon the Corinthian church.

And so the text of Corinthians—and we talked about this three weeks ago now, but just by way of review again—the text of Corinthians tells us that there was this problem. The problem was critiqued by Paul as being a result of them not loving each other and actually sinning against each other in the context of the body of Christ at the Lord’s Supper. And the answer for this was to be properly engaged in acts of kindness toward one another, specifically waiting for one another in the context of the Lord’s supper.

So when Christians in the Bible went to church, it was to eat the Lord’s supper. It was to break bread, which was a phrase to mean to eat the Lord’s supper. That’s why they went to church—to eat the Lord’s supper. To go to church and to not have the Lord’s supper is doing something out of whack with what the Bible in Acts tells us.

Secondly, to study the Lord’s supper, we’re going to have to read 1 Corinthians 11. To study the Lord’s supper—if this is, you know, what we’re supposed to be doing on the Lord’s day—okay, one of the most important texts, probably the most important texts, is 1 Corinthians 11. People were getting sick at that supper. We’re told in 1 Corinthians 11, the cause was that they were sinning against Christ’s body, the church.

So Christ’s body in the text is explicitly identified as the church. The cure was to keep from getting sick. They were supposed to not—they were supposed to rather—wait for each other. They were to actually exercise proper love for other members of the body by waiting for each other, to all sit down and all eat together and all drink together.

Paul said that the Corinthians were not treating each other as part of the body, and so they were sinning against—they were not discerning the body properly. They were thinking they were most important. They weren’t discerning the body in the sense of not acting in kindness towards other members of the body.

Now, what we have is this very specific exegetical work in 1 Corinthians 10-11 that says that children should be at the table by way of implication because they’re part of the body. Remember in 1 Corinthians 13 we read that you are all baptized into one body. So by the Spirit we are baptized into that body. Our children who are baptized are part of that body, and every member of the body is supposed to partake of the supper. That’s what Paul said their sin was. They weren’t letting some partake.

And by way of application, to fail to let our children partake—but to bring God’s judgment against us as it was against them as well.

So, specific exegetical work. Now, the broader work is what we want to talk about today. We want to talk about God’s children at God’s feasts in the scriptures. The transition verse here is the one we just read from 1 Corinthians 10. He gets into this whole discussion of communion by stating the unity of the church: “All were baptized. All ate the same spiritual food. All drank the same spiritual drink.”

He’s talking about the wilderness, the 40 years in the wilderness when God provided manna for his people in the wilderness and then water from the rock. What he says is this is spiritual food and spiritual drink. The Westminster Confession of Faith, which is a bedrock of orthodoxy for Reformed churches in the last 500 years, says that manna was a sacrament.

Quoting now from the Westminster Confession of Faith—and this is on your handouts: “The sacraments of the Old Testament, in regard to the spiritual things thereby signified and exhibited, were for substance the same with those of the new.” So they’re saying there were sacraments in the Old Testament, and they’re the same essentially as signifying and entering into the blessings of things that are in the New Testament. And the proof text that the Westminster divines added for this particular statement was 1 Corinthians 10:1-4.

So, you know, don’t let any Presbyterian tell you that eating manna wasn’t a sacrament. The Westminster Confession of Faith says it was. And if you didn’t eat manna when you were part of that body of Christ in the wilderness, you starved to death. So we know the children—all members alive, you know, nursing children, children who were somewhat older—children ate spiritual food, ate the sacrament of the Old Testament. And specifically we’re told in 1 Corinthians 10, they ate and drank of Jesus Christ.

Now, why would we withhold them from the supper of the Lord Jesus Christ? We wouldn’t. So the Bible tells us that children were always part of the assembly of God, God’s people, in the Old Covenant, and we would expect the same today. In the Old Testament, children ate manna. This manna was true spiritual food.

Secondly, in Deuteronomy 29, we have the renewal of the covenant between God and his people. I’ve actually got the text printed out on your handouts. You can just look on the handout without opening your Bibles. Deuteronomy 29:10:

“All of you stand today before the Lord your God—your leaders and your tribes, your elders and your officers, all the men of Israel. And just so we don’t miss it, we already knew it because it said ‘all of you,’ all you people, but he includes here: ‘your little ones and your wives.’ So little ones are explicitly included in the covenanting body in Deuteronomy 29. Also, the strangers in your camp, from the one who cuts the wood to the one who draws your water, that you may enter into covenant with the Lord your God and into his oath which the Lord your God makes with you today.”

So children were part of covenant renewal assemblies, little ones. And when we come to the Lord’s supper, when God tells us that this is the covenant of the New Testament, when as we take the Lord’s supper, why would we not have children part of this covenant renewal ceremony? We would want to do that to be consistent with what we read in Deuteronomy 29.

Children were part of the privileged community that God entered into covenant with. His covenant is that he’ll be their God, they’ll be his people. And that’s true of the children who are part of these assemblies now. These are baptized kids, right? Circumcised kids. These are kids who are not cut off from community because they were circumcised. And so the same thing’s true of us today. The children who have been baptized are brought into that covenant community. God renews covenant with them as well as with older people at this supper.

In Joel 2:16, the people are being gathered together to mourn for sins and to fast and to ask for God’s blessing upon them as they repent of sins that have brought God’s judgment. And in Joel 2:16, we read:

“Gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children, and just so we don’t miss it, and nursing babes. Let the bridegroom grow up from his chamber and the bride from her dressing room.”

Everybody is supposed to get together to mourn and weep and lament over sins. And when he says everybody, he says explicitly, including your children and even nursing babes. So children are part of these covenant assemblies. They’re actually called upon to mourn over sins in some way. And so they were part of these covenanting assemblies. God renewed his covenant with children, and in Joel even babies were to mourn over their sins.

The original Passover: children were participators in it as well. In Hebrews 9 and you’ve heard me talk about this a lot—9 and 10—it talks about the Old Testament was symbolic for the present time. The sacraments then concerned only with food and drink, various washings, and fleshly ordinances imposed until the time of reformation. So this is an important verse. It says that the carnal or fleshly Old World ordinances consisted of two things: food and drink, and washings. The preeminent washing was circumcision. The preeminent food and drink was Passover.

Now, it’s not the only food and drink ordinance in the Old Testament. So, even if kids don’t take the Passover meal but did take other food and drink ordinances of the Old Testament, we would assume that they would be given the Lord’s Supper, right? Because there are various food and drink ordinances. But clearly, the children were to eat the Passover meal.

I’ve got the Exodus 12:3 and 4 citation. We have the citation: “All the congregation.” Who is part of the congregation? Everybody circumcised eight days and older, right? They were all part of the congregation of Israel, God’s people. They’re all there. All the kids, nursing babes are all part of that congregation of Israel. And they’re to take a lamb for a household in verse three. So every member of the household, which would include the children, was to eat of this lamb.

And if we missed it there, if we missed it in “all the congregation,” he says every member of the household partakes of the Passover lamb. And then he says “according to the number of the persons.” So he says each and every individual. And literally, I think the word here is “mouth.” According to the number of their mouths, you’ll have this lamb. So children have mouths. Children were numbered with those who were to partake of the Passover lamb.

And then finally, “according to each man’s need.” This is an interesting phrase. I think the only other time the phrase is used is in Exodus 16, in reference again to manna. So in 1 Corinthians 10, when we read the children ate the manna and drank the water that came out of the rock, according to their need is what it was described as in Exodus. It’s really a summation of all these Old Testament meals that the children partook of. And here’s a very specific tie between Passover—eating according to their need—and manna, where they took manna according to their need.

So in each case, all the congregation, every mouth was to be fed, and this was according to the very number of the people, the souls that were alive in the households, and according to every man’s need, which draws these connections as well.

So children ate Old Testament sacramental food—not just the manna in the wilderness but children ate the Passover meal as well. The ultimate, or rather the most distinctive food and drink ordinance in the Old Testament, the Passover meal which was observed annually, children partook of that.

And again, in Exodus 12:24, speaking of the Passover, it says: “You shall observe this thing, you and your sons forever.” Sons is every male descendant. If you got a one-year-old, a six-month-old boy, he’s a son. So you and your sons—including your baby boys, in other words—will observe this Passover meal in this particular way.

So, children included. You know, four or five specific references to make sure that we understood that children ate the Passover meal. So children ate the Passover meal in the Old Testament. What we’re saying here is that when we come together and eat the Lord’s supper with our children, there’s nothing new and novel about this. This is what the people of God did. This is who they were identified as being—those that renewed covenant, that got together corporately to confess sins, that got together to eat sacramental meals with God. And children were part of each and every one of the descriptions of these things in the Bible, our source and standard for what we do.

D. The priests’ families and the offerings. You know, we’re a nation of priests now, but we can look at the Old Testament priests and say: “Well, what the priest and his family ate, we can think of that then and, saying what our families eat as well, because we’re all priests now.”

Well, in Leviticus 10, the breast of the wave offering and the thigh of the wave offering, you shall eat in a clean place—you, your sons and your daughters with you, for they are your due and your sons’ due, which are given from the sacrifices of peace offerings of the children of Israel.

And again, in Numbers 18:11: “This also is yours, the heave offering of their gift with all the wave offerings of the children of Israel. I have given them to you and your sons and daughters with you as an ordinance forever. Everyone who is clean in your house may eat it.”

Not everyone who is mature intellectually. Not everyone who can understand what is the sacramental food that sacrificial food that they’re eating. Sacramental food. No, he doesn’t say that there’s an intellectual attainment. He says everyone that’s clean, that’s been purified, that’s been washed. We would say that’s been baptized, definitively cleansed, and hasn’t fallen into some sin that would prohibit them from partaking.

So the priests’ sons and daughters, all of them. If they didn’t get this food, the priest had no other food. This is what the food was—the priest and his family ate special sacrificial peace offerings and other offerings that the priest was to eat in the Old Testament system. So clearly, the analogy to the nation of priests that we are now is that our children partake of the same spiritual food that we partake of.

And then finally, the peace offering and sacrificial feast in Leviticus. Leviticus 7:15-18: we read there that the peace offering was to be eaten. Not just, you know, the portion that we just described was eaten by the priest and his family. There’s a portion that’s given to God. God eats. But the peace offering, which culminated the Old Testament offerings, right? They go through the purification offering, the ascension offering, the tribute offering, then they’d have the peace offering, and then Aaron would pronounce the benediction. That’d be the cycle of those offerings when they got together and worshiped God. The peace offering was the penultimate, the last before the great benediction was placed upon them.

The peace offering was the conclusion of that, the climax before the benediction is placed. And that peace offering represented food for the priest and his family, food for God, but also this was the one offering that the sacrificer himself could partake of. And he was to partake of it with his family.

In 1 Samuel 1:4, whenever the day came for Elkanah to sacrifice, he would give portions of the meat to his wife Peninnah and to all her sons and daughters. So here’s an example—a historical example—of the peace offering being given to the sons and daughters of the man who brought them as well. So the peace offering was eaten by all the children in the family.

And that’s what we do at the Lord’s supper—before we get the benediction, we have the peace offering, the application of the work of the one work of Jesus Christ in terms of bringing peace between God and man and God and man and other men as well. And that feast is what’s partaken of by the children.

Sacramental feasts in Jerusalem were eaten by the children. Again, in Deuteronomy 12:7, 12, and 16:

“There you shall eat in Jerusalem—in other words, they had to go up there three times a year. ‘There you shall eat before the Lord your God, and you shall rejoice in all to which you have put your hand, you and your households in which the Lord your God has blessed you. And you shall rejoice before the Lord your God, you and your sons and daughters, so we don’t miss it. Your male and female servants, and the Levite who is within your gates, since he has no portion. But you must eat it there before the Lord your God in the place which the Lord your God chooses, you and your sons and daughters, your male servants,’ etc.”

And again, in Deuteronomy 16: “All the firstborn males that come from your herd on your flock, you shall sanctify to the Lord your God. You shall do no work with the firstborn of your herd, nor shear the firstborn of your flock. You and your household shall eat it—this offering, this sacramental meal that accompanied this—before the Lord your God year by year in the place where the Lord chooses.”

So throughout the Bible, when they got together to renew covenant, the children participated in that covenant renewal service directly. When they got together to confess sins, even the nursing babes get together and somehow are part of that congregation of God that repents of sins, mourns over sins, and asks for God’s blessing and forgiveness.

When they get together to eat the Passover, the great Old Testament food and drink ordinance, sacramental meal, the children, every mouth of the household was to eat of the Passover meal as well. When they ate the peace offerings—the priest first with his family, the offerer with his family—children, every son and daughter who was clean who could approach to eat these things were to eat of this sacramental meal as well.

And then in Deuteronomy 12 and 16, we read that the children ate these sacramental feasts as part of God’s congregation as well in these annual trips up to Jerusalem. And so what we see, you know, from beginning to end, every time the people of God assemble and specifically those great feasts of rejoicing and thanksgiving, children participate in these. It’s who they are.

Children ate then at God’s other feasts. Now they eat as members of the congregation. How do they become part of the body of Christ that is to partake of the Lord’s supper? They don’t become part of the body of Christ by being born to Christians. Because if you just have a child and you, you know, your wife bears the child and you got the child and the child grows up and the child is never baptized, they can’t partake of the Lord’s supper. So just because they’re part of your family gives them no right to eat at the supper, which is reserved for Christ’s body.

Children are not automatically enrolled in Christ’s body through birth. How do they get there? Well, we read it in 1 Corinthians 13, that through the Spirit we’re baptized into one body. Our children become members of the congregation, the assembly of God, the rejoicing people that eat the festival food and renew covenant with God. They become part of that through—in the Old Testament the cleansing ritual of circumcision and other things like it. And in the New Testament through baptism.

Okay, so now think of the implications for baptism. What we just read: these nursing kids are part of these assemblies that get together and eat sacramental food, sacrificial food. They confess their sins. They renew covenant. Little nursing babies. Okay. Well, how can they do that unless they become part of the congregation, the body of Christ? They can’t.

So what they’re telling us is that our little nursing children are supposed to be part of the body of Christ—by way of symbol in the Old Testament church, but now by way of directly the body of Christ, the church. So what it tells us is that there’s a responsibility to bring our children after they’re born soon after to the waters of baptism. And at those waters of baptism, the children become members of the visible church of Jesus Christ. And that’s the point at which they’re able to come to this supper, because not because they’re part of your family, but because they’re part of the body of Jesus Christ.

You know, Paul’s point is there’s sinning against the body going on. And we would say that to withhold children from the table is a sin not against the family, but against the body. The children don’t have a right to supper based on their physical lineage. All we can do is give birth to dead kids, and the waters that come from above symbolically recreate the child, bringing him to life in Jesus Christ through unity with Christ, being unified with Christ, being part of the body of Christ, and all the blessings of Christ accruing to him. This happens in the context of by way of physical symbol—baptism.

So we don’t come to the supper as members of a family. We come to the supper as members of the church.

I want to read some quotes here from Steve Wilkins and a few other men. There was a recent discussion of this on the Confederation of Reformed Evangelical Churches, the denomination we’re part of, on their listserv. And I wanted to read some of these. I thought they were really excellent summations.

I think this verse is by Steve Wilkins:

“We participate in public worship in terms of our primary identity and calling as children in the family of God. My children must know that their fundamental identity is not that they are Wilkins’s.” There was Steve Wilkins writing this. “In other words, members of my family, though they certainly are, but they are Christians, members of God’s family. That’s their primary identity. Water, Wilkins writes, is thicker than blood. Baptismal birth glorifies and sanctifies their physical birth. The name of Christ put on them is primary, not co-equal, and surely not secondary to their father’s name.”

Okay. So when they’re baptized and given their Christian name—that is, you know, bringing them into the family of God. And that family is preeminent over all of our individual families. Now, that family informs the rest of the families, right? And one of the things that family—when we come to hear the word of God—is the family of God. One of the things that we read in that scripture is that children ought to honor their parents. And it tells us families are real important.

I’m going to preach on Psalm 78 sometime in the next few months, and we’ll talk about responsibilities for families based upon this. But see, if you think of those kids as your kids, that’s big wrong. And it won’t help you do as good a job with them as if you think of them as Jesus’s kids. That’s the whole symbol of baptism up here. You give the children to Jesus to bring them to life—back to life.

And Jesus, you know, represented by the officers of the church, the pastors, baptized the child. It’s as if Jesus had taken them up in his arms and blessed them, that nice picture of Jesus today: “Jesus blesses your baby.” And then he gives it back to you and says, “Now raise this child for me. This isn’t your child anymore, Dennis. You know, Elijah.”

He leaves home. My preparation for the sermon included yesterday—Elijah moving to the Tri-Cities, moving away from home for the first time. So my eldest son is gone. Well, and I’m praising God because he’s in a place where there’s a great church and a great pastor, Don Van Til, and I’m just pleased as punch. See, and what God tells me is: Elijah never was your son. You can’t hold on to him. You can’t think of yourself as responsible for doing everything for him. You can’t do it.

Now, you got a lot of things you’re supposed to do for him. And those things are heightened when we understand that child is not our child ultimately. That child is part of the family of God.

Rogers Meredith, another CREC pastor, great guy, fun fellow. He put it this way. He says: “Amen to Wilkins’s post. When they sin, you grab them by their baptisms, not by their last name.” That’s good, right? We grab them by their baptism. In other words, when our children sin, we say: “Look, you’ve been united with Christ. You’re not supposed to act that way. You’re a Christian. Christians don’t act that way. If you keep acting that way, the Lord God may break your neck. He may cut you off and throw you away. Don’t do that. That’s not who you are.” We grab them by their baptisms, the claims of Jesus Christ upon them. We don’t grab them by their last names.

We don’t—you know, there is a sense to which you want to honor your family name and all that stuff. That’s good. But that’s secondary. Primary is their names as Christians. That’s what we grab them by, not their family membership.

I think this is Wilkins again:

“My point is when we gather as the people of God, we gather as the family—this is what we saw all those Old Testament references—the family of God gathered together, not as families of God. We worship in heaven, right? We go to worship, we send up and in this ancient offering, we worship in heaven. And there is an eschatological aspect that must be maintained and emphasized. The only family that will continue throughout eternity is God’s family, not ours. The family that demands my highest allegiance is God’s, not mine. Thus, if I love father or mother more than Jesus, I am not worthy of him.”

Jesus says, you know, families are great things, but they can become great curses in the world. And they have been, because men think they own their own kids and they’re going to do what they want with them or to them or neglect them or whatever it is. But Jesus says: “These are my kids. They’re part of my church. They’re part of my body. You want to get weak, sick, die? Mistreat my children.” That’s what Jesus says.

Yeah, I know you bring your kids here to the meal. That’s good. But this meal is intended to set up every meal in your home. It’s intended to set up what you do in your home. And if you don’t treat your children with respect as individual members of the body of Christ in your homes, then the ritual action here will just redound to your curse, not to your blessing.

Jesus says that our children are preeminently members of his family, not ours. In Christ, we collectively are the new Israel. We have been given new names because we have been adopted into a new family. That doesn’t mean that my old identity or calling as husband of Sapphire, father of Simon, Peter, and Andrew and postal carrier is lost. It simply means that in addition to that I now have a higher calling and identity as a child of the family of God, member of the bride of Christ.

Another man wrote this. He said: “I’m thinking out loud here. Is it not more a matter of place in the dance than it is role changing or role ceasing? I don’t cease to be a husband and a father, of course, when I enter the pulpit or go behind the table. But in that part of the dance, I have a responsibility to lead the church, five members of whom, this pastor says, are my wife and kids. The question seems to me to be not: do fathers and husbands cease to be fathers and husbands in the pew, but what are they to do in this particular part of the dance?”

So the dance that is worship—you know, I’m up here in the pulpit. I get behind there and I’m ministering to all the members of the body of Christ here, some of which are happening to be members of my family as well. But in this dance, I don’t represent them as their family head. I represent Christ. And each of you fathers, it’s the same thing in the dance that is communion.

You know, your children are not coming forward because they’re your children. If that’s all they had, and no baptism, they don’t get the supper, okay? They’re not coming forward as members of your family. They’re coming forward, or receiving from your hand or the hand of the next child down who passes it down to them, wherever we’re getting that bread and wine from—they’re getting it because they’re members of the body of Christ.

The nursing ones, the little ones who were called to eat Passover, rejoice in the covenant renewal ceremonies, eat feasts of rejoicing with God. Their identity must be formed as members of the church first and foremost, and secondarily, then they’re members for a while in your particular household. They’ll always be your children, but in a much different sense when they leave. But they’ll always be very directly children in the particular church in which they’re part.

I hope this is getting across. I hope it isn’t all that difficult for us to understand this. I think it’s quite important.

Few more quotes, then we’ll deal with the objections and then we’ll be done.

Well, I’m sure no one wants to say that they quit being fathers, but when the congregation stands before God, what matters is that Christ is our elder brother and we are all his brothers.

Okay, so now he’s going to talk about Hebrews 2. We talked about this when I preached through Hebrews.

Quoting from Psalm 22, Hebrews 2 says this:

“For both he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all from one father. For which reason he, Jesus, is not ashamed to call them all brothers, saying, ‘I will proclaim your name to my brethren in the midst of the congregation, I will sing your praises.’”

So, you know, when Benjamin stands up and sings with the rest of the church or Charity or when little children get up and sing, Jesus says they’re part of him. They’re united to him. And like him, they’re proclaiming the name of the father to their brethren. So there’s a sense in which Benjamin and I, and Charity and I, are brothers and sisters in Christ more preeminently than we are father and son. It’s got precedence. That’s the way Jesus describes it.

Going on to this quote again:

“Jesus calls us his brothers and he proclaims the name of God in our midst. That is what happens in worship as our great high priest leads his brothers, including the women who are all here, brothers of Christ as well.”

Later in Hebrews it reads:

“Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which he inaugurated for us through the veil, that is his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful, and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near.”

And whoever wrote this says: “Note that Paul, or whoever wrote Hebrews, in speaking of our worship addresses the whole congregation as brethren. Of course, in all this epistle, he addresses Christians as brethren, brothers in Christ, members of the new family. He does not say that our families come, family by family, into the holy place in heaven, but rather that we all come as brothers of Christ into the holy place in heaven.”

Okay? So our children are those who are part of the body of Jesus Christ. And they come here as part of the body of Christ, not as part, ultimately, of the families that God has placed them in.

Children have a primary obligation to Jesus, not the family. Children have a primary obligation to Jesus, not the family. Now, Jesus through the church tells children to honor their parents and to be good family members. We’re not saying anything against that. In fact, you take away the fact that children have a first obligation to Jesus, and you’ve got nothing left to maintain authority in the home other than coercion.

Am I right? Because the basis for their obedience to you is the word of Christ to them as Christians. That establishes the authority of the family, not vice versa. God grabs us each by our baptism, not by our last name. Christians come to the supper as part of the body, not as part of the family.

All right. I want to make one set of quick comments here that’s on your outline about people saying: “Well, okay, you made a good case for that based on the Old Testament practices, based on the big teaching that Paul’s given to us, but we still have this self-examination clause.”

The objection here is: you know, we’re supposed to examine ourselves and see if we’re doing things rightly. And so here’s some comments, very quickly, right off your outlines. The self-examination clause does not dictate against what I’ve been talking about. By the way, you remember we read from Isaiah 1 three weeks ago. Self-examination is always part of assembling with God and having sacramental meals. All that stuff in the Old Testament we cited about it almost always comes in the context of some degree of discernment and self-examination—to see if we’re really doing things the right way.

And in Isaiah 1, you know, to see if we’re treating God correctly and loving God, God says: “Look at how you’re treating one another. Look at social sins. Correct there, because that’s where sins against me are going to evidence themselves.”

Okay, so this what we’re talking about here is not unusual for the Lord’s supper. This is a usual pattern in the Old Testament as well. And we saw that it didn’t keep children from eating sacramental meals and being part of the corporate body. Just the reverse.

All right. The self-examination clause in 1 Corinthians—or the command, rather—is given to adults, not to infants. This is akin to the requirement in 2 Thessalonians 3:10: “If anyone will not work, neither let him eat.”

In Romans 10:13: “Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

Can you be saved if you can’t actually vocalize and call on the name of the Lord? Yes, of course. But he’s saying: if you have the ability to vocalize and call on the name of Christ, if you do that, you’ll be saved. Can or should our children eat when they’re nursing infants, even though they do no work? Well, of course they should. And we wouldn’t want to take the clause in—or the verse in—2 Thessalonians 3 to say: if you won’t eat or if you won’t work, don’t eat, to exclude children from the table.

Commands are given to particular people. You have to look at the context of what the command is. In Corinthians, in its first application, the command to examine yourselves—and actually the word isn’t examine, it’s prove. Big difference. When we say examine yourself, we’re thinking of introspection: Gee, what am I? How am I doing? Am I—you know, I really love in Christ? I love everybody? That’s what we think of as self-examination. But the word literally means to prove it—to take a piece of metal, assay it, and decide whether it’s gold or lead. That’s what it means. And I think what it’s talking about is: look at your actions. Don’t look at what you’re thinking. We’re self-deluded easily, but when we do things, then we’re proving that we’re not sinning against the body when we wait for one another, which is what Paul tells them to do.

So this, but in its first application, it’s given to adults. It’s given to those people that were grabbing food and not giving it to the poor, people that were getting drunk and not sharing wine equally at the Lord’s table and at the agape. So kids don’t do that. Little tiny kids don’t do that. So the command is given to adults first and foremost. And so we shouldn’t take it too woodenly or literally in representing little children.

Secondly, infants were not the ones guilty of sins against the body and were therefore not the subjects of the self-examination clause. So they didn’t have the ability to decide, some of them—a one-year-old child—if they’re treating other members of the body of Christ correctly.

Secondly, the infants were not the ones who were sinning that Paul was correcting with this command, right? It was the adults who were sinning.

Third, infants are not capable of being unworthy due to the sin that is the subject of the proving. So, you know, examine yourself, prove yourself so that you partake of the Lord’s supper in a worthy manner. Well, if an infant can’t look and see: am I treating other members of the body of Christ with love and kindness? Am I waiting for my other brother or sister? They’re not capable of that kind of mental task. Then they can’t be unworthy, because you’re unworthy if you’re sinning against other people, knowing that you’re supposed to be kind toward them and wait for them and include them in the meal. So they’re not capable of being unworthy in this sense of the term.

So the self-examination clause doesn’t apply to infants.

Fourth, the self-examination clause can, however, be exercised by children at a very early age—not babies, but a one or two-year-old. Ariana knows whether she’s hitting people or not in the pew. She can know whether she’s treating other people, members of the body of Christ, in a kind way. The self-examination clause, the proving clause, can be exercised by children at early age. Children learn very early to see how they are relating to the rest of the children and adults in the context of the body. So this proving, the self-examination, can be actually entered into by older children, and the younger ones they’re not the ones being specifically addressed.

Finally, the self-examination clause leads the adults to properly discern the children of the church’s inclusion in the corporate body of Christ. So let’s use that self-examination clause. Let’s say in our churches that the people that we love: examine yourself, prove yourself. Are you discerning the Lord’s corporate body correctly? Do you know that children ate Passover? That children were part of covenant renewal? That children were part of morning festivals? That children were part of the gathering together and eating the sacred food of manna or the Passover or the peace offering?

Do you know that the body included those children back there? And do you know that Paul uses that very line of reasoning from the manna in 1 Corinthians 10 to say: we should discern the body correctly? So the self-examination clause is a verse for us. It works for paedocommunion, not against it, because it’s given to adults to tell them: discern the corporate body of Christ and give them all equally food at the supper of the Lord.

So the self-examination clause is no problem for us, and in fact it’s the very thing that proves our case more than anything else: that our children, as we understand they’re being baptized, part of the corporate body of Christ, part of the family of Christ, should be brought to this table. Baptism is the initiate right into the church and her supper. It is the proof of the children’s participation in Christ’s family.

All right, quick applications, quick response to all of this, right?

Children, you should know better today, after hearing all these things, who you are. You should know you’re not part of a family and only a family. You’re part of the church of Jesus Christ. You have heard gospel to you today. There is good news for you. You’ve been united to Christ and his death and resurrection. You’re a new creature in Christ. You don’t have to come through your parents. You come through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And you get to partake of this table, the table of blessing from Jesus Christ. So it’s great gospel to you, kids. But it’s also great responsibility.

You’ve got somebody to please beyond mom and dad, okay? You want to please the Lord Jesus Christ with your actions. He’s going to hold you individually. You come to the table and you think: “Well, if I’ve sinned, you know, Dad’s going to get it.” No. If you’ve sinned and you’re rebellious against Christ and don’t repent of that and come to this table, you’re the one that’s going to be directly judged by God.

So children, you have an obligation to live as a member of the church of Jesus Christ.

I saw a recent movie, Gone Baby Gone. In the beginning, there’s a voiceover, and the guy is saying: “You know, he says, ‘I always thought the most important part, the most important things in our lives, the things that we didn’t choose, our family, our neighborhood where we grew up.’ And it’s kind of the theme of the movie.” The movie wasn’t that good, but that’s a good statement, and it’s true, isn’t it?

I mean, one of the most important things to determine who you are is your family. And you didn’t choose to be born into the Lions’ home or the Foresters’ home, the Tuuri home, the Schubans’ home. None of you kids chose that. And you didn’t choose to be born into and then baptized into the body of Jesus Christ. But it’s the most important thing in your life.

You know, we’ve been around twenty-five years. We get these kids growing up. They get to be, you know, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-two, twenty-four. And they start going sideways a little bit in some aspect of their life. And they’re starting to try to figure things out. And we say: “Well, you know, you got this membership covenant. You’re not supposed to buy and sell on Sunday. You’re supposed to go to church every week.”

Well, now I didn’t sign that covenant.” They say: “So what? You didn’t sign the covenant to be a citizen of the state of Oregon either, but you got to obey the laws.”

Children, the implication of this is: you were joined to the church of Jesus Christ, most of you at your baptisms, and you entered into obligation to that church of Jesus Christ and specifically to this local church. Now, you can choose—once you, you know, get, you know, eighteen, nineteen, twenty—you can choose to become a member of another church. But you can’t choose to ignore your obligations to this local church in the process, right?

So, you know, don’t—this comes up every couple years. “Why don’t we have kids sign the membership covenant?” Because the implication is they aren’t members until they sign the covenant. And what I’ve said: the great privilege you children have is to become members of this church by means of your baptisms. And that great gospel brings great responsibilities to abide by the teachings of this church until you’re transferred or released to another local church.

We’re not going to just let you wander away. We’ll excommunicate you if necessary. See, we’ll say: if you want to do that, if you want to turn your back on the church of Jesus Christ, then we’ll excommunicate you. We’re not going to let you just wander away. We’ll transfer you to all kinds of other churches, but we’re not going to let you kind of float, because you’re not some kind of autonomous neutral unit, children. You’re members of this church.

That’s the way it works. And you didn’t choose it. It’s one of the most important things in your life. But just like your family, just like where you grew up, just like if you grew up in Oregon City, you didn’t choose that either. At some point, you can choose to move away. You can choose to start your own family. You can choose to go to another church. But until then, this is what God has chosen for you.

Fathers, the clear implication of this, as I said earlier, is we got to treat our children with a high degree of respect. You know, it’s interesting. We talked about the household codes in Colossians and Ephesians. The shortest is Colossians, the longer is Ephesians. It talks about the relationships of the families. And here’s what it tells fathers. And you know, it’s interesting because men, Adam was to guard and nurture, right? He was supposed to guard the garden and nurture and bring it to development. He’s supposed to guard his wife and help her nurture and bring to development. In the church, the elders guard the church, and the elders feed the church and make it grow to maturity and blossom and do better. So guard and nurture are the two responsibilities. And this is what Paul says to dads.

“Fathers, and you fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.”

So you’re supposed to bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. That’s the nurture part. Did you hear the guarding part? You’re supposed to guard your kids. Now, you know that you’re supposed to protect your kids. You know that. But did you hear who it tells you to protect them from? “Fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath.” It says: “Dads, these are Jesus’s kids, and the thing you’ve got to guard them most against is your anger.” That’s what it says.

This is a summary code about what family obligations are. When the husbands don’t address the wives—they’re addressed. Kids are addressed. Dads. And the dads specifically are told: “Guard, nurture. Nurture them up in the Lord and guard them against your own sinful tendencies.” Isn’t that interesting? I think it’s fascinating.

And when it gets down to Colossians, which is like a short form of this, right? Colossians in each of these sections relating to husbands, wives, dads, kids is shorter and more succinct. And in Colossians, here’s what it says:

“Fathers, don’t provoke your children lest they become discouraged.”

End of command to fathers. It leaves off the nurture stuff and just leaves the guarding statement—to dads: guard your kids against yourself, bringing your children to discouragement through provocation of them.

I think that’s amazing. If there’s one thing dads need to hear, it’s not that you’re the lord of your kid and can boss him around and do what you want to with him. It’s that you have to bring him up in the nurture of the Lord and you’ve got to guard him against your own sinful anger.

Now, two elements of this. One: don’t feel bad—well, I was going to say don’t feel bad when you get angry when you provoke your kids to anger. Well, you should feel bad, because you’re breaking these commands. But understand that if God gives us these commands, it’s because they’re so hard for us to keep. We got to be reminded of it. It is a natural thing for dads to be angry and to provoke their children. Christ’s children, really. See?

So number one: don’t think I’m a lousy, rotten sinner because I yelled at my kids this last week. Well, yeah, I’d think that you are, but understand that every other man in here has done the same thing to their kids in differing forms, because that’s why the command guards—it tells us, it preaches at our weakness and difficulties.

So on one side, understand from these commands that your obligation to Christ’s children who happen to dwell in your homes—the King’s children—is to guard them from yourself, and that’s a common thing that they need guarding from. On the other hand, feel really bad when you do provoke them to anger, when you do exercise your wrath against them.

And because your children are members of this church first and foremost, not your family, we will bring the full sanctions of the church against dads that violate these commands. You know, husbands are supposed to be faithful to their wives. And what kind of a church would we be if we let husbands be unfaithful and didn’t discipline them? How would we be helping them? We wouldn’t. How would we be helping their wives? We wouldn’t.

We have obligation—we’ve got obligation to your children to protect them from your anger as well. And when this church finds out that your anger, your wrath, has struck out verbally or physically, and your children are becoming discouraged and provoked to anger themselves and discouragement and are suffering because of your sinfulness, fathers, we will intervene. When we hear those cases, we will intervene. We will call you before us and we will say: these children are not your children. You’re not the pater familias. You’re not the Roman dad that can do whatever you want to with them, because they’re not your kids. They’re members of the body of Jesus Christ.

That’s their central identity. They are bound with Jesus Christ. They bind unto themselves today the strong name of the Trinity. They’re part of that host that’s called upon by God to persevere, triumph, and have victory. And this church will assist those children in every way we possibly can, including, if necessary, bringing formal discipline against heads of families that strike out in anger at their own kids and are unrepentant about it.

Your children don’t belong to you. They belong to Jesus Christ. And the church of Jesus Christ here has an obligation to treat those children directly, to encourage and instruct them in the Lord, to protect them against the sins of other people in the context of the body or from outside, including, if necessary, their own families.

Now the church has an obligation to instruct children to honor their parents, to instruct parents to bring up their children in the nourishment and admonition of the Lord. We’ll talk more about that. We’ll look at Psalm 78 and give the importance of the family and what the family is supposed to do in terms of raising children. But understand that you got to have the groundwork right first.

The groundwork is that when we come to worship, to take the Lord’s supper, you’re reminded every week that your children are not ultimately your children. They’re Christ’s children. Not ultimately here as members of your family. They’re here as members of the family of Jesus Christ.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for the great promises regarding our children and for the great responsibilities that go both to them, to their parents, as well as to the elders in the church as well relative to all these things. We thank you, Lord God, for the high privilege. We thank you for the wonderful fact that in our day and age, children are being brought back to the table and are being strengthened and nurtured through the sacrament of the supper, that they may indeed be those strong, conquering ones that we sang of at the beginning of our service.

Bless the children of this church, Lord God, in Jesus’s name we ask it. Amen.