I want to read this morning from Matthew chapter 18. So, again, another familiar passage, but a glorious one for all that. Let's hear it in Matthew 18 beginning at verse 1. At that time, the disciples came to Jesus saying, who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And Jesus called a little child to him, set him in the midst of them and said, assuredly I say to you, unless you are converted and become his little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever receives one little child like this in my name receives me. But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world because of offenses, for offenses must come, but woe to that man by whom the offense comes. That is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, again we thank you for giving us your word and promising your spirit to illumine and help us to understand so that we might be transformed into the image of your son. Thank you for allowing us your mercies, the opportunity now to be transformed into him and to be conformed to him, and we pray that you will work in us to that end. For Jesus' sake, amen. A few years ago, most of you probably are way too young to remember this, but if you had been watching television on Friday or Saturday nights, and sometimes, I guess, during the week, too, around 10 or 11 o'clock, you would hear something like this before the next segment of the program or whatever, if you were watching. It would say, it's 11 o'clock. Do you know where your children are? Remember that? The older ones, they would say. It was an interesting effort, I think, to make parents aware of their children and not simply leave them without supervision or accountability or anything else. But that reminds me of an even more important question for us as the people of God. And the question is this, do you know who your children are? I'm not sure that many of our brethren have thought carefully enough about this. I've spoken to Christian couples who have had real concerns about having children. And their concern goes something like this. They say, is it selfish for us to want to have children knowing what they might have to face in this world during this time in history? And these are not people that are anti-babies, they're not anti-family, they have a serious question. And they really are interested in wrestling with this real issue. Is it really wrong to bring children into the world at this time? Well, of course, there's great wickedness in the world, and so there's no question that the world is a dangerous place, and there's no question that our children will have hardship and sorrows and afflictions and tribulation, and they will be the occasion of sorrow for us. That's true, always is. They will be the occasion of sorrow. They may have to face terrible tragedy. They may have to endure great heartache. They may get seriously injured. They may have serious diseases. All kinds of things show that we cannot guarantee that their lives will be smooth and trouble-free. Indeed, we can guarantee the exact opposite. God says that everyone will go through tribulation, and all have been appointed for affliction. That's true. There's no escaping grief and sorrow, affliction and tribulations, or trouble and woe. And that's true no matter when you're born. That's the thing you have to remember. Not just in these days, but in every season of the history of the world, this has been a case. If you think this is a bad time to bear children, the question is, when was a good time to bear children? If you mean by a good time, a time when that would be free from sin and trouble and distress and tribulation and danger, well, there never has been such a time and there never will be such a time. But that does lead us to a second thing that needs to be factored in when you think about this, and that is that we should never think of the woes of the world apart from God's purposes and grace. The world is not apart from God. It's not cut off from him, running its own way. It's not something that he has no control over. The world is under his rule. Jesus is Lord of heaven and earth, and because this is true, we can be assured that God will not only provide for us and our children, but also work everything together for his glory and our good. And not only is the world not cut off from God, but we are not cut off from God. We have his grace and we have been embraced by him and brought into his family as his children. And he has said that he is our God. He gives himself to us. And that makes all the difference in the world. That's why Christian parents should have no worries about bringing children into the world. Not being naive about it, sure that's gonna mean trouble. Yes it will, no doubt about that. But I'm not afraid of that because God is our God. And since we've been bound in covenant to him, we're able to rest on his promises now and forever, and we have nothing to fear, and that goes for us and our children as well. And you see this, I think, at least in part in the passage in Matthew 18. The disciples are arguing about who is the greatest in the kingdom. They had been influenced by the culture around them, that greatness means power and strength and influence. fame and money and all the rest. Who's the greatest in the kingdom? Jesus picks up a little child and states that they are completely misunderstanding the nature of his kingdom and the way of true greatness. He says the way of greatness in God's kingdom is not through great strength or great deeds but through humble faith and trust and love like that, he says, of a little child. But what I want you to notice here is that Jesus does not view these children as outsiders or strangers or people who are somehow externally in the covenant, whatever that means. I don't understand that kind of language anymore. Externally in it, that means just your skin and a few centimeters down. I don't know. In fact, you see, what he does here is presents these children as the great example of what citizens of his kingdom should be. And he calls upon the disciples to receive them in his name. He says in verse five, whoever receives one little child like this in my name receives me. He identifies himself with these children of the covenant. They are members of his own body and to receive them means to believe the promises that he has made concerning them. Because they're true. Those promises are realities. It means to treat them as what they are. They are members of his family, citizens of the kingdom. They are his people. That's what they are. And he uses the same language to describe these little ones as he used to describe those he sends out as apostles later on. You're there to be received in his name too. And the little children are to be received in the same way. These children have nothing to prove. in order to be received by him. Because of the covenant they are embraced by God, and he embraces them as he embraces adult believers. And so serious is Jesus about this relationship that he sustains to them, he can warn any adult who causes them to stumble of the most severe punishment. Listen to what he says. Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin It would be better for him if a millstone were hung about his neck, and he were drowned in the depths of the sea." Now whether you know what a millstone is or not, I used to think when I was really little, and I heard this in Sunday school, I thought, whoa, I don't know what a millstone is, but I want one hung around my neck, that's for sure. And that's right, because they're big things. And if you have one of those hung around your neck, you don't need to be thrown into the sea. You probably have a broken neck before you get anything in there. It's a terrible thing, but that's a serious judgment. He makes it clear that these little ones are the special object of the Father's love and of his work of redemption. Listen to verses 10 and 11. I didn't read these verses, but he says, take heed that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I say to you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven. For the Son of Man has come to save that which was lost. Their angels behold God's face, he said. God loves these children as his own and he desires their salvation. He says in verse 14, even so it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. Every child joined in covenant to him is important to him. He would gladly leave the 99 and pursue the one who is strayed, Jesus said in verses 12 and 13. We don't often connect. You see, this is one continuous passage about little ones, but you see, so when you get to what we call the parable of the lost sheep, he's not talking about somebody else. He's talking still in the context of these little ones. Take heed that you don't despise one of these little ones, he says. For I say to you that in heaven the angels always see their father's face. And then he goes on, what do you think, if a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray, does he not leave the 99 and go into the mountains and seek the one that is straying? He's talking about the little ones here. This is how much the father cares for the little ones. When one of them strays, he will leave the 99 and go and find him and bring him back. So it is this reality that is the defining reality about our children. This is their identity and we must learn to view them and they must learn to view themselves with this way in the same way that God views them. They must learn to view themselves like God says he views them and therefore like they really are. It's not what you think about yourself that is most definitive about you. It's what God thinks about you. He defines you. And he has defined the children of his people as his own. God has taken us to himself and he has given himself to us. He has promised to be a God unto us. and to our children. This is, of course, the great promise that we see all the time throughout the scriptures. I will take you as my people. I will be your God and you shall know that I am Yahweh your God who brings you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, he says to to the people of Israel and Egypt. I will set my tabernacle among you, my soul shall not abhor you, and I will walk among you, and be your God, and you shall be my people." Now you see, what God is to us, he promises to be to our children as well. And we must not read this promise as if it's simply a provision of great opportunity for our children. I used to ask this in seminary, I came into seminary as a a Methobaptist something. I was reared in the Methodist church, went to a Baptist church in college, and I didn't know what I was by this time. I was trying to understand covenant because I went to a reformed seminary. And I kept asking professors, but what does it mean? I mean, what's the difference between a child? What good is the covenant to the child? And they always came back with something like this. Well, that means that they have great opportunities. They get to hear the word, and they get to sit in the worship, and they learn about the Bible, and they get to grow up around other Christians. I go, okay, well that sure is good. But it didn't seem like that's what God was saying. That's not all surely he can mean. And of course those things are great privileges. I don't mean to despise them at all. They are great things. Those are great opportunities that no one should despise. But the promise is I will be your God. And surely that means more than you're gonna get to hear the Bible once a week. Surely it means more than I'll let you be introduced to some of my people. You see, it means more than that. When God gave this promise to Israel, he was not saying that Israel's gonna have greater opportunities, or not merely saying that they're gonna have greater opportunities than Egypt or Babylon or Persia or any of the other countries of the ancient world. He was saying they were given things that no one else was. They were given gifts that no one else was. They were the object of his love like no one else. They were going to be provided for by him like no one else. They were going to be protected by him like no one else. They had the assurance of his love and mercy. They were the recipients of his care in ways that the world was not and could not be. They could cry to him and he would hear them. They could ask him for things and he would answer them. All the blessings and benefits of the covenant would be granted to them and are given to them. And they are told that they belong to them. And you see, it is this covenant that we have been brought into, this same covenant, the same promise is given to us in Christ Jesus. So in this promise, God promises to give himself to us. He belongs to us, we belong to him. That's what I will be your God and you will be my people. I give myself to you, you give yourself to me. We belong to each other. To have God as your God means that all that he is belongs to you. We don't want to read it like that. It's almost too big to conceive and it's almost, you would think, oh man, I'd never claim something like that in public. That sounds so presumptuous. No, God says that. Everything he has, everything he is, is yours. He is your God. And it means that you are his child, in his family, and now have access to all the riches of that family. You're a real member of that family. You're not the half-forgotten stepchild that somebody picked up on the highway one day and you never went back home. You know, you're really part of this family, full-fledged. And we are expected to believe this promise, accept it as true, because it is. God gives no false promises, no vain hopes. He is the true God who speaks the truth and thus When he says we are his people and he is our God, he means it. It's a glorious reality and we have to live in the light of it. And so, you see, when I look at my children, I don't have to give them the judgment of charity, which is what some of my friends say. Well, yeah, I agree. We should look at our children with the judgment of charity. What do you mean judge? God says they belong to him. My judgment is I agree with God. And that's charitable, I assume, right? I don't have to presume that they're Christians until they prove otherwise. Why do I have to presume that? I don't merely pretend that they're Christians so they'll feel good about themselves and not get the wrong impression. I'm to view them and treat them as those that God, as God defines them. They belong to him. And I tell them, you belong to God. That answers a whole bunch of questions. And so if the question ever arises, should I go out and get drunk on Friday night? No, you belong to God. That's not the way we live, we're God's people. Is it okay to get a girlfriend and fornicate? No, that's not even a question. You belong to God. That's not the way we live. No, those are not options for you because you belong to God. You're his and that changes everything. It changes how you view yourself, how you view your life, how do you view every day, how you're to live because you belong to God. There's no question about it. He has claimed you. That's the truth. Now you see, this is what baptism signifies in seals. It not only symbolizes it, it seals this reality. When children are baptized, God by the power of the Holy Spirit joins them to Jesus. He unites our children to his son and admits them not only into the household of the faithful, that is the church, but also into the communion of the Trinity. You're baptized into the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. The name of God is the triune name of Father, Son, and Spirit, and you're baptized into that. That is, you become a member of that holy, divine, joyful, living, loving communion and community and fellowship. You become a part of that. Really and truly, that's what the Spirit does at baptism. Since, and you hear this, so Paul says, by baptism we're made partakers of the spirit in this way, in 1 Corinthians 12, by one spirit, we are all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and have all been made to drink into one spirit. Galatians 3 says, for you are all sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ, for as many as you have been, as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. You've been embraced, you've been united to him, and in him now you've become a part of the divine family. And since we're united to Christ, and since he has ascended into heaven, we are now seated with him in the heavenly places and made partakers of the glorious communion that exists between the Father and the Son and the Spirit, which is life. Life exists in him. To be a part and not be cut off from that communion is death. Even if you're walking around living and breathing and eating oatmeal, I don't care. You're still dead. If you're not a part of that divine communion, that's life. Fellowship with God. Fellowship and sharing the fellowship that is in the Lord. And so baptism signifies and seals our salvation. Which is why Peter says, baptism saves you. And he doesn't feel the need to qualify it, even though, of course, we know that the Bible teaches you're not saved apart from faith, you're not saved If you're an unbeliever, we know all that. But Peterson, she says, you got the rest of the Bible, you know that. But you need to understand that baptism brings about the reality, which is salvation, that's deliverance out of Adam, joining you into the resurrected living son. That's deliverance. If I've ever seen it, that's salvation, Peter says. Baptism gives us and our children our fundamental identity. We are given the new name of the triune God, being baptized into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And so once baptized, our children no longer have their identity in Adam anymore, or in the world, or with Satan. Rather, they are identified with Jesus and bear his name. and they don't belong to themselves and they don't belong to us anymore. They belong to God. You see that's why when you have baptism you bring your children forward and the father gives over his son or daughter to the minister. who is the representative of Jesus. In effect saying, this child was born in Adam because that's who we are. But he has the promise that God would take him out of Adam into his son. And so we give him up as a family. We give him up as the natural parents so that the Father can now adopt him and bring him alive in the new family, in the resurrected family. And the whole thing is reenacted before our eyes and we see the Spirit do this very glorious, amazing work with ordinary water, with sinful people. It's a beautiful, amazing thing that the Spirit does. And that gives our children their fundamental identity. I've told my sons, you have to understand, you are a Wilkins, that's okay. But the main thing you are, and your basic identity is Christian. You belong to Christ, you belong to Jesus. And that's the name that must live on. Our family name may die out, all right, that's okay. It's not wrong to say, oh, I don't want our family to die. No, I want our family to be a part of this whole business, man. But you see, the point is, the most important family is God's family. Your fundamental name is Christian. That's who you are. Because of baptism, that's who you are. That name is upon you. Now, if you rebel against it, if you despise it, if you trample upon it, that name will send you into a greater condemnation at the last day. But that name is upon you and it does not go away. So this is the reality that is to govern and mold our children, their souls and their minds, all their days. They must never wonder who they are. Because it's clear God has made it plain who they are. And this means that our role as parents is to bring up our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. We don't view them as outsiders who have to be cajoled to get in. They're not outside the house and we don't have to cook these great meals, open the windows and put a fan out there and try to tell them, look at all, we got good stuff in here, you need to come on in here. They're not outside the boat floundering and we're throwing them lifelines trying to get them into the boat. They're in. They have been brought in by God's sovereign and merciful grace. They are brought in, they belong to God, and by that they now have a God who loves them, they're in his family, and they must grow up to love him and be faithful to him. And as parents, we're required to give all diligence to teaching them who they are and how and what that means. And that includes not only providing godly instruction and faithful discipline and an environment conducive to growing in holiness in the home, but it also means placing them in faithful churches where they may learn and hear faithful instruction, receive faithful oversight, be a part of the living communion of the community of God, the living fellowship where the Spirit molds us. He ministers to us through one another. And you've gotta be with that community. You've gotta be a living part of that community to be the recipient of God's mercy and grace and transforming love. That's how God works on you. Now, we've got it in our individualistic idea. My friends used to say, I'm going on a personal retreat. And I wonder, what does that mean, personal retreat? They said, well, that means I'm going off by myself. I'm going up on a really high mountain. I'm going to spend the whole weekend just communing with God. I said, why would you do that? Well, that's holy. I mean, that's the way God speaks to you there. And I used to think, wow, I guess that's good. Maybe someday I'll do that. I never had the nerve to do it, because I knew within 30 minutes I'd want to be getting back down. I'd get hungry and want a Twinkie or something. There you are on top of the mountain. What are you going to do? The idea is being alone with God is good. But you remember what God said to Adam. It's not good to be alone, which means I don't want to be alone with you. I want you to be with people, because I'm not alone. God's not alone. And he wants us not to be alone. And that's not the way he ministers to us. He ministers in the context of the body. Just like, you see, what if my finger said, you know what, not that I'm unhappy with your body, but I'm a little bored. I have to tell you, I need to go and be renewed. So I'm going to go take a trip to San Francisco for a couple of weeks and maybe I'll come back and be, you know, I'll really be excited about being a part of your body again. Okay, well in two weeks, guess what? We don't want you back because you stink. You're dead. You're not going to live apart from the body. You try to get off by yourself, you're going to die. That's the way it works. Too many mountain retreats are bad for you in that way, if you go by yourself, unless you're really working on something for a good reason. But you see, this is not the way we think, but we've got to start thinking like this. I can't exist by myself. I have to have you. I have to have you. You say, but you get so aggravated. I know, but I need the aggravation. You say, well, wait a minute, you're not the one that's primarily aggravated. It's us. I say, but you need the aggravation. You need that kind of interaction. You must have it to grow in likeness to Jesus. That's the way this works. And so our children must understand this. They have to live in context of God's family, and we have to give them an example of righteousness and repentance. And they've got to see that in us and in others. You've got to be an example of righteousness. You say, oh no, I can't be that, I'm imperfect. That's not what righteousness means. Righteousness doesn't mean perfect, it means faithful, doing the right thing. So that when you sin, what's the righteous thing to do? Repent. And so the righteous man repents when he sins. And he's righteous. Still, Job was righteous. Not because Job was sinless, but because Job was faithful. He did the right thing. And when he sinned, he asked forgiveness and he prayed for his children and all of that. That's what a righteous man does. He confesses and forsakes his sin day by day. And he's serious about being holy and pleasing in God's sight. And so Jesus in this passage goes on to call all men to deal with sin seriously. Listen, this is again another passage we kind of take out of the context, but this is all in the context of the little ones and how you have to treat the little ones and what the little ones must have. He says, after woe unto the world because of offenses for offenses must come, but woe to that man by whom the offense comes. And if your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off. And you see that passage, that verse that we talk about all the time, this is how you deal with sin. You cut off your hand, you pull out your eye. Jesus said that. That's in the context of not offending his little ones. So he's saying, church, this is how you have to deal with sin because I have my little ones there and I don't want them seeing you excusing your sin, covering it up, blaming other people for it. I want you confessing it and forsaking it. And when you offend one another, ask forgiveness and be reconciled. My little ones dare not be offended and stumbled because of your bad example. You see, that's the context here. He wants the little ones to see how to live faithfully, and that's the whole point of being in the family. You learn how to live, you learn how to believe. Yeah, faith is a gift, but faith is a gift that grows in the context of the faithful, the household of faith, the household of family. We learn how to believe God as we see others believe him and trust him. We learn how to obey. We learn how to repent and believe. We learn how to love. We learn how to be patient. All of these things. And so you have to deal with your sin so that anything that might cause the little ones to get the wrong idea of what it means to be righteous, will be put out of their way. They won't be stumbled by you. And if you refuse to do this, Jesus says, in verse 10 again, he says, take heed that you don't despise one of my little ones. He said, when you don't do that, you're despising my children. And that is what upsets me, he says. Don't despise them. Don't treat them as if they're unimportant. Don't act like they mean nothing. He says, you do that, you're in big trouble because you're despising one of my little ones and the angels in heaven always, their angels in heaven always see the face of my father who is in heaven. The father doesn't despise them. And you better not either. Your repentance is not for you. It's for the world, not only for you. Your faithfulness is not only for you, it's for the world. And when you live in the church, you've got to keep in mind, it's not just your children that are your responsibility. Remember, baptism transforms everything. You say, yes, I will assist these parents in the Christian nurture of this child. And that child becomes yours in a way. And God holds you also accountable to helping rear that child in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. You see, not only must parents deal with their sins, but the church must deal with its sins faithfully. And in the same passage again. Matthew 18, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. Now we take that passage out of context and we're not using it illegitimately to say this is how discipline is to go on, this is what you're to do when you sin against your brother, you go and be reconciled. That's all true, but it's in the context of not causing the little ones to stumble that that's true. Why is that important? It's because when a church doesn't do that, the little ones get up and they say, yeah, yeah, I know, I know what this all is about. That means, you know, the Hackenthackers hate the Zingos, and the Zingos won't sit with the Smiths, and the Smiths hate the Thomases, and there's this long feud that's been going on for years in our church. It's all hypocritical. And this is not real, it's all a game, it's all play. You just come in, say the things, you don't mean it. The little ones get to thinking that's what real life is and it isn't. And Jesus says, that's what makes me angry. When my people despise the little ones and don't care about one another enough to be righteous examples. No family, you see, is sufficient to train children by themselves. It might not take a village to raise a child, but it certainly takes a church to raise a child. And if you think I don't need the church in my child rearing, then you're foolish. And you're going to pay for that folly in one way or another. Unless, in God's providence, you are truly in a desert place, like the old guys used to say. Yeah, if you're off somewhere and they're in the church within walking or riding distance, then we understand God makes up for that. That's alright. And you better try to get out of that place as soon as you can, but the fact is sometimes you're stuck in a place like that. All right, well then you do everything you can and God will bless, don't worry, he'll bless you. But when you have opportunity to be in a congregation of God's people and refuse, you're asking for judgment and you're asking for your children to stumble. You're not sufficient. It takes a church to raise a child, just like it takes a church to raise you. You gotta have God's people to be like Jesus. This is critical. We belong to God's household. They are his children. They must be like him. They must learn to hate sin and love righteousness. Children are required to receive the instruction and discipline given to them by their parents and through the church. in faith and love, trusting in the Lord Jesus, repenting of their sins, being faithful to him all their days. And we have to teach them that from the moment of their birth onwards. They must always know that the living God is their father, that Jesus is their great elder brother and savior, and the Holy Spirit is their great comforter and exhorter and the one who equips them and strengthens them for life. They're not outsiders, they're not semi-pagans who need some sort of crisis experience before they are held accountable for their lives and choices. They belong to God. They are members of his family and they must never think of themselves in any other way. And when they grow up like that, they begin to realize, oh, oh, I see what this is. Abraham is my father. That's true. And Jacob, and Isaac, and Joseph, all the great patriarchs, that's our family, you see? That happened to us. Remember how Moses, speaking to the second generation, describes everything that maybe they really, most of them didn't really participate in, but he says, this is what God did for us. And he's talking about the generation that's perished that really is not there present, but that's part of the family. This is what God has done for our family. And you begin to realize that God not only has loved Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, but he loves me. Yeah, he loved Joseph and Daniel and Isaiah and Jeremiah and he loves me in the same way and I'm one of that. That's like my, those are my great fathers and uncles in the faith. I'm in that family. And the more you learn of God's love, the more you understand that his love means he doesn't excuse wickedness and rebellion. So this means that the paradigm for child rearing in Christian homes is nurture. It's nurture rather than evangelism. Our children are to be viewed and treated as who they are. And this is not presumption. It's simply acknowledging the reality. Presumption is assuming something you can't know for certain. And this, what we're doing here is taking God at his word, you see? So we don't have to presume they've been predestined from the foundation of the world to persevere to the end. I don't know that. I can't know that. That's not been revealed. And God says the secret things belong to me. And it's none of your business, frankly. What you're to be concerned about are the things that I revealed to you, the things you can know for certain. So I'm to live in the light of what I know for certain. And what I know for certain is what God has said. And God has said, look, they belong to me. I've joined them to my Son, they are part of my family, they are members of my Son's body, and thus they really and truly are mine. They are Christians because they're united to the Anointed One. They are united to Christ. Now will this lead to presumption? That's a good question. Will our children presume on the grace of God? Will parents not be tempted to think that just all you gotta do is just get your children baptized somehow or other, and then they're okay. Whew, thanks be to God, that's done. So you walk out after, you know, they're three months old, you get them, or they're a couple of weeks old, you get them baptized, you walk out and go, oh, whew, glad that's over. No, if you understand covenant, then you know that's not how covenants work. Covenants are conditional. The blessings of the covenant are granted to those who fear the Lord and who faithfully keep his commandments. Listen to Psalm 103, the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him. and his righteousness to children's children to such as keep his covenant and to those who remember his commandments to do them. Yeah, this is yours forever. You never have to worry about the Lord ever turning back on His promise. But if you turn your back and trample upon His love and mercy, well then what do you expect? What would you expect in the family? What if one of your children one day gets up and says, you know what, I'm sick and tired of being in this family and I spit on all of you. And I think this is horrible and I've hated you for a long time and I've decided I don't want to ever see you again and I don't want you to have anything to do with me. Well that would be incredibly tragic. That would be awfully sad. But he shouldn't walk out of the house thinking he's still got an inheritance. Right? And it's not because I don't want to give him one. And it's not because he didn't really have it. He had it. But now he's trampled upon it. He's treated the grace of this family as if it was a vain thing. He's turned his back on grace. He's fallen away from grace. You see, all of that language is what Paul uses to describe apostates, those who were part of the family and then despise Jesus and the love of God. They have turned their backs on the favor and love of the living God, and this, they have forfeited that which was truly given to them by promise. So this means that if our children refuse to love and trust the Lord, they will receive a greater condemnation than the world, and they need to know that too. That's the way it is. They will receive a greater condemnation than the world that's never known Him. God makes it plain, it'll be more tolerable for the people of Sodom and Gomorrah than it will be for those who had the mercies of Jesus displayed in their midst. But this means, you see, that we don't leave them to decide what they want to be and which side they want to be on. The choice has been made for them by God in his sovereign mercy. And therefore, the model of covenant training is discipleship, not evangelism. Of course, our children need to repent and believe in Jesus, but they do so as those who belong to him by sovereign mercy and grace. and by sovereign claim. They are not enemies, they are not strangers, they are not alienated, they are not outsiders, they are not living on the screen porch of the household of the faithful waiting full admittance. They are members of the household. They've been brought all the way into the house and adopted as the children of God in his family. And they must be certain of that reality so that they understand if they ever turn away, they are losing everything. If they ever despise the Lord Jesus and his love, they lose everything. They lose the world. They lose time and eternity. They lose everything. We have to take the reality of this, this reality central, make it central to our discipline. Philip Henry, who was Matthew Henry's father, and probably the one who really wrote Matthew Henry's commentary, because Philip Henry would get all of his, I forget how many children, like 18 or 36 or something like that, had a lot of children. He would gather them around and he would teach them and then he would make them go to their rooms and write out what he had just taught them. And so Matthew Henry probably got a lot of his commentary just from listening to dad and he had to go into his room and write it all out. And so dad would expound a passage, Matthew would go back to his room and write it all out and later gets it all published and gets all the credit. Good. But Philip Henry said this, whenever my children rebel, I take hold of them by their baptisms. He said, I lay hold of them by their baptism. Because basically he's saying, I just tell them, you're forgetting who you are. You're not acting like who you are. You've forgotten the love of the Lord for you, and you need to straighten up. That's not the way you're to be. He reminds them of their identity. And they have an obligation because of who they are to be faithful to God, who entered into covenant with them before they knew him. And it's vital that our children have this clear sense that they don't belong to the world, they don't have a right to live like the world, look like the world, talk like the world. They don't belong to them. They belong to the living, loving, triune God. So this covenant then is a positive blessing to the children. It's not a no man's land of neutrality where you get a chance to choose which way you want to go. Nor is it merely a place of great opportunity that can become great blessing. Rather it's a relationship of grace and favor. The covenant is the term used to describe the relationship that God has with his friends and with his loved ones. And so to be in covenant is to be a recipient of the love and mercy of God. To be in covenant is to receive the grace of God. And remember that the word grace is favor. It means favor. Which is why Jesus received the grace of God. He didn't need it to forgive his sins, but he had the favor of his father. And that's what covenant means. It's unavoidably that. If God is your God, it can be nothing else. God gives himself to those who are his and takes them to be his own and therefore we should have the expectation that our children will grow up in faith as opposed to living like pagans and being converted later in life. The normal pattern of Christian experience for children reared in covenant homes, in faithful covenant homes is not conversion, but growing in faithfulness. Yeah, you have crises just like you, maybe some of you had this wonderful blessing to grow up in a faithful home where you were taught from as long as you know, you love Jesus, he's the Savior, you worshiped him, and you know that in your life you had certain points where you came to critical issues where it was almost like, all right, are you gonna be faithful or are you gonna deny me? And you continued to persevere. It was a crisis and you grew through that crisis and you went to another level of understanding what it means to be a child of God and be a part of the people of God. So you grew from that. You have these moments of great critical and remarkable turning points. But that's the normal experience, not living like a pagan until you're 18 and all of a sudden coming down to the front and weeping half the night and being forgiven. That's not to despise all that. It's just, of course, there are people that are actually converted like that. That's fine. That's okay. That's just not normal for the children who are reared in covenant homes. Now you say, well, that seems like the norm today. Well, I confess it does, but I think it's more because we've been trained to think that's how people become Christians. So we kind of expect that, and you find that a lot of children go through it, because that's the kind of culture, that's what we've been taught to expect from our culture, that's how a person gets saved, that's how you become a child of God, and so everybody kind of expects that, and you get that. But in the Bible, you don't see that. No, well, somebody says, well, in the Bible, it looks like the pattern of conversion. You got all these conversions. Well, what we see is adults who've been raised Jewish come to the truth that Jesus is Messiah and believing in him as the fulfillment of all the types and shadows of the old covenant. Now, that was a true, real, great, and majestic conversion. But even so, you see, Paul's experience on the Damascus Road very soon was not the norm. That was pretty dramatic. But dramatic experiences pretty soon in the first century didn't become the norm. Remember that Timothy was one who was from his youth, from his infancy, had known the holy scriptures, Paul says. He'd been trained from a youth. And Timothy became pretty much the norm, not Paul, for how a covenant child would grow up in the faith. And this will particularly be the case when we begin to take seriously what the covenant, what God says about our children. Because God has given himself to our children and because he desires their salvation, we can trust his promises. to us for them. He has taken them as his own as the sign of baptism makes plain and we're to rear them in the light of this amazing reality. Baptism is the visible confirmation that all that God has said is true. At baptism our children are given Jesus and Jesus is given to them and they are to be reared in the light of that truth. And they are to know that they belong to God and never talk to forsaken but to trust Him all their days. Now this observation, the observation recorded for us in the Proverbs is true. Proverbs 22 verse 6, train up a child in the way that he should go. And when he is old, he will not depart from it. Remember that this, however, is a proverb. It is an inspired observation of what normally is true. That's exactly what is normally the case. Proverbs are not promises, though, without exceptions. In Proverbs chapter 3, verse 1, for example, you have my son, don't forget my law, but let your heart keep my commandments. For length of days, long life, and peace they will add unto you. Now, this is not a promise without exception. It doesn't mean that those who are faithful to keep the law will always going to live to be 100. Some don't. Some live to be 15. Some live to be 20. Some live to be 35 and 45. The point is that, yes, sure, this is normally the case. That's what proverbs observe. A stitch in time saves nine. But that doesn't mean that if it saves 27, it was false, right? or saves only three, or doesn't save any stitches, as it turns out. This is the way things normally do. If you keep the law, if you're faithful to God, you're going to have a long life with great peace and shalom. Rebels and fools normally die young, normally. That's true. And they don't enjoy peace, that's true. There are exceptions. There are trophies of grace. There are some museum pieces of grace. But ordinarily, rebels will be destroyed. And usually, they don't live long, long lives. Normally, a child who's given his own way, which is one way to read Proverbs 22, will not depart from it when he's old. That is, if you indulge a child and a child do whatever he wants all his life, One way of reading Proverbs 22 is that if you do that, if you train him up that way, then don't expect him to change when he gets older. He's going to be a selfish pig all his life. That's the way it is. But probably all of us can say, you know what, but I know a guy whose parents were just miserable. They were terrible parents. They gave him a key when he was five years old. They saw him at Christmas and Easter, ate dinner with him once or twice in his life, had one birthday party. I mean, they were awful parents. And he is the most godly, humble, gracious guy in the world. Because God loves to show his mercy and grace in remarkable ways. True enough, but most of those kids are not that way. Right? Most of the children who are reared like that are not. Ordinarily, if a child is trained faithfully in the ways of life, God blesses the faithfulness of his parents so that the children often continue on. Usually they continue on in the way they've been taught. But somebody says, yeah, but I know, I know that, you know, there were some parents that I think they were just faithful parents and yet they've got this rebellious son and it just looks terrible. Well, true enough. True enough, it happens. In the Bible, we kind of see this, don't we? There are those who are unfaithful. Sometimes there are a couple of ways, I guess, to look at this. One of the things is that sometimes faithful men are disobedient and foolish and unwise in their nurture of their children. their faithful men. But they really messed up with their children and their children show the effects of their unfaithfulness. I think Eli may be an example of that. David may be an example of that. Hezekiah may be an example of that. Godly men who were unfaithful and often foolish fathers at various points and their children suffered as a result. But you also have in Scripture rebellious sons who come from fathers who appear to be faithful. Samuel had unfaithful sons and there's no real indication in the scriptures that he was an unfaithful father. Now, if that's so, how do we deal with it? Well, I think you just say, well, there are a lot of, I don't know, I don't know how to deal with it ultimately. Maybe there's a real good answer to that. But you have to acknowledge the reality that our children are responsible for their unbelief. Yesterday I said, yeah, you know you ought to sit down with your son and say, what have I done to forfeit your honor and your respect? I think you should do that. But there's a real situation where the answer may be nothing. Right? And your son will probably, or often, he may respond and say, dad, honestly, you haven't done anything and I'm just being rebellious. All right. Still a good question to ask, but it's not always my fault. I'm taking responsibility for the rebellion. I want to be sure that I'm not doing anything that's encouraging it. And I don't want to always take his answer. He may not be willing to tell me. Maybe he's not. But the fact is, I want to try to get to this and deal with it. That's what taking headship means and responsibility means. But there are times when sons want to be unbelieving and rebellious, and daughters as well, and they have to take the blame for that unbelief, and it cannot be put all together on their parents' unfaithfulness, even when nobody is a perfect parent. You know, I've done more things than you can imagine to send all my children to hell. trying to be faithful, but being really imperfect and terrible. Sometimes in God's wise and holy purposes, he allows my sins and defects and inconsistencies to affect one of my children or more of them than others, or than the sins and defects and inconsistencies of my unfaithful neighbor, who has these very polite and gracious children. And you think, how does this happen? You know? He never, he beats them and curses them and does all that and they're just the sweetest kids in the world and here I am trying to do this and I've got these little, you know, adorables that need beatings every day, you know, just to stay in line. You just wonder what in the world's going on there. Well, God is working and his ways are not always clear. When our children rebel, we are to repent of our sins, correct and chasten them for their sins, and pray that the Lord will bless. But we have to take seriously our responsibility to give this Christian nurture to our children. God does indeed use means to bring about ends. There's no doubt about it. The means by which our children grow up in holiness and righteousness are the faithful, conscientious, repentant nurture of parents. Carelessness normally produces careless children. Arrogance normally produces arrogant children. You reap what you sow. But humble, diligent, prayerful faithfulness produces the blessings of God in humble, diligent, faithful children. Do you know who your children are? Do they know who they are? Equally important. They have been given the name of Jesus and brought into God's household and given immeasurable blessings and their calling is an all-embracive, comprehensive, and inescapable one. It's been sealed by their baptism. and they cannot fulfill their calling apart from the body of Christ. Without this reality clearly kept in our minds, we're going to fall into confusion over our goals as well as our methods with our children. Without this, we'll have the temptation to excuse laxity in discipline or training, but this guards us from the temptation to presumption as well. It prevents us from falling into despair. Remember who you are and remember who they are so that you can know the joy and gladness of the Lord all your days. Let's pray. Our Father, we pray that you will help us again to understand these things properly. Bless as we consider it more carefully and are able to see more, perhaps even better ways to understand these things so that we can teach our children and remind ourselves of your grace and mercy day by day. Uphold us then and strengthen us as parents and children for Jesus' sake. Amen.