him, in order that he may command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice, that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has spoken to him.' And the Lord said, because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grave, I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry against it. that has come to me, and if not, I will know. Then the men turned away from there and went towards Sodom, but Abraham still stood before the Lord. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the word of our God shall stand forever. In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and our faithful Savior, And God, we come as well in the power of the Holy Spirit asking that you would bless not only this reading of your word, but this exhortation of your word to your people. God, we ask that you would truly comfort the afflicted and that you would afflict the comfortable. You would comfort us and challenge us as we have need. We pray especially that you would open our eyes to behold wonderful things out of your word. And in particular, we would have a fuller and a fresher view of Jesus Christ, in whom is hid all the treasures of wisdom, knowledge, and glory. We ask this in his precious name, amen. You may be seated. At the Beijing Olympics in the summer of 2008, the 4x100 men's relay team was set for gold. They trained for years, for those last four years, really their whole lives. They were fast, they were ready, they were hungry for gold. And yet, very early on in that event, they were totally disqualified for one simple but completely devastating reason. They dropped the baton. If you watch the footage, one moment, the runner is running with the baton, and the next, it's clattered upon the ground, and in that instant, Olympic dreams vanished. It didn't matter, really, how fast they were, because they dropped the baton. What does that have to do with the Christian life? Well, what would it look like for us to drop the baton of discipleship. What would it look like for us to fail to pass on the faith to the next generation? Well, to get an idea of what that might look like, I'm gonna read you a statistic from the Barna Group back in 2006, and they were looking at young people in the church. And their conclusion was that of young people who had grown up in the church during a certain timeframe, 61% walked away in their 20s. Covenant children, many of them baptized, brought into the church, surrounded by privileges, surrounded by the means of grace. They hit their 20s and they're gone. They're already gone. That's what happens when we drop the baton of discipleship. When we read our Bibles, we pray, we come to church, we fellowship with believers, we perhaps even do evangelism, but somewhere in the midst of all our responsibilities, we do not pass on the faith to the next generation. We do not make the connection, we drop the baton of discipleship. What's the solution to that problem? I suggest to you as we look at our passage in Genesis 18, in particular verses 17 and 19, we receive an answer to that problem, a solution to that dilemma. Just to give you a little bit of context, here the Lord has come to Abraham and to Sarah and he's repeated the promise of a seed, Isaac, and Sarah laughs in unbelief. And just after that, the Lord comes, and he's on the cusp of going down, investigating, and destroying Sodom and Gomorrah, where Lot, the relatively righteous nephew of Abraham, lives. And this triggers a whole set of negotiations between Abraham and the Lord. Will the Lord spare Sodom and Gomorrah for the sake of so many righteous there? But before that, God asks a question. Shall I hide or conceal from Abraham what I am doing? Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing? In this moment, it's almost like a soliloquy. If you've ever seen a Shakespeare play, a soliloquy is where one actor stands on the stage and he opens up his mind to the audience. He lets them know what he's thinking. And here, as it were, God stands alone on the stage of history and he says, Shall I hide from Abraham? And we, as the audience, get to listen in on the Lord's own self-reflection. Shall I hide? And the answer is no. No, he's going to reveal to Abraham his plan. And in this context, the Lord gives a reason for that revelation, and we find it in verses 17 through 19. We'll read them again. And the Lord said, shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing Implicit answer, no, since Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him. For I have known him, in order that he may command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice, that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has spoken to him. The danger of dropping the baton of discipleship. And the answer, the solution we find in our text is simply this. God has chosen you to train up the next generation to bless the world. You, the congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, this is what the Lord has for you in his words. God has chosen you to train up the next generation to bless the world. In many ways, this is a charter for covenant nurture, a charter for covenant nurture, a task given to parents in particular, but it has relevance for the whole people of God, covenant nurture. This evening, I want us to explore this theme under three heads, simply these. The foundation of covenant nurture, the means of covenant nurture, and the purpose of covenant nurture. Let's begin with the first, the foundation of covenant nurture. If you look at these verses, this foundation is election. God's sovereign, unconditional, unmerited, unilateral choice. And we see that in verse 19 where it says, for I have known him. This intimate language of God's knowing Abraham is the language of election. For God to know him is to love him. For God to know him is to set his love upon him, to determine, to enter a relationship with him, to choose him. And in fact, if you're reading from the ESV or the NIV or the NASB, it's actually rendered that way, for I have chosen him. I love the way Derek Kidner renders it. He says, I have made him my friend. That's what election does. God looks down at sinners and makes them his friend with a sovereign, unconditional choice. So in context, election is part of God's explanation. This is why I'm not gonna hide what I'm gonna do from Abraham. He's my friend. I'm not going to cloak my secret counsels. I'll make them known. But it also, in this flow, provides a perfect foundation for covenant nurture. For I have known him. And there's a couple reasons why election is the perfect foundation for this task of nurturing the next generation. First, election is rooted in eternity. But it's also worked out in history. It's rooted in eternity. We know that from Ephesians 1-4, according as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world. It's rooted in eternity, God's eternal, everlasting decree. But it's also worked out in history. Particularly in the effectual call, you think of Genesis 12. God's elected Abraham, he's chosen him from all eternity, but in Genesis 12, he looks at this man dwelling among idolaters in Ur, and he sovereignly calls him out of that dark place and says, I'm gonna lead you to a new land. It's rooted in eternity, it's worked out in history. Second reason why this is the perfect foundation for covenant nurture is that Election is unconditional in character, but it also has implications for how we live. It's unconditional in character. Classic text on this is Romans 9, where God talking about Jacob and Esau says that before either of them had done anything either good or bad, what did the Lord say? Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated. Unconditional. Sovereign, good pleasure, love alone. But it also has implications for how we live. Going back to Ephesians 1, 4, it says, according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we might be holy and blameless before him. Notice that, the connection. God has chosen us, not so we could just remain in our sin and our misery, but He's chosen us to be holy and blameless before Him. Or even look at our text, it says, for I have known Him, I have chosen Him in order that He may command His children and His household after Him. Yes, it's unconditional, but it certainly has implications for how we live. And just to pause at this point, we have to be careful. We're Reformed people, we love the doctrines of grace, Beware of slipping into hyper-Calvinism, the sort of frozen, chosen mentality that God's sovereign and what I do doesn't matter one whit. Arminians cling to human responsibility, hyper-Calvinists cling to God's sovereignty, and the answer is the Bible teaches both. In fact, the one arises from the other. Just to quote a couple Paragraphs from our confessional standards, Westminster Confession in chapter 5, it says, although in relation to the foreknowledge and decree of God, the first cause, all things come to pass immutably and infallibly, yet by the same providence he ordereth them to fall out according to the nature of second causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently. And maybe even more clear in chapter three on God's eternal decree, it says, God from all eternity did by the most holy and wise counsel of his own will freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass yet. So as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established. Notice that last phrase, but rather established. This is the wonder of God's divine logic. You are responsible, not in spite of, but precisely because of God's sovereignty. Your thoughts, your words, your actions have meaning, value, and significance, not in spite of the fact, but precisely because they are included in God's sovereign plan. And that's why when we look at the Bible, we look at a text like this, we see two strands brought together, promise and obligation, privilege and duty, divine sovereignty and responsibility. They're not enemies, they're friends. For I have known Him. I want to encourage you as the congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, as those who profess the true faith together with your children, that the Lord declares to you this doctrine of election. I encourage you to take comfort from it. It's not merely a puzzle to solve. It's a truth to use rightly. Take comfort from it. Take motivation from it. It's rooted in history. It's rooted in eternity. It's worked out in history. It's unconditional in character. It has implications for how you live. For I have known him. You've been chosen for a purpose. And that takes us to our second point, not just the foundation of covenant nurture, But God's choosing you for a purpose leads us secondly to the means of covenant nurture. The means of covenant nurture. If you look at our text in verse 19, it says, for I have known him in order that he may command his children and his household after him. God's chosen you for a purpose. That purpose is covenant nurture. How do we do that? What are the means of covenant nurture. Well, if we look at our text, the principal verb is command. In order that he may command his children and his household after him. And this word command has the idea of instruction, admonition, exhortation, discipline, training, instruction in righteousness. Of course, we have this principle in Deuteronomy 6. The Bible says, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength, and these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hands. They shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorpost of your house, and on your gates. God's saying, teach them diligently, and do it all the time, every place, as you're walking around, when you're at the drugstore, when you're at the gas station, when you're rising up from bed, when you're going home late at night. Take the opportunity to instruct your children in the way of the Lord. And it's repeated, as we would expect in the New Covenant, in Ephesians chapter six. Begins with an exhortation to children, but it ends With an exhortation for parents, it says, and you fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord. So the primary means of covenant nurture is this whole life activity of biblical instruction, of Christian education, that he may command his children and his household after him. Now, of course, this is directed to Abraham, and it has particular relevance to fathers. Now, secondarily, it has relevance for mothers who are also parents with responsibility, and it also has relevance for anybody who's entrusted with the training of covenant youth. I know in this congregation, there's many people, some of which don't have children, but they're very much involved in the Sunday school, the catechids, all sorts of opportunities. to train up the next generation. But I say that it has particular relevance to fathers, because the father is the covenant head of his household. I like the way Doug Wilson puts it, he says, the father should be the resident theologian in the home. Now in saying that, you might get the idea that means I need to go to seminary, I need to learn Greek and Hebrew, I need to become a master at every theological loci, and That's not what this text is saying. What it is saying is, Father, is you have a high calling, you have a holy calling, a heavenly calling, and you need to know your Bible and your theology well enough to instruct your children and your household after you. And notice it's not simply children, but your household after you. You think of those words again from Ephesians, cleansing your wife with the water of the word. Anyone under your roof, and for Abraham this would have included adult servants, everyone in his household, he was challenged to instruct in the ways of the Lord. Command your children and your household after you. So the chief instructor's the father, the students are the children and all those within the home, but what is he to teach? What is the curriculum? Well, we know from Deuteronomy 6 that clearly the curriculum is founded upon the Bible as it's applied to all of life. And that means you need to declare and interpret God's mighty acts and words in history to your children. Tell them about creation, tell them about redemption, and show them how all of history is centered on the person and work of Jesus Christ, and in particular, his death and resurrection. But notice that the focus of the text, however important that is, the focus of the text is actually moral. In other words, you can have a perfect knowledge of redemptive history, and you can know your catechism backwards and forwards, but ultimately, God's plan for covenant nurture strikes at the very heart, the soul, and the marrow of who you are and who your children are. Look at verse 19, it says, that they keep the way of the Lord to do righteousness and justice. In other words, train them to be, by God's grace in Christ, covenant keepers. As those who walk with the Lord, who walk with the Lord blamelessly in their thoughts, their words, and their deeds, as those who repent of their sins and turn from their idols and embrace the Lord Jesus Christ, as those who walk closely with the Lord who attend to the means of grace, as those who believe the promises, obey the commands, and tremble at the warnings. Keep the way of the Lord, and to do it by doing righteousness and justice. We see this in so many texts of scripture. We think of Genesis 17, just a chapter before, and the Lord comes to Abraham and he says, I am the Lord God Almighty, walk before me. and be blameless. And then he says, keep covenant with me. And he applies it to everyone in his household. The whole household is circumcised and then is instructed in the ways of the Lord. We see this in Psalm 5. Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness. Because of my enemies, make my way straight before me. Or Psalm 15, the psalmist asks, who's gonna dwell with the Lord? It's the one who walks blamelessly. who does what is right, who speaks truth in his heart to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice. And perhaps one of my favorite verses of all, Proverbs 12, 28, the way of righteousness is life and the pathway thereof, there is no death. Parents, that's the way that we're called to train our children to follow, to walk in the way of the Lord in all the ways of love to Him and loyalty. This is the content and the purpose of God's instruction. I don't know about you, but as a parent myself with three sons, three, three and under, I look at a passage like this and I think, who is sufficient for these things? I've been given the task, I've been given the responsibility to command my children, my wife, everyone in my household to train them, to nurture them, to walk in this way. And the Lord in some mysterious economy of his providence is actually tying these two things together. that my faithful covenant nurture is meant in his economy to lead to faithful covenant children. He's binding these things together, and I'm called to fulfill this responsibility. Who is sufficient for these things? I want to encourage you, as you think about this, there's a couple pitfalls we could fall into. One of them is despair. Really hard responsibility. I feel like my children are a disaster. I feel like it's all my fault. I'm going to throw up my hands before the task has even begun. Another temptation might be pride. My kids behave well. They conform outwardly. They look pretty good. They dress better than their peers in the world. I feel good about myself. I feel good about what I'm doing. And the answer is not despair and not pride. It's using the means of grace with faith, hope, and love. And really, this whole passage should drive you to dependence upon the Lord and His grace. And that means that when you fail as a parent, let's say you're having a day that's not going like you expected, and one of your children does something and you blow up, and you're irritated, and you lose your temper, and you notice that the reason why your children are so irritated and selfish might have something to do with the fact that you're irritated, selfish and you're rebuked out of their own mouths and those days happen confess your sins of the Lord run to Christ and pray for forgiveness and pardon by his blood and he will forgive your sins in that same motion cry out to the Lord for enabling empowering grace to do what only he can do Pray that the Lord would use and attend these means and to do what only He can do, which is to save and keep our children. Yes, train up your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Take responsibility and even admit your faults. Even be willing to ask forgiveness of your children and your wife when you fail. Ask for God's enabling grace, but also entrust your children to the Lord, knowing that they are His children, the sheep of His pasture. In terms of practical application, well, you have responsibilities in different directions. We have responsibilities for parents, we have responsibilities for children. For parents, I want to encourage you. to do a number of things. One, do family worship. For me, when I first thought about family worship, I thought it needed to be something so big and so complicated that I would never actually do it. That we needed to have this set order of liturgy and it needed to be very, very in-depth. And maybe for you in your situation, family worship looks like gathering around the kitchen table after supper, reading a passage of scripture, praying, singing the doxology, tucking the kids into bed. And if you do that every day for the rest of their lives, that will make a difference. That's family worship. A few key resources that you might want to avail yourself of. If you don't feel as confident leading family worship, consider using the Reformation Heritage Study Bible. It's got great application questions to walk through. Whatever you want to do. There's Confessing the Faith by Chad Van Diksorm. It would be helpful to help inculcate doctrine in the home. There are all sorts of means at your disposal. We think about catechism, the wonderful practice of catechism rooted in scripture, but also great precedent in our own tradition. Maybe it's putting on a CD of the child's catechism in the car, reciting catechism questions before the children go to school. Whatever it is, seek the Lord's guidance and wisdom to rightly apply this truth, that as you have opportunity throughout the day, formally, informally, train up your children, pray for them, and perhaps most important of all, model Christian piety before them. It's one thing to teach these things, even to teach them very, very practically, to apply God's word to the whole sphere of life, but it's another thing, having soaked all of this in prayer, to walk before your children imperfectly, but sincerely following Christ. and then saying, imitate me as I imitate Christ. Now, there are other people who aren't parents, and I don't want to leave you out. We have wonderful opportunities in Sunday school, I mentioned before, catechids, opportunities to support parents and to help train up a next generation to serve the Lord. And beyond that, remember that this is about passing on the baton of discipleship. And yes, we're talking about children in the covenant home, but this also has great relevance for every child of God. Even adult converts need to be instructed in the ways of the Lord. So this is really about discipleship, about being a disciple and making disciples. When it comes to covenant children, you have great privileges, great privileges. And I want to speak to you for a moment. Those of you who perhaps were born in this church baptized in this church, you've grown up surrounded by covenant privilege, you have a responsibility to repent of your sin and believe the gospel. You have a wonderful responsibility and privilege to embrace Jesus Christ freely offered to you in the gospel, not to grow hardened by these privileges, not to grow indifferent to these privileges, but to own them for yourselves, to own the covenant for yourself, to close with Christ, to embrace Jesus Christ freely offered to you in the gospel. I encourage you as well to grow in covenant consciousness, grow in the realization that you do not belong to yourself. You belong to God. So people of God as a whole, God has chosen you to train up the next generation in the way of the Lord. We've seen the foundation of covenant nurture, it's election. We've seen the means of covenant nurture, it's this whole life instruction in righteousness. But what happens when we fulfill this duty? What's God's bigger picture and bigger purpose. Well, so far we've almost had sort of a zoom lens focus on the Christian home and the covenant family, but now we're going to take a wide angle lens and pan out to see God's purposes for the whole world. And that takes us to our final point, the purpose of covenant nurture. The purpose of covenant nurture. If you read this text, there's a series of purpose statements. For I have known him in order that, the first purpose, that he may command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice, second purpose statement, that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has spoken to him. Derek Kidner says this passage moves from grace to law to grace. It moves from the grace of divine election to the law of human instruction to the grace of divine promises and we see that God's purpose, his purpose for covenant nurture is bound up and contained in his promises. It says that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has spoken to him. What has God spoken to Abraham? Well, look at the first verse in our text, verse 17. It says, and the Lord said, shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing, since Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him. That's what God has spoken to Abraham. It's the promises of the Abrahamic covenant. And as we look through the previous chapters, Genesis 12, 15, 17, there are four key promises that emerge. We have the promise of a seed, the promise of a people, this seed that's going to crush the head of the serpent, this seed that's Isaac, but that ultimately is fulfilled in Christ. We have a second promise, the promise of a land, a place for this people to dwell in. The third promise, a promise of relationship, where God says, I will be a God to you and to your seed after you. And the fourth promise, the final promise, is really the climactic one, where God says, in your seed, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. The purpose, God's ultimate purpose in this way of covenant nurture is that all the nations, all the families of the earth would be blessed. And the reason why this is so climactic when we think about the Bible's storyline, in the book of Genesis, we get to the Tower of Babel and the nations are utterly scattered. We've had that avalanche of sin from Adam to Cain to Nimrod to the Tower of Babel and God disperses the nations, confuses their languages. But with this promise, God is not only going to have a seed and a land and a relationship, he's going to regather those scattered nations. He's going to bring those rebellious nations back and bless all the nations in Abraham. When does this happen? When has this happened? To answer that question, we need to remember who is speaking to Abraham in Genesis 18, 17 to 19. In this account, there are three men who come to Abraham's house. And then two of them go on to Sodom, and one remains. And that one appearance of a man is identified in this passage as God, as Yahweh Himself. And if we look through the whole Old Testament, it becomes clear that the person speaking with Abraham is an appearance of none other than the pre-incarnate Son of God. The one speaking to Abraham is the one who would take on flesh, the one who would truly be the seed of Abraham. We read from Galatians 3 in our earlier reading, and it was clear from that passage that the seed ultimately is not many only, but one, and that seed is Christ. So let's reread this passage in light of Christ's coming, and when we do that, we shift from looking not simply at Abraham and Isaac and his children, And we focus on God the Father and God the Son. God the Father is the perfect parent who commands and nurtures his son to keep the way of the Lord and to do righteousness and justice. And Jesus Christ, the seed of Abraham, is the perfect son who keeps the way of the Lord, who perfectly does righteousness and justice, and does it all obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. He's buried, he's raised up, justified by the Spirit, he ascends into heaven, and then he pours out his Spirit on all flesh. And according to Galatians, that promised Holy Spirit is part of God's blessing all the nations through Abraham. God has done it. And as we come into the new covenants, we're able to realize that this charter for covenant nurture in Genesis 18 is in many ways integrated with the great commission of our Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew 28. Let's compare the two very briefly. In Genesis 18, we have the nations of the earth blessed in Abraham. Matthew 28, Jesus says, make disciples of all nations. Genesis 18, we have an initiation sign of circumcision. Abraham is called in Genesis 17 to circumcise his entire household. Well, Matthew 28, make disciples, how? By baptizing them. Genesis 18, we have instruction. Command your children and your household after you. Matthew 28, Jesus says, teaching them to observe all things that I've commanded you. Begin to realize that covenant nurture is the way in which God is realizing his purposes. Not simply in the Abrahamic covenant, but in the new covenant. Not simply in this charter for covenant nurture here, but in the great commission in Matthew 28. And a beautiful illustration of this pattern is found in the book of Acts when we see the gospel being proclaimed not simply to Jews, though it is proclaimed to Jews first, but also to the Gentiles. It's proclaimed to Gentiles. Heads of household are converted. Whole households are baptized. Whole households are catechized. The blessing of the nations has come. As you, by God's grace, fulfill this duty of covenant nurture, God is realizing His purposes to bless the nations. Covenant nurture is the way, not only in which children are raised up in the fear and admonition of the Lord, but also the way in which adult converts are trained to walk in the way of righteousness. If we drop the baton of discipleship. whether with regard to our children or with regard to adult converts, we run the terrible risk that although the church of the Lord Jesus Christ will advance, it will not advance through us. That as far as we are concerned, it is as if the faith has died with us. But it need not be so. Rather, rather than dropping the baton, take comfort from these words, take challenge from these words that God has chosen you. He's chosen you for a purpose, to train up the next generation to bless the world, to train up the next generation to walk in the way of the Lord. For I have known him. in order that he may command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and righteousness, that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he has spoken to him and of him, the blessing of the entire world." God's chosen you for a purpose, and so as mothers, when you hear the infant crying at three in the morning, or his father is when you're tempted to lash out at your child in a fit of anger. For all of us, when we're tempted to think that what we're doing isn't that meaningful, remember that God has chosen you to train up the next generation. This is the blessing of Abraham. This is the charter for covenant nurture. Let us pray. Father, we come to you through Jesus Christ, and we confess that we are not sufficient for these things. We are struck both by our great privileges, but also by our great responsibilities. Lord, we pray that we would never despise or lose sight of our privileges in Christ, At the same time, we would never despair or lose sight of our responsibilities, but rather, Lord, taking comfort from our privileges, give us grace to fulfill all our duties, not to earn merit with you, but out of gratitude, because this is the way of life. We pray all this in Jesus' name, amen.