Parenting and The Gospel
Psalms: Exalting King Jesus • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 39:07
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· 50 viewsSince God gives us children as a gift to steward, we must do so by sharpening arrows with restful wartime mentality for His glory.
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Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth.
Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.
Prayer
Parenting and the Gospel
Shooting Arrows for God's Glory
We have been studying the book of Job, but today we are taking a break from that study to address parenting and raising children.
Today’s message is different from usual but I felt was necessary.
It will be an exposition of Psalm 127, but my intention is to lay before you a vision for Christian parenting.
It’s impossible in one message to lay out everything that the Bible says about parenting wisely.
But today, I want to lay forward to you a vision for parenting with an eye toward dedicating our children.
Since God gives us children as a gift to steward, we must do so by sharpening arrows with restful wartime mentality for His glory.
The passage I want us to use as a launching pad is Psalm 127.
Psalm 127 could be best summarized as a Psalm on human flourishing.
Human flourishing could be described as the necessary elements for people to thrive.
This thriving being the building of dwellings, the security of the city as a whole, and finally the family.
Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.
This Psalm begin by reflecting on two different activities that are a result of human flourishing.
Building and security.
If the Lord doesn’t build it, it won’t last.
If the Lord doesn’t watch over the city, it won’t be protected.
The author is wanting us to see that all of human flourishing is a gift from God.
If this is true, then there is only one natural response.
It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.
Solomon is very clear, since God is the ONE who gives all of these things, we should be able to rest in Him.
We are NOT ones who eat the bread of anxious toil because our God gives all of these things.
What’s interesting though is what he goes on to say…
In Psalm 127, we see a clear picture of how Solomon viewed children.
The Reward of Children
The Reward of Children
“Gift from God”
Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.
What do we mean when we say a child is a reward?
The word that Solomon uses is “heritage” which could also mean a possession or a gift.
The word heritage has fallen out of common use...
but it was something that people would inherit after another person passed away.
Solomon here is viewing children as a gift from God.
Children, in every circumstance, are a gift.
They are never an inconvenience, a burden, or a “mishap”
Do you agree that children really are a gift from the Lord?
Maybe you would agree that some of your children are a gift from the Lord, except that one!
But what Solomon says here is more profound.
Every child is a gift from the Lord.
A Posture of Life
A Posture of Life
“Valuing What God Values”
Cultural Critique - Despising of Children
This concept that children are a gift from God has counter-cultural assumptions.
If you pay attention in our culture, you will see a tenor of people despising children.
Notice what happens when a child screams in the grocery store.
People become annoyed, frustrated, and over all angry about it.
From annoyance of a child screaming to the grotesque assumption that children are disposable in abortion.
This concept of children being viewed as a gift is critically important.
“Parenting is a lifelong commitment. So no matter when you decide to become a parent, you’ve got to be totally sure it’s what you want to do for a very long time.” — Planned Parenthood
As Planned Parenthood has said, they believe that deciding when to become a parent is completely up to us.
This is completely and utterly false.
Psalm 127, tells us that children are a gift from the hand of God.
This means that God is the ONE who gives and the ONE who withholds.
If children are withheld, then it is God who withholds them.
Or as Jacob reminded Rachel in Genesis 29:2
Genesis 30:2 (ESV)
“Am I in the place of God, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?”
So it’s important to know that the Lord withholds children..
But the flip side is also true.
If children are given, then it is God who gives them.
As Jacob would later remind his brother,
Genesis 33:5 (ESV)
“The children whom God has graciously given your servant.”
The Lord is the ONE who withholds and the ONE who gives.
Children are never an inconvenience, a burden, a hardship, they are a gift.
For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.
That means even if a child has deformities, medical issues, or even physical or psychological impairments.
They are a gift.
Now this applies to individual’s to regard their children as a gift, but it also applies to the larger body of Christ.
So church, this means we are to have a posture of life toward children.
Now more than ever, we as a church need to love and care for children.
Even when there may be more noise in service.
Hear that extra noise as God’s blessing upon our congregation.
Now because they are a gift to us, that means that we do not have ownership of our children.
There is a huge implication here for us.
Since children are a gift then we must be GOOD STEWARDS.
Stewardship of Our Gift
Stewardship of Our Gift
“Giving Up Our Rights”
We are entrusted by God to take care of our children.
To provide for them, and to protect them, but we do NOT own them.
They are NOT mini-slaves that we have for 18 years and then they leave.
They are to be stewarded for God’s glory.
Direction
Direction
“Course of Life”
Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.
Now like I have mentioned, the Proverbs are like the grain of how life normally operates.
I want to make something very clear in this moment, and its a distinction between promises and wisdom.
This Proverbs tells us what we should do if we want to be wise.
But it does not PROMISE us we will succeed.
“Dedicate a child according to what his way demands.” (DeRouchie)
We are to be the ones cultivating potential we see within a child.
This does not mean we simply say,
“Let a boy do what he wants, and he will become a self-willed adult incapable of change! Raise him in accordance with his wayward heart, and he will stay wayward” (Clifford, 197).
What this Proverb is presenting to us is the need to shepherd a child in the way we see he/she needs directed.
So it requires a close ear and eye of a shepherd to be in tune with what they need.
It is required that we direct our children in the way of godliness.
We pay attention if they are little rebels who like to break the rules or self-righteous rule keepers.
Because they will need shepherded differently.
But there is an intentional moral shaping which must take place from parents toward children.
SO how do we go about doing that?
Goals vs. Hopes
Goals vs. Hopes
What we can do though is the following...
Goal – Setting a plan for what we have control over.
Goal – Setting a plan for what we have control over.
You must have control over a goal.
A goal requires you to have control over it.
To set “goals” for our children is NOT good stewardship.
Hope – Desires that you would like to see happen.
Hope – Desires that you would like to see happen.
You do not have control over the hope.
Rather than setting goals for them, we need to have “hopes” for our children.
Now Jesus gives a similar parable to this kind of stewardship.
“For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property.
To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away.
And the story goes that these servants all invested what was given to them.
To one who was given two talents, he invested and made two more.
To one who was given five talents, he invested and made five more.
To each the master responded with, “Well done, good and faithful servant”
But a third servant was given one talents, and he buried in the ground.
His reasoning was...
He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed,
so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’
Timetable
Timetable
“God’s Time”
Last week, we looked at the theology of Bildad the Brut from the book of Job and it was simply this:
“Good things come to good people and bad things come to bad people.”
We know this is wrong, but one area it is often expressed is within parenting.
“If we can just parent well enough, our kids will come to faith.”
“If I just discipline consistent enough, they will come to believe.”
“If they would just listen to what I say and stop listening to those friends at school, they will be saved.”
All of these ideas come from that kind of theology, and it’s just not true.
What we need is God to radically intervene in our children’s lives.
When it comes to stewarding our children well, it requires us to entrust them to God’s timetable.
Now we pray to that end.
We faithfully parent them that they may come to know God.
But there is nothing in us to bring that about.
We are utterly powerless to bring this about.
Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.
Committing
Committing
“The Lord Gives and Takes Away”
This means like we saw Job pray just after he lost his children and family.
Job 1:21 (ESV)
The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
One of the greatest acts of faith for a parent to their children is to recognize and acknowledge God’s sovereign hand over it all.
From the dedication book...
On Sunday, July 7, 1991, Steve and Laura Johnson stood before the congregation of Bethlehem Baptist Church of Minneapolis, Minnesota holding their second-born, 10-week-old Grant Christopher.
Steve and Laura "solemnly and earnestly" made these promises before God and their brothers and sisters in Christ.
Eighteen days later they were standing in the same room, in the same spot; only this time they were not holding Grant in their arms.
Instead, his lifeless body lay in a little white casket.
Two days before, Grant had gone down for his nap and stopped breathing.
As they sat in the hospital room, they kept repeating the phrase through tears, "we surrender worldly claim upon his life"
Steve and Laura did not expect their son's life to be so short, but in the moment of heartbreaking loss, they kept their promise, entrusting their son by faith to the wisdom of a good and gracious God who had given him to them.
One of the reasons making this promise can be so hard is because we don't know how we would respond if faced with such sorrow.
Three weeks before the funeral, Steve and Laura would not have known either.
They made the promise by faith, trusting that God's grace would be there, and it was.
Solomon goes on to describe what children are to their parents and it’s an interesting illustration.
The Weapon of Children
The Weapon of Children
“An Arrow in the Hand”
Psalm 127:4–5 (ESV)
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth.
Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them!
It’s intriguing to me that Solomon would move from talking about children as a reward to war imagery.
“Children are a gift from God, they also make excellent weapons to crush the serpent’s head.”
Our Present War
Our Present War
“Blood Feud”
Solomon is assuming that the people of God have been in a war.
We have been in a war from the beginning.
I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
I call this a blood feud because God promised the serpent that a seed of the woman would one day crush his head.
Now we see this ultimately accomplished in Christ.
At the same time, the Psalmist is presenting all children as
The Psalmist knows that we have been in a war.
The battle lines have been drawn and they are simply, the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent.
The seed of the serpent represent everything that opposes God and His kingdom.
The seed of the woman represents everything that is in Adam.
A child is like an arrow that a man is taking into battle.
He is training up and preparing his children to fight in the blood feud between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the women.
Which is why Paul later says in Ephesians 6, just before an exhortation on spiritual warfare....
Ephesians 6:4 (ESV)
Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger,
Now this is a task for both fathers and mothers.
But the special focus in the New Testament is for fathers to take the initiative.
Father’s are meant to be the ones who set the plans and processes for
The warning is for parents to not provoke, or “make angry” their children.
Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
Paul’s exhortation is for the fathers to “bring them up”
This word for “bring them up” could also be translated “nourish them”
The same word Paul said earlier, Ephesians 5:29
For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church,
Paul’s concern is that father’s approach their children with a heart of love.
So this tending to and caring for is done in two different steps.
Law & Gospel
Law & Gospel
“Sharpening Our Arrows”
It’s at this point I want to pause and ask a question…
What do you think the difference is between Christian parenting and any other kind of parenting?
Islamic parenting?
Jewish parenting?
Secular Parenting?
Is there a difference?
Does their parenting look radically different?
I would contend that there is a fundamental difference.
But the question is, what is the difference?
Law
Law
“The Discipline”
The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother.
Discipline your son, and he will give you rest; he will give delight to your heart.
Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him.
Discipline is extremely important in the economy of how we parent.
As Hebrews tells us, It is important because even God displays the children He loves. (Hebrews 12:7)
But what happens when the discipline is all we have?
If the law is all we have, we will end up shoving the law down our children’s throats.
We will eventually try to corral them with the law.
Creating all sorts of laws and rules to keep them in obedience.
And I would argue that every other form of parenting does this.
Whether it is through manipulation or legalism
But true Christian parenting brings something more to our children.
Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
Gospel
Gospel
“The Instruction”
Paul has in mind that Father’s would not just brow-beat their children.
No, they are to discipline them AND instruct them in the way of the Lord.
That word for “instruction” comes from the same root word that Paul uses in another place..
Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.
For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.
This is not some cold and calculated lecturing.
This is the warm loving instruction that presents the GOODNESS of the GOSPEL to our children.
This is showing our children how sinful and broken they are while simultaneously showing them the ONE WHO suffered and died for sinners!
When our children fail, this is warmly entreating our children to come to Christ.
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.
Let’s turn back and finish up Psalm 127.
The Result of Children
The Result of Children
“Restfully Sharpening”
Psalm 127:5 (ESV)
Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.
The picture I want you to have in your mind is of a man going out to meet his enemies at the gate.
As he does so, his children stand all around him
Building and Protecting from Rest
Building and Protecting from Rest
Psalm 127:1 (ESV)
Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.
Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.
So this is the building piece…
Psalm 127:1 (ESV)
Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth.
Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.
This is the protecting piece..
Don’t miss though what verse 2 says..
It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Since God gives us children as a gift to steward, we must do so by sharpening arrows with restful wartime mentality for His glory.
Why do we do children dedication?
What are we saying as we do this?
Dedicating Our Children
Dedicating Our Children
“Set Apart for Christ”
What are we doing today?
The word dedicate means: to set apart; to consecrate to the Lord; to devote wholly and earnestly to Christ.
Is there anything in the Bible about this?
Yes
And at the end of eight days, when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.
And when the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord
Is this mandated in the NT scriptures?
No
It is meant to be a public display of covenant accountability and humility.
There is no salvific merit in this!
It is just as much a parent dedication as it is a child dedication! (God I need you…Church I need you)
Infant Baptism
This is NOT equal to an infant baptism.
They would believe that a child is a part of the NC community by being born into the family.
We believe though that the NC community is made up of people who have been born again.
Those who have experience the second birth, the spiritual birth.
Since this is the case, baptism is only for individuals who have been born again.
Those who have been regenerated by the Holy Spirit.
So how then do our children fit into the New Covenant community called the church?
Children in the NC community are under what would be described as a spiritual guardianship (parents/guardians/stewards) praying, asking, awaiting the day of their spiritual regeneration to faith in Christ.
Parents are called to be faithful in raising their children in the “fear and admonition of the Lord.”
We believe though that God uses means of grace to bring people to faith, and sometimes that is through parents.
SO FOR children to be born into this community means that we as a church are to be their spiritual guardian’s.
God takes vows very seriously
Ecclesiastes 5:4-5
When you make a vow to God, do not delay to pay it; For He has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you have vowed; Better not to vow than to vow and not pay.
Speak blessing over the child:
Simeon & Elise, together with your parents, who love you dearly, and these people who care about the outcome of your faith, I now dedicate you to God, surrendering together with them all worldly claims upon your life, in the hope that you will belong wholly to God, finding your joy in Him, and live for His Glory!