Leslie and I are preparing to have our second girl on Thursday, January 21 at 7:30am. The reason I know the exact day and time is because it is a scheduled Cesarean. This upcoming event has got me thinking about my role as a parent, which led me to the manuscript of an old sermon by John Piper about our calling as parents and as a church. Below is a segment of the sermon.There are six stages in our calling that I see in these verses.
1. The Preeminence and Centrality of God
First it begins with God.
Verse 4b: "We will tell to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and His strength and His wondrous works that He has done."
All Christian parenting and Christian education begins with God. There is One ultimate, unchanging Reality, namely, God. All else in parenting and education comes from him. All else is for him. He is the first and the last and the center of parenting and education. He is the main thing in how you rear children and teach children and discipline children. It all begins with God and it all is built on God and it all is to be shaped by God. If there is one memory that our children should have of our families and our church it is this; they should remember God. God was first. God was central. There was a passion for the supremacy of God in all things.
2. A Fixed Deposit of God's Truth
The second stage in our calling as parents and as a covenant community is that there is a fixed deposit of God's truth in the world.
Verse 5: "He established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel."
God has testified and God has taught. The Hebrew word translated "law" (Torah) means "teaching." God has testified and God has taught. And we have that testimony and that teaching in a book, the Bible. The Bible is the way God, the ultimate and all-important Reality, reveals himself to us with clarity and authority today. If God is more important than anything, then the Bible is more important than anything but God. The implications of this for parenting and New Covenant guardianship are staggering.
It means the Bible will be the sun in the solar system of all that we teach our children. It will not be one among many books. It will be the central book, the all-permeating book. The other books are dark planets; the Bible is the light-giving sun. All other books will be read in the light of this book. All books will be judged by this book. All books will find meaning in the worldview built by this book. Which means that this book must be known first and known better than all the other books.
The second thing it means for us that God has testified and taught in a book is that there is a fixed deposit of truth to pass on to each generation. Paul tells Timothy to "guard the good deposit that has been entrusted" to him (2 Timothy 1:14). That is the task of parents as well the covenant community as a whole: guard the sacred deposit. Preserve it and transmit it to each generation.
3. Teaching
The third stage in our calling as parents and community is teaching.
Verse 5: "He established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers, that they should teach them to their children."
We are commanded to teach the testimony of God to our children. It is not enough to preserve the deposit of truth in a book, and tell them it is there. We are commanded to teach it. Ephesians 6:4 says, "Fathers, bring up [your children] in the discipline and instruction of the Lord." Instruction! We are to instruct them in the testimony and teaching of God.
Here is a huge educational implication: Since the testimony and instruction of God is in a book, this means that we will labor to teach our children to read. In fact, among "readin', writin', and 'rithmetic" reading will be of supreme importance. And reading is no simple thing: it includes recognizing the ideas that attach to symbols. It includes understanding how those ideas fit together in an author's mind to make a message. It includes thinking about whether that message is true or not. Learning how to read never stops. There is always room for improvement in how we read. And the main incentive to grow and improve in our reading is that the infinitely glorious God who made all things and who loves us and plans our future has testified and taught in a book.
4. Children Learn and Know
The fourth stage in our calling as parents and church is that our children are to know the testimony and teaching of God—know it well enough to tell it to the next generation. From our teaching comes their knowing.
Verse 6: [We teach] "that the generation to come might know, even the children yet to be born, that they may arise and tell them to their children."
You might think that this point is virtually the same as the one before. But they aren't the same. Teaching is not the same as learning and knowing. And the distinction is important for at least two reasons.
One is that we cannot make our children learn. We can make ourselves teach. But we cannot make them know. Knowing is a precious thing. The kind of knowing God has in mind here is more than mere memory or raw mental awareness. Knowing is seeing into the real beauty of truth and embracing it for the treasure that it is. Parents and church cannot make that happen. We can do our best in putting God in the center and loving and praying and teaching. But in the end there is a chasm between teaching and knowing that only God can carry our children across.
The other reason for stressing the difference between our task of teaching and their responsibility of knowing is that the rest of God's purposes for our children grow out of this knowing. The final two stages of our calling are the fruit of this stage of knowing.
5. Children Put Their Confidence in God
So the fifth stage in our calling is that our children put their confidence in God.
Verse 7: "That they should put their confidence in God"
God has testified and taught that there might be a deposit of reliable truth that we might teach it to our children that they might know it and embrace it—why? So that they might put their confidence in God.
The aim of all true education is to deepen and broaden confidence in God. This is what keeps learning from leading to pride—or should keep learning from leading to pride. All true learning, all true knowledge reveals that we are dependent on God and must depend on him or perish. Knowledge that leads to self-sufficiency rather than dependence on God is not true knowledge but flawed knowledge. It is like an archaeologist who finds a beautiful ancient painting, but hides it in a locked case and travels around giving lectures on how clever he was to discover it, but never bringing it out for all to admire, lest the beauty of the original treasure detract from his own achievement in finding it.
The aim of all knowledge is confidence in God. Hope in God. Trust in God. God is the beginning and the goal of all education. But there is one final stage in our calling as parents and church toward our children.
6. A Life of Obedience
Our confidence in God, rooted in knowledge of God's testimony and teaching, must lead to a life of obedience.
Verse 7: "That they should put their confidence in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments."
When our children are confident in God, they will follow the commandments of God. Outward obedience will not be legalistic conformity to external pressures and expectations. It will be the fruit of internal confidence—not self-confidence, but God-confidence.
The reason outward obedience to God is the final goal of parenting is because it externalizes the glory of God—and that is why the universe was created. Internal states of mind, no matter how good, do not manifest or reveal or externalize the worth of God. But when we and our children are so confident in God that we gladly obey God's demands for love and justice, then the beauty and worth and wisdom and love and justice of God shine out in the world. And that is why the world was created—that the knowledge of the glory of God might fill the earth the way the waters cover the sea (Habakkuk 2:14).
February 25, 1996 http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/topicindex/104_Parenting/946_Raising_Children_Who_Are_Confident_in_God/
