Again, our sermon sects this morning will come from Psalm 78. In particular, we'll read the first eight verses of Psalm 78. Psalm 78, beginning in verse one and reading through verse eight this morning. People of God, this is the word of the living God. So you are called and commanded to give heed and to hear the word of the Lord. Give ear, O my people, to my law, Incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter dark sayings of old, which we have heard and known and our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, telling the generation to come the praises of the Lord and his strength and his wonderful works that he has done. For he established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children, that the generation to come might know them, the children who would be born, that they may arise and declare them to their children, that they may set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments, and may not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, A generation that did not set its heart aright and whose spirit was not faithful to God. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of the Lord is forever. Well, it's quite interesting to me coming all the way from New York, which is about a 17 and a half hour drive, which is why I flew. to notice the similarities between Kansas and New York, or at least the section of New York that I'm from. So I'm from upstate New York. And upstate New York is just as filled with farmland as this section of Kansas happens to be. And so we have that in common, to be able to look out any direction and see some sort of farmland or farming occurring before our eyes. And in upstate New York, there are a lot of family farms. farms that have been in the family for generations. And I would be surprised if that weren't also the case here in Kansas as well, that there are farms that have been passed on from one generation to another. And those family-owned farms often are intentional in that desire to see the farm pass from one generation to the next, to the next, and to the next. Though that may not always happen to be the case, yet nonetheless, Lots of family farms would like that to be the case. And so fathers and mothers will teach their children about the ways of farming. They'll tell them what it takes to make the soil able to bear fruit from the seed planted within it. They'll tell them how to use the machinery, even have them engage in the process of bringing those crops to bear. They'll regale them of the tales of their youth as they were able to themselves participate in the farming venture through the course of their childhood, all with the hopes, all with the hopes that their children might have that same love for the farm that they have and then carry that on to the next generation. Well, in a manner, that's sort of the concept that we have here for us in Psalm 78, except for something far more profound than the family farm. That is just like farmers often want to establish a generational farming family, we as the people of God ought to want to establish a generational covenantal family. Just as we have embraced God in faith in his son, so also we should have that strong desire for our children to lay hold of the promise of God that was just signified to us in the sacrament of baptism, that they might also know him as we know him and be part of the covenant family of God. And part of the means of doing that is what's laid out for us here in Psalm 78, which teaches us that we as the people of God are to be diligent to instruct our children to embrace God in faith. That'll be the thrust of the sermon this morning, that we are to be diligent to instruct our children to embrace God in faith. And we'll follow that point along these lines. First, we'll look to the Psalm and see the command. to instruct our children to embrace God and faith. Secondly, we'll see the content, what it is we are to instruct our children about. Third, we'll see the culmination of that, or the reason, what it is we're trying to accomplish through the content of our instruction. And then we'll finish with some closing applications. The command, the content, and the culmination of instructing our children to embrace God in faith. So let's turn then to the first element of our text this morning, that command to instruct our children. And that comes in verses 1 through 4 and a portion of verse 5, where we read again, give ear, O my people, to my law. Incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter dark sayings of old which we have heard and known and our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, telling to the generation to come the praises of the Lord and his strength and his wonderful works that he has done. The first thing that we notice when we come to our psalm is that there's a particular command given right away. The psalmist starts in verse 1 with a two-fold, almost redundant statement when he says, give ear, O my people. And then he follows that with, incline your ears. Give ear, incline your ears. As we read a passage like that, or a verse like that, we might be tempted to wonder, why does the psalmist say the same thing twice? Isn't it sufficient for him just to say, give ear? Why does he need to essentially repeat the command, incline your ears to hear? But just like anywhere in scripture, and really any literature at all, when we find something repeated, it tells us something. It tells us that this is important, that what you're being called to do is an important thing. And the psalmist is impressing upon the people of Israel that as he is about to reveal the will of God to them, that they are to give attention. It's important. Prick up your ears. Hear what I have to say. So that twofold statement highlights the necessity and the urgency of what is to follow in the rest of the psalm. Give ear, incline your ears to hear. Don't turn a deaf ear to the proclamation that is about to come. And there's a reason for that. There's a reason why there's that necessity and that urgency to give ear, to incline your ear to hear. And that is because what is about to come from the psalmist is an authoritative declaration from God himself, as he says in verse two. I will open my mouth in, or sorry, verse one. Give ear, O people, O my people, to my word. law, to my word. They are to open their ears and incline their ears to hear because he is about to express to them a law. And it's not just his law. It's not as though Asaph decided that he would go ahead and sit down and write out his own little law, his own little helpful direction to the people of God and give it to them and then say, oh, by the way, guys, it'd be a really good thing if you would listen to my subjective opinion about how you ought to raise your children. Well, no, that's not what Asaph is saying at all. Rather, we know that the law that he is about to give, that authoritative word that he's about to declare, is the authoritative word of God himself. We find that in verse 5. For he established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel. The law that the psalmist is about to declare is the law that God himself appointed in Jacob appointed among the people of Israel, that he commanded their fathers. And that command to their fathers is one that is to go forward from generation to generation. And so the psalmist tells the people of God, listen up, pay attention, open your ears. And so then, people of God, as we continue to move forward through our text this morning, that command is to you as well. perk up your ears, give heed with what is about to come here in this psalm, because as we shall see, it is a matter of obedience to God's command for all of us, especially for those of you who are parents and grandparents. So that's the first portion of that command, give ear, heed, heed what I'm about to say, incline your ears. But then there's the heart of the command itself, which we find in verse four. We will not hide them from their children, but rather we will tell. The command that the psalmist is giving is that the people of God would not hide the dark sayings of old, would not hide the parables of old, the knowledge of old, but rather would tell them to the generation to come. So then the call of the psalmist here to all of you is, is to prepare yourself to hear and to dedicate yourself to obey as we move forward in the sermon, to living your faith visibly before your children and diligently, actively declaring them to the children of the Covenant community. Which is an important thing in our day and age, because in our Christian culture, there is a common error of thinking that we are to sort of leave our children to figure it out for themselves. We don't want to brainwash them. We don't want to propagandize them. But rather, we should sort of let them figure this out, make their own decisions, which ultimately, they will have to make their own choice. But we're not free to just let them go about figuring it out for themselves. But we have a call and a command to lay God before our children, to call them to faith in His name, to present to them what covenant life is, what it means to be a son or daughter of the Most High God, not just in how we speak, but also in how we live. So that there's not a moment, whether in the confines of our own homes or when we gather together as the assembled family of God, that our children do not see, as we'll look at in just a moment, the wonderful works of God declared and lived out and express each and every day. No, we're not to leave our children to to figure it out on our own, but rather we are commanded not to hide the wonderful works of God, but to declare them to the people of God. So therefore is the command before you. But that command has some content. It's not just a vague command, here, do this thing, but it's here is the thing you're supposed to do. Look, he says in verse 2, I will open my mouth in a parable, I will utter dark sayings of old which we have heard and known and our fathers have told to us. He's about to tell them the content in verse 4 of this command, what it is that is to be taught, what it is that is to be declared and to be lived out before the covenant children of God. In that first element, where he talks about these parables, these dark sayings of old, is a reference to generational truth. That's the idea behind these dark sayings of old. Things that were known by a previous generation, by our fathers. Things that we have known, the one of the psalmist generation. generational knowledge and wisdom of import. It's not necessarily referring to obscure and mysterious things that are hard to understand, but rather to something that's been passed down from generation to generation to generation that ultimately on the surface is easy to know, is easy to understand on a surface level. Rather, the darkness comes, the mysteriousness comes from the difficulty in embracing and internalizing the truth that has been passed down from generation to generation in that old covenant community and that for the new covenant community continues to be passed down from generation to generation to generation. That's why Jesus spoke to the people of Israel in parables. What was the point of the parable? While on the surface level, all of the details of the parable aren't really hard to understand and to figure out, are they? It's not hard to understand the idea of someone tossing seed in a field and that bearing forth fruit, right? What's difficult to understand is the truth reflected in the parable that Jesus told, which is the necessity for spirit-wrought good soil to respond to the gospel in faith. The same was true in the Old Covenant as well, that God's commands were put before his people, and they're simple enough on their face. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind. Love your neighbor as yourself, easy enough to understand, super hard to do, impossible even without the work of the Holy Spirit. But that is precisely the content of what is to be passed from generation to generation. We already saw that in Deuteronomy chapter 6. When he calls out to the people of God, Hear, O Israel, the Lord, the Lord your God, is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, strength. And then what are you to do? You are to teach them, to your children, from your getting up to your sitting down. We are commanded to teach our children the commands of God, the love for God. But we need to, as part of a quick application, understand that we need to be patient in this endeavor. Parents, grandparents, and people of God. Our children aren't going to be able to work within themselves an ability to obey the commands of God, an ability to love God. We put these things before them, and it's the Spirit of God that works within them to open their hearts, to bring them to that life of faith, to regenerate even their little hearts so that they can actually love God as they ought to. We teach them to love God, but it is the Spirit of God who enables, and sometimes that takes time. We need to be patient with that process. Constantly putting the gospel before our children while patiently waiting for God to make his promise efficacious. And so that should keep us in our teaching of our children and proclaiming the truths of the gospel from an unreasonable harshness. And so somehow we can beat the truth of God into our children. That's not to say we don't discipline, but saints, you will never beat the truth of God's word into your children. Only the Spirit of God can change the heart to produce faith and obedience. Be patient with your children. Yes, discipline them faithfully according to God's word, but don't be harsh and unreasonable in your expectations. Don't inspect more of your children than you do yourself. As everyone here knows, that if it weren't for the working of the Spirit within each one of us, we never would have professed faith in Christ, and we would never have been set on the path and the course of growing in our love for Him, and our love for one another. Be patient, Saints. Secondly, we have to be sure in that patience that we're also not okay with accepting a superficial understanding. That we're just looking for some simple profession, some surface-level understanding, an answer to a catechism question that's been memorized. Rather, we're looking for our children in that patient teaching to articulate a real understanding of the truth of God's Word as we patiently teach it to them. That's what we're looking for. Not that they can recite to us the 100 plus questions to the shorter catechism, though certainly that would be a fine teaching tool, but that they understand the answers to the shorter catechism. That they understand the truths of God's word and what God is calling them to. Be patient, saints, as you put before the covenant children of God the sayings and the teachings of God himself. Secondly, we learn that not only are these generational truths, notice that there is a heavy generational emphasis, in case you didn't pick that up in this psalm, tell the generation to come, that they can tell the generation to come, and so on and so forth, that heavy generational element there. but that these parables, these dark sayings of old, are encapsulated in verse 4, telling to the generation to come the praises of the Lord and his strength and his wonderful works that he has done. Really, we can understand that the praises that we give to God, inspired by the strength that he has demonstrated in the wonderful works of the Lord, of God. That's the way that we ought to understand the complex there. So that our focus is on teaching our children the wonderful works of God, so that they might declare his praises because of the strength that he has displayed in those wonderful works. Which hopefully for all of you, if you're paying attention, begs the question, what are the wonderful works? So we're not just generically throwing up to their, Lord, I praise you for your wonderful works. I don't happen to know what they are, but here are the praises for those wonderful works, whatever they may be. No, that's not what we're supposed to understand here from what the psalmist is saying. Rather, he already has something in mind. He has something in mind in terms of the entirety of the old covenant scriptures that he would have had in his possession, even the psalms themselves. That these scriptures are filled with these wonderful works. This is no less a call to the people of God to teach their children the scriptures themselves and the wonderful works of God done throughout the history of the covenant people of God. We can conceive of those wonderful works in a more general sense outside of this psalm itself. We think about creation, the wonderful work of God that you can see every time you look out the windows when the blinds are up. Wonderful works of God that you walk through each and every day that declare His eternal power and His attributes. That God's strength is on display and that we should praise God for that strength in His wonderful work of creation. Word is, we do the loving of God and loving of neighbor that we're called to do. And it's not just in the wonderful works of creation, but also the wonderful works of redemption, of restoration, of deliverance, of salvation itself. That is the chief wonderful work of God, if you're familiar with the pages of scriptures. That the wonderful works of God, that actual phrase, is so often directed at the way in which God has saved, delivered, and redeemed His people. If we return to Psalm 40, indeed, I'd actually call you to do that. Turn to Psalm 40 when we find that phrase, the wonderful works of God. We'll note the context and the New Testament fulfillment of what we find in Psalm 40, beginning in verse five. Many, O Lord my God, are your wonderful works which you have done. And your thoughts toward us cannot be recounted to you in order. If I would declare them and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered. And the content of those wonderful works is going to come here in the next few verses that should be familiar to many of you. Sacrifice and offering you did not desire. My ears you have opened. Burnt offering and sin offering you did not require. Then I said, behold, I come, and the scroll of the book, it is written of me. I delight to do your will, O my God, and your law is within my heart. I have proclaimed the good news of righteousness in the great assembly. Indeed, I do not restrain my lips. O Lord, you yourself known. I have not hidden your righteousness within my heart. I have declared your faithfulness and your salvation. I have not concealed your lovingkindness and your truth from the great assembly. What's the wonderful works of God that the psalmist is declaring? That he can't keep within, but he's talking about he goes into the assembly and he declares what? He declares the salvation of God. He declares the lovingkindness of God. He declares the truth of God in his salvation. And who ultimately is it that Psalm 40 speaks of here? You turn to the book of Hebrews and you find that this is applied directly to Jesus Christ. That He is the one who came to do the will of God and that in being the sacrifice and doing the will of God procures redemption, salvation, and eternal life for His people. Wonderful works of God is his wonderful work of loving kindness and mercy in delivering and redeeming a people for himself through his son, Jesus Christ, prophesied all the way in Psalm 40. And on and on, if we were to march through the Psalms, we would continue to find that phrase, the wonderful works of God, over and over again, all pointing to the wonderful work of God that will be accomplished in Jesus Christ himself. Psalm 107, the phrase is, oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for all of his wonderful works. all pointing to the wonderful work of redemption in Jesus Christ. The wonderful works of God are His provision and His protection for His people. And that's all over the face of the Psalter. It's all over the face of the Old Testament Scriptures and it's those living in the New Covenant era and the New Testament Scriptures as well. But it's particularly true of Psalm 78. We haven't read the whole thing because it's 72 verses long. But walk through that this afternoon. Walk through the rest of Psalm 78 and see exactly what the psalmist means by the wonderful works of God, beginning with the bringing up of his people out of the land of Egypt and then caring for and providing for them on their way through the wilderness to the land of promise, even in the midst of Israel's perpetual rebellion, ending with the declaration of his establishment of the Davidic king. It's nothing short of the gospel and topology, saints. So those old covenant people of God were to declare to the next generation the wonderful works of God in his mighty hand, delivering his people from their slavery, providing for them, and setting on the throne God's king. This as what we are to declare to our children. God's wonderful works of salvation and provision, but in full view of the new covenant of fulfillment. God's wonderful works done in Christ. The establishment of the Davidic king on the throne. King who gave himself a sacrifice for sin and by his own obedience procured eternal life for all of us. We find that in Acts 2, verse 11, when the Spirit of God falls upon those disciples and they begin to speak in the tongues of the people around them, we find Peter saying that, what's happening here? Rather, the people hearing that are saying, what's happening here? We hear these men in our own tongue, in our own language, doing what? If you know your scripture in chapter 2, verse 11. Declaring the wonderful works of God. Salvation in Jesus Christ. This is the content of what we are to declare to our children, generation after generation after generation. Not only that, we are to declare to our children the wonderful works of God, but also His testimony and His law. We find that in verse 5 and following. For He established a testimony in Jacob, and He appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers, that they should make known to their children. wonderful works of God set down and recorded in Scripture, but also how life was to be lived in this covenant community created through those wonderful works of God. Part of proclaiming and passing on the wonderful works of God is found in teaching and living the very law of God itself. Again, note how Deuteronomy flows and follows. It's the idea that they have been called out of Egypt, that they've been redeemed, and redeemed life looks like something. It looks like loving God and following hard after his revealed will. And we are to teach that following hard after the revealed will, just as much as we are to teach faith in the one whose revealed will it is, the faith preceding the obedience, but the obedience flowing out nonetheless. Make sure you don't mix that up, saints. We obey because we believe. We don't believe because we obey. Right? But nonetheless. There is a life laid out to all of those in that covenant community that has been established by the wonderful works of God and that life itself is what we are to teach each and every generation. This is what it looks like to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your mind, with all of your strength. This is what it looks like to love your neighbor as yourself. This is what it looks like to actually bear the image of the One who redeemed you. And so we lay Christ himself and the necessity of faith in him for the redemption of souls before our children, but we also lay before them the life of that same faith. Both in laying before them the truths of Scripture, but also in living out the truths of Scripture Words without actions are merely empty words, saints. You can profess the truth of the Scripture all you want, but if you don't live the truth of Scripture, your profession is worthless. We are to proclaim with our mouths and with our lives the wonderful works of God and His revealed will for all of those redeemed by His Son. We do that in a two-fold way, primarily through the Scriptures. We teach our children the Scriptures. We bring them to worship, to sit under the teaching and preaching of the Word. We have family worship in our homes so that we can consistently demonstrate to them our own love for the Scriptures, as well as have them develop their own. As they grow older, encouraging them to spend their own time in Scripture. As they spend time with all of us saints, the people of God, we can all be engaged in setting Scripture before our children that they might see in all of God's people a love for His revealed will, for His wonderful works, for His law, and for His testimony. But in our own lives as well, and perhaps that's what we lack most, is reform. We don't really have a problem understanding that we ought to teach the Scriptures to our children, But do we ever teach our children how the scriptures are operative within us? When's the last time, saint, you have told a child, your own child, your grandchild, a child that's not your own, how it is that God's wonderful works have been operative in your life? How it is he has redeemed your soul? how it is he has set you free from slavery to sin and to Satan and the kingdom of darkness to walk the path of light so that they can see in your life the very truth that you're proclaiming, the wonderful works of God done in you. Don't hide your faith from your children, brothers and sisters. Let them know. Declare to them the wonderful works of God in you. So they might see its reality before them, not just in the generations of old, but in this very generation itself. So then having the command and having the content, We come to the culmination. There is a purpose, there's a reason why this command is given. There is a reason why we are to declare the wonderful works of God and the testimony and the law that God has given to his people. And the first one is the perpetuation of faith itself. Verse five, for he established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children. Why? that the generation to come might know them. The idea of knowing is never intellectual knowledge when it comes to the Old or to the New Testament. It's the idea of knowing in the mind and embracing with the heart and working out through the hands, head, heart, mind. It's the whole complex. Actually, head, heart, hands, not head, heart, mind. It's the whole complex that you would know these things. that the next generation would know who God is, lay hold of Him, and embrace Him in faith and the life of faith to follow. We teach them and declare them that they might know them. The perpetuation of faith, because it says here that then they might arise and declare them to their children. Not just our children would know, but their children would know, and their children would know, and so on and so forth, for thousands of generations, for however many God has established would find their feet resting on this earth. We teach and declare these things to our children as an inducement to faith, a reason for hope. Verse 7, that they may set their hope in God, that they may look and to see God revealed and His strength revealed in all of His wonderful works and have every reason to hope and to trust in Him, that He offers hope and trust in a way that nothing in this entire world can ever offer them. that all the strength of the omnipotent God is wrapped up in his declaration of his will to his people, that he exercises that strength for the good and the benefit of those who put their faith in him, and he can bring to fruition everything that he promises in his wonderful works in a way that nothing and no one in this entire world ever has, ever can, and ever will. Because outside of his eternal power, everything else turns to dust. And so we put God before our children. We declare his wonderful works to them so they can have reason to see him for who he is and to have real, lasting, living hope beyond anything that anything else can offer. who set these things before them, so that they might keep His commandments. Verse 7, that they might set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments. But so far from the previous generation in verse 8, that they may not be like their fathers who forgot the works of God. and were a stubborn and rebellious generation that would not set its heart aright, whose spirit was not faithful to God. We put before our children and their children after them the wonderful works of God, that they might set their eyes upon God himself, and so then live the life of faith, the life of inherent blessedness found in keeping his commandments. That's important thing for you to teach your children. Saints is not a bare obedience. We don't teach our children to obey merely because God said so. We teach them to obey because God said so, but not merely, but rather because God is good. And God is wise, and he has laid out a path of life that is itself inherently blessed. And if they would just walk down it, they would know the blessedness of a good, wise, loving father. Fathers, which one of you here would ever be satisfied with a child who simply obeyed you out of a fear of what you might do if you didn't? Or would you rather have a child that obeyed you out of a love and trust in who you were, knowing that what you are telling them to do is for their good? It's what we teach our children, to obey God because he is good, because he is loving, because he knows what he's talking about. And we can see that in his wonderful works, that the one who commands you this path of faith is the one who gave his son for you. And if he would give his son for you, will he not then give you all things? Found in living the life of faithfulness to his revealed will and beyond into eternity. So teach our children the wonderful works of God to perpetuate faith, to give them a reason to hope that they might keep His commandments and find in that the blessedness of God Himself. Well, let's close this morning with just these two thoughts. The first one brings us all the way back to the beginning of the sermon. And that is, people of God, now is the time to embrace your covenantal obligation, because that's what this is. This is a covenantal obligation. It's not something that we simply can choose to do whether or not we want to. This is a covenantal obligation. Why does Asaph, why does the psalmist call the people of God to do this? precisely because they are the people of God. They are the people of the one who performed these wonderful works for them and established covenant with them. Because they are the people of God, they are to declare God. And their children were embraced in that covenant with them. The promise was to them, and to their children after them, that God would be a God to them and to their children after them. Children were under a covenantal obligation to embrace God and faith and obedience, and they were under a covenantal obligation to place that in front of their children, and that hasn't changed. The covenant has always included the children Scripture always refers to children in that positive, covenantal light, even in the New Testament, whether it's Jesus talking about, you know, let the little ones come to me and forbid them not, or it's Peter in Acts 2 declaring that this promise is for you and for your children. or whether it's Paul commanding the covenant people of God, fathers in particular, to do what? Fathers, you are to raise your children in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord, to bring them up in the discipline and the instruction of the Lord. It hasn't changed that that covenantal obligation to declare the wonderful works of God to our children still resides upon us. If we love our God, we should want our children to love them as well. And He is the means by which He is set before them. We are the means by which He is set before them. Embrace your covenantal obligation for what it is. Take it seriously. Perk up your ears. This psalm is for you. Do it. That's the second point of application. Embrace it and then do it. Parents and grandparents actively, consciously, daily, perpetually, put the wonderful works of God, His testimony and His law before your children and your grandchildren, that they might come to faith, that they might walk the life of faith, and that their children after them, and their children after them themselves, for generations to come, as long as our Lord shall tarry. might come to know this good, powerful, wonderful covenant God. And to the rest of you as well who may not have children or your children are off somewhere else and not part of this covenant community and body, don't think that this is just for parents and grandparents, it's for you as well. We are all the household of God, and every child within this household, all of us have the obligation to declare the wonderful works of God too, to proclaim them with word and with life, to set them before all of our covenant children. Disregard the origin of the statement, but there's a real truth to the idea that it takes a village. It takes a covenant community to raise covenant children, saints. Even if you don't have children, you can be an integral part in seeing the children of this covenant community grow into a vibrant faith and trust in the covenant God who has performed these wonderful works. or think through what it is when you stood together and declared that you would come alongside Caleb and Hannah to pray for them, to encourage them, to support them as they seek to raise these covenant children, these covenantal blessings. And how hopefully you made that same commitment for every family that I see here with little ones who bear the sign and seal of the covenant that you have dedicated yourselves to pray for them, to come alongside them, to encourage them, to love them, to declare the wonderful works of God to each and every covenant child that's here among you this morning and beyond. People of God, would you see the faith continue from generation to generation? Would you see the love of God flow from one family to the next? Would you have each child here profess faith in the wonderful works of God? Then declare to them the wonderful works of God. his mighty acts of redemption, the blessedness of his testimony and his laws, and live it in front of them that they might see day by day the truth of his wonderful works and of his law.