Beloved congregation of the Lord, you know, I'm assuming that the congregation of Lacombe is listening along to many of our services. And this week I received a fascinating phone call from an older man. He'd heard my sermon last week, Sunday morning, and that had mentioned Manna, of course. And he had been in his early teens at the end of World War II. And he called me and he said, have you ever heard of Operation Manna? Now, I couldn't remember, but maybe a few of you who are older can remember what that was all about. Operation Manna took place in the last winter of World War II, the so-called Hunger Winter. People were starving. They were eating tulip bulbs and anything they could get their hands on. Food was so hard to come by. And the Allies made special arrangements with the Germans And on an appointed day, a massive flight of bombers came, not loaded with bombs but with food. And they flew over low and they weren't shot at, and they dropped food supplies. And one pilot said, that was the best flight I ever made. And the man who called me could remember going outside and seeing the food come raining down from the sky. And he remembers being amazed that someone had thought about them in their need. operation manna. And I may be the pilot in God's operation manna tonight because God is pouring out new covenant riches in the sign and seal of his one covenant of grace. I didn't buy them. I didn't pack them. All I need to do is open the door and point them your way. God himself is the one who reigns the riches of his covenant in his word, his claim, and in the flowing waters of his new covenant sign. Did you marvel the last few weeks at how richly God displayed his grace to Abraham in the sign of circumcision? And it's the same covenant maker and the same covenant signer and the same covenant keeper who deals with new covenant Christians even more richly than he did with Abraham. Our theme is this, God's new covenant riches for our households. We see three things, a richer sign, baptism, a rich inheritance promised, and a rich instruction required. God's new covenant riches for our households, a richer sign of baptism, a rich inheritance promised, a rich instruction required. So imagine this gorgeous rosebush with large, beautiful, fragrant red roses. You plant it, you watch it grow, and the first buds appear and they start to open. And at what point does the bud become the flower? Can you pinpoint it to the second and say this second it's a bud and that second it's a flower? It slowly and yet naturally opens up and it was designed and was growing into the flower all along. It just needed to fully open up and it's Christ who is the full flowering of the new covenant. God's been the covenant maker from the Garden of Eden. didn't start when Jesus came. Jesus coming simply brings the promise God made to Abraham to its full flower, and that's why New Testament Christians are called the circumcision of God and the children of Abraham. And once you see that point, The new covenant switch of the sign from circumcision to baptism follows very naturally, as does the baptism of the households of believers. Now, why is it that we and our Baptist brethren talk past each other in so many conversations? because we have different ways of reading the Bible. You call that a hermeneutic, but I'll just call it tonight the goggles or glasses you have on that color, why you see what you see. If you think that the new covenant means you've torn up the old one and started over, that's the Baptist hermeneutic. And those who believe in household baptism have taken the approach that God adds new features and greater riches and the bud blossoms, but it's still the one covenant of grace. And a covenant is a covenant even when it's a new covenant. And that's why you'll find the discussions sometimes talking past each other. And once you say this, Once you look at Scripture as a fundamental unity so that we aren't New Testament Christians, we are whole Bible Christians, then to say that baptism replaces circumcision is simply to state the obvious. But that's also why our Baptist brethren often deny that baptism replaces circumcision. I remember a friendly public debate between R.C. Sproul, a Presbyterian, and Alistair Begg, a Baptist, and I have a great deal of respect for both men. And at one point, Begg said this, if you believe that baptism replaces circumcision, then you must baptize infants. That is quite the admission by our Baptist brother. And that explains why so many Baptists go out of their way to tell you that circumcision wasn't spiritual, that it was just a physical national sign. And the result is that the Old Testament becomes irrelevant to the discussion of who should be baptized. Can we show from Scripture? that baptism replaces circumcision? Well, they stopped circumcising people, didn't they? Why? Well, several lines of biblical evidence. First of all, the Scripture speaks of Old Testament people as being baptized. and of New Testament people being circumcised. First Peter 3.20 says, the ark was a picture fulfilled in baptism. First Corinthians 10, Israel was baptized into Moses and not just into Moses in the cloud and the sea, but Christ was the rock that followed them and their food. And Scripture calls New Testament believers the circumcision, so it's to limit circumcision to the Old Testament and baptism to the New is to draw too sharp a line because Scripture refers to both as applying to both. Second, let's turn to Colossians chapter 2, where in verses 11 and 12, it says that circumcision and baptism have the same theological meaning. so that the circumcised are the baptized. And our Baptist brethren, I read their commentaries this week, would argue, well, this was spiritual circumcision in view here, not physical circumcision, and that spiritual circumcision in the New Testament replaces physical circumcision in the Old Testament. There's a problem with that logic. Deuteronomy says this. God will circumcise the hearts of his people so that we'll love him and keep his commandments." Did Old Testament people love God and keep his commandments? Yes, they did. Then they were circumcised of heart and not just of body. So spiritual circumcision was spiritual already in the Old Testament. But let's read now this passage. Colossians are complete in Jesus Christ. They don't need Old Testament feast days. They don't need the sponsorships of angels. They don't need diet laws. They don't need anything else to be complete. Why not? Because, verse 11, they're in Jesus Christ. And in Jesus Christ, they've been circumcised with a spiritual circumcision not made with hands. What does that circumcision produce? What does it do? Well, the next part of the verse in verse 11. in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh." And the word putting off here means stripping off. It's a rare word in the Greek. When I was in college, first year of college, I took a biology class and we visited something probably our children would like to do. We visited a local peat moss bog. I don't think we have too many of those in Alberta. And we were warned, you take only your oldest clothes and you wear only your oldest shoes. And you had to wade through the mud and then climb up on the peat moss carpet. And it was so thick you could actually stand on top of the lake on top of this peat moss. And in the middle was a big mud hole, which, of course, being college students, we jumped in and swam across. And to be honest, we utterly stank. It was disgusting. And I had already prepared my car back at college with a tarp. My mom had me put a camping tarp all over the chair so that when I came back, I wouldn't mess up the car. When I came home, I had to go in through the back entrance into the garage and strip off all my old clothes there, and they went straight in the garbage because my mom said, I'm not even washing that. And in spiritual circumcision, God does what you could never do yourself. That sinful nature is being stripped away. Verse 13 explains, you being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your heart. Those two are the same thing, dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your heart. God makes alive through Jesus Christ. God plants new spiritual desires in your heart. breaks the stranglehold of sin in you." How does he do this? Verse 11 again, "...by the circumcision of Christ." And that's a reference to the cross of Jesus Christ. As the next verse will make clear, and last week I demonstrated to you that the cross is called His being cut off. It's the language of circumcision. It's being united to Jesus Christ that gets you such a heart. Now, why does the Apostle describe it as the putting off of the flesh, meaning the sinful nature? Well, keep your finger here and turn to Romans 6. That's why I read both passages. And notice that the Apostle uses the very same language to describe spiritual baptism as he does to describe spiritual circumcision. He uses the same words. Romans 6 verse 2. How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein? Well, how did I die to sin? Well, know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we should walk in newness of life. Verse 6, our old man is crucified with him that the body of sin, same words, might be destroyed that from now on we should not serve sin. What is pictured by spiritual baptism of the heart is identical to what's pictured by spiritual circumcision of the heart. They mean the same thing. Now back to Colossians. You could ask the question after verse 11, well, when was the body of my sins put away by the circumcision of Christ? And I translate now from the Greek, verse 12, and it's a participle, and what that means for those of you who aren't linguists is it's either showing a further reason for or the time when something happens. So you could either translate it with a because or a when. When was the body of my sinful flesh put away by the circumcision of Christ? When you were buried with Christ by baptism or because you were buried with Christ by baptism and raised with him by the work of God. Do you see that baptism and circumcisions theology is identical? And since we're no longer circumcised and we are baptized, Shouldn't we say then that the one replaces the other? Third, you can line up what happened in the Old Testament and the New Testament when the signs of the covenant were administered. Old Testament first. What happened in the Old Testament? How was somebody saved? By grace, through faith in the coming Christ. And how was that Old Testament person set apart from the world and added to the church and covenant of God? And it wasn't just true of Jews and Abraham's children. Others were joined, too. By the sign of circumcision, which pictured being united to Christ and having a renewed heart, and that followed faith in adults. So it was believers' circumcision. And if they practiced it superstitiously, that's not God's fault. That's their fault. Who was circumcised? The believing adult in his whole household. How is someone saved in the New Testament? By grace, through faith in the Christ who has come. How is the New Testament person marked, set apart from the world, added to the church and covenant of God? By the sign of baptism which must follow faith in adults. We have the whole book of Acts recording the profession of faith as expected of mission field baptisms, following faith. And who is baptized? The believing adult and their whole household without any further mention of whether the whole household believed or not. Do you see that when you line the two up, it's identical in almost every respect? How then can anyone say baptism doesn't replace circumcision? That doesn't mean, of course, that there are no differences. As New Covenant Christians, everything God does for us is richer and fuller. So what are the differences? Why is the sign of baptism more beautiful than circumcision? First this, what happened with Jewish little boys on the eighth day or adults who joined the church of the Old Testament? Blood had to flow. It was deeply painful and that blood pointed to Christ to be cut off for the sins of his people. But since Christ has shed his blood on the cross, we don't need to do any cutting anymore. Now water is good enough because the blood, the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ has flowed once for all. Second, in the Old Covenant, only males were circumcised pointing to Christ because they collectively represented the Savior who was to come and to be cut off for the sins of His people. And in the New Covenant, we may joyfully bring our daughters for baptism as well and joyfully baptize adult women who profess faith in Jesus Christ. God made covenant with women in the Old Testament too. He says so. But the sign of the covenant is now applied to all. And third, in the old covenant, God was promising that the family of Abraham would continue. Christ had to be a physical son of Abraham's family tree. This wasn't the main point of the covenant. It wasn't the first point of the covenant. And to say that it was is to miss the whole point of the covenant. God made covenant with Abraham because he valued covenant friendship and communion and relationship and saving Abraham and all his old covenant people. And yet God was primarily busy with Israel. And in the New Covenant, the Church spreads to all nations in fulfillment of the promise to Abraham. And fourthly, Christ is more clearly, fully known and richly enjoyed in the New Covenant. He's now not just promised, not just seen from a distance, so to speak, but now he's enjoyed from close up. We can look back on His coming with the benefit of hindsight and read the entire Bible with the benefit of hindsight. What's the mark of a great book? You can't just read it once. You want to read it again and again and again. And every time you read it, you pick up on new nuances and layers and you say, I never saw that, but now because I know all the story is going to turn out, how beautiful. And now we may see Christ in a clarity and in a fullness that the Old Testament saints didn't have because they didn't have the benefit of hindsight. I think I've told you in the last couple of weeks about the new home our families purchased. We've signed the necessary paperwork, the bank, the lawyer, the real estate agent. We call it our house. We've never set foot in it. We look forward to going there. The closing date hasn't yet arrived, but we call it our house and we assign the rooms. The only thing that needs to happen yet is possession. And the first night we sleep in our new place, that home will be ours in ways it's never been before. And so it is with Christ. He's promised throughout the Old Testament. His people, by faith, have trusted that God would do what He said, even though the full beauty of all that God would do escaped them often. And now He has come, and the sign of baptism sparkles with His finished work, and His cross has made the difference, and we can enjoy His salvation like never before. And that's the riches of the new covenant sign. And in fact, these wonderful riches of salvation are so great that God expresses in the promise and claim of his sign that you could also call it a rich promised inheritance, our second point. So what does this make of those who are baptized with the new covenant sign? The form says this, and then we'll see if it's biblical. It says that the baptized are declared the heirs of God, of his covenant, and of his kingdom. And such people have a heavenly birthright promised to them. First of all, is that biblical that God calls children of believing parents His or children of His covenant people His? Look at Ezekiel 16 verse 20 and 21. I'll give you one Old Testament and one New Testament text. Ezekiel 16. Verse 20 and 21, God is expressing His outrage because Israel is committing spiritual adultery. And the worst part of it is that they're expressing their spiritual adultery to the Lord, their covenant God, by what they're doing with their children. They're sacrificing those children to idols. And listen to what God says to them in verse 20. Moreover, thou has taken thy sons and thy daughters whom thou has born unto me. Imagine a husband coming home one day and being told by his wife, I had an abortion today. The baby was yours, but I didn't want to keep it. And I didn't want you to have a say in the matter. What would you say as a husband? You'd say, what did you do with my son or my daughter? God is saying the same thing about these physical members of his church. Even in an apostate people he is saying these are my claimed covenant children and he says about them in the last part of this verse is this the smallest part of your spiritual adultery that you have killed my children and delivered them and caused them to pass through the fires God sees covenant children as doubly his by creation and by covenant. Now Matthew chapter 19 verse 14. Jesus uses the very same language. Matthew 19 verse 14. People are bringing their little children to Jesus and Dr. Matthew actually uses the more medically correct word. These were infants. They want his prayers and his blessing. And the disciples thought, but these kids aren't old enough to remember this or understand this, and these parents are bothering Jesus, and he's got way more important things to do. He's establishing his kingdom on earth, and these infants should stay out of the way. And what does Jesus say to them? Suffer the little children. Don't forbid them to come to me. Why not? For of such is the kingdom of heaven." Not of such might someday be the kingdom of heaven when they're old enough to repent and believe for themselves. No, now already infants are declared a part of the kingdom of heaven. Now Acts chapter 3 verse 25. You see the same type of language. I'm only using a few examples tonight. There's many more that could be used. Acts 3 verse 25, notice what Peter calls the people to whom he's preaching. He's calling them to repentance and how does he appeal to them? You are the children of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying to Abraham in your seed, meaning Christ, shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. These covenant children were not repentant or believing, and they're called still children of God's covenant. Yeah, but someone says, well, these were all Jews. We aren't Jews. You can't chop up the Bible this way. You're assuming something about the text. The newness of the covenant is so strongly stressed in the Baptist argument that the word covenant gets completely forgotten. A new covenant is still a covenant. And what a privilege it is to be children of the covenant. Verse 26, God comes to such people first before all others in this world to raise you with gospel proclamation and even to turn such people from their sins to himself. Oh, believing parent, do you see what a tremendous inheritance God has promised to your children? He has your child baptized so that you would recognize that inheritance and that you would teach your children to understand that God has promised them this inheritance. They must know this about themselves. Children, maybe some of you have seen the pictures of the princesses and princes of the royal houses of Britain or of Holland. What happens when the king or queen have their firstborn child? Well, that child is the darling of the nation and is in the international media. The proud father carries him or her before the cameras and the nation realizes there's our future king or queen in the arms of the current king or queen. And guess what happens on social media and in the news in Holland and in Britain? First lost tooth, first day of school, it's all covered. But now imagine that instead of bringing out his own child, polished and well cared for and clean, the King of Holland brings out a child born in the slums, full of disease, poverty, and neglect, not in wonderful clean clothes, but in filthy rags that ooze pus and blood. And he says of this child, I adopt this child as my heir, and I promise all my riches to overcome the neglect and the disease and the poverty and the death. Do you think the cameras would flash and the stories would follow? What a moment that would be. And that is what you see every time there's a household baptism in this church. Those baptized sinners, young or old, are called the heirs of God's kingdom and covenant. And we should be amazed and marvel that the God of glory comes and makes stakes such claims on our children. Baptism is the gift of God's promise to us, not of our promise to God. Baptism is God's message to us, not our testimony to God. Baptism is about what God is saying and doing, not about what I'm saying and doing. And do you see how this covenant perspective can help in the agonizing struggle that some of us have had? For you've grown up so fixed on election that God's personal promise to you with your name on it has gone into eclipse. And you stay stuck in yourself and you ask yourself, am I born again and am I elect? And can I see the evidences of mature spiritual life and only then am I allowed to believe? Because the covenant is only made with those who are elect. And since I don't know if I'm elect, and since I think that most people aren't elect, then I'm under the covenant, but I'm not in it. And the promise, therefore, doesn't have your name on it. You're stuck. And you're not allowed to believe it, because you're stealing the promise in Christ if you do. You take your crowbar to the precious doctrine of election and you try to pry God's secrets out of him in some other way when God, in the way of his covenant claim and promise, has given you all the permission and encouragement that you need to trust in Jesus Christ. You cannot steal what God himself has promised you. Parents, do not steal from your children the very promise God gave them in their baptism. Don't steal from them the very birthright that God himself signed over to them. It's not an empty sign so as to deceive us. Your heart can deceive you, but God's promise can't. And to doubt that promise is the act of covenant presumptuous unbelief. I love the doctrine of election, but it's got to be used the way the Bible uses it. A hammer is a wonderful thing when you're driving in a nail because it, used rightly, fastens things together, but when wrongly used, it shatters things. When you use it as a window opener, it's a miserable tool. And wrongly used, it breaks people. To use election to create doubt about God's covenant promise is to smash the window with the hammer. to use election to show how God applies the very spiritual life needed and promised in His covenant is to use it to fasten our hearts to God in awe and eager expectation. Open saith the Lord, wide thy mouth believing, this my covenant word I will, if thou plead, fill thy every need, all thy wants relieving. God in having a child baptized is saying, I promise you this child has been designated in heaven as an heir of the kingdom of God and of His covenant. To keep us from abusing election, God administers His covenant more broadly than election. God's not therefore going to turn me away when I reach for Jesus Christ. The promise is certified personally to every covenant child. And if you, with such a promise and claim, go lost and remain unbelieving, it's because you chose to disbelieve the promise that God gave you at your baptism. And you reject your covenant God with such unbelief. And you reap the covenant curse of being a spiritual adulterer against the God of the covenant. And the covenant will testify against you as the word of God always does. And it comes true when covenant curse is applied as well as covenant blessing. But that means, therefore, then, that to the rich new covenant sign and the rich promised covenant inheritance must be added a rich covenantal instruction, point three. What kind of upbringing does God want the heirs of his kingdom and covenant to have? When you scramble election and covenant through each other, you can fall into two different errors. The first we saw, the error of stealing the promise from that covenant child. But the opposite error is this, to deny the need of the applying work of the Holy Spirit, to renew the hearts of covenant children and the need for our covenant children to be born again so as to come into their inheritance. And then all you'll say is, well, we're all children of God, and isn't that wonderful? And let's go home and rejoice. And we don't need to tell our children about their need for a new heart, because we can just tell them how to serve God and give them a list of things they should do in order to serve God and to live out their faith. And you just assume, well, of course, they're baptized and they all have faith, and we just need to teach them what to do and not to do. And then Christian schooling, too, becomes purely and only about telling kids, well, this is how Christians should act, and not telling them this is how you become a Christian. And that's a problem because you can take a cup of tea and say you're going to sweeten it by stirring, but if you're stirring and there's no honey or sugar in there, it's not going to get any sweeter no matter how you stir it. And this is where sometimes Christian schools and parents run stuck. Yeah, but I told my kids what they should and shouldn't do. That's not the only thing they need. What God signs and seals at baptism is his word. This is simply the word of God made visible. And like every other proclamation of the word, it meets with two responses, unbelief and rejection, or faith in the Christ of the covenant. Every physical child of the covenant, therefore, does not automatically become a spiritual child of the covenant. And that should create a holy urgency and tension in how you see them. It means they need to be called to repentance and faith and called to the circumcision of their hearts. And that's not hard to prove from Scripture. Every covenant God has ever made has had two kinds of covenant children, those who believe and receive the promised blessings and those who reject and rebel against their covenant God and inherit covenant curse. God gives Adam and Eve the promise of life through the seed of the woman, and they have two kinds of children, Cain and Abel. God even comes to reason with Cain and to call him to repentance, and Cain refuses, and he's got nobody to blame except himself. Noah's told, you enter the ark with your whole household, sons, their wives. What do you have among the sons of Noah? The first Old Testament baptism mentioned, well, you have a Shem and you have an unbelieving Ham. The one gets the blessing, the other gets the curse, and those are both covenantal words. They don't come falling out of the sky on their own. Abraham has two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. Both are given the sign of the covenant, rightly so. And yet one is the believing child of promise and the other the unbelieving child of the flesh. Isaac has two sons, Jacob and Esau, they're twins, same upbringing, born at the same time. Growing up, they all had everything the same. And Isaac and Rebekah are told something that none of us are told ahead of time, which of their sons will inherit the spiritual blessings of the covenant and which will rebel. And yet both are given the sign of the covenant, rightly so. Genesis 25-34 describes the moment when Esau, and I quote now, despises his birthright. You can't despise something that was never yours. The sign of the covenant meant that the birthright of the covenant was promised to him and the claims of God were placed upon him and he despised it. Who's to blame? Esau. See the same thing in the New Testament, Matthew 8. Let's look at Matthew 8, 5 to 13. Matthew 8, 5 to 13. Jesus is marveling at this Gentile who didn't grow up a child of the covenant or of the kingdom, and he says about him, I haven't even seen such faith in Israel. What's going to happen to those Israelites who refuse to believe? Verse 11. Many shall come from the east and west and shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, but the children of the kingdom. Again, you see the same words. shall be cast out into outer darkness. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Let me say it in today's language. The covenant child growing up with it and despises it and says, it doesn't mean anything to me. So much privilege. And God goes and finds a homeless drug addict and saves that person. And the child of the kingdom is cast out. Why? Because the child of the kingdom despised his birthright. Wasn't the failure of the promise? was the failure of their own hearts. Parents, God baptizes your children so that you would raise them with the full riches of the covenant and everything of the covenant balance found in the scriptures. Raising them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord means they need to know that there are two kinds of covenant children, and they need to be admonished in light of the promise and claim of Christ. And you sound like the father of Proverbs who teaches God's wisdom to his son. And you sound like the author of Hebrews, the very passage that quotes the New Covenant from Jeremiah and yet demonstrates that within the New Covenant community are found those who need to be admonished against unbelief and called to faith. The sign is meant to teach you how to do so. So let's say that tomorrow you're going to drive to Calgary. And so you leave Fort McLeod and you're heading north on Highway 2 and the sign says, just pick a number, Calgary, 120 kilometers. Do you say, well, hooray, I can read the sign, I'm in Calgary? That would be silly. Do you say, yeah, but the sign says Calgary, but I'm not sure if it means me or not, and so I will wait. I will park my car by the side of the road and if one day I wake up in Calgary then I know the sign meant me." Well, that would be foolish because the sign and the thing signified work when you follow the directions on the sign to the thing signified. Our children must be raised to follow the directions on the sign. And not to say, well, I can read it, it's mine, or to say, well, I don't know if it's mine. What are the directions that come with the sign of the covenant? Well, the same that come with the word because it just is another form of the word. The call to trust in Jesus Christ, receive from him as the mediator of the covenant, all that God promised for all God's blessings and promises flow through Jesus Christ. And you need to go to him with all your sins and shortcomings and needs. the call to circumcise your heart, you can only get that by going to Christ for it. Christ alone by his word and spirit can renew you. And now in the one covenant child, the Spirit of God does this as roughly and suddenly as a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder above your head at midnight. And then another God awakens spiritual life as gently as a mother's kiss awakens her sleeping baby. God simply opens that heart, and that person can't even remember the trauma of conversion. They just know, I love the Lord, and I trust in the Lord Jesus, and I want to obey him. And both are biblical, equally biblical models of covenant conversion. And then there's the call to repent of your sin and walk in all the ways of the Lord. Now, if you don't obey these calls, you will go lost. The curses of the covenant will come upon you. But if you turn to the Lord Jesus Christ, you'll find that God keeps His covenant promises. So what do you do when a covenant child comes to you and says, I want to be good, but I can't? I try so hard, and I keep on sinning, and I keep on doing wrong. And then you say, my son, come with me to the foot of the cross, where we can meet the mediator of the covenant. My daughter, come with me to the throne of grace, and let us go to the God who promised the washing away of sins and the forgiveness that you need in your baptism. And now trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, and walk in God's ways with the help of his spirit. God's covenant claim and promise gives your children the right and reason to do so. But if you just assume that it means that they already have everything they need spiritually, that's not covenant upbringing. That's the covenant presumption of unbelief. That's what Nicodemus needed to learn in John 3, didn't he? You must be born again. Nicodemus, if you knew your Old Testament, you would know that. Nicodemus, if you'd paid attention to your own circumcision, you would know that. Parents, God hasn't left you to face something as draining, monumental, and impossible as parenting by yourself. His covenant claim and promise gives you all the spiritual equipment and wisdom you could need. When your heart is overwhelmed as a father or mother by your own unfaithfulness and your own inconsistencies, then go to the God who made His covenant of grace with you and your family. The salvation of your children doesn't ultimately depend on you or on your children, but on the God who must prove by working through the generations that He is the covenant keeper, that He works in His sovereign grace, repentance, and faith, and every grace in the physical children of the kingdom so that they become spiritual sons of the kingdom. and in people in the world who have never had any connection to the kingdom and covenant of God. And when you realize that, you become prayerful. And you keep on praying, even if you have a son like Manasseh, who ignores God for years. And that's why prayer is the very next part of the form. And for tonight, let's just stop and think about this. Parents, marvel at the riches and the wisdom of God's covenant, of His heritage for our households. God is declaring he will remain your God and the God of your children, and he gives you reason to marvel at his goodness and grace, and your heart should be flooded with unusual happiness and enlivened to deeper love for your own heavenly Father when you see that his concern for your children is expressed for his covenant's sake. Let's say you had a best friend who said to you, well, I'm going to ignore your children. I don't even want to say hi to them because they have to choose friendship with me when they're old enough to decide whether they want it or not. Some friend. But what if he said to you, I'm going to show the same friendship I showed you to your children from their earliest days for your sake to show you how much I delight in you? Would you not love your friend all the more for such kindness to your family? God calls believing parents his covenant friends just like he did to Abraham. And he says, I'm going to prove that by how I treat your children. Oh, marvelous riches. I heard recently of one Baptist who's coming to the point of infant baptism and he said, for him, the simple reason is this, that as I read the Bible, it's clear to me that God doesn't treat the children of believing parents as no different than the children out in the world who've got no connection to God. Do you see now the riches? Remember Operation Manna, all those bombers? Not with death and destruction, but raining food, much-needed food. Some of us may have had relatives who ate that food. It's the marvel of World War II, but Operation Covenant is the marvel of God's church, and it's far richer, and it proclaims the glory of God to us in a wonderful way.