So I received a whole lot of suggested topics for our Suggested Topics Series as you were learning. We're on number 36 today. And for you that are visiting, this sermon series is one where people made suggestions of topics that they wanted to hear a sermon on. And so I'm taking these up in different categories that I've put them into. And as I say, we're on number 36, and the category that I put the sermons in we're looking at now is Christian living in the home. And this particular one is on the second of eight sermons that are in this category. And what is the topic for this week about Christian living in the home? It's covenant succession. You've already been told that. And what is covenant succession? Well, covenant succession refers to the way that God establishes covenant, not only with believers, but also with their children and their children's children. And what we read in Romans 11 shows us that sometimes that even extends far into the future, where a people can be cut off for a long time and God still remembers their fathers and is able to graft them in again, that they're natural branches because they were once part of the tree that had been cut off and now they're brought back again. and people who are outside that are grafted in are seen as wild branches. And so once people have known the Lord and a society at large, a nation has come to know the Lord, then that society would be natural branches as well in that sense as we progress on in history. But covenant succession, especially we're looking at more in the smaller context, a shorter range of God's blessing to us and our children, is the teaching of Scripture that God's ordinary way of working among His people is in saving them and their children. So there is this succession that goes on from one generation to another as children coming up in a Christian home, then go forward, and then their children and their children after them. That's the succession that we're talking about. The person who requested this asked me to provide biblical support for this doctrine, to show how it is emphasized in the scripture, and how it is practically applied and misapplied. So, that's a tall order. There's a lot there. We could do a whole series. I don't know whether I'd be capable of doing a whole series, but it warrants a whole series. But I should point out from the beginning that this doctrine is not a very popular one in our day of individualism. because we look at each person as entirely separate from every other person. I mean, sometimes we talk about unity in a really kind of twisted way, and other times we talk about everybody's completely separate from each other. I suppose it's never been a very popular doctrine, but it was popular, or widely held, I guess I should say, by the reformers. Zwingli, Calvin, Biza, and the later Reformed confessions and catechisms that followed after those in the next couple of centuries, they teach that children of believers are God's people just as their parents are. They are baptized not to make them his people, but because God has declared that they are his people, and that the kingdom belongs to them. And so that's why they're seen as having a right to baptism. The Westminster Confession is our confession, and it teaches this. In chapter 25, paragraph 2, it says, it's the section on the church, the paragraph on the church, I mean the chapter on the church, and in paragraph 2 it says, the visible church, okay, so that's the community of believers, it tells us, the visible church, which is also Catholic or universal under the gospel, and it explains what that means, not confined to one nation as before under the law, consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion together with their children. So it's talking about young children who are not able to profess because they can't even talk, babies or whatever. And so the church is made up of both professing those who profess a true religion, and their children, together with their children. And as the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation. So this includes the doctrine that Jesus taught that the kingdom belongs to little children, even infants, as Luke uses the word infant in his testimony about what Jesus said, that he receives them as he receives their believing parents who profess the true religion. Then when the Westminster Confession speaks of baptism in chapter 28, it teaches in paragraph 4 that, and I quote, not only those that do actually profess faith in and obedience unto Christ, but also the infants of one or both believing parents are to be baptized. And according to the first paragraph of that chapter, chapter 28 on baptism, baptism testifies to the blessing that both professing Christians and their children have in God's salvation. Says, baptism is a sacrament of the New Testament ordained by Jesus Christ, not only for the solemn admission of the party baptized into the visible church. Okay, so they're already seen to be God's people, but they're solemnly, ceremonially admitted into the church by giving them baptism. So it's not only for that. just to bring him into the outward church, but also to be unto him a that that one is baptized, a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, of his engrafting into Christ. of regeneration, of remission of sins, of his giving up unto God through Jesus Christ to walk in newness of life, which sacrament is by Christ's own appointment to be continued in the church until the end of the world. So the children of professing believers are giving this sign and seal of God's covenant of grace. They are baptized because they are seen to be engrafted into Christ. and to have regeneration, remission of sin, a life giving up to God through Christ to walk in newness of life. Not because they are baptized, but they are baptized because they have this blessing. In other words, God's covenant that is established with their believing parents is established with them before they are capable of professing their faith. We're therefore to look at these little ones, to look for these little ones to continue in the grace of God and to receive the blessing of the covenant through the working of Christ by his spirit in them. We look to God to work in them and to keep them just as we look to him to work in us and all those who profess the true religion. It is true that not all baptized children will continue. In other words, not all are truly regenerate and so on. Not all will continue. But this is just as true of those who profess as adults. In a faithful church, the number of children that continue is more or less similar to the number of adults that continue. We've certainly had people that were baptized into the church, that professed their faith, that made a credible profession, the elders received them, and then they went out from us because they were not really of us. And so adults do that, and we also see children. that grow up in the nurture of the covenant and so on. And then when they get older, they go out and they depart from the faith. Sometimes a person that professes in adulthood might be 20 years later. You don't, these things, God told, Jesus told us that there would be wheat and tares. He told us that there would be those who were not the real thing, but look like the real thing. When the church declines spiritually, and ceases to preach the gospel and exercise church discipline, it becomes filled with nominal Christians. Christians in name only. Meaning that the church is filled with those who do not have a solid profession of faith and obedience. Soon, in a church like that, a false presumption ensues. In other words, the false presumption presumes that everyone among them is a fine Christian who is going to heaven regardless of what any of those people profess to believe. and regardless of how those people live. Just because they're part of the church, they're considered to be fine Christians all going to heaven. When children grow up in such churches, they, like their parents, neither believe the gospel nor walk in obedience to Christ. And so they grow up, you see, and there's a kind of a, you have a succession then Not of Christ, but of this nominal Christianity in name only that is not as such. That's what's being brought forth. You have churches, some of the liberal churches that we see about that they don't even profess the gospel. And you have generation after generation that comes along in some of those some of those churches. So it's a succession then, not in Christ, but in presumption. that we're all going to go to heaven. We're all Christians. We're all going to go to heaven. When the church or churches fall into such times, there are often those who come to believe the true gospel. out of that nominalism, that apostasy. And in the Old Testament, as well as the New, God brings forth men who proclaim His truth and seek to reform the church. For example, Elijah was one like that in Israel, which was largely apostate. They were worshiping Baal. There were 7,000, God said, that hadn't bowed the knee to Baal. Most of them had. And Elijah's desperately preaching to those people. He's calling them out of that nominalism, that presumption that they have. Jesus himself and his apostles did this. And they were expelled from the nominal church. The same kind of thing happened at the Reformation. But over time, the heirs of the Reformation themselves became nominal. At various times the Lord called people within these churches to himself so that they believe the gospel. And we had revivalism, didn't we, that followed a couple of centuries after the Reformation. We began to have revivalism. However, these revivals sometimes overstepped and they forsook the church because they said, oh, the church is no good because there's all these people that presume that they're right with God when they don't even believe. And now we've come to believe and we see that they're not. And so they stressed personal conversion to such an extent that they excluded the children of believers. And that's the situation that we sit in today, where the children of believers are largely excluded from the church and evangelicalism because they're seen to be no part of Christ until they come to such a time where they They have a conversion experience, and so revival meetings are held for children, camp meetings, and different things to try to... That's not as common as it used to be today. There's even a sadder reason for that, because a lot of these churches that once did that have become nominal themselves. They don't even care whether people really have a credible profession of faith. But that's kind of what has happened, and it's kind of left us in the situation that we're in now. So rather than in this kind of a situation, a revivalism kind of situation, rather than being thankful that God has restored us and then being thankful that our children are with us in that restoration and that we can bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. We put the children outside and say we have to wait and see what they're because we don't want any nominal Christian children are not nominal. God has received them. And if they grow up and they don't have a credible profession, then they have to be removed, just like any adult that professes has to be removed. So this hinders. the Christian nurture of children. And I have seen churches where they had very strong revival and many times almost none of their children go on for the Lord. It becomes you've got a bunch of old people in the church and they all talk about the power of the gospel and how they want the spirit to come down and all these things. It's all old people. And the children are gone because they didn't nurture their children in the Lord. They were waiting for them to have a conversion experience in the child's world. What does that mean? I have all of these things, and they hardly know how to handle it. Now, of course, many times people can be saved in that, but our great concern, what is our great concern? It should be to go with what the Bible says. Now, this is a long introduction I've given you, but the Bible teaches throughout its pages that righteousness is to children's children. So we need to accept that. We need to see what that is. It does not teach that children of believers are outside of God in his kingdom. It teaches that they're inside. I've chosen for my text Psalm 103, 15 to 18, where this is expressly stated. We read it earlier. I want to read this one passage to you again. We'll look at some of the others that we read earlier as well. But Psalm 103, 15 to 18, this is the Word of God. As for man, his days are like grass, as a flower of the field, so he flourishes. For the wind passes over and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more. But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him. and his righteousness to children's children, to such as keep his commandment and to those who remember his commandments to do them. There we shall end the reading of God's word. First, we are told here of the wonderful blessing of eternal salvation which we have from God's covenant mercy. We're reminded here that we cannot even keep ourselves alive. Again, verse 15 and 16, as for man, his days are like grass. And remember, their grass was, in those dry countries where they lived, there would be a rainy season, the grass would come out. You wouldn't even see it. If the seed was in the ground, it would come out. And then the dry season would come, and all the grass would dry up, and it would blow away, and it would be gone. There'd be no grass. And then when seasons would go on like that in those countries. And so, say man is like grass, is a flower of the field, so he flourishes. For dew passes over it and it is gone. And its place remembers it no more. God has humbled us by sentencing us to return to the dust out of which we were originally made. We declared our independence from God. We sought to find a better way, a better life by departing from God in our father, Adam, and his wife, Eve. I will do what I want instead of what God wants. If I want to eat the fruit, I'll eat the fruit. I don't care if God says don't eat that fruit. Then I'll be like God himself. I will decide what is good for me and what is evil for me. Instead of yielding to him, I will make my own way. I will be like God. So the Lord responded. He has shown us that left to ourselves, we can't even keep ourselves alive. We couldn't even exist left to ourselves. We return to what we were. We return to the dust out of which we were made. That is the ultimate humiliation. We sang that in Psalm earlier, where our Lord spoke, you know, of going to the dust of death. It is indeed the ultimate humiliation. God makes it clear to us that without Him we are nothing. We are here and we're quickly gone, just like the grass. But unlike our passing lives, God's mercy is everlasting. Verse 17 begins, but the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him. The word mercy here translates the Hebrew word hesed. It speaks of God's promised covenant mercy and love that He bestows on His people. It is God's forgiveness and restoration to Him. He reaches out to us and He lifts us out of our ruined condition of sin and death. This is the mercy that saves us from our sins. We know what God did to save us, how he sent Jesus to pay for our sins, to be punished in our place so that we could be forgiven, and how he sent him to establish his kingdom of righteousness, being the first to fulfill God's righteous requirement and the one who fulfills that requirement for all of his people that are brought into his kingdom. He is our righteousness. And we know how he also gives us his spirit so that we can know the truth about sin. See it as it is. And so we can come to Jesus for forgiveness that we might be brought to God because we wouldn't come apart from the working of his spirit. We'd have this salvation provided and we would never come. Then he helps us to grow in our walk with God. The Holy Spirit helps us to grow in our walk with God. This mercy, once it is received, is what? According to the psalm here, everlasting. And because it is everlasting, God sustains us forever, as those who belong to God. In other words, if God is showing everlasting mercy to us, that means we become those who last forever. who love Him and know Him and worship Him and trust Him forever. He keeps us in His way. Now, this mercy of His makes us everlasting, and it sustains us forever. This is nothing else but eternal life and joyful communion with God. That's what eternal life is. It's not just living forever. It's in joyful communion with God. The opposite is called everlasting destruction. It goes on and on, but it's not life. The characteristic of those who have this blessing of salvation is that we fear God. That's what it says in the Psalm. That means that we realize that He matters, we saw this this morning, more than anything. That He determines how it will go for us. That we cannot thrive without Him. If left to our own resources, what happens to us? We already saw that. We're like the grass. We perish. People who receive this grace are awakened so that they look to God. for his mercy. It is, in fact, a part of his mercy to turn us to him for his mercy. Now, you can recognize those for whom this has been done. How? Because they fear God. They have turned to him as God, the one that they have to trust and depend on to get on. They have heard his warning and they have believed his promise and they have come to him for mercy for eternal life. Now, would that be true of you? Just pause here. Have you turned from death to life? Are you resting in God? It doesn't matter if you're a child who has known the Lord from as long as you can remember. A child that grew up in the church that has known the Lord as long as you can remember. The question is, are you resting in Him for your righteousness, for your salvation, for eternal life? something else and what you do, you're going to make your own life or maybe you don't care about eternal life. What a grand thing this mercy is. It takes perishing people who are destined to just blow away like grass, and it makes them everlasting people in God's kingdom. This is a wonderful, gracious thing from God. But our text does not end. With that blessing. For you as an individual, It says more about that blessing. Where does that blessing go from you? This is very clear. We're told here that the very same blessing we've just been talking about, everlasting life, is to children's children. You can see that in the rest of verse 17. And his righteousness, God's righteousness, to children's children. Hebrew poetry has parallelism. God's everlasting mercy is parallel with His righteousness. If you look at the whole of verse 17 then, it says, Mercy is given to us just as righteousness is given to us. Both of those are given. Mercy is given. And when mercy is given, there's always righteousness. Righteousness when it's given, it always means that mercy is given. So mercy restores us to God's righteousness so that we are then right with him. This mercy that goes on forever and this righteousness that extends to our children when God blesses an individual with everlasting salvation, it is his ordinary way Okay, this is how God says that He works, to extend that mercy and righteousness to that individual's children. Okay, we're told here that this is how God characteristically works. His mercy is from everlasting to everlasting, and His righteousness to children's children, on those that fear Him. This is what God has promised to us and to our children. Earlier in our service, we read from Genesis 17, 1 through 8, and we saw this promise to Abraham, that this was promised to Abraham. In verse 7 and 8, the Lord promises that he will be God to Abraham and to his descendants. He says in 17, 7 and 8, And I will establish my covenant between you and your descendants after you and their generations for an everlasting covenant. He's not talking about a temporary thing to be God to you and your descendants after you. And I will give you and your descendants after you the land in which you are a stranger. All the land of Canaan is an everlasting possession, and I will be their God. Now, some want to say that this has to do only with living in the land. And it certainly does have to do with that. We're told even in Romans that Abraham is actually an heir of the world. And the land that they were given, yeah, we've got the land. The meek inherit the earth. When Jesus comes back and he's gonna restore new heavens and new earth, it will be this earth restored. Just like with the flood, after the flood, after the fire, he's gonna restore it. And then we will be here with him forever and ever. This is our everlasting possession in that way. And it was given to his people of old. But they had a particular land at that time that God had appointed for them. So, the land was how, in those times of Israel, the land was the place where God called them together to reveal His mercy and grace to them. He gathered His people and showed His promises to them in that land before Christ came to through the ordinances that he had, but it was not a mere temporal relationship that he established with them. He established it in the temporal way of that land of Canaan with the tabernacle and all those things, but it was an everlasting relationship. God is not the God of those who are only given blessing in this life. When he says, I am your God, that doesn't mean I'm your God for a little while. It means I am your God. That's forever. For Him to be our God means that we have been reconciled to Him and will live forever. We've been pardoned and forgiven and we have received the Holy Spirit. That blessing is declared and fostered in the church. which in the Old Testament was tied to the land, and in the New, it's tied to our Christian assemblies that meet all over the world, churches in every nation. That's how God administers that covenant now. He administered it in the land of Canaan with the temple, in the Old Testament, now He administers it in churches all over the place that call upon Him in every nation in their own language and whatnot. God is not and never was the God of those who are blessed only in this life. When he blesses, his mercy is from everlasting to everlasting. And the New Testament tells us that the blessing of Abraham that he received was righteousness by faith and eternal life, and that we are partakers of the blessing of Abraham if we believe. that what was promised to him we have now. He is a model, not of temporal, but of eternal salvation. When you have faith like Abraham, you have the blessing that he was promised to you and your children. This blessing is to you and your children and their children. That's what we're told in Psalm 103. This promise to us and our children is often repeated in scripture. We find it again and again. For example, in Jeremiah 32, 38, 39, God says, Many other examples could be given from the Old Testament. When Peter preaches the gospel on the day of Pentecost, we read that earlier, he makes it clear that the promise is still not just to the individual who believes, but also to the children. When some of those who heard Peter preaching were convicted that they had actually crucified the Messiah in rejecting him, the crucifixion, they were convicted of their sin and they cried out and said, what shall we do? They were desperate, what can we do? And you can see what he tells them to do in Acts 2.37. Peter responds with this all-important call. What does he say to them? Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and your children, and to all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call. Since God had already established that He is a God not only to those He saves, but also to their children, then Peter's mention of children here must be understood in the same way. He's not speaking out of a long context of Old Testament promises. He would have no reason to mention children either, unless they were to be included in God's kingdom as children while they were still children. If he's saying just that this blessing is for you and your children when they get older, well, of course. I mean, if there's a man that's 60 and a 30-year-old child there with him, then of course it would be up to that 30-year-old to respond to the gospel or not. But what about the 30-year-old that has a three-year-old? That child's not going to respond either way, they don't understand. So what is it that promises to you and your children, as children, that they are my people, God says. I am God to you and to your children. Now we find out, of course, when people are older, they speak for themselves, and we see what they say about it, and then we have to deal with them according to their profession. But as children, we deal with them according to what God says about them because they don't speak. If they were adults, it would be up to them to repent and believe. But for the children, The promise is for them too. God is so very kind and gracious to us. He doesn't make us leave our children out. And then when our children die, if they were to die in their infancy, then we can rejoice that God has said that they're his people. And we have no more reason to think that they perished than we would think that a professing adult perished in the church. That professing adult may not really know the Lord. We don't know. We don't know if they really, maybe they were hypocrite. But we take it on the status that God has bestowed on them for us to see. And it is His normal way to bestow salvation on these little children. We're to bring them up as those who have God as their God. We're to baptize them and count them with us as his people. And we're to bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, as we're told in, for example, Ephesians six. God uses Christian nurture to instruct them in what he has done for them. And by his glorious, gracious work, they believe and continue in the faith. Not all do. But that's his way of generally working. They move from absolute dependency to independency in their walk as they grow to maturity. So there's a transition as they grow up, understand, begin to speak to themselves. They move from those who are the children of professing believers to those who themselves profess. but the whole time they are to be reckoned as belonging to God until it becomes clear. Otherwise, just as any baptized person, adult or child, is to be reckoned, who makes an incredible profession, is to be reckoned as belonging to God until they show otherwise. It's no different. He says that he is their God and that his kingdom belongs to them. But God's blessing to the children of his people is also what we see. We see it in the Bible, in the ancient world before the flood. What do we look at today? Well, there's a godly line that runs from Seth to Noah and his household in a world that had, by and large, rejected God. It is not the case that in one generation, the godly one is a descendant of godly Seth, who believes, and then the next generation is one of Cain's. It follows in a succession. The line of righteousness moves from parent to child. Now, others can be brought in, of course, but it moves from Seth to his son, Enosh, to his son, Canaan, to his son, Mehalel, to his son, Jared, to his son, Enoch, to his son, Methuselah, to his son, Lamech, to his son, Noah. We see that kind of succession also with Abraham. There is a continual succession of the descendants who believe and who follow the Lord. It's not just election is not just random. OK, here's Abraham. Now we're going to get someone from another country and someone from over here that that does happen in the gospel course now. But but I'm saying once those people come in, then they the expectation is that they will go on in their descendants. Strangers are brought to God from other nations, but when they they are, the promise is also to them and their children. That's how it was in the Old Testament. People were not of Israel, even though they didn't have they weren't going to be the ones that brought forth physically the Messiah. But still, the promise was to them and their children as well when they came from Moab or or somewhere else. We see this same kind of succession in the New Testament. Did you notice it was Zacchaeus? It's kind of an interesting thing, isn't it? The Bible has this story of this little man climbing up in a tree and everything. It's such an interesting thing wanting to see Jesus. We read about him in Luke 19 there. And he was a son of Abraham who had rejected the Lord. He was a descendant of Abraham. But God's saving mercy came to him because he was a descendant of Abraham. That's not the only reason it came, but that's a reason that it came. And the salvation that comes is not only to him, but also to his house. So his children are blessed with him. In Luke 19, 9-10 it says, And Jesus said to him, Today salvation has come. Where? To this house. Not just to you, Zacchaeus, but to you and your household. Because, he says, he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost. All the conversions in the New Testament of those who have families are said to be of households. The household comes in. Of course, if there is a spouse or an older child who rejects the mercy that's brought to them, that individual will be cut off. But the pattern is that when salvation comes to a man or a woman, it comes to their household. Whether it be Stephanas, or whether it be the Philippine jailer, or whether it be Lydia, or whether it be Cornelius. The blessing still always to you and to your house. Covenant succession is the pattern of the Bible. We also see it in the history of the church up to the present day. God's primary way of growing his church is by bestowing salvation on the children of his people. Certainly many others are brought in by the gospel as it spreads to the nations, but the great majority of those that are saved are the children of believers. God has weaved His electing grace, the lines of that grace, within family lines. Otherwise, it would be just as likely for children of unbelievers to be saved as children of believers. It would be just as likely for your neighbors that don't know the Lord as for your children. That's not true, is it? It's much more the case that your children be saved than that someone outside that doesn't know the Lord. We are to expect to see the salvation of our children, because this is how God works. God has called us from the beginning to be fruitful and multiply. He made it clear at creation that he wanted us to bring forth children that the earth might be filled with godly people who bear his image. Genesis 1, 27, 28, we read, So God created man in his own image, and in the image of God he created him. Male and female, he created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Notice how it stresses that he made them in his image. He made them in his image, in the image of God he created. It says it more than once. And then how he says be fruitful and multiply. What does he want to be multiplied? Those who bear his image. This is both a commandment and a blessing that's given. He blesses them, how? To enable them to fulfill the commandment. He blesses them so that they can bring forth children, so that they can bring forth image bearers, so that they can bring forth children that glorify Him. He calls and commands them to do this. God still wants the earth filled with godly image bearers. And you don't just want people in the New Testament times. He blesses us even more because the godly seed are delivered with their parents from the fall. So not only do we have the blessing that Adam and Eve had with their descendants being made in the image of God, but we've actually also been restored and then have that that blessing. So God is not interested in filling the earth with ungodly, unredeemed offspring. That's not fruitfulness. That's to bring forth weeds. He says expressly in Malachi that he wants a godly offspring. He rebukes them for dealing treacherously with their wives because he wants a godly offspring, not just offspring to come from them. And if you are not keeping his covenant, mistreating your wife, it's going to affect the godly offspring. And this brings us to a very important qualification in this whole thing. The promised blessing is conditional. Returning to our text, we see that it says the blessing of the covenant succession is to such as keep his covenant and to those who remember his commandments to do them. If you want to experience the blessing of covenant succession, you and your children must continue in the covenant. As it says, we must keep His covenant and remember His commandments to do them. This is true of the parent as well as the child. Obviously a parent, think about this, a parent who does not teach his child, let's give an extreme situation, about God's mercy, who does not take them to a faithful church, establish them in it, who does not lead his family in obedience to God's ways, will not have children who continue in the covenant. Why? Because the parent doesn't continue in the covenant. And if the parent doesn't, then the children are not. To continue in His mercy, one must continue in His covenant mercy. The parent doesn't continue. The child can be brought back in, but the parent didn't continue. How is it that the child could? When God called Abraham, He told him that he must circumcise his sons and lead his household in God's gracious way, in order that the blessing might come to him. Look at the words, in order that, that are repeated. Actually, it's just that one time, but the Hebrew word is lamayan. And it says, for I have known him in order that Lamayun, he may command his children in his household after him that that's sort of in an order that but it's not Lamayun there that they may keep the way of the Lord to do righteous and justice. And then again, in order that Lamayun, the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has spoken to him. So the promise that God spoke to Abraham cannot come if Abraham doesn't pass the faith along to his children? How could it come if they are not nurtured in the way of the Lord? They don't even know the Lord. They don't know of his salvation, his promises, or anything. Each generation must continue to do so, and when a generation ceases to do so, then they're cut off. They're cut off from the covenant. Proverbs, which is all about training up children in God's way of wisdom, says in 22.6, train up a child in the way he should go, and when he's old, he will not depart from it. This is the way God works. His electing grace often brings salvation to his people as infants of believers who are then nurtured by their parents in the faith into which they grow up. Psalm 78 includes a resolution on the part of parents to preach the gospel, the way of obedience to our children, that our children might go on in God's salvation. We're not going to hide. If we don't give them the word, the gospel, we're hiding it from them. So it says, 78-1, give ear, O my people, to my law, and cline your ears to the words of my mouth. I'll open my mouth in a parable, I'll 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. What's the greatest work he's done now? Sending Christ. 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 children who would be born, that they may arise and declare them to their children. See, there's a succession that they may set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments. If they don't do it, how can they set their hope in those promises? Verse eight, it 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 Bible has examples of the kind of forfeiture that of the blessing that is warned about here, the blessing of succession. It can be there can be a forfeiture of it. David is a prime example in the Old Testament of this. We know for certain that David was a godly man, because God says he is a godly man. He's a man, God says, after my own heart. We're told that this is so, but we're also told that he was not a faithful husband and father. Not only did he marry many wives, but he also committed adultery. When he did that, God declared that he would chasten him via his family. In 2 Samuel 12, 9-12 it says, why have you despised the commandment of the Lord to do evil in his sight? saying this to David, you have killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword. You have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the people of Ammon. Now, therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. Thus says the Lord, behold, I will raise up an adversary against you from your own house. and I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives on the side of the sun." That was Absalom, David's own son. For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, before the sun. God brought this about in his providence. David was a negligent father. It comes about that Amnon is infatuated with his half-sister Tamar and rapes her, and David does not deal with this. This leads to the rebellion of David's son Absalom, who is Tamar's full brother, who kills Amnon and then rebels against his father and says, my father won't give you justice, but I'll give you justice. Come and follow me, I'll be your king. And the people of Israel began to follow him. He sets up a rival kingdom, taking David's concubines openly in fulfillment of God's sentence to David for his adultery. David's neglect of the training of his children is emphasized again when his son Adonijah later rebels against him. The comment in 1 Kings 1.6 is that David had not rebuked him, the son, at any time by saying, why have you done so? The cause of the rebellion of David's son is attributed to David's sin and neglect. We can mention many more examples of otherwise godly men. There's Eli who's charged concerning his son. We have Hezekiah, we have Samuel, we have Joseph and Mary, though their sons later repented. There's never a time in the Bible when we're told that rebellion of covenant children had nothing to do with parental sin and neglect. This is what we always hear in the church, that it had nothing to do with that, but this is never what God says. God does not withhold his promise, this is the issue, to bless the children of those who keep his covenant, remember his commandments to do them. Unfaithful covenant children call for repentance of some sort on the part of parents. It is one of the most painful ways that the Lord humbles and chastens his people. Eli was charged with the rebellion of his sons. Men who serve as elders are called to have faithful children. Parental failure is right in there with other things that are disqualifying. Certainly a man can repent so that he's qualified again of any of these things. But there needs to be acceptance of responsibility, and there needs to be repentance for this just as much as there is for anger, intemperance, covetousness, neglect of hospitality, drunkenness, being quarrelsome, any of those things a man can fall into, and if he's living in these things, they disqualify him. but then he can be restored by repentance. Parental failure is one of the hardest sins to admit because the consequences are so painful. But if God's promise to our children is not realized, it's because we and our children in some way have not kept his covenant and remembered his commandments to do them. Now David obviously was a man who kept God's covenant and remembered his commandments to do them, but none of us do it perfectly. So this gives us a lot to ponder. The point is we need to realize that God's promise is good, and that when that promise is not realized, we bear responsibility for that. Holding to this doctrine of responsibility regarding the faithfulness of our children is important on several fronts that I want to give to you now. First, because it teaches us to turn to our Lord for mercy. Our tendency when we have sinned is to find comfort in the fact that we are in the good company of godly men like David and Samuel. But that is not where God wants us to find comfort. Our comfort must come from Christ our Savior who cleanses us from sin. It should not come from claiming that what we did was not that bad. God humbles us not so we can comfort ourselves, but so that we can cry out to Him and rest in His mercy that is not based on our righteousness. That's actually where we went wrong in the first place whenever we have gone wrong. We're not resting in God's mercy, we're not looking to Him, we're not relying on Him. The Lord is showing us that our sin is not a light thing. It sorely displeases him and it has devastating consequences. It sent his son to the cross after all. All this should lead us to a deeper repentance. We're so prone to be satisfied with a superficial repentance. Second, holding to this doctrine of parental responsibility is also helpful in the act of parenting itself. My advice to parents is to note when our children are starting to decline. When we see them starting to go astray from the Lord, we should immediately get on our knees and plead with the Lord based on His promise to us and to our children. But the pleading should not just be for our children, but also for us in association with our children as parents. We should ask, how am I contributing to this decline in my child's godliness? Then we can repent of our sin, seek mercy, and go to our children as one sinner to another in need of God's mercy, addressing ourselves as a sinner in need of God's mercy, addressing our children as sinners in need of God's mercy, rather than as some righteous person that's coming without need. Don't misunderstand. I don't mean that you have to do this in some kind of a weird wooden way every time you discipline your children. Some kind of legalistic way. But with a broken heart before God because I love Him and because I love my children way. That's the way you go. a humbly coming, saying, I have contributed to this. And again, you don't necessarily always say that to your children when they're just disobeying you or whatever. But as you see them hardening their hearts, perhaps, and drifting away, that's when you really start to see signs that look like apostasy. then you get on your knees and you cry out. And then the third thing, holding to this doctrine of parental responsibility is important because it enables us all to cling to God's promises concerning our children. We don't hold this, we don't have parental responsibility, we don't really have much of a promise. We need to see that God is faithful to his promise to us and our children. We are the ones who are unfaithful. That's the way it always is. He remains faithful. He has not broken his promise when our children go astray because his promises to those who keep his covenant, remember his commandments to do them. And in some measure, we have not done that. Parents need to be encouraged that God's promise still holds. We must say we must not say what good is it if David could not meet those conditions? We must rather say, when tempted by adultery as he was, or when we find ourselves neglecting correction of our children like he did, Lord, have mercy on me and keep me from these sins. Not, Lord, have mercy on me even though I commit these sins. You see the difference? I can say, oh Lord, you work out there, but don't work in me. Or I can say, work in me and them, my children, together. We need to realize how God operates in all this. This is very important, okay? There is not some kind of mathematical equation that God uses that when there has been this much neglect of children or whatever, then they're gonna be lost. This is not at all what we're talking about here. It's all of grace when God brings salvation to us and our children. There are some parents who are very sinful and negligent who nevertheless have godly children, God's mercy. Sometimes the Lord chastens those parents in other ways. David was more faithful than most men, as we're told. And it was perhaps because of such faithfulness and the esteem that he had in the eyes of God and others that God dealt with his children as he did, when another man might be equally negligent and have faithful children. In other words, David was held to a higher standard. And God does not treat everyone in the same way in these things. What we're talking about is principles here that God has given. There is also the responsibility of others that comes into the picture. There are two parents. A praying godly mother can sometimes offset a wicked husband. On the other hand, some of the godly kings in Israel married pagan women and their children ended up being pagan. So, you know, those things come into play. Siblings and grandparents certainly have a role. Sometimes God will use an older sister or brother to rescue a child that was going astray. when the parents have been negligent to do so. Ministers and elders have a role to play. When ministers preach the gospel and the elders apply that teaching in their engagement with the congregation, and when the elders carry out faithful church discipline and pray for the people, God will use that. Likewise, when these things are neglected, it can lead to a whole generation that is apostate. This is not an excuse for parents. The parents are responsible for tolerating such teaching. But there are times when there are no options and the parents don't even know the truth because there's been a perversion of the truth over the generations. There are many nominal churches where there is no gospel. And as I said earlier, these churches bring forth a succession of wicked, ungodly, presumptuous disciples who do not inherit eternal life, but who all think that they're on their way to heaven. The bottom line is that our God is extreme in His mercy. He has sent His Son to save us, and He pleads with us to come to Him. That's the kind of God He is. He promises that when we do, we will know His salvation. He includes our children with us. And this is a tremendous mercy, because they're sinners just like we are from their birth. They're conceived in sin. We bring them up not as strangers, but as his people to whom he has shown mercy. We tell them what great things he has done for them, and we teach them to trust in his mercy and to keep his commandments. We continually turn our eyes to the Lord for this mercy. Please stand and let us call on the name of our God. Our gracious Heavenly Father, we come before You, recognizing that these are some heavy things that we have looked at in Your Word. And we thank You, O Lord, that the overall thing, though, is that You are merciful to us and to our children. And we see, Lord, that there are so many children that are even among us that are continuing in the grace of God as they go on in the years. And we thank You, O Lord, for that mercy that You have shown. We also see, Lord, that You work in us in a whole variety of ways. You humble one person in one way and another person in another way, and that You do not always act in the same uniform way. There's not some mathematical thing that goes on here. But, Lord, what we have looked at today is one of the ways that You do humble us and often chasten us in our offspring. We see that You've done this again and again in history. And we pray, Father, that we would entrust ourselves to you as a gracious, faithful Savior, and that we would realize that in Christ we have full forgiveness of sins for whatever ways we have come short. And Lord, there are so many ways. I think about in my own life how you hit me so hard about about pride and all of these things that Lord, to expose that and it's such a hard thing. But Lord, you are the one who. who works in us and brings forgiveness to us through Christ. You do forgive us. Our righteousness is in Him. Father, we know that how we act does affect our children. If I'm abusive to them, it's going to have an effect. If I neglect them, it's going to have an effect. Set a bad example for them, it's going to have an effect. There's all kinds of ways that even in a natural kind of setting that we could say, but it is all tied together with your sovereign hand. And we pray, Lord, that you would help us to ultimately that we would have faith. Father, that we would cry out to you and look to you for only you can save us, only you can save our children. We can't do it. Christ is the only one who can do it. But Father, we pray that in saving them, that you would be pleased to work in us, Lord, so that we would be what we need to be. in order to bring that about. We think about the apostle talking about his ministry and saying that he would preach in such a way or that he did preach. It says, I guess, in Luke that he preached in such a way that people were saved when Luke writes Acts. And we know, Lord, that there can be preaching such that men cannot be saved. And there's preaching where they can be saved. We want to have preaching where they can. We want to have ministry to our children. And Father, we cry out to you. and ask you to help us and guide us. Lord, these are you're so you're so kind, Lord, to even have saved a single person. We see how that you rescued Noah so long ago because of your great promise that you would bring salvation into the world through your son. And we see that you did do that. You have done that. And now it is in him that we rest. We pray that you would guard us from the nominalism that we talked about to We can see that that is a danger, Lord, that we begin to become slack and and to not carry on in the way that we should. And I pray that you would help us to be vigilant. And I thank you, Lord, that that you are able to preserve us and to keep us. We ask you to do so, O Lord. We pray for your blessing on us and our children. In Jesus name. Amen. OK, we're going to sing. The psalm that we looked at Psalm 103, so it's 103 Selection C. May the Lord rescue you and deliver you from the hand of foreigners whose mouth speaks lying words and whose right hand is a right hand of falsehood. That your son, that your sons may be as plants grown up in their youth. that your daughters may be as pillars sculptured in palace style. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you all. Amen.