Now, I'm not going to read all of this, but let me just get the immediately relevant sections in front of us. So look with me at 1 Chronicles 1, beginning in verse 1. Adam, Sheth, Enosh, Canaan, Mahalaliel, Jared, Hanak, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah, Sham, Ham, and Japheth. And now scan down to verse 24. Shem, Arphaxad, Shelah, Eber, Peleg, Reu, Sereg, Nahor, Terah, Abram. The same is Abraham. As I just mentioned to you, one of the great difficulties of the human condition is the problem of passing on what has been attained in one generation to the next generation, and really passing on sometimes the fruits of many, many, almost innumerable generations. When you think about the development in any field, we're kind of strange that we only tend to look at matters pertaining to religion in the really strange, mindless way, but you think about mathematics and its development from the very beginning, we very carefully, as a race have laid up the lessons, we have organized them, and we have sought with each generation to pass on what has been learned with respect to mathematics. Not necessarily that every student will master the whole field, But generally speaking, every society wants everybody to master a competent amount for whatever it is that they do. But there are always those who are seeking to master the whole field with the sense that they need to advance, go further. But no sane person says, ah, let's just start mathematics over again and see how much I can figure out in one lifetime, which is, isn't it interesting that by the time I was getting into middle school, I was doing a form of mathematics that had I been left to myself, I would have never been able to. Could I have ever arrived at the Pythagorean theorem or something like that based upon my own? My own investigations of nature and number something like that. I wouldn't have gotten very far And what human being among us would get to calculus if had to start over just I see a handful of objects and I'm gonna count them and I'm gonna start Right from ground zero. No Pre-provided multiplication table nothing. I'm gonna start right from scratch. Nobody would get very far, especially not as short as our lives are now. Think about the accumulation of knowledge with respect to the sciences or computers and all of these kinds of things. As a race, we are very diligent about gathering these things up and seeking to pass them on. But even in these things, we learn how difficult it is to pass them on. Students can be recalcitrant. They don't want to learn. They don't want to focus their minds. Frequently, they're learning things and they're not prepared to understand the purposes of the things yet. They just need to learn them and so on. It is difficult, but it is strange. It's really in the field of religion alone that most evangelicals think, you know, I don't need I don't need the wisdom of the ages. I don't need the three and a half millennia of Christ-provided teachers to help me in biblical interpretation. I'm going to start over from scratch and see how far I get. And you guys have probably heard me use the illustration, and you know that I love Bible outlines. If I can get a simple outline into my mind, it helps me remember where things are so that I, if I'm, facing a particular thing in Providence, I can start scanning mentally my Bible outlines and think of some fruitful passages that might suggest direction or something. I remember years ago reading Olson's Deuteronomy and the Death of Moses and just having him point out that Deuteronomy chapter 5 and the Ten Commandments is no vain repetition. It's the necessary outline for chapters 6 through 26. The law is being re-presented, but in the new context of the conquest. So you've been living here, applying the Ten Commandments, in a desert, largely by yourselves. But now, with the conquest, you're getting ready to go into the Promised Land, and you're going to be surrounded by all kinds of pagan people groups. How do you apply the law in that context? And some of it, you can understand confusion, like when we go in there, obviously we're not supposed to worship their gods, but What do we do with the relics of paganism that are left? Some of the things, like there are pretty buildings and pretty music, and do we build museums and house that stuff? Do we try to learn things from that in the worship of our God? I mean, what do we do with these sorts of things? And so God clarifies the issue when you go in there. I want you to pull all that stuff down. I want you to burn that stuff and let the memory of these things be altogether extinguished. Thou shalt not do so to the Lord thy God. Right? So he's blowing away any confusion that might arise. And basically, beginning at chapter six and running through to chapter 26, he applies the commandments one by one. So you get a first commandment section, a second commandment section, and so on. Now my whole point in bringing that up is simply to point out that once Olson pointed it out to me, I could see the validity of it in about 10 seconds. But I could have read, I'm pretty sure I could have read Deuteronomy in my regular course of reading for my whole life and never come up with the outline myself. and you see the value in teaching. Olson hasn't introduced some vain or foreign thing. He's pointed out what's already there. And so then I can look at it and see that it's there. And there's a great efficiency that is picked up in this regard. You might also think about doctrinal issues, how the church worked so hard in the early ages to clarify its vocabulary, and the logic of Trinitarianism and how those things come to us now. I mean, at least in the fundamentals, so simple, so straightforward. Great mysteries abounding, to be sure, but the terminology is provided for us ahead of time. The logical relationships of the concepts are provided ahead of time. That was hard work for our fathers, and they won those things from the scriptures. in the midst of painful conflicts and trial, both ecclesiastical and civil, in some pretty scary times. But now we have the pleasure, we get to sit up in the stands, right, and simply watch through history's glass, what was said and the truths that were attained, we compare them against the scripture and it's easy for us or should be easy for us. Well, the church didn't stop attaining things with the first four ecumenical councils. As the church has continued to read and study the scripture, she has brought, usually by God's providence and difficulties that come up, one thing after another have been forced upon her awareness and she has been forced to clarify her thinking. Sometimes that thinking, before it was okay for it to be somewhat fuzzy, but problems required, we need to become razor sharp on this particular issue. So even now when it comes to things like ecclesiology we get to sit up in the stands and watch our watch our fathers win these truths in the first and second reformation in scotland they exegete the passages and we go and compare their results with the passages themselves and we see them to be sound and and they they won those things in the midst of tremendous difficulties frightful things temptations, trying to pull them away from the things that they were saying, sometimes even to the point of the shedding of blood. And yet what they won in the high places of the field simply comes to us as our inheritance. But there's no going back. Like once the Pythagorean theorem was discovered, there's no going back. We have it, and it has become part of our heritage as a Christian people. These things are on the forefront of my mind again because we have them in our text. If you remember the work that we did on the antediluvian fathers from Adam to Noah, we saw that right from the very beginning, With the first fall of man, we get the doctrine of the two lines, that there's gonna be the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, right? And right away, we see those two family lines developing. You have Cain's line presented in Genesis chapter four. And then you have the godly line, Seth's line, presented in Genesis chapter 5. And what's remarkable about that genealogy for the most part is you see their faithfulness and you see their godliness. Their separation from the Cainites implies it. But even sometimes you see the prophetic oracles that are even given in the names of the children. And if you remember when we did that study, among the ancient Arabian Christians, they even maintained that the Sethites continued to maintain a physical separation from the Cainites. they dwelt apart, that what God had done in the beginning in driving Cain away, they actually physically maintained. They dwelt in a separate place. They actually sat on some mountain or something somewhere, but they maintained that separation. But eventually, there was a declension in the generation, at least enough where they compromised and they made unadvisable, ungodly marriages. And so you had the sons of God intermarrying with the daughters of men. And the net result, and this is the way that declension almost always happens, it happens by degrees, the one compromise ended up leading to greater compromises, and very quickly, you have the almost complete overthrow of the true religion, basically now limited for the most part to Noah and his family, and some of the other fathers that are still remaining, but to die shortly before the flood. Well, after they get off the boat, what we find in these newest names, if you look with me at 24 to 27, we find a similar pattern. So we know from Genesis chapter 9 that Shem is faithful. Sheila, if you remember, his name appears to be a memorial of the flood. So he's coming at about the time that you're hurtling towards the Tower of Babel crisis. And Shelah, the emission of waters, right? This is a reminder of the flood. This is as if Father Arphaxad would remind the world the net effect of all of this is God's judgment. He reminds them of the flood. It seems pretty clear that we have faithfulness at least up through Eber. If you remember, Father Eber is the progenitor of the Hebrews, the Hebrew name. It appears that at Babel, his family retained both the original language of humanity as well as the ancestral religion, right? So language and religion appear to have gone together. And with Peleg, we know for sure that Babylis happened, and the people groups are being forced to scatter back out to what should have been their inheritances. But somewhere between Ru and Nahor and Terah, declension has begun to set in, even in this family of the godly. So by the time Abraham comes along, like a theological knight has begun to descend upon what had once been the godly family. Or to say it like this, when God calls Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees, the crisis isn't too different than what was going on with Noah in his days. The true religion has almost been extinguished altogether again. Now we know that there are some here and there, probably more unknown to history, but there is a Melchizedek in Palestine. There are those that remember, but they are a few and a scattered few. And this line, which had been so eminent for its faithfulness, is in is in a rapid decline. We don't know very much about Father Nahor other than his name. After some really great names like Shelah, the sending forth the omission, and Eber, crossing over, we're not quite sure what that might refer to, but memorialized forever in Hebrew. Ru, friend, hopefully like Ruel, the friend of God. But then Nahor is just like snort or snore, which is really interesting. Not a fantastic name. The etymology of it's pretty clear. There it is. Do not confuse him with the more famous Nahor, which was Abraham's brother. So Nahor I had a grandson, Nahor II, that figures more prominently in the scripture. Just don't confuse them. They are different people. And then we get Terah. Next week, Lord willing, we'll talk some more about Terah's history. And happily, the end of his life appears to have been somewhat better than the beginnings of his life. Moses does not major on this, but Joshua gives us some perspective about the religious condition of the family when God called Abraham. So turn with me to Joshua chapter 24. And this is, you might call this Joshua's second swan song. It appears that he thought himself very near to death and delivered a farewell in chapter 23, but it appears that God prolonged his life, which led to another farewell and a challenge. to his people, but we learn some interesting things from Joshua that, for whatever reason, inspired Moses did not descend to address about the ancestral family and its religious condition. So chapter 24, beginning in verse one, And Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem and called for the elders of Israel and for their heads and for their judges and for their officers. And they presented themselves before God. And Joshua said unto all the people, thus saith the Lord God of Israel, your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time. Even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nahor, and they served other gods. So does that surprise you? It ought to be a little bit when we remember the faithfulness of the line, at least up through Eber, probably Peleg too, there is a generational decline somewhere in those names that are not well known, that by the time you get to Terah, their religious condition can rightly be characterized as the service of other gods. Now it does appear that whether it's because of the revival of the knowledge of the true God in Abraham himself, or just some level of preservation, it does seem that some knowledge of the true God remained But now, night is descending, and the darkness and the confusion is getting deeper in a hurry. And it's sad that it could be characterized as the service of other gods. Verse 3, And I took your father Abraham from the other side of the flood, and led him throughout all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his seed, and gave him Isaac. So you might think about Abraham almost as being a new arc for the true religion. Once upon a time, it was Noah in his boat, but now it is Abraham in his person. But the true religion was in great danger again when God called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees into the land of Canaan. Verse four. And I gave unto Isaac, Jacob, and Esau. And I gave unto Esau Mount Seir, to possess it. But Jacob and his children went down into Egypt. I sent Moses also and Aaron, and I plagued Egypt according to that which I did among them. And afterward I brought you out. And I brought your fathers out of Egypt. And ye came unto the sea, and the Egyptians pursued after your fathers with chariots and horsemen unto the Red Sea. And when they cried unto the Lord, he put darkness between you and the Egyptians and brought the sea upon them and covered them. And your eyes have seen what I have done in Egypt. And ye dwelt in the wilderness a long season. And I brought you into the land of the Amorites, which dwelt on the other side, Jordan, and they fought with you. And I gave them into your hand and that you might possess their land. And I destroyed them from before you. Then Balak, the son of Zippor, king of Moab, arose and warred against Israel and sent him called Balaam, the son of Baor, to curse you. But I would not hearken unto Balaam. Therefore he blessed you still. So I delivered you out of his hand. And you went over, Jordan, and came into Jericho. And the men of Jericho fought against you, the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Hivites and the Jebusites. And I delivered them into your hand. And I sent the hornet before you, which draved them out from before you. even the two kings of the Amorites, but not with the sword nor with thy bow. And I have given you a land for which ye did not labor, and cities which ye built not, and ye dwell in them. Of the vineyards and olive yards which ye planted not do ye eat." So here, Joshua reviews the covenant history with them, and it starts with the miraculous redemptive rescue of Abraham, who is part of an idolatrous family in Ur of the Chaldees. God rescues him, brings him into Canaan. His family settles there. Esau ends up settling permanently just south of the promised land, but the family of promise went down into Egypt. God delivered them from Egyptian military might. and brought them up to the promised land. He gave them military victories over the Amorites and a spiritual deliverance from Balaam, right? So they had an enemy in front of them that they might fight with the sword, but they had a devil behind them with curses. God protected them before and behind, protected them from the enemy they could see and the one they couldn't see. God is faithful. They crossed Jericho. They fought, at least in some of the battles. Others, God is portrayed here as simply driving them out by the hornet, by other miraculous means, when it was time for them to be dispossessed, and they've come into the land. So this is Joshua Old, and In one regard, the conquest has been completed. They've covered the length and the breadth of the land. Although the conquest is multi-generational, they can't hold all of the land. There's not enough of them yet. So as they multiply, the conquest needs to be resumed until all of the Canaanites are put out. This is a model of God's great faithfulness and a reminder of God's great faithfulness. There is every reason in the world that the Israelite should be thankful and faithful to so good a master and so kind a king. Verse 14. Now therefore, fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in truth. and put away the gods which your father served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt, and serve ye the Lord. Okay, so there's two notices of generational declension here. First, there's the reference to the family of Terah on the other side of Euphrates before Abraham came into the promised land. So he tells them to put away the gods which their fathers had served on the other side of the flood. So this would be Terah and his family. So there's been declension from Shem to Terah. But then after the revival of true religion and Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the 12 patriarchs having gone down into Egypt, we learn something else disturbing. The fathers served other gods on the other side of the flood and in Egypt. It's very interesting to me that Moses, again, inspired Moses under divine direction, does not take that up in his own narrative. We learn about it here. We learn about it some in Ezekiel. I think you can read about it in chapter 24, where the prophet memorializes the fact that they went after other gods in Egypt. There's at least an implication of it. The Golden Calf incident that's a relic of Egyptian religion and a sign that they had taken somewhat to it. That's the Egyptian apis, the calf god, which some think reminding your euhemerism, some think the apis was modeled after Joseph and his remarkable achievements in their midst. The laboring ox and the connection to grain, productivity, think about Joseph in that regard. That also might have been the image on his banner when the tribes came out, but that's another discussion, I guess, for another day. So, declension from Shem to Terah, declension from Abraham to when Moses brought them out. Verse 15, and if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve. whether the gods which your father served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. So very much like Elijah, Joshua thinks that indetermination in religion is an unreasonable thing. You remember when Elijah chided the people, how long will ye halt between two opinions? If Jehovah is God, then serve him. If Baal is God, then serve him. But sitting on the fence in this regard is unreasonable. Everything is at stake for you, right? So you need to figure out what's true and then do it. This is a similar challenge from Joshua. And given the record of Jehovah's fidelity and the fact that all of these other gods lost in their conflict with Jehovah, the answer, the only reasonable answer is plain. 16. And the people answered and said, God forbid that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods. For the Lord, our God, he it is that brought us up and our fathers out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage and which did those great signs in our sight and preserved us in all the way wherein we went and among all the people through whom we passed. And the Lord drave out from before us all the people, even the Amorites which dwelt in the land. Therefore will we also serve the Lord, for he is our God. And Joshua said unto the people, Ye cannot serve the Lord, for he is an holy God. He is a jealous God. He will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins. If ye forsake the Lord and serve strange gods, then he will turn and do you hurt and consume you, after that he hath done you good. And it's very interesting when you consider what's coming in Judges, that Joshua already senses that the heart of the people is not quite toward the Lord the way it had been. They say, we will go on serving the Lord. And he says, I don't think so. Quite a challenge from the patriarch at that point, don't you think? Verse 20, 21, and the people said unto Joshua, Nay, but we will serve the Lord. And Joshua said unto the people, Ye are witnesses against yourselves, that ye have chosen you, the Lord, to serve him. And they said, We are witnesses. Now therefore put away, said he, the strange gods which are among you, and incline your heart unto the Lord God of Israel. And the people said unto Joshua, the Lord our God, will we serve and his voice will we obey? So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day and set them a statute and an ordinance in Shechem. So we have a covenant renewal at this place. The national covenant that had been inaugurated at Sinai cell in some ways already anticipated and covenant going all the way back to the time of Abraham is here enlarged and renewed. And then going on in the chapter, Joshua erects the monument of it. He writes it and erects a monument of it. And then he passes from the scene of history and there's going to be another declension. So consider what we have seen here from Shem to Terah. from Abraham to the rise of Moses and his generation. And already you get, of course, Moses' generation, as we all know famously, was pretty troubled. Joshua's generation does well. And even to the point of the elders that outlived Joshua, they did pretty well. But then, with them passing from the scene, you get the rapid declension that's described in the book of Judges. So fast. It's startling. It's startling. So what lessons can we take away from this? I mean, first, there are two doctrines that that we need to press together here. We've worked with them somewhat in the past, so I'm just going to do them by way of general summary, relying upon things that we have done in the past. But first of all, we are reminded that God is altogether sovereign in salvation and that grace doesn't run in the blood. So man has been disabled by his sinfulness. He desires neither God nor the things of God. And because that is the bent and inclination of his heart and his freedom, he never chooses God and never responds positively to the gospel. He is altogether helpless. And so if he's going to be saved, God must do the saving. Not some part of it, not Hatzis, not even 99%. God has to do all of the saving because the man can't help himself. The only thing that fallen man can bring to the table is his sinfulness and his neediness. He can't bring anything with respect to merit. He can't even bring a 1% to God's 99% to make the thing work altogether disabled. And the scripture states this plainly enough and clearly enough. One of the things that's interesting about the text we've been looking at is they highlight that by illustration. One of the ways that God made his sovereignty and salvation clear is by his choice of the unexpected, right? So we might, as human beings, expect the blessing to rest upon the firstborn, but we frequently see God, even in these genealogies, passing over the firstborn. and laying hold of the second. So it's not Ishmael, it's Isaac. It's not Esau, it's Jacob. Ultimately, with respect to messianic promise, it's not Reuben, Simeon, or Levi. It's Judah, the fourth. So we find God doing unusual things. And Paul makes it all together clear. He did that on purpose so we would recognize his sovereignty in these things. He is not limited by either human structures or human expectations. So grace doesn't run in the blood, and it's always an immediate, miraculous act of the Most High God. But we need to press together with that the other biblical fact that he has normally been pleased to extend his salvation in families. And we have been taught that right from the very beginning, right? That there is going to be a seed to the woman. And it's interesting that we don't just find it scattershot, but Cain's line is cast away, and all appearance in Cain's line is that they were all wicked as far as we get notice. But then we find in Seth's line monuments of conversion and some rather great luminaries like Enoch and Methuselah, right? But then at some point, because grace doesn't run in the blood, there's declension. But both of these things together, God is sovereign in salvation and he can do whatever he pleases, but it's also been his pleasure to work most normally in families. And part of that becomes very clear when you see the great wonder when God has reached outside of those families that are in covenant to other families that are not. So you might think about the wonders of the apostolic age, that this great salvation is not just for the Hebrews, but this is going to all of the other scattered descendants of Noah. And so there's a great wonder, there's a great amazement. Do you remember how many different means, instances, and examples God had to give the apostles so that they would be clear about that great fact that this wasn't just for. But there is a certain sort of wonder, a certain sort of amazement, because it was normal for when salvation came, it was coming in the trajectory of that family for the most part. And the inclusion of others was always amazing, like Ruth the Moabitess comes. That's amazing. Rahab the harlot of Jericho is included. That's amazing, right? But those are the unexpected things. God is reaching outside his normal method of working through families. So with that in view and with that normal working in view, we might say that a generational decline or declension is doubly lamentable. Which brings me to my principal use for the evening, which is we do need to take warning from these illustrations in the scripture. We are not special, and the things that we see here can happen to us. the attainments of Father Sham are lost by the time you get to Terah, and they are in darkness. And it appears to have happened pretty quickly, right? But by the time it gets going, it's just a couple of generations that it takes to decline to the darkness where they can be characterized as worshiping other gods. But this ought to rattle our cage. And not just to adult people, I'm not just trying to rattle the cage of the adults, like make sure that you're trying to pass on the biblical attainments of the church to your children, but this is really a call to the children just as much to rally and raise yourselves, desire the inheritance. Don't leave it locked up in your parents' heads. Don't leave it on your bookshelf. Your job is to appropriate what is being offered to you, to receive the pass that is being thrown to you. And it really requires both. Otherwise, the Otherwise, the transition, the transfer is not going to happen. There has to be a pass and a reception or it's not going to happen. If any of you are sports enthusiasts, most of you know that I grew up playing football. And I frequently have noticed this with preachers and their congregations. Not unusual for a congregation to complain about their preacher, this or that about his preaching or whatever. They want him to do this or that better. You rarely find congregations criticizing themselves. We're not doing a good job catching. We need to practice the reception of sermons right but if you if you think about the sports analogy if you get your quarterback to practice and he's throwing a better ball and a better ball but the receiver never practices receiving then he's bouncing it off their face mask and off their the numbers on their chest and it's ridiculous you're not going to complete any more passes at the end of the day By all means, let the quarterback practice throwing a better ball. Let him be more diligent. Let him throw more balls your way. But if this is going to happen, you have to practice the reception. You have to catch that pass. So there is a warning. Normally, Declension happens not all at once, but it comes on by degrees. If it happened all at once in one generation, it would be really obvious and it would be really startling. But one of the reasons it happens, and it happens as frequently as it does, is it happens little bit by little bit. So, for example, it's not uncommon in evangelical families for there to be declension because as much as a parent might be trying to give to the children night by night, say in family worship, maybe even self-consciously trying to hand on all of the attainments of the church, frequently the children leave with the impression, well, I got the basic stuff, I got the fundamentals, and that's all I really needed to get. But if I might say so, that is the path to the full-on declension. And I don't know if I could demonstrate this to you as being logically necessary. Maybe I could, because maybe it works something like this. If you're going to deny or ignore one obvious teaching of God's Word for no justifiable reason, what's going to prevent you from ignoring another one? Until eventually, your conception of what is fundamental becomes so shrunken, so small, that it hardly even resembles the Christian religion anymore. So maybe that's the logic of it. But history shows it over and over again. So for example, after the restoration, after the killing times, after the glorious revolution of William and Mary, the Revolution Church made what we might esteem to be a handful of comparatively small compromises. But that way of compromise is all downhill. Where is the revolution church now? It is the established church of Scotland, and it's hardly even Christianity anymore. It's what Americans call liberalism. It doesn't even look the same. Or think about when Americans inherited Presbyterianism, they inherited it but without all of the attainments. And where is the main body of that now? It's the PCUSA. The path of declension is all downhill for fallen flesh. Once you start making compromises in principle, There isn't any place for it to stop. If you can unjustifiably make one, then there's nothing to prevent you from unjustifiably going on and making more and more and more. And just think about these startling results. Revolution Church, which if we could see it right now in the American context, we would probably all point at it and be like, that's a good church. But where did it end up? The generational slide is into liberalism and something that hardly looks like Christianity. Where is the Presbyterian Church of Hodge? We point at it and be like, that's a good church. And where is it now? The path of, and this is the way that they all will go. until there is the insistence that we maintain the full body of the attainments, because that's what God commanded and required. And that's the secret to maintaining both purity and unity. That's the rallying point, as it were. Anything else is a recipe for division. Probably we see the logic of it. But history shows it over and over and over again. There is something about us that once that starts, it always ends in the same way. That is, it ends in the worst way. And you consider some of these things. You think about what's going on in the Methodist church now. Well, Wesley wouldn't even recognize it. And is it even Christian anymore? You can't hardly recognize. a faithful Christian doctrine being held, but it started with compromise. So a couple of duties. First, to parents and to the aged, we need to go on in our studies. The inheritance that has come to us at this point in history is a pretty large one. And we should be happy, but we should also be prepared. That means that the accounting is going to be more complicated, as it is with a vast inheritance. So we need to continue as students to make sure that we are receiving the fullness of the inheritance, because we can't pass to our children something that we have not yet first received. ourselves. So we've got to be busy, and we've got plenty of work to do. And we're never too old to continue to be students. I remember talking to Dr. Young toward the end of his life, a faithful student his whole life, But I asked him what was on his near-term reading list, and he had a list as long as your arm. He wasn't slowing down at all. It was one of his great frustrations when he was sick that they didn't take his books with him to the hospital, because he had work that he wanted to be doing. And think about Abraham, who is immediately in front of us in our text. He began his great adventure of coming to know God in his 75th year. 75, and he's really just getting started with the Lord. And so no matter how old we become, there's always progress to be made. And then having received those things, we need to do our very best and a steady means to hand that on to our children in its breadth, and with as much tolerable depth as we can manage. And by all means, part of responsible teaching is making sure that we major on the majors. What is it going to profit us if we teach them a great many things, but our Savior Christ recedes into the background and they scarcely understand his gospel? That's not going to serve anybody to any good purpose. As Donald Cargill said, let us make sure that we are most in the main things. And if we teach the Bible in a balanced way, Christ will always be in front of our faces. We need to have our eyes open for him and be alert to him as he's presenting himself in the scripture. And having majored in the majors, it is fine to minor in the minors, but this is the difference. We have no justification to neglect the minors. It is true that not all biblical doctrines are equally important for all things, but all biblical doctrines are important. And I remember hearing Sproul say years ago, how many times does God have to say a thing before it becomes his disciples to learn it? And I think the only answer to that is once. If he says it, then it becomes our job to learn it. There are huge issues, the really important bits, and even the minor bits. But if he's spoken, it's our job to learn it. But I'll conclude with the young people. If it is the job of the former generation, your parents, your pastor, your elders, to teach you these things, it only works if you apply yourself to the learning of them. And inasmuch as your parents are commanded to teach these things, isn't there an implied duty for you to learn them? It doesn't even make any sense. to what purpose would it be if they're commanded to teach but you're free to sit there like a block of stone while they teach and refuse to absorb? That would be absurdity. That would be to give a commandment in vain. So most of all, make sure that in all of the things that your parents are teaching you, that you're alert to Christ in it. Ask yourself constantly, what I'm hearing right now, what does it have to do with Jesus? What does it have to do with the glorious salvation that he's brought to us? Because one way or another, it does. by all means, major in the major, and make sure that you get the principal things. But having gotten those things, that doesn't absolve you from the lesser things, the adjuncts, the things that are not quite in the center, but at the periphery. Those things are still attached to the center one way or another, and you need to make sure that you get those as well. It could very well be true that they are less important, but less important doesn't mean unimportant, and they can be tremendously important when set in the right context. One of the reasons the confessional standards are the way that they are, almost every sentence in them all Scripture teaching, but things that had to be drawn into the foreground because of some important problem at some point. Now, you may or may not be having that problem right now, but if you remember Wisdom's lesson from earlier, most of these problems are common to human experience. Sometimes it's really grand, it's playing its way out large multitudes of people, but in the season and at the time, always important in some particular way. So let us make sure that we give our attention to all of the lessons, make sure that we're busy receiving all of the inheritance. And I said this to you before, but let me just remind you, it's not a bad thing that the inheritance is large at this point. It's really good. Aren't you glad with the clarity that the doctrine of the Trinity is given to you as a child? Isn't it better to live now than in the second century before the vocabulary and the logic of it was clarified? Isn't it good that Our fathers went before us and won the hard and yet important truths concerning Presbyterianism and the system of government was given by the Lord because it's good for souls when it's rightly done. It's important for the care of souls and so on. Is Presbyterianism as important as Trinitarianism? No, but is it important in its own place? Yes, it's very good. It's structured purposefully. by our kind Savior for the nourishing of souls. If you were to ask me, how important is it? I would say, how important are you to you? How important is your eternal destiny to you? How important are the means of that grace to you? when you're able to answer those questions and you'll have a deeper understanding. So don't, there is more to learn, but praise be to God that more to be learned is given to you in the easiest possible way. It's been gathered by others for your instruction, for your learning, and for your improvement. So let us receive it in thanksgiving, thanksgiving to the God who has given it to us. Let us pray together. Now we're Father in Heaven, we do ask that thou would strengthen us all as disciples. For there is not a one among us that can claim to have loved thee with all of the mind. Not for a single day, not for a single hour. Thou art worthy of so much more time and attention So much more diligent study than what we have given. We ask that thou would forgive us and make us clean by the blood of Jesus Christ. Cover us with the robe of his righteousness. so that we might be acceptable in thy sight. And we know that our Jesus has purchased for us not only justification but sanctification to shed forth thy spirit upon us so that our hearts might be stirred earnestly, hungering after Thy word, that sincere milk, the bread of life. And Holy Father, as we are being strengthened individually as disciples, we do ask that thou would transform our congregations and our families into marketplaces in which we would freely trade one with another of the things that we have learned of thee and from our fathers in the scriptures. Be thou our help so that we might, in every relationship, be both edifying and edified. And in this way, enjoy the blessedness of Christian communion. Holy Father, we do not deserve these or any other good things from thine hand. And so we ask that thou wouldst grant them to us according to thine own lovingkindness, and because Jesus Christ the righteous hath purchased them for his people, according to the terms of the covenant of grace. Amen.