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"Grace through
Generations" We have so far considered what this important text has to say about the dialectic between divine sovereignty and human responsibility and, last Lord's Day, what it teaches concerning the sacramental character of life. But we are hardly done with the major themes introduced in a comprehensive and definitive way in these verses. Another of the striking emphases of this most important text is the divine promise to continue his covenant with Abraham through the generations of Abraham's descendants. We have already encountered in earlier chapters of Genesis the phenomenon of saving grace running in the lines of generations, but here, for the first time, is it explained as God's gracious purpose and intention that he should be the God both of those who trust in him and their children. Here, for the first time, we hear the words that we are to hear countless times more in the pages of Holy Scripture, on the lips of prophets, of Apostles, and so often of God himself and his own Son. "I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you." Later in the law we will find the same: "for I the Lord you God am a jealous God...showing love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments" and "Now choose life, so that you and your children may live..." and literally scores of passages like those. And in the Psalms the same: "from everlasting to everlasting the Lord's love is with those who fear him, and his righteousness with their children's children" and "He decreed statutes for Jacob and established his law in Israel, which he commanded our forefathers to teach their children, so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children. Then they would put their trust in God and would not forget his deeds but would keep his commands" and many more texts like those. And in the Prophets the very same: "As for me, this is my covenant with them," says the Lord, "My Spirit who is on you, and my words that I have put in your mouth will not depart from your mouth, or from the mouths of your children, or from the mouths of their descendants from this time on and forever" says the Lord. And "They will be my people and I will be their God. I will give them singleness of heart and action, so that they will always fear me for their own good and the good of their children after them" and many more texts like those from Isaiah and Jeremiah. And in the Gospels our Redeemer says the same, to parents who had faith to bring their children to him that he might bless them: "Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these." And, as the Gospel went out to the world it still contained this message of grace to family lines: Peter on the day of Pentecost told the penitent multitude "The promise is to you and to your children," and Paul said to the jailer in Philippi, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household." Now this is part of the promise of God's covenant and, as such, it has its conditions and its responsibilities, of course. The Lord alludes to them in what he says to Abraham, in v. 9: "As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come." And those responsibilities -- those of parents to nurture their children in the faith of this covenant and those of the children to walk with the God of their fathers -- will be enumerated and explained and illustrated over and again in the rest of the Bible. But, this morning, I want to concentrate on the promise of the covenant, that God would be a God to us and to our children. For this is the main point and this the truly striking thing! This is, after all, one of the great facts of history, of the history of the world as well as the history of the church. Most Christians in the world are the products of Christian homes, the vast majority of Christians through the ages have been the products of Christian homes. And of the also great multitudes of those who have been won from the world and the life of unbelief, most of them have become themselves, by the grace of God and by this covenant, the progenitors of a line of Christian belief beginning with themselves and stretching into the distant generations. We are not told this in so many words here in Gen. 17, though it may be implied clearly enough, but what is not said here is said elsewhere and confirmed in the course of the ages: this promise to be the God of the children of believers is and was from the beginning the principal means by which God intended to advance his kingdom in the world. Evangelism is fabulously important, of course. Let no one take our crown in commitment to the winning of lost souls to faith in Christ and to eternal life. But evangelism is not the first, the principal means of enlarging the church. It never was and will never be except perhaps in that single generation when the Spirit will descend and the knowledge of God will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. You have heard me on this subject before. It is not only that most Christians hail from Christian homes, it is as well that most of the heros of the faith, its greatest thinkers, its martyrs, its missionaries, its preachers, its choicest mothers, through the ages have hailed from Christian homes. Not all of them, by any means, but the vast majority of them without a doubt. Indeed, when I was at the library of Covenant Theological Seminary working on a manuscript on this very doctrine this past summer, I spent a day enlarging my list of examples of this phenomenon, especially from certain important historical periods of Christianity. We are well aware of how comprehensively the fact of grace running in the lines of generations is illustrated in the Bible itself. Not only do we have such successions as are provided in Genesis, chapter 5, in Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph which occupies two-thirds of the first book of the Bible, or such successions as Boaz, Jesse, David, and Solomon in the OT or Lois, Eunice, and Timothy in the NT. But the number of faithful men and women in the Bible whose parents were believing men and women is very large. It includes most of the faithful kinds of Israel and Judah, most of the heros of faith mentioned in Hebrews 11, John the Baptist, Mark the evangelist, and the Lord Jesus himself. In the early church I have before mentioned to you such church fathers as Polycarp the early bishop and martyr, Origen, the church's first great theologian, and that fourth century triumvirate of holy men raised by pious mothers: Augustine, Christianity's greatest man, by Monica, Chrysostom, early Christianity's greatest preacher, by Anthusa, and Gregory Nazianzen, the champion of the deity of Christ, by Nonna. But, in St. Louis this summer, I was able to track down the family histories of many more celebrated names of early Christian history. Over and again the faith of these men and women lived first in their parents. Athansius, Orthodox Christianity's champion in the death-struggle with Arianism had Christian parents. So did Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan, whose life and work exerted such a wonderful influence on Augustine and whose courageous facing-down of the Emperor Theodosius in the name of Christian mercy and justice was one of the glorious episodes of fourth century Christianity. Jerome, the scholar and translator of the Bible, wrote of himself that "as a baby he had been nourished on [Christian] milk." Gregory the Great's early biographer wrote of him, "he was brought up as a saint in the midst of saints." And on and on the list goes. It does not include everyone, of course. Justin, the mid-second century apologist and martyr was a convert from paganism; so was Cyprian the great third century North African bishop. But most of the names an educated Christian has reason to know were the products of believing homes, were in covenant with God because he promised to be their God when he became their parents' God. And when we come into the modern era the situation is the same. I have mentioned many names to you in the past as examples of grace running in the lines of generations. But I came across many more in my reading in St. Louis. As an example of but one period and one place, all of these Puritan notables were the products of Christian homes: their first leader, William Perkins, William Ames, Richard Sibbes, Joseph Alleine, Thomas Goodwin, John Howe, Thomas Manton, John Owen and Richard Baxter. Also John Robinson, the pilgrim father, Matthew Henry the great Bible Commentator, and Isaac Watts the greatest hymn-writer of the English speaking church. And, while we might have thought that the great evangelists would be drawn from the ranks of those who had been themselves converted out of the world and unbelief, it is not so. The great pioneer missionaries of the 19th century --William Carey, Robert Morrison, David Livingstone, and John Paton -- were all the sons of Christian parents. So were Henry Martyn and Robert Moffat, Adoniram Judson, Alexander Duff, and Amy Carmichael. Jim Elliot is a still more recent example. And of the greatest evangelists of the modern era, certainly included in that number are John Wesley, Charles Spurgeon, and Billy Graham, all sons of one or more Christian parents. I do not say, of course, that all of these people had the same religious experience or even that they all came to spiritual life in infancy or early childhood though by far most of them did. I only say that God's covenant promise to be the God of his believing people and their children has come good in these lives and so many multitudes of lives less prominent and less well known. But the point can be made in the negative just as well. When the church succumbs to unbelief, when the covenant is broken, the next generation follows its parents in unbelief and spiritual death. A major reason for the numerical decline of mainline Protestant churches has been their failure to retain their children in the church. The Presbyterian Church USA, The United Methodists, and Episcopalians lose nearly half their children for good, many others remain only nominally committed to the church of their parents. Indeed, one study reports that 48% of PCUSA youth drop out of church-going altogether. One historian of modern American Christianity notes that the indifference of young people to the Christianity of their parents or grandparents shows up in many things, including things as mundane as their inability even to spell "Presbyterian" or "Episcopalian." He comments, "Denominational history and theology interest my students about as much as baroque opera or the insects of Paraguay." [The Empty Church, p. 11.] If a living faith is not transmitted to the children of the church, few of them will follow Christ! And so it has been throughout the ages. The great reason for the decline of the church in one period or another has been the breaking of the covenant at just this point, the refusal of parents to pass on to their children the faith and love of God and Jesus Christ. And the burgeoning of the church in other eras, often eras in which evangelism is also bringing larger numbers of folk into the church, primarily results from Christian parents laying claim in faith and obedience to the promise God has made for their children and so two Christians become four or six and six become eight or twelve and twelve become twenty-four and so on. Think of it: in just two generations, my two Christian parents have become twenty one Christians -- their four children and seventeen grandchildren, all of whom are walking or have walked with the Lord. This was certainly not their achievement -- not at all; only God can change a heart, only God can grant faith in Christ, only God can justify the ungodly whom all human beings are, conceived in sin as they are -- it was the promise and the grace and the covenant of God and has been through the ages. Now, imagine the contrary. Imagine for a terrible moment that there were no such promise in God's covenant with his people, no such hope, no such expectation for Christian parents bringing children into the world. No reason to believe that the grace that had been pitched upon them, in defiance of their sin and guilt and ill-desert, would be pitched on those they love more than life itself. No reason to believe that their children would be any more the objects of divine mercy than the vast multitudes of other people in the world who live and die under God's wrath. That faithful, pius, devout Christian parents would go to heaven and their children regularly, commonly would go to hell! No, we cannot imagine that! We cannot because we know God and we know his love and we know that he himself has taught us that to love anyone truly one must love those that person loves. Did not he teach us exactly this as a principle of our living in the world: so in 1 John 5:1 we read: "...everyone who loves the father loves his child as well." And wasn't it therefore inevitable that God should pledge himself not only to fathers and mothers who believed in him, but to their children? And so he did, not once, not twice, but literally scores and scores of times throughout the Bible. I am a Christian today, ultimately, because the love of God in Jesus Christ was pitched upon me before the foundation of the world. But, I am a Christian today, instrumentally, because God caused me to be born in the covenant, to be raised in that covenant by earnest Christian parents who loved God and his Word and his Gospel and cared deeply that I should come to love as they loved. And God, who made a promise to them concerning me, honored that nurture I was given by writing it upon my heart -- the instruction, the example, the prayers, the preaching, the church life, the family devotions, the Christian community, and all the rest. And I know that there are a great many others in this sanctuary this morning whose story is like mine. There are also many who did not come from Christian homes, but who are now building such homes for their children, a large number of whom have already embraced the faith of their parents for themselves. Oh, we do not appreciate the wonder of this promise nearly as much as we should. How can I make us see its glory for what it is? How can I make us thrill to this singular mercy that God has lavished upon his people, in the promise he made to be their children's God? Let me try with but one dimension, one illustration, one example of the fulfillment of this promise. I am speaking of those little ones born to earnest, faithful, devout Christian parents who lived but a short while in the world. Let there be no doubt, whatsoever, about their eternal life, their salvation. God has promised to be their God and to believe that it were possible for them to die in infancy and not be saved is to empty that great promise of all its meaning. No, as the great Synod of Dordt said for the entire Reformed Church in its Canons:
But, oh, the heartbreak when God calls a child away from a mother's breast and a father's arms! Those who have suffered such losses alone know how sharp and heavy they are! But, then comes the promise of God's covenant and just imagine the fulfillment of that promise!
Thomas Boston, the Scottish theologian, pastor, and saint, lost six children in their infancy or early youth -- six; the two little boys named Ebenezer I have told some of you about and four others! In a letter to a similarly bereaved parent, he wrote, "I travelled that gloomy road six times... It...serves to let into the sweetness of that word in particular, 'I will be thy God, and the God of thy seed.... The next time you see your child, you will see him shining white in glory, having been washed 'in the blood of the Lamb...'" Of his six lost children he wrote, "I shall see them all at the resurrection." Now, if you can, imagine that scene, see if you can see that scene. That indescribably good man, with such a tender, father's heart, with his Scottish penchant for tears, somehow, with some God-given instinct recognizing his six bairns, his eyes brimming with tears and gathering them in his arms and holding them to himself and all of them together feeling a depth and power and purity of love and joy for which all words are futile. And that is but one way among a great many ways to try, if we might, to gain some feeling of how great is God's mercy to us that he should promise to be both our God and the God of our children. And when the wonder of that divine goodness takes hold of us, as it should and as it must, then we will, in humble gratitude, take care to ensure that our children are raised -- by teaching, by discipline, and by the example of Christian holiness, zeal, and love -- that God's promise might be fulfilled in them. Don't you love those immortal lines in Henry Alford's hymn, "Ten thousand times ten thousand"? O then what raptured greetings Then eyes with joy shall sparkle, Who is a God like our God who should take such tender care of the relationships he himself has created! Who is a God like our God who should create for miserable sinners like you and me the prospect of such a perfect happiness forever! Let us know the greatness of this goodness and respond with the most consecrated obedience in the nurture of our children. Thus to the parents and their seed |
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