http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15588443/how-to-become-a-coworker-of-god

Audio Transcript

Welcome to a new week on the podcast. This week in our Navigators Bible Reading Plan, we start our May readings. Month number five is upon us. And that means we begin the new month in the first four chapters of 1 Samuel, reading the story of a dad named Eli and his worthless sons. That’s the Bible’s language — 1 Samuel 2:12 says it: “Now the sons of Eli were worthless men.” That’s a brutal assessment right from the start of their story, one that continues in 1 Samuel 2:12–36 and then picks up in 1 Samuel 4:12–22.

With such a heavy story on the docket, we start this week talking about parenting — because clearly there’s a link between our parenting and our children, right? Failed child, failed parent. Well, such a link never tells the whole story of parenting, as we are going to hear today as we look at the parenting assurances that we read about in the book of Proverbs.

All this came up in an APJ from 2015 that I want to reshare with you today. The question was from a new mom named Brenda. She asks, “Pastor John, I have a 22-month-old daughter, and I’m already teaching her about Jesus and sharing my faith with her. However, recently I’ve heard about many adult children who grew up in a strong Christian home — some who even had parents who were leaders in the church — who eventually left the faith as adults. This has become my biggest fear for my own daughter. Can you explain Proverbs 22:6 and give me some practical ways I can help my daughter have a true, authentic relationship with Jesus — one that she will not abandon later on?”

Well, I wish I knew more about this question than I do, even after 43 years of parenting five children, but I want to base everything I say, as much as possible, on the Bible and not just on my personal limitations. So, I will try to say something. Let’s talk about Proverbs 22:6 first, and then we will get to what you can do to maximize the likelihood that your child will follow the Lord.

“Rest in the sovereignty of God over your children. We cannot bear the weight of their eternity.”

Proverbs 22:6 says, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” And the problem we all feel is that the promise half of that verse — “he will not depart from it” — seems so absolute that every time a grown-up child of a Christian family departs from the way of wisdom, or the way of faith in Jesus, we must conclude that it is owing to a failure of the parents to obey the first half of the verse — namely, to train him properly. That is a pretty heavy burden to bear for most parents. But if that is what the text means, then we should be willing to bear it.

Before I say what I think that promise actually means, there are passages in the Bible where the disobedience of children as adults — departing from the faith and making a shipwreck of their lives — is traced back to the failures of fathers.

Parental Failures

For example, Adonijah, David’s son — David, the man after God’s own heart — “exalted himself, saying, ‘I will be king.’ And he prepared for himself chariots and horsemen, and fifty men to run before him. His father had never at any time displeased him by asking, ‘Why have you done thus and so?’” (1 Kings 1:5–6). Now, that is a very intentional criticism of David. His father had never taken the time to say, “Don’t do that,” because he didn’t want to displease Adonijah. And clearly, this biblical writer is chalking up the rebelliousness of Adonijah against his own dad to the failure of his father to rebuke him. So there it is. We do err, and our errors have terrible consequences.

Here is another example: the sons of Eli the priest. A prophet came to Eli and said, “Why then do you scorn my sacrifices and my offerings that I commanded for my dwelling, and honor your sons above me by fattening yourselves on the choicest parts of every offering of my people Israel?” (1 Samuel 2:29). Wow. When Eli heard his sons had been killed by God for their disobedience, he fell over backward, broke his neck, and died because he was old and fat (1 Samuel 4:18). And it says he got fat because he honored his sons above God, because his sons were pulling out the choicest parts of the sacrifices to eat, and their dad loved the food so much he wouldn’t criticize his kids.

Oh, he criticized their fornication in the temple, but they kept their jobs, and they kept misusing the sacrifices. What this shows is that a dad can be very selective in his discipline and his criticism of his children, and clearly the prophet here wants to criticize Eli for honoring his sons above God by failing to reprimand them in the way they were handling the sacrifice.

“The only perfect Father who ever was had a son who went astray.”

So, the point there is simply not to blow off Proverbs 22:6, as though there were no correlation between the way you bring up your children and what becomes of them. I mean, I am a dad, for goodness’ sake. I know this is a huge weight to bear for all of us — when our kids don’t do things we think they should do or do things we think they shouldn’t do, to look back and say, “Could I have done better?” And the answer is almost always yes.

No Foolproof Process

But having said all of that, I doubt that the second half of Proverbs 22:6 — “even when he is old he will not depart from it” — I doubt that the writer of Proverbs intends for us to take that as an absolute promise with no exceptions. And I’ve got three reasons why I don’t think that means it is a foolproof process — that if you bring up your child in a godly way, he will never depart from the faith.

1. Bad sons follow good kings (and vice versa).

When you read the history of the kings of Israel, a good and faithful king is sometimes followed by a bad son. A bad king is sometimes followed by a good son. There doesn’t seem to be any effort on the part of the inspired writer to say that faithful fathers have faithful sons and unfaithful fathers have unfaithful sons. There doesn’t seem to be any effort to do that. The writer seems to be okay pointing out that this godly king is going to have an ungodly son (and vice versa).

2. The only perfect Father had a rebellious son.

The only perfect Father who ever was had a son who went astray. Israel is God’s son and was rebellious almost its entire existence, in spite of all God’s fatherly ways with his child. Here is an example: in Hosea 11:1–2, God says, “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. The more they were called, the more they went away.” This is God, the perfect Father, pleading with his son. And what does he get for it? A lifetime — I mean, a history time, the whole history of Israel, the whole history of the Old Testament — shows that this son is rebellious.

3. A proverb is rarely an absolute statement.

I think this is the most important point contextually. Proverbs 22:6 is a proverb — and proverbs, by their very nature, are generalizations about the way life usually is rather than promises about the way it will have to be all the time. You could just read through Proverbs, and you will see this.

For example, in Proverbs 22:29 it says, “Do you see a man skillful in his work? He will stand before kings.” Well, really, are we going to force the writer to mean that every carpenter or every stonecutter in Israel who does his job well is going to get a chance to go to the palace and stand before the king? That is surely not the way we should take the proverb, and many others. The point of the proverb is to make the generalization that excellence in our work generally gets recognized by discerning people and leads to great benefits — something like that.

The clearest example of how proverbs work is, of course (everybody who has studied Proverbs knows this), Proverbs 26:4–5. Proverbs 26:4 says, “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself.” Verse 5, the next verse, says, “Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.”

Now, what that does is reveal the nature of proverbs. “Haste makes waste”; “a stitch in time saves nine.” Those are opposites, right? “Haste makes waste.” Is that a true proverb? Yes. “A stitch in time saves nine.” Is that a true proverb? Yes. Well, they command opposite things. Yes, which is why Proverbs 26:9 says this: “Like a thorn that goes up into the hand of a drunkard is a proverb in the mouth of fools.”

“Kids need to see how precious Jesus is to Mom and Dad.”

In other words, you can use proverbs to put thorns through people. You have to be wise to even know what to do with a proverb. You can’t just take proverbs and assume that they are self-explanatory. It takes wisdom to know how to wield a proverb. “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver” (Proverbs 25:11). Yet you have got to know the time and the place to use a proverb.

So, for those three reasons, I don’t think that Brenda should bear the horrific weight of thinking that if she could just do it exactly right, it guarantees that her 22-month-old daughter will be a solid believer when she is 22 years old. She cannot bear that burden.

Counsel for Godly Parenting

So, here is what I want to say to her — just a few things.

1. In general, bringing up children God’s way will lead them to eternal life. In general, I think that is true.

2. This would include putting our hope in God and praying earnestly for wisdom and for their salvation all the way to the grave. Don’t just pray until they get converted at age six. That is not very smart. Pray all the way to the grave for your children’s conversions and for the perseverance of their apparent conversions.

3. Saturate them with the word of God. “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17).

4. Be radically consistent and authentic in your own faith — not just in behavior, but in affections. Kids need to see how precious Jesus is to Mom and Dad, not just how he is obeyed, or how they get to church, or how they read devotions, or how they do duty. They need to see the joy and the satisfaction in Mom’s and Dad’s heart that Jesus is the greatest friend in the world.

5. Model the preciousness of the gospel. As we parents confess our own sins and depend on grace, our kids will see, “Oh, you don’t have to be perfect. Mom and Dad aren’t perfect. They love grace. They love the gospel because Jesus forgives their sins. And I know, then, that he can forgive my sins.”

6. Be part of a Bible-saturated, loving church. Kids need to be surrounded by other believers and not just Mom and Dad.

7. Require obedience. Do not be lazy. There are so many young parents today that just strike me as being so lazy. They are not willing to get up and do what needs to be done to bring this kid into line. So, we should follow through on our punishments and follow through especially on all of our promises of good things that we say we are going to do for them.

8. God saves children out of failed and unbelieving parenting. God is sovereign. We aren’t the ones, finally, who save our kids.

9. Rest in the sovereignty of God over your children. We cannot bear the weight of their eternity. That is God’s business. We must roll all of that onto him.

Does theology serve doxology? It ought to. God means to be worshiped, but not in ignorance. He wants to be known and enjoyed and praised for who he is. Which is why he doesn’t just demand the worship of his creatures, but first reveals himself to us so that we might know him, and therefore delight in him. Theology, our study of God, serves doxology, our worship of God.

Jonathan Edwards, known for both his Reformed orthodoxy and his creative expression of it, helps us with a fresh way to approach God’s attributes, in service of our worship. From a few basic truths — God is simple, God is incomprehensible, God is happy, and God creates — we see more of what God is and, by his grace, are freed to marvel at him even more.

God Is Simple

Begin with the statement, “God is simple.” Understanding divine simplicity is not simple; it’s complicated. Think of it this way: created things are made up of parts; we can break them down into things more fundamental than they are. A person is composed of body and soul. We can distinguish what you are (your essence) from the fact that you are (your existence). We can distinguish things that are essential to what you are (like being a rational creature) from things that are non-essential or accidental (like having red hair). We can do the same sort of composition with all sorts of attributes and qualities.

Divine simplicity essentially says, “God is not like that.” That is, he is not composed of parts. You can’t break him down into things that are more fundamental than he is. There is nothing behind God that makes God what God is. He simply and absolutely is. Even his old-covenant name, revealed to Moses at the burning bush, testifies to this: “I am who I am” (Exodus 3:14).

A popular theological way to express divine simplicity, both in Edwards’s day and our own, is “everything that is in God is God.” In other words, God doesn’t have attributes in the way that you and I have attributes. He’s not composed of attributes or qualities or excellencies or perfections. Whatever God has, God is.

God Is Incomprehensible

Now, this is difficult for us to comprehend. That’s why theologians also say that God is incomprehensible. Simplicity and incomprehensibility go hand in hand. Because God is simple (and we are not), we can’t comprehend him. That is, we can’t wrap our minds around him. Our knowledge of him is always creaturely — finite, limited, and partial.

“We can know God truly, though not fully.”

Of course, we can know him, because he reveals himself to us. And he reveals himself to us in ways appropriate to our creaturely limitations. To put it simply, God speaks human to humans, and humans always speak about God according to our way of conceiving. We can know God truly, though not fully.

God Is Happy

Not only is God simple and incomprehensible; God is also happy. In fact, he is infinitely, eternally, unchangeably, and independently glorious and happy. He is free from all need, want, and lack.

This happiness is an infinite happiness in himself. From all eternity, God has perfectly beheld and infinitely rejoiced in his own essence and perfections. He has known himself with perfect clarity and loved himself with perfect delight.

“From all eternity, God has known himself with perfect clarity and loved himself with perfect delight.”

Thus, God has always beheld a perfect, full image of his perfections. This image is so perfect and full that a second person stands forth in the Godhead. In other words, God’s knowledge of himself is so rich that by eternally thinking of himself, a second person is eternally begotten. This is the Son of God, the image of the invisible God and exact imprint of his nature (Colossians 1:15; Hebrews 1:3), the eternal Word who is with God and is God (John 1:1), the eternal Son who is always at the Father’s side (John 1:18).

More than this, the eternal and mutual love between Father and Son is so rich and full that this love stands forth as a third person in the Godhead. In other words, God’s love for himself is so rich that by loving and delighting in himself, a third person eternally flows forth from the Father and the Son. This is the Holy Spirit, the breath of the living God (Psalm 33:6), the supreme joy and delight of God in God (Luke 10:21), the infinite river of his eternal delights (Psalm 36:8).

And each of these persons is truly and fully God. The whole divine essence truly and distinctly subsists in each, and yet there is only a single, simple divine essence. This too is incomprehensible: one glorious and happy God eternally subsisting in three distinct persons.

God Creates

Thus far, we have spoken of the simple, incomprehensible, and triune God as he is in himself. The triune God lives in himself, knows himself, and loves himself, and thus possesses unchangeable happiness in himself. But the living and triune God did not remain by himself. In his perfect freedom, he chose to communicate himself outside of himself by creating the world from nothing.

With creation in view, we can now speak of God in himself and his triune being (as we’ve done above), as well as God in relation to his creatures. This relation to his creatures generates a myriad of attributes, perfections, and excellencies, according to our human way of conceiving. Thus, God’s “absolute (or real) attributes,” as Edwards calls them, flower into God’s “relative attributes.”

In this way, we may now speak of God’s power, which is simply the fullness of divine being in relation to the things God does and can do. God’s wisdom is simply God’s own knowledge directed to finding appropriate means to accomplish God’s purposes. God’s love for his creatures is simply God’s love for himself as it is brought in relation to the creatures who reflect and image him.

Flowering of Divine Excellencies

This flowering of relative excellencies continues as God creates, sustains, and governs the world. God’s faithfulness is his love as it bears upon the promises that he makes. God’s righteousness is his knowledge and love as they rightly order and structure reality in fitting proportion, according to the proper value of every created thing. God’s mercy is his supreme love for himself as it encounters weak, pitiable, and broken sinners. God’s wrath is this same supreme and holy love as it collides with stubborn, stiff-necked, and idolatrous rebels.

Again and again, God’s absolute excellencies — his being, his knowledge, and his love — are brought into relation to all aspects of the world, its creatures, and its history, and thereby generate God’s relative excellencies, according to our way of conceiving.

Many of these relative excellencies identify the perfection of qualities that we know in and from creation. Thus, as creatures, we come to know goodness in the world and then follow this created goodness back to the God who is the Supreme Good. So with wisdom, majesty, mercy, grace, faithfulness, justice, power, and other positive relative excellencies. We see the creaturely echoes of these divine properties all around us, and we follow them back to their ultimate source, where they dwell in their fullness and eminence.

Negative Attributes

On the other hand, some of God’s relative excellencies are “negative attributes.” If “positive attributes” take creaturely goods and trace them back to their infinite divine origin, negative attributes take creaturely limitations and deny that God is limited in this way. Consider the negative terms that we ascribe to God: infinite, immutable, eternal, and the like.

Each of these speaks of God by denying to him some creaturely property. Divine infinity denies that God is limited and finite as creation is. Divine immutability denies that God changes the way that creation does. Divine eternality denies that God is bound by time. Divine ubiquity (or omnipresence) denies that God is limited by space. Even the two attributes that began this essay — simplicity and incomprehensibility — are negative attributes, the first denying that God is composed of parts, and the second denying that the infinite God can be contained by the finite mind of man.

God and No Other

God’s attributes aren’t merely qualities that he happens to have. They are essential to him. They are our descriptions of his being, his essence, his very nature, his God-ness. Because he simply is who he is. Everything in God is God.

God is light — pure, simple, white light. God is. God knows. God loves. More specifically, God is himself, God knows himself, and God loves himself. He is the triune God, absolutely full and happy in himself.

Then, this God, the living God, freely creates the world. And when he does, the pure, simple, white light of his being, knowledge, and love shines through the prism of his creation. The white light is refracted into all the colors of the rainbow, as God himself is brought into relation to every aspect of the world he has made. This refracting is what enables us to know him. The flowering of God’s relative excellencies in creation is so that clay pots can have some idea of what the Potter is like. Like Moses, we see the glory of God “from the back.” We grope and we strain and we labor to find words to describe our Lord, who is God and there is no other.

Infinity Clothed in Flesh

And then, wonder of wonders, this God — infinite, eternal, and unchangeable; simple, incomprehensible, and happy — does the unimaginable. The God who lacks every creaturely limitation freely chooses to clothe himself with such limitations, uniting his infinite and eternal being to finite and temporal human nature.

If the excellencies of the simple, incomprehensible, and happy God blow our minds, how much more when this God takes on flesh and dwells among us? And not only dwells among us, but loves among us, suffers among us, dies among us?

The heights of God’s absolute and relative attributes, and his positive and negative attributes, lead us to the depths of his love as the Son comes down from heaven for us and for our salvation. The glorious excellencies of his deity are united to the diverse excellencies of his humanity so that, in Christ, the full range of perfections, both human and divine, are united in one person, Jesus of Nazareth, who is worthy of all worship.

And so, our theology — careful, rigorous, and detailed — leads to doxology — full, overflowing, and abounding with joy.