How many of you remember the Andy Griffith show? In one of the episodes, a hobo told Andy he should just let his son Opie "decide for himself" how he wanted to live, Andy had these words of wisdom. "No, I'm afraid it don't work that way. You can't let a young’n decide for himself. He'll grab at the first flashy thing with shiny ribbons on it. Then, when he finds out there's a hook in it, it's too late. Wrong ideas come packaged with so much glitter that it's hard to convince ‘em that other things might be better in the long run. All a parent can do is say 'wait' and 'trust me' and try to keep temptation away." Many parents today are more worried about being their child’s friend than in being their parent. What is the parent’s responsibility to their children? This is at the heart of today’s passage that Evan and Dawn chose for their children’s baptism.
I
love that you chose this text for Theodore and Oskar’s baptism as it shows that
you understand the importance of your responsibility to raise your children to
know and love God, to understand who Jesus is and what he accomplished for us
on the cross, and the forgiveness we find in Jesus’ loving sacrifice there. Parents
have the most influence on their children’s lives; never under estimate how
your beliefs and faith will shape your children’s faith. Ultimately, your
children will look to you for guidance and values. The more we get to know God,
the more that love for God grows in us.
It
all begins with the Shema, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord
our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with
all your soul and with all your strength.” Shema comes from the word “listen;”
basically Moses is telling the Israelites to listen to the Lord and his call on
their lives, reminding them who God is. The Israelites are camping at the foot
of Mount Sinai after being rescued by God from slavery and the power of Egypt.
They’ve been in Egypt for 400 years. But over those 400 years, the Israelites
have also embraced an Egyptian way of seeing gods, believing that there are
many gods who all need to be appeased and feared. You never knew what these
gods really wanted, so sacrifices were made to keep them in a good mood.
Moses
is reminding the Israelites who their God is, the God of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of creation, the one and only God who is one
and not many. Their worship and obedience are rooted in their confession
that, “The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” God
asks for their love, not their fear; a deep love that comes from their heart and
soul with all their strength. Moses goes on, “These
commandments that I give to you today are to be on your hearts.” I
appreciate how Evan and Dawn recognise that these commandments are given to the
Israelites as a gift to help shape their love for God by being on their hearts,
and on our hearts.
One
of the key ways we show our love to God is through obedience; taking his
commandments seriously, trusting that God knows and wants what’s best for us.
God gives Israel his laws to create a holy people whose character, both as
individuals and as a community, is built on the foundation of worshipping and
following God in every area of their lives. Jesus later on tells his followers
that their obedience is how they show him that they love him, “If you love me, you will keep my commands,” Jesus
said. Jesus summarizes all his Father’s commandments by first repeating Moses,
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with
all your soul and with all your strength,” which is the point of the
first five of the Ten Commandments, and then Jesus adds, “and love your neighbour as yourself,” as the point of
the last five commandments. The Ten Commandments protect God’s honour by
telling us how to relate to God, and they protect our neighbour from our
selfishness and greed.
This
is where the parenting comes in, “Impress these
commandments on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when
you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” This is
every day, going through the day faith growing in your kids. This is
intentional faith training in your children. As parents, your main task is to
show them who God is, help them see God all around them, the book of creation
that the Belgic Confession talks about, and to shape how they live as the children
of God, shaped by his values and centered on his commandments. It’s a parent’s
task to show how the commandments reveal to us who God is, what the heart of
God is and what our hearts are to be like. We teach our children to obey by
obeying God’s commands ourselves.
Talk
about God while you’re at home, sitting at the dinner table, or while
doing chores around the house, or while simply being together. Today Moses
might have said, talk about these things while on your tablet or watching
television, talk about them on the way to volleyball, badminton, or hockey
practices, and share with your children at bedtime how you’ve seen God at work
during the day as you pray with them and sing them the Shema song. When you get
up in the morning together, begin by thanking God for his grace and ask for his
guidance in the day ahead. This is how you make faith a day long part of your
lives as a family and as individuals; teaching yourselves and your children to
see God at work everywhere you go and every place you end up. When this becomes
a regular part of your children’s life from an early age, it creates habits of
faith that remain with them through their entire life.
The
Israelites are told to tie the laws of God on their hands and on their
foreheads to shape their work, thoughts, and beliefs so that they’re always
working for God, honouring him with their thoughts and plans. They place specific
texts from Exodus and Deuteronomy in these little boxes called phylacteries, or
in Hebrew, tefillin. The two leather boxes contain hand written parchment
scrolls of passages in the Torah from Exodus 13:2-10 and Exodus 13:11-16
about consecrating every first-born male to the Lord,
and from Deuteronomy 6:1-8 and Deuteronomy 11:18-21 which are calls to teach our
children to obey the Lord your God. Deuteronomy 11:18-21 echoes our passage
about fixing these words on their hands and forehead and teaching them to the
children, and then adds this promise “so
that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land the Lord
swore to give your ancestors, as many as the days that the heavens are above
the earth.” Here’s a glimpse that this is about placing
eternity in the hearts of our children.
They’re
told to “Write them, these commandments, on the
doorframes of your houses and on your gates,” an echo of the blood of the lambs that
was spread over their door frames to protect them from the angel of death. The
people heard this as the law giving them life. Later on, God, through Jeremiah
promises a new covenant, different than the one here at Sinai. Jeremiah 31:31–34, “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when
I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of
Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took
them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. “This is
the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares
the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I
will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their
neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know
me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will
forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” This points
to Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit into our hearts. The challenge to
us is to listen to the Spirit’s guidance as we read Scripture together, as we
make prayer a regular part of our life together as families and church, as we
look to the Spirit to keep our head, heart, and hands Jesus oriented.
When
our hearts are turned to God, obedience flows out of love rather than
obligation. This is why Jesus sends us the Holy Spirit, to remind us of Jesus’
forgiveness and grace found on the cross. The Spirit works in our hearts to
transform us into the people of God who are a blessing to the nations as we
model Jesus and go make faithful disciples shaped by the Holy Spirit and live
out Jesus’ command to love God with everything we have and are, and love our
neighbours as ourselves.
