Mystery of Providence - Chapter 2

All right, so chapter 2. In the original book, actually, it separates itself into general heads, as it calls it.

And so on the outline, there were these five things at the top. The concerns of the saints are conducted by special providence was the first general head, which we've covered so far.

And now we're into particular concerns in which this providence is discovered, which will be this week and next week with Conley as well.

Now, this chapter is mostly focused on birth in our upbringing and how God's providence is shown through those things, right?

And so he starts off initially by telling us about how our formation and protection in the womb is that first work of providence that God ever acts upon us.

A specific quote from him I liked was, as curious artists, when they have some choice piece in hand, they perfect it in private and then bring it into the light for all to gaze at.

So it was here. People talk about birth a lot of the time, especially in the Christian community, as something that demonstrates

God's mystery, how we don't really understand these processes well. And we even see that in scripture, that it's sort of a folly for us to assume we even understand the process to begin with.

And so it sort of plays into how God, as an artist, as the greatest artist also does this work in private.

It's not something he likes to really even give us full knowledge of, for there's just a mystery to it that we should accept, right?

There's a lot of mysteries of the faith that he gives us, and this is a mystery of nature that he's given us to gaze at.

Flabel makes some applications of this, too, to how we don't understand, yet we can recognize the excellent composition of our own body.

It's something he quoted from Thomas Manton, actually, is painted as with a needle, saying it comes from the

Vulgate, acupictus sum. He's a contemporary of Flabel, and he had written this down. You can find Spurgeon quoting him on this, too, and it's an expression they would use to demonstrate how

God has painted us in fine ways. We talk about cloning humans, we talk about trying to put people together in our own ways.

However, there's just a fine nature and exactness to how humans and just animals in general are all sort of put together that we can sort of use as a special evidence how

God cares for us. Now, on top of that, our body is composed even perfectly, meaning completely.

Now there's sin, as well, wrecking havoc on ourselves at this point, but there's still a completeness to how we're put together on average, right?

To an extent that whenever ever we're missing or lacking some function of our bodies or any single part of it, it renders us really greatly aware of that deficiency.

This isn't just like people who have outright disabilities, who have a loss of hearing or loss of sight or are missing a limb, but even when we have a tweak in our knee, we have any kind of small lack of function, we recognize how that affects our whole body and our whole experience of life.

Instead of taking it as something to bring us depression or sadness, maybe we should recognize that that's an opportunity to glorify and worship

God for how he has put us together and be thankful for how he's going to restore our bodies in the future.

Now, he moves on to talking about how the soul that inhabits the body, too, being an example of God's providence for us, that especially within humans, that we uniquely bear the image of God.

Now, it's right to say that animals, all animals have some souls, but humans, not really well understood instead as animals, but instead should be understood as image bearers of God who have a unique and special soul given to them.

And it's because the soul is actually prepared to be married to Christ. It's not for any other particular reason so much as it is prepared to know and experience

God's glory so much more greatly. And the soul, he mentions to the soul being the envy of hell, if you actually try to search this across like a lot of books and Google Books or something, you won't really find it very often.

It seems to be a flabbelism, so to speak, saying that like hell itself envies the thing that we've been given, that the demons, they wonder after what we've been given, the angels wonder after what we've been given, not just the angels who have not sinned against God, but the angels who have sinned against God, both envy the state that we're in just in different ways.

And he expresses our soul can be seen as the embodiment of our logic, reasoning and understanding.

There's a sense in which we should probably not even expect to dare to ever be animals who have our sense of logic, reasoning and understanding because of this.

Again, our human soul is a unique thing that gives us a unique capability. And so when we see like claims of apes or dolphins being able to communicate in ways that are human -like, we should always throw some kind of questioning on that because God has revealed to us that this is something specifically given to man.

Our ability to reason is particularly great in that way and something that we should praise him for and thank him for.

And one other thing he mentions with some scripture references is that we are also greatly fragile during our time in the womb and through the trial of birth.

There's like not even just through the trial of birth, but also just in the process of being made and woven together in the womb.

We're very fragile, very special, particular, and a lot of that even fails due to sin as it is now.

Like there's a lot of lost children in the womb. There's a lot of lost children soon after birth.

And the whole fact that any of you are sitting here today should be understood as a special miracle and providence from God, even in that part.

The passages he mentions for this are all Psalm 139, 13 and Psalm 22, 9.

Let's look at at least one of those to recognize what it does. Question is

ESV or BSV, right? For you formed my inward parts, you knitted me together in my mother's womb in 22, 9.

Yet you are he who took me from the womb, you made me trust you at my mother's breasts.

So saying it's a specific act of God that we've even made it here. David's expressing that in his worship.

It's something we should understand and express, too. It's not just the work of the doctor or the work of our mother, but it's the work of God that we are here.

And then he moves on to some, I think, a pretty compelling part of the chapter, which is just about the place and time of our birth and how that plays into understanding

God's providence on you, especially as a believer and how you should think about what he's done for you.

So let's consider first the place. It's funny reading this chapter as he keeps mentioning how

Braden's nodding his head in the back. He keeps mentioning England as the special great place of faith and how horrid

America is. And we can sort of switch the topics a bit to understand it in the same way.

So first, how greatly comfortable is our shelter compared to how many live? I'm going to give a direct quote from here, from the book.

What is but what is it but a garden enclosed out of a wilderness? I may, without partiality or vanity, say

God hath, even upon temporal accounts, provided you with one of the most healthful, pleasant and in all respects, the best furnished room and all the great house of this world.

There is, I mean, we hear told us all through our childhood generally about how blessed we are.

Be thankful you're not a starving kid in Africa is the thing I would actually hear as a kid from people. Right.

It is a sense in which even the most modest of conditions that we have here are really particularly special throughout all of human history and throughout all the world now, especially just living in America.

There's there was a I found an article to give some interesting stat, and this was from 2019.

It's only gotten more extreme since then. But the poorest 20 percent of Americans even adjusted, especially for all the things that we give the poorest people, the subsidies, food stamps, et cetera.

The poorest 20 percent of Americans, they consume more goods and services than the national averages for all people and other affluent countries.

And there's another interesting stat here, which is that if you put the end give exactly about like you put the 20 percent poorest people in America into a nation of their own, it would be within one of the world's richest nations on its own.

It would be beyond the wealth of the nations of Europe in particular. And so there's both a size and a grandeur to the pleasantries we we experience here in America that we should be continuously thankful for to God.

Especially with that, that was actually with the next point. We still have the poor among us, but nothing like the poorest in the world.

Another quote from him, God has provided for the and given the poorest among us far better accommodations of life than the greatest among them or ordinarily provided with.

And he's talking back long ago when there was probably less of a wealth disparity than we have now across the world.

But still, even now, it's only gotten more extreme in that sense where we really live in just a special time.

And we have computers. We have Internet. We have these things that even still parts of the world have no concept of and just have no access to.

And not just to talk about financial things, we especially knowing

English and being in America, we have spiritual mercies and advantages given to us. We have an extreme access to the gospel that others just don't experience.

Something I noticed is that I looked into it again because I just remember hearing it a lot, especially in colleges here, but which is about the 1040 window, which for those who aren't familiar, it's the 10th and 40th latitude on the map.

If you look at that across the world, especially in the eastern hemisphere, it's like the most unreached population in the world for the gospel.

It's also the most popular. It's an extremely populous region. It has 5 .44 billion people as of a few years ago in just that window.

And most of them have no access at all to the gospel, have never heard it, don't know what it is.

And they're also generally associated with the highest rates of poverty, highest rates of disease, lowest life expectations.

And I wanted to mention specifically two verses in reference to this that he mentioned, if you can flip there to Jeremiah 10, 25 first.

He expressed this as an actual judgment from God on other nations specifically because of these passages.

Pour out your wrath on the nations that know you not and on the peoples that call not on your name, for they have devoured

Jacob. They have devoured him and consumed him and have laid waste his habitation. And also

Psalm 97, 7. All worshipers of images are put to shame who make their boast and worthless idols worship him, all you gods.

And so we see the scripture speaks to we should sort of expect this. We should expect those groups and those peoples who do not desire

God and do not know him, reject him, worship idols to just experience a worse life here on the earth, a worse expectation of everything.

This isn't to be misunderstood as the prosperity gospel. We're not saying if you believe in the gospel, God is going to give you everything.

But God does shine a special kind of providence and love upon his people. And you can see that even in the nations that they inhabit.

And this is to be understood, especially for his bride. He wants to provide for us even in these basic things.

Right. He mentions we're also not specifically a providence that we're not in a land overtaken by Islam.

In the original version of the book, he refers to this as Mohammedans, those who worship Mohammed rather than as Muslims.

And I thought this this specific quote, he had a quote about manacles and fetters.

Should have put the quote in here, but I did not, which was that those who that if you were to listen to any of the arguments and teachings and writings of Islam, that you would expect that those who protect it to be worthy of manacles and fetters rather than logic and reasoning.

He even expresses that there's such a lack of light in those Islamic countries that what they believe is worthy of putting them into chains and bindings like you would a prisoner.

That's what manacles and fetters are, rather than giving them logic and reasoning because they're just simply like they're lost in their minds at this point.

So it's interesting to hear that, especially when you think from like an apologetics or teaching standpoint, like, should

I even be trying for certain groups of people? It is a good question to ask, but definitely recognize how

God is giving you a special grace just in being here, right? And then another one he mentioned, of course, a land overrun by Catholicism and any anti -Christian delusion.

I found this interesting because of when he was speaking about it. It was only after like it was only a few years after large scale persecution of Protestants and especially separatists in England at the time, but it was still nothing compared to what you could see if you were like living in Rome or living in some country just overrun by Catholicism.

There was not some specific anti -Christian delusion to talk about. I do think it references, though, like what he's talking about is something we recognize here in America or at least certain parts of America.

Again, I grew up in the Midwest. I grew up in an area full of the Church of Christ. Christian churches, ones that would teach baptismal regeneration, that you're saved by works, that they're the only true church and any other churches are not.

You should deny and not accept any creeds or confessions given by other Christians. And if you're not going to Church of Christ around the area, you're going to an

Amish church, which again, we even teach in some ways a similar thing. They do not know the light of the gospel.

They teach salvation by works, not by grace. And so there are still places like this within America.

Places that we have even grown up in, and we should really be thankful, even though we're in California, which people like to joke about being a land of the lost.

We at least have a church like this. We have other churches around us we can call true and know are teaching the gospel and preaching the word truly.

Now, moving from place, he had us consider the age of the world we were born into, and he wants to look at Acts 17, 26, which he mentioned for that.

I'll just read it real quick. And he made from one man, every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place.

So not only is he determining where we live and die, he is determined where nations and peoples live and die, giving them borders.

These are real things, real things to consider. And so Flavel himself speaks of pagan

England. Again, let's relate it to pagan America for our own way of understanding things.

He's saying that pagan England was itself a crazy, godless place at one point.

And it is one that has been had been restored by the gospel and brought into a great state.

And this is what he mentions here. We are not only furnished with the best room in this great house, but before we were put into it, it was swept with the besom of national reformation from idolatry, yea, and washed by the blood of martyrs from popish filthiness and adorned with gospel lights.

Now, thankfully, America was never really majority Catholic, so there was never a washing of popish filthiness to get rid of.

But there was at one point, as he mentions, we were overrun by pagan religions. We were overrun by, say, native animalist religions or animist.

I can't remember what they're really called. And in a sense, with the foundation of the

United States of America, we did get more or less some kind of Christian nation out of that or at least

Christian peoples entering into this nation. And while we may be far from what that was like then, maybe not asking to go exactly to what that was, there should be a recognition of how

God has cleansed and made this area a special place for his people to dwell in, especially given what we were talking about earlier.

Actually, something I mentioned earlier was knowing English. That wasn't just an aside. There's something interesting to that, which is just that a huge wealth of the commonly, some commonly is imposed upon me.

Well, it's just that a huge wealth of theology and theological writings have been translated into English or were themselves written in English.

I mean, this book was written in English. All of the Puritan works are written in it. And so there's a sense in which knowing the

English language gives you a grand access to the scriptures. I mean, if you have the Bible app, pick another language real quick and just see how few translations they have to pick from.

I think Swedish has one in the entire thing. German has like two or three.

I've looked occasionally and American, we have English. We just American English.

We have just like an insanely long list, most of them copyrighted horrendously. But that's a different topic, right?

And now, I mean, there was a short while where everything, all

Christian theology was written in Greek and then shortly after that was Latin and pretty much for the most of the

New Testament era to study theology, you would do so in a language that was not your own.

And so it is really relatively recently that we've been able to study in our own native language as the main scholarly language that you would study.

It is a really huge lesson. Now, I think you brought up a really interesting point in this part of the book as well.

Are these not themselves reasons also that man in these lands and times suffer a greater eternal aggravation when they reject

Christ? Basically saying, because they've been given all this knowledge, they've been given all these blessings, doesn't that just give them a worse place in hell if they reject

Christ? And he affirms that this is very much true. And we can see this in Scripture. I think it's John 8 where Christ, and we had

Kyle Fitzgerald preach on this recently, where those who are given knowledge, that knowledge they are given is that by which

God holds them accountable to. And so that knowledge includes the graces that God has given a person, the blessings they've given to him.

Those are meant to turn you, turn a person to worship him, turn a person to know him. And when they reject him, it's all the more reason to reject that person.

And so there's, of course, Romans 10, 14 to help with this. How can one be saved if they do not hear?

Recently went over this in a Scripture reading, right? How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed?

And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?

So in this case, we live in a country where it's almost impossible for one to not hear the gospel at some point in their life.

There's parts of the U .S. where there's a Christian church, actually Christian church on every corner, right?

I think we had some friends who lived in a part of Michigan that was the highest density of churches in America.

I can't remember what it was at this point. He has a quote in here about this.

Here you have the presence of precious means and the absence of soul destroying prejudices to singular mercies.

Again, applying to England then, but America now. We have so many mercies given to us just in that we have a non -destructive society, one that teaches

Christian morals, even if they are not Christian people teaching them. Not that they do that across the board.

I mean, we still teach that abortion is okay across the board now. We teach that various forms of infidelity are just expected and normal.

But still, on the average, you compare us to the rest of the world. There's really no other place like this in that sense.

And even if you're not just being exposed to Christian morals, you're at least being exposed to the gospel at some point in your life.

And then he mentions Proverbs 22 .6 in regards to this and how people are exposed to it sort of passively so that in which they can't be at least.

I don't see how that relates actually. We are less prone to sins that other nations may have and less prone to do them just naturally because of how we're taught from a young age by even our culture.

This is funny. Yesterday on Twitter, of course, there was a post going around about a quote from Penn Jillette recently.

It's one he said a long time ago. I'm not going to quote it entirely, but it was a sentence in which he said was people ask him what's to stop you from committing these horrendous sins all you want.

And his response to them was just basically, I don't need a sky daddy to tell me to stop doing these things.

I just don't want to do these things. I don't have the desires to sin that people talk about.

This just shows how bereft of value your religion has. And really, that's only something he could say coming from a nation and a people who've been teaching him these things from the beginning, teaching him these basic morals.

In particular, he was talking about rape in this quote. And a lot of people try to point out that there are cultures even now where this is just expected and normal.

Again, in the Middle East, especially, there's just like mandated and allowed the forms of this. And so he's coming from a place of privilege from being grown up in a

Christian society that has taught him these things. And so he innately understands these truths. Like Romans 1 says that these things are wrong.

These things are sinful and abhorrent, but he doesn't want to recognize them as attached to God. So you'll even see atheists use this as a way of explaining that.

See, why do you need Christianity if I can just know these things myself? But instead, that is actually just an evidence of God's providence on them, especially

God's providence on you, that you at least understand where that truth is coming from. And this is only because we actually have

Christians in this nation around us to assist in our growth. We have Christians in our families and our communities to guide and aid these things.

Also pushes us to recognize that there is value in the church and in the civil realm for us to do this work and for us to actually push for biblical and gospel truth.

It does matter what laws are in a land and it does matter where they're coming from. And the last section of this chapter, he talks about the mercies you get from being raised up in a family that exposes you to the gospel, both from the perspective of a parent and the perspective of a child and the duties that we have to one another.

So he lists off first just the mercies that you get from being in a family like this.

So he mentions these particular ones, parents who prayed for you before your birth and in your infancy.

In the quote from the book about this, it is a greater mercy to descend from praying parents than from nobles.

He has multiple scripture references about this. And so even though there is some grace and honor to be coming from a noble family or a wealthy family,

I know as a kid I always wished I had come from a richer family, but I don't think I knew a richer family growing up that at least professed to be a

Christian at minimum. And so there's something that we can recognize for ourselves. If you come from a family at all that attaches themselves to the gospel, that is something that you already can thank

God for much greater than those around you. Parents who are careful and they're disciplined of you.

Our sins are called youthful lusts. This is 2 Timothy 2 .22. He mentions especially talking about the sins of one's youth as the greatest sins that someone has.

This was initially shocking to me in reading, but the more I thought about it, the more

I recognized how true it is about the greatest sins of a believer's life are generally the sins from their youth.

As I started to think like, in a sense, I still think I'm quite young and recognizing that if I even look back a few years, how much worse

I was and look back to myself as like a five -year -old or whenever I first gained knowledge, there was no understanding of God, no knowledge of him.

There was just complete selfishness in my perspective on everything. And these are all states of sin that I was in.

It's something we grow up and mature out of. And as we become more spiritually mature, we should recognize how these things need to grow and change and have grown and change in us all the time.

And that's sort of why we want to look to older Christians as well, ones who have mortified their flesh much more than us.

And I think almost all of them can tell you when they look back at their lives, how they sort of dread and not regret, but just look shamefully upon how their life once was and are thankful for where God has brought them to.

And so we should recognize sins of our youth, sort of identify them and try to root them out quite greatly.

And this is the role of parents to start in us, to discipline us and to give us that understanding early on that the way we are at that point is not how

God intends us to end up. Third one applies similarly to when parents praying for us, parents who bring us up in the knowledge of God.

So those who are actively teaching us, quote from him for a godly parent, nothing was more desirable to them than that they might say in the great day,

Lord, here am I and the children which thou hast given me. And it was just a picture I hadn't really considered before as like being before God.

I've always thought about being able to present myself and be like, I want to hear that I've been the faithful servant.

Right. But to recognize that there are my children to consider as well, to be able to say that these are the faithful servants

I've been able to raise for you. That's just something that is a mercy. I hope everyone here gets to experience the eternity.

It's something he's sort of saying. We have a grand role in this. It's something we should bring them up with the knowledge of the gospel.

We should try to bless them with that as much as possible, probably more so than anyone else in our lives.

And parents who set a godly example for us to walk in faith, so parents who we can look to as good examples of Christian living and good examples of faith.

Something he said, how often are children dragged to hell by their parents? Actually, I have often heard this recently as an argument against Christianity being true, saying that you're only a

Christian because you grow up in a Christian culture. You're only a Christian because you were born in America. I heard this recently when

I was in Atlanta from a guy trying to argue this with me. He's like, if you grew up in the Middle East, you'd be Muslim. If you grew up in China, you'd be

Buddhist. If you grew up wherever you'd be, whatever. And this is, again, it's not really an argument against us.

It's something that we're learning here is very much true. And the scripture teaches it, just that God does have a special providence upon peoples and upon nations that he sets in place.

And it may be true that we're Christians because we were placed here, but we were only placed here because God placed us here.

And so that is, in the end, still his choice, still his mercy upon us and his grace.

This is one that I was talking with Braden about throughout the week. How often do parents care only for the body of the child and not the soul?

You hear a lot that people just want happy or healthy children and they don't want to cause a ruckus at the holidays, especially talking about difficult things.

But in a sense, parents should care about the difficult things, especially if their kids are unsaved. And this is a pretty important thing in their lives.

It's much more important than the kid be healthy. It's much more important that they know the gospel and actually have spiritual health.

This is something that starts early, but something that should continue for the rest of one's life. He mentions the example of Job.

Job 21, 7 and 11. Why do the wicked live, reach old age and grow mighty in power?

They send out their little boys like a flock and their children dance, talking about children being set on a bad example and upon a good example.

These are things that the parents have set upon them. And it should be a question from us sometime. Why do the evil people get to live a long time?

Why do they get to do these things? It has a lot to do with not necessarily God just giving long lives and providence to his people, but also there is a sense of which he wants to make an example of different peoples.

Third, when he mentioned how often do parents teach morals yet actively stifle a child's faith?

We definitely see this more often now as we have a lot of people who are cultural Christians and will call themselves cultural

Christians. They don't want their kids to have faith or to believe in a God, but they want them to obey certain morals and have certain moral sets because it's helpful for society.

One of my brothers is very similar to this way where he teaches, he wants to teach his kids morals in a very specific kind of way, but it must be divorced from faith because God is fake and God is not real to this man and should not be to his kids either.

But in a sense, they're just teaching them ridiculousness. It is true that every man has the morality of God and the law of God written on their heart, but to actively reject where that comes from is itself sinful and to actively reject it is to not know

God, not know the one thing that could save them. And now for these reasons we've mentioned, if you are one whose parents were any of the bad things above, ones whose parents dragged you to hell, only cared for your body or taught you morals with no faith, you can even have thankfulness for the providence of God for plucking, as he put, plucking you out by a wonderful, distinguishing hand of mercy from among them.

And so if you're like the only saved person in your family, the first one to do so, you can remember that this is a reversal of the sins of the father.

There's a new point where you can start to bless a new family line and bless a new people with the way that you live and accept the

Lord and have faith. So don't base yourself upon how your parents were, but rather accept

God's providence in the matter and just move forward. Now, we're going to blast through these last few things, exhortation to parents, so things that you should be doing for your children, be concerned with their happiness and their misery, which is a lot of verses to to support these things.

But I'll just list the five that he has. You should have longings for your children, so you should desire them to begin with.

You should recognize them as a blessing upon your life. You should have joy when you have them, recognize the joy just of every additional child that you're given, right?

Have a high value set upon them. This has a lot to do with how you actually seek them out. Like we say at the singles dinner a lot, sort of telling people they need to get married early and quickly and have children early and quickly as well.

You should set your heart upon the valuable things early, not late, so that you can actually get them and God will actually bless you with those things.

You should have sympathy with your children and their troubles and trials, especially becomes more important, I assume, as they get older and they have more real troubles and trials.

But it's something you can practice even from the beginning when the trouble and trial is just getting used to the world. But those things will only continue to increase and it is our duty to care for them and that, too.

And you should have sorrow upon their death. Let's look at the verse reference for this,

Genesis 37, 35, all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted and said, no,

I shall go down to Sheol to my son mourning. Thus, his father wept for him. It's biblical for us to be saddened by their death and saddened by their loss and saddened by their hurt, but not overly.

We still should recognize the providence God even had in giving you those children to begin with. Now, God expects you as a parent to steward your children's souls as well as their bodies, linking back to what we just said earlier, various verses he gives for this, especially

Ephesians 6, Deuteronomy 6, 6 to 7, which has to do with teaching your children.

When you wake, when you go upon the road, when you go down to sleep. And Ephesians 6, 4 and 6, 1, this involves also requiring their obedience and requiring them to obey you and therefore obeying the

Lord as well and have a recognition for that. One of the sweetest things the

Synaba does in our worship times is she figured out, we ask her for prayer requests and one of the ones she's had continuously for a while is to help obey

God. Just sort of interesting, it's often an opportunity to remind her what that actually means.

One of the exhortations he gives us, what will comfort you if your child dies faithless due to your neglect?

A rhetorical question just to really get you wondering, what is there to comfort you if your child dies faithless?

Did you do everything that God actually asked you as a parent to do? If so, you can die in the comfort of knowing that God has chosen as he will.

But if you did not, not only did he still choose as you will, but there is still a lack of you applying the means that he's given you to do that thing.

So you should do everything you can to sort of feel as if you've done your duty, the duty that God called you as a parent to do.

Next one, will Satan neglect to teach your child his ways if you neglect your duties?

The quick answer is no, Satan will not neglect it at all. He has a greater temporal power, it seems, than we do.

But not the one that matches God, right? And so especially as we look at our society and often talk about how evil it is, despite it being a providentially secured one in a lot of ways, it's still one wrought with sin.

We should expect Satan to take them if we do not do it, if we do not work to have the

Lord take them himself. It is unlikely your children will be fruitful if you squander their childlike faith.

I like that one a lot, he referenced Proverbs 22, 6 about teaching a child in one way, he will not depart from it as he grows old.

Conley's mentioned this frequently, but I think you can find it in many sources. You don't really see people frequently converting to Christianity as adults.

You see them being raised up in it as a child. You see them being given it early and them having an early faith and a recognition of that when they come into adulthood.

You see that most frequently, not that we shouldn't be going after adults, but just try evangelism for a while.

You'll see exactly what we mean. It may be difficult to raise children, but giving them the faith when they are learning the world and learning how to interpret it is much easier than that in its own way.

This next one, generation and imitation of parents are causes of a child's mercy.

So misery, child's misery. Generation being the original sin that we get from Adam's own sin.

So from the ordinary generation, our children have misery from the original sin that's in them. But then also imitation of us causes children misery and actual sin, whether it be the way that we speak, the way that we act, the way that we treat other people, the way that we respect

God's law. These are important things for us to recognize that they're going to imitate everything that we do.

And so we should care a lot about how we've actually become righteous in our works before the

Lord, not righteous in our works, but that we are actually doing good works and the

Lord right. Similar, like we said about squandering the childlike faith, we are the most likely instrument as parents for instilling the knowledge of Christ into our children.

This is the way that God has frequently ordained and speaks of in Scripture as the way, as an important duty for us to do and as something that he has ordained as a special means by which people will know him is from through the family and through the work that we do with worship and through the work that we do with just teaching them generally.

And consider that pity you would feel for them on the last day and something similar to he mentioned before.

You should think early about your children and how they will feel when Christ comes to return or when

Christ raises them from the grave in order to judge them or when God does that.

Consider how they are going to be, whether or not, not even necessarily if you're going to see them, but they are eternal souls that you've been given some kind of stewardship over, a special stewardship, and it's something that you should be considering every single day for them.

And lastly, three quick exhortations to children in the room, of which all of us are children.

So it's something we should recognize even now. Disobeying parents is disobeying

God's authority. Again, from Ephesians 6 .1 is one of the few commands given, especially to children, is to obey their parents.

And so by disobeying this, you have, in a sense, disobeyed God as well.

It's not if your parents are asking you to sin that obviously trumps this, but you have to somehow be more wise than them in that case.

And again, we're assuming people in this room raising children or being under people in here as their own children.

So that's likely not the case, but you should really consider just immediate obedience of your parents as much as possible.

And for those of us who are adults, not in our parents' homes anymore, there's not necessarily a sense of obligation to obey them, but there is a sense, an obligation to respect and honor them still.

A warning to children as a child of godly parents, if you are a child of godly parents, your sin is greater because you have more light given to you.

This is similar to earlier with John 8. God has given you a special situation, in some senses an easier situation.

He does expect you to recognize the grace of what he's done in doing so and the grace of the knowledge that he's exposed to you.

And the last thing of all, God will retaliate against your disobedience to your parents.

The story he gave for this, I did not honestly understand at all. Good, I'm not alone, but apparently we can be dragged around the house or something like that.

But I think we can all recognize that God will retaliate in some way against the disobedience you have towards your parents.

I know that in my own family, with my own siblings, I've recognized this in some way that I've been blessed up full of wife and kids that I actually get to raise and know my siblings don't really have the same situation at all.

And I would say that I was a more obedient child, while not perfect by any means.

And so there's a sense in which God does want to pay back those who have had obedience early on in their life and recognize the gift that they were given.