Episode 87: Salvation in the Home

Rural Church Podcast 2.0

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Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast. This is my beloved son, with whom

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I am well pleased. He is honored and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas?

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You see that one in Pechote, Mexico? Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

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The church is not a democracy. It's a monarchy. Christ is king. You can't be

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Christian without a local church. Oh, that's right. So people are listening to this one a whole week later.

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But for us, it's one continuous recording. It's good because, you know, you're going to your...

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I'm going to have to write this down for a couple of weeks. I'm going to have to write this down for a couple of weeks. It's good.

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It's good when we can to double up like this. So welcome to the

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Ruled Church Podcast. I am your co -host, Allen Nelson. I'm one of the pastors at Providence Baptist Church in Perryville, Arkansas.

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Or if you don't know where that's at, we're on the outskirts of Toadstuck, Arkansas. With me is the one and only, not actually literally, but figuratively, metaphorically, spiritually,

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Eddie Ragsdale. What's up? Hello, everybody. Hey, what's our topic? Salvation is of the

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Lord, part two. This one, we want to move it into the home. That's right. That's what we want to talk about, especially our children.

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If salvation is of the Lord, what hope do we have? Hope? What guarantee?

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What promises do we have for our children? I'll read to you a pretty well -known text.

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It comes from Acts chapter 2. Have you ever heard a Presbyterian quote this one? Acts chapter 2, beginning in verse 38.

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And Peter said to them, repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins.

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And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, and for who? Your children.

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And for your children, and for all who are far off. Everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.

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And with many other words, he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, Save yourselves from this crooked generation.

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Verse 41, I think is important. And so those who received his word were baptized. And there were added that day about 3 ,000 souls.

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So I got a few things to work through. The first thing I would work through is this concept. I'm seeing it more and more in the

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Reformed Baptist world. But this concept here of covenant children, what is that?

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Maybe you don't want to answer that. I don't know. Well, I think what covenant children or covenant succession is the idea that the children of believers are expected to succeed in the faith of their parents, to follow in their parents' faith.

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And that's accomplished through divinely ordained means of being included in the covenant.

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For our Presbyterian brothers, it would be through the means of being initiated through baptism of infants.

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So they would say they're being included in the covenant. I do think that the problematic issue with our

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Baptist brothers is I think often they're agreeing with other doctrinal positions, and then there's no place to get off that train.

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And so it's bringing them to this. So maybe they agree when it comes to postmillennial eschatology or theonomy, but once they get on, there's not a stop for them to get off of that train, and it brings them back to this.

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Because they haven't understood the distinctions between a Baptist covenant theology and the

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Presbyterian form of covenant. That's what it seems like to me. I think that that's actually one reason why so many

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Baptists end up becoming Presbyterian. It's actually kind of an emotional thing. There's some people,

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I'm not trying to be uncharitable here, but there's some people who can't embrace the doctrines of grace because of their children, which is weird.

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I mean, it's just weird to me. It's like, why don't you trust the salvation of your children in the Lord's hands? But then there's also some

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Baptists that wind up running to Presbyterianism or some other form of paedo -Baptist covenant theology, because they have to see their children in the covenant.

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Now, we did, was it three episodes? Yeah, on Baptist covenant theology.

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Yeah, we did. And actually, it's some of our most popular episodes, so I don't know. I hope they're helpful. We also have a page we walked through on our website.

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We walked through covenant theology this spring on Wednesday nights, talked through it, recorded it, put it on our website.

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We also have some resources there, so you can look up all that. But let me just say this in summary. No unregenerate person has ever been part of the new covenant.

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No unregenerate person has ever been part of the covenant of grace. Those who come into the new covenant are those born again.

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And so there is no such thing as covenant children. God, as it were, has no grandchildren, only children.

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Read John 1, 12, and 13, for example. And so there is, first of all, this idea that our children are absolutely not in covenant.

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You are either in Christ or out. You are either regenerate or unregenerate. You are either lost or saved.

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There's no halfway point. There's no neutrality. There's no almost end.

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Now, then, why do we end up treating our children differently?

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For example, in our home, we let our children pray. We command our children to sing.

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We bring them to church. We read the scriptures together. What's going on here? It kind of seems like there's something a little bit different with our children.

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I'm asking you, Eddie. Yeah, yeah. You know, I think that one thing we want to point out is

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Christian parents are commanded in the scripture to bring up their children in the nurture and admonition of the

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Lord. And so we do teach our children. We teach them to trust the

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Lord. We teach them the truths of the gospel. We teach them the right practices.

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But they must believe the gospel for themselves, for them to be converted. And that's the distinction we must remember.

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We are teaching them, you can trust the Lord. In this home, we trust the

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Lord. But at the same time, we are acknowledging they must themselves trust and rely on the

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Lord Jesus. So I started out with the text, but I didn't go, you know, I didn't really deal with it. So I go back to it.

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Acts 239, for the promises for you and your children. I hear that quoted all the time, then everything else is stopped.

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But hold on just a second. The promises for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the

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Lord our God calls to himself. And then in verse 41, so those who received his word were baptized.

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So when he says to the preaching, he's preaching and the whole crowd's listening, he says this promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the

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Lord our God calls to himself. Actually, in Joel, it's translated, everyone who calls upon the name of the

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Lord. But both of those are true, right? Yes. Those who God calls to himself, those who call upon the name of the

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Lord. The point is the whole crowd's out and he's preaching. This promise is for you and your children and everyone who the

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Lord calls to himself. Okay, but how do we know that? When does that promise, how do we know that? If you call upon, if you go to Christ, if you receive his word, right?

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It's not just a blanket like everyone listening to this, you're now in the new covenant. Well, of course not, right?

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That's not, and so that's why we treat our children. They're not in the covenant.

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They need to receive Christ. Their sins are not, to be in the, okay, what does it mean to be in the covenant of grace?

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It means to be a Christian. It means to be born again. It means that your sins are forgiven.

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It means that you know the Lord. This is all, I'm just, I'm just, you know, paraphrasing there from Jeremiah 31.

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That's what it means to be in the new covenant. So if you say your child is a covenant child, you're saying their sins are forgiven.

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They're regenerate. They know the Lord. The law of God's written in their heart. Go ahead. I saw you had it.

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Well, you know what you're saying here from Acts chapter two, we have to remember, and I think this happens so often, we forget the historical context.

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Who was Peter talking to? He was talking to Jews in Jerusalem, and he was saying the promises to you and your children and to those who are far off.

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Who are the ones who are far off? They're the Gentiles. The distinction that he's making is that the promise is both, and we see this throughout the rest of the

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New Testament, right? We're working. We've got a home meeting on Sunday evenings, and we're working through Colossians.

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And so we're in Colossians, the end of chapter one and first part of chapter two right now.

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And Paul there is pointing out the mystery. What's the mystery? The mystery is that Gentiles are saved along with Jews.

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That's the mystery, that we're one people of God. And so what is it that Peter's saying to them?

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He's not saying that the promises to an individual family's children.

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He's saying the promises to you, Old Covenant, you and your children, and to those who were far off under the

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Old Covenant, the Gentiles, all in the New Covenant can be brought in through Jesus Christ.

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All who receive Christ. All who receive Christ. That's the point that he's making.

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The promise is not the promises to you, the Nelsons, and to your children, or you, the

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Ragsdales, and to your children. It's denoting the distinction between the Jew and Gentile, and that both are being brought in, as Paul says to the

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Ephesians. The dividing wall of hostilities being broken down. They're both being brought in as one new man in Jesus Christ.

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We have this weird kind of discussions going on today. We talked about this,

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I think we talked about this a few weeks ago in Cultural Christianity, but we talk about Elon Musk is, man, he's almost a

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Christian or whatever. And you're like, no. Right? And so you take it to your home.

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Are your children more savable because they're in a Christian home? Well, if by that do you mean there's more opportunity in the sense that they're hearing the gospel?

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Well, I mean, I'm not going to argue that. I'm not going to argue against that. But if you mean like they need less grace or something, well, that's foolish.

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They're not more savable. What they need, if God leaves them to their own impenitent heart, they will reject him and rightfully,

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I will add, receive his justice. So let's talk through this a little bit. So at the end,

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I definitely want to get to, so what do we do with our children? But one of the things I think is there is this mindset that if I raise my children up in the nurture and admonition of the

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Lord, I pretty much have a promise from God they'll be a Christian. Well, I'm arguing that's not true.

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That's not true. Because number one, you're going to fail. Right? That's why we need the gospel. Like you're not going to perfectly succeed in raising your children up in the nurture and admonition of the

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Lord. There are going to be areas where you fail. You're going to fail every day.

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You need God's grace every day. But let's suppose you do a pretty good job and then your children don't get saved.

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That's under the sovereignty of God. Well, it goes back to our discussion last week, because when we're talking about our own salvation, if the distinction between you and I, we talked about this last week, between you and I, one of us being saved, one of us being lost, we both heard the gospel same time, same proclamation, same everything.

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If the only difference is you made the right choice and chose Christ and I made the wrong choice and didn't choose

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Christ, you would be able to say to God when you stood before him, well,

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I'm here because Jesus and I made the right choice. But isn't this just extending that now to the parents and say, well, you're here because of Jesus and your parents were faithful.

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You're saved because Jesus and your parents. That's basically the same argument.

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I'm also going to even say this, we want to be careful here, because we absolutely love and adore and believe

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Christian homes are biblical. Yes, yes. But what God is doing today in the world is he's building his church, and the church is not composed only of Christian homes.

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So maybe you have this idea of Christian homes make up the church. Well, that's just not true.

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In the New Testament, there were unbelieving husbands, so the wives were exhorted, here's how you handle your unbelieving husband.

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There were unbelieving wives. Was it 1 Corinthians 7? Paul talks about that.

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There are unbelievers in families. So what makes up the church is believers. The local church is

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God's family, but it's not necessarily God's family of families. It's some families, but also some individuals.

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And we do want to acknowledge the distinction between what's normative. Yeah, good. We would both say, we believe it's going to be normative to have

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Christian families. Most of the people in a healthy church are probably in a

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Christian family. That's going to be normative, but it doesn't mean that's the only people in your church.

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So I look around my church and I say, man, God has blessed us. We've got all of these Christian households,

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Christian families, but still we've got women who have an unbelieving husband, or we have children who their parents aren't believers.

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We have that too. Now, it's not the majority because we do have

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Christian households, Christian families in that sense. But just because I want us to just keep both things in mind.

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Yes, you're normatively going to expect to see Christian families producing believing children.

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We ought to expect that. We should expect that. But not because God has made us a promise that if you're faithful in bringing up your children, there's no way they'll be, because that's not what...

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Well, I think that's good. I think as Martin Luther said, that we're like a drunk that will climb up on the horse on one side and fall off on the other.

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That's right. And so that's a good word that you gave there, because we're not trying to de -emphasize the

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Christian home either. Right. But like in our church, and we're a small church, but I think we have one young man who we presented not long ago.

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He's 16. He's about to be 17. He comes by himself, and we're going to be baptizing him soon.

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We have another person in our church, a lady who is unmarried.

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She comes by herself, and her grandchildren, maybe they'll start coming with her, but they don't.

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You know what I'm saying? So it's like, yes, on one hand, many Christian households in our church.

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On the other hand, not all of them. The point I'm just trying to make is that there's not a guarantee or 100 % promise when the gospel comes in the home that every single person in the home for sure will become a

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Christian. And the point I'm coming back to is when you raise your children up and you do everything right, what do you do if your children go astray?

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Well, there is – let me say this – there is a measure of reflection on your own part.

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Were you a hypocrite in the home? Did you act one way at church, one way at home? Well, you may – if that is true, there's not no eumania about it.

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But if there was hypocrisy, repent. Repent to your children. Hey, there was hypocrisy, okay?

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And if there are situations like that, then you need to own those. You need to repent of those. At the same time,

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I also know of parents that just lived their life just kicking themselves. It's like, look, you weren't a perfect parent.

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There's no such thing as perfect parents. But you were faithful in raising your children in the nurture and admonition of the

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Lord. And when they got to a certain age, they rejected Christ and went their own way. So you can't beat yourself up about it.

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However, however, I want to argue, the responsibility is not off your shoulders.

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You should continue, as the Lord gives you providential opportunity to both pray for them and to share the gospel.

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So what I see a lot of parents doing now and grandparents – and I think this was – I think this might have been what happened with Alistair Begg.

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And it's like, okay, well, now my kids are going to be part of a gay wedding, but I got to keep in their life, so I got to go.

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And I'm saying, no, you shouldn't go. And you should make a stand for truth.

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Yeah, but they may write me off, and here's the hard truth. That's true. They may write you off.

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But do you care for their soul? Then you have to stand for truth. So as a parent, you still have the responsibility to share the gospel with them, to stand for truth, to pray for them.

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I'm not saying every time you have to be confrontational. That would be foolish. You need wisdom. And I'm not saying that you can't ever have a time that maybe think – you know what

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I'm saying. You don't have to – I'm not saying get in their face all the time or whatever. You need to listen and hear and maybe talk through with them and all that.

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But I'm just trying to argue there's still responsibility on your shoulders. God is still giving that child to you, even if they're 40, whereby you should be praying for them and look for opportunity to actually share the gospel.

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We should have mentioned this in the last episode, but there's a lot of professing Christians that are not sharing the gospel.

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When I say that, let's just be clear here. When I say gospel, Eddie, what am I saying? We're talking about the message of the good news of this

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Christ saving sinners. What he's done. His righteous life. He is God in the flesh.

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His vicarious death. His dying as a wrath satisfying sacrifice. And his raising again from the dead so that those who repent of their sins and believe the gospel are credited with his righteousness, declared righteous based on him, forgiven of all sins and brought into union with Christ and relationship with God.

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Anyway, just to be clear. But you were about to say something. Well, on this issue of thinking about our children, even as pastors, and so I know there are probably some pastors listening to this, even when we look at the qualifications for pastors, we have to acknowledge that there is a distinction between your children when they're in your home and your children when they are adults and they're on their own.

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Because listen, our households, we've got to be able to manage our households.

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If a man cannot manage his own household, how is he going to manage the church of God?

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And so we acknowledge there in first Timothy, Paul says that. And so, you know,

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I look at my household. I have an 18 year old, you know, according to our society, he's an adult.

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I've been joking with my younger son that he's an only child now, the only child in our home.

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But as long as he's in my home, he's 18 years old, but he's still in my home.

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He's still got a year of school left, high school left. I'm still responsible, you know,

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I'm still responsible. But now two or three years from now, when he's out on his own, I will still be responsible as his father to love him and to steer, you know, give him counsel, wise counsel, all those things.

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But the reality is right now, I would say if my household was in disarray morally,

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I would not be qualified to be a pastor. Why? Because I have to be able to manage my own house.

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And I think that on this discussion of our children, we've got to acknowledge that there is an expectation upon Christian parents to manage a faithful household.

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You know, so there in Titus, Paul gives a list of qualifications for elders. And there's, you know,

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I know there's a lot of debate about, you know, what does it mean that their children are believers or that they are faithful?

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But at least it means that your household is one where the faith is being proclaimed to the children.

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At least has it in the end. And what is it that we think qualifications for elders are?

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But the expectation of all mature. Yeah, yeah, that's right. So let's just talk the last few minutes here.

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I'm fixing to get ready for my Mexico Zoom call. But let's just talk about our responsibilities in the home.

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And and like, let's say this, too. Like, I have six children. Do I do

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I have a reasonable hope that my six children will be converted? Yes, because I know the

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God of Scripture. I know he's gracious. I know he's good. So I have a I have a reasonable hope.

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Maybe even you might even say an expectation that my children will be converted. What is my responsibility to them?

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My responsibility is to pray for them. Yes, responsibility. We plead for our children. My responsibility is to put them in front of the means of grace.

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So my responsibility. I doubt anyone's listening. This has this problem. But if you happen to be listening this and you don't go to church, go to church.

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Right. Take your children to church. It's not something. Let Sunday be what your whole week revolves around.

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And you don't squeeze in church. You take your children. And by the way, to a healthy church.

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I even argue, don't don't let discipleship be handed off to some other group or whatever.

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Bring them in the main gathering and in the Sunday morning gathering. May they sit under the preaching and all that.

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Be a regular habitual times of family worship. It doesn't have to be extremely difficult or hard.

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Open the Bible, read a verse, read a few verses, read a chapter and discuss it.

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Yes. So much you can add there. But I'm just saying that's the basic. Sure. Sure. Make sure they understand the gospel, their need for the gospel.

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Don't lead them in some sort of sinner's prayer. Teach them what the scripture says. We have a little girl in our church right now.

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I won't say her name, but, you know, our music guy. And, you know, a wonderful brother and is one of his oldest daughter that a few nights going family worship was like, what does it mean to believe?

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You know, and I've had those same conversations. And you're going to have those same conversations because we wrestle these things out.

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We wrestle. We wrestle with helping them understand and all that. We pray for them and we share the gospel. And then we we literally entrust them to the

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Lord. Salvation is of the Lord. I'm going to put the salvation of my children in the hands of a good and gracious God.

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What else can I do? And I would just say this to any parent. We've all watched our children make foolish mistakes.

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Would you really rather entrust your child's eternity to them or to God?

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Who do you want to trust? Them or God? I trust the Lord more than I trust my sons.

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Yeah. And I trust the Lord with my son more than I trust my son. And I would just say this, maybe a bit of hope.

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If your children, if you have grown unconverted children, as long as a sinner has breath in their lungs.

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That's right. I hold out hope for their salvation. But you must not be presumptuous, meaning you don't just say, well, maybe they'll come around.

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No, you continue to pray for them. You look for opportunities. I've even written emails before knowing where a person was.

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And I've looked up like I've gone to Founders or whatever. I've tried to find a healthy church close to the area.

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And I've said, hey, this person is in this place. Would you go visit them?

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And there's even things like that, that you may try. I've written letters. This is to unbelieving family members, but I've written letters, sent books.

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One of the things we do as a church is around Christmastime, we do an evangelistic letter writing. Maybe we haven't settled on that.

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Anyway, the point is, don't just be presumptuous about it. If you have an unbelieving grown child, look for opportunities to continue to show your love for them and the love of Christ and the gospel and what they must do, which is still repent of their sins and put their faith in Christ.

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So salvation is of the Lord. This is true everywhere. It's also true in the home. And we're glad that it is true because we serve such a good, good

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God. That's right. Well, I hope this has been helpful. Any closing word of wisdom you have for us?

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Well, you know, I think not only do we need to make sure that we're presenting the gospel to our children and teaching them the scriptures, but the other thing is our kids got to know that we love them.

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Yeah. You know, Dad, I don't know what your thing is.

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I mean, if it's a certain sport or a hobby or certain kind of work, but get out there and do stuff with kids.

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Take them with you. Take them with you. Yeah. You love hunting. Nothing wrong with hunting. Take your kids with you.

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And take them with you serving the Lord. Let them see that. My oldest son, we were on a mission trip to Utah, and he was, like I said, he just turned 18, which he was still 17 when we were there.

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But basically he served as another leader on the trip. He was able to lead.

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You know, we would break off into little evangelistic teams to go around and share the gospel. And he was able to do one of those.

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And it's only because almost every time I've been to Utah, he's been to Utah.

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I've just taken him along. He's learned, oh, yeah, this is how we do this.

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We take the gospel to lost people. Involve them. Involve them in the ministry, especially your converted children.

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And I would just show your children, converted, unconverted, no matter the age, show them,

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Dad and Mom, that you need the gospel too. You're not a perfect parent. Repent.

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Sometimes you yell when you shouldn't have yelled. My wife and I both, we obviously, we can do better than this.

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But there are times we have to bring our kids in, like, hey, I didn't handle that right. Will you forgive me?

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Why? Because I need the gospel. I need Christ. I'm not saved by virtue of my parenting.

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I'm only saved by Christ. So teach them the gospel. Explain the gospel.

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Show them what it looks like to be a man or woman who lives in response to the gospel, in your need of it.

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Take them with you places. And when you do, look for opportunities to share the gospel or connect it.

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So let me just give an illustration. We got to wind up because I'm getting pressed for time here. But one thing we used to do in baseball games, before or after, sometimes both, we would pray to the

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Lord. We'd thank him for the sport of baseball. But we had also asked that he would not allow it to become an idol in our hearts.

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And so I'm just saying, like, the things you're doing, like hunting, we do it with hunting. We ask the

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Lord to bless our hunts and those sorts of things. And I'm just saying, like, live as though God is real. Even Sharnock said we live like practical atheists, like God's real on Sunday, but the rest of the time he's not.

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So anyway, as always, you got questions, you can holler at us. I think we just shared our emails in the last episode, but I'll go ahead and share it again.

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Quatro Nelson at Gmail, C -U -A -T -R -O -N -E -L -S -O -N at gmail .com.

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Feel free to reach out. Eddie, you want to share yours? Yeah, E -D -D -I -E -R -A -G -S -D -A -L -E -17 at gmail .com.

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So EddieRagsdale17L .com. I hope that these episodes have been beneficial.

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Jonah 2 -9, salvation is of the Lord. And this is good news.

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We'll see you guys next week. If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what

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God's doing. This is His work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the poemos, the masterpiece of God.