Word of Salvation – Vol. 36 No. 4 – January 1991

 

Indoctrination Of Children – A Moral Duty

 

Sermon by Rev. Michael Flinn on Genesis 18:16-21

 

A Case of Moral Indignation

If you want to make a non-Christian mad, one of the easiest ways to do it is to talk about the religious indoctrination of children.  Do that and you can virtually feel the temperature in the room rise.  Out will come the horror stories of the poor, beleaguered urchins who have suffered at the hands of religious fanatics and who have had religion rammed down their throats from such an early age that their perspective on life has become entirely warped and unbalanced.  Out will come the display of moral indignation at the thought that a child’s individual human rights are blatantly ignored by these people who call themselves Christians.  After all, does not a child have the right to decide for himself what is right and wrong and which religion he will follow if he decides to follow one at all?  There are people who feel so strongly about this very matter that they campaign for the removal of all children from Christian schools and home schools in favour of placing them in so-called neutral state educational institutions where they will not be brainwashed with Christian dogma.  If some had their way, they would remove all children from Christian parents for the same reason.

This evening I want to take a position which is diametrically opposed to the one that I have just expressed.  I want to point out from the Scriptures that it is not only the right of Christian parents to indoctrinate their children in the faith, it is the moral duty to do so and that if they do not do this, they will be held morally accountable by God for this neglect.  One of the passages in Scripture which teaches this is the passage that we have before us in the book of Genesis but before we get into its detail, let us briefly review its context.

Background

Remember that God has chosen Abraham for a special purpose.  He has been summoned by God In order that he might become a great nation, the most important and significant nation amongst all the nations of the world.  He is to be the father of the faithful, the people with whom God will enter into covenant relationship.  And through Abraham and his people all the nations of the earth would come to receive blessings.

Now clearly, in order for these promises to be fulfilled in history, it was vital that Abraham receive a son.  And so the Lord assures Abraham that he is going to give him a son through Sarah, his wife.  The latest revelation to this effect has been given by three men, one of whom is the Lord Jesus Christ.  Abraham has entertained these three guests and the Lord has just informed him that at this time next year, Sarah would give birth to Isaac.

Coming then to verse 16 we read that the men rose up from there and looked down towards Sodom to which place they are about to go and Abraham, according to the social etiquette of his day, is walking with them with a view to seeing them off.  But the Lord says in verses 17 and 18:

‘Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, since Abraham will surely become a great and mighty nation, and in him all the nations of the earth will be blessed?’

What is it that the Lord is about to do?  He is about to go down to the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and judge them because of their wickedness.  And in an amazing display of grace, the Lord decides to reveal to Abraham what he is about to do.  God has entered into covenant with Abraham.  He has chosen him for the great purpose of being the father of a multitude of nations, prominent in all the earth, and for God, this means that Abraham is entitled to information concerning what He is about to do with these peoples of the plain.

A Vested Interest

But there is more to the Lord’s decision.  Abraham has a vested interest in Sodom.  Remember that Lot, his nephew, whom he has already saved from disaster on an earlier occasion, is now living in the city.  Abraham is to be given an opportunity to intercede for Sodom and for Lot in particular and as he fulfils that very role, he will be expressing his God-given task of fatherhood over a multitude of peoples.  And he will foreshadow the work of Christ himself as the Lord who stands between us and God and intercedes on our behalf.

But the great calling of God’s servant Abraham is not the only reason why God chooses to inform him of what he is about to do and here we come to the aspect of the text that I want to highlight in particular this evening.  God says in verse 19:

‘For I have chosen him, in order that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice; in order that the Lord may bring upon Abraham what He has spoken about him.’

God says: ‘I have chosen him’ – literally, ‘I have known him’.  The word that is used is the same word that is used when in the Hebrew language a man is said to ‘know’ his wife – that is: to enter into the covenantal bond of the marriage, expressed in the intimacy of their relationship.  It is the same word that is used in Jeremiah 1:5 in which the prophet is said to be ‘known’ by God before he was even formed in the womb.  And in the same breath he is said to have been consecrated by God, set apart for a special purpose and function.

So with this particular word, in its context, God is communicating that he has chosen Abraham and entering into covenant with him.  He has consecrated him and set him apart for his own purposes.  Now what is that purpose?  Well, it is expressed here in this verse in this way: Abraham has been given the commission and responsibility to command his children and his household to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice.  This is his purpose, this is his calling.  For this he has been consecrated.  Abraham is to educate his children and his household (that includes his servants and their families) in the ways of God.  And notice that God’s commission for his servant involves no ‘take it or leave it’ type of instruction.  Abraham is to command his children.  Commands necessarily involve sanctions.  That is, God expects Abraham, as the head of this covenant household, to enforce this process of instruction.  If some of his children or members of his household rebel against the ways of God, Abraham is expected to take action.  He is to indoctrinate his children with the truth.  The ways of God are to be inculcated into the minds and hearts of his children and the members of his household from the earliest age.  Here then, we have our important principle which I would like us to consider in more detail this evening: the moral necessity, before the Lord, of the indoctrination of our children in the faith.

Why is this a moral duty?  Why is it so important an aspect of our relationship to God?  Well, let me give you three reasons.  The first is this: The nature of the covenant relationship and its blessings demand it.

Read again the final section of verse 19.  What is it that God has spoken about to Abraham?  What promises has he given to him?  You say: that’s easy.  It’s there in the text.  God has said that he will become a great and mighty nation and that in him all the families of the earth will be blessed.  But hold on a moment.  How long is Abraham going to live?  He is already a hundred years old!  Just how many years has he got left to receive the fulfilment of this promise?

Generational Fulfilment

Ah, but you do not understand, you say.  Abraham is not going to be the fulfilment of these promises directly.  He will become the fulfilment of these promises throughout history as the promise is established and fulfilled progressively through the generations of people that spring from him.  That’s why God promises in Genesis 17 that the covenant is not only with Abraham but with his children.  God promises to be the God not only of the man an individual but also of his household.  That’s why all Abraham’s sons are to be circumcised.

Precisely!  And it follows as night follows day, that Abraham has the responsibility to teach and instruct his children regarding the demands and the requirements of the covenant relationship.  If he does not do this he himself violates the terms of his covenant bond with the Lord and thereby prevents the generational fulfilment of the covenant promises.

We can go further.  Under the terms of the covenant bond, not only does Abraham have the right to instruct his children in the truth and in the ways of God, he must command his children to adhere to the covenant itself and take whatever action is necessary when they become reprobate.  Remember, God has already pointed out to Abraham in Genesis 17 that the one who refuses to receive the sign of circumcision is a covenant breaker and is therefore to be cut off from among the people of Israel.  Well, who is to do the cutting off?  Who is to administer the discipline if not Abraham himself?

You say, is this not a little rough on the children?  All this instruction and teaching and commanding and disciplining and so on?  Not at all!  Our children have the glorious privilege of having been born into covenant relationship with God by virtue of their federal relationship with us as parents.  And what that means is that our children have the God-given right to expect from us as parents instruction and nurture in that covenant bond.  They have a right to the discipline that their relationship with God entails and if they do not receive that from us as parents they have every right to groan and wail before God’s throne and complain about the parental neglect that they have been forced to endure.  If we do not give our children what is their God-given right, we will have to answer to God for it.  The very nature and terms of the covenant relationship itself demand the indoctrination of our children in the ways of God.

There is another reason why this is a moral duty; and it can be expressed as the ungodly influence of the world on our children.  What is God about to do as he goes down to the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah?  He is about to pour down fire and brimstone in an act of judgement because of the wickedness of those cities.  He is about to destroy the inhabitants entirely.

Now this is by no means a capricious act on God’s part.  God says in verse 20 that the outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is indeed great, and their sin is exceedingly grave.  The language here recalls that of Genesis 4 where it is said that the voice of the murdered Abel’s blood cries out to God from the ground for vengeance.  Sin produces an outcry.  In the ears of a God who is absolutely holy, and the judge of the heavens and the earth, it demands justice and retribution.  As we are about to see, the sins of the Sodomites had reached such gross proportions that the patience and mercy of God reached an end in the same way that it did at the time of the Flood.  But even here, God is not hasty or rash in his judgment.  He reveals that he is about to go down to the city to see whether the inhabitants have indeed done according to the outcry that he has received.  Of course, the all-seeing God does not need to do this in order to ascertain their guilt.  But for our sakes he reveals in this way the care taken and the measured, careful nature of his judgments.

What is the point of these events in terms of our theme?  The point is that cities like Sodom and Gomorrah exist in this world.  There are those in this world whose behaviour, unbeknown to them, produces an outcry that goes out to God for justice and for retribution.  And the sinful behaviour of people in the world has a way of affecting adversely the people of God.  If you don’t believe me, consider Lot and his family and what happened to him as a result of his raising his family in the midst of a den of iniquity.

Sodom an Example

One of the reasons why God reveals to Abraham what he is about to do to these cities is that God wants him to teach and warn his own children about the sins of the wicked and how they warrant the retribution of God.  He wants Abraham to instruct his children about the holiness and the majesty of God and about how he will view them if they follow the ways of the world.

Sodom and Gomorrah have become by-words for good reason.  We must instruct our children concerning the ways of the world and teach them what will happen should they walk in them and turn away from the Lord.  If we do not do this, we leave a vacuum which Satan will jump at the chance to fill.  We need to understand that indoctrination is an escapable fact of human life.  It is not a question of whether or not our children will be indoctrinated.  It is always a question of what doctrine they receive.

It’s high time that Christians realized that by sending their children to state schools, they are not exposing them to neutral, non- religious education.  They are sending their children to be indoctrinated with the religious position that man is ultimate, that our children are laws unto themselves, that God has not created this world, and that they must stand on their own two feet in opposition to the religious view and perspectives expressed by their parents.

It’s high time that we Christians took a serious look at what our children and young people are reading and the music they are listening to.  I choose rock music as an example.  Now I am not down on all forms of rock music and I am not about to say that rock music per se is intrinsically evil.  But there are rock groups and artists whose explicit, self-confessed intention is to promote through their music, rebellion against authority, the use of drugs, the practice of illicit and even deviant sex, the language and ritual of the occult – and their target is the teenagers of the world.  Leave a vacuum and Satan will fill it.

The world is not a neutral place.  It is filled with people whose actions produce an outcry that goes out to God for retribution.  And if we do not warn and teach our children about the wickedness of the world and the holiness and majesty of God, if we are not constantly vigilant to guard our children from these things, we have only ourselves to blame when Satan fills their minds and their hearts with wickedness.  And if we then run to the Lord and cry to Him: ‘What about the covenant and its promises?  Did you not give to me an assurance that you would be a God to my children and that they would be your servants?’, we can expect God to say: ‘Yes, what about my covenant?  What about the specific covenantal responsibilities which you as parents have failed to uphold?’  We will have no recourse before God if we fail to fulfil the duty of teaching and raising our children in the ways of the Lord.

There is one final motivation to this duty that I would mention and this is the blessings attendant upon its performance.  The Scripture says in Proverbs 29 that the child who gets his own way brings shame to his mother.  Indulgent parents can expect to be ashamed of their children.  But the opposite is also true.  In Proverbs 22 we read: ‘Train up a child in the way he should go.  Even when he is old he will not depart from it.’  We read also that foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child but that the rod of discipline will remove it far from him.  Children whose parents take seriously the responsibility of raising their children faithfully according to the terms and requirements of the covenant will be a great blessing to those same parents.

I know that there are also cases in which parents do everything they can to be faithful in raising their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord but, despite their diligent and prolonged efforts, there are some members of the family who turn from the faith and who go the way of the world.  So we are dealing with general rules here but we may be assured, we are dealing with a general rule.  And if you think about this it stands to reason.  God surely wants to fulfil his covenantal promises to us and to our children.  And when parents honour the terms and responsibilities of the covenant, he will fulfil that covenant with us and he will not do so grudgingly but with delight.  And even when some of our children do appear to go astray, we must never lose heart or hope.  The Scriptures say: Train up a child in the way he should go and in the end, in the end he will not depart from it.  There are Esaus in the Bible, that is true.  But there are also prodigal sons who leave for a time but in the end they return to the ways of the Lord and the upbringing that they have received.

Raising our children in a fallen world is not easy.  It is hard, hard work.  But it is worth the effort.  And the Lord stands with us to honour and rewards our efforts with the children he has entrusted into our care.  We have his strength and his grace to rely on.

What further motivation can we require for the performance of this duty?  The terms of our covenant relationship with God demand it; if we are lax in this area, Satan will fill the gap.  There are great blessings attendant upon the faithful performance of this duty.  Please do not leave it to the church to raise your children for you.  Do not look solely to the church to instruct and teach your children in the ways of God.  The church will do what it can, but the primary responsibility and accountability lies with you as parents.  Children, do not rebel against the instruction and discipline that you receive from your parents.  It is your right and privilege.  Do you want to have foolishness driven from your souls and do you want to be a blessing to your parents and to your children after you, taking your stand before God and walking in his ways?

Then listen to what your parents teach you and accept the discipline and the training that you receive from them.  May God in his grace grant us the ability and the willingness to be faithful unto God – both as parents and as children.

AMEN