Bible Study on Matt.19:28-30

Families, Church & Discipleship (vi) Matt.19:28-30

If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.  But if the unbeliever leaves, let it be so. The brother or the sister is not bound in such circumstances; God has called us to live in peace....                     

 (I Cor.7:12-15)

Still another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family.”  Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”.

(Lk.9:61-62)

One of the most disturbing things about Jesus (and yet amongst the most natural and appropriate) is His relentless claim to absolute priority amongst all our priorities.  It locks us into one of the deep paradoxes of the Christian faith.  When we refuse Christ’s claim and allow other relationships, people, ambitions, or concerns to usurp His position, we find those things we have prized so highly lose their ability to satisfy.  It turns out they have the capacity to fulfil only insofar as they find their place under Christ in our affections.

That is as true of family as it is of everything else.  When we idolise family, believing we can never be fulfilled without one, then even if we find we are part of one it will be unable to bear the weight of expectation we have placed upon it.  Children can so easily become the principal focus of a parent’s life.  And parents can easily expect to be the centre of their children’s universe.  As with so many things in the Christian life, balance and context needs to be in place.  Families are God’s idea.  Parents can have a breath-takingly sacrificial love for their children.  Children should love and honour their parents.  But all this undeniable ‘good’ is relativized by Christ’s prior claim on all involved.   Parents are themselves first and foremost children of God; and every Christian parent longs for their children to find their identity and purpose in their common Lord. 

Such ‘loss’ can feel an impossible wrench.  And yet, if we dare believe Him, giving Christ His proper place will allow everything else to find their proper place.  It is in losing, that we find.  It is in giving, that we receive.  It is in dying, that we live.  Such is the way of the Kingdom.  And herein lies the path of liberty.  James reminds us that captivity to the ways of God is path of freedom (1:25).  We may find that when we submit to His decrees, what we had once rejected as unrealistic foolishness turns out to be the very wisdom we had craved.  Many saints have learned these lessons the hard way.  We clutch that which is so precious to us so tightly, it cannot thrive.  We let go only when we could hold on no longer.  But at the very moment we felt we would lose everything, that it must slip through our fingers, we had for the first time a firmer grip than we could ever have dreamed.  And we wonder why we didn’t understand, or trust, the wisdom of Christ sooner.

‘All that we have comes from you, and of your own do we give you’.  Like much of our liturgy, when we don’t understand what it is supposed to do, it can glide over our tongue while we barely notice it.  And yet the words carry eternal truth.  Family life, with all its joys and sorrows, struggles and rewards, comes from Him.  It is His and remains His even as He gives it to us.  That is what Christ is calling on us to recognise.  Our responsibility as parents is to structure His family according to His wisdom.   Our responsibility as a Church is to ensure that we know His wisdom, and that we support each other in leaning into it.  Our temptation is to dislodge this Divine economy, to disregard this Divine Wisdom.

For some Christians however, faithfulness to Christ will mean actual loss.  The ‘internal’ re-ordering of priorities will have ‘external’ consequences.  Family will reject and be rejected.  And Jesus’ extraordinary claim is that even such ‘loss’ is gain.  There is not a fundamentally different dynamic at work.  The same principles apply.  His claim is that in both this age and the age to come there will be a more than adequate recompense.  Blessed is the Church that can be the fulfilment of Jesus’ promise.  Where those who endure such loss will receive a hundred times as much in this present age (Mk.10:30).  Where those who lose everything for His sake, find more than they sacrificed.  And woe to the Church that will not...

Questions

What have you found most helpful and affirming about this series? ...and what has been most challenging?  ... or what have you disagreed with?

What changes – if any - do you think we need to implement to help MIE grow into the structures of family and Church family life that we see in the Bible?

Read Matt.19:28-30

Can you trace the logic that leads from Jesus’ parables in vv.16-26, to what he says in these verses?   Why do you think that what Jesus says in 19:21 doesn’t constitute a general principle for Christian discipleship?  ...or does it?

Why is it that so few rich people will be saved (v.23-24)?  Do you think this is what Jesus is teaching?  How do you guard yourself against the dangers of riches?

Why do the disciples react as they do in v.25, and v.27?

Given the high priority for family in Scripture, under what circumstances would it be a legitimate option for a Christian to leave (v.29)? 

What is Jesus seeking to convey about His own future, the future of the Creation, and the future of the Church in v.28? 

How does our hope for our future with Christ in a renewed creation feed into the decisions we make about our discipleship here and now?  How does it help when we are called on to make sacrifices for His sake?

How can we make sure that children and y.p. at MIE have that hope securely in place, and that they understand how their future hope enables their present discipleship? 

How as parents, and as a Church, can we raise children and young people who will so recognise the worth of Christ that they will sacrifice all else for Him?  Is that what we want for the children and y.p. growing up through MIE?

Memory Passage:

“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.  For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law - a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’  Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me”.

Matt.10:35-37

Going Deeper:

During a recent evening service, we were reflecting on King David’s greatest desire for Solomon.  Lying on his death-bed, the old king calls his son and charges him: “I am about to go the way of all the earth,” he said. “So be strong, act like a man, and observe what the Lord your God requires: Walk in obedience to him, and keep his decrees and commands, his laws and regulations, as written in the Law of Moses...”.  One of our observations that evening was the tragedy of this moment.  David has done desperately little to train Solomon – or any of his children - to walk in the ways of the Lord (see e.g. I Kings 1:6).  Without a backdrop of discipline and instruction, David’s dying wish has a certain pathos.  As he prepares to ‘go the way of all the earth’, David sees with incredible clarity what is of genuine importance, and longs for Solomon to ‘walk in obedience’ to the Lord.  We know the in spite of Solomon’s love for God (I Kings 3:3), his involvement in worship, and even his evangelism, in the final analysis, he couldn’t ever walk in obedience’.   In the end his compromise leads to his heart turning away from the Lord, and his spiritual heritage is squandered (I Kings 11:4-6).

What we see played out here in one family, can resonate with an entire culture.  When a society no longer thinks it important to retain a knowledge of God, He hands them over to ‘a depraved mind so that they do what ought not to be done’ (Rom.1:28).  Perhaps an unexpected symptom is ‘they disobey their parents’ (Rom.1:30).  But then again, perhaps it isn’t so surprising after all.  Children who do not learn obedience will struggle to know how to ‘keep His decrees and commands, his laws and regulations’, or even to understand why they should do so.  That is bad news for the Church... and for the society built on it.

Bible Study on II Tim.1:1-5 & 3:10-17

Families, Church & Discipleship (v) II Tim.1:1-5 & 3:10-17

Now about your love for one another we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other.  And in fact, you do love all of God’s family throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more...                     

 (I Thess.4:9-10)

Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.

(Heb.2:11)

Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings.  And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.

(I Peter 5:8-10)

One of the things I’ve really enjoyed about this series is the realisation of how deeply committed Christ Himself is to embedding these structures in the life of the Church and the family.  At no point is there a guarantee.  At the end of the day, children grow up into adults and make their own decisions.  One of the horrors in reading the Gospels is how many people choose to walk away from Jesus, even as they grasp the truth of who He is. It’s not everyone, but a lot of people do (see the end of John 6 for a particularly dramatic example).  A parent can faithfully fulfil all that Scripture teaches (OK, theoretically), but at the end of the day, a child will make their own decisions as they reach maturity.

That said, Jesus remains committed, and has structured Church life to resonate with the goals of family life.  And more than that, to compensate to some level for the places in which family life may fall short of a (perceived?) ideal.  Take Timothy.  Paul is bequeathing his ministry to Timothy, and there is clearly a deep relationship that is rooted in their shared faith in Christ.  There is a genuine poignancy in Paul’s address to Timothy as ‘my dear son’.  It’s easy to miss the significance of this.  We can easily forget that phrase by the time we get to 1:5. Paul reflects on Timothy’s spiritual heritage, which is traced through the maternal line!  We know from elsewhere that Timothy’s father wasn’t a believer (Acts 16:1).  It isn’t difficult to imagine the tensions his mother (and grand-mother) navigated seeking to bring her son up as a Christian in a family with ‘split loyalties’.  At times she must have felt in an uphill battle... 

Eunice had two (three is we assume prayer!) critical weapons.  The first was her diligence in teaching her son the Scriptures (3:15) with the full spectrum of what the Spirit designed those writings to achieve: teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.  Thus Timothy was made ‘wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ’.  She must have been a woman who herself had a deep grasp on the Word of God, for Timothy was already a mature believer, well-spoken of by other believers when Paul met him (Acts 16:2); and his schooling in the Scriptures prepared him for a lifetime of ministry and teaching, in what was a pretty demanding context.  But the second is a porous boundary between her own family, and her Church family.  It was this that allowed such influential relationships to develop with spiritual ‘fathers’.  Paul isn’t being at all patronising here.   Elsewhere he speaks of Timothy as ‘brother and co-worker’ (I Thess.3:2); a ‘servant of Jesus Christ’ (Phil.1:1); and as a ‘man of God’ (I Tim.6:11).  But here, and elsewhere (e.g. Phil.2:22), Paul styles the relationship in father/son terms... not because Paul had lead Timothy to Christ, but because Paul had ‘adopted’ Timothy.  The spiritual lack in Timothy’s own family is mitigated by the wider Church family.

Many of us have to negotiate the painful realisation that our own family experience is in some way dissonant with the vision for family life that is portrayed in Scripture.  Families can be complex, blended, bereaved, fractured, spiritually divided.  When we see the Bible’s vision for family life we can be tempted to feel angry, resentful, frustrated or even hopeless.  We end up focussing on all the things we can’t do.  But that is to lose sight of the redemptive heart of our God, and it is to forget the resources God has put within reach to support us in what we can do.  If Eunice had simply capitulated to the idea that because her husband wasn’t a Christian, there was nothing she could do for Timothy, the Church would have lost one of her most incredible pastors.

Questions

Read I Tim.3:2-4 & Titus 1:6-7

Why is the qualification for Church leadership linked to a proven ability to lead a family?  What qualities would this lead you to expect in a pastor (see also: I Thess.1:11-12; 2:7-8 etc.)?  Is this how you see Church leaders and pastors?

What does Paul mean when he says the Church is ‘God’s household’?  How should that affect our engagement with the Church we are part of?

Have you ever left a Church (or remained in one) because of the behaviour of a pastor’s children?  Can you explain why / why not?  Do you think if someone isn’t able to fulfil these criteria they should step down from Church leadership?

Read II Tim.1:1-5 & 3:10-17

What does Paul mean when he talks about Timothy’s faith as ‘sincere’ and as living in Timothy?   How would you recognise such a faith in someone?  What would characterise it?

Do you think persecution is an inevitable result of living faithfully as a disciple of Christ?  Can you envisage a situation where Christians would be persecuted in the UK?  How – as parents and as a Church – can we prepare the children and y.p. for such an experience of Christian living?

How has Timothy’s heritage of having ‘known the Holy Scriptures from infancy’ equipped him for his own discipleship, his involvement in mission, and his experience of persecution?  How can MIE ensure that children and y.p. gain such knowledge and continue in what they have learned?

How does knowing the Scriptures so deeply equip us for every good work?  Can we be so equipped without this knowledge?  What about Christians who don’t know the Scriptures well, but who do a lot of good?

How is Paul’s own experience (see II Tim.3:10-13) a vindication of what he says about the Bible in II Tim.3:16?

Memory Passage

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

II Tim.3:14-17

Going Deeper:

Rhetoric can easily outstrip reality of experience when it comes to Church life.  Perhaps that is nowhere more self-evident than when we speak of the Church as ‘family’.  Think of the way that families celebrate Christmas.  It is one of the most profound Christian festivals of the Church year, and yet for many Christians it is also the most lonely.  And this while other Christians prioritise celebrating Christmas ‘as a family’.  Making the boundaries of family life ‘porous’, especially at such key moments, might be one of the most difficult things we have to learn as Christians.  The old saying that ‘blood is thicker than water’ isn’t true if the water involved in the water of baptism.  I love the way the relationship of the early Church is described: Peter and John went back to their own people (Acts.4:23).  That is quite powerful.

It is too easy to think only of the sacrifice such a change in mentality might incur.  Of course, to be part of a Church that operates as a family will be costly, but don’t lose sight of the blessings and benefits of putting our families so consciously in the context of Church family (and putting Church family in the context of our own families).  When families are siloed, everyone suffers.  Such sharing of life brings structures of support and encouragement, challenges sinful patterns of life in all concerned, fosters unity and fellowship, heals fractured backgrounds, gives a place to the lonely, the widowed, the deserted, the broken (Ps.68:6).  Sharing life (not hosting!) gives you a way to contribute, to serve, to support – from both sides of the equation.  God means for us to be adopted into this family, with all the vulnerability that entails.  Holding ourselves apart is to refuse His vision for community that reflects the life of the Trinity.

Bible Study on Prov.2:1-11

Families, Church & Discipleship (iv) Prov.2:1-11

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow his precepts have good understanding. To him belongs eternal praise.                     

 (Ps.11:10)

My goal is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

(Col.2:2-3)

Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom.  But if you harbour bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.  But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.

(Jas.3:13-17)

We’re beginning to get a sense of how significant God’s vision for parents teaching and training their children in the ways of God actually is.  We see the command to do so popping up all over the Bible, and in all kinds of genres of literature: Law, Psalms, Epistles...  and now, in the Wisdom literature.  In fact, the whole book of Proverbs, the book in the Bible designed to detail wisdom, and to cultivate Christ-like wisdom in His disciples, is set up as parents teaching their child. ‘Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction and do not forsake your mother’s teaching’ (Prov.1:11, see also 2:1, 3:1, 4:1, 5:1, etc.).  Not only are parents commanded to bring up their children in the training and instruction of the Lord, the Bible actually contains a case study, a sustained 31 Chapter manual on the specifics of how to do this.   Parents might struggle to think through how to teach their children to think like, to behave like Jesus – but the Spirit is so committed to helping them in their task, that He provides a step-by-step model of what to teach and how to teach it.  Of course, other Christians can benefit from this too – but it is presented as a model of parents (David & Bathsheba?) teaching their son (Solomon?) the art of beautiful and skilful living: wisdom.

But before we get into the ‘guts’ of the syllabus (Chs 10-29), this opening section deals with preliminary questions, which in some ways are harder to answer, or indeed for your child(ren) to answer.  And yet everything depends on us teaching them how to do so well.   They are questions like: Do you want to be wise?  Is the desire of your heart to be able to live like Jesus?  Are you willing to work hard for this?  The pursuit for wisdom is likened to mining for precious metals (2:4, see also Job 28).  Are you willing to search for it as for hidden treasure?  Are you willing to value wisdom above all else (see e.g. 3:15)?  Of course, the question for parents is how do I teach my child(ren) to value wisdom above all else...

But the list goes on: Are you willing to be humble, so that when wisdom says something you disagree with, or that your culture disagrees with, you will trust the Lord and submit to Him (Prov.3:5-6)?  Are you willing to be disciplined and trained, or are you going to resent rebuke, and despise discipline?  Don’t you understand, (3:11-12) that if the Lord is training you to be wise it’s because He loves you as His child?  This takes us back to our earlier weeks in this series, in which we were reflecting on the responsibility of parents (especially fathers) to teach their children how to obey the Lord, by teaching them how to obey them.  Loving fathers must insist on obedience without resentment.

Are you willing to repent and make changes when you get things wrong (1:23)?   Are you willing to live now in ways that will only come to fruition and be of benefit later in life?   …or maybe not even until the age to come?  How do we model this perspective as parents, and as a Church?  Some will realise only at the end of their lives the consequences of their decisions (Prov.5:11-12).

These are the kinds of questions our child(ren) will need to be answer before they can be taught the wisdom of the Book of Proverbs.  This section finishes in Chap.9 with a call for decision.  Wisdom and Folly are both there, calling out to your child(ren) to come to them.  This is critical to appreciate.  Parents may train, and teach, invest and support, but at the end of the day, the decision to embrace wisdom will be with the child.  We recognise that, but we do all we can to ensure they make that decision well, and can move into Chapters 10-29!

Questions

How can you cultivate a ‘fear of the Lord’?  How is that the beginning of wisdom (Ps.11:10), and knowledge (Prov.1:7, 2:4-5)?  what would you think of someone who didn’t have any fear of the Lord?

In Prov.1:10 warns us against the ‘wisdom’ of ‘sinful men’.  Why is foolish and sinful advice so appealing to us?   How would you respond to someone who didn’t want God’s wisdom?  Why might this be the case?

The foolish (i.e. sinful) men warned against in 1:10-19 seek to benefit from the ruin of others, indeed to ruin others for their own benefit.  But who gets hurt most?  Can you think of examples of this from your own experience?  Why then, do the wicked seem to prosper in this life?

Read Prov.2:1-11

Why does the LORD make it so hard to acquire wisdom?  Is this out of character for a God who is elsewhere seen as generous (e.g. Ps.65:9-13; Matt.7:11)?

This passage is built as a conditional promise: if... then...  Can you list the conditions, and the promises that God makes to those who fulfil those conditions (NB: there are three ‘if’s two ‘then’s)?

What does it actually look like to ‘store up’ [H]is commands, to turn our ear to wisdom and to apply our heart to understanding (2:1-2)?  How can we develop such skills in our own experience, and in the experience of others?

Is it possible to attain wisdom without reference to God (v.6)?  How can you explain someone who is wise, but who is not a Christian?  Can such people exist?

How can we instil a desire for wisdom in ourselves and in other people?

How can we make sense of the persecuted Church in the light of Prov.2:7-8? 

In Prov.2:11, what are being protected and guarded from?  Does this, as a consequence of acquiring wisdom, inspire and motivate us in our pursuit of it?

Memory Passage:

For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.  Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.  For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.

I Cor.1:21-25

Going Deeper:

No-one follows a map to the ‘X’ if they don’t believe there is treasure buried there.  To put in the effort required, we must value the (potential) reward.  If we don’t, we simply won’t care.  Can we instil in the children growing up through MIE a breath-taking sense of the value and worth of the wisdom of God? 

Part of this might be to be clear in our own minds that the wisdom of God and the wisdom of the world are in utterly different categories.  They are not on a spectrum with ‘godly wisdom’ somehow an enhanced version the wisdom of the world.  They are utterly different.  And the idea that we can attain to true wisdom without relationship with Jesus, is as old as Gen.3:6.  James contrasts wisdom from the Lord that leads to righteousness with a ‘wisdom’ does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic (Jas.3:13-17).   Indeed, the wisdom of God is so antithetical to this world, that it cannot be found within it.  Even if you go to the very borders of creation, to the gates of death itself, the wisdom of Christ will still elude you (Job 28:14-22).  The whole point is that Wisdom is something that comes from outside of this world… that can only be given by God in Christ (Prov.2:6, see also I Cor.1:18-31).

So living according to the wisdom of God will be a real problem in a world that rejects God and that becomes increasingly foolish (Rom.1:21-22).  Which means that as we learn to live wisely, we will be living in an experience of deep and painful tension and contradiction with our world.  That will be costly.  To live with wisdom, we will need the Lord to give us more than wisdom...  courage.

Bible Study on Ps.78:1-8

Families, Church & Discipleship (iii) Ps.78:1-8

I will give thanks to you, Lord, with all my heart; I will tell of all your wonderful deeds. I will be glad and rejoice in you; I will sing the praises of your name, O Most High.”                     

 (Ps.9:1-2)

I will tell of the kindnesses of the Lord, the deeds for which he is to be praised, according to all the Lord has done for us— yes, the many good things he has done for Israel, according to his compassion and many kindnesses. He said, “Surely they are my people, children who will be true to me”; and so he became their Saviour.

(Is.63:7-8)

“Great and marvellous are your deeds, Lord God Almighty. Just and true are your ways, King of the nations.  Who will not fear you, Lord, and bring glory to your name?  For you alone are holy.  All nations will come and worship before you, for your righteous acts have been revealed.”.

(Rev.15:3-4, The Song of Moses)

Asaph was a musician, likely what we would call today a ‘worship leader’ in that he is responsible for leading the musical elements of the ancient Church’s worship (I Chron.15:19, see also 16:6-37).  He was appointed by David to ‘to minister before the ark of the Lord, to extol, thank, and praise the Lord, the God of Israel’.  He was trusted by the King to regularly minister before the Ark, and seemingly wrote this Psalm in the course of his duties there.  In doing so, he fulfilled the role of prophet, which is key to being able to make sense of the opening verses of the ‘maskil’.  Matthew gives us the key to interpreting the passage before us.  In Matthew 13, in the midst of Jesus has teaching the Parables of the Sower, the Weeds, the Mustard Seed, the Yeast, the Hidden treasure, the Pearl and the Net, we are told that, ‘Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. So was fulfilled what was spoken through the prophet:

“I will open my mouth in parables,

    I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world.”

Psalm 78 suddenly takes on an added significance.  It is liturgy designed to find its place on the lips of Jesus Himself.   This ‘strategy’ that we have been reflecting on over recent weeks is so close to the heart of Christ that He becomes part of ensuring the process of passing on the knowledge of God to the next generations... to those not yet born.  Although parents bear a unique privilege in this, it is the command of God to the whole Church, and is so critical that Christ commits Himself to being involved – not just in His own experience of being a child and then a teacher during his earthly ministry, but also in the ensuing generations to come.

Realising this might be what helped Asaph to follow his own ‘advice’... although of course, it is more in the category of ‘command (Ps.78:5).  The Sons of Asaph are a regular feature, and pop up repeatedly at critical moments in the history of the Church.  They are ‘brought along’ by their father into serving the Church musically as part of their worship (I Chron.25:1f), gaining experience in how to respond to ‘the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD, His power and the wonders He has done’ (Ps.78:4).  And they were present at the dedication of the Temple, when it was filled with the glory of the LORD (II Chron.5:11-13).  their knowledge of God was no dry intellectualism, but a living encounter with His glory and holy majesty.  The descendants of Asaph turn up again during the revivals lead by King Jehoshaphat (II Chron.20:14, where one of Asaph’s descendants is also a prophet); King Hezekaih (II Chron.29:13, see also 29:30, where Asaph is again referred to as a ‘seer, i.e. a prophet, I Sam.9:9); and King Josiah (II Chron.35:15). 

And generations later they are again at the dedication of the foundation of the Temple when the people of God return from exile under Ezra and Nehemiah (Ezra 3:10-11).  For all the long centuries of the Kings, in the midst of the slow degenerating of the life of the Church, even in the midst of the exile, Asaph’s family fulfilled the commands of Ps.78, teaching each generation of their family the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, the statutes and Law of Israel so that they could in turn teach the next generation what it means to put their trust in God and to keep His commands. 

Questions

How can you make sure that your children are equipped to understand any part of the Bible they read?

How can you nurture a child’s / young person’s sense of ‘encounter’ with the Lord? ...their practise of worship? ...their fear of the Lord?  ... their experience of pursuing holiness and resisting temptation?

How do you / did you encourage them to put their trust in God (Ps.78:7)?  As you reflect on these things, what went / is going well?  ...where were things less positive?

Read Ps.78:1-8

How does it change your understanding of the Psalm when you realise it is prophetically speaking of, and being spoken by, Jesus (see Matt.13:34-35)?

In v.3, Asaph / Jesus tells us that the ‘hidden things, things from of old’ that He teaches, are things we have known?  How do we hear and know these things?  Who are ‘the ancestors’ who have told us?  Or do you think these verses don’t apply to us, but only to the original writer, or readers?

In what ways can a generation of the Church be guilty of ‘hiding’ what they have heard or known (v.4)?  How might that be done consciously? ...and how unconsciously?  What would the effects of that be?

As you read through the rest of Psalm 78, you are reading the ‘syllabus’ of what Asaph would have us ‘tell the next generation’.   How would you plan a considered, intentional approach to ensure that these histories and their meanings are taught in ways that develop with a child as they grow?   

Is there anything here you’d be uncomfortable teaching children / y.p.?  What do you think are the main ideas Ps.78 wants us to teach about God and His dealings with His people?

What about when v.7 doesn’t ‘work’?

Memory Passage:

You who are young, be happy while you are young, and let your heart give you joy in the days of your youth.  Follow the ways of your heart and whatever your eyes see, but know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment.  So then, banish anxiety from your heart and cast off the troubles of your body, for youth and vigour are meaningless. Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, “I find no pleasure in them”...

Eccl.11:9-12:1

Going Deeper:

I’m always intrigued by the idea that it is somehow harder to be a Christian in today’s generation than in previous ones.  There is nothing new under the sun.  We may think the struggles and the pressures on us as parents, or temptations that we face that are unheard of in the history of the Church.  They may put on a new face... technology isn’t something previous generations had to wrestle with.  But there was something.  As far back as Plato we find people complaining about how hopeless the ‘youth of today’ are.  Do not say, “Why were the old days better than these?” For it is not wise to ask such questions (Eccl.7:10).  In fact, there has always been deep spiritual stress around this question of bringing our children up by prayerful reliance on the Holy Spirit to hope in God.  In fact, in times past it might have been more problematic that it is even for us today.  Martin Luther found himself preaching this over 450 years ago

We are plagued by the miserable fact that no one perceives or heeds this truth. All live on as though God gave us children for our pleasure or amusement, as though He gave us servants to use, like a cow or an ass, for work only, or as though we were to live with our subordinates only to gratify our whims, ignoring them, as though what they learn or how they live were no concern of ours. No one wants to see that education or training is the command of the Supreme Majesty, who will strictly call us to account and punish us for its neglect, or that the need to be seriously concerned about young people is so great

(What Luther Says, vol. 1, p. 140)

Bible Study on Deut.6:1-12

Families, Church & Discipleship (ii) Deut.6:1-12

But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”                     

 (Josh.24:15)

Come, my children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord.

(Ps.34:11)

Yet you brought me out of the womb; you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast. From birth I was cast on you; from my mother’s womb you have been my God.

(Ps.22:9-10)

I brought you up out of Egypt and led you forty years in the wilderness ... I also raised up prophets from among your children and Nazirites from among your youths.

(…taken from Amos 2:10-11)

Children are capable of far more spiritually than we tend to think.  A moment or two’s reflection on Scripture would be enough to teach us that (think of John the Baptist, testifying to Christ whilst still in the womb, Lk.1:44!).  They are consistently assumed to be enquiring about the things of God (e.g. Josh.4:6), and to be involved in the teaching and worshipping life of God’s people (e.g. Josh.8:35).   And there is a constant expectation that they are being taught what it means to be part of the people of God.  The classic text is, of course, Deut.6:6-9, but as we’ll see in the next couple of weeks, this is a refrain that echoes throughout the Bible.  Even in Deuteronomy it is repeated.  Just a couple of chapters earlier we read:

And what other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today? Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them. Remember the day you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, when he said to me, “Assemble the people before me to hear my words so that they may learn to revere me as long as they live in the land and may teach them to their children.”

Deut.4:8-10

The picture that emerges is one of an immersive environment, a culture that is oriented towards growth in understanding and response to a developing vision of who God is, and all that He has done for us as His people.  They are surrounded by examples of people who themselves love the Lord their God, and who have the Law of God written on their hearts (Dt.6:5-6).  Surrounded by adults who are characterised by such discipleship themselves, children are stimulated to constant questioning (Dt.6:20), interaction (Dt.6:8) and discussion (Dt.6:7; 11:18-19) about what they see and hear.  The things of God will be the constant theme of the home, naturally surfacing in the rhythms and routines of day-to-day life.  Moses anticipates children and grandchildren (Dt.6:2) being caught up in a multi-sensory, lived experience of discipleship formation simply by being part of a covenant family, who are themselves oriented around the life of the Church family. 

And hopefully it goes without saying that Deuteronomy isn’t advocating a dry intellectualism, or a Pharisaism that focusses on behaviour whilst ignoring motives.  The goal is the cultivation of ‘the fear of the Lord’ (Dt.6:2 & 24).  Parents (& grand-parents) are expected to be in a position to answer questions (Dt.6:21), to decorate the home with visual reminders of God’s vision for life (Dt.6:9; 11:20), and to create a spiritual legacy that their children, and so the Church of future generations, will benefit from (e.g. Dt.5:29; 12:28; 30:19-20).

This has always been God’s ‘strategy’.  But even if we accept this is what the Bible in fact teaches, such a vision can easily feel overwhelming.  We may feel massively underqualified.  Our experience of Church, our being shaped by cultural norms, our experience and fear might all feel stacked against us.  On the other side of the scales is our faith in the wisdom and goodness of God; the promise of the Spirit to help us as we seek to structure Church and family life in a way that resonates with His vision; a Church that can support, resource and encourage us.  If we don’t feel qualified, then how, as a Church can we help that?  Our job is to ‘to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature...’ (Eph.4:12-13).  If that isn’t happening (which would seem to be the case if parents don’t feel able to, or supported in discipling their children) then we have significant questions to ask about our wider ministry and fellowship.  But perhaps that is for another time...

Questions

How would you measure the health and effectiveness of a spiritual culture ...in a family? ... in a Church?  How would you cultivate and develop such a culture?

In what ways can family life and even, children themselves become idols?  How would that affect our ability to raise (grand-)children in the ways of the Lord?  How could MIE help people to recognise this, and to repent of it?

For those to whom it applies: When we look back on our own childhood, how were we helped or hindered by our families, and by our Churches, as we grew as Christians?  What lessons can we bring to today’s Church in the light of our own experiences?

Read Deut.6:1-12

How realistic is it for a family to function in this way in our own culture?  Is it harder for families to be ‘Christian’ now than it was a generation ago?  ...and for children / y.p. to be Christians now than a generation ago?  Why / why not?

What is the fear of the Lord?  How does it connect with ‘keeping all His decrees and commands’ (Dt.6:2)?  How does it connect with ‘love’ (Dt.6:5)?

Why do we find it so difficult to talk about the commands of the LORD with each other and with our children?  How is this different from teaching them Bible stories?  What sort of conversations do you think Moses envisages parents and grand-parents having with children in their midst? 

What does it mean to ‘impress’ the commands of the Lord on children (Dt.6:7)?  What should be our attitude to Christian discipleship as compared to other demands on our, and on our children’s time and energy? 

What does it mean to ‘tie them as symbols on your hands, and bind them to your foreheads (Dt.6:8)?

What is the idea behind writing the commands of the Lord on the door-frames of our houses, and on our gates (Dt.6:9)?

Memory Passage:

Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates, so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth.

Deut.11:18-21

Going Deeper:

We noted last week the devastating loss of 0-16 yr olds the Church has experienced in the UK over the last half century.  That in itself should be enough to make us stop and ask deep questions of the way we have sought to evangelise and disciple this demographic in recent decades.  To be fair, even when children’s and youth ministry has been a factor, the key issue has always been the spiritual leadership of parents.  The ramifications looking forward are fairly harrowing.  But as we stand in this moment of fragility, we have an unprecedented opportunity to reclaim a more Biblically-inspired model of family and of Church family.

The two are of course, deeply interconnected.  If we are right, that the purpose of ‘nuclear’ families is to train constructive and contributing members of the Church family, then trying to fix ‘Church ministry’ in order to strengthen children’s and youth work is to address the question backwards.  If we are to think forwards, we will have to make our decisions based not on the fear of a godless future, or in order to somehow prop up a failing Church.  Still less will we re-iterate our own fears and insecurities as parents.  We remember that children are first and foremost the Lord’s before they are ours, and we will work hard to ensure that we are best placed to fulfil our stewardship of their growth and development.  We are mandated to bring them up for Him, and to be consecrated to His service.  We have a holy trust to not just ‘keep them in Church’, but to inspire a deep, spiritual growth that prepares them for a lifetime of following Christ.  We’ll start to unpack how that works in next week’s study.

Bible Study on Ephesians 6:1-4

Families, Church & Discipleship (i) Ephesians 6:1-4

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”                      

 (Matt.28:18-20)

Love the Lord your God and keep his requirements, his decrees, his laws and his commands always.

(Deut.11:1)

But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be … disobedient to their parents … having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.

(…taken from II Tim.3:1-5)

Obedience has always been integral to Christian discipleship.  To be redeemed is to be called into God’s vision of our life together.  It is the goal of grace (Titus 2:11-12), and the inevitable result of genuine faith (Rom.1:5).  It is the aim of the Spirit’s ministry through the Scriptures (II Tim.3:15-16), and indeed through much of what He does in our services of worship Lord’s Day by Lord’s Day.  And it is always worth remembering that it is by our obedience to the Lord’s commands that we will be judged, and not by our spiritual experience or ministry (see e.g. Matt.7:21-27; Rev.20:12-13 etc.).  We face a constant and insidious temptation to conceive of our spirituality without reference to the decisions we make in the details of how we live.  Yet it is obedience to the commands of the Lord that makes real our faith; and without such expression in daily character and life, our faith remains only a religious theory…  or more bluntly, ‘dead’ (Jas.2:17).  Obedience articulates our beliefs, gives voice to our change of identity in Christ.

And what does all, or any of this have to do with the question of discipling children and young people, or the life of families?  Because if we have been privileged to be born into a covenant family, then we are able to learn the mechanics of obedience in the context of our relationship with our parents.  Taking us back to the enduring reality fifth commandment, Paul dispenses with any questions about ‘historical context’ or ‘cultural relevance’ by simply restating it, centuries later and in a very different world (Ps.119:89).  And in ‘our’ world in which rebelling against parents is seen as normal, perhaps even a rite of passage; and in which parents so often feel they have no authority; in this world, we need to reclaim this simple strategy to teach our children obedience.   

This is not some naïve nostalgia for the family life of a bygone age.  It is recalling us to God’s good and gracious design for family life.  Parents are supposed to grow wise with age, learned in the things of God, spiritually compelling examples of Christlikeness.  They have a lifetime of experience in learning what it means to walk with the Lord to bestow.  And their children are to honour them, and in so doing learn from them.  They will be raised in the training and instruction of the Lord (Eph.6:4).  They will be taught what it means to walk with Christ.  This is the fundamental responsibility of parenting (we’ll see this next week in Dt.6, esp.vv.7-9 & Dt.11:19 etc.).  Nothing exempts children from so honouring their parents, not even that which is ostensibly for religious purposes (Mk.7:9-13).  Only if your parents seek to lead you into actual sin are you freed from this all-encompassing obligation (Matt.10:37; Acts 5:29).  Only Christ Himself takes precedence (which given this commandment, is quite a statement, Matt.10:35-37; Lk.9:59-60; 14:26); and Christ Himself was bound by it (Lk.2:51; Jn.19:26-27).

The very vocabulary used points us to this extraordinary arrangement: ‘honour’ (which Paul understands as including obedience!).  It is language that is used to describe the relationship we have with God (Ex.12:42; Ps.22:23, etc.).  We see a similar overlap in other language used to describe the role responsibilities of parents to their children (e.g. Prov.6:20, Ps.119:105).  As children learn to honour their parents, so they learn the necessary dynamics of relating appropriately to the Lord (Mal.1:6).  Parents are to seek therefore reflect as fully as possible the characteristics of the Lord, and to structure their relationship with, and discipline of, their children as closely as possible to that of the Lord’s relationship with us.  Children are then able to transfer what they learn from their relationship with their parents, to their relationship with God.  They understand the Lord, because they have learned to understand their relationship with their father and mother.  Parents make great visual aids!

Questions

What are you hoping that this series will cover?  …and what are you hoping it will avoid?

In the light of the introductory thoughts above, what would you say to a parent who felt they couldn’t discipline their child(ren) because they had done the same kind of things (or worse) when they were that age?

How can MIE better reflect the idea that parents are the primary ‘pastor’ in the lives of their children?  What would youth and children’s ministry look like if it was modelled on this?  Would we have youth and children’s ministry?

Read Eph.6:1-4

How does our culture teach children to think of their relationship with their parents?  …and how does it teach parents to think of their relationship with their child(ren)?

What does it mean to honour our parents?  How do the dynamics of such honouring change as we (& they) grow older?  What about if our parents aren’t Christians?

What does it mean to say ‘so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth’?  Why does Paul change the promise as he quotes it?  How does this promise act as a motivation to honour and obey parents? 

Paul writes this in a letter addressed to the whole Church.  How can the whole Church support children as they seek to obey their parents, and parents as they bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord?  And how can families better engage with the life of the whole Church?

Do you think Paul is addressing v.4 specifically to ‘Fathers’, or is it shorthand for ‘Fathers and Mothers’?  What does exasperate mean?  What are we being warned against?  …and what does it mean to bring our children up in the training and instruction of the Lord?

Memory Passage:

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.  But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”  Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds..

James 2:14-18

Going Deeper:

We live at the end of half a century (and for some that covers our entire Christian life) of unprecedented investment in youth and children’s ministry in the British Church.  Never has so much time, energy, thought and money been poured into servicing a specific demographic in the life of the Church.  And at the end of it, the stats are terrifying.  Less than 100,000 children / y/.p. (0-16) attend Church.  Looking specifically at Anglican Churches, less than 1,000 Churches have more than 25 children or y.p. in attendance; and almost 50% of 0-16 year olds are found in 6.4% of the Churches.  Within living memory, hundreds of Church, likely thousands, have seen their youth / children’s work decline to zero.  Behind those statistics are terrifying trends… but more importantly, there are people.  There are young people not walking with Christ, and broken hearted parents and grandparents having to navigate that devastation of their (grand-)children not sharing their faith.

Whether a segregated approach to Church life ever worked is a moot point.  It is self-evident that it isn’t working today.  To continue to invest in a model of Church and youth and children’s ministry that has led to such catastrophic results is beyond madness.  To put our hope for our children in such structures would be to invite only further tragedy.  But the questions we must face in these few weeks are deeper than pragmatics, and statistical trends.  The fundamental question we must learn to ask when addressing any aspect of our discipleship is simply this:  What does the Bible teach?   That and that alone must guide our discussion as a Church.