Parents As Prophets

It comes from Psalm seventy-eight, verses one through eight.

Give ear, O my people, to my teaching.

Incline your ears toward the word of my mouth.

I will open my mouth in a parable, and I will utter dark sayings from of old, things that we have heard and known, that our fathers have told us.

We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord and his might and the wonders that he has done.

He established a testimony with Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers to teach their children, that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to your children, so that they should set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments, and that they should not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation whose heart was not steadfast, whose spirit was not faithful to God.

This is the word of the Lord.

Alrighty.

Good morning.

Thanks Ryan for filling in for Zach.

Ryan's our our one of our deacons.

He's doing a great job leading worship this morning.

Thanks, man.

And uh and he also fixed the coffee grinder this morning.

So he's just like Deacon Extraordinaire.

And uh John and I have done everything together this week uh as he's reading the leading the rest of the liturgy.

Uh uh John's one of our ruling elders, and we spent the week in Louisville, Kentucky for uh the PCA's General Assembly, which is like it's a room full of PCA pastors who are great in reasonable doses.

But you get a room full of us together and we quickly become insufferable.

So that was a joyful thing to get to be a part of.

Uh and uh I our denomination is in a healthy place.

I'm thankful to be a part of it.

Um so let's pray and we'll continue in our series on the Christian home this morning.

Holy Father, I thank you so much for uh our church and just the joy of getting to uh return after a week away.

Lord, getting to uh worship together with these people and this church that you you are establishing here in the northwest corner of Denver.

Father, we thank you for the denomination that we get to be a part of.

Lord, the faithful men who had who began it courageously 53 years ago, Lord, I pray that you would uh continue uh to give that same character to us who are a part of it now, and that you would strengthen and uh secure the PCA, Lord, um uh not just for the sake of a denomination, but for the sake of all the local congregations, all the gathering bodies, Lord, um, that uh uh the PCA uh seeks to care for and tend to.

Lord, I pray that you would work in our hearts this morning.

I pray especially for the hearts of the parents, Lord, that they might be encouraged by the text today.

And Father, I pray that you would help enliven our hearts and and I pray that you would establish in our hearts and in our minds just a clear picture of your will for our salvation.

And Lord, that we would not live as though you are you are some unknowable, you know, airy deity, Lord, but that you have made yourself clearly known.

And Lord, that we can take great confidence that your desire is for our salvation.

Lord, that we would act in obedience in accord with that truth, Lord.

Father, I pray that you would work these things into our hearts in Jesus' name, amen.

So this is our third sermon in this series, which I've titled The Christian Home.

And we're looking at how it is that the gospel restores the family to what God intended the family to be at creation.

And we looked at, uh, in our first sermon, we looked at what God's intention for the family was and how disordered our thinking about what who we are as people is with regards to the family.

We often think that families are a collection of individuals, that individuals constitute a family.

But what we neglect is that individuals are constituted by a family.

There is no such person who exists apart from a family.

You don't get to exist, you don't get to live apart from a family and a lineage.

And that's the good order that God has placed in the world.

But this good order has, of course, been corrupted by sin.

But with the corruption of sin entering the world and individuals and the family itself, God did not throw away the pattern of the family.

He did not remove lineage, he did not remove inheritance.

Instead, he sought to redeem it and restore it to the position of function.

So that now in families under the covenant of grace, that by faith families can recognize themselves as the arena in which God passes down his covenantal promises to his posterity, that God's promises for generations of Christians apply to Christian families now, just as they applied to Abraham.

So now our question is: what do we do?

How do we live out the hope of these great promises that are given to our families?

How do we participate in the hope that's been shown to us in the covenant of grace given to our families?

Well, the way that we do that is we model Christ in our homes.

Now, the ordinary way that this pattern is described throughout the scriptures is parents teaching their children.

And so that's what I'm going to talk about throughout most of the rest of the series, is parents and our responsibility to teach our children.

Now, if you are a child listening, there's another part of this, which is your responsibility to listen to and obey your parents.

You should do that.

It's a good thing.

It will go well with you if you do that.

Likewise, if you don't have children, you may be wondering, how do I participate in this at all?

Well, one of the ways is that as a member of this church body, you're surrounded by children.

And so you can care for the parents, you can care for the children, you can directly participate in this within this church body.

Likewise, many of you likely, likely will have children, so this is a good thing to know in that regard as well.

But also, all of these things apply to the spiritual generations that we get to participate in as Christians.

That this same sort of disciple making that we're looking to improve in our homes can take place amongst your friends, amongst those who you share the gospel with, amongst younger Christians who you can encourage and strengthen, amongst fathers in the faith who you can learn to receive truth from.

This is all available to us in these same patterns.

Now, Christ is the perfect model, of course.

And so we're looking at who are we trying to be as parents to our children?

We want to be how Christ is to us.

And Christ fulfills three offices as our Redeemer.

These are the offices of the prophet, of a priest, and of a king.

The office of a prophet, a priest, and a king.

So parents, what you are to be for your children are prophets, priests, and kings in your home.

This is the responsibility that you have.

So for the next two weeks, we're looking at what it means that we are prophets in the home.

Children, this is what it means that your parents are prophets to you.

Do you know that your parents are prophets in your home?

You have a prophet living with you?

Pretty slick to have that right in your house.

So, a prophet, what's the responsibility of a prophet?

The responsibility of a prophet is not fortune telling.

This is not looking off into the future.

That's not exactly what we mean, although that sometimes happens in the prophetic writing and scripture.

But even then, when it happens in the prophetic writing in scripture, what's happening is the prophet is simply taking the truths of God and he is applying it to what he sees taking place in the world as the Spirit guides him.

And so when a prophet looks and says, Oh, the wrath of God is coming against this nation, all he needs to know is that the wrath of God reveals itself against sinful nations.

Then he looks out and he sees a sinful nation.

And then he says, the wrath of God is coming against a sinful nation.

See, that's not that hard to fortune tell in that sort of situation.

But there is a what we are meant to do as parents is to apply the truths of God to our children.

And that's why we're looking at Psalm 78 this morning.

Your role is to be a prophet to your children, so that from you they might know and receive the truths of God.

This is the ordinary pattern in which God desires his gospel to be proclaimed from parents to their children.

This is the ordinary pattern by which God desires the proclamation of his word.

In Psalm 78, verses 2 through 3, it says, I will open my mouth in a parable.

Psalms 78:2–3

I will utter dark sayings from of old, things that we have heard and known that our fathers have told us.

You know, the first step in being a prophet to your children is receiving the prophetic word.

That's the first step.

You must receive the true word of God.

And that didn't happen to you generically.

That happened to you in a particular way that you yourself received the word of God.

I titled this the this series the Christian home because it's sort of a it's a typical refrain in people's testimonies.

You know, I grew up in a Christian home.

And then the way that you're supposed to tell a testimony is you say, I grew up in a Christian home, and then you describe how much of a curse that was, and how by the skin of your teeth you became a Christian, even though you grew up in a Christian home.

And it's we should think of it as precisely the opposite.

Precisely the opposite way.

Because the way that the way that you have received the gospel, ordinarily for many of you, is from your home, from your parents.

As imperfectly as that was done, this is something that you should give incredible thanks for, that you should receive with a deep, deep gratitude, because it is an amazing blessing.

You should think of them so you should you should recognize how is it that you have received this faith?

Not just generically, think in particular.

How is it that you received this faith?

How did it come to you?

The way that I want you to think of these, of the way that I want you to think of that story, is that these are dark sayings from of old.

Things that you have heard and known that our fathers have told us.

You know, sometimes we don't know how to read things rightly when we read them in the Bible.

But this is one of those expressions that if you read it in the middle of an epic novel, you would be like the dark sayings from of old.

And you would see the wonder of it.

I want you to see the wonder of it now, that that is the story that you're in.

You're in a story where you have received dark sayings from of old.

My mom was there.

And he confessed the faith.

I've heard the story.

Watching Billy Graham on TV, some Billy Graham revival, a dark saying from of old.

He watched and heard proclaimed into his living room on the television.

His family were not Christians, they were race car drivers, and they work on Sundays, so my mom's my mom comes from a long line of Christians.

And so my mom's side of the family, my grandma on her side, we called her Gran.

She uh her her childhood home burned down, and her mother died, and her dad became an alcoholic.

And so the children were taken, her and her 10 siblings were taken from by the state and given to some foster parents.

And the ones that raised her were named Giggy and Papa.

Now, I don't think that those are their Christian names, but these are the only names that I know them by.

And Giggy and Papa raised them Christianly, you know, shared the truths of God, and they were obviously just uh unthinkably generous people.

These are amazing people.

And so my grand grew up a Christian uh because of them.

I I I know there's a picture of my oldest sister sitting on Giggy and Papa's lap.

And that's the only uh image I have of Gigi and Papa.

They were dead before I uh was old enough to remember them.

Uh, but I know I know that picture, and as I've pieced the story together, I realized that's this is one of those dark sayings from of old.

Why, why are we sharing the gospel here today?

Well, there was a house fire in South Carolina, and there were children who were transferred, and they were transferred to the to a Christian home.

And so now I'm a part of that.

My my dad, we called him dada, my grandpa on my mom's side as well.

He uh was also from a family of 10 tobacco farmers, and uh they uh come from a line of of just strong Christians.

They uh a couple of his brothers became pastors.

The oldest brother stayed home and worked the farm so that the other brothers could go off to university, and uh several of them became pastors, and so they've uh they've had a strong Christian lineage on that side as well.

My parents took me to First Baptist of Merritt Island, which is in on Merritt Island, in Merritt Island, Florida.

These are my first memories of church.

These are dark sayings from of old.

In First Baptist Merritt Island, there are a couple of things that stand out about this church.

One of them is that at Christmas time, they would do a singing Christmas tree.

Have you seen this?

No?

Mixed.

They organized the choir.

There's a special stage that they bought from some probably like church salesman who would go around and be like, You want to gather people this Sunday, if you want to have a show, put your choir in the shape of a Christmas tree.

And they it was it was would go from the floor to the ceiling of the you know, chapel space, auditorium, and the whole choir would be in the shape of a Christmas tree.

It would be a singing Christmas tree.

You don't forget stuff like that.

There was a baptismal uh that was built into the wall uh above the stage where the pastor would preach, and that so when it was time to baptize somebody, the pastor would vanish and then reappear out of the wall into the into a baptismal that was up above, and and he would be robed and there'd be curtains.

I would I would look at that and say, This is something else that's going on here.

We're witnessing something pretty important here.

And then I would sit next to my mom and I would squirm out of my skin for, you know, like some of you children are doing now.

And then I would I would think I asked for a mento just like a couple minutes ago.

I could probably ask for another one.

And I would think that.

That's what I would think.

These are my first memories, those are my first memories of church.

And I got to see the sacrament take place, I got to see worship of our God, I got to see my parents sing.

You know, these are dark sayings from of old.

These are glorious, glorious things.

This is the way that the faith was handed down to me.

It goes, it it hinges on these these close calls, like it does for all of you.

You know, these amazing stories, these dark sayings from of old.

We have to receive those and get we should give, we should be so grateful for those.

Just full of gratitude and thanksgiving.

Some of you didn't grow up in a Christian home at all, but you met somebody or you watched some, you know, like the your YouTube algorithm was like, all right, all right, enough of this.

Let's just give them some Christian stuff.

Who knows why that would happen, you know?

But those things happen.

And all of a sudden, by these this series of crazy close calls, you you have been led into the faith.

These are the dark sayings from of old.

You must receive them.

Receive them with gratitude and wonder and amazement.

How has the Lord sought me?

How has he called me?

How has he worked particularly in my story, the stories of my fathers?

How has he led me towards this message and brought this message to me that I might be made alive in him?

You should think of these things as wonderful and amazing, given it they you should think of them as part of this epic story that you now find yourself in because it is.

And that is not deluding yourself, that is thinking appropriately about what it means that you have come to know the Lord, that is viewing it accurately.

To say, I grew up in a Christian home and had all these problems and there are these difficulties, and yeah, I learned the message that will give me eternal life in the heavens, but other than that, you know how we do.

So this is just the appropriate reorienting.

The appro what I what I want is uh you first receive it.

You first receive it.

And as you receive this message that has been given to you, that has been handed down to you by these prophets, now you can pass it on.

In 78, verse 4, it says, We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might and the wonders that he has done.

You must proclaim these glorious deeds to your children.

You know who great stories happen to?

You know, this saying great stories happen to the people who can tell them.

That's who great stories happen to.

You know who wondrous mighty deeds, wondrous works of God happen to?

They happen to the people who will tell them.

That's how they happen.

You know how they become a part of your family story?

By telling them.

This is, otherwise, they just get they just get lost.

Because here's one thing that could have happened, and it's basically what did happen to the generation that was rescued out of Egypt through the plagues that they witnessed against Egypt, through the parting of the Red Sea that they witnessed.

There was like, you know, a day and a half where they were like, wow, what a miracle of God.

And then for the rest of the time, they basically interpreted it as, oh, glad that worked out.

Probably would have worked out anyway.

Glad that worked out.

And this is often how we treat the wondrous deeds, the mighty works, the glories of God that He has done in our lives.

We we pray and we stress about something, and then we receive deliverance from the Lord.

And then once we received that deliverance from the Lord, we're like, well, I don't know if it was really like a miracle.

Like, we probably would have probably would have been fine anyway.

And all of a sudden it's lost.

It's robbed of the wonder, robbed of the glory, robbed of the of what has really taken place here.

So we have this responsibility to tell our children the mighty works of God because they are not born knowing these things.

Your children are not born knowing the provision that the Lord has shown you.

Your children are not born knowing the mighty works of God that are shown.

To us in the scriptures.

You need to tell them, you need to walk outside, and you need to say, look at these incredible mountains.

The Lord made these.

Mountains were his idea.

Look at all the different types of birds.

God must love birds because he puts them everywhere.

And they're all these different kinds.

So look at the wonders and the glories of these, of what we have here and what he's made.

You should tell him, you should tell your children, tell them the story about the false trial against the best man who ever lived.

And the courage that he showed in that false trial.

And about his execution.

And tell them about how he tricked them all.

Because in killing them, he defeated them.

And he rose again three days later, and he rules and reigns now.

You aren't born knowing this story.

You have to tell your children this story.

Then you can say he's a hero, isn't he?

He's our hero.

You know, like the the um um my uh uh my son pulls for Denny Hamlin.

He's a NASCAR driver, which matters to one of you.

And that's because I pull for Denny Hamlin.

I I'll I like him.

I there's I have so much I can say, but I've just it's just me and Chris talking right now, and I know that's it.

But the the point the point, or he's a here's one, Denver Broncos.

This is more appropriate if I learned how to how to preach and where uh where I live.

The uh uh you you didn't have you probably you know why your kid's a Denver Broncos fan?

Because you are.

They just accepted it, they just received it.

And what you said was, this is our team.

This is our team.

Well, what you have, this is an incredible power.

So what you have the power to say is this is your God.

This is my God.

Have you heard this story of what he has done?

You know, teach them the wonders.

Teach them the mighty deeds.

And then as they know these wonders, then in what you can say, I don't have anything to do with Denny Hamlin or the Broncos.

I have nothing to do with them.

You know, I can't help them, or there's nothing, nothing, I'm not a part of it.

Of what of what they do.

But those are those are my stories.

You know, these are things that that happened to my spiritual fathers a long time ago.

And I can say to my children, these are my stories.

These are your stories.

These belong to you.

This is who you are.

We can tell them about feeding the 5,000, we can tell them about the Exodus, tell them about that first story about the tree with the fruit and the pain that came from it.

Tell them about David and Goliath, tell them about the wonderful acts of provision that take place throughout the whole of the scriptures, tell them about their sin and about how there's hope of salvation in God because of their sin.

Tell them about the Great Commission and about God's desire for all nations to come to know him, that uh that he would rule and reign over all the nations of the world.

You can you should tell them these things, and then what's happening is they are learning this is my story.

This is who I am in the world, this is the story that I have been placed in in the world.

I read this great book earlier in the year called Liturgies of the Wild by Martin Shaw.

And in it he says this.

He says, but he says it with a beard and uh English accent.

Picture that while I'm reading it.

In fact, picture that whenever I preach.

While we're doing that.

In the Celtic world, you find an old belief that if you aren't wrapped in the cloak of story and the cloak of place, you are liable to experience huge rushes of angst as you age.

You are in some grievous way unprepared for what the world will likely hurl at you.

You remain adolescent, you remain at risk, and that itself makes you dangerous, and your decisions likely unwieldy.

You're not grown.

Your job is to grow your children.

So you must wrap them in the cloak of a story.

You must wrap them in the cloak of a place.

To not wrap them in this story, the true story, is to send them out into the cold with no cloak to protect them, no cloak to cover them and care for them.

This is your responsibility.

This is why it is so important to consider the environments that our children are in, the education that our children are in.

We desire to grow our children, not curse them to a perpetual adolescence.

And that means we should seek that they would not be in places where the true story, the cloak that you are wrapping them in, is being undermined or is being taken off and destroyed.

But rather they are to be wrapped by you in the cloak of the true story, lest they are cursed to a perpetual adolescence.

I think a perpetual adolescence is a great way to describe much of our generation.

And I think that so much of this is because they have no story.

They have no story.

How can you know who you are if you have no story?

How can you know where you're headed if you have not been wrapped in the cloak of a story?

How do you know what to do with your guilt and your shame if nobody has told you?

And so there is a world of perpetual adolescence because they've not been told.

And in fact, they've been told to stay away from that, to get away from those old stories, to deny the nature of what those stories would impose upon them.

You must wrap your children in the cloak of the true story.

This is your role as a prophet.

Also, it's the law.

God commands you that you must tell them the truths of the scriptures.

You must tell them the wondrous works that He has done for you.

In Psalm 78, 5, it says, He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children.

See, this is the command of God in the scriptures.

He established testimony, appointed a law, he commanded our fathers to teach to their children.

You have a responsibility to tell your children what the law of God is, who they are in it, what their hope is, what the goal and purpose of their life is.

There's so much wandering around of not knowing what is what is what I am here for, what is the purpose of my life, what am I aiming towards?

And without the story of the scriptures that we are given, without the truth of who God is, that we are creatures of Him, that we have fallen into sin, that there is redemption in the world, that we are made for fruitfulness and goodness in the world, without these truths, and we don't know where we are.

Now, all people, Christians included, experience seasons of I don't know what's next, I don't know where I am.

It seemed like the story that I was a part of has fallen apart, but the Christian story is sufficient for even those seasons.

Because we have times like that all over the Christian story.

You know, you can be like, man, I it seemed like the person that I was working for that I thought things were going to go great with.

Well, now it seems like we're really at odds with them, and it seems like they're trying to, you know, ferret me out of this thing.

And then you read the story of David and Saul, and it's like, yeah, it's kind of like this.

All that confusion, I guess this is the type of story that can happen.

Or you finally get deliverance from some part of your life that felt oppressive and felt terrible, and all you were thinking about all the time was, I just want this to be over, I just want this to be over, and then one day it is.

And then you find yourself wandering in the wilderness.

What do I do with myself?

How am I supposed to act here?

Now that that thing's gone, I actually don't really know who I am and I don't know how to be established as people.

This is the Exodus story.

This is the story of the people of God in the wilderness.

We we we have in our story what is sufficient to guide us throughout the whole of our lives.

We must give this to our children.

This is what it means to raise wise, thoughtful, God-fearing children.

We tell them the story that they're in.

We are commanded by God to teach this to our children.

So, to what end are we teaching this to our children?

And how are we teaching this to our children?

Psalm 78, verse 7.

Psalms 78:7

This is like the summary of the whole psalm, which is a very long psalm because it goes into like Stephen's speech telling the history of the people of God.

Well, it says this: why would you tell them?

Why are we commanded to tell them?

So that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments.

We must tell the story down through the generations, so that one, they will set their hope in God.

Two, that they will not forget his works, and three, they will keep his commandments.

This is the purpose of our telling this story.

That they will set their hope in God, that they will not forget his works, and that they will keep his commandments.

First, they will set their hope in God.

This does not just happen.

Our hearts, the hearts of your children, will ordinarily tend towards, like yours, setting their hope in all kinds of things.

But when we tell them the stories, when we tell them the commands of God, they will learn to set their hope in God.

So that means when their team loses, this is a time while they will learn, I can set my hope in God.

I know that he will hold me.

When they get sick and miss the birthday, they can learn, I can set my hope in God.

He is the one who will care for me.

When they feel shame because of their sin, you can instruct them, you know, the Lord has died to take away your shame.

It is done, it is finished.

You can tell them the story of how it has happened so that they might learn to set their hope in God.

When you feel stressed about some finances in your home, you can start to tell a story.

You can say, you know, the Lord has always provided for us.

And the Lord will continue to provide for us.

Let's pray together, and then we'll get to witness a miracle together.

Let's pray and wait and set our hope in the Lord.

And watch.

You will see miracles happen.

They'll have a sense of growth and adventure.

They'll have a hope that cannot be put to shame because it is a hope that is in the Lord.

Second is that they will not forget his works.

Remembering is just not forgetting.

And the trick to scripture memory is the three steps of Christian of scripture memory, they say are review, review, and review.

This is how we remember things.

And this is how we remember the mighty works of God.

And we don't forget his works.

We do that by practicing not forgetting, by practicing remembering.

Talk about them.

Have times where you gather together as a family and you read of his mighty works.

Collect the stories of your family, and then consider how they map on to the stories in the scriptures.

And look and say, you know, it's kind of just like this.

Man, we uh that was uh a uh close call there.

We we almost didn't make it out, but the Lord provided.

What a glorious thing.

The Lord has his hands on us.

What a joyful, joyful place we get to live.

You practice remembering.

Another way that you practice remembering is you come to church.

When you come, this is us practicing remembering.

That's what we're doing here this morning.

We're practicing remembering the mighty works of God.

And we remember the bread and the wine.

Every week we remember that.

We remember the sacrament, the new covenant purchased in the blood of our Lord, these dark sayings from of old.

We bring these to the surface in our minds.

These are unthinkably wonderful things that we are that we deal with week in and week out.

Remember them.

Remember them.

This is the actual story that you are in.

Put your children in it.

If you don't, if you don't practice remembering the mighty works of God, they will be taken in by a narrative of some other mighty works, and they will learn to put their hope in those things.

And then as those things falter and fail, they will experience the sense of being crushed and destroyed and lost, wandering around the world without the cloak of a story to protect them.

God has commanded you as parents and given you this responsibility to, like a prophet, share the mighty works of God, that they might put their hope in Him.

I think one of the great things that we can do as we as we practice remembering the mighty works of God, is we is we practice believing them.

I think this is a little outside the scope of family right now, but there's this, I've noticed this sort of like way of making a friend.

There's like a new way of bonding in uh like at the park when you're standing next to other parents and stuff and you're talking.

What you used to do, or like at a coffee shop or coworker or whatever, you know, you know, the world.

You guys out what it's like out there?

Well, there's this old way of bonding, which was like uh um, oh man, did you what did you see Lost?

What do you think it is?

What do you think that island is?

And then you would you would share your different theories on what it was.

Well, the new way of bonding is to say, oh my gosh, the world's insane and stressful.

I can't, I don't know how I'm gonna make it.

That's the new way of bonding.

It's way worse than it used to be.

But that's like the way that we like, we're like, oh man, it's crazy out here, isn't it?

Can you believe all the stuff that's going on?

I just hope, you know, just trying to hang on there, just trying to hang out, hang in there with all the stuff that's going on.

And then that's and then you kind of say that to each other and you act stressed about it, and then that's how you become a buddy.

This is the new just pay attention to it.

I think it's happening.

I've just this is a I have a small sample size, this is all anecdotal, but this has been my experience.

And so I think what we ought to do is we ought to interrupt this new ordinary way of of relating.

And and instead, we should act like we have the cloak of a story on us.

And we should we should say, man, it's crazy out there.

Isn't it wild?

Man, what an adventure we're on.

I wonder what the Lord is doing.

It seems like he's doing some, it seems like nations are rising and nations are falling.

Glad they're all in his hands.

This is an incredible story that he's telling.

I wonder what great and glorious purposes he is bringing out of a story like this.

And then you act like your life is like the life of a Bible character.

And you have to teach your children that their life is probably going to be like the life of a Bible character.

The trick is that our culture tells us a fulfilling life is like the last half of an infomercial.

That's true fulfillment, that you have you have inconveniences done away with, and uh, and a life of ease and finally in full color is upon you, and your problems are gone, and you don't have to worry anymore.

That's not a Bible character life.

That's not the story we've been wrapped in the cloak of.

We've been wrapped in the cloak of a story of where we are born condemned to certain death, and then we are rescued by the greatest loving sacrifice you have ever heard of.

And we have been called up into the glory of this story, surrounded by people, cursed to certain death.

And we have the news of how they might be rescued out of it.

And we know that the one who received the curse on our behalf rules the heavens and the earth, and all authority belongs to him, and that he has promised to always be with us, and that whatever fears we might have, we know that there is that his strength and power and the deliverance that he offers us is sufficient to any problem that we might face.

And that we were made to face those problems, and that he will care for us and always protect us, and that we ought to obey him because there is goodness of life in obeying him.

This is the story that we want our children to be wrapped in.

Lastly, in telling them this, they will keep his commandments.

Our children will keep his commandments.

That's because they will see that he is good, he is loving, he cares for them, he has already made the greatest sacrifice for them while they were yet sinners.

And so his commandments for them are the path of life.

And they are full of goodness.

And so they might see this story that they've received, the commandments that they've received, and they might look back on the ordinary ways that you've passed this down to them in your home.

You know, as you gathered around your table and you read the Bible and you tiredly explained it to them, and you and they might look at those things and they might say, These are the dark sayings from of old.

I'm going to shed light on them to your grandchildren.

They might shed light on these things to your grandchildren.

You know, that you might see this as being passed down gloriously through the generations.

This is the story that you're in.

So share this story with your children.

That's what Psalm 78 is all about.

Lastly, we can't talk about being a prophet to our children without talking about being how Christ executes the office of a prophet.

And the way that Christ executes the office of a prophet is revealing to us by his word and spirit the will of God for our salvation.

Christ as a prophet says, I want to reveal to them this highest truth of God that I want them to know.

And what does he reveal in his prophetic office to us?

The will of God for our salvation.

Your children must know God desires to save you.

He wants to save you.

This is the will of God, that you would be saved and rescued into his presence for eternity.

That's what we have to share with our children.

Let's pray.

Holy Father, I pray that you would strengthen us, Lord, to open our lips that our mouths might proclaim your praise.

Lord, that we might declare your mighty works in our homes.

Lord, that we might no longer gloss over the mighty works that you have done in our lives in order to rescue us to yourself.

And that we that we might share those as gloriously as they are.

Lord, a prophet, like Jeremiah says, it's stored up in his bones like a fire.

Lord, would you set that fire in our bones?

Lord, in our role as parents, in our role as children, will we receive it with gratitude?

Lord, in our in our role as friends and neighbors, Lord, would you store this up like a fire in our bones that we cannot keep it in so that we might share these glories?

Lord, I pray that we would see people, see, we'd see children wrapped in the cloak of your story, so that they mature to godliness in you.

I pray that our our church will be marked by that.

Lord, I pray that those who are wandering around without the cloak of a story to protect them, Lord, I pray that you would equip us to proclaim the true story of the God who went to the cross so that they might be wrapped in the cloak of righteousness, Lord, in his presence.

That that might be the full protection that they need, Father.

Lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.