“Just a note: if you haven’t read my previous post, then read that one first!

I wanted to provide some application for my previous post “Elijah: Man of Death and Resurrection”. Elijah represented Israel. He is a picture on legs of what God was doing with the nation of Israel as a whole. I think that maybe all the prophets in Scripture are pictures of Israel, or of Israel’s king. (Ezekiel really demonstrated this relationship). So since Elijah was a picture of Israel’s deadness because of their sins and idolatry, he was also a living testimony of God’s recreating and resurrecting them. So how does this apply to us?

Well, it’s important to know what Scripture is trying to teach us, and not just try to come up with little morals that we can apply to our day-to-day lives. The point of 1 Kings 17 when Elijah is fed by the ravens is not just that if we are ever in dire straights, God will provide for us. God has indeed promised to provide for us, and 1 Kings is a good reminder of that, but there is a bigger picture going on too. And in order to see the bigger picture, we must know how to read our Bibles. For example, learning what certain numbers mean in Scripture (like I mentioned below), offer us hints as to the big picture. And it is from these hints that we can accurately apply God’s word to our lives.

Since Elijah is so obviously a shadow of Jesus Christ, we can look to Elijah’s role, and to Jesus Christ’s role as prophet, for one of our applications. (I’m sure there are others, but this is the one I can see). As our Prophet, Jesus Christ represents us (the new Israel) in our sins and idolatry. And He becomes THE picture of death and resurrection, just like Elijah demonstrated for the nation of Israel. Furthermore, being in Christ and in His death and resurrection, I know that He takes each and every one of my daily deaths, and will bring them to fruitful resurrection. So we die daily…in hope…of resurrection and recreation! Now that is GOOD NEWS that I can hang my hat on TODAY!”

I have been studying 1 Kings lately, and have discovered some interesting things. I thought I would share some of those findings with you! The first is about Elijah, and after studying him more, I am so glad we named our first son after him. One of the things I noticed about Elijah is that he is a walking picture of death and resurrection, which means that he himself is a shadow of Christ. Nowhere do we get a better picture of this than in 1 Kings 17 + 18.

First, we see Elijah pronouncing drought upon Israel (death), and then three years later (in chapter 18) Elijah prays, and it rains (resurrection). By the way, most of the time in Scripture, when you read the number 3, you can think “death and resurrection”, as seen in Christ being in the grave for 3 days, and resurrecting on the third. Then, after Elijah announces drought, he goes to the brook Cherith where the ravens provide food for him. While there, the brook dries up that he was drinking from (death), so God tells him to go stay with a widow and God will provide sustenance for him there (resurrection). So Elijah finds the widow, who is making preparations for a last meal with her son before they die of starvation (death), but Elijah causes the pot of oil and the bowl of flour to not be exhausted (resurrection). Then, the son of the woman becomes sick and dies (death). Elijah stretches himself upon the boy THREE times, and comes back to life (obvious resurrection).

Going now into chapter 18 where we have the story of Elijah having a competition with the prophets of Baal. The prophets of Baal call upon their god to send fire three distinct times, verses 26, 28, and 29 (death). Then its Elijah’s turn. He rebuilds the altar of the Lord which had been torn down using twelve stones (this is a picture of Israel being rebuilt). Then, he has them pour four pitchers of water on the altar THREE times. This altar is a picture of Israel being dead in their sins and idolatry. 4 pitchers of water three times equals twelve, the same number of the tribes of Israel. In verse 37, Elijah prays, “Answer me, O Lord, answer men, that this people may know that You, O Lord, are God, AND THAT YOU HAVE TURNED THEIR HEART BACK AGAIN.”. This is an obvious picture of Israel being recreated (I’ll explain more in a little bit). Fire falls from heaven and consumes the sacrifice and altar (resurrection). God has restored fellowship with His people. Then, Elijah goes to the top of Mt. Carmel, where he crouches down. He sends his servant SEVEN times to go look toward the sea to see if there are any rain clouds coming. On the SEVENTH time, he finally sees a cloud, and then heavy showers fall upon Israel after THREE years of drought (resurrection). Most of the time in Scripture when you see the number 7, it refers to recreation. This is yet another picture of Israel being recreated.

Prov. 22:6

Too often this verse is taken to mean something like:

Spank my child like a perfectionist machine.. Make him eat all his vegetables and organics.. Make him comb his hair and sit in church quietly..   Discipline him in reformed manners and ways and when he’s old he won’t depart.  Put him through a really hard classical Christian education.  That’ll do it.

Instead, I think we must read the verse like this:

Give ‘em the good life.  Show ‘em heaven.  Show them tenderness.  Yes, bring the sting of spanking regularly and consistently.  Hold them to a higher standard.  Expect strict manners but in a spirit of humility from the heart.  Shepherd them through a robust Christian education.  Teach them to embrace hard things.  How?  By example.

But, train them up in the way they should go…  Laughter.  Family fun.  Prayer with them.  Stories.  Feasting.  Play.  Time with dad.  Time with mom.  Dates.  Discussing movies watched together.  Vacations.  Teaching them diligently from the Word to understand Him and the world.

They will not depart from a home like this.

And if God requires that church officers have these kind of children-faithful and believing (from the heart, we can deduce) then it is possible.  Not just possible but commanded and blessed by His grace.

We need help.. And God will give it.  Ask.  believe.  Obey.

James calls the law the perfect law of liberty. Obedience makes for freedom.

And so, instead of the simple message that we need to exert ourselves in greater diligence we get lost trying to step-toe around what we really need to hear.

Teaching children for instance.. As a man with five children I know how hard it is to teach them something sometimes. Instead of doing the harder thing, the more loving thing of giving each child the attention they need I am tempted to a herd mentality. I am tempted to a zone-defense reactionism instead of being a more pro-active father. For example, I might think that my son will learn how to memorize Scripture or learn to sing if he just comes along for the ride as I teach all my children as a group. But no, nothing can replace the individual attention that each child needs. Group devotions are wonderful but not as a replacement for personal interaction with a child.

I need to work harder. I think we all need to work harder. Sometimes the answer is more simple than we want it to be.

And as we do this from being clothed in God’s grace ourselves, we will discover that our exertion is duty, love, and yes, grace to us and to the child.

“Life is bigger
It’s bigger than you
And you are not me
The lengths that I will go to
The distance in your eyes
Oh no I’ve said too much
I set it up

That’s me in the corner
That’s me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
Trying to keep up with you
And I don’t know if I can do it
Oh no I’ve said too much
I haven’t said enough
I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try

Every whisper
Of every waking hour I’m
Choosing my confessions
Trying to keep an eye on you
Like a hurt lost and blinded fool
Oh no I’ve said too much
I set it up

Consider this
The hint of the century
Consider this
The slip that brought me
To my knees failed
What if all these fantasies
Come flailing around
Now I’ve said too much
I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try

But that was just a dream
That was just a dream”

I have always found this song chilling. It is well-written, poetic and very sad. Regardless of his particular aim, the song seems plain that it is a memoir of failed parenting in my mind. It stands as a great warning to those parents that lose their children’s religion.

I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try

But that was just a dream…

May our children’s dreams be shaped by the reality of our love for them, not of father hunger.

Okay Mr. and Ms. Fancy Pants..

I love ya, and I gotta tell you something.

You need to listen and honor your parents instruction.  Your parents don’t do everything right and this tempts you to not trust in their words in other areas, I know.  But can I ask you something?  Will you be different than the typical run-of-the-mill teenager who thinks his parents don’t get it and he does?  This is old.  Most teenagers do this only to find out when they become parents of teenagers themselves that they see their teens treating them like they are unenlightened.  

Come on.  It is a common lie that circulates around every young person that you need to disobey because they don’t really understand what I’m going through.  Don’t fall for such easy traps.

“But my parents have issues!”  Listen, we all have issues.  Your God and Savior is the Lord Jesus Christ and no man.  You will see with more wisdom later, but for now, take their word to heart and obey, cheerfully.  The more you do this, the faster wisdom will come to you.

Be different.  You will realize later and in the present (if you listen and obey) that your parents are right about FAR MORE than you realize.  It is so easy to throw off something that an authority figure says because you see a deficiency in a certain area.

Be different.

Be a wise young man and woman.

“Even a child is known by his deeds, Whether what he does is pure and right.”  Prov. 20:11

What does a Christian and classical education have to do with it?  Of course for a mom and dad to be wonderful parents they don’t have to teach in the Christian classical tradition but it helps to fill out the questions and the identity of the teenagers view of the world.  As we’ve talked about already, young people are always interpreting life around them.  They will get answers one way or another.  It may come from a home that provides articulate and well-read views towards history and its meaning for life today (i.e. a classical ed.) or it may come from the cheesy and lame pop-culture teachers that flood your teenagers head every day.  Did you catch that?  Young people today are absolutely flooded with the gurus of pop-culture.  We have to have the stuff to counter all the flashy computer technology in the movies.  

The three sacraments in our culture: movies, music, and TV are persuasive in seducing young people to stupidity.  We can’t just throw Bible verses at them nor can we always be quoting from our own limited life experience.  And it’s not always helpful to always be citing 17th Century authors to them.  

No.  We need to swim with them through pop-culture dissecting it scrupulously.  We must study to show ourselves approved to God and to our children.  The effect should look something like lining up all the stupid heads of pop-culture and rhetorically and in love, cut off all their heads by the penetrating analysis of their foolishness with the well-developed tools of cultural engagement.  What are these tools and weapons?

At the least, the Bible oozing out of your pores and careful study of what we know to be biblical about the distinctives in our denomination and in a Christian and classical education.  What else but a great classical ed. can provide for a teenager the difference between a good story and a ridiculous one?  What else can lay the foundation for the wisdom to know the difference between Eminem and Bach?  And if you don’t know who Eminem is, then you should familiarize yourself by listening to some of his music on itunes. (!)

It just doesn’t do to tell a kiddo, “Oh, that’s bad, very evil stuff.”  You have to show why.  And we’re all challenged along the way.

“I am convinced that we miss these dynamic moments (to instruct) because we don’t know what to talk about.  Our Christianity often becomes fuzzier the closer it gets to real-life, everyday experience.  So we clumsily throw out-of-context Bible passages at our children in the hope that they will somehow motivate them to do what is right.”

Let me say that we have much to be grateful for at this point.  We find ourselves in a church community and denomination that is both skilled and passionate about practical Christian living.  We have a cultural inheritance in our own denomination that is oriented to live the Christian life with grace and beauty.  Can I remind everyone that there is an absolute gold mine of resources on many things under the sun over at Canon Press and the community at Moscow, ID?  Take a trip with your family, go to a conference or just take an afternoon on a weekday that you have off to peruse through the audio materials at Canon.  They have so much good stuff there on the family, theological topics, history resources and many, many other things.

Our very theology around here informs us to take dominion and to bring in the kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.  We’ll never run out of things to talk about and explore with our children if we winsomely lead them to sort out obeying Jesus accurately in *anything* that they may find themselves doing.  In the areas I will list below lies some of the substance behind the culture that we are raising our children in.  Study along with me in the distinctives we have in our theological tradition:

1)  Covenant theology –One of the most central guiding metaphors for studying Scripture is the foundation of God being a gracious God who establishes and maintains relationship through promises.  This is crucial.  This was the backbone for all Jewish exegesis.  It is about identity.  It is about “the covenant” always including believers and their children.  It is about history.  The covenant is the only key that properly untangles the confusing discussions about the law and the gospel in the New Test.  So, wherever we may find ourselves in Scripture we don’t interpret it as though we are without a unifying system to interpret –and that is the covenant, well understood and developed of course.  Each passage of the Bible does not stand alone, it is not a person with a one-track mind.  The Bible is literature.  The Bible is history.  The Bible is symbols and types.  In other words, the Bible is Jewish, highly symbolic and highly poetic.  All this and more is wrapped up in the term “covenant theology.”  It is the discipline of doing theology the way the apostles did, through telling God’s story of redemption.  Covenantal theology is part and parcel of what it means to do faithful theology in any area because the concept of covenant is so interlaced in the Bible.  Therefore, for something to be scriptural or biblical, it must have this covenantal flavor and smell about it.  This is foundational stuff, that’s why I have it #1. 

2)  Calvinistic soteriology–We have a beautiful heritage in this.  It is great peace and ballast to know that God is sovereign over all things.  Covenantal, (that is, grounded in Scripture and not rationalistic/scholastic Calvinism which is hyper-calvinism)  and biblically balanced “Calvinism” gives wonderful teaching on eternal security and the doctrine of God’s providence through evil.  We have covered this thoroughly at Christ Church.

3)  Paedocommunion–We stand unique in the reformed world at this point.  The belief that baptized children are not only welcome to the Table but ought to come to the Table is rare in our baptistic culture.  We best know what we’re talking about when asked.

4) covenantal theonomy–The only real law out there to govern all things is the law of God–understood in this the New Covenant and carefully applied through a mature understanding of the state and the church.  We are a long way from this as a society.  But we need to study these things carefully so that we can teach our children and grandchildren how to really understand a biblical form of government and economics.  It is in this arena that Christians are so weak in impacting this country and in this our time of history.  This was not always the case.

5) Postmillennialism–Christ is the King of the earth now.  He will return after the world is enveloped and drenched with the gospel.  Much of the prophetic material in the New Test. concerns the ending of the old world–before destruction of apostate Jewish nation.

6) Presuppositional apologetics—the starting ground for all metaphysics, epistemology and philosophical debate is the revelation of God in His Word.  God’s Word is the foundation for all apologetic endeavors.

So why are these expounded distinctives of most of the Confederation of Reformed Evangelical Churches listed?  See Parenting Teens Part VII.

“What does it mean to say that children think?  It means that children will seek to make sense out of life.  They will try to organize, interpret, and explain the things that go on around them and inside of them.  Children are incessant interpreters, and they respond to life not on the basis of facts, but on the basis of the sense they have made out of those facts.”

Parents, we are the interpreters!  We must grow in skill in taking every thought captive under Christ and learning and growing ourselves so that we may teach our children how to view the breadth of God’s world with wisdom.