THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR"Out of the Mouths of Babes"Rev. Carl Haak(e-mail: Rev. Carl Haak) September 11, 2005; No. 3271
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Dear
radio friends,
Today the message that we hear is taken from God’s Word in
Psalm 8:2.
Please
open your Bibles and read what is found there: “Out
of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies,
that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.”
Psalm 8
is a beautiful psalm on
the glory of God as it is seen in His creation and, specifically, in the creation of man. David, the author of the psalm, senses that his
subject is beyond him; his task of expressing God’s glory is completely beyond his
abilities. So he begins by uttering a note of
exclamation: “O Lord our Lord, how
excellent is thy name in all the earth!” The
word “excellent” means “surpassingly great, superb, and stupendous.” David means to say that the creation cannot
adequately express God’s glory. He
begins to think of the immensity of the stars: “When
I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast
ordained,” he says that even that cannot exhaust the glory of the Maker. Although the universe expresses God’s
majesty, power, and infinity, yet God stands above it all, for David goes on to say,
“For thou hast set thy glory above the heavens” (v. 1). You can measure, if you want, the wonder of the
stars in the distance and the miles and the light years, but you cannot come up to the
glory of God. Even the stars cannot praise
Him adequately.
Then it is as if David, under
the inspiration of the Spirit, is pondering. Where
shall I find something that expresses God’s glory in somewhat an adequate manner? Will it be an angelic chorus? How about a flowing mountain stream? Singing birds?
What would it be? And the Holy Spirit
leads him to see a way that God has ordained to show His glory — a way that God has
picked out to reveal His grace, love, and beauty. He
writes: “Out of the mouth of babes and
sucklings hast thou ordained strength [or praise].”
The lips of children. When infants,
little children, speak the name of God, speak the name of Jesus; when they sing from their
hearts — this, says David, is a great revelation of the glory of God.
Let that sink in! The surpassing excellence of God, His glory and
beauty, is seen in infants, in the children of believers, praising God with their mouth.
Jesus thought so too. You might remember that in the last week of His
earthly ministry He quoted this particular verse to the scribes and Pharisees, who were
scowling and angry and pulling their hair out as the children were running through their
temple crying out, “Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord!” They were talking about Jesus. The little children had heard their parents saying
that on Palm Sunday. And they were marching
through the temple praising Jesus Christ, the Son of God:
“Hosanna to the Son of David.” Jesus
stood by and smiled. The Pharisees were
enraged. They said to Him: “Make them stop.” And He said, “Have ye never read the
Scriptures? Out of the mouth of babes and
sucklings hast thou ordained praise because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the
enemy and the avenger.” When infant
children of God praise God, Jesus said, then something of the glory of God is being
displayed — something of His grace.
You can always tell, you know,
when something praises God. The enemies of
God get very angry, as the scribes and Pharisees were furious. God’s praises hurts their ears. God says that His purpose with the children of
believers (covenant children) is that from their mouth they might praise Him and that this
is ordained of Him to be a marvelous display of His majesty, power, and glory — even
such a display that surpasses the testimony of the stars and of the creation itself.
God has ordained strength, we
read, or better, praise, to come out of the lips of children. The word means “to praise,” and thus
“to be strong.” Praise means to
speak well of someone, to tell how good he is, to extol.
There is, of course, one who is worthy of praise — God! “Thou art worthy of all praise,” we say
and the Scriptures teach. There is one who is
good. There is one who does well. There is one who is to be lifted up high, to be
extolled. “Praise ye the Lord! Praise is comely for his saints. I will praise the Lord with my whole being,”
says the psalmist. Praise means that you
know God as God. It means that He stands
before you, by faith, through the Scriptures, in all of His power, glory, holiness,
goodness, love, mercy, and grace. It means
that you have a correct estimate of God. You
say, “God is great, God is wonderful, God is awesome, God is glorious.” And you are humbled and lost in the dust before
the God who is so glorious.
God has ordained that such
praise come out of the mouth of children. When
believing children are taught about God, and the Holy Spirit sews that into the lining of
a new heart, then they praise God. And God
says that He delights in the praise that comes out of the mouth of babes and sucklings.
That is a word to us as parents,
and that is a word to us as children. God has
ordained praise out of the mouth of children. He
has determined from all eternity in His strong will, His sovereign determination, His
all-ruling purpose for all things, that He will glorify Himself through the lips of
children. When out of the lips of believing
children there come songs of praise, memory verses, prayers — when we go to a
kindergarten program, when, in your home, your little boys and girls play church and they
sing the songs they hear in church and they fold their hands, when a first grader learns
how to read and he begins to read the Bible at the family table — God says that He
has ordained this. Do not say that it is just
cute. Do not say, “Well, the teachers
planned a nice program, didn’t they?” And
much less, do not be cynical. Do not say,
“They don’t mean a word of it. They
can’t understand what they are saying. They’re
just being imitators, that’s all. And
you, radio pastor Haak, you are just a sentimental person.” Do not say that.
I am reading to you God’s Word. If
you have an objection, you will have to bring the objection to God. He says that He ordained the praise. He planned it.
He brought it to pass. Oh, He used
instrumentality. But He did it.
That means that He opens the
hearts of covenant children in their early infancy with the miracle of rebirth, the
miracle of the life of Jesus within them. When
He does that, parents, remember that He begins a warfare within your child, a warfare that
they wage against their flesh, against their sin. So,
yes, they sin. They scream, they argue, they
fight, they throw a temper-tantrum. They are
just like you and me. But they are,
believing parent, by God’s grace, just like you!
The great God in Jesus Christ has been revealed to their hearts. When they raise their hand in catechism or in
school and they want to give the answer, and when they say their verse and when they pray
and when they talk about God and when they sing, God has ordained, God has brought to pass
praises from the lips of children. God has
done this, not we; not for our honor. But God
has done this.
God has ordained praise to come
out of their mouth. Let us consider that
carefully. That means that they are to talk
and to sing the praises of God. That means
that the children of the covenant, children of believing parents, are to be skilled in
spiritual talk. By nature we are dumb. We have nothing to say about God’s glory. We can talk about the weather. We have our opinion about sports and how the coach
ought to run the team. Men can tell you how drunk they were Friday night. They can publish a whole magazine about their
lust. But they are dumb, they have nothing to
say, about the God of heaven and earth.
God says that out of the mouth
of covenant children, children of believing parents, there will come forth a spiritual
talk. Their language will include God’s
wonders. They are able to talk about sin and
forgiveness. They are able to talk about
Christ and the church. You will find them,
says God, talking about that. Is that so? God says that will be so. By the power of the spiritual rebirth, God will
create in them the image of His Son Jesus Christ. He
will give them not just to form syllables and say, “Mama, Daddy.” He will form, by grace, the syllables of His
praise within their hearts.
Is that what our children are
saying? They say that by learning it from
their parents. That is how God works it. So you place your little ones on your lap. You live with your little ones in the house as
husband and wife. How you talk to your wife,
husbands; how you talk to your husband, wife, is teaching your children how to use their
lips in the praise of God.
Now I could ask the children and
the older boys and girls (the fourth and fifth graders) and the teenagers: “Is it normal, is it comfortable for you to
express your faith, to talk spiritual talk, to talk about God, His grace and love, your
sins and struggles? Is that normal for you? Are you comfortable to do that? You should be comfortable to do that. If you are not, and if you cannot do that in high
school, and if you do not do that in high school, yes, there is something wrong.” What’s wrong?
Today I would like to address
that to you parents who are listening in, especially when I talk to the young people (you
are listening very carefully). And I would
like to say to us as parents, “Let us not set the bar for them to jump higher than
what we jump.” “What do you
mean,” you say to me? Let us remember
that a lack of spirituality in our young people is a reflection of a lack of spirituality
in the parent. Let us beware, let us listen
to the Scriptures when they warn us that materialism — living our life in the pursuit
of things, being concerned about what others have and we should have more, being concerned
about how we look and spending hours and hours before the mirror — materialism will
choke praise.
The psalmist says in
Psalm 144:11
that he desires to be separated from the children of the strangers whose mouths
speak vanity (that is, emptiness — there is no substance in what they have to say
because their hearts, and the hearts of their parents, are set only on possessions, on
this life). What matters to you as a parent? What do you want your children to have? Possessions?
Fame? Career? Jesus says that all of these things choke praise.
Father, if someone would take
his strong hands right now and put them around the throat of your little girl, would you
not do something if he tried to choke her? If
you and I live our life for the things of this life, then God says those are strong hands
around the throat of your children choking the song of praise.
Materialism will choke praise. Hypocrisy will mute God’s praise. If they see that we are not consistent in our
spiritual life, if they see that we talk one way around church people and another way when
we are not around church people, when we are one way in public and another way at home,
then we are muting our children. Then they
become cynical. Then instead of praising God
they sneer. Then instead of extolling God
they scoff at spiritual things.
God has ordained praise from the
lips of believing children. Why has He done
this? The psalmist says, “because of
thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.” This is in harmony with God’s method —
God’s strategy of how He will defeat His enemies. Why
hath God ordained that especially out of the mouth of little children He will bring forth
glorious praise to Himself? Because
God’s method is to use that which men consider the weakest as the instrument whereby
He shall glorify Himself and His Son Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul gives this general policy of God, this strategy of God, in
I Corinthians 1,
when he tells us that not many mighty after the flesh have been called to Jesus Christ;
that it is God’s purpose to bring to naught the things that are through the things
that are not; that no flesh should glory in His presence.
God, says the apostle, has committed Himself to a course of action in dealing with
His enemies. That course of action is this: He shall bring them to naught, He shall bring them
down through the instrumentality of what they consider to be weakness.
How will God silence the enemy
and the avenger? How will He shut them up? For the enemy of God and the avenger are ever
boasting, they are ever jeering against Him. They
are ever filling the air with their shouts against God.
They are ever polluting the air and polluting the sound waves. And they are forever saying, “We are mighty
and God is nothing.” How will God
silence them?
By the mouth of a little boy and
a little girl. Oh yes, professors of Reformed
theology and preachers of the Reformed, biblical faith, He uses you. But God says it delights Him especially to use a
voice of a little boy to silence His enemy and the avenger.
The enemies of God are many. Leading those enemies is Satan, and his purpose is
to rob God of His glory. He wants the praise
for himself. He is after revenge. God is going to still, we read, the enemy and the
avenger. The devil wants to pay God back. He thinks something was his and that God took it
from him. When God, in justice, cast him out
of heaven and threw him down from his high and lofty place as Lucifer, son of the morning,
and damned him to hell, he believes that he was done wrong.
And he wants to get God back. He does
not want God to be praised. Oh, praise hurts
his ears. It gives him pain. It shoots through his skull. He cannot stand to hear praise of God.
The devil is a mighty enemy. He says, “I’ll stop the sound of praise. I’ll tempt, I’ll destroy, God’s
church. I’ll instill false doctrine
into the church. I’ll destroy this
church.” And God says, “I’ll
defeat him.” How? By little children.
“I’m going to defeat him in church, in the worship of the church.”
Now listen very carefully. Do not take your two- three- four-year old
children out of the church, off by themselves into another room, to color while there are
worship services going on. Do not do that. You are working contrary to God’s very
purpose. We read in the Scripture that God
has ordained praise out of the mouth of children. When
on earth is God praised? In the worship
service. How has God ordained that He be
praised? By the lips of children. Now add it together. That means that little children are to be there. The enemy boasts.
The devil boasts. He says, “the
children, the young people, are mine. Religion
is for old people. Religion is a crutch for
the aged. But the beginning of life, the seed
of life, is mine,” he says. “The
flower of life, the teenage years are mine.”
But God silences him with the
lips of children, with young people paying attention to sermons, with young people opening
their mouths to sing of what lives in their heart — the praises of God. This is the strength of the church. The strength of the church is to be found in our
children and in our young people. The
strength of the church is there. You watch
the mega-churches and the camera is scanning the audience.
Few, if any, children. By the
wonderful love of God alone, attend a church wherein almost every row has children, lots
of children. Maybe they are writing notes. They are being taught to sit still. They are singing.
And the devil quakes!
God ordains praise when the
church worships and the children are present singing His praises. God ordains praise when they confess the name of
God in your home. God ordains praise in the
Christian school when children, little children, boys and girls and teenagers, confess His
name. When they believe in creation in six
twenty-four days God ordains praise for Himself.
Let us take this Word of God to
us today. Let us apply it to our hearts. Let us take heed to ourselves as parents. What comes out of your mouth as a parent? God-dishonoring music? Blasphemy? Cursing
and swearing? The four-letter word? What kind of conduct do you hold before your
children? Do you argue and fight in front of
your children? What is heard in your home
— the TV all night?
Beloved in the Lord, let us take
ourselves to the cross. Let us take ourselves
to the Scriptures. Let us as parents see our
place and our calling. Let us sing
(personally). Let us speak (personally). Let us know (personally) the mighty praises of
God. Then, as we live before our children,
let us say, “Walk as I walk, do what I do, live as I live.”
Now let us go back to the start. Where shall we find an example worthy of
God’s glory? Shall we look to the stars? God says, “Listen to little children when
they sing songs and when they pray.” Angels
in heaven are silent. Satan is disgusted and
angry. And God is glorified when our children
praise Him. May it ever be so.
Let us pray.