THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR
"Homeward Bound”
Rev.
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prca.orgDear radio friends,
Today I would like to consider
with
you the resurrection of Jesus Christ as it applies to parenting.
You might ask: “What do those two have to do with each
other? What does parenting have to do
with the resurrection of Jesus Christ—specifically with the resurrection of the
body and life everlasting through Jesus Christ?”
The answer is: they have very much to do with each
other. First of all, God created the
family to prepare us for eternity. That
is very easy to forget. Looking at your
children you might think today that, as their parent, I must prepare them for
life. Yes, that is true in itself. You need to prepare them to hold a job, to be
responsible, to plan for their education, to take care of their health. And you hope to leave them a little
something.
But God says, “If
that’s your goal, if that’s the heart of it, you aim far too low. You miss the heart of it. You must prepare your children to die well,
and how to live for eternity. That is
your task as a parent.”
It is the life in
Jesus Christ that must be your concern.
It is their future, not on earth, but in heaven, that must be your
burden. In the hedonistic, materialistic
culture in which we live, this is the great task of Christian parents—preparing
our children to live with an eternal perspective. Do your children and young people see
eternity in your eyes? When they look
into your eyes, do they see what matters to you? What is in your eyes as they look? What is revealed in your spending
patterns? What is revealed in your
interests? From you, what do they learn
that life is all about?
Secondly, we must
remember that, as parents, we bring forth children for eternity for God’s
house. That needs to sink in. Even the world sees that God has made
parents, especially mothers, as the ones who set the goal for their children. That was true, you remember, of Moses. The unextinguishable
flame of eternal life and a resolve to live as a pilgrim on the earth was
kindled in Moses in his first years of life, by the time he was three or four,
by his mother. By God, yes, I know. But the means were his mother, Jochebed, in a mud-thatched hut,
so that when Moses was forty years old he said to his step-father Pharaoh, “I
am homeward bound. I’m going to take up
a place with slaves. I’m going to leave
a palace and a throne for affliction and for reproach, because my heart is set
on the hope of glory in Jesus Christ.
There are greater riches with Christ than anything here in
And Pharaoh became
angry. There was the wrath of the
king. Pharaoh said, “What? All I worked for for
you, the power, the wealth, the influence.
And now you’re going to throw it all away? What’s the matter with you?”
Nevertheless, Moses
set his hope upon heaven. And it was his
mother whom God used to set his eyes upon the true riches of Jesus Christ.
Now do you see the
connection? Do you see the connection
between, on the one hand, believing in Jesus Christ the risen Lord, in the
resurrection of our body, in the life everlasting, and, on the other, our
calling as parents? It speaks to us.
The resurrection of
Jesus Christ does not speak simply to those who are at death’s door or are in
rest homes or are aged. It speaks to
us. It speaks to parents. It speaks to young people. The resurrection of Jesus Christ says, “This
is direction. This is guidance. This is life.
You are only living today if your eye and your heart are set upon
eternal life. That is life. You must live homeward bound.”
This present life,
according to the Scriptures, and by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, is not
the end. It is not the end-all. It is the preparation for a better life. This is our Christian faith. II Cor-inthians
5:1, “For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved,
we have a building of God, an house not made with
hands, eternal in the heavens.” When I
die it is not the end. It is the
beginning of a better life. Now we are
in a tent. Then we shall be in a
heavenly building. The important life is
the life that is to come.
This shows how poor
the life of millions is today, how poor you are if this life is all that you
have and all that you have pinned your hopes upon. This life, you say, is all there is? Then it makes sense that the world, apart
from Jesus Christ, is in a frenzy. They have to do it now; they have to have it
now; and they need to spend it now!
Then mothers will say to daughters at an ever-earlier age, “You need to
have romance now. You need to have a
boyfriend now.” And the world will say
to young people, “You need to spend now and have a credit card now and be in
debt now.” And then the world will say
to middle-aged people, “Your life is slipping away. You need to leave your husband or wife if
you’re not happy. You need to follow
your dreams now. You need to do
it now.” If you get caught up with the
“now—you have to have it now,” you are denying faith in Jesus Christ. For this life is not all there
is. It is not the end-all. But life is Jesus. It is the fullness of His presence.
That is what we believe
(Heb. 11:1),
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the
evidence of things not seen.” The life
that is ahead is the better life.
Paul says in
Philippians 1:23, 24:
“For I am in a
strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is
far better: nevertheless to abide in the
flesh is more
needful for you.” This present life,
make no mistake, is good for us as Christians (“for to me to live is
Christ”). This present life is not to be
despised or wasted. It is to be used and
to be enjoyed. But the life that is
ahead is better, much better. We do not
despise the present life. We believe
that it is necessary and valuable. It is
preparation for the life that is to come.
We do not think little about marriage or about rearing children or about
earthly things. All of these things
matter, yes. But the life that is ahead is
better. It is better to be with
Christ. It is better to be clothed upon
with His life.
So we read in
Ecclesiastes 7:1:
“A good name is better
than precious ointment; and the day of death than the day of one’s birth.” Solomon says that the day of one’s death is
better than the day of his birth. You
say, “How can that be? I believe God’s
Word, but that is hard for me to understand.”
You say, “I was present at the birth of my children. I remember the joy and the joy of having
these children. And you are saying that
if suddenly, in the middle of the night, a four-year-old is taken to the
hospital and dies, or a husband of forty years dies, or, perhaps a young person
dies, you say that is better?” And we
answer, “Well, of course, apart from Jesus Christ it is not better. Apart from Jesus Christ, the day of one’s
birth and the day of one’s death are bad days. Apart from Jesus Christ, it is all bad. But, yes, in Jesus Christ, the day of one’s
death is better than one’s birth.
Because, you see,
first of all, this life now is attended with the misery of our sin. And birth marks our entrance into all misery,
whereas our death marks our entrance into the fullness of eternal joy. Yes, this present life is good in
Christ. And we have eternal life and
faith in Jesus Christ now. Christ in us,
says the apostle, is the hope of glory.
But now we live in our sinful flesh.
We live with woe and toil. We
live with unrelenting struggle against sin.
So we bring up our
children in the midst of this world to be soldiers of the cross and to fight
their sin. That is their enemy. Are you making your little boys and girls
good soldiers of the cross of Jesus Christ?
But there is
another reason why death for the Christian is better. That is because in death we are brought into
full communion with God. We enter into
Father’s house of many mansions. And the
Bible says to us that there is something about seeing God’s face that is so indescribably
worth it. We read, “As for me, I will
behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness”
(Ps. 17:15).
The apostle says, “Now we see through a
glass, darkly; but then face to face” (I Cor.
13:12).
At the moment a
Christian dies, his soul is taken to Jesus Christ, our Head and our
Savior. And the moment we stand before
Jesus we understand, we are perfectly satisfied. Jesus said to the thief on the cross, “Verily
I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise”
(Luke 23:43).
He held out that
hope, being more than enough comfort to overcome all the pain and misery in his
soul.
So, parents, we
must bring up our children. And we must
sometimes take them to a funeral of a loved one, and stand before a grave and a
pile of dirt and a coffin. And that little
child will ask you, “Where is he? Where
is Grandma? Where is Grandpa?” They look up into your eyes and they see
tears. But they must also see in our
eyes the sparkle of light and hope. And
you tell them that the life of the soul is what matters today. You tell your little girl that what really
matters is not the color of her hair or how pretty she is or the beautiful
things that she can wear. But the most
beautiful thing must be her heart. And
that her heart must be right with God, in the forgiveness of sins. You tell her that beauty is not something in
a cosmetic case, it is not something on a rack at Nord-strom’s,
or obtained at Valley Fitness, but it is in Jesus Christ. And then you tell them that Jesus Christ has
a complete victory, and He is going to take the body of our dear departed, and
our own bodies, and will raise them and will make those bodies like unto His
most glorious body. You say that one day
the Spirit of Jesus Christ is going to come and blow upon cemeteries and upon
ocean bottoms and open fields, and dead bones are going to live again in the
new creation of God forever and ever with Jesus Christ.
And then, parents,
you begin to tell your children about their bodies—that their bodies are
temples of God, and that their bodies have been created to praise God, and are
not for fornication or drugs. You teach
them about a life that is better and sure, which is to come. You teach them to live for heaven.
Is your family
homeward bound? Is your marriage on
track? Are you and your children living
for the better life? Then you will be
ready to die. And to be ready to die
means that you are living in Christ now.
As young people, we
have the tendency to think that our future is all right and that our earthly
life, at least until we get to be forty-fifty-sixty is invincible and
indestructible. And we can be shocked
when a friend of our age dies or is diagnosed with a fatal disease. It is always someone else who is going to be
diagnosed with cancer, with Lou Gehrig’s disease,
with the sudden car accident. That
happens to other people. I’m
invincible. I’m immune. It will not happen to me.
But the Bible says
to you today, “How do you know that?” We
must live daily by faith in Jesus Christ, trusting His righteousness and
trusting Christ as our full acceptance with God. Where is your heart today? At the moment of death it must be fixed upon
the cross of Jesus Christ. And you must
be able to understand that at the moment of death you go to heaven not because
you are a good person, but because God unleashed the fury of His anger against
your sin upon His dear Son Jesus Christ.
And believing that,
you will live in that truth and you will possess a joy in your heart in Jesus
Christ. You will have confidence.
But then, with this
before us as parents with our children, we will know how to view earthly things
and we will know how to live toward earthly things. We will respect them. We will care for them as the stewards of
God. But we will understand that the
earthly things cannot satisfy. We life in a consumer-culture. Advertising relentlessly bombards us with
this message: “Things give you pleasure
and you must have them right now.”
Future costs must be set aside for personal, present gratification. We live in a society of overwhelming
consumer-debt, national debt, credit cards.
Evidently the society believes there will be no final accounting. They believe that all payments will be
deferred. That is not true. Death comes.
You do not postpone it.
How are we raising
our children? Jesus Christ said, “Take
heed. A man’s life does not consist in
the abundance of the things that he possesses, but in being rich toward God.”
So now, what does
life consist in? What really makes you
happy as a young person? What is
life? Clothes? Spending?
Good times? Parties? CDs? Why do you want to have a job? To make money to throw
around? Do you believe that
clothes make the man?
You understand that
living for heaven makes all the difference about how you are going to live and
how you are going to view earthly things.
Then you say, “Why do I have a job?
Because I want to serve my Jesus and I want to serve Him
faithfully. At the heart of this job as
a father is that I want to provide for the things of the
Father and mothers,
you must not buy into the world’s economy.
You must not sell off your spiritual assets. There are many men who are listening, I
trust, who are in business. You would
recognize a smooth sail in earthly things.
Well, there is none so smooth as the
devil. And he says to you today, “Give
me just a small amount of your spiritual capital and I will give you the
world. Give me just a few hours of work
on Sunday and I will make you successful.
Give me a few extra hours so that it intrudes into your supper hour and
I will give you hand and fist of all the things of this world.”
But now let me tell
you something that the devil is not telling you. This is what you are going to get if you go
for his sale. You are going to get many
cares. You are going to get many
worries. If you set your hearts on the things
that are below, you are going to see your marriage broken up and you are going
to have children who have not learned the one crucial lesson of being a
Christian. That crucial lesson is: sacrifice.
You will end up like
Let us live for
eternal life. We, who belong to Jesus
Christ the risen and exalted Savior, let us live for eternal life. Then we will live in joy and in hope, our
hope that never makes us ashamed. And
then we will have longing. In our
families, and in our life, and in our marriages, and in all that we do, we will
say to each other: “I want to go
home. I am very eager for Jesus to come
back. I love Him. I love His people too. I want to be where Jesus is.”
Do you not? Do you not, parents,
want to be where Jesus is? Do you not
want to go home? Then, with your
children, live your life homeward bound.
Let us pray.
Father, we thank
Thee for the precious Word of God. We
ask again that Thou wilt seal it to our hearts by the Holy Spirit, so that we
may live out of a risen Savior, that we may live with our eye upon life
eternal, the hope that shall never make us ashamed. We pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Last modified: 02-may-2007