Catechisms as Teaching Tool

February 7, 2011 in Bible - OT - Psalms, Children, Ecclesiology, Meditations

Psalm 78:5-8 (NKJV)
5 For He established a testimony in Jacob, And appointed a law in Israel, Which He commanded our fathers, That they should make them known to their children; 6 That the generation to come might know them, The children who would be born, That they may arise and declare them to their children, 7 That they may set their hope in God, And not forget the works of God, But keep His commandments; 8 And may not be like their fathers, A stubborn and rebellious generation, A generation that did not set its heart aright, And whose spirit was not faithful to God.

Last week we remarked that one of the lessons which the fathers of Israel are to teach the people of God is the necessity of instruction. Fathers are to teach their children – and one of the tools that our fathers have handed down to us to accomplish this task is the catechism – a question and answer format that summarizes some of the most essential teachings of Scripture.

Today we are reminded that the function of these catechisms, the function of this instruction, is not first and foremost to fill the minds of our children with facts. Knowing what Scripture teaches is important, but this knowledge is not intended to exist as a repository of data; it is to move them, to touch them, to transform them by the grace of God. Notice what the psalmist declares:
[We teach] That the generation to come might know them [here is the knowledge level – but note it doesn’t stay here], The children who would be born, That they may arise and declare them to their children, That they may set their hope in God, And not forget the works of God, But keep His commandments;

Notice the several purposes which this instruction is to have. Children, take note what you are supposed to be learning from the catechism, from the teaching which your parents are giving you. First, you are to learn the importance of giving this information, this instruction, to your children. You are going to grow up. You are going to have children yourself, most likely. God is giving you this information now so that you in turn can give it to your children.
Second, God is giving you this instruction so that you might put your hope in Him. The world wants to offer you all kinds of objects in which to put your hope. Put your hope in an ipad; put your hope in a great education; put your hope in diversity; put your hope in a change of government; put your hope in health care; put your hope in your ability to defend yourself. The catechism teaches you to put your hope in God. He will not betray you; He will not desert You; all His promises will reach their fulfillment; He is entirely trustworthy.

Third, the psalmist insists that the purpose of instruction doesn’t end here: when we have learned what God has done in the past, when we have learned that He is totally and absolutely trustworthy, we will then be reminded of the absolute necessity of obeying Him and keeping His commandments. After all, when we learn the stories of Scripture, one of the things we learn is the seriousness with which God takes His Word, the faithfulness with which He judges His people when they ignore it. And so, the catechism teaches us what it means to obey God, what it means to serve Him and delight in Him. This is the duty which God requires of man.

Let us consider, therefore, what the purpose of our instruction is – the purpose is not just to fill the mind but to touch the heart, to move the will, to shape the conscience. Parents, how are we doing molding and shaping not just the minds of our children but their character? Children, how are we doing learning not just the facts, not just the information that is being given, but the significance of this information for our own lives?

Reminded that the function of education is to do all these things, let us kneel and confess that we have often neglected them.

All the Earth Shall Worship God

October 21, 2010 in Bible - OT - Psalms, Meditations, Postmillennialism, Worship

1 Make a joyful shout to God, all the earth!
2 Sing out the honor of His name;
Make His praise glorious.
3 Say to God,
“How awesome are Your works!
Through the greatness of Your power
Your enemies shall submit themselves to You.
4 All the earth shall worship You
And sing praises to You;
They shall sing praises to Your name.” Selah
Psalm 66:1-4

When we look toward the future, what do we expect? And how does our expectation shape the decisions and investments which we are making with our time today?

For the last 100 years, the predominant Christian view of the future is what we might classify as pessimistic. It is believed that we are living in the last generation before Christ’s bodily return, that the world is destined to get worse and worse prior to His return, and that there is nothing Christians can, or even should, do to reverse this trend. Indeed, to attempt to reverse the trend would be to postpone the imminent return of our Lord, something no thinking believer should want to do.

The results of this particular vision of the future for the history of our nation have been deadly. Christians retreated from cultural involvement, downplayed the importance of future generations, and prepared for the rapture. The results of this retreat have been tragic. Violent crime has mushroomed, educational standards have plummeted as ignorance has spread, church buildings have been designed for utility as opposed to beauty, Christian kids have been abandoning the faith in droves. America has become, in many respects, an ugly place. And much of this is a result of the church’s view of the future.

How does this pessimistic view of the future mesh with David’s view in the psalm before us today? It is the exact opposite. Notice that David describes his anticipation for the future like this:

“Through the greatness of Your power God
Your enemies shall submit themselves to You.
All the earth shall worship You
And sing praises to You;
They shall sing praises to Your name.”

In light of the power of God, David sees the future full of the worship of God, full of the knowledge of God, full of the praise of God. All the earth shall worship, all shall sing praises, even the enemies of God shall submit themselves to Him. Why? Because God is Almighty.

How does this vision of the future shape David’s exhortations in this passage? For notice that David is issuing a series of commands. Listen again:

Make a joyful shout to God, all the earth! Sing out the honor of His name;
Make His praise glorious. Say to God, “How awesome are Your works!

Notice that David is summoning the nations – make a joyful shout to God, all the earth! David calls upon all creation to worship and serve the Lord; to join him as he praises God for His might and power.

This is the same summons we make every Lord’s Day. As we come into God’s presence and sing His praises, we are invoking the nations to come and to join us: smell the fragrant aroma, behold the goodness of God, come see the glory of our King and join us in praising Him. And this praise, which starts here each Lord’s Day, is to eek out of here and make its way into our lives during the week so that folks can’t help but declare – how good and how pleasant it must be to know the Lord.

This morning, then, as we enter the presence of the Lord let us consider the exhortations that David gives us:
• We are to sing – don’t mumble, learn psalms as quick as can
• We are to sing joyfully – Make a joyful shout to the Lord
• We are to sing loudly – Make a joyful shout, sing out His Name
• We are to sing beautifully – make His praise glorious

And so let us fill this building with the praise of God – but let us begin by seeking His forgiveness for failing to live now in light of the glorious future that He has promised – let us kneel and confess our pessimism and doubt to Him.

Hardening our Hearts

October 21, 2010 in Bible - OT - Psalms, Meditations, Word of God

Psalm 95:7-11 (NKJV)
7 For He is our God, And we are the people of His pasture, And the sheep of His hand. Today, if you will hear His voice: 8 “Do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion, As in the day of trial in the wilderness, 9 When your fathers tested Me; They tried Me, though they saw My work. 10 For forty years I was grieved with that generation, And said, ‘It is a people who go astray in their hearts, And they do not know My ways.’ 11 So I swore in My wrath, ‘They shall not enter My rest.’ ”

When we hear the Word of God week by week the danger always arises that it begin to seem humdrum – just one more voice in the mass of noise. This is particularly true in our day – technology has made it nigh impossible to escape the drone of voices. Just yesterday I was at Killarney Lake, in the midst of God’s beauty, hearing the musica mundi –the music of the world – when a speed boat came by blasting the latest sounds from its speakers. The voice of God begins to sound like just one more voice in the crowd.

This morning we are warned against this very type of problem, against hardening our hearts to the Word of God. Today if you hear His voice – which we all do in the reading and preaching of His Word – do not harden your hearts. Cultivate an ear to hear and heed what God has to say.

What does it mean to harden our hearts? Notice the parallel that we are given to define hardening our hearts. We are reminded of a story – the story of our fathers at Meribah in the desert. What happened on this occasion? How can this help us to understand what it means to harden the heart? Notice that our Lord makes the story particularly clear by noting that “your fathers tested Me, they tried Me, though they had seen My work.”

What then was the sin of our fathers? You know the story. God rescued them from Egypt by an outstretched arm. He sent plagues on Egypt, granted our fathers favor with the Egyptians in the midst of these plagues, and then brought them out of the land. When they were in danger of destruction at the hand of Pharaoh’s army, God parted the waters of the Red Sea and let our fathers pass through on dry land while swallowing up Pharaoh’s chariots in the sea. An astounding act of God’s power and mercy! And yet, and yet, within a short time the people of Israel began to grumble, began to complain, began to long to return to Egypt. Why? Because the harsh reality of wandering through the wilderness drove from their minds a consideration of what God had already done for them and of what God had promised to do for them yet. Here then is our definition. To harden the heart to God’s Word is, in the midst of life, to forget what God has done for us already and what God promises to do for us in the future.

So what about you? What trial are you passing through in the wilderness? And how are you responding to it? Are you clinging in faith to the Father who rescued you from your sin and sorrow by sending His own Son to take on human flesh and to die on the cross? Are you remembering that the same Father who sent His Son also sent the Spirit upon our hearts that we might cry out Abba, Father? The Spirit who promises to work in us that which is good and well-pleasing in His sight?

Or are you instead hardening your heart? Have you forgotten the way in which our Lord rescued you? Forgotten the promises He has made to you? Drowned them out in a sea of noise and voices such that His Word is no longer clear? I fear that each of us finds ourself too frequently longing to return to Egypt. And so let us confess our sin to the Lord. Let us kneel and ask his forgiveness for hardening our hearts.

Pillars Sculpted in Palace Style

June 14, 2010 in Bible - OT - Psalms, Children, Meditations

Psalm 144:11-15 (NKJV)
11 Rescue me and deliver me from the hand of foreigners, Whose mouth speaks lying words, And whose right hand is a right hand of falsehood— 12 That our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth; That our daughters may be as pillars, Sculptured in palace style; 13 That our barns may be full, Supplying all kinds of produce; That our sheep may bring forth thousands And ten thousands in our fields; 14 That our oxen may be well laden; That there be no breaking in or going out; That there be no outcry in our streets. 15 Happy are the people who are in such a state; Happy are the people whose God is the Lord!

Here in our text today, our Lord Jesus identifies why it is that he prays for God to rescue Him and His people from His enemies, from those not in covenant with Him, who are prone to deceit and falsehood. And the first thing that He identifies, the main reason why He wants God to protect and guard us, is for you young folks out there. He prays so that the sons and daughters of Zion may grow into maturity in the midst of their youth. “That our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth; that our daugthers may be as pillars, sculptured in palace style.”

Jesus’ prayer reveals to us not only his desire for our protection from enemies but also His vision for young adulthood. Our Lord hungers for you young adults, young men and young women alike, to grow into maturity. He wants young men to be like plants grown up – fruitful, strong, resistant to disease – in your youth. He doesn’t want you to wait until your twenties or thirties like so many. He wants you to be mature now – so how are you doing striving for it?

Likewise, he prays for the daughters of Zion that they may be as pillars, sculpted in palace style. Since we have been doing a series of exhortations on the lessons young women teach us, it is fitting that we get a sense of Jesus’ vision for young womanhood here. First, note that he wants you to be pillars. And what is the purpose of a pillar? Pillars hold things up. They are strong, steady, stable. Notice in this young ladies, that Jesus’ vision for your calling in the Church is to be a source of stability, strength, wisdom, and gravitas. Young women – at one level because of your sensitivity to art, beauty, and spirituality, at another because of your immense influence upon young men – Jesus’ has put you in our midst to hold us up in your labors, in your prayers, and in your purity.

But beware that as a pillar you truly are what you portray yourself to be. Our word sincere comes from two Latin words, sine – which means without – and cera – which means wax. A sincere person is a person without wax. For you see ancient Rome, just like modern America, had her unscrupulous contractors. And these builders were often contracted to make marble columns. But it was quite a task to find the right kind of marble and craft and polish it to perfection. So some builders would take shortcuts. They would fill the gaps and cracks in their piece of marble with wax. Only when the column collapsed would the trickery be revealed – and it might be a few years out. So make sure that you are a sincere pillar.

But not only does Jesus pray that you would be pillars, he also prays that you would be one sculpted in palace style. Jesus knows that pillars come in various designs. A rough yewn log pole can be a pillar. Not very lovely but it does the job. That’s not the kind of pillar for which the Lord prays. He doesn’t want just a sturdy pole, he wants a beautiful column, one whose beauty makes all those around stand in awe. That pole barn you saw on your way to worship may be just as sturdy as the Acropolis in Athens – but who would dare claim it is just as lovely? I remember Douglas Wilson telling the story of the atheist Edward Tabash’s visit to Moscow when Tabash remarked at dinner, “I’ve never met so many beautiful, confident women.”

So what does this beauty look like? Peter tells us, “Do not let your adornment [your beauty] be merely outward – arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel – rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God.” This is the beauty that our Lord Jesus desires for you – a beauty which shall be a source of strength, stability, and glory for the Church of God.
Reminded that our Lord Jesus prays for us, that he prays for our young men and young women to be mature even in their youth, let us seek the Lord’s forgiveness for failing to value maturity. Let us kneel together.

Maidens Playing Timbrels

May 11, 2010 in Bible - OT - Psalms, Children, Ecclesiology, Meditations

Psalm 68:24-26 (NKJV)
24 They have seen Your procession, O God, The procession of my God, my King, into the sanctuary. 25 The singers went before, the players on instruments followed after; Among them were the maidens playing timbrels. 26 Bless God in the congregations, The Lord, from the fountain of Israel.

In the last couple weeks we have learned that two lessons young women teach us both highlight our identity. The Church collectively is called the daughter of Zion to indicate how beloved the Church is – God loves us just as a father delights in his daughter. In addition, we saw last week that throughout the Scriptures young women are frequently identified by the title, “daughters of Zion” or “daughters of Jerusalem” or “daughters of Judah.” All these titles assure young women – God claims you as His own; He loves you; He cherishes you; He delights to be called your God.

Precisely because God claims you, He simultaneously invites you into His house to worship. When Adam and Eve were placed in the Garden of Eden, they were given two tasks: to tend the garden and to cultivate it. This latter calling of cultivating the Garden relates directly to worship. In the ancient Hebrew, as well as in Latin from which we get our word “cultivate”, the idea behind the word is to offer up in worship. So in English we not only get the word “cultivate” from the Latin cultus, we also get the words “cult” and “culture” – both pointing to the product of our cultivation. Adam and Eve, in other words, were to guard and cultivate the Garden and the work that they did was to be offered up to the Lord as their service of worship. From the beginning, man and woman were not created first and foremost as homo sapiens (wise man) but as homo adorans (worshiping man). We were created to worship.

Consequently, when God claims you young women for Himself, He invites you into His presence to worship; he invites you to offer up your labors as sacrifices, a pleasing aroma, to Him. Listen again to our psalmist:

24 They have seen Your procession, O God, The procession of my God, my King, into the sanctuary. 25 The singers went before, the players on instruments followed after; Among them were the maidens playing timbrels. 26 Bless God in the congregations, The Lord, from the fountain of Israel.

Note that the psalmist is careful to note that in the assembly of God’s people, worshiping before Him, were the maidens, the young women. And note that these maidens are not there half-heartedly, not there disinterestedly, not there sulking or pining for some other activity, but there rejoicing. Their joy in worship was evident for they were playing the timbrels – and timbrels always draw the attention.

This description of young women is made an imperative in another psalm – the psalmist in the 148th psalm calls upon the whole creation, including maidens, to worship the Lord: Praise the Lord from the earth… Both young men and maidens; Old men and children. (Ps 148:7,12)

So, young women, you are exactly where you are to be this morning. God has invited you here, welcomes you into His presence, delights over you with songs of love. He has brought you here to assure you that you are welcome; he speaks to you and says to you, “You are mine”; He receives you at His table and says to you, “I will provide for you, I will protect you.”

So, having been invited, come into worship with all your heart. Do not come distracted; do not come half-hearted; do not come unwillingly. The Lord Himself calls you here – not your parents, not your friends, not your elders. And for all you saints of the Lord – learn this lesson from the young women in our midst – just as God delights over them, inviting them to worship before Him with all the congregation, so too the Lord delights over all of us and call all of us homo adorans, worshiping man, called to offer up all our labor in worship.

Reminded that we are first and foremost worshiping creatures and that we have frequently failed to come into the Lord’s presence with joy and gladness, but have instead been sulky and disinterested, let us kneel and confess our sins to God.

Young Men and Young Males

January 25, 2010 in Bible - OT - Psalms, Meditations, Word of God

Psalm 119:9 (NKJV)
9 How can a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to Your word.

What does it mean to be a young man and not just a young male? We have many young males in the world. You can see them strutting along the streets; speaking disrespectfully to their parents and teachers; scorning authority; blasting their music in their cars; starting fights; chasing females; causing trouble. But what does it mean to be a man and not just a male. For maleness is a matter of biology – anyone with certain anatomy is a male. But manliness is a matter of moral fiber – and has less to do with your anatomy than your character.

So you young males out there – do you know what it is to be a young man? This is the question David poses today. How can a young man cleanse his way? How can he be a young man after God’s own heart? How can he grow in favor with God and with other men? How can he demonstrate his worth? David’s answer is simple: By taking heed according to God’s Word.

Remember that two weeks ago when we read John’s remarks in his first epistle, he said, “I have written to you young men because you are strong and the word of God abides in you and you have overcome the evil one.” In other words, the most important thing you can do to become a young man and not simply to be a young male is to consider, meditate upon, memorize, and practice God’s Word. Lord, what do you want me to love and esteem? What do you want me to cherish? What does it mean to be a young man after your own heart? It is this type of meditation which leads to John’s conclusion, “and you have overcome the evil one.” The key to victory is faith in and reliance upon the Living God who has revealed Himself and His will in His Word. And this book is the pathway to manliness.

Reminded that we often confuse maleness with manliness, let us kneel and confess our sin to our father, asking Him to bestow manliness upon our men – young and old alike.

The Laughter of God

December 1, 2009 in Bible - OT - Psalms, Children, Meditations

Psalm 111:7-8 (NKJV)
7 The works of His hands are verity and justice; All His precepts are sure. 8 They stand fast forever and ever, And are done in truth and uprightness.

Last week we noted that the playfulness of children is something in which our Lord delights. He promised that one day the people of Jerusalem would once again observe boys and girls playing in the streets – and that this would be a good thing. And so we as the body of Christ need to learn from these members in our midst the importance of joy, the value of play, the blessing of laughter.

As we reflect on our need to do so, we should realize that the reason the joy and fun of children brings pleasure to God is that they reveal His own laughter in all His work. God never tires of causing the earth to spin like a top; never tires of flapping the wings of a bird; never tires of causing the grass to sprout from the earth; never tires of sucking water out of the earth through the roots of a tree and turning the nutrients into apples that people can eat. All these works of the Lord reveal His untiring joy and laughter, reveal His delight in all His work, His faithfulness and uprightness.

Listen as Chesterton explains in his book Orthodoxy:

A man [typically]varies his movements because of some slight element of failure or fatigue. He gets into an omnibus because he is tired of walking; or he walks because he is tired of sitting still. But if his life and joy were so gigantic that he never tired of going to Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly as the Thames goes to Sheerness. The very speed and ecstacy of his life would have the stillness of death. The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. it may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

And so reminded that we have sinned and grown old, that we have become bored and complacent with monotony, that we have complained rather than overflowed with thanksgiving, let us kneel and confess our sin.

Like a Weaned Child with His Mother

November 6, 2009 in Bible - OT - Psalms, Ecclesiology, Meditations, Trials

Psalm 131:2 (NKJV)
2 Surely I have calmed and quieted my soul, Like a weaned child with his mother; Like a weaned child is my soul within me.

A couple weeks ago we spoke of the lesson that infants teach us in their hunger. Just as infants cry and pull at their mother’s clothing to get at the milk, so we as the people of God are to hunger and thirst for the Word of God. We are to long for the pure milk of the Word that by it we may grow in respect to salvation. But children aren’t always quite so passionate about eating. Is there anything to learn when they grow up a bit? According to the psalmist the answer is yes.

Psalm 131 is one of the songs of ascent, sung when the men of Israel would journey to Jerusalem for one of the three annual feasts. God had commanded that the men of Israel appear before Him in Jerusalem three times per year. While sometimes whole families were able to travel to Jerusalem, frequently because of the cost and inconvenience involved, only the men were able.

Imagine, then, the fears that would beset families as the men prepared to go. The men would worry about their wives and children – will they be well when I return? will enemies attack while I am gone? The women would worry about their husbands, their children, themselves – will my husband return? what will I do if he doesn’t? what will I do if our enemies attack? how will I protect our home? Fear was a great temptation.

But God had not left them without assurance – He had promised them that He would take care of them during these times; that He would be their Protector and Defender. Exodus 34:23-24 declares, “Three times in the year all your men shall appear before the Lord, the Lord God of Israel. For I will cast out the nations before you and enlarge your borders; neither will any man covet your land when you go up to appear before the Lord your God three times in the year.” God promised that He would protect their homes as they went up to Jerusalem. And so the question became – will we trust Him, will we believe Him?

Around this question began to swirl a collection of songs, called the psalms of ascent. These are Psalms 120-134 in the Psalter. These psalms were especially sung in this time when the men of Israel were called to leave their homes and journey to Jerusalem.

Psalm 131 was sung to move the Israelites to patient trust in the promise of God. And notice the heart of the meditation: Surely I have calmed and quieted my soul, Like a weaned child with his mother; Like a weaned child is my soul within me. The psalmist was a careful student of the people of God – not just the big people, but the little ones as well. And in the life of weaned children, he learned what we are to be like in times of trial.

As husbands and fathers made the trip to Jerusalem and feared for their families, as wives, mothers, and children remained at home and feared what could face them with the men away and their enemies surrounding them, this psalm would have been a great comfort and encouragement. What do we learn from weaned children? To be calm and quiet in the presence of our provider – no longer pulling and yanking at our mother’s breast to get that food. No instead now we know that our mother cares for us, we know that she shall feed us, we no longer fear that she will forsake us; for she has demonstrated her love for us time and again and we trust her.

This is the message learned from weaned children in our text today – our attitude to the Lord God is to be like this little child toward his mother. But often it is quite the opposite. We fuss and whine; we yank at the blouse, pull at the bra, trying to convince God to feed us when he has already promised to do so.

So the call of weaned children is this: trust God, he will provide for you, he will protect you, he will fulfill his promises. Entrust yourself to him and to His loving care. Reminded that we have failed to trust Him, let us kneel and confess our sin to Him.

The Glory of Infants

November 6, 2009 in Bible - OT - Psalms, Ecclesiology, Meditations

Psalm 8:1-2 (NKJV)
How excellent is Your name in all the earth, Who have set Your glory above the heavens! 2 Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have ordained strength, Because of Your enemies, That You may silence the enemy and the avenger.

We begin our survey of the lessons taught by every member of the family of God with infants. We could, of course, begin earlier, with the little ones in the womb. But we’ll stick with the ones not hidden in the depths of the earth.

Babies are so cute and cuddly; so small and tiny and apparently so fragile. It always seems to first time parents as if the slightest rustle, the gentlest breeze may land our little one in the doctor’s office. We bundle them up, we scrub all the toys with disinfectant, we wash the food two or three times. They are so weak, so dependent.

And it is this very truth that strikes David as he considers the world about Him. The Lord’s Name, David tells us, is excellent in all the earth. After all, He has set His glory above the heavens. Day to day utters forth speech and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no language, nor voice where their tongue is not heard. Their line has gone out to the ends of the earth. The heavens tell the glory of God.

Having considered God’s wonder in creation, the first place David turns to behold this wonder, the wonder of God’s Name, is the mouth of little babes. Turn and look upon this child – crafted by the hand of God Himself, carefully knit in his mother’s womb, appointed by God to live and breathe and scream and eat – and in looking on this child behold the wonder of God’s Providence.

For God has not only crafted this child, this dependent child, but has provided food and nourishment for him in his mother’s breast; has not only given the food but given him, this teeny, tiny baby, a tongue that latches on to his mother’s breast so that he can drink his fill and be satisfied. God orchestrated this; God put it together. Behold the wonder and grandeur of God!

And so, David tells us, these little babes, so fragile, so small declare the praises of God, reveal the excellence of His Name, reveal His great power. God needs no rhetoricians; He needs no learned men to vindicate His Name. Every baby born into the world manifests His glory, His strength.

Chapman Cohen once remarked, “Gods are fragile things. They may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense.” Yet modern history has demonstrated that the gods are far more resilient than Cohen imagined, and the living God more so than the idols of the nations. We simply cannot escape His presence, cannot avoid reckoning with Him because all the sophisticated arguments of philosophers, all the conjectures of scientists, all the pontifications of sociologists, suddenly confront the hard reality of a little baby. And God says, behold My grandeur!

So have you looked at a baby recently and considered the strength that God has vested in that little one? We are reminded this morning to see with new eyes and to ask God’s forgiveness for failing to see His glory in the weakest of places. Let us kneel as we are able and confess our sins to the Lord.