"But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work" (2 Tim. 3:14-17 NIV).
On May 9, 1993 the Deseret News ran this article by Erma Bombeck:
"For the first four or five years after I had children, I considered motherhood a temporary condition – not a calling. It was a time of my life set aside for exhaustion and long hours. It would pass.
Then one afternoon with three kids in tow, I came out of the supermarket pushing a cart (with four wheels that went in opposite directions) when my toddler son got away from me. Just outside the door, he ran toward a machine holding bubble gum in a glass dome. In a voice that shattered glass, he shouted, “Gimme! Gimme!” I told him I would gimme him what-for if he didn’t stop shouting and get in the car.
As I physically tried to pry his body from around the bubble gum machine, he pulled the entire thing over. Glass and balls of bubble gum went all over the parking lot. We had now attracted a crowd.
Donna Reed would have brushed away his tears and granted him absolution on the spot. I wasn’t Donna Reed. I told him he would never see another cartoon as long as he lived, and if he didn’t control his temper he was going to be making license plates for the state.
He tried to stifle his sobs as he looked around at the staring crowd. Then he did something that I was to remember the rest of my life. In his helpless quest for comfort, he turned to the only one he trusted his emotions with – me. He threw his arms around my knees and held on for dear life.
I had humiliated him, chastised him and berated him, but I was still all he had. That single incident defined my role. I was a major force in this child’s life."
“I was a major force in this child’s life.”
That’s quite a profound statement, brethren. Profound, not just for the role that mothers play in a child’s life (as major as that is!), but as a reminder that there are a lot of major forces in a child’s life.
As we know, our heavenly Father designed the family, physically and spiritually, to be a major force in raising our children and grandchildren to put their confidence in God (Ps. 78:7) and to put their faith in Jesus Christ (2 Tim. 3:15).
The Apostle Paul told Timothy that in a world of evil men and impostors who will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived, that he was to remember what he had learned from his mother, Eunice and his grandmother, Lois. As an infant, they had taught him the Holy Scriptures that led him to a saving faith in Jesus Christ (2 Tim. 3:14-15).
There is no greater accomplishment!
But it takes a “family”!
I couldn’t have been more than five years old, but I still remember a little, grey-haired woman named Polly Lowry who taught me the Bible stories that are still with me today. Of course, my parents were the front-line major force in my life as well as in the lives of my two sisters; and that’s as it should be. Throughout the history of God’s people we see the active influence that parents exerted over and over again.
To realize that Moses’ parents, Amram and Jochebed risked their lives to save their son from the king’s death order…is the stuff of heroic tales. Seeing how God worked out the details of floating baby Moses down the Nile in a basket, only to be found by Pharaoh’s daughter and then to be nursed by his own mother for next several years…that is the stuff of spiritual legends – but, brethren, spiritual legends are the product of providence and parental guidance.
In 1 Samuel we hear Hannah pray for a baby boy and then watch her raise him in the ways of the Lord, only to give him back. As she stood before Eli, the high priest, she explained why she was there with her little boy: “For this boy I prayed, and the Lord has given me my petition which I asked of Him. So I have also dedicated him to the Lord; as long as he lives he is dedicated to the Lord…” (1 Sam. 1:27-28).
Actually, that’s what this morning is based upon – dedicating a child to the Lord – giving him back to God. It’s interesting that that’s how the New Century Version translates it: “I give him back to the Lord.”
Now, I know what some of you are thinking: “Wait! God takes them back?! Isn’t there some kind of ‘no return’ policy on kids! Besides, I can’t find the receipt!”
Admit it, parents; who hasn’t had those moments of insanity (or sanity) when you would have loved to have packaged them up and taken them back to God’s customer service counter and said, “I want my money back!”
When Nancy and I started out we had 5 theories on raising kids…now we have 5 kids and no theories!
All kidding aside: “Behold, children are a gift of the Lord, the fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one’s youth. How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them; they will not be ashamed when they speak with their enemies in the gate” (Ps. 127:3-5).
Brethren, the hope of the future lies in our hands and arms – literally – but it doesn’t happen without providence and parental guidance.
Every time I read God’s statement about Abraham in Genesis 18:19, it rekindles my hope in the future: “For I have chosen him, so that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring upon Abraham what He has spoken about him.”
And what had God spoken to Abraham? That through his children all the families of the earth would be blessed (Gen. 12:3). Of course, we know that that blessing would ultimately be Jesus (Gal. 3:8).
Jesus…born to Joseph and Mary who also “presented Him to the Lord” (Lk. 2:22). Of course, presenting Jesus to the Lord was hardly the beginning. How many other babies are born of the Holy Spirit, announced by an angel and his backup band of angels? How many babies are visited by smelly shepherds? How many babies have an old man and old woman waiting to be released unto death once they see the “consolation of Israel” (Lk. 2:25)?
How many babies grow up to die for the sins of the world?
Only One!
And that One did so, so that all other babies could grow up to know the Lord.
And that brings us to…us – the other major force in a child’s life!
The church is the extended, spiritual family for all our children. We become the fathers and mothers to any that may not have a father or mother. We become the grandparent when your real grandparents are far away or gone. We are the brothers and sisters, the aunts and uncles, the village of saints who are committed to telling God’s story: “That the generation to come might know, even the children yet to be born, that they may arise and tell them to their children, that they should put their confidence in God and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments” (Ps. 78:5f).
