Thy Children's Children
THY CHILDRENS CHILDREN
Great leaders are men of hope. They cast vision, and they seek to implant that vision in the heart of the next generation.
These men take every opportunity to direct the children of today to the duties of tomorrow. They are not crippled by the hopelessness of current distresses because they understand the doctrine of providence. They crave the very blessings of peace, fruitfulness, and family faithfulness embodied in Psalm 128, but they are also prepared for battle. In short, they are multigenerational visionaries with sincere and well-grounded kingdom aspirations.
In 2010 Christian homeschool fathers have a special opportunity to model this type of leadership to their families. Our national, civil holiday of gratitude provides a perfect opportunity to remember the God-blessed visions of the past, to reaffirm the holy foundations of family blessing, and to raise up new “Ebenezers” of family freedom.
Remember the God-blessed Visions of the Past
History teaches us to hope. I am persuaded that we should never underestimate the importance of godly remembrance. The word remember is used more than 144 times in the Bible to point people to their duty to memorialize the work of God in their history.
This is the reason why all who aspire to generational faithfulness must not only be students of God’s providential history, they must also be about the business of presenting their children with constant reminders of those merciful providences.
Home educators have a special debt of gratitude. In a very real sense, the Pilgrim vision is our vision. The Pilgrims sought to obey God according to the dictates of their consciences. So do we. The Pilgrims sought to educate their children in the fear of the Lord at home. We do the same. The Pilgrims believed in the sufficiency of Scripture for all of faith and practice. We must embrace the same doctrine. The Pilgrims hoped to shield their children from destructive peer influence. This is our hope. The Pilgrims sought to build a distinctively Christian family culture for their posterity. Here again, our aspirations coincide. The Pilgrims recognized that their greatest work would not be accomplished during their lifetime, but through their posterity. We recognize the same. Finally, the Pilgrims were willing to make unimaginable sacrifices for their children and the cause of Christ. Though we do not dare compare our feeble efforts with those of the Pilgrim Fathers, yet we aspire to be ready for even greater sacrifices, should God call us.
Wise fathers will draw these comparisons for their children. They will point their children to the man who was perhaps the greatest multi-generational visionary in American history—William Bradford of Plymouth.
Lastly (and which was not least), they had a great hope and inward zeal of laying some good foundation, or at least, in Bradford’s words, to make some way "hereunto, for the propagating and advancing the gospel of the kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of the world; yea, though they should be but even as stepping-stones unto others for the performing of so great a work.”
Since the early days of the great Apostolic commissions, no group has been more blessed or had a greater impact for their size than the 102 people who dreamed of being “stepping-stones unto others” in furtherance of a multi-generational family vision of victory for the Church of Jesus Christ. Though less than half of those men and women would make it through the first challenging winter in the New World, God would bless them with thirty million descendants and a spiritual heritage which served as the basis of freedom for the future United States of America.
Reaffirm the True Spiritual Foundations of Our National Days of Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving may be the last great national tradition that is distinguished by an overtly spiritual foundation which Americans collectively and annually enjoy. From the beginning, our national days of thanksgiving were dedicated to the Lord and announced with proclamations that invoked many of the principles embodied in Psalm 128. These principles might be broken down into five blessings for which the righteous man seeks the favor of the Lord:
· That the hope of peace and blessing is founded on the fear of the Lord
· That the righteous father is a happy man of hard work who will be blessed with the fruit of his own labors
· That the blessings of a faithful wife and many honorable children abounding in his home are a glory to the righteous man
· That such righteousness leads to the blessing of peace amongst the people of God
· That the righteous man seeks a multi-generational vision of victory
Our Founding Fathers were biblically literate men who were intimately familiar with the vision of Psalm 128 and sought to apply these principles to the national context. Consider that our leaders reminded us that to secure the blessings of God we must first fear the Lord (Psalm 128:1):
It is therefore recommended to the legislative or executive Powers of these UNITED STATES to set apart Thursday…for SOLEMN THANKSGIVING and PRAISE: That at one Time and with one Voice, the good People may express the grateful Feelings of their Hearts, and consecrate themselves to the Service of their Divine Benefactor; and that, together with their sincere Acknowledgments and Offerings, they may join the penitent Confession of their manifold Sins, whereby they had forfeited every Favor; and their humble and earnest Supplication that it may please GOD through the Merits of JESUS CHRIST, mercifully to forgive and blot them out of Remembrance (Thanksgiving Proclamation, Congress, 1777).
The Psalmist gave praise to God for allowing the man of righteousness to be blessed by the fruit of his labors (Psalm 128:2), and our Congress called upon the Lord for the same:
That it may please him, to prosper the Trade and Manufactures of the People, and the Labor of the Husbandman, that our Land may yield its Increase (Thanksgiving Proclamation, Congress, 1777).
To smile upon our husbandry and trade and establish the work of our hands (Thanksgiving Proclamation, Congress, 1781).
As the Psalmist had spoken of children flourishing around the table of the righteous man (Psalm 128:3), so our leaders called upon the Lord to raise up noble youth to cause the work of the Lord to flourish:
To raise up from among our youth, men eminent for virtue, learning and piety, to his service in church and state; to cause virtue and true religion to flourish, to give to all nations amity, peace and concord, and to fill the world with his glory (Thanksgiving Proclamation, Congress, 1784).
As God had told the people of Israel to hope for the “good of Jerusalem” (Psalm 128:5), our national leaders presented us with the holy hopes that God would bless us with the ability to live in a land of peace and freedom:
That it may please him graciously to afford his Blessing on the Governments of these States respectively, and prosper the public Council of the whole: To inspire our Commanders, both by Land and Sea, and all under them, with that Wisdom and Fortitude which may render them fit Instruments, under the Providence of Almighty GOD, to secure for these United States, the greatest of all human Blessings, INDEPENDENCE and PEACE (Thanksgiving Proclamation, Congress, 1777).
That he may be pleased to bless us in our husbandry, our commerce and navigation; to smile upon our seminaries and means of education, to cause pure religion and virtue to flourish, to give peace to all nations, and to fill the world with his glory (Thanksgiving Proclamation, Congress, 1783).
The point is clear. Our Founding Fathers knew that to be blessed in our homes, our labors, and our nation we must humbly and gratefully submit ourselves to Jesus Christ, the God of Scriptures, Who alone is responsible for our success.
Rally Your Children to the Great Work of Family Reformation
Thanksgiving is also a time to exhort our sons and daughters to seek the peace of God in their households as they build upon the rocks of freedom established in the lives of their parents.
The Pilgrims understood this principle. It burned in the hearts of their most noble sons and daughters. The story of Thomas Faunce is an example.
It was by the base of Cole’s Hill, where many Pilgrims had been buried under cover of darkness during that first savage winter, that a second-generation Pilgrim father named Faunce took his eight-year-old son Thomas to touch an ancient rock and give the boy a charge. This was the rock, his father told young Thomas, that had received the footsteps of his fathers on their first arrival. It was his mission to see that it should be perpetuated to posterity.
By 1741, that eight-year-old boy had become a ninety-four-year-old man. Thomas Faunce was now the esteemed elder of the ancient church of the Pilgrims—the congregation of those holy Separatists who had more than a century earlier been commissioned by their pastor John Robinson to travel on the Mayflower and build a covenant community in the New World.
Faunce lived to ninety-nine years old, and he was known as one of the most honest figures in Plymouth. But fearing his life would soon end, the hoary headed man asked the people of his town to lift him onto a chair, carry him down Leyden Street (the oldest in America), and place him by that unusual rock where the bay water meets the land.
Pointing at the rock before him, the now aged Thomas Faunce told others how his father had brought him to where they were standing, declared the rock to be the very spot where the Pilgrims first set foot in Plymouth, and exhorted the men of his generation to honor the faith of their fathers.
Faunce did more than simply fulfill his boyhood commission; he gave America her great “rock of remembrance.” Because an eight-year-old boy listened to his elders, Plymouth Rock has become America’s “Gilgal stone” (Joshua 4). More importantly, because one boy was faithful to his father’s commission, the story of God’s multi-generational blessing on the Pilgrim vision has been perpetuated to millions.
Crave the Blessings of the Righteous Man
“Behold, that thus shall the man be blessed that feareth the LORD. The LORD shall bless thee out of Zion: and thou shalt see the good of Jerusalem all the days of thy life. Yea, thou shalt see thy children's children, and peace upon Israel” (Psalm 128:4-6).
This Thanksgiving teach your children to understand that they must crave the blessings of the righteous man—peace and happiness, fruitfulness of the hands, fruitfulness of the womb, blessing on the land, and generational faithfulness.
This means understanding the godly vision of our Pilgrim Fathers. It means reaffirming those Thanksgiving Day sentiments of our Founding Fathers that true hope for peace rests on a foundation of repentance and submission to the God of Scriptures. It also means we must exhort our sons and daughters to build upon the work of their parents so they might hope that God will pour out even greater blessings on the households of their children’s children.