Bringing Up Children for God

A good word from Edward Payson (1783-1827) on bringing up children.

"Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy -wages." —Exodus 2:9

THESE words were addressed by Pharaoh's daughter to the mother of Moses. Of the circumstances that occasioned them, it can scarcely be necessary to inform you. You need not be told that soon after the birth of this future leader of Israel his parents were compelled by the cruelty of the Egyptian king to expose him in an ark of bulrushes on the banks of the Nile. In this situation, he was found by the daughter of Pharaoh. So powerfully did his infantile cries excite her compassion that she determined not only to rescue him from a watery grave, but to adopt and educate him as her own. His sister Miriam, who at a distance had watched his fate unseen, now came forward like a person entirely unacquainted with the cir­cumstances of his exposure and, on hearing of the princess' determi­nation, offered to procure a Hebrew woman to take the care of him until he should be of sufficient age to appear at her father's court. This offer being accepted, she immediately went and called the child's mother to whose care he was committed by the princess in the words of our text—"Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages."

In similar language, my friends, does God address parents. To eve­ryone on whom He bestows the blessing of children, He says in His Word and by the voice of His Providence, "Take this child and edu­cate it for Me, and I will give thee thy wages." From this passage, therefore, we may take occasion to show what is implied in educating children for God.

The first thing implied in educating children for God is a realiz­ing, heartfelt conviction that they are His property, His children, rather than ours. He commits them for a time to our care, merely for the purpose of education, as we place children under the care of hu­man instructors for the same purpose. However carefully we may educate children, yet we cannot be said to educate them for God unless we [believe] that they are His; for if we [believe] that they are ours exclusively, we shalt and must educate them for ourselves and not for Him. To know that they are His is to feel a cordial, operative conviction that He has a sovereign right to dispose of them as He pleases and to take them from us whenever He thinks fit. That they are His and that He possesses this right is evident from innumerable passages in the inspired writings. We are there told that God is the former of our bodies and the Father of our spirits, that we are all His offspring, and that consequently we are not our own but His. We are also assured that as the soul of the parent, so also the souls of the children are His. God once and again severely reproves and threatens the Jews because they sacrificed His children in the fire to Moloch (Eze 16:20-21). Yet plain and explicit as these passages are, how few parents appear to feel their force. How few appear to feel and act as if conscious that they and theirs were the absolute properly of God, that they were merely the foster parents of their children, and that, in all which they do for them, they are or ought to be acting for God. But it is evident that they must feel this before they can bring up their chil­dren for Him; for how can they educate their children for a being whose existence they do not realize, whose right to them they do not acknowledge, and whose character they do not love?