The Life of the Family
by R.C. Sproul Jr.

I have already confessed in these pages that not long ago I owned every record ever made by a certain Purple Potentate who only for a time remained nameless. It is far easier what I confess today, that I likewise own roughly half a dozen records by Peter Tosh. Mr. Tosh, like Haile Sellassie, is dead, but while he lived he was a devout man. His devotion was to Rastafarianism, a rather odd religion, and its sacred herb, ganja. The Purple one was famous for singing about the joys of connubial bliss, while the dreadlocked one was famous for singing of cannibial bliss. What few people know, however, is that both also often sang, if not biblically, at least on biblical themes. Indeed several of my favorites by Mister Tosh might be construed as praise choruses. In one he sings, "The lips of the righteous teaches many, but fools die for want of wisdom." In another he sings with a gleeful zeal that would make the most cranky theonomist sing, "Let Jah arise, let all His enemies be scattered. Let those who hate Jah be driven away, Jah drive them away. Let them be melted."

Thus, giving allowances for disputes on the proper translation of YHWH, begins Psalm 68. Tosh tapped into something rather scarce, as far as I know, in the Christian music scene, adaptations of God-inspired Christian music that included such themes as "Dash their heads against the rocks." Show me a praise chorus taken from a imprecatory psalm, and maybe, just maybe I'd sing it. Rastafarians understand what God's people, at least in the Psalms understood, that God's enemies are to be destroyed. We, even if we claim to be evangelicals, don't much care for the bloodthirsty God of the Old Testament. Such a God might, after all, drive them away. We like the nice safe God, the one described as, "A father of the fatherless, a defender of widows, Is God in His holy habitation." Trouble is, this description is right here in the same psalm.

We who claim to worship the God who is One tear asunder what is in God one thing. His wrath and His love are not opposite poles that have to be balanced, but one blindingly glorious reality. It is because of His love for His glory, for His people, that He hates what He hates. When He manifests His wrath toward the wicked we do not merely look away, but rejoice that in so doing He manifests His love for us. Right after David praises God for driving out the wicked, "As wax melts before a fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God," he instructs the righteous to rejoice, "But let the righteous be glad; Let them rejoice before God; Yes let them rejoice exceedingly" (2b-3). The grace of God in the lives of the righteous is found in the wrath of God in the death of the wicked. He loves us by destroying them.

We tend likewise to put a great gulf between the two halves of the great commandment. Because the theological left has made a hobby horse of loving our neighbors, we have veered in the other direction, believing that the only really bad sins are against God. We take David literally when he cries in another psalm, "Against you and you only have I sinned" (51:4). Each sin against man is a sin against God, because man bears God's image. We don't have the first half because God is so special, and then the second half because man is pretty special too. No, our value is derived, dependent, contingent upon the image of God placed upon us. An assault upon the King's men is an assault upon the King Himself.

And therein is the great evil of death. We don't mourn for the dead, if they are God's, but for the living. The evil of unjust war isn't so much the full body bags returning from the front, but the empty dining room tables at the home front. Men are made for sacrifice. But women and children are made to be protected by men. God destroys the wicked because they assault His character. They do this by tearing asunder what God has brought together, by making orphans of sons and daughters, and widows of wives. This is the evil of death.

But God is mightier still. David goes on to tell us, "A father of the fatherless, a defender of widows, Is God in His holy habitation. God sets the solitary in families" (5-6a). See again our oneness with God. He who sits on high both is the father and husband, and provides the father and husband. He does so through the body of His Son, the church of Jesus Christ. Thus James tells us, not merely that we're supposed to do this, not simply that such is a sign that we are truly redeemed, but "pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: To visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world" (1:27). Families reflect the very being of God, in making one of many. But families reflect the very grace of God when they open their arms and welcome others in. Death destroys families; grace remakes them.

God has blessed our little congregation in many ways. There are so many gifts He has given us together for which we cry out in gratitude. Outside all His redemptive promises to each of us, none looms larger than His grace here. We not only have been showered with the blessing of children, but nearly a fifth of them were once orphans. Death, in its many faces, left these little children alone. And God shocks us not merely by delivering them, but by delivering them into our families. His gift isn't merely that they are taken care of, but that we get to take care of them. That God sets the solitary in families is life, and life abundant, both for the solitary, and for the families. Let death be not proud, and let our families rejoice exceedingly.