Feeding Babies
by R.C. Sproul Jr.

Saint Peter Presbyterian is a little church. We have not only small numbers, but small members. A few weeks ago 45% of the people in attendance for Lord's Day worship were eight or under, and that's not counting our unborn child. I figure in another twenty years or so, when the kids start to have kids, then we'll become First Church of the Big Parking Lot. But I don't expect we'll experience quite the same growth as the baby church did on Pentecost.

Luke tells us, "And with many other words he testified and exhorted them, saying, 'Be saved from this perverse generation.' Then those who gladly received his word were baptized; and that day about three thousand souls were added to them" (Acts 2: 40-41). That's a lot of new babies, all (re)born on the same day. Each of them were born of the Spirit, through the preaching of the Word, moving from death to life. What now?

Denise and I, patiently waiting for our fifth blessing, have now had sufficient experience to know what babies need. They need to be fed. And this is exactly what happened with Peter's precious spiritual children, "And they continued steadfastly in the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers" (vs. 42). They gave themselves over to the studying of the Word. What they needed in order to grow into maturity was to feed upon the Word of God.

And it is still so today. All around us the cultural conservatives are fighting the school wars desperately trying to bring back the curriculum of the past, saying that what we need in "our" schools is the three r's: reading, 'riting and 'rithmatic. This is the food the older generation was raised on, and so they reason, our children should have it too. But this was not what the Holy Spirit, the schoolmaster of the newborns of Pentecost prescribed. What they needed is what we need. Our children need to devote themselves to the doctrine and fellowship of the Apostles, to the breaking of bread, and prayer.

Our children are essentially in the same boat as those new creatures in Acts. They have been baptized into the covenant (at least we hope they have. Even our baptist friends at least dedicate their children). They are ignorant. They are helpless. What they need more than anything else is to be taught what the Word of God says. That should be our curriculum.

I've argued before in this column that we may of course teach our children math, and geography and history, as long as we are teaching them it is God's order, God's world, and God's story. And I meant what I said. But these things come after teaching our children the Word of God. Just a few days ago Denise was asking me about history curriculum for Darby and Campbell. The new Veritas Press catalogue had arrived, and she had been paging through it. There are lots of wonderful history tools in that catalogue, all of which affirm that history is God's story. But Darby and Campbell haven't mastered the family story yet. They know a whole lot more about the exploits of the Old Testament saints than I ever did at their age. But they don't even yet know it as well as those who were redeemed at Pentecost, those babes who, while they were yet dead, at least had the advantage of learning the Old Testament while they were dead. My kids haven't had that advantage, but they should.

And of course the Old Testament needs to be taught from a New Testament perspective. My children need to know that we are the children of Abraham, the Abraham who rejoiced to see the Day of Jesus, whose son Isaac was spared, while Jesus was not. They need to know that David was a man after God's own heart, who served as a model of the Christ. That Moses, Joshua, the judges, that all the saints, like we are today, were the manifestation of God on earth, and were witnesses to the Messiah. They need to be steeped in our family story, beginning with Adam. Later they can learn about what God did through the Egyptian empire, the Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Greek and Roman (in fact they can get a sneak peak at it by reading about our brother Daniel, and all that he told Nebuchadnezzar).

From there they need to learn about the history of the Messiah during His earthly ministry. They need to master the gospels, that time in history when Jesus pierced the veil. Then the book of Acts, the great acts of Christ on earth in the first century. That's the history God has called us to know. They need to give themselves over to the study of the Word.

Of course the education bureaucrats might not approve. They want their approved history told, about how the Pilgrims gave thanks to the Indians at Thanksgiving, about how America dropped the A-bomb on Berlin, about how the Yankees valiantly freed the slaves. This, and more muddled silliness is the stuff of government history books. They focus on the backwaters of history, less significant details like the rise and fall of empires. Our history book, on the other hand, is completely without error, and tells the true story of the one empire which is covering the globe. But if we know our story, as it is told in Acts, we'll know that we are called to obey God, rather than man.

Homeschooling should not be schooling at home. The point is not to keep the kids clear of Columbine, but to teach them who they are, to nurture them in the culture, and therefore the history of the Lord. The point is to help them give themselves over to the teaching of the Apostles. He has given us babes, and instructed us to instruct them in His Word. And that's a full time job, when you rise up, when you lie down, wherever you are.