A lovely scene we have in these verses. This lovely scene is the covenant home. You can see the scene in your mind’s eye. You are familiar with it. The mother who rises each morning and gives herself to the needs of her family. The father who sits down for dinner with his family, and they eat and drink together, they open the scriptures and read and discuss, and they bow their heads and pray. Can we enumerate all the labors that go into this covenant home? It is quite impossible. The covenant home is a wonder of grace in which a host of labors come together in the raising of children who fear the Lord and confront the enemies in the gate. Verse 2 of the psalm says simply that the laborers in this home “rise up early,” “sit up late,” and “eat the bread of sorrows.” For in this lovely scene, it is not all pleasantries, but the scene involves sorrows too. Parents, late at night, praying for their wayward children. The son who must be rebuked. The daughter who must be warned. The scene involves the anguish of parents who struggle to raise their children in the fear of the Lord in this sin-cursed and weary world.

The Lord loves children, for in himself he is Father and Son in the most blessed fellowship in the Spirit. His being is the perfect home for the fellowship of the covenant God. And God’s dearest possession in all the world is his Son, Jesus Christ, the one by whom God made all things and for whom he made all things. And in his Son, God establishes a covenant with his elect. In that covenant God builds their homes and gives them a piece of his covenant to have and to enjoy in their homes.

Oh, indeed, it must be true that “except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it.” Jehovah, Jehovah alone, builds covenant homes. He does that in and through the labors of covenant parents. The covenant home is one that Jehovah builds; and in that home that he builds, he gives believers a glorious work in his covenant. By extension this includes the good Christian school established by believers. Verse 1 explicitly mentions “the city,” which is a fellowship of various homes, so that the psalm views God’s building the homes of believers as the way in which he also builds his city, the church, which is his kingdom.

The psalm declares the work in the home and on behalf of the home to be vanity except Jehovah builds, which means that labors apart from and outside Jehovah’s building are not only fruitless but also condemnable and damnable. The home that Jehovah does not build is the home that he tears down and destroys. Yet for believers there can be the appearance of vanity and the thoughts that their work is vanity. With the truth that Jehovah builds the homes of believers, the psalm comforts them in their weariness and thoughts of vanity in their labors.

But “children are an heritage of the Lord”!

Wonderful confession about this home in the psalm!

The central work of this home and also the cause of much weariness in this home are children. May we say that this home in the psalm and all its labors surround the children? Yes! Jehovah builds homes of believers by giving children. It is also the children who are the main work of the home and who are the reason for many anxieties, fears, and concerns of believing parents. The psalm is concerned with the proper view of the children of the godly home. Verses 3–5 are Jehovah God’s praise of his children to believers. He commends his children to believers and commends the lives of believers that are given to children. Over against the work of raising these children, Jehovah comforts believers with the truth of his sovereignty, especially in the lives of their children. And God promises his happiness to believers in their children.

Lo, children!

God speaks in the psalm of the children of believers. This ought to be obvious because the house that is built in the psalm by the gift of children is a house built by “the Lord.” Jehovah does not build every man’s house. Jehovah blesses the house of the righteous and builds it. But “the curse of the Lord is in the house of the wicked” (Prov. 3:33): the house of the wicked and everything in it are under Jehovah’s ban, and he tears down the house of the wicked in myriad ways. Jehovah builds the houses of believers, and he does that through their children.

Children of youth!

God ordained the youth of the man and his wife as the time of having children. Not all men and women are like Abraham and Sarah, who had a child late in their lives. Youth is given to men and women to have children. The will of God for young men and women is that they marry and have children. This is the reason for the strength of youth. God gives strength in youth, and it is to be used in the interest of children.

Concerning the children of believers, the psalm takes a startling and remarkable view: these children are “an heritage of the Lord.” Children are a heritage as Jehovah gives them to believers. Children are a heritage in order that Jehovah builds their houses. Children are a heritage not by their parents’ upbringing or through their parents’ labors. But children are “an heritage of the Lord” as they come from the hand of God and are given to a covenant home.

Such a statement that children are “an heritage of the Lord” is remarkable over against the people of the world, who are worse than lions and bears and more like savages who butcher and brutalize their children. The text is not a general statement about the glory and goodness of all children, but in its statement about the children of believers, it rebukes the world, who views children as nuisances, drags upon resources, hindrances to selfish lifestyles, pawns in parents’ plans, instruments of parents’ pleasure to raise and spoil as they please, subjects of parental whims regarding whether the children live or die, means to parents’ selfish ends, and grist for military mills that grind up children by the thousands. How is it not true with respect to children that worldly parents are implacable, unmerciful, and cruel!

That children of youth are “an heritage of the Lord” is remarkable over against the corrupt missionary zeal of many who despise the growth of the church in her children. These zealots compass land and sea to make one disciple and then make him twofold more the child of the devil than themselves. In the interest of their supposed mission zeal, children are abandoned to missionary camps so that their parents can engage in a supposedly more glorious work of missions.

Such a view of children as “an heritage of the Lord” is remarkable over against a church world that has bought wholesale into the thinking of the world, which the world euphemistically calls “family planning,” but which is the calculated and deliberate minimization or destruction of children by all sorts of means.

Jehovah’s praise of his children is remarkable over against many men and women who are capable of having children of youth and who should desire children of youth but instead deliberately put off having children of youth. These men and women say about their youth, “Our youth is ours, and we do not want to waste our youth with children. Our youth is for building up our bank accounts, our portfolios, and our possessions. And our youth is for having a good time vacationing without children, reposing in sunny locations with drinks in our hands.” Jehovah’s praise of his children rebukes many who are fully able to have children in the prime of their lives but who deliberately cease from having children by means of medical operations upon the male or the female or by the use of powerful, body-altering chemicals so that they will not have children of youth. Or if they must satisfy a selfish desire of the womb for a baby, they have only one or two. They deliberately make themselves old when God gave them youth for the purpose of having children.

Over against all of this carnality and unbelief, Jehovah declares about his children, “Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord.”

What a glorious commendation of children! Can anything more precious be said about children than that they are Jehovah’s heritage? He claims them as his own and as an inheritance, in which he dwells and which he distributes as a most precious possession.

Israel as a nation was Jehovah’s heritage, chosen and redeemed out of all nations of the earth and in whom and with whom God dwelt according to his gracious purpose in election. And as a symbol of that and as the Israelite’s share in that, God gave to each family of Israel a piece of Canaan. The heritage of the Israelite was Jehovah’s gift of a piece of the land of Canaan to every Israelite family. In Canaan God dwelt with his people. A little piece of heaven for them! Thus an inheritance is fundamentally a gracious gift because of Jehovah’s election and his redemption, and that inheritance is distributed according to his sovereign will. And so whatever else you might have to say about Jehovah’s heritage, it is a covenantal term. It is God’s gift to his people in the covenant of grace and for their blessing and salvation. The proper view of children is proper covenantal thinking, just as surely as the improper view of children is anti-covenantal thinking. That the covenant children are Jehovah’s heritage means that they are the objects of his grace and as such are also gracious gifts from Jehovah.

That the covenant children are the objects of Jehovah’s grace is the reason they are called Jehovah’s heritage. That is also why they are called not only “an heritage” but also the “fruit of the womb” and “his reward.” All this emphasizes that the children who are called Jehovah’s heritage are the objects of his grace and thus are also gracious gifts. They are not given to the parents in order that the parents may make the children members of God’s covenant; children are not given in order that by instruction the parents will lead the children to accept God’s covenant. Children are given as those who are in God’s covenant and thus are numbered among his chosen people.

To put the matter negatively: if a child of believers is not himself the object of Jehovah’s grace, he is not a gracious gift but is a grief of mind, soul, spirit, and heart. The psalm is not extolling all the children of the world. The psalm is not speaking of all the children of believers. But Jehovah speaks of his elect children and thus those who are the objects of Jehovah’s grace. They are his heritage, the fruit of the womb, and his reward. These children he chose in love out of all people before the beginning of the world and appointed to them his covenant and promised to be a God unto them. These precious children God also bought and redeemed by the lamb slain before the foundation of the world and who was thus crucified on Calvary as their head and savior. An inheritance is always secured at the death of the one who gives it. So the one who promised the inheritance also secured it by Christ’s death. And these children as the heritage of Jehovah are given according to God’s sovereign right of distribution: to this home this one and to that home these ones.

Thus God gives children as a gracious reward. The rewards of God are always gracious. The graciousness of the reward stands in contrast to all earning and merit. Jesus Christ earned his own gracious reward at Calvary. God rewards his people. He rewards them richly and bountifully. He daily heaps benefit after benefit upon them. And these children are Jehovah’s reward. To demolish the human pretension that man builds his house or that man causes his children to be Jehovah’s children and to teach believers that God builds their houses, he teaches that the children by which houses are built are God’s gracious gifts.

And children who are Jehovah’s heritage and his gracious reward are also the fruit of the womb. He gives these children by making the womb of the covenant mother fruitful. The womb of the daughter of Eve is naturally unfruitful; it is barren. It is barren in the sense that the womb cannot bring forth children of God. And still worse, the womb is a grave. The womb may bring forth many children, for the command to man is to be fruitful and to multiply. God surely gives to everyone their children. But the only children whom the womb by nature can bring forth are carnal children of the world. Man is a vicious stock that brings forth corrupt children. So we confess that by nature our children are conceived and born dead in trespasses and in sins, that they stand outside the kingdom of heaven, and that except they be born again, they cannot even see that kingdom. The womb is utterly barren as far as bringing forth children who are Jehovah’s heritage and his reward. The power of God’s grace operates in the womb of the covenant mother and upon her children in order to bring forth elect, redeemed, and regenerated children of his grace.

Since children are “an heritage of the Lord,” this destroys the false opinions of the Baptists who forbid the sacrament of baptism to a vast part of Jehovah’s heritage and refuse to children membership in the church and covenant. God calls children his heritage so that his church is made up of believers and their children. Children who were Jehovah’s heritage in the Old Testament had to be circumcised. And since God calls the New Testament church the Israel of God, the church’s children must be baptized. This is saying nothing different than what Christ stated as the ground for infant baptism when he said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:14). Christ was teaching the New Testament church that she must view her children as members of his covenant, as the Old Testament did, because God includes children in his heritage as the objects of his grace. As a sign and seal of that work, God commanded circumcision in the Old Testament and baptism of children in the New Testament.

So also the psalm destroys the notion that all the children of the womb are Jehovah’s heritage. No, the sovereign will of God determines his own heritage, so that in the Old Testament he loved Jacob and hated Esau. So also in the New Testament, the fruit of the womb, the reward of the Lord, and his heritage are his children according to the election of grace.

Besides, both the view of the Baptist and the view that all children are the heritage of Jehovah imply that the parents’ upbringing of their children and a child’s own choice as a consequence of that upbringing is decisive in the child’s salvation. Rather, children come to parents as gifts of God, as saved, as his heritage, his reward, and his fruit bestowed by grace from the wombs of covenant mothers.

Arrows!

Such children are as arrows in the hand of a mighty man. Under that simile, God speaks of the highest purpose for the raising of covenant children. It is not as though the raising of these children is unimportant. But that raising must aim at the highest purpose, the very purpose of God in giving the children.

Children are as arrows in the hand of a mighty man! These children are not called simply arrows but arrows in the hand of a mighty man. A mighty man was a mighty man of valor, a man well trained in the art of war and whose skills were honed to a razor’s edge. When such a mighty man fired his arrows, they all found their mark, and thus such a man was overwhelming in battle. To speak in our language, that comparison brings to mind the difference between handing a gun to a novice recruit and handing a gun to a member of some elite unit. The bullets of the latter generally will find their mark with unfailing accuracy, while the bullets of the former are fired with little accuracy and are often wide of their mark. So arrows in the hand of the mighty man are arrows that find their mark.

Further, for a Hebrew man the comparison between children and arrows would have been natural because as warriors are prone to name their guns, so the bowman called his arrows sons of the quiver. So children of youth are as the sons of the quiver of the expert archer.

Thus the bull’s-eye, the mark, at which children are to be aimed is the same as the mark at which every believer is to aim, which is the glory of God. He calls children his heritage, and it is the highest purpose of the heritage of Jehovah God to worship, praise, honor, fear, and glorify him. The arrow must hit that mark of the glory of God.

And when God speaks of children as arrows in the hand of the mighty man, God is not comparing the parent to the mighty man who is able to direct his arrows to hit the mark, but God is explaining how Jehovah unfailingly directs those children to the mark of his glory. He gives the children, and he causes them to serve his purpose.

The gracious work of Jehovah in giving children and directing them to the purpose of his glory means their salvation. Their salvation does not depend on their decisions for Christ, on their ratifying the promised salvation, or on their good works but on Jehovah’s gracious gift of salvation to them.

The outward evidence of that inward and invisible salvation is their own bold and unashamed confessions of the truth. This is what God means when he says, “They shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.” This is stated in the language of God’s covenant promise to Abraham that his “seed shall possess the gate of his enemies” (Gen. 22:17). To possess the gate of a city was to possess the city and to rule it. Furthermore, the gate was the place of public preaching and the judgments of the court of law. In the bold and unashamed confessions of Jehovah as their God by the children of believers and their opposition to the enemies of Jehovah, God is glorified, and the children’s purpose is reached. The work of God in their hearts and his grace in their lives become evident in their boldness in confessing the truth. The work of God’s grace in their hearts becomes evident in their opposition to all that is opposed to God, his covenant, and his kingdom. When they speak against the enemies in the gate, the power of that war is the Word of God. The nature of that warfare is spiritual, and the victory in that warfare is the Lord’s.

That those enemies are in the gate teaches that this warfare of the children of believers is especially against those who call themselves church and those who are born in the sphere of the kingdom but who are not church and who do not belong to the kingdom of God. The opposition becomes fiercest and the boldness becomes most notable against those who are closest.

Further, when God speaks of the children’s boldness in confronting enemies, he is teaching that by means of those children God extends his kingdom. God extends his kingdom and the holy gospel by his work of grace in the hearts of the children of believers for the salvation of those children and the glory of his name. He builds his kingdom by building the homes of believers through the generations of their children. He confronts and destroys the kingdom of Satan by that means. God causes his glory to stand out in those confessions.

Thus the purpose of God controls the upbringing of these children. Believing parents are to enjoy their children as from the Lord. Believing parents are to receive their children as from the hand of Jehovah and to delight themselves in their children as gifts and rewards from God. Is that not part of the beautiful scene that lies behind the text? Covenant parents and their children fellowshiping in the truth and enjoying each other’s company.

But above all, believing parents are to direct their children to Jehovah, whose children they are. This is implied not only by God’s declaration that these children be directed to the purpose of his glory, but also by calling them Jehovah’s heritage: a heritage was a gracious gift, and it determined a man’s life. It was his piece of ground that he worked and in which and for which he labored before and unto the Lord. So these children are the parents’ work. And also when God calls these children arrows in the hand of the mighty man, God places that quiver of children with the father and mother and says to them, “Now, so direct your children.”

This work involves above all directing them to the glory of God: teaching them Jehovah’s truth, at the heart of which is the glory of Jehovah as the sovereign God of all grace; bringing them up in the true doctrine of salvation; and teaching them to sing God’s praise and to know, love, and trust him with all their hearts.

On that way these children will also find their mark in their parents. According to God’s own doing, children are like arrows that find their mark in their parents too. The children cause parents to mortify themselves. God demands that for the purpose of teaching children and directing them that the mother devote her life to the home. Her hard work consists of the labors in the home and in the sphere of the home. The Bible everywhere extols that as the will of God. She gives her life, first, to bearing children and, second, to raising them. The children are arrows in that they mortify her flesh. That is God’s work. Children cause the old man in the husband and father to be mortified. The father must instruct, discipline, and correct his children. He must give of his time and energy for them. Especially, this involves the Christian school because to direct children to the glory of God and as Jehovah’s heritage, they cannot be educated with apostate Israelites, Philistines, Moabites, and Ammonites. So a good Christian school of like-minded parents and children must be formed at great expense. Children bring with them trials as well as joys, and so they bring their parents to watch themselves; to give themselves to prayer, warnings, admonitions, and encouragements, for so often parents need the same admonitions, warnings, and encouragements as the children do. And God uses children for the spiritual profit of their parents as the children find their mark as arrows in the hand of a mighty man.

And how all this stands in contrast to the wicked man, who abuses or misuses his children by violence or for his own gratification and pleasure. He uses them as his personal slaves. He treats them as whipping boys. How such a spiritual upbringing contrasts with the man who only teaches his boys to be good businessmen or only teaches his children to save money or not to burp at the dinner table. Such men—whether the brute or the shallow worldling—waste their children and thus their youth when they direct their children to every end but God. The father who does not teach his children the truth abuses his children as surely as if he took them in violence and whipped them for no reason.

But above all, a man who will not direct his children who are God’s children to the purpose of the glory of God fights God, for what that man does with his children he does with Jehovah’s heritage. God stands opposed to that man in his purpose, and that man will be overcome either to his repentance or to his destruction. Just as surely, the man who directs his children to the purpose of the glory of God will be prospered in his purpose by God, and that man’s labor will not be in vain in the Lord.

Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with such children. The Hebrew of the psalm is not blessed is the man whose quiver is full but blessed is the man who fills his quiver with such children. The psalm speaks of the happiness of the man who gives his life to raising such covenant children. And by extension and by obvious implication, the psalm speaks of the happiness of his wife who gives herself to raising such children.

When the psalm speaks of a man’s filling his quiver with these arrows, the psalm is not speaking of mere numbers. The psalm is also not taking the view of many—also many today—that this or that number of children is enough. The psalm speaks of a goodly number of children as a good and blessed thing, provided those children are Jehovah’s children. But a man cannot be like a polecat or a lion and simply have children. If he simply has children and never raises them and teaches them, then both his family and the church have sorrows as the whole house lives undisciplined and unregulated by any law but their own.

Certainly, the idea of the psalm with the words “quiver full” is not the carnal idea of the Quiverfull movement, which seeks to establish earthly dominion, to build an earthly kingdom, and to have an influence in politics on the earth by means of their prodigious number of children. That thinking makes the whole psalm carnal and earthly, while the psalm is very much spiritual and heavenly.

The psalm praises not merely the number of children, but also the kind of children. A man is happy whose quiver is full of children who are like arrows in the hand of the mighty man. The psalm is not being idealistic, for it obviously speaks of hard work, vanity in all labors apart from the truth that Jehovah builds godly homes and specifically that Jehovah does that through giving as his gracious gift children of youth who are Jehovah’s heritage. He gives those children. He directs them to the purpose of his glory and to their salvation and even to the salvation of the parents. And the man is happy who fills his quiver with such children. He has children; he desires them; he delights in them as an expert warrior delights in acquiring good weapons. He is happy in his children.

His happiness consists in seeing his children’s unashamed confessions of the truth and their speaking with the enemies in the gate. This is the fruit upon the labors. But that is a gift from Jehovah God who gave those children. He gives children; he directs them to the purpose of his glory; and they actually do that. Apart from this truth that everything depends on God, there is no happiness in having and raising children.

And those children are for our happiness. God gives us happiness in and through our children. The world and Satan and our own flesh present the vacation to the Bahamas, Mexico, or Hawaii without children as the way to fulfillment and happiness. I ask, “What would you rather see: the confessions of faith of your children, their bold confessions of the truth as held in the Reformed Protestant Churches, or their having good careers in the world and forsaking the truth?”

The believer answers, “I want my children to be bold and unashamed and to confront the enemies in the gate! That is my joy: I have no greater joy than to see my children walk in the truth, just as I have no greater grief than if my children were ashamed of the truth and took the side of the enemy.” Even in this there is no vanity, for the Lord’s will and purpose are done, and he is glorified.

Happiness is to the man who fills his quiver with children. And happy is the woman who gives herself to the home and to those children. God gives happiness to that man and woman, just as surely as he withholds it from those who seek happiness anywhere else.

And God teaches this to us, so that we have the right view of our children; that we receive them from the hand of God as such; that we bring them for baptism as such; that we teach them as such; that we have comfort in our weariness in raising them; that in this most important work in the world, we rest in this truth that children are the heritage of Jehovah; that all our labors are controlled by that truth; that all our weariness is relieved by that truth; and that we live happily with our children before Jehovah.