As we near the close of summer break, we look forward to another year of covenantal instruction in our Reformed Protestant schools. Schools for which the sword has been drawn and blood shed. Schools over which many departed from the fellowship of the church. In the controversy over the school, nothing less than the truth of God’s covenant was at stake. Do not believe for a moment that the school controversy was about anything less than the gracious, unconditional covenant of God with his people in Christ. Men and women railed against that covenant. They kicked up a big cloud of dust against the school as the demand of the covenant.

The demand of the covenant is grounded in Lord’s Days 21 and 38, Church Order articles 21 and 44, and the questions asked of parents in the Reformed baptism form. Briefly, we define the demand of the covenant as the requirement to instruct our children together according to the vows we make at baptism that they be taught the doctrine of this Christian—Reformed Protestant—church. The Christian school is the carrying out and performing of those vows, which are made in the power of the Holy Spirit. When we talk about a demand or requirement, we insist upon the language of the baptism form—namely, our part in the covenant, that we cleave to the triune God of the covenant, trust in him, love him, forsake the world, crucify our flesh, and walk in new and holy lives. Our part is given to us of God as thankful worship and service of him. That thankful worship is demanded as part of our lives in the covenant, just as being members of a true church is demanded and baptizing our children is demanded. What God exposed in the controversy over the school were ungodly men and women who used the doctrine of gracious salvation as a cover for licentiousness, rebellion, and unbelief. The doctrines of justification by faith alone and of unconditional covenant fellowship were not at fault for that rebellion and unbelief, but the fault lay in the wicked hearts and devices of man.

In the end the controversy surrounding the school revealed a complete ignorance of and even a maliciousness toward the doctrine of the covenant, of which many supposedly were ardent defenders. The essence of the covenant is God’s fellowship and friendship. According to his unconditional promise, God establishes the covenant, maintains it, gives the enjoyment of his fellowship, and perfects that fellowship. God draws his people unto himself in their experiences and consciences by faith alone, which is worked by the Holy Spirit in the gospel. And in doing so God places them into the body of Christ as Christ’s members. God did that eternally when he decreed Christ and the elect church as the body of Christ. And God reveals and gathers that body in time by the preaching of the gospel, setting each one of his people in his or her proper place as it has pleased him. And together as a body all the members raise their children, instructing them in the one faith of God’s word. The fellowship in that covenant must necessarily show itself among those incorporated into the life of the covenant. A manifestation of that covenant life is the Christian day school where parents, through godly teachers who stand in their places, instruct their children about God in all the subject material of the classroom. The Christian school is certainly required. God is not indifferent toward the matter of the school, just as he is not indifferent toward his covenant.

It is the Christian school and, more specifically, the covenant children of believers that were in view in the graduation speech at Grace Reformed Protestant School delivered by the undersigned on Proverbs 19:20–21 under the theme “Instruction on God’s Counsel to the Graduate.”¹

Solomon began the proverb with the words “Hear counsel, and receive instruction.” A counselor is one who gives advice or guidance. The counselor gives instruction. Instruction is teaching with a view to a purpose. Instruction is the main work of the schoolteacher, parent, and officebearer. Always the one instructing has a purpose in mind. He does not aimlessly instruct. He prays, reads the scriptures, sings God’s word, admonishes, corrects, and teaches, having a purpose in his mind toward the ones he is instructing. This is true of ministers, teachers, and parents. When a minister teaches the congregation, he has in view the people’s eternal salvation. Parents discipline their child for the child’s eternal good. The teacher in the school instructs the children in a general education with the goal that the children might see their covenant God in all their instruction.

The text says that the purpose of instruction is to make one wise. The instructor teaches the child God. God is wisdom. Wisdom is a perfection of God. God does not merely possess the attribute wisdom like we might possess a piece of property. The property does not define who we are. But wisdom is who God is. He is that perfection, and all his perfections are one in him. All the instruction of the instructor is aimed with the purpose of teaching the child to know God as he is revealed in Christ. And to know God as he is revealed in Jesus Christ is salvation (John 17:3). The purpose of that instruction is that the child might know God and see God in all the wonderful works of his hands, and seeing God, to praise, glorify, and bless his name as the only good and almighty God.

Godly instruction has the purpose to teach the child Jesus Christ alone as the only way of salvation that God appointed. The counselor of the instruction is wisdom herself. Jesus Christ is the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:24). In Proverbs 8 wisdom speaks, personified as a beautiful woman. She cries at the gates and the entry of the city. She speaks of excellent things. She speaks truth and righteousness, and there is no perverse word in her lips. She is better than rubies, and all things that men desire in this life are not to be compared to her.

The great antithesis in Proverbs is always folly. There is the divine wisdom of God, Jesus Christ, who is the counselor who teaches us concerning himself. Over against divine wisdom there is always the folly of man. Wisdom and folly always stand antithetically opposed. You either have wisdom, and you are saved, or you are the fool whom God will destroy in his righteous anger. Man thinks himself to be wise, but man is nothing but a fool. He shows that he is a fool in the instruction of his children at home and in the school. The purpose of his instruction is not to teach God or to teach wisdom, but all his instruction is colored with man’s goodness, man’s achievements, man’s earthly hopes, and man’s activities. All the world’s education is folly because there is no Christ in it.

The world’s instruction is not just in the public schools, but I include with it all instruction in so-called Christian schools and in the Protestant Reformed schools that we left. You must always be ready to give an answer. Why do you not send your children there? Why will you not send them there? Because there is no wisdom. The instruction of those institutions is folly because they do not teach the children the almighty, triune God of their salvation; and they do not teach Jesus Christ alone as the way, the truth, and the life, whom God appointed for the purpose of the salvation of his people. That is why we separated from the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC). That is why we do not instruct our children in the Protestant Reformed schools. The reason is that these churches and schools do not teach Christ. They do not teach Christ as the heart of the counsel of Jehovah. All their preaching and education then is folly, empty, and vain.

All the PRC’s instruction of her children in the Protestant Reformed schools must parrot what is taught off Protestant Reformed pulpits. For the PRC, man’s obedience, repentance, and good works are the necessary way to obtain the assurance of justification and the experience of the covenant. This instruction must also be taught in Protestant Reformed schools. To send your children willingly to those schools is no different than the Old Testament sin of offering children to Molech.

The theory of evolution has been entrenched in the education at the Protestant Reformed schools through the loaded term microevolution, which is evolution that happens over short time periods and on a small scale. I know this because I was taught it in the Protestant Reformed schools over ten years ago. Yet that teaching denies the counsel of the sovereign God of heaven and earth. The providence of God determinatively controls whether a frog can jump one inch or two inches or whether this or that mammal can now swim longer under water than before. Those changes were not evolutionary processes. God determined, governed, and upheld the circumstances and inputs of the environment, and he caused those changes. God governs and upholds all things. There is no such thing as evolution in God’s creation. Evolution in any form is a rejection of the sovereignty of God in his creation. Paul warned Timothy regarding this very thing: “Keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called” (1 Tim. 6:20).

Common grace has also invaded Protestant Reformed thinking practically. Common grace speaks a certain language about the good gifts of God. The doctrine of common grace comes out in the thoughts and voices of the people. “God has given me many things, and therefore he is blessing me.” “That I have all this money, wealth, and influence is God’s blessing on me.” “What a blessing that all my children are healthy and not sick.” In the teaching of common grace, God’s grace is synonymous with the good gifts he gives. Then what naturally follows is that one has God’s blessing because he is a good person and obeys God. One begins to think, “I have all these good gifts as God’s blessings to me because of my obedience, or the gifts are related in some way to what I am doing.” It is not difficult to see how all the wealth and prosperity in the PRC has corrupted the truth that God’s blessing never lies in his good gifts themselves or is a result of one’s obedience. God’s grace is particular, only for God’s elect, and God’s blessing is never in things themselves. God blesses his people for Christ’s sake always, whether they have much or whether they have little, in rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, and riches and poverty.

What folly characterizes man’s instruction!

There are many devices in man’s heart. Man’s heart is his spiritual-ethical center. Out of man’s heart flows all the issues of life. Man’s heart in Eden was consecrated to God. Through that heart the whole of creation found its center. But man fell into sin, so that now as he is fallen in Adam, man’s heart is corrupt, black, and disgusting. Now man’s heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.

Man is nothing but a fool. A fool is one who hates knowledge. Before the fall man instantly and spontaneously knew and loved God. But with man’s fallen, corrupt heart, he hates the knowledge of his creator. Man loves the lie and hates the truth. He will not receive the truth; he will not listen to it; he rebels against that knowledge; and he bristles against it. A fool is easy to spot. A fool is one to whom the gospel comes, proclaiming that salvation is by grace alone without any working of man whatsoever, and the fool refuses to believe the gospel. Wisdom is believing the gospel. But the fool will not believe; nay, he cannot believe, for he has no faith, which has its anchor in election. The fool will not listen to or heed instruction. He plays fast and loose with God, Jesus Christ, the gospel, and the church.

The devices in man’s heart are all the thoughts, deeds, and actions of a man with a view to man’s purpose. Man always has a purpose with what he does. He has a plan to get rich and famous. He has a plan to lead a comfortable, easy, and pleasurable life. Man has many devices in his heart, and they are seemingly limitless and varied.

Really you can sum up those devices simply as this: with all of man’s purposes and the folly of his own heart, man wants to be God. That was man’s device in the garden when the serpent tempted Adam and Eve to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve thought to themselves that they could be as God, and ever since then it has been the same thing. All the sin in the world comes from that root sin and develops from it. Man desires to be God. And the ultimate expression and development of that root sin in the garden will be the culmination of man in the antichrist. Man throughout all of history in his purposes and his plans desires to be as God, and man is the fool for it.

That is true in the false church. Man sets out with his purpose of numerical growth, earthly peace, or prosperity. In the false church man enthrones himself as God in the salvation of sinners. Man teaches the lie that in some sense man is determinative for some aspect of salvation. There is that which man must do to be saved. One must repent in order to experience forgiveness and enter the kingdom. One must obey the law and do good works as a way to obtain assurance. These are man’s devices out of man’s corrupt heart in his desire to be as God in his own salvation.

Nevertheless, the counsel of Jehovah, that shall stand. Over against all of man’s plans and purposes, there is the striking phrase of verse 21: the counsel of Jehovah, that shall stand. What is Jehovah’s counsel? Jehovah’s counsel is everything that he has determined with a view to his purpose. Jehovah’s counsel is eternal, all-comprehensive, perfect, wise, and sovereign. That counsel determined everything that has ever occurred or will come to pass. Jehovah decreed the end from the beginning. His counsel is that which he deliberately thought and planned; therefore, that counsel is determinative. The emphasis of the text is on God’s counsel as he decreed all things with a view to his purpose. He has one purpose, and according to that purpose he works all things. And that purpose includes all of man’s purposes and devices. Man thinks that he is shrewd and smart. Man thinks that he is something in his devices and ingenuity. But understand that God’s counsel encompasses all of man’s purposes too, so that nothing stands outside God’s counsel and control, and God executes his purpose in and through all of man’s devices.

That one singular purpose of God is Jesus Christ. He is the heart of God’s counsel. There is simply no purpose for anything other than Christ. God said, “I am going to reveal myself in Christ. To do that, I will fashion a creation and uphold a creation according to my counsel. Sin will come into the creation so that I might reveal my only-begotten Son as the savior of my people, who will redeem the creature to a higher and more glorious state than could have ever been attained by man.” God was working his purpose when he sent Christ into the world in our flesh. God was working his purpose when at the cross Jesus Christ poured out his blood. God executes his counsel in and through all of man’s devices.

So when out of hatred for God and his Christ, wicked men thought, “We are going to kill the Christ,” there God executed perfectly his eternal purpose in crucifying his only-begotten, beloved Son. God carried out the death sentence of his Son, using the most wicked atrocity man has ever perpetrated, in order to save his elect people from death and woe appalling.

God raised Christ from the dead! That was God’s counsel too. That resurrection shall stand forever as the declaration to the sinner that his sins are forever blotted out and that presently he shall enter eternal glory with his risen Lord. The cross and resurrection are the great bookends to the totality of the elect sinner’s salvation. Both the cross and the resurrection God eternally determined.

All of time and history is the unfolding of what God determined, of what he purposed in himself, and he rushes all things toward that purpose to unite all things in Jesus Christ in the new heavens and the new earth to glorify himself. When God framed the worlds, he always had in view the new creation united in the glorified Son of God in the flesh, along with all his elect, to perfect all things in the Son. All the history of the nations and the kingdoms of this world and all the laws, logic, and order of the creation must serve the purpose to glorify God in Christ. Do you see how no instruction can be apart from Christ, who stands at the center of the counsel of Jehovah?

That counsel shall stand! Forever it stood, and forever it shall remain.

Jehovah’s counsel is wise. The emphasis in Proverbs 19:21 is on the wisdom of the counsel of Jehovah. God in his eternal purpose as he decreed all things carries out that purpose in the most-wise manner. Because God is wisdom, so also his eternal counsel is wise. Wisdom in the triune God is that perfection in which he orders his divine life within himself. He knows how to and does order his life perfectly. And so in his counsel God orders, arranges, and governs all that he decrees so that all things serve his glory, the exaltation of Christ, and the salvation of his elect church.

God shows himself as the infinitely wise God especially in the revelation of Jesus Christ. God’s wisdom was realized centrally at the cross because he willed to glorify himself along the deep way of sin and grace. Jesus Christ, as he walked on this earth, pressed all things into the service of God. Jesus willingly obeyed God in perfect consecration to God. And that led Christ right to the cross, where at that cross God made foolish the wisdom of the world. Man said about the cross, “This is folly.”

But God said, “This is my wisdom. This is my perfect way of salvation for my elect people. And I have determined the preaching of the gospel as the most efficient means—as my wisdom—for the salvation of my people and the carrying out of my eternal counsel and purpose, to apply unto my elect people all the salvation that I have stored up for them in Jesus Christ.” The preaching of the gospel, which declares the wisdom of God, stands over against all of man’s folly and man’s devices.

And God gives to his elect children wisdom. God gives to the elect sinner Jesus Christ. When God joins an elect sinner to Jesus Christ, Christ becomes wisdom to that elect sinner. Jesus Christ is made unto you wisdom. When you have Christ, you have wisdom. This means that Christ is your complete and total salvation, and you seek nothing besides him all the days of your life. Christ becomes to you a refreshing drink of water in a dry desert. Christ becomes bread for the starving. Christ becomes the sweetest, most glorious reality in the whole world to the sinner. You must have Christ, and you must throw man overboard—man’s working, man’s obedience, and man’s repentance. You must have in your instruction Christ, Christ, and more Christ. Nothing else stands but that counsel of Jehovah. Everything else will burn away; all the world’s education, advancements, and achievements and all man’s hopes, dreams, and aspirations will melt away in the great day of the Lord.

The wise man apprehends the reality that is Jehovah God and his counsel. The wise man understands that reality, and he does not build his house upon the sand. He builds his house upon the rock. The wise man adapts his whole life to the ultimate reality, which is God himself. That is what man and man’s devices always deny. The man who does not adapt himself to the counsel of Jehovah is a fool. He is like the man who sits in a burning house and refuses to leave that house but instead rolls over in bed while the house burns down. Or the fool is the man who sees a tornado coming and refuses to go in the basement. Or the fool is the man who sees the storm surge of a hurricane and does not find higher ground.

Because Christ is the wisdom of God to you, you see the whole world and all things in your life from the viewpoint of Jesus Christ. You see that all things must serve him. You understand in a new light all things from the vantage point of eternity. You stop seeking salvation outside of him in yourself or another. And having that wisdom, you press all the gifts and abilities that God has given to you into the service of God’s covenant. To have wisdom is to be covenantally minded. That is the Christian school, dear reader! To press all your abilities and gifts into the instructing of covenant children. The fool says, “I do not want or need the school.” The fool kicks up dust surrounding the school. The fool reveals himself in his folly as a hater of God’s covenant. But to have wisdom is to have the mind of Christ and to love the body of Christ.

The counsel of Jehovah, that shall stand. And literally that means to rise up. The counsel of Jehovah rises up. The idea is not that Jehovah’s counsel had to muscle its way to the top, that Jehovah’s counsel had to beat out all of man’s devices to rise to the top. It is not as if Jehovah’s counsel got to the top in spite of being thwarted by sin, Satan, man, and man’s devices. God’s counsel is not some divine plan B. His counsel stands. It stands perfectly. It is perfect within God, and it will be perfectly executed. God is never frustrated or thwarted. His counsel stands as he decreed it all and as he executes it perfectly for his purpose.

Jehovah’s counsel, that is what stands.

Jehovah’s counsel includes election. Jehovah’s decree of election has determined everything about you. Election, which joined you to Christ. Election, which obtained faith. Election, which obtained the promise. Election— not your repentance—which obtained the forgiveness of sins and justification. Election, which formed you as a church. Election, which gathered you into a body. Election, which gave to you the communion of saints. It is all election. Election is the reason God sent Christ to the cross for you. Election is the reason God sent to you the gospel. Election is the reason God does anything for his people. God was eternally determined to save his people; he desired their salvation. So much does God love his children that he desired that they know his love, that they experience it, and that they enjoy it. So much does God love you that he sent to you the gospel that you might adore him, that you might love him, that you might know him, that you might experience the blessedness he stored up for you, that you might give glory to him, and that you might thank him.

Jehovah’s counsel stands.

His counsel includes reprobation too. You cannot talk about election without talking about reprobation. Reprobation is the ultimate explanation why there is a wholesale rejection of the gospel, why many do not want wisdom but choose to remain as fools, their hearts full of man’s devices. Reprobation is the explanation why many refuse instruction. In reprobation God said, “I hate these ones, and I am going to destroy these ones, and all of their lives long my wrath will abide on them.” The world thinks itself wise, but the world is nothing but foolish without the knowledge of God’s counsel, without the knowledge of Christ, without the knowledge of God’s purpose, and without his divine wisdom.

Jehovah’s counsel shall stand. And that means too that the word shall stand. That is the only thing that stands. The holy scriptures stand as the revelation of God. The scriptures, which are able to make one wise unto salvation through faith that is in Christ Jesus, shall stand. All that God speaks in his word, all that God testifies unto his elect people, shall stand. The free forgiveness of sins, free and everlasting righteousness, that shall stand. That Christ came to justify the ungodly from their sins shall stand.

Why does all this stand? Exactly because it is all of the counsel of Jehovah. Jehovah’s counsel stands over against all of man’s counsels and devices exactly because of whose counsel it is. It is the counsel of God, who stands absolutely sovereign over all that is created, who is self-sufficient without any need of the creature. It is the counsel of the I AM THAT I AM. It is the counsel of the one who reigns over the heavens and the earth. It is the counsel of the one who is ever faithful to his covenant and his promise to forgive his people their sins and to bring them into their eternal inheritance. Jehovah is the one who with his almighty hand carries all that out with absolute perfection. His counsel determined your salvation. His counsel determined all the blessings that you have in Jesus Christ. His counsel stands because it is the counsel of the faithful, covenant God.

Hear God’s word at the end of verse 20: “That thou mayest be wise in thy latter end.” When the text says “thy latter end,” it is talking about your eternal state. The latter end is salvation or no salvation. For the elect God committed to Jesus Christ, who is God’s wisdom, all of their salvation. To be wise unto your latter end is to be wise unto salvation. It is to have Jesus Christ. When God in election gives you true wisdom, you are saved completely—without any of your works.

To be wise unto your latter end then is simply this: do nothing for your salvation. That is wisdom. That is the instruction on Jehovah’s counsel. To be wise unto your latter end is to do nothing for your salvation. Do you believe that? Do not do a thing. Stop working and laboring. God perfected that salvation. He accomplished it all without your working. Christ did it all. To be wise unto your latter end is to stop trusting in yourself. Stop trusting in your good works. Stop trusting in your obedience. Renounce yourself and any good that you have. Wisdom is believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, who has done everything for you and whose blessedness you receive because you have his Holy Spirit. The fool will not believe that but will perish in his folly. The PRC and her schools will never teach that because they are fools. They will always add a “but” after they say that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone to the glory of God alone: “But man must repent…But man must do good works…But man must believe.”

To be wise unto your latter end is to stop with the “buts” and to confess that salvation is of Jehovah and that you are of all men most undeserving of God’s grace and eternal favor.

Therefore, as members of the body of Christ, we instruct our children in this heavenly doctrine in harmony with our baptismal vows to teach them the truth taught in the Reformed Protestant Churches.