I love the sound of kids in worship. The smaller the kid and the louder the sound the more I like it! So does Al Mohler. And so does God.
You may find that claim to be audacious – extremely so. But I believe that the Bible is clear – God himself has ordained the worship of infants. And he has done so for the most astounding of reasons.
In Psalm 8:2, we read:
“From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.”
In the original text, the word translated above as “infants” is the Hebrew word yoneqim – it is best translated “sucklings.” It specifically refers to babies who are not yet weaned. Biblical Hebrew knows no word for babies or infants that connotes a person smaller or younger than a yoneq.
So far then, we have established that from the mouths of toddlers and newborns (a mildly to non-articulate bunch), God has established strength. Strength? Doesn’t the Bible say “praise?” Yes, it does – in English! The original Hebrew reads that from the lips of children and infants God has established ‘strength.’ When the rabbis who translated the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek (in what we call the Septuagint – a translation dating from the 2nd century B.C.) worked through this Psalm, they chose to translate this idea of ‘strength that is established through peoples’ lips’ as ‘praise.’ In the first verse of this Psalm we are told that God’s name is majestic in all the earth and that his glory is above the heavens. In this second verse we read that he has ordained – he has determined and appointed – that children and infants declare his strength.
But why? To what end? The second half of verse two points us to the most astounding of reasons: God has ordained praise from infants “because of his enemies; to silence the foe and the avenger.”
Imagine for a moment that you have enemies. Powerful, resourceful, bitter enemies. They are intent on getting revenge on you for every fault or slight they have experienced or imagined. What will you do in light of their persistent antagonism? Will you hire the best lawyer you can afford? Will you engage the services of professional body guards? Buy a gun?
When God was scorned and despised while his people were enslaved in Egypt, he sent an 80 year old man who stuttered to speak for him. When he was derided by Goliath – backed by a technologically superior Philistine army, God defended his name and delivered his people through a young shepherd with a sling. Because of his enemies, he moves the hearts of infants to sing. This is what God does.
Too often when we hear noisy or troublesome children in church we are annoyed. We are distracted from our ‘adult’ worship. And we are missing out on the opportunity to be reminded of this astounding truth: in the audible participation in worship of the youngest of God’s people we see and hear God’s chosen response to the existence and the activities of all who oppose him. God, whose name is majestic in all the earth and whose glory is above the heavens, could have simply shouted himself. But he shows his strength in the first and earliest acts of worship performed by the smallest and weakest members of his church.
This week as you sit in worship and hear that child cry, remember the immense strength of our great God. He has ordained – even in the incoherent praise of the nursing infant – a declaration of his own power so grand that no opposition can stand against him. It is shocking that God would do such a thing, but isn’t that the point of this whole Psalm? The very next words of this psalm express our wonder in the form of a question:
When I consider the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?
Your Pastor,
Bob Bjerkaas
N.B. I couldn’t find a good public domain picture of small kids in worship! Let me know if you can.