I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Matt 18:3
I pedaled past a line of preschoolers out for a nature walk. They lit up at the site of a funny man on a bicycle. One little guy leaned out, beamed a gap-toothed smile, and chirped, “Hello there!” His dimpled hand polished off the salutation with a vigorous wave. It was over before my sluggish brain pushed a response down to my mouth—I only chuckled as I rolled away. A bubble of God’s love had swelled out of that little life and burst on mine. It was a dose of joy that lasted well into my day, reminding me there is no barrier between God’s voice and a child’s heart.
I want a faith like that tike. I want to effervesce when the Spirit moves me, free of stalling doubts. Why must I always hold back to ask if God is really prompting me, if others will receive it, if I can take the risk? Then the moment is lost. “Hello there!” “Are you happy like I am?” “Isn’t God’s love great?” Why don’t I spread joy around like a child? What can I hope to accomplish by my prudish reservation? Who does not need a smile and a happy word? Why is the slim possibility of rejection more important to me than broadcasting goodwill? The Lord will never use me to evangelize the nations until I can love like a four-year-old.
Perhaps I could elect senility before it is compelled by age. I could regress to a less jaded worldview. I could be silly, laugh at my self-important big ideas, and concern myself with tickling others. After all, who is mature if it is not the soul free of worry? Regression would allow me to swap out my constipated pride for some healthy generosity. Instead of impressing others with decorum, I would bring them joy. When I can bubble spontaneous love, I will know I am plugged into God.
Prayer: Father, make me childlike again.
Thursday, October 27, 2005
Thursday, October 20, 2005
Sermon – Purity of Doctrine Oct. 23, 2005
Faith-Wolves
Mat 7:15
Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.
The wolves circled excitedly within their pack, bared their fangs, nipped one another, and set up howling. It was a pre-feeding ritual. For days, they had stalked a flock of sheep and measured each animal. Finally, at a stealth trot they separated out a lame ram. What appeared to be a snarling frenzy was choreographed murder. Yellow eyes glared, lips curled, throats growled all just out of reach of the lowered horns. It was a ploy of distraction. The appointed killer slipped up behind, pounced on the haunches, and pulled the sheep down. Before there was a bleat for help, the pack was gorging on their victim.
I know some grandmotherly people involved in the blackest of treacheries. They go about dragging human souls into hell with their words. They are false teachers. However, these purveyors of heresy are mere pawns. The true carnivores of faith are the demons who prompt false teachers. They salivate with desire to sink their teeth of untruth into our faith and pull us down, below life. These beasts track humans looking for those with weak or deformed knowledge of Christ. They know a frontal attack against faith itself will not succeed. Instead, they sneak up behind with false teaching about Jesus. Missing faith and misapplied faith have the same conclusion: spiritual death.
I am not interested in wearing a target on my backside advertising the message ‘pounce here.’ I’d rather the wolves looked at me and moved on because they saw an informed, healthy faith. Having faith is not enough. To be strong and agile it must be faith based on truth about Jesus. We are not abandoned to the spiritual conjectures of humans—though the world is rife with such. We have a rich and beautiful objective source in the Bible. The Holy Scriptures alone capture the teachings of Christ and the resurrection validates His truth. Our only hope against the faith-wolves is to nourish our faith on the real Jesus.
Acts 20:29-31
I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. 30 Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. 31 So be on your guard!
I am not worried about faith-wolves getting into this church after I leave. I trust your elders completely to ensure you receive accurate teaching. What I worry about is what happens when families move on, teens go off to college, or we mix with other so-called Christians who in reality are faith-wolves. They are out there, all around us. It is common to find teachers in the main-line Protestant denominations who deny the authority of scripture. Cults of Christianity send out workers with magazines and spiels for luring in the unaware. I imagine each of us has been targeted at one time or another. If I sound like an alarmist, it is because the wolves have overcome people I love. Like us, they started well then shipwrecked their faith.
1 Tim 1:18-2:1
18 Timothy, my son, I give you this instruction in keeping with the prophecies once made about you, so that by following them you may fight the good fight, 19 holding on to faith and a good conscience. Some have rejected these and so have shipwrecked their faith.
1 Tim 6:20-21
20 Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to your care. Turn away from godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge, 21 which some have professed and in so doing have wandered from the faith.
Repeatedly Paul and Jesus urgently warned us against false teaching:
2 Tim 4:2-4
2 Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage-with great patience and careful instruction. 3 For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4 They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.
One Path
One of the most popular myths of our day is the doctrine of ‘many paths’. It is popular to teach that Jesus is one of many ways to God. These are faith-wolves speaking. Listen to the Bible on this subject:
John 14:6
Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
John 10:1
10:1 "I tell you the truth, the man who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber.
John 10:7-9
7 Therefore Jesus said again, "I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep. 8 All who ever came before me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. 9 I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved.
Acts 4:12
Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.
When we teach Christ as the only way we are viewed as prideful exclusivists. But the universe does not operate according to man’s childish opinions. Let’s look at this subject from God’s point of view. God created the universe through Jesus, He said it was good, and blessed it. Man promptly sinned and corrupted everything. Then God turned to Jesus, this part of Himself with so much splendor and glory that the entire universe was held in His hand, and He said to this Glory, “I want You to become a helpless infant, grow up as a human, and die a treacherous death on their behalf.”
It tore God’s heart to ask glorious Jesus to do this but it had to be done. Jesus agreed and together they went through the heartache of the incarnation, death, and resurrection. Then God held out this indescribable gift to man as the means of forgiveness of his sins and man turned up his nose and said, “No thanks, I’ll find my own way.”
I ask you, is it God who is the proud exclusionist or is it man? It is man; not to mention he is also ungrateful and blind.
Beware of the doctrine of many paths. It will get you into hell.
Types of Wolves
Here are a few other faith-wolves in sheep’s clothing to watch out for:
-Cults
-Cults of Christianity
-Occult
-New-age
Let’s quickly run down this list.
First - cults:
-Do not accept the deity of Christ
-Works-based salvation
-Source of authority other than the Bible
Many cults have no claim of a connection to Christ, such as Buddhism or Hinduism. However, there are many more who do claim Jesus. These are called cults of Christianity. It is a better term than Christian cults because that is an oxymoron. These are probably the most dangerous to you and me. They give lip service to salvation in Christ alone but, like other cults, they un-deify Christ and focus on good works to get us into heaven.
The Occult is usually more honest in where they claim to get their power; from Satan. But sometimes occultists, too, dress in sheep’s clothing. I dated a girl in high school who first told me she used only white magic, but when I broke up with her she put a curse on me. I think that is why my hair is thinning today.
Finally, there is the New Age Movement—which really isn’t so new. In fact, all these heresies were around in the first century and are openly refuted in the New Testament.
New Age -- One or more of the following beliefs:
-All is one, all reality is part of the whole;
-Everything is God and God is everything;
-Man is God or a part of God;
-Reincarnation;
-Man can create his own reality and/or values through transformed consciousness or altered states of consciousness.
Misapplied Faith
As we said at the beginning of this message, the danger in all these false teachings is not that we would drop faith altogether, but that our faith would be misapplied to something other than Jesus, or to a Jesus different from the biblical Jesus. Once again, missing faith and misapplied faith have the same disastrous result—spiritual death. If anyone ever tells you about any Jesus other than the one so clearly described in the Bible, know you are looking at a faith-wolf. Paul had this to say to the Corinthian Church:
2 Cor 11:2-4
I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him. 3 But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent's cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. 4 For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.
And to the Galatian Church he was compelled to say:
Gal 1:6-9
6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel- 7 which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! 9 As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!
The conclusion to this discussion is this: To know the truth about Jesus, through Whom alone comes salvation, we must saturate ourselves in the Bible.
Legalism
Before we leave this subject I want to warn against a pitfall common to many who dedicate themselves to purity in doctrine. It is easy to fail to differentiate which doctrines are essential to salvation and become belligerent about fringe issues. Militant insistence on some trivial matter has turned many away from the church and ultimately Christ. Some of today’s molehills that are made into mountains are worship music, tongues, and buildings; there are many others as well. Paul had much to say in warning against fighting over disputable matters.
Rom 14:1-10
14:1 Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters. 2 One man's faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. 3 The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him. 4 Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.
Paul then applies this theme to matters other than vegetables, and finally wraps up with:
Rom 14:22
So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God.
When you hear the Christian-ese term ‘legalistic,’ it refers to this practice of adding extra rules to grace. It is just as dangerous an extreme as false teaching on who Christ is. Both extremes rely on something other than Christ for salvation.
Beloved, beware of the wolves. Their only intent is to drag you into hell with them.
We will end with the prayer of Paul that we might truly know Jesus:
Phil 1:9-11
9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ-to the glory and praise of God.
Monday, October 17, 2005
Nothing Without Love
If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 1 Cor 13:2
I was running from place to place trying to wire explosives together. Everybody kept interrupting, and I couldn’t let on what I was really doing. I gave them platitudes to keep them content. I finally got free of the crowd and sprinted to the detonation site. Then I awoke upset and breathing hard. “Lord, what does it mean?”
“Don, you have been conspiring to bring explosive change to the people you shepherd. You have been running around wiring for change and preoccupied with configuring a new start for the church instead of truly loving the souls that will be blown up in the process. In the name of outreach you are disregarding the hearts I have already given you to love. Slow down and care for people, not your programs, not your bigger, brighter future. Because if you build the greatest evangelistic ministry in the world, and lead thousands to Christ, and witness your land swept into repentance and worship, but you do not love people as I love them, you are nothing.”
“Lord,” came my reply (though I loathed to hear my voice now that I saw the enormity of my error), “will I ever get out of spiritual kindergarten? Yes Lord, with Your help I will love others. I will leave results in Your hands. I will spend quality time with whoever will let me. I’ll learn to know them. I’ll enjoy good things with them and find out where they hurt. I’ll let You bring Your peace into their lives. Lord, I will see the individual not the crowd. I know how You love me, and I know that is how You love them. I’m so sorry.”
Prayer: I am nothing without You. Help me love.
I was running from place to place trying to wire explosives together. Everybody kept interrupting, and I couldn’t let on what I was really doing. I gave them platitudes to keep them content. I finally got free of the crowd and sprinted to the detonation site. Then I awoke upset and breathing hard. “Lord, what does it mean?”
“Don, you have been conspiring to bring explosive change to the people you shepherd. You have been running around wiring for change and preoccupied with configuring a new start for the church instead of truly loving the souls that will be blown up in the process. In the name of outreach you are disregarding the hearts I have already given you to love. Slow down and care for people, not your programs, not your bigger, brighter future. Because if you build the greatest evangelistic ministry in the world, and lead thousands to Christ, and witness your land swept into repentance and worship, but you do not love people as I love them, you are nothing.”
“Lord,” came my reply (though I loathed to hear my voice now that I saw the enormity of my error), “will I ever get out of spiritual kindergarten? Yes Lord, with Your help I will love others. I will leave results in Your hands. I will spend quality time with whoever will let me. I’ll learn to know them. I’ll enjoy good things with them and find out where they hurt. I’ll let You bring Your peace into their lives. Lord, I will see the individual not the crowd. I know how You love me, and I know that is how You love them. I’m so sorry.”
Prayer: I am nothing without You. Help me love.
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
It Will Come Out Right
Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows… Isa 53:4
Come with me. I know what to do with that grief. Put it into a basket and hold it out in front; we are walking up the steps to Jesus’ throne. As those radiant eyes look at what you brought Him, they burn with sympathy and understanding. A tear plots its course down His cheek. His silence is profound. His hand next to yours, you share sorrow over what lies in the basket.
The golden voice reaches out, “I can carry this basket with you but I cannot take it away just yet.” His eyes drift to some vision unseen by us. “I can foresee the outcome of this. As you trust Me, the venom of this tragedy will not touch you. So trust Me. I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world,” (Jhn 16:33).
The next best thing to having no troubles is being sure they won’t hurt us. We have to endure for now. We may lose worldly wealth, health, and prestige but none of these is the real person anyway. The true you, your soul, will flourish. The waters will not sweep over your spirit, the flames will not set your heart ablaze. You and I will be protected. It will come out right.
Who is it that makes these great assurances? It is Jesus, by and for whom all things were created. It is Jesus, the One given all authority in heaven and earth. It is Jesus who, since the day you gave your life to Him, has not stopped watching over you. Listen to Him breathe words of comfort right now, “My hand is on our basket. It will come out right.”
Prayer: Lord Jesus, whisper peace and confidence into desperate ears.
and carried our sorrows… Isa 53:4
Come with me. I know what to do with that grief. Put it into a basket and hold it out in front; we are walking up the steps to Jesus’ throne. As those radiant eyes look at what you brought Him, they burn with sympathy and understanding. A tear plots its course down His cheek. His silence is profound. His hand next to yours, you share sorrow over what lies in the basket.
The golden voice reaches out, “I can carry this basket with you but I cannot take it away just yet.” His eyes drift to some vision unseen by us. “I can foresee the outcome of this. As you trust Me, the venom of this tragedy will not touch you. So trust Me. I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world,” (Jhn 16:33).
The next best thing to having no troubles is being sure they won’t hurt us. We have to endure for now. We may lose worldly wealth, health, and prestige but none of these is the real person anyway. The true you, your soul, will flourish. The waters will not sweep over your spirit, the flames will not set your heart ablaze. You and I will be protected. It will come out right.
Who is it that makes these great assurances? It is Jesus, by and for whom all things were created. It is Jesus, the One given all authority in heaven and earth. It is Jesus who, since the day you gave your life to Him, has not stopped watching over you. Listen to Him breathe words of comfort right now, “My hand is on our basket. It will come out right.”
Prayer: Lord Jesus, whisper peace and confidence into desperate ears.
Sermon – Family Part 3 Oct. 16, 2005
Series Intro
Today we wrap up a series on the family from Ephesians 5. Our focus is on children.
Family Fudge
It has been said that families are like fudge: At first they are very sweet, but after a while, too much can make you sick, especially if it’s the kind with nuts. I don’t know about your family but mine certainly has a lot of nuts.
Children Obey
Eph 6:1-4
6:1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 "Honor your father and mother"-which is the first commandment with a promise- 3 "that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth."
Children are to obey parents even if we no longer live in the same home. As long as our parents are living we are bound to respect and obey anything that is not a direct violation of God’s word. It is ironic that this scripture comes just before the injunction for slaves to obey their masters. There is a reason we are to obey parents and the clue is given in the next verse: That it may go well with you and you may enjoy long life on the earth. Paul is quoting the promise God gave back in:
Deut 5:16
Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the LORD your God is giving you.
Paul points out that this blessing is not just a natural consequence of obeying wise advice but there is a promise from God connected to obedience. God will bless us when we are obedient to our parents whether their advice seems to make sense or not. We will never be able to follow this command if we do not trust that God is big enough to turn around bad parental advice into something good because we honored His command.
At age 19 I was an immature Christian and had a small view of God’s ability to counteract bad advice. I wanted to take a break in college to travel with the Evangelism Corps through the States spreading the Gospel. My father, who was not a Christian at the time, did not want me to stop my schooling. In fact, he would not finance my future college if I quit then. I felt a non-Christian could not appreciate what I wanted to do so I disobeyed him and left. I will never know what miracle and blessing God would have worked out if I had honored this command to obey my father. If nothing else, perhaps I would not have had to work a job, be involved in ministry, and have a family with children while I finished my last year of school all because I postponed my education in disobeying my father.
God is bigger than our parents’ advice if it seems bad. Obey your parents and trust God to honor you.
Verse four turns the discussion around to how parents are to treat their children.
Eph 6:4 Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.
In fact, we are to treasure our children:
PS 127:3 Sons are a heritage from the LORD,
children a reward from him.
PS 127:4 Like arrows in the hands of a warrior
are sons born in one's youth.
PS 127:5 Blessed is the man
whose quiver is full of them.
MT 18:10 "See that you do not look down on one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.
We are to encourage and bless and hug and love, never to exasperate:
COL 3:21 Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.
MK 10:[16] And he (Jesus) took the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them.
Effective Training
To truly love and honor our children is to train them up in the Lord.
Prov 22:6
Train a child in the way he should go,
and when he is old he will not turn from it.
Training is so much more then what we tell our kids.
Actions Are Loudest
Our kids are hearing from our words that God loves them and that Jesus is Lord, and deep inside they are hoping it is all true. But they can’t see God to verify our words so they seek validation by another method. If they see us living our faith when we don’t think they are watching, they will conclude Christ to be real. Our life speaks our heart in a hundred ways each day:
-When our kids listen at our closed door, they hear us praying.
-When we are called to the phone they find our Bible lying open where we left it.
-When we come out of the store with too much change because the clerk goofed, they see us go back in to return it.
-When a car cuts us off, the kids witness love in how we talk about the other driver.
-When we leave the room and they look at the rental video box, they see a wholesome rating.
-When we are caught in sin, they see us apologize and ask God for cleansing.
Parents, grandparents, our children are NOT listening to what we say, they are listening to what we do. We cannot lecture, legislate or make legalistic the Christian life, but through meekness, humility and vulnerability must model a Spirit-led life. Hearing the simple words from your lips, “I’m sorry, I messed up. I wasn’t trusting the Lord,” will mature your children faster then a whole library of lesson books or lectures.
Statistics show that 86% of all people that accept Jesus as their personal Savior do so between the ages of 3 and 14. Train them while they are young.
Family Night
One of the best things Dani and I ever did in our family was family night. Focus On
The Family has excellent books on Family Nights that even include activity ideas and lessons. Each week we would take turns choosing the activity. The rules were: no friends, no phone, and no absences. We went miniature golfing, went on hikes, played games, had lessons and prayed. Our kids grew to really look forward to that night and even now they have great memories. Dani and I planned lesson activities.
Toothpaste
Do you want to teach your children to be careful with how they talk to others? Then one family night, give each child a tube of toothpaste and let them squeeze out the entire contents onto newspaper. Let them enjoy and have fun, then ask them to put all the toothpaste back into the tubes. When they figure out it is impossible, explain how it is just like our words. It may be fun to let words squirt out but you can never get them back in, so we should be very careful how we speak to one another.
The Ladder
A father showed his kids why Jesus came to save us. The father put a ladder beside the house and got up on the roof. Then he told the kids that the game was that each of them had to come up to the roof with him, but they could not touch the ladder. So the kids struggled and debated until the youngest said, “Daddy, this is not fair and we can’t do it.” The father only encouraged them to keep thinking and trying. Finally the youngest said, “Daddy, please come down the ladder.” And the father did so. She said, “Daddy, please bend down.” The father did so and the girl jumped up on his back. Then she asked, “Daddy, please climb back up the ladder.” As the father climbed the other children caught on and took their turns at getting a ride to the roof without touching the ladder. This clever father then talked about why Jesus came down from heaven to bring us to the Father. To their dying day, those kids could never forget that lesson.
The point is that in families, learning and growing activities happen every day for the parents who want to SHOW their child how to know God rather than just lecture them.
Letting Go
One of the most difficult things to do as a parent is letting go of our kids when the time is right. While they are young we govern every aspect of their lives. One of my favorite five- year-olds is so trusting of his parents that when he is given food that he is not sure he has eaten before, he asks his parents, “Do I like this?” He trusts them even with what he will like. But how long will that precious, unquestioning, trust continue? Probably not as long as the parents would like.
Another five-year-old came over to our house and wanted to watch one of our Disney videos. I told him we first needed to check with his parents and he promptly took me through a checklist of his parents’ limitations:
-No kissing,
-No bad language where they say "stupid" even if they are joking,
-No dancing where they take their clothes off.
While they are young we can enforce compliance with our rules. But we are each created by God with a free independent will, and we cannot control the beliefs, actions or attitudes of our family for very long. Spouses and children must make their own decisions for or against obedience to Jesus. Our responsibility is to do all we can to encourage them and pray for them but we share none of their guilt if they reject Jesus. It is ok to grieve for their loss, but not to accept their guilt. The role model for us in seeking the salvation of our loved ones is found in our Heavenly Father himself and beautifully expressed in the parable of the prodigal son.
LK 15:11 Jesus continued: "There was a man who had two sons. [12] The younger one said to his father, `Father, give me my share of the estate.' So he divided his property between them.
You know the rest of the story. The father gave the son the freedom he asked for and let him go off until he had squandered his wealth and bankrupted his life. The Bible says that later the son came to his senses and returned:
Lk 15: [20] …"But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.
And the father said:
[24] For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.'
That is how our Heavenly Father loves us, but lets us choose and fail if necessary. That is how we must let our children choose. We must let them go.
Hope for Broken Homes
Some here today are single, others come from broken homes. Some are unloved by their families. I want to encourage you with the perspective of Jesus. Even though Jesus loved His earthly family, He knew that His true family was those in the church.
MT 12:48 He replied to him, "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" [49] Pointing to his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers. [50] For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother."
So if you are feeling lost and without a family today, take heart and look around, because you are sitting with your dearest brothers and sisters who will love you in ways that your earthly family never can.
Where to Now
It really does not matter what situation you find yourself in today. It doesn’t matter what the past has been, whether you are from a disrupted home, or even a strong home. Whatever your situation, today, all things are new. You are given an opportunity to forget what lies behind and start fresh with loving your family with all of God’s strength.
PHP 3:13 … one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, [14] I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Forget the past, strain toward what is ahead. Commit to loving your earthly family with renewed strength. Love them, be patient with them, demonstrate the grace that was demonstrated to you. Have fun, love, laugh, have food fights. If you don’t have a family, thank God for this Christian family right here.
Today we wrap up a series on the family from Ephesians 5. Our focus is on children.
Family Fudge
It has been said that families are like fudge: At first they are very sweet, but after a while, too much can make you sick, especially if it’s the kind with nuts. I don’t know about your family but mine certainly has a lot of nuts.
Children Obey
Eph 6:1-4
6:1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 "Honor your father and mother"-which is the first commandment with a promise- 3 "that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth."
Children are to obey parents even if we no longer live in the same home. As long as our parents are living we are bound to respect and obey anything that is not a direct violation of God’s word. It is ironic that this scripture comes just before the injunction for slaves to obey their masters. There is a reason we are to obey parents and the clue is given in the next verse: That it may go well with you and you may enjoy long life on the earth. Paul is quoting the promise God gave back in:
Deut 5:16
Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the LORD your God is giving you.
Paul points out that this blessing is not just a natural consequence of obeying wise advice but there is a promise from God connected to obedience. God will bless us when we are obedient to our parents whether their advice seems to make sense or not. We will never be able to follow this command if we do not trust that God is big enough to turn around bad parental advice into something good because we honored His command.
At age 19 I was an immature Christian and had a small view of God’s ability to counteract bad advice. I wanted to take a break in college to travel with the Evangelism Corps through the States spreading the Gospel. My father, who was not a Christian at the time, did not want me to stop my schooling. In fact, he would not finance my future college if I quit then. I felt a non-Christian could not appreciate what I wanted to do so I disobeyed him and left. I will never know what miracle and blessing God would have worked out if I had honored this command to obey my father. If nothing else, perhaps I would not have had to work a job, be involved in ministry, and have a family with children while I finished my last year of school all because I postponed my education in disobeying my father.
God is bigger than our parents’ advice if it seems bad. Obey your parents and trust God to honor you.
Verse four turns the discussion around to how parents are to treat their children.
Eph 6:4 Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.
In fact, we are to treasure our children:
PS 127:3 Sons are a heritage from the LORD,
children a reward from him.
PS 127:4 Like arrows in the hands of a warrior
are sons born in one's youth.
PS 127:5 Blessed is the man
whose quiver is full of them.
MT 18:10 "See that you do not look down on one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.
We are to encourage and bless and hug and love, never to exasperate:
COL 3:21 Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.
MK 10:[16] And he (Jesus) took the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them.
Effective Training
To truly love and honor our children is to train them up in the Lord.
Prov 22:6
Train a child in the way he should go,
and when he is old he will not turn from it.
Training is so much more then what we tell our kids.
Actions Are Loudest
Our kids are hearing from our words that God loves them and that Jesus is Lord, and deep inside they are hoping it is all true. But they can’t see God to verify our words so they seek validation by another method. If they see us living our faith when we don’t think they are watching, they will conclude Christ to be real. Our life speaks our heart in a hundred ways each day:
-When our kids listen at our closed door, they hear us praying.
-When we are called to the phone they find our Bible lying open where we left it.
-When we come out of the store with too much change because the clerk goofed, they see us go back in to return it.
-When a car cuts us off, the kids witness love in how we talk about the other driver.
-When we leave the room and they look at the rental video box, they see a wholesome rating.
-When we are caught in sin, they see us apologize and ask God for cleansing.
Parents, grandparents, our children are NOT listening to what we say, they are listening to what we do. We cannot lecture, legislate or make legalistic the Christian life, but through meekness, humility and vulnerability must model a Spirit-led life. Hearing the simple words from your lips, “I’m sorry, I messed up. I wasn’t trusting the Lord,” will mature your children faster then a whole library of lesson books or lectures.
Statistics show that 86% of all people that accept Jesus as their personal Savior do so between the ages of 3 and 14. Train them while they are young.
Family Night
One of the best things Dani and I ever did in our family was family night. Focus On
The Family has excellent books on Family Nights that even include activity ideas and lessons. Each week we would take turns choosing the activity. The rules were: no friends, no phone, and no absences. We went miniature golfing, went on hikes, played games, had lessons and prayed. Our kids grew to really look forward to that night and even now they have great memories. Dani and I planned lesson activities.
Toothpaste
Do you want to teach your children to be careful with how they talk to others? Then one family night, give each child a tube of toothpaste and let them squeeze out the entire contents onto newspaper. Let them enjoy and have fun, then ask them to put all the toothpaste back into the tubes. When they figure out it is impossible, explain how it is just like our words. It may be fun to let words squirt out but you can never get them back in, so we should be very careful how we speak to one another.
The Ladder
A father showed his kids why Jesus came to save us. The father put a ladder beside the house and got up on the roof. Then he told the kids that the game was that each of them had to come up to the roof with him, but they could not touch the ladder. So the kids struggled and debated until the youngest said, “Daddy, this is not fair and we can’t do it.” The father only encouraged them to keep thinking and trying. Finally the youngest said, “Daddy, please come down the ladder.” And the father did so. She said, “Daddy, please bend down.” The father did so and the girl jumped up on his back. Then she asked, “Daddy, please climb back up the ladder.” As the father climbed the other children caught on and took their turns at getting a ride to the roof without touching the ladder. This clever father then talked about why Jesus came down from heaven to bring us to the Father. To their dying day, those kids could never forget that lesson.
The point is that in families, learning and growing activities happen every day for the parents who want to SHOW their child how to know God rather than just lecture them.
Letting Go
One of the most difficult things to do as a parent is letting go of our kids when the time is right. While they are young we govern every aspect of their lives. One of my favorite five- year-olds is so trusting of his parents that when he is given food that he is not sure he has eaten before, he asks his parents, “Do I like this?” He trusts them even with what he will like. But how long will that precious, unquestioning, trust continue? Probably not as long as the parents would like.
Another five-year-old came over to our house and wanted to watch one of our Disney videos. I told him we first needed to check with his parents and he promptly took me through a checklist of his parents’ limitations:
-No kissing,
-No bad language where they say "stupid" even if they are joking,
-No dancing where they take their clothes off.
While they are young we can enforce compliance with our rules. But we are each created by God with a free independent will, and we cannot control the beliefs, actions or attitudes of our family for very long. Spouses and children must make their own decisions for or against obedience to Jesus. Our responsibility is to do all we can to encourage them and pray for them but we share none of their guilt if they reject Jesus. It is ok to grieve for their loss, but not to accept their guilt. The role model for us in seeking the salvation of our loved ones is found in our Heavenly Father himself and beautifully expressed in the parable of the prodigal son.
LK 15:11 Jesus continued: "There was a man who had two sons. [12] The younger one said to his father, `Father, give me my share of the estate.' So he divided his property between them.
You know the rest of the story. The father gave the son the freedom he asked for and let him go off until he had squandered his wealth and bankrupted his life. The Bible says that later the son came to his senses and returned:
Lk 15: [20] …"But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.
And the father said:
[24] For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.'
That is how our Heavenly Father loves us, but lets us choose and fail if necessary. That is how we must let our children choose. We must let them go.
Hope for Broken Homes
Some here today are single, others come from broken homes. Some are unloved by their families. I want to encourage you with the perspective of Jesus. Even though Jesus loved His earthly family, He knew that His true family was those in the church.
MT 12:48 He replied to him, "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" [49] Pointing to his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers. [50] For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother."
So if you are feeling lost and without a family today, take heart and look around, because you are sitting with your dearest brothers and sisters who will love you in ways that your earthly family never can.
Where to Now
It really does not matter what situation you find yourself in today. It doesn’t matter what the past has been, whether you are from a disrupted home, or even a strong home. Whatever your situation, today, all things are new. You are given an opportunity to forget what lies behind and start fresh with loving your family with all of God’s strength.
PHP 3:13 … one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, [14] I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Forget the past, strain toward what is ahead. Commit to loving your earthly family with renewed strength. Love them, be patient with them, demonstrate the grace that was demonstrated to you. Have fun, love, laugh, have food fights. If you don’t have a family, thank God for this Christian family right here.
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