God's Gift of Children

Sovereign Grace Family Church iconSovereign Grace Family Church

2 views

0 comments

00:04
I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to Psalm 127.
00:27
Today is Sanctity of Life Sunday.
00:33
We normally in this church recognize this day with bulletin inserts.
00:39
Sometimes we have a video to play.
00:42
We talk about the NEST, which is a women's resource center that we support.
00:47
But I do not always preach a special message.
00:53
However, this year I decided to do so, to take a break from our study of Colossians.
01:01
In fact, when we go back to Colossians next week, we're going to look at what Paul said his role was, which was to admonish, to teach, and to present every man mature in Christ.
01:15
And so what I took today as is an opportunity to admonish and to teach and to hopefully help us to be more mature in our understanding of this subject.
01:27
So I'm taking my cue from Colossians, but we're not preaching from Colossians today.
01:37
An expositor, and that means one who preaches verse by verse through the Word, one who draws from the text, typically preaches verse by verse, is allowed one topical sermon per year after which he must repent.
01:53
So after today I'll be in sackcloth and ashes in my office if you need me.
02:00
I do want to ask you to stand.
02:01
We're going to read Psalm 127.
02:03
And even though we're going to focus upon verse 3 because of the continuity of the text and it's only five verses, we will read all of Psalm 127.
02:17
A song of a sense of Solomon.
02:21
Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.
02:26
Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.
02:32
It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil, for he gives to his beloved sleep.
02:43
Behold, children are an heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb, a reward.
02:54
Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are the children of one's youth, and blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them.
03:00
He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies at the gate.
03:08
Father, we thank you for your word.
03:10
And I pray even now, Lord, that you would keep me from error as I seek to preach your word.
03:15
I pray that you would fill me with the spirit.
03:18
I pray that Christ would increase and I would decrease, that the power of your spirit would flow from these words and into the ears and the hearts of everyone here.
03:27
I pray, Lord, for believers, that they would be admonished, that they would be instructed, that they would be further matured in their faith.
03:35
And I pray, Lord, for the unbelievers, that they would be faced with Christ and his cross, and that they would be faced with a point in life where they must turn from their sin and turn to him.
03:48
And, Lord, by your spirit, that you would empower them to do so, and that today men and women and children would come to know Jesus as Savior.
03:57
And I pray all of this, Lord, in Jesus' name and for his sake.
04:02
Amen.
04:21
Every year, Sanctity of Life Sunday is recognized on the third Sunday in January.
04:29
It was designated by President Ronald Reagan as a day to recognize those harmed by abortion and as a day to recommit ourselves to the protection of unborn children.
04:43
It's in January because it was in January that the infamous handing down of Roe versus Wade took place in 1973.
04:56
And it just so happens that this year we are celebrating, or not celebrating, remembering Sanctity of Life Sunday on the very anniversary of Roe versus Wade.
05:08
Roe versus Wade was handed down January 22, 1973.
05:13
It is now 50 years to the day of that infamous legislative error.
05:22
Now, we can all rejoice that last year that error was overturned.
05:30
So this also is the first Sanctity of Life Sunday where there is no more Roe versus Wade.
05:39
Amen.
05:40
And we should be thankful for that.
05:45
However, the deaths have not ceased.
05:52
Deaths continue to add up, even with the striking down of Roe versus Wade.
06:00
And there is an effort, and do not kid yourselves and think that this is not happening, there is an effort within certain legislative groups to try to, through the Congress, create a national legalized right to abortion.
06:18
So that it would no longer be a Supreme Court decision, but rather it would be the law of the land.
06:28
So the battle is not over, and it is not won.
06:32
Though we do thank God for small victories, and the striking down of Roe was a victory.
06:42
But if we consider the concept and idea of what we face when we face the enormity of dealing with the subject of abortion, we realize that when we consider this sin and we compare it to things like the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah, of Assyria or Babylon, even Nazi Germany, those really don't even come close to comparing to the sin that we face in our own land.
07:09
In the past 50 years, over 60 million children have been extinguished through abortion in the United States alone.
07:17
And if you go worldwide, that number goes up to a billion.
07:26
You have to understand the astronomically wide-ranging effect that that has had.
07:39
That means that abortion worldwide has been responsible for more deaths than any war, any atrocity, any epidemic that has ever taken place.
07:54
We have willfully chosen to extinguish life at a scale beyond comprehension.
08:08
Now, I think I can safely say that most of us in this room would agree with Brother Mike earlier when he said abortion is a sin and it needs to stop.
08:30
And I have preached that many times.
08:34
I went back into my notes this week and I was trying to consider what was I going to preach this week because I knew I wanted to speak on this subject.
08:40
And I pulled out old notes.
08:42
I keep all of my sermons.
08:45
And I pulled out all my old notes from before and I noticed a trend.
08:49
I had always preached on the devastating sin of abortion and how awful it is and how atrocious it is and what it does and the extinguishing of a human life.
08:59
But I noticed something I had not done.
09:02
Because, by the way, I have not only preached it from the pulpit.
09:05
We have an entire ethics class in our academy.
09:09
Two years of study that you do at our academy.
09:12
One of the terms is Christian ethics.
09:16
Jackie, you were in the class.
09:18
So we study this subject to the hilt.
09:24
But I decided today to do something differently.
09:27
I want to look at this subject from a different perspective.
09:32
Because if we agree, and I hope we would all agree, but I would never presume unanimity in any subject.
09:41
Because who knows.
09:43
But I would hope we would all agree that abortion is a sin.
09:46
It's wrong.
09:47
It needs to stop, as Mike said.
09:50
But do we also understand that children are a blessing? And as I was sitting at Publix having lunch with my wife this week.
10:04
It's good stuff.
10:07
And we were talking.
10:08
That's why you know true romance is when you're excited to have lunch at Publix with your wife.
10:13
So we're having lunch.
10:15
We're talking across the table about my sermon and about what I was going to preach.
10:21
I said something to her.
10:22
She said, that's what you need to say.
10:25
And it was this.
10:26
I said, we know abortion is a sin.
10:27
But do we really know children are a blessing? And she said, that's what you need to preach.
10:35
So that's what I'm going to preach.
10:37
And we're going to look at three things today.
10:39
Again, it's a topical sermon.
10:40
But I still want to be faithful to the text.
10:43
We are going to look at three different texts.
10:45
Psalm 127 is going to be our first text.
10:48
If you want to have in your mind where we're going from here.
10:50
We're going to go from Psalm 127.
10:52
We're then going to go to Romans chapter 8.
10:54
And then we're going to go to 1 Corinthians chapter 7.
10:58
And we're going to look at three distinct truths about children that the Bible teaches.
11:03
Number one, we're going to see that children are a blessing from the Lord.
11:08
Number two, we're going to see that children adopted are a picture of the gospel.
11:14
And number three, we're going to see that children raised in a Christian home are blessed.
11:21
So that's the three things we're going to look at today on the subject of the blessing of children.
11:26
So let's look first at the first one.
11:28
Children are a blessing from the Lord.
11:31
Psalm 127 verse 3.
11:34
It says, as we read earlier, behold, children are a heritage from the Lord.
11:39
The fruit of the womb is a reward.
11:43
Now this is what's known as a Hebrew parallelism.
11:48
A Hebrew parallelism is something that says something twice.
11:54
And it says it often in two different ways, but it's saying the same thing.
11:57
It's actually called a synonymous parallelism.
11:59
There are things that are different types of parallelism, but this one would be a synonymous parallelism in the sense that it's intended to give the same idea in two different ways.
12:10
And what it says to us, it says that, behold, children are a heritage from the Lord.
12:15
The fruit of the womb is a reward.
12:17
Well, if you put in your mind and you sort of map that out, you'll see that the first thing it says, children are a heritage.
12:24
And then it says the fruit of the womb, which, what is the fruit of the womb? Children.
12:28
And then it says reward.
12:30
Well, the parallel to reward is the word heritage.
12:33
So that's the way that this particular parallelism breaks down in Hebrew.
12:38
We have a subject, which is children or the fruit of the womb.
12:42
And then we have what that subject is.
12:45
That subject is a heritage and is a reward.
12:50
So let's for a moment talk about what that means.
12:55
When Psalm 127 says that children are a heritage.
12:59
The word can also be translated as an inheritance.
13:05
And the idea of an inheritance is something that has great value, something that could be translated as a treasure, something worth a great deal.
13:19
The idea of the word inheritance actually is the idea of property or possession.
13:24
But it's not a possession that has no worth.
13:27
It's a possession of great worth.
13:29
In fact, if many of you have children and you think about what you're going to leave them when you pass away and what do you call what you're going to leave your children when you pass away? That is their inheritance.
13:41
And you leave an inheritance to them of something that's of value.
13:46
Now it may not be of worldly value.
13:49
It may be a coin collection that you spent your life raising.
13:52
But it's valuable to you because it's your coin collection.
13:55
It may be something else that seems very minuscule to the world.
13:59
But to you it's valuable.
14:02
So what the idea of an inheritance is, it's something that is a treasure.
14:06
It's something that is a value.
14:08
It's something that is a gift.
14:10
It's something that is important to the one giving it.
14:15
The one giving it to the one receiving it.
14:17
It is a treasure.
14:20
And now we ask the question, what's the treasure in this text? Children are a treasure.
14:27
From who? From the Lord.
14:32
You see, God, when He gives us children, He's giving us a treasure.
14:40
He's giving us His blessing.
14:43
That's what these children are.
14:46
They are a property, a possession of great worth.
14:49
They are valuable.
14:51
Now you may say, why are you harping on this, Pastor? You've said the same thing 15 different ways.
14:57
Here's why.
14:59
We live in a world where the concept of children being valuable is being snuffed out.
15:08
And children, rather than being seen as blessings, are being seen as burdens.
15:16
How do you know that? Just start having more of them.
15:21
Your first child, everybody will be excited about.
15:23
Your second child, people might be a little excited about.
15:25
Your third child, they'll say, I guess you're done.
15:26
If you have four or six, oh, my heavens.
15:31
That's no longer a blessing.
15:32
That's a burden.
15:35
Right? That's how we see it.
15:37
Children are a burden.
15:40
It's not only that.
15:41
Even one child, people say, I don't want a child.
15:43
I want a dog.
15:43
I want to dress it up in human clothes and take it into Disney World as a service animal.
15:49
And that's a lot easier because you're not going to spend $20,000 sending the dog to college.
15:55
Maybe you shouldn't send your kids there either, but that's another story.
16:01
But the point of the matter is we have seen children as a burden, whether it's one or whether it's three or six or ten or how many children you have.
16:11
People do not see children as the gift that they are.
16:13
People do not see children as the blessing that they are.
16:16
People do not see children as the treasure that they are.
16:19
We see them as a burden because as Brother Mike and I were talking in Sunday School, that's Mike Ward, by the way, just so you know.
16:26
As Brother Ward and I were talking about in Sunday School this morning, children are hard.
16:33
That should have gotten the biggest amen.
16:36
Children are hard.
16:38
Thank you.
16:42
And so the idea that they're a blessing is tough when they're keeping you up all night and they're screaming in your face and they're soiling themselves and you're having to clean up over and over and over.
16:55
And there are times where it seems like children are not a blessing.
16:58
It seems like they're hard and they're a burden and they're tough and they're keeping you from doing the things that you want to do or they're keeping you from the fun parts of life or they're making it tough because they're teenagers.
17:14
I've gone through two and I'm looking.
17:16
I tell you, my ten-year-old, I love her to death.
17:19
The other day I said, Hope, I like you.
17:23
That's just something I like to say.
17:24
We say I love you all the time, but sometimes I'll tell my kids, I like you.
17:28
I like you.
17:30
It's just a little something.
17:31
And she looked at me and she goes, thanks.
17:36
I still like you.
17:39
Thank you.
17:40
Walked away.
17:42
Children are difficult.
17:45
Children are hard when they grow up and they become wayward.
17:52
Not all of my children are saved.
17:54
I pray God will save them.
17:56
That is up to him.
17:57
They receive the gospel from me.
17:59
They receive the gospel from any of you.
18:01
It's God who will convert their heart.
18:04
I have to trust him with that.
18:07
And that's a burden, knowing that I have children that are not saved.
18:14
So I'm not saying every aspect of being a parent is a blessing.
18:20
Because it's hard to be a parent.
18:23
It's hard to watch your children walk a road that you don't want them to walk and wish you could walk it for them.
18:29
It's hard watching your child hurt, and you can't be the one hurting for them.
18:36
It's hard to say to your child, don't do that, and they look at you and say, it's okay, Dad.
18:44
I'm going to keep going.
18:49
It's hard to be a parent.
18:52
And don't think for a minute that the writer of the psalm is whitewashing that.
18:56
He's not whitewashing the difficulty of parenthood.
19:00
But what he is doing is he's saying it's still a blessing from God.
19:04
It's still a gift from God to be given that child.
19:08
And we need to reevaluate how we understand the value of children.
19:24
I don't just mean the world.
19:26
I mean even in the church.
19:30
Because even in the church, children have become a burden.
19:41
I want you to understand.
19:44
Children are valuable not only to their parents, but your children are a treasure to this church.
19:52
Because a church with no children has no future.
19:59
When you hear a child cry, like I just heard little Raylan, and I'm glad and I'm thankful.
20:05
One that I can hear his cry.
20:07
We know Raylan had a tough coming into this world.
20:10
And we see him back there and he's happy and he's healthy and he's cooing.
20:14
And that's a blessing.
20:17
We value children here.
20:20
And we must.
20:23
Some people would say, well, you don't value children because you don't have a children's church program set aside for them.
20:30
But the reality is we want them in here with us.
20:37
It's not a devaluing to say we don't want to send them to another room where we don't have to hear them, where we don't have to discipline them, where we don't have to do anything with them.
20:45
Just send them away to be entertained.
20:47
No, we want them here under the preaching of the word.
20:50
So that God, as Mike talked about, would mix with faith the word of God and would save them even at a young age and give them a boring testimony.
21:01
You know what I mean by a boring testimony? You know what a boring testimony is? You hear those guys? I work every week at Set Free and I talk to guys who have come out of terrible situations.
21:12
I'm thankful to God that he saves those men.
21:14
I'm thankful to God that he can take a man out of the gutter and set him as a king.
21:20
I'm thankful for that.
21:23
But praise God also for the simple life of the child who's raised in church, who gets saved in church, who raises their family in church and perpetuates the faith through simply living it out day by day by day.
21:40
And let me tell you something.
21:41
They need salvation just as much as a guy in the gutter.
21:42
Don't think I'm saying they don't need to be saved as much.
21:46
But it is nice to hear someone say, Yeah, Mom and Daddy took me to church.
21:50
They loved me.
21:52
I got saved young and I've loved the Lord ever since.
21:55
And, yes, I've sinned and, yes, I've had days where I didn't act like I loved the Lord.
21:59
But God saved me.
22:02
And that's a blessing, y'all.
22:03
I'm kind of getting to my third point a little early.
22:06
But the point of it is we need to understand we want to value children because God has told us they are an inheritance.
22:18
The word he uses is the word reward.
22:22
I looked in the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament Hebrew, just because I wanted to see sort of what the Septuagint uses.
22:33
And it does use it kind of translates it kind of interesting because it uses a word that is sometimes a word for wage, like something that's earned.
22:42
Right.
22:43
But we don't earn our children.
22:47
So it's like we have a it's like what do you call something that you should have earned, but were given a gift.
22:55
And that's the idea.
22:57
The children, in that sense, weren't earned by us.
22:59
They were gifted to us.
23:01
It's something that it's something we couldn't earn.
23:04
But God gives to us.
23:07
And in that sense, children are a heritage.
23:11
Children are a treasure.
23:13
Children are a gift from God.
23:18
2013, the then sitting president of the United States was Barack Obama.
23:24
When he was speaking to a group from Planned Parenthood, he made this statement.
23:31
I'll never forget it.
23:31
I remember exactly what he was talking about because he was praising the people of Planned Parenthood for their good work that they were doing in society, you know, murdering children being a good work.
23:44
And he said, I'm thankful to know that if my daughters ever got in trouble, that they wouldn't be punished with a baby.
23:56
That's the exact phrase, the context.
23:58
I gave it to you.
23:59
I'm not misquoting.
24:00
That is what he said.
24:01
I'm thankful that if my two daughters ever get in trouble, that they won't be punished with a baby.
24:09
You understand how the world understands children? They are a punishment.
24:18
You understand how God sees children? They are a blessing.
24:28
That baby is a blessing.
24:31
He didn't even have to leave.
24:32
I kind of wish he would have stayed.
24:35
I made him upset.
24:39
So that's my first point.
24:41
And there's more.
24:42
Here's the thing, by the way.
24:43
I always like to talk about context.
24:45
The context of Psalm 127 is actually important because it's about the futility of building outside of God.
24:52
It talks about building a house.
24:54
He who builds a house without the Lord, the house is doomed to fail.
24:56
Build a city without the Lord, it's going to fail.
24:58
And he goes on to talk about children.
25:00
Why? Because children are how you build your house, right? You can have the world's most pristine house with all the nice fixtures and all the nice setting and all the nice painting and all the nice foundation.
25:18
But the home is not just you by yourself in a house.
25:23
It's your children.
25:25
That is the home.
25:27
And that's what the psalm is talking about.
25:32
Now, as I was thinking about this, and I was thinking about how I wanted to say this, children are a blessing.
25:40
I think I've made that point.
25:43
I began to think about what else do I need to say.
25:46
Not just because I want to fill time.
25:48
That's never my goal.
25:50
But because I want to make sure that other things are understood too.
25:54
So the second thing I want to point out to you today is not only are children a blessing from the Lord, but children adopted are a picture of the gospel.
26:06
And you say, well, why are you bringing this up? Because I know that there are those out there, maybe not in this room, but maybe there are.
26:13
There are those who will never know the blessing of having natural children because of some physical issue.
26:24
Many of you know me.
26:26
Some of you know the history of my wife and I.
26:29
Some of you don't.
26:31
My wife and I went 12 years married before we ever had a positive pregnancy test.
26:41
Twelve years of being together before we ever had hope.
26:49
Never even had a miscarriage in that time.
26:52
Jennifer was unable to conceive, and it wasn't happening.
27:00
And I remember seeing her face every time there was a negative test.
27:12
Because we could have took stock in birth tests.
27:17
Because we had them because we so wanted a baby.
27:24
And then in 2006, we'd been married for six years.
27:27
Well, we got married in 1999, so I guess we'd been married around seven years at this time.
27:30
God did a miracle in our life by opening up a door for adoption.
27:40
And it was actually, we met the kids in 2004.
27:43
We brought them into our home in 2005, and we adopted them in 2006.
27:48
We became foster parents so that they could live with us, and they became our children in 2006.
27:53
And I say that very specifically worded.
27:57
They became our children.
28:03
We are not raising someone else's children.
28:09
Ashley and Cody are ours.
28:15
Not by birth, but by adoption.
28:21
And the blessing of that, and if you have your Bibles, turn to Romans 8.
28:25
The blessing of that is that's the picture God chooses to show us how we are in a relationship with Him.
28:40
In Romans 8, verse 15, it says, For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, Abba, Father.
28:58
What's that passage talking about? Romans 8 is all about the work of the Holy Spirit, walking by the Spirit, not by the flesh.
29:06
It talks about the Spirit coming in, making His abode with us.
29:08
If you don't have the Spirit of Christ within you, you're not His.
29:10
That's what Romans 8 is about.
29:14
And what Paul tells us in Romans chapter 8 is when the Holy Spirit comes to live with inside of us, we become united with Christ.
29:23
And through union with Christ, we become part of the family of God, not by birth, but through adoption.
29:33
We become God's children.
29:36
And you know what he says? He goes on to say in this passage, we become fellow heirs, joint heirs with Christ.
29:47
As much as Christ is the Son of the Father, we too become sons and daughters of God.
29:57
So, beloved, if you have, by God's grace, brought a child into your life by way of adoption, you are not raising someone else's child.
30:07
God gave you a child in a different way.
30:10
But that child is yours.
30:14
And that child is a gift, a blessing, an inheritance, a treasure.
30:20
All the things that Psalm 127 verse 3 relates to a natural child is related to an adopted child, because they too are an inheritance from God.
30:36
I have beloved friends who have struggled with infertility.
30:43
As I said, we did for 12 years.
30:49
And again, I don't know everybody's current situation here.
30:51
I don't know where everybody's at.
30:52
And I know most of you, but I don't want to speak presumptively to anyone's individual situation.
30:59
But I will tell you this, if you want children and for some reason your body can't do it, God has made another way.
31:09
God has made another way.
31:13
And it is no less an inheritance.
31:18
One of the greatest blessings I remember about Adoption Day, and we celebrate Adoption Day every year.
31:23
We call it Gotcha Day.
31:25
It's the day we gotcha.
31:27
We still have the photographs up, just like people have photographs from the delivery room.
31:31
We have photographs from the courtroom where we all dressed up in purple clothes because that was the color we chose that day.
31:38
I look like Grimace.
31:42
And we all went with our purple clothes in before the judge, and he was the sweetest man.
31:50
And he shook my hand and he thanked me.
31:53
Thank you for taking these children.
31:55
Don't thank me.
31:56
I thank God.
31:58
This is a gift.
32:00
And as he did that, and he shook my hand, and he made me raise my hand, and he says, these children are going to be your children.
32:07
They're going to be your heirs.
32:10
And when you die, they're going to have equal rights of inheritance to any natural children you have.
32:15
I said, yes, sir.
32:16
At that point, we didn't expect to have any.
32:20
That's okay.
32:22
People say, how many kids do you have? I have six kids, not four.
32:31
They are my inheritance.
32:32
They are my reward.
32:35
You understand? So adoption is God's picture of the gospel.
32:44
So don't ever diminish the value of it in your heart.
32:49
And if that's the way God chooses to give you children, be thankful that he chose to give you children that way.
32:58
Third thing.
33:00
And this one may seem like it's coming out of left field, but I want to stop talking to the parents for a minute.
33:05
I want to talk to the kids.
33:08
Go to 1 Corinthians 7, 14.
33:11
Now, there's a lot of stuff that surrounds this passage.
33:14
And if you guys have a Presbyterian background, there's a lot loaded in this passage that I'm not going to get to talk about everything in this passage, but I will mention at least one thing.
33:26
Presbyterians see this slightly different because they see this passage as referring to children who are brought into the new covenant by birth.
33:34
And I don't believe that that's correct.
33:36
But I do want us to understand what this passage does mean.
33:40
So what it says, if you'll give me just a second.
33:45
Paul is talking about unbelieving spouses because that may be the situation that someone is in.
33:51
A believer can have an unbelieving husband or a believing husband can have an unbelieving wife.
33:57
That happens.
33:58
People get married unsaved and one of them gets saved.
34:02
Now you're in a mixed relationship and it's difficult.
34:05
So Paul's talking about what to do in that situation.
34:09
And this is what he says.
34:10
He says in verse 14 of chapter 7, he says, For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband.
34:20
Otherwise, your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.
34:24
You say, wait a minute.
34:26
Does that mean that if I got a saved wife and an unsaved husband that he's saved because of the wife? No.
34:33
The word holy here, the word hagios in the Greek, could also be translated sanctified.
34:39
It's the word which means to be set apart.
34:43
The word holy has various nuances of meaning.
34:46
When it's talking about God, it's talking about the ultimate setting apart because God is other.
34:50
He's different from all of us, right? But we also talk about holy communion.
34:55
This bread and this cup is set apart from all the rest of the week's food.
34:58
This bread is holy because it's separate and sanctified.
35:02
It's different, right? We talk about other things that are holy.
35:06
You are called holy.
35:07
The Bible calls you saints.
35:10
The word saints comes from the word hagios, which means the saints, the ones who are set apart.
35:17
That's you.
35:21
But in this context, what Paul is saying is he's saying that if there is a believing spouse and an unbelieving spouse, that the unbelieving spouse actually has a special blessing by living in the home with a believing spouse.
35:38
Because by living in the home with a believing spouse, they have a window to the gospel and the proclamation of the truth within their home, and they have the added benefit of living with a believer, which should be better than living with an unbeliever.
35:55
Amen? Doesn't Peter say in his letter to women, if you have an unbelieving husband, what do you do? You live and love him and you live your faith quietly before him, right? He talks about that.
36:13
So I'm going to say right away, if there's any of you in here, you have an unbelieving spouse.
36:18
You are a sanctifying presence in your home.
36:23
You are the blessing in that home.
36:25
The blessing of sanctification comes through your presence.
36:31
Now I talk to the children.
36:35
You're everywhere, but most of you are right here.
36:41
Understand this.
36:44
By being born in a Christian home, you are not saved by that.
36:53
I mentioned earlier, I have unsaved children, right? But you do have a blessing.
37:03
And the blessing is you have parents, at least one, who loves you and is willing to give you the gospel and separate you from the world as being the child of a believer.
37:24
And that blessing is what brought you here today.
37:28
That blessing is why you're here today.
37:32
And God uses that as one of the means to draw you to himself.
37:44
I was not born to believing parents.
37:52
My mom and dad got divorced when I was six.
37:56
My dad married a Christian woman.
38:03
From her perspective, sometimes I wonder why she did it.
38:07
Just kidding.
38:10
But by marrying a Christian woman, I was forced to go to church.
38:17
And I want to tell you, I weren't nice about it.
38:22
Because I didn't want to go.
38:25
But by God's grace, I knew where I was going to be on Sunday.
38:29
And I heard the word in my home.
38:33
And through that, I got saved.
38:37
Through that, my daddy got saved.
38:41
Now it took a few years.
38:43
And it took some hard times.
38:47
But God blessed me through that.
38:53
My mom got saved.
38:55
Not through that, but another way.
38:57
And now my mom is in church.
39:00
And she's got my kids with her today.
39:02
Because by the way, the Bible also says in Proverbs 17.6, Grandchildren are a crown to the aged.
39:09
So not only are children a blessing, grandchildren are a blessing.
39:13
And I know some of you bring your grandchildren to church.
39:18
That's a tongue tie.
39:19
You bring your grandchildren to church as well.
39:26
But you understand, that's the blessing.
39:30
The Christian home sanctifies through the believing person.
39:36
Because the gospel is brought into that home.
39:39
It doesn't guarantee salvation.
39:41
And understand this, none of us have the guarantee that our children, all of them, will be saved.
39:48
But we can know this.
39:49
If you are in a Christian home.
39:51
Children.
39:52
Caleb, you grew up in a Christian home.
39:55
It's a blessing, isn't it? That's what I want you all to understand.
40:01
Uniquely blessed to be brought up in a place where the gospel is paramount.
40:12
I'm going to draw to a close.
40:16
I started today talking about abortion.
40:21
But I wanted to help you understand that the real battle in all of this is the battle of understanding the value of life.
40:31
The value of children.
40:34
Because ultimately, this debate is over when it comes to the issue of life.
40:46
Because when all this started back 50 years ago, the access to things like ultrasounds and all that were not at all what they are today.
40:57
And what someone said back then was if all we could do is put a window on the womb, abortion would be abolished.
41:04
Because we'd see that it was a child.
41:06
All we need to do is put a window on the womb and abortion would be abolished.
41:10
They were wrong.
41:11
We put a window on the womb.
41:14
And people are still willing to kill it.
41:18
Why? Because we are an Epicurean society.
41:25
The Epicureans believed that the most important thing was the seeking of pleasure.
41:33
The most important thing was the seeking of satisfaction.
41:39
And children are often not satisfying.
41:43
They're often not pleasurable.
41:45
They're often difficult.
41:47
They're often hard.
41:49
And the world looks at that and says it's not worth it.
41:56
And so could I go through the scientific argument and say yes, we can prove that at the very moment of conception, brand new DNA is created and a brand new life is created.
42:05
Yes.
42:06
You know what they say? We don't care.
42:09
We don't care that it's a life.
42:10
We don't care that it's a person.
42:12
What we care about is convenience.
42:14
And we care about ease.
42:15
And we care about comfort.
42:17
And we care about pleasure.
42:18
And we care about all of that to the point where we are willing to destroy an entire generation.
42:29
Because we do not understand the blessing.
42:40
The call of this message is simple.
42:44
Understand that children are a blessing.
42:48
Understand that if God has given you children, you have a responsibility to raise them in the fear and admonition of the Lord.
42:53
You cannot save them.
42:55
But you, sure enough, can preach the word of God to them.
43:01
And trust the Lord with their salvation.
43:04
They are God's gift to you.
43:07
And what are you going to do with that gift? Let's pray.
43:29
Father, this was a message which should cause us all to think a little differently when we hear little feet walk by us in the church.
43:42
Father, may we see these little people, these children, and understand that they are image bearers of God.
43:52
That they are blessings from you.
43:57
That to their parents they are the inheritance, the treasure, the gift, the great reward.
44:06
Father, let us be thankful for them.
44:11
And Father, let us praise you.
44:16
Father, I know that this subject also brings up a lot of pain and hearts.
44:25
So I pray, God, that you would comfort those who hurt.
44:29
For those who have been unable to have children, don't know what to do.
44:37
For those who are still waiting, Lord.
44:43
Lord, for those who have lost.
44:48
For those who are pregnant.
44:53
For those with small children.
44:56
God, give us all a better understanding of what it means when your word says that our children are an inheritance from the Lord.
45:09
And that the fruit of the womb is a reward.
45:14
In Christ's name, amen.