Evangelizing Children (Part 2)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Guest Introduction and Show Banter

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. This is another Tuesday here and we have our special guest today, Pastor Gene Scott with us today.

Bienvenidos a los Estados Unidos.

For those of you who are old enough and who lived in Los Angeles or had TV back at the time, Gene Scott was this crazy preacher in Los Angeles. I'll cut you all off. He actually, early on, well, he was always smart, but he actually taught some of the Bible and he smoked cigars and then towards the end, Steve, he was into horse racing and...

Oh, oh, and the inside of the pyramid and how that related to, I mean, it was bizarre. When I was not on, or when I was unsaved, when I was not unsaved, you know, whatever. You're sounding like me. When I was still yet to be saved, I was flipping around the radio one time, my old VW, and I heard Gene Scott and I go, what is this guy talking about?

And it was literally inscriptions from the inside of the pyramid and he was trying to relate it to today or whatever. And I thought, this is just bizarre. I didn't even know any better. And I thought, this is really weird.

He was crazy. What was the name of that place that he had downtown LA? Some big Jesus saves building or something. I don't know. The church or the open burger. Steve, we now have our email up and running again, and so people can email us and we'll respond back.

Either I will respond, you will respond, Ray, or somebody. En espanol. Si, si. And I've yet to receive one in Spanish. We get them from Latin American countries, but we don't get them in Spanish.

Por que dices eso? Mas o menos.

We got an email the other day from someone, and Steve, tell our listeners a little bit about it without revealing the person's name, but he basically said he liked our style. As an agnostic, he liked our style, being direct, and then he needed some help evangelizing his neighbor.

Is that it? He was like, you know, I have a neighbor who's really depressed and he's angry with God, and I think he could use your kind of help, was basically what he's saying. And I'm like, you know, I just said, you know, it seems to me like I didn't really address the whole agnostic thing other than to say there was a time in life, in my life, when I was agnostic, but I wanted there to be a God because I wanted to make sure that the really bad people got what they deserved.

And then through the grace of God, he revealed to me that I was really a bad person. You know, I thought I was pretty good compared to most, because I worked around a lot of really bad people, and compared to most people, I'm pretty good.

But compared to God, I'm undone, I'm unclean, I'm an unclean man.

There you go. And so if you're an agnostic today and you'd like to email us about evangelism, we'd love to help you. Yeah.

Agnostic evangelism. How you can evangelize your unbelieving friends if you're an agnostic.

Steve, I still am concerned because I think one hour after we're off the air on WVNE, they've still got that crazy, no parental forgiveness, Bob Davis, Bob George, Bob somebody ministry. What's going on with that?

I really hadn't listened to that. I don't know. But if you're a no compromise radio listener, I think you should probably write WVNE and say, what's going on with this defrocked Bob George ministry that's people to people?

What's going on with that? Why would we have that on this evangelistic radio station? Yeah, that's sad. So let's go from sad to glad. Whoa. Well, that was the judgment of God there. That's earthquake.

Yikes. Let's go from sad to glad. We're going to talk about the glad tidings that we can give our children. So today is part two of evangelizing your children. So last time, Steve, we talked about not making things too simple and not rushing.

So give us just a quick, like, one minute recap of those two points.

Well, you don't want to oversimplify and you don't want to rush things.

The Gospel Must Not Be Oversimplified or Rushed

Well, I mean... Isn't there a country song, Steve? You're into country. Now let's just admit, I'm into more alternative, new wave, punk rock.

As Kim likes to say, the music is fine as long as the guys can't sing.

Yeah, I like music where the guys aren't good singers. But there's just an attitude. And you have an eclectic taste, too, but you've got a country stream that goes through there. Yes, I do. So can you pick a country lyric that goes with this topic?

No.

No, because, you know, pretty soon I'd be saying, you know, something like, Jesus take the wheel or something like that, but, you know...

I don't know if this is going to help our ratings or hurt them that Steve likes country music. How can it possibly hurt?

I mean, that's just impossible. But, you know, to get back to what we were talking about, you don't want to oversimplify things because you can't so water down things that you give them an incomplete picture of who God is.

And given the fact that we sometimes struggle to grasp the enormity, the immenseness, the holiness, the all-encompassing nature of God, that's pretty difficult to explain to a young child of four or five.

And then you just don't want to make it so... What was the other point? You don't want to... Well, don't rush things. Yeah, you don't... Well, because we talked about, you know, you could pretty much get them to say whatever you want.

You know, if you talk to your four-year-old long enough now, you could get them to walk up to a stranger and say, you're a ham sandwich and, you know, they'll do whatever you want.

Steve, if a kid did say, I really know that I'm rotten and I'm a sinner, I've sinned against God and I've sinned against you, and I believe... Don't say that. What's our approach with children who make a profession?

It's not an oversimplified gospel. It's not a rushed coercion, but they really understand, and they've been taught at church and Sunday school and at home what the gospel is, and they make a valid profession.

They claim to say, you know, Jesus is the only way. What's our response to that?

Well, we encourage that, certainly. I mean, that's great. Which would you rather have a child say... I hate Jesus. Yeah. Or, you know, why would anybody believe that? You know, something like that. But yeah, I mean, you want to encourage them and you just say, keep on believing that, you know, keep studying, keep believing, and, you know, someday we will see the fruit of that.

Right. So I would definitely encourage them in that way.

Steve, when you were saying that, I thought to myself, A, it's biblical, and B, since we don't have any account in the scriptures about children believing, now, maybe some children did believe, maybe some of those people, he and his household were children and they believed.

I have no idea, because we can't prove it. But since we don't have child conversion in the Bible, then we have to treat children through the same lens that we treat adults. So if an adult says to me, I believe, I say, excellent, keep believing, don't we say that to adults?

So we have the same paradigm for children. There's not a kind of belief that adult has and a kind of belief that a child has. It's the same thing. So this is the gospel for adults and children, and this is the response.

And if you believe, wonderful, keep believing. Preach it. Why do we treat adults and children differently? Because they're humans, they're image bearers, and they need the same gospel. So I say what the Bible says for preaching to adults, you preach to children as well.

Of course, use words that are different, and you can use, you know, such as, and, you know, in other words. But we're dumbing down the gospel because we're talking to kids, but the gospel shouldn't be dumbed down to anyone.

That's right. We want them to learn all the language, propitiation, you know, no, I'm, no, but, but exactly right. I mean, why would you want to give them like two thirds of the gospel or, you know, three quarters of it or whatever you want them to get the whole thing and you don't want to dumb it down, edit anything out.

But just keep encouraging that, that belief, keep on believing.

So when a child says, I believe, or I want to believe, no, you don't, yeah, I don't do that for sure. I have a big smile on my face and say, Daddy's so happy you believe in Jesus and you just keep believing.

Way to go. I encourage the faith, but I don't, I don't do a sinner's prayer. I haven't done that with any of my kids. Do you advise parents to pray sinner's prayers? What's a sinner's prayer?

What do you do with that? I don't advise anyone to say a sinner's prayer ever because I, I mean, I did it once and big, big mistake, but I mean, why not? Because there's no model of it anywhere in the Bible.

You know, we never see John the Baptist, Paul, Peter, Jesus, anybody saying, well, you know, if this sounds good to you, just lower your head and repeat after me. I, state your name, I just admit that I need, you know, we just don't do that.

And you know, I invite Jesus into my heart again, unbiblical language. I mean, that is the one thing I would love to stamp out. I love to go across every church in the country and just say, do you invite Jesus into your heart?

When they say yes, just go, don't.

It's nowhere in the Bible. Steve, now, can't you learn from the email or just a recent, just recently in first Corinthians 13, and it just so sounds so harsh and so unloving.

Well, I, I love, I love to see people come to Christ. What I hate is this kind of non-biblical, unbiblical, really un, un-Christian idea of inviting Jesus in. Where do we see that? We would never see that.

We see Lydia having her heart opened by God. We see, you know, the ultimate example, of course, is Paul. He saw on the road to Damascus and Jesus appears and says, Saul, will you invite me into your heart?

We don't see anything like that. It's just so unbiblical, nowhere is that appeal made, nowhere.

And you know, Steve, I get that people have a desire to close the deal, but this goes back to our theology again, and if God is sovereign over everything, it's okay to wait patiently. And you can look at the Psalms about waiting.

Now the direct context isn't, it's not waiting for your child's salvation, but the point is this, you can trust the Lord with your children. And if God has given you children, he has given you the task of telling them about the good news.

And through the preaching of the good news, God regularly, based on his own free good will and loving kindness, opens the heart of a child. And when the child says, I believe, we don't know if he believes or not.

Time will tell, trials will tell, etc., but we want to encourage that faith. But I don't purposely say, let's do a prayer, and then I go back and say, remember when you prayed the prayer? The kid says, my kids have come to me, Daddy, I'm struggling with my assurance, I don't know if I am or not.

I don't know if I'm a Christian. I never say, remember that time we were laying in bed and we were reading the gospel and you started crying about your sin, and then you prayed to ask Jesus in your heart.

I never do that. That sealed the deal.

Remember that date. If the devil brings an accusation against you, you just remember that date.

I thought you were going to do some kind of the devil song in a country music song. Devil went down to Georgia. See, that was it.

I knew you were going to do that. He was looking for a soul to steal. He's in the bind because he was way behind. He was willing to make a deal.

So in No Compromise Radio Ministry today, we're talking about evangelizing children. And so here's our big paradigm. The same style and content for evangelizing adults, it should be used with children.

And so we trust in the Lord as we do it. We have the great command to do it. We know God blesses His Word. We know God's Word is powerful enough. We know children can't save themselves. And so, Steve, for me, I never say, repeat after me.

I say, you know, Daddy's going to pray for you. Dear Lord, please open the eyes of my daughter. Please save her. Please help her faith. I do those kind of prayers. So pray for your children, but don't do the whole dopey repeat after me, A, B, C.

Yeah, I'm on board 100%. All right.

False Assurance and the Danger of a Prayer Formula

Let's talk about something that's tied to that. And that is if you do pray the prayer and you do tell the child, yes, in fact, you're saved. Steve, talk to me how false assurance could play into it.

Well, I mean, let's say you have a young child, four, five, six years old, and you lead him in that prayer, and they view it, ultimately they grow to view it as fire insurance. And maybe even from a parental perspective, you see it as fire insurance.

They're saved. There's nothing to worry about. I don't need to preach the gospel to them anymore. I don't need to worry about their sin because it's all paid for at the cross. That could be 100 wrong.

I think the number one problem we see, especially here in New England, is people who don't believe the gospel but are inoculated from it because they have a false assurance from their false religion.

Should I name the name? Well, this is No Compromise Radio Ministry, and you didn't get a 1 Corinthians 13 letter. So balance those two. Hmm.

Okay, well, I won't name the name. I'll just tell you that their headquarters are in Rome. Okay.

Steve brings up a good point. There is false assurance given through many avenues. And one avenue is, yeah, but you prayed the prayer. You know, I know you're living with your girlfriend now, and you're 19 years old, and you smoke pot every day.

But remember, you prayed the prayer. And Steve, don't you think that's just the parents saying, I love my kids so much. I don't want them to experience the wrath of God in hell forever.

I don't even want to imagine the possibility that they could be unsaved. So I'm going to rely on a single event. And Christianity is never described that way. You know, Jesus never said, consider the cost of praying the prayer.

You know, I know.

And Steve, I think personally, and this is only anecdotal evidence, that the origins of non-Lordship salvation, they stem from a love of a family member who now just, you know, would still say Jesus is Savior, but not Lord.

And people just can't get it through their mind because of the knowledge of eternal consequences. And so they default to non-Lordship. The guy says he believes in Jesus, but he's living with his girlfriend.

Yeah. And they just love them too much to even imagine the possibility, to even entertain the possibility that they might not be saved. They don't want to look at, you know, the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5.

They don't want to look at anything else. All they do is just go, hey, I remember that date. I remember that prayer. I'll never forget. Well, that's all well and good, but it may not be valid. I mean, we at Grace Community Church, how many times did we hear on Sunday night, you know, somebody getting baptized and giving their testimony, and they would say, you know, I made a professional faith at 11.

I was baptized at 12. And then for the next 20 years of my life, I did whatever I wanted. And then God convicted me of my sin, and I recognized that there was no validity to that first profession. My baptism meant nothing.

I was just trying to make my parents happy. And I'm glad children want to make their parents happy. But to make their parents happy by saying, I believe, we cannot know if that belief is genuine. Listen to Randolph Baptist Church's website, Steve.

You're going to like this. Oh, no, this isn't. This is Grace Church, Sun Valley. Scripture indicates that children tend to be immature, naive, Proverbs 1 .4, foolish, Proverbs 22 .15, capricious, Isaiah 3 .4, inconsistent and fickle, Matthew 11, and unstable and easily deceived, Ephesians 4 .14.

Children often think they have understood the ramifications of a given commitment when they have not. Their judgment is shallow, and their ability to see the implications of their decisions is very weak.

Despite the best of intentions, they seldom have the ability to think far beyond today, nor do they perceive the extent to which their choices will affect tomorrow. This makes children more vulnerable to self-deception, and it makes it more difficult for a parent to discern God's saving work in their hearts.

I think that's pretty well said. So in light of that, we just want to encourage parents that if your child is ordained to salvation, friends, he's going to believe no matter what. So you don't have to try to rush it, seal the deal, close the deal.

God alone saves. And so you can ask God to save your children, and God opens up hearts. And He loves to do that, and He uses the secondary means of prayer and evangelism. And so pray for your children, evangelize your children, and use the same strategy that you would for adults.

I think, Steve, that's what this is really—this is what's boiling around in my mind. We somehow have two different programs for evangelizing adults and children. And short of explaining terms, I think it's the exact same way to evangelize an 80-year-old or an 8-year-old.

I mean, it's the same way to evangelize anybody, right? They need to hear the whole truth about Christ, that we are in need of a Savior because we are sinners estranged from God, bound for hell, that God is perfect and holy and righteous, that He cannot abide sin, that sin will not enter into His presence, that the Trinity in ages past, before time began, determined that Jesus Christ would come, take on a body of flesh in addition to His God nature, that He would live a perfect life, that He would die a sacrificial death in the place of sinners, that He would be raised on the third day.

They need to understand all of that, believe it, and it needs to—if they do believe that, it will change their lives, and that's the only way people get saved.

The Same Gospel for Adults and Children

Steve, when an adult person that I know makes a profession of faith, I have kind of two things going through my mind. One is I want to be happy, right? So somebody calls you up and says, my husband just got saved.

Part of me wants to paint a smile on my face and go, yes, it's not even just painted because I have joy that they're not saying, you know, I hate Jesus, execute Him. But part of me wants to go, time will tell, we're not sure, you know, people can receive the word with joy, Luke chapter 8, and so the same goes true with children.

If your child says, yes, Jesus is the only way, I'm 13 years old, I affirm it all, we still have to be very careful. John MacArthur says, children will almost always respond to whatever way parents ask, not at all guaranteeing the real acts of faith in Christ.

So it's not bad news when your child says, I believe, but your work as a parent is not done, because you need to keep placing Christ before that child in Bible teaching and in reading and showing them an example of a parent who keeps believing the gospel.

How about this, Steve? When we preach on Sunday mornings and Sunday nights, don't we still have a gospel-driven message? So shouldn't we do that with kids? In other words, at service, we still preach the gospel to Christians, shouldn't we still keep preaching the gospel to kids?

Absolutely. I mean, listen, I tell people all the time, if you're tired of hearing the gospel, there's something wrong with you. You know, if you're like, oh, not that gospel message again, get your pulse checked because you are really, really not, you know, I'll use some biblical language, you're not walking in the Spirit, you're not full of the Spirit, there's something going on in your life that isn't right.

We should never tire of hearing how God condescends to save mankind. I remember once I had a friend who said he didn't like Sunday nights at Grace Community Church because they were boring. He thought the baptisms were boring.

I'm like, boring? To hear how God changes people, how he changes their desires, their lives, the trajectory of everything, you know, they're bound for hell and he takes them and says, no, you're not going to hell, you're going to heaven.

That's boring?

That is not boring at all. Those are my favorite services, by the way. How about this, Steve? Wouldn't you say that most people that listen to No Compromise Radio, most people that listen to WVNE, listen to these kind of shows, their children are growing up hearing Bible teaching, they're going to solid churches, fairly solid churches, and so, at least with my kids, it's easy for them to look at people who don't have good manners, who smoke cigarettes and have tattoos and to say, they need a Savior, versus them saying, do you know what?

See that guy who was on Skid Row? I'm just as bad as that guy. I think that's the problem. We see good morals coming out of our kids and good manners, and we exchange that for an internal righteousness that stems from justification.

Yeah, we confuse what's on the outside with what's in the inside. And then we, in that case, we really become no better than, you know, Sunday-only Christians or, you know, fake Christians or any number of cults where the concern is on outside, we're legalists.

You know, well, they must be Christians. Look at how they act.

What a bad idea. Steve, this is more to the praise of God's working through my wife than me. Amen. But I can't think of a time when our kids were smaller, and even now when they're a little older, that we go on a flight someplace and somebody doesn't say to me, boy, your kids are sure well-behaved.

And you know what? That really feeds my mind to my self-righteous mind, because I'm thinking, you know what? Yeah, they are well-behaved. And look at them. And somehow equating, if I'm not thinking rightly, that's how Christian kids act.

But you can have good moral kids in terms of society's morals, and you can have a drill sergeant for a dad and kids know how to act. You know, we have good-mannered, well-mannered kids, and somehow we exchange that for salvation.

I'm guilty of it. My kids are well-mannered, therefore they're saved. That's so wrong.

Come into my rest all ye who are polite and well-spoken.

It's like the kid who sees another guy drive down the street smoking a cigarette. Daddy, we need to pray for their salvation. They're smokers. So on No Compromise Radio today, we still need to get to where we're really driving, and that is baptizing children.

When should we baptize children? Should we baptize children? How often, Steve, should we baptize children? Weekly. So if you've got a question, we want you to write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com.

You can say, why don't you do this as a show? Who do you think you guys are? What's Todd Friel's email address? Mike doesn't seem very loving. He seems, yeah. And I'm extra unloving since I've been sick for about four weeks in a row.

What's all the sickness going on? Do I need to just kind of speak it into existence? I'm well?

I'm about ready to bind the demon of phlegm or whatever it is. That's got hold of you. Yeah.

What do you call that kind of, you know, I'm hacking stuff up? Hack and sack? The demon of hack and sack. If you'd like some shows done on certain topics, you can write us. But if you've got, what, really nasty emails, why don't you write them to Steve?

Is it Steve at No Compromise?

What's your email, Steve? It's info at nocompromiseradio .com.

We are so stalling for time.

You know, the truth is they don't trust me enough to give me a No Compromise Radio account. All right.

Well, thank you for listening today. You can get us at www .nocompromiseradio .com. We'll see you next time.