Family Worship Ideas

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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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

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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.'"

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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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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.

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Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and I'm your host today.

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We have a little moniker, and that moniker is always biblical, always provocative, always in that order.

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What we want to do is we want to tell you that there is one, in fact, who never compromised.

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Think about that. Think about how hard it is to live a life free from sin, yet the

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Lord Jesus Christ lived that perfect life. He was a lamb without spot, without blemish, and so we like to talk about Jesus here on No Compromise Radio.

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And in light of that, there is a conference here at the church, bbcchurch .org, and we have the conference with guest speaker

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Pat Abendroth. Pat is my brother. He's the pastor of Omaha Bible Church. He's nine years younger.

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Let's see, what else do I know about Pat? He likes to bicycle as well. He's got a bunch of kids. I can't remember how many kids he has.

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Five, 15? No, but anyway, Pat's a pastor of Omaha Bible Church, and he's going to be speaking here

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October 4th and 5th. He'll be preaching on the 6th as well. Behold the

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Lamb is the conference title. And in all the days we have of motivational speakers and Joe Osteen and other folks like that, we wanted to talk about the

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Lord Jesus Christ. When you think of Christ, you should think of the substitutionary lamb.

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You should think of behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. You should think of Exodus chapter 12, and you have the

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Passover what? The Passover lamb. And so Friday night, October 4th, men only.

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I think he's going to talk about trends and evangelicalism or gospel trendiness or something. Then Pat and I'll do a

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Q &A. The 5th, we'll have Behold the Lamb, Pat's message, worthy as a lamb.

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I'll be preaching from Revelation chapter five, and then Pat preaches salvation belongs to the lamb. October 4th and 5th, you want to register bbcchurch .org.

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Maybe you go to NOCO, and there's a link there as well. Well, I get asked the question sometimes, what do

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I do for family worship? How does a family get together and worship the

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Lord Jesus Christ? What do you particularly do? How do we go about that? And so I think

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I'd like to talk about that today. I've done it in the past, but I want to revisit the issue.

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If you're a dad and you have, well, you have kids if you're a dad.

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If you're a husband and a father, you want to lead your wife and children in the things of the

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Lord. It is not the pastor's main responsibility to teach your children. It's not

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YouTube's main responsibility to teach your children. It's not your homeschool curriculum's main job to teach your children.

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Fathers, you are the leaders, and you have the responsibility.

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I had to ask you this question. What percent responsibility do you dads have for teaching your children?

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Now, in our egalitarian society, you'd probably say, well, 50 -50, 51 -49. Well, since you are the leaders by God's sovereign decree, you have 100 % responsibility.

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Now, your wife can contribute to things, and I'm glad for my wife that she teaches the kids all kinds of things.

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I'm glad for that help, and I think moms have responsibilities, of course, to teach their children about the ways of the

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Lord too. But the full responsibility for the spiritual health of the family is found in the dads, found in the husbands.

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And so, what do we do? If you're like me, I have no resources to look back upon and say, well, this is what we did in our home.

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My dad would do such and such, and then my dad would do such and such, and my grandpa would do this.

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Well, what happened in the Ebendroth household when I was growing up at 9131 Tomahawk Boulevard in Omaha, Nebraska?

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Well, we were required to sit up straight, no elbows on the table, unless it was dad.

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I think he could do that. We were required to, we couldn't wear a hat at the table if we were young men, which

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I was, and I could not eat until we prayed the prayer. Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest.

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Let this food to us be blessed, amen. And then we would have a lot of gravy bread, a lot of meat and potatoes, and off we would go.

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And then we'd say, thank you, Mom, for dinner. May it please be excused, and off we'd go. So that's the extent of it.

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At night, we were told to pray, come, Lord Jesus, let's see, now I lay me down to sleep. I pray, Lord, my soul to take you, and you know the prayer.

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Well, now what do I do as a Christian man now?

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And so when I read Deuteronomy 6, even though I know Moses is writing to Israel, I think you can sense the heartbeat and you can hear where Moses wants the people of Israel to go, and I think there's some good principles for us as well.

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Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you know that's the great Shema. You shall love the

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Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And certainly, mind is included there.

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Jesus says with your mind in Matthew and in Mark, but here the idea of heart includes mind in the

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Hebrew. So love the Lord your God with all your mission control center, with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.

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You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, and when you lie down and when you rise.

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You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.

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You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. And so I think we have lots of good fodder there for men to say,

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I just need to teach my children about the Lord. Now, the Deuteronomy 6 passage is more just in life.

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And so you're living life and you see an ant there and you stop and you talk to your children about ants and Proverbs and what

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Solomon says about the ant and don't be lazy. I think a lot of it has to do with that.

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But we certainly can formally sit down and teach our children about the things of the

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Lord. And so I have children now who are 12, 14, 16 and 20.

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It's much harder now to get them all seated at the dinner table because they have all kinds of things going on and they're driving around and youth group and work and school and these kinds of things.

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But if you start when the kids are young, I think you'll find it easy. And here's what I do, modify it whatever way you want.

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If you want to do it the way I do it, that's fine. I'll pick my way over Joel Beeky's way because Joel, he's living in a different stratosphere.

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He's the one that you should set your eyes toward because he really has some excellent stuff about family worship.

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But this is kind of the blue collar, Abendroth version of family worship and how a dad could make some steps to teach the children about the things of the

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Lord. So we would have dinner, that's a good place to start and everybody is seated at the dinner table and that assumes lots of things.

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That assumes that the children are seated at the dinner table and that there's no TV show anywhere. Watching TV and dinner,

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I guess it's not a venial sin or a mortal sin, but if you've got a TV in the kitchen, I would turn it off.

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So step one, turn your TV off unless it's, you know, I love Lucy or something, you're trying to learn how to be moral, leave it to Beaver.

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So turn the TV off and everyone's seated there and dads, you can probably, you know, hold all the hands, you know, let's hold hands and bow in prayer and you can say,

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Lord, thank you for this food. Thank you that you gave us taste buds. You can say whatever you want in Jesus' name, amen. And then you eat and talk.

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And then after the meal, I taught my kids to do this, to stand up and salute.

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We just got a, somebody called the church and said, there's too much humor in No Compromise Radio and they've listened to three of the shows and they'd like to give me a suggestion to have less humor.

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So I'll take them at their word and now this is gonna be humorless the rest of the show. So the kids would say,

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I taught them to say, mommy, thank you for dinner. You know, thanks for putting the effort into it.

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It's hard to put the dinner together. Thank you for dinner. And then they were required to ask before they got up.

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You just cannot get up off of the table unless, you know, some kind of emergency. May I please be excused? And nine times out of 10, it was, no, you may not because we're gonna have

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Bible time. And so if you need to be excused, you use a restroom or wash your face or clean off the table in front of you so you don't have things to play with or to go get your

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Bible or to go get your hymnal. Okay, but we're gonna meet here because think about it, parents. You've already had, you already have a captive audience.

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Why try to round up all the crazy kids again when there's homework and school and they gotta take a bath and all these other kind of things to get home from Awana.

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So they're already seated there and you have a captive attention. I don't really like to get up at oh dark 30 to try to do this before school.

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And we homeschool some, public school some, private school some. So I like to do it at night.

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And here's how I would go about teaching the kids. It was my job to try to teach the kids the

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Bible. And it was my wife's job early on to keep the kids seated, to make them not throw any food or anything like that.

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And keep your sippy cups down, you know, at arm's length. And so her job was to try to coach the kids along so that they would listen.

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And by the way, if I could give the wives some advice, here's the advice. If your husband doesn't exegete the scripture like John MacArthur does at the dinner room table, dining room table, don't complain.

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If he's not very enthusiastic, if he doesn't really make the points like you want him to, if he can't preach like the pastor does, don't do any kind of discouragement.

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Pray for him, but encourage him. Thank you so much for teaching the children about the Bible. I really appreciate it.

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Because it's hard to do if you're a man. And it's hard to do living in light of the computer age where at a split second's notice, you can pull up the best

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Bible teaching in all the world. And then here I am, some dad in the middle of Massachusetts trying to teach my kids.

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And so wives, be encouraging. Remember, you could be married to an unbeliever who just wants to get drunk.

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And now you're married to a believing man who wants to teach your children the scriptures. So try to be encouraging.

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Try to keep the kids quiet. And dads, start off by not going for such a long time.

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It doesn't need to be a 50 minute exegetical sermon complete with alliteration and close.

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Here's what I do. I'm gonna teach my children how to study the Bible. Well, how do you study the Bible? Chapter by chapter, verse by verse.

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And so get excited, dads, about the study of the Bible. I would pick up the Bible and when

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I had really little kids, kiss the Bible. I love the Bible. I'm excited about the Bible. I'd be enthusiastic because kids will follow.

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And I have a couple of key theological words I want to tell you, dads. If you're not excited about Bible study, and you might want to write these down if you're in the car, pull over, write these down, put them on your iPad.

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And these are the two words for the dads who aren't excited about the Bible study that you're having at your house.

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So you're ready for these two words? Fake it. Fake it.

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You better be enthusiastic. Now, of course, I want it from the inside, but you better be enthusiastic because otherwise you're gonna teach your children the message and the message is dad thinks the

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Bible's boring and therefore I think the Bible's boring. It's the same thing

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Sunday morning worship. I look at people and say, I can't believe your kids aren't singing. Well, your kids aren't singing the hymns because you're not singing the hymns.

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The kids aren't singing hymns because you're not making your kids sing the hymns. You sing. My kids sing.

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Maybe they're not even all regenerate, but you better sing the hymns because that's just what the Abendroths do.

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The King is worthy of this kind of praise. So be enthusiastic about the Bible and you can give the kids a little children's

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Bible, story Bible, picture Bible. You should do that because I think they should have a

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Bible in front of them. And then you start, how about an Exodus? And read

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Exodus, maybe the night before you read it ahead of time so you can figure it out. But even if you don't, read

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Exodus and then talk to the kids about who God is and who man is and why they need

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Jesus and you'll be surprised about the topics that come up. On a side note, how do you teach your children about the birds and the bees?

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How do you teach them about sex? Well, it became very easy for me to have the conversation with each of my kids over time because they were exposed to systematic

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Bible teaching. We went through Esther. We went through Ruth. We went through the Proverbs. We went through Genesis.

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We went through passages that talked about going into so -and -so's tent to do such and such.

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And that when the kids are little, it just goes over their head. When the kids get older, I'll never forget the time when my kid interrupted me, they raised their hand and said, dad, what's a prostitute?

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What's a whore? Now, I wanna answer those questions. And so I said to the kids, all right, a prostitute is someone who for money will lay down next to a person who's not her husband and let that man do anything he wants to her and she has no clothes on.

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My kids were appalled, dad, that is so bad. For money, they're not even married.

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There's some sense of propriety and private areas and stuff like that. They were appalled.

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Now, certainly when kids get older, you can tell them more details, but we had some great memories when it comes to family worship.

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And so the next night I would ask the kids, what did we learn in Exodus 1? And then I'd do

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Exodus 2. And I did all kinds of things. I said things like if you read your Bible through from start to finish,

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I'll give you $100. And some of my kids have collected. I'd tell the kids that whoever can answer four of my questions rightly from last night's chapter and when we have our review,

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I was gonna give them two scoops of ice cream for dessert, not just one. And I just tried to make them understand cause and effect and reward.

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And you don't have to do it every night, but sometimes I would pour a bag of M &Ms out. And so I'd say, this question is gonna be harder.

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You get five M &Ms if you answer this question. And then the kids would all try. And then sometimes I'd make it easier because I have a three -year -old kid and they couldn't answer what is superlapsarianism as well as my 10 -year -old could.

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Oh, I thought it was supposed to be funless, rest of no compromise. Today we're talking about family worship.

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The best thing is if you are determined to teach your family the Bible, I think the Lord will really bless that.

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You don't need a formula. You don't need to be a legalist about it, but I just wanna teach my kids the Bible. I can't get my kids to heaven, but I know how

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God takes kids to heaven. And that is through the means of the Bible, through the means of preaching, through the means of prayer.

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And so Lord, help me to discharge my duty to teach my children the

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Bible. And so then we would read chapter two of Exodus. We'd ask some questions and then we would sometimes sing songs.

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We expanded to every kid gets to pick their favorite song. We expanded to I got a bunch of hymnals for a discount price at some, where did

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I get them? Some garage sale someplace. Just go to the church in your area and say, could I have some of your old hymnals because it's all

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PowerPoint now. Nobody uses hymnals. And so we'd have hymnals. And so we'd take turns singing songs.

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Sometimes I would do this parents. Sometimes I would let the kids read the chapter. I'd let the kids pick out the highlights.

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I'd help them do that. And then afterwards we would pray. Every kid would pray and then mom would pray and then

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I would pray. And then we would clean up stuff and we'd just go have a fun time. And then we didn't have to get all the kids all seated back together.

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Parents, dads, especially, I would try to be as creative as possible. So when we were talking about Lot's wife and she became a pillar of salt, we're at the dinner table.

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What would you do to try to reinforce Lot's wife became a pillar of salt because she looked back?

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Well, I got the salt out and everybody had to put their little hand out and a little kind of cup formation and I poured the salt on their hand and they had to lick the salt.

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And so I was trying to get them to think about it. I'll tell you that when it came to Genesis 15 and the covenant that God made with Abraham, the unconditional covenant and the burning fire goes between the dead animals cut in half that I went out,

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I called for the dog. Well, no, I guess I didn't. I got little pieces of tissue, paper, kind of, what's that kind of paper towels.

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And I said, this is like a dog and this is like an animal. And then I ripped it in half and then

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I took a little match and I moved it between the pieces saying, here's God by himself making a covenant with Abraham at the expense of his own name if he breaks it.

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And when David was foaming at the mouth and when he was faking like he was insane and he had spit coming down onto his beard, what do you think

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I did? Well, I actually did it because I wanted to make sure the kids got the point. And so I didn't grow a beard but I let the spit drool down my mouth and I acted crazy.

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When it comes to Joshua and you march around the city, so the walls fall down.

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The Abendroth marched around the table and we were little soldiers and we were probably singing some

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Christian anthem and around that table we went and the walls came tumbling down. I'd have the kids stand up and I'd say, all right, you start walking toward the dishwasher.

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And when I say repent, you turn around and walk back to me. And over we'd go and all the kids like, my turn, my turn, no, dad,

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I wanna go. And so I would teach them repent means to turn around.

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Repent means, technically it means to think differently, to change your mind, but then it means if your mind's changed, your life will change and so to do a 180.

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And so I try to be creative and I try to have some fun. It is my desire and I don't know if it'll happen or not, but in an emotional moment,

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I think when I'm on my deathbed and my kids are all gathered around, I hope they remember those days. I hope they remember those days where they had a sinful, frail, fallible dad, but that dad was pointing them to the

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Lord Jesus Christ who never compromised. And so if you say to yourself,

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I'd like to teach my children the Bible, you have a Bible, you get them Bibles and if you wanna sing some songs afterwards, if you wanna have prayer journals, for a while we had little prayer journals and we'd say, what do we need to pray about today?

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And then has the Lord answered these prayers? Who could we pray about in the neighborhood that needs prayer?

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Who are some unbelievers that we could pray for? Believers. And so you can have prayer journals, you can do whatever you want.

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I also had a side plan, a side deal, and here's what it was.

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I, I know now probably it's hard for you to believe, but I don't like to get up in front of public, in public places or for a long time

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I didn't, I didn't like to speak in front of people because I knew I'd make a mistake and I'm vain and prideful and want to look good.

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And so speech class was killing me. Any kind of speech communication classes through junior high, through high school, through college.

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I mean, I would be, I couldn't sleep the night before. So I thought, well, how do you get your children to not have to experience so much pain, so much angst, so much phobia?

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Well, I would have the kids, when we would do our Bible memory verses, kids, please stand up and do your

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Bible memory verse. Hi, my name's Luke. It's John 10, verse one and two.

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And then he would give it John 10, verses one and two. Okay, you can be seated, standing up in front of people.

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This helps in evangelism. This helps every place. Then I started having them stand on top of their chairs and I make them sing a verse of amazing grace, unaccompanied, and then they'd have to sit down.

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We couldn't laugh or anything like that. And I try to encourage them. Once in a while, I had them stand on the table. They thought that was pretty fun, pretty funny, until it was their turn to do it.

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I'd have them say things like, okay, let's work on public speech. And so please stand up and tell me three reasons why you had a good day at school today.

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Hi, my name's Gracie Abendroth and I had a good day at school today for these three reasons. Number one, um, okay, let's not say um.

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Just think, but you don't have to say um. Um means I'm thinking out loud, but just think. You can just think on your feet, it's okay.

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Well, I didn't get 10 detentions like I did yesterday. Okay, that's good.

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I'm glad you're thinking. So, family worship. I find it very interesting when

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I look at scriptures, why doesn't it tell us exactly what to do?

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So when you read the scriptures, you ask yourself the question, some things it gives me precisely given imperatives, prescriptions, do this exactly.

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So if you take the New Testament, you can say, what does God want in a worship service on Sunday? He wants preaching. He wants singing.

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He wants the Lord's Supper. He wants baptism. He wants prayer. He wants giving. These things we know because God has disclosed those things.

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But what about family worship? Isn't it interesting even with parenting, Hebrews chapter 12, parents, when they discipline, they did what was best in their eyes.

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If you get me a dad and a mom who have been captivated by the love of God in Christ Jesus, who have a desire to teach their children the word of God, it will work out because I'm not so concerned about the method as I am about the parents who have the desire to pass on their faith and to speak well of Christ.

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That's what I'm after. So if you say, well, we don't really like the song part and we don't really like do this, but we write the little poems about Jesus and then we read

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Concise Theology by J .I. Packer and then we only order the Banner of Truth books because they're the ones with the good doctrine.

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Whatever you wanna do, if you sit down at the table and say, let me tell you about the

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Lamb of God who takes away not just Jewish sins, but Gentile sins and you just go on and on,

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I will be very happy. And here's the good news. If you didn't do any of that when you were younger,

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God's grace is greater than your sins. Aren't you glad for that? And if you're a grandpa and a grandma and you've got kids who come to your house and they don't grow up in a

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Christian home, they're not growing up and you wanna talk to them about the Lord, what a great opportunity you have.

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It's never too late to start teaching your kids about who God is. So my name is Mike Abendroth.

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This is No Compromise Radio. We've got some videos as well. YouTube, the YouTube station is No Compromise Radio 90.

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I think it is, No Compromise Radio 90 or something like that, No Compromise 90. And we're on Worldview Weekend now.

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Brandon House is broadcasting some of our shows. So we're excited about this time of ministry. October 4th and 5th,

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Behold the Lamb Conference. You can register at bbchurch .org. I think I've got some discounts too for No Compromise listeners if you wanna email me, but I don't have the code in front of me.

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Family worship, not an option. Dads, you be the leaders. Moms, rejoice that your husband is teaching your kids about the

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Lord. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston.

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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE its staff or management.