The Enormous God-Given Responsibility Various Texts

The most well -known verse in the Bible when it comes to parenting is Proverbs 22 .6

that says, Train up a child in the way he should go.

Even when he is old, he will not depart from it. When you read this, you might be tempted to think that if we raise our children to follow the

Lord, it is a guarantee that they will be followers of Christ when they become adults.

So in other words, this is a promise from Proverbs 22 .6. But that's not always how it works in the teachings of wisdom literature.

We've been talking about this in Sunday school and Wednesday night. Proverbs is a book in the

Old Testament intended to provide wisdom so that your life in the Lord will go well. These physical and spiritual blessings are designed to happen if you act wisely.

But it is important to understand that Proverbs are not guarantees that what it says will happen will happen if you do this always.

But they are general rules that typically this is what will happen if you do this.

Because sometimes the Lord in His infinite wisdom, He does His own things.

And we have to trust Him with that. But even though there are exceptions to general rules in wisdom literature, we should still teach them because the

Lord usually blesses the wise things He tells us to do. One of those wise things is to raise our children to follow the

Lord. It matters. It's so important. And that's what I'm going to drive home here today.

If we do this, we are setting them up well to follow

Him when they are older. Any adult child who grew up in the

Christian faith and that influence early on made a big difference, they'll tell you how much of a difference it made.

And so, what we're doing with the children in this church is so important. Now, as I mentioned last

Sunday, this sermon is not just for parents who have children in the household right now.

This sermon is for everyone because every adult in here has an influence on these children.

The Lord uses not only parents, but other godly people to influence them toward Christ.

So this sermon today is for everyone here. Once again, I will not have you turn in a specific place in the

Bible. We're doing a few topical sermons here. For those of you who are new here today, we spent two years in the book of Genesis.

We went verse by verse through Genesis. We finished that two Sundays ago. And a few

Sundays from now, we're going to be in Matthew. But we're kind of doing an in -between topical sermons.

Today, we're going to focus on parenting. So I encourage you to listen to the passages that I present to you.

Write them down. Take notes. Look at them later on. And that's what is important for you to do as we live out what is taught from the

Scriptures today. So this sermon this morning is titled, The Enormous God -Given

Responsibility. And this sermon is calling you to train a child or train your children in the way of the

Lord. And before I say anything here, if you're going to train your children in the

Lord, you first need to be in love with the Lord. You can't do it superficially, right?

You have to love Him first. And if that's not taking place, you need to seek the

Lord. And I pray that the Lord would break through in your life and that you would know Jesus Christ as your Lord, Savior, and Treasure, and that you would want to raise your children in the

Lord. So that has to happen first. So I say that as a disclaimer here as we start.

So this sermon is calling you to train a child in the way of the Lord. And there's four ways how we will see.

The first is by being a constant presence in their life. Being a constant presence in their life.

When a father and mother are present, they reflect one of the attributes of God, and that is the omnipresence of God.

The doctrine of omnipresence means that God is present everywhere at all times. He's always with us whether we realize it or not.

Jeremiah 23, 24 says, "'Can a man hide himself in secret places "'so that I cannot see him?'

declares the Lord. "'Do I not fill heaven and earth?' declares the Lord."

Psalm 139, one through three says, "'O Lord, You have searched me and known me. "'You know when

I sit down and when I rise up. "'You discern my thoughts from afar. "'You search out my path and my lying down "'and are acquainted with all my ways.'"

Psalm 23, four says, "'Even though I walk through the valley "'of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, "'for

You are with me. "'Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.'" The Lord is always with His children.

And as I mentioned, you become His child by turning from your sin and believing in Christ and having the

Spirit come into your life. And when that happens, the Lord never leaves your side. We can meet

Him in His word or go to Him in prayer any time we want. Now we know that human parents are not omnipresent.

And I chuckle as I say this because we have two little ones at home, Aletheia and Isaiah. We have these cameras in their room so we can always watch them when they're sleeping.

So sometimes it feels like we're omnipresent, like they never leave our sight. But we know, of course, parents are not omnipresent.

We can't always keep an eye on our children. But parents can reflect God by being active in the lives of their children.

It's always sad when children get older and they're asked about their upbringing and they say they had an absent parent, whether dad or mom or both.

It's traumatic to have an absent parent. And it sticks with you throughout your life.

Now usually when there is an absent parent, it's the father. Not always, but usually it's the father.

It's true that mothers can be absent and as they hand their kids off to their husband and pursue other selfish desires.

I've seen that happen with people. But typically, more times than not, the father is the one who is absent.

Why is it that the husband and father neglect their family, their God -given task?

There's a reason for this and it goes back to the fall in Genesis 3. When Eve was tempted by Satan, where in the world was

Adam? We know that Eve sinned by being deceived and eating of the fruit, but did you know that Adam was there when she was being tempted?

Did you know that he sinned also? Adam's sin was a sin of passivity.

He didn't do what he was supposed to do. James 4 .17 tells us, "'Whoever knows the right thing to do "'and fails to do it, for him it is sin.'

Adam should have protected his wife from Satan and kept her from being deceived, but he dropped the ball big time.

He let her be deceived and that's how humanity plunged into sin.

This is our sinful nature. Specifically, I'm referring to men here. Men have the tendency to be passive and not present and alert.

We have the tendency to neglect our important responsibilities as husbands and fathers in the lives of our children.

And our presence may lack in two different ways. One is that physically we may not be present.

It's easy to do something less important to the neglect of something that is more important.

You can't meet the physical, spiritual, and emotional needs of your family if you are not there.

Your children need you to be there. One thing that Brianna and I are attempting to do is to be intentional about putting our family before ministry.

There's many sad stories of pastors who have sacrificed their family, their children, on the altar of ministry.

My family is my first flock. I'm a pastor to them. And every man is a pastor to their family.

And did you know that? You are a pastor to your wife and to your children.

So how are you doing? My family is my first flock and I show this by balancing work and family time.

To the best of my ability, right? Overwork is not a virtue. Underwork is not a virtue, right?

We want to avoid those two ditches. One is laziness and one is workaholism. There's this balance between work and family time and devoting yourself to the regular activities of meeting with God's people on Sundays and in Bible studies.

And having that balance is so, so important. So that's one way that we can show passivity by not being present physically.

The other way our presence may be lacking is mentally. What I mean by this is our body may be there, but we're not there.

And this is convicting to me because this is my struggle. And this is a confession to you. When I'm at home, there are times when my mind is on other things when it should be on my wife and children.

And Brianna loves me enough. God's given me such a good wife. I couldn't blow it even if I wanted to because she's not gonna let me.

And I love that about her. I still do blow it. But my point is that she doesn't worship the ground

I walk on. She challenges me when I fall short.

And I need to hear that. She says, Seth, we need you to be here. And that gets my attention.

I say, yep, you're right. I need to be present here. And then I repent and ask the

Lord to help me to be fully present mentally. And as I say that too, if one spouse is not doing their part, you have the right and the responsibility to address your spouse and do it in a gentle manner.

Don't hit him over the head, but do it in a gentle manner and say, you know what, would you be more present than you are?

Our family needs that. Don't be afraid to do that. It's love to tell that to someone, to tell that to your spouse.

And for the fathers in this room, who I'm being a little harder on here than the wives, you don't want to get to the end of your life and say

I was not present as a father. That's a tragedy. I was out doing other things or my mind was always somewhere else.

That's a fear I have. I need to be alert with my family. And while I have pinned this mostly on fathers, mothers, you need to be present also by showing an interest in the deep needs of your children.

Mothers can also be distracted about what is important. And sometimes with mothers, you're there physically, you're there mentally, but you're not addressing the important things of your child's heart.

And that can be an evidence of absence as well. The most important need children have is spiritual.

The Lord calls parents to lead them to follow the Lord. Parents should be present by being actively involved in their children's lives and being prepared to answer their questions about the

Bible and being one who they come to during times of difficulty as they're growing up because we all know that growing up is so hard and your parents need to be there for their children during those difficult growing up years.

And if you are a parent who is present, showing that you love and care for your children, they will come to you.

They won't go to someone else. They'll come to you to guide them because they know that you care and they know that you love the

Lord. One thing that's happened recently in the church is the position of youth pastor, it's not a bad thing in itself.

But what it kind of turned into was the youth pastor raises the children of the Lord and the parents just kind of plop the kid off to the youth pastor.

And that's not what the Bible says, right? The Bible teaches us to raise our children in the Lord and that's the responsibility of the parents.

And the youth pastor, if we had one, which we don't right now, but a lot of churches do, the youth pastor assists in that.

But the primary responsibility is on the parents to raise their children in the Lord. So you don't want your children to say,

I'm not going to my parents at this difficult point in my life or I'm not going to ask this question because my parents don't deeply care for me and they don't love

God. What a tragedy that would be. They need to know that you love them. They need to know that you love the

Lord and what a difference you will make in their lives. So the first way how parents should train a child in the way of the

Lord is by being a constant presence in their life. The second way how parents should train a child in the way of the

Lord is by praying for them daily. Praying for them daily. It's so important that we pray for our children continually that God would break through in their hearts.

Children have a heart of stone just like adults do. It's an idle factory.

One thing Brianne and I are teaching Aletheia is that Jesus is so much important than princesses.

She loves princesses. In fact, she can name about 25 of them. I say, who's this one? You know, she's like Aurora.

Who's this one? Cinderella. Who's this one? Jasmine. I mean, she just goes right down the list. But does she know the

Bible? Does she know what Jesus did for her at the cross? You know, she needs to know that so much more than her princesses.

And we tell her that. And by nature, we know that children will not love the Lord. They're gonna be drawn to other things because that's what we do by nature.

King David said in Psalm 51 .5, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me.

God has to do a work in their hearts and this will come through prayer. And your motivation to pray should be very high because of the impact it makes in all of life, including the lives of your children.

James 4, two and three says, you do not have because you do not ask.

You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your own passions. That's such a wonderful passage and convicted a passage because the

Lord is saying, if you want things to happen, pray. Because you did not receive because you did not ask.

If you want your children to follow the Lord, you need to pray for them. Prayer makes things work in this world for God's glory and for the good of his people.

The reason I am following the Lord right now and I am your pastor is because people prayed for me decades ago.

Lots of people at Mound Free Church, my home church, where I grew up, prayed for me and my parents prayed for me.

My parents love the Lord and if you are following the Lord today, people prayed for you and you wouldn't be here right now if they didn't.

And it may be that your parents prayed for you. And as parents, we should pray for our children daily.

1 Thessalonians 5, 17 and 18 tells us to pray without ceasing. And to pray without ceasing is

God's will for our lives. This includes praying for your children. These gifts, these precious gifts that God has given to us should be prayed over continually because we don't want the world to get them.

We don't want the devil to have dominance over their lives. We want Jesus to be supreme in their life.

And you might ask, well, what does this look like? What does prayer for my children look like? There are several times a day where we are reminded to pray, right?

Mealtimes, good time to pray. Bedtimes, good time to pray. But we don't wanna stop there.

We wanna pray throughout the day as well. And this is where it's important to set aside time and say, you know what?

I'm gonna pray for my children at this time during the day because if we don't do that, we probably won't do it. So it's important to set aside that time throughout the day to pray for your children.

And if we do this, we will fulfill the command to pray without ceasing. Secondly, we need to understand what to pray for.

How to pray. We want our prayers to reach heaven. I heard someone say one time that only one out of 100 prayers reach heaven.

I'm not sure if that's accurate or not. But if we don't pray right, the Lord's not gonna love to hear it and He's not gonna answer it.

We need to pray for what is close to God's heart. The way that God hears and answers our prayers is when we pray

His promises back to Him. 17th century Puritan, a man by the name of Thomas Manton, wrote that when we pray, we should show

God His handwriting. We need to pray according to His will. So let me give you a few examples of what this might look like.

The prayer that I pray most for Aletheia and Isaiah is

John 6 .44 in Acts 16 .31. John 6 .44

says that no one believes in Jesus unless he is first drawn by God the

Father. So I pray, Lord, draw my children to your son,

Jesus Christ. Then I pray for Acts 16 .31,

which says, believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved. So I say, Lord, I pray that my children will believe in Jesus Christ and be saved.

You can also pray Romans 10 .13, anyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.

And pray, Lord, may my children lead them to call upon your name and be saved.

So I pray for them, first and foremost, that they would come into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. I also pray that my children would love

God with all of their heart, which of course will come about if they are saved. Deuteronomy 6 .5,

right? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and might. And this happens when the

Lord gives them a new heart. That comes from Ezekiel 36 .26,

right? He replaces the heart of stone with a soft heart of flesh.

And that's what we want, a heart that is receptive to God and doesn't put up all these blocks to God when he's trying to reveal himself to you.

Another prayer you can also pray is Romans 12 .2, that they would not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of their mind, that by testing they may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

You may have noticed a pattern here. We're praying Scripture, right? We need to know the Bible. We need to pray

Scripture back to God. We should pray that they come to know the

Lord and that they love him and walk in his ways. We can also pray that the Lord would provide for them.

Jesus in Matthew 6, verses 25 to 34, he says, just as the Lord provides for the grass of the field and the sparrows, how much more will he not also provide for you?

And so we can say, Lord, would you provide for my children as you provide for the birds of the air?

Also, we can pray that the Lord protects them from harm. Paul said in 2

Timothy 4, 18, that the Lord protected him from every evil deed. And we can pray that for our children, that the

Lord would protect them from people who seek to do harm to them. And we

Googled, Rhianna Googled yesterday. You can know criminals in your area.

They notify you of that. And it's good to know that because you can keep an eye on it and realize this is a dangerous world and people seek to do harm.

And we need to pray, Lord, protect us from those people who would seek to do us harm. And not just physically, but spiritually.

The devil wants your children. He wants them. And he starts at a very young age, he goes after them.

And we need to pray that the Lord would protect our children from the evil one. Ephesians 6, 10 through 18, of course, is the armor of God.

We need to pray, Lord, would you not only protect my children from the devil, but would you save them so that they would have the armor of God to be protected from him in the future?

The Lord calls us to be in the frequent habit of praying for our children. And as I mentioned before, this is not only for the parents who have children under their roof right now.

This is for every adult. If you don't have children in your household right now, do you pray for the children of this church?

We have about 30 children in this church. Are they being prayed for?

We need to pray for these children. And some of you will be parents in the future.

Some of you are grandparents. For some of you, the Lord's will is for you not to have children, but to have a godly influence on the children that he has placed along your path.

The Lord wants us as adults to pray for the children that he has put in our paths.

The second way how we should train a child in the way of the Lord is by praying for them daily.

And may we do that by God's grace. The third way how we should train a child in the way of the

Lord is by spending time together in God's Word. Spending time together in the

Word of God. So we should not only pray for our children, but also read the Bible with them.

There are many ways to expose our children to the Word of God. And one of those ways is bringing your children to church.

It's been neat seeing Patsy lately bringing

Tessa to church. And it's been wonderful to see that. And you know, Patsy has such a wonderful story.

She grew up in a home where they didn't go to church. And she lived off of 230th Street there.

And I can't remember which home it was. I think it might be Kyle and Abby's home, where they live now. And the people across the street who were strong believers.

And who are they again? Russell and Bernice, yep. Who were pillars of this church.

They asked Patsy's parents if they could bring her to church.

And I assume that's her siblings as well, right? And Patsy came to church and she's here today, right?

And we know the wonderful ministry she has with the children of this church.

But think about Russell and Bernice. What a witness that is. That they thought it's so important to bring these neighbor kids to church.

And look what a difference that made in the lives of those children who they brought.

So we need to bring our children to church. And when your children come here, they learn from God's Word.

The child's mind is like a steel trap. They will soak it in. We have

Sunday school for the children at 9 a .m. And Karen Mickelson is leading that. We have children's church during the service.

And many women have generously volunteered their time to teach that. For the older kids, we have a booklet for them to take sermon notes.

For the teenagers, they are old enough to take notes on their own. We also have VBS during the summer.

And we are starting to get the ball rolling on a teenage ministry where those who are transitioning from childhood to adulthood can be exposed more to the

Word of God. So at Eureka Baptist, children have plenty of opportunity to hear the

Word of God. But we don't want to stop there. We should also do

Bible reading together with our kids at home. Now, I'm gonna pause here and say,

I don't want this sermon to feel like a big burden being laid on you to the point where we're like, where am I gonna find time to do all of these things?

I understand that life is busy and it's hard to balance everything that you do. But this is an area where we need to prioritize this, where, just as I mentioned, we need to block out time to pray for our kids.

We need to block out time to read the Bible with our children. Think about so many other things we do with our kids.

Why can't we take a little bit of that time and read the Bible with them? Deuteronomy 6, six through nine teaches us to do so.

These words that I command you today shall be in your heart, says the Lord. You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise.

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

You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. So you can see the pattern the

Lord wants us to have for our children. Children need to be exposed to the Bible in the home.

This means reading with them and teaching them about the truth of God's word. What we do in the home is teach our children right and wrong.

Any good parent will do that. But there is something I need to say that's very important here.

When we teach children to obey, we should not tell them to obey because we said so, as if we are the highest authority.

We teach children the rules in the house are

God's rules. We need to teach our children that this is how

God wants them to live. We need to teach our children that God wants for them the best.

He doesn't want them to destroy themselves, to go down the dangerous path. He wants the best for them.

I love Psalm 16 because it describes two different paths. Verse four says, the sorrows of those who run after another

God shall multiply. Going any other path than the Lord is a path of sorrow.

But the path of following the Lord is a path of joy and pleasure, right? Fullness of joy, pleasure is forevermore.

We need to teach our children that and say, when you follow the Lord's rules, you are choosing the joyful path.

And when you sin, you're disobeying God. And when you obey, you're pleasing the

Lord. This is how we need to teach our children. And what we need to understand is that the child's heart is, remember

I mentioned it's an idol factory, it's a place of worship. And they're either gonna be worshiping idols or they're gonna be worshiping

God. And we wanna lead them, of course, to worship the Lord. And so we always need to be vigilant in our children's life to say, you need to worship the

Lord and go to the root of the problem. The reason they're not obeying is because they're going after idols.

And we need to say, no, you need to please the Lord and you need to worship Him. Now there's an excellent book out there called

Shepherding a Child's Heart. And I highly recommend that book.

I think it's a book that Brianne and I want to go through in the future. And in fact, they have a DVD series that we're thinking about getting and maybe showing in here sometime down the road.

And if that would be of interest to you, which I hope it would be, we can watch that down the road.

But again, you don't want your house to be superficial rules, right? You do this because you're supposed to, because the parents said so.

You wanna see it as this is worship of the Lord. This is pleasing the Lord. This is going down the right path, not going down the wrong path, the path of idolatry.

You'll notice in Deuteronomy 6 that we are told to write God's Word in our house also.

This is something that Brianne and I have been doing and what we want to do more of and that's having Bible verses on our walls or words of hymns on the walls.

My parents had on the wall by the door a sign that said, Jesus never fails.

I just love that. Every time you see it, we need to be reminded that Jesus never fails.

In fact, yesterday I was at, Brianne and I were at Jeremy and Rachel Hall's house and I loved how you had next to your door, as for me and my house, we will serve the

Lord. That's a wonderful thing to have written in your house. I heard of a pastor also who had a sign on his door growing up that had a huge impact on his life.

In fact, this is John Piper. It was Charles Studd's poem, Only one life will soon be passed.

Only what's done for Christ will last. In fact, that's what inspired

Piper's book, Don't Waste Your Life. One life soon will pass. Only what's done for Christ will last.

And I wasn't even planning on saying this, but I'm going to say this right now. There was a gentleman here last week named

Larry who sat right there. And he had pie with us downstairs afterwards and he died this week.

And he came to the River Ramble last week and came here to church on Sunday and he drowned on Friday.

And I just heard about it this morning. I was completely shocked by it. I was planning on meeting him Friday and he never reached out.

He never came and never told me he was going to be here. He passed away. And it goes to show the brevity of life.

We don't know when our last day will be.

And the Lord, his days were almost over when he was here last Sunday. And this poem rings loudly, right?

One life will soon be passed. Only what's done for Christ will last.

But as far as I know, I think Larry was a sincere believer and he's with the Lord right now. So grateful for that.

But it just goes to show how short life is. And how short, too, children are in the home.

Think about that. I know for those of you who don't have your children in the home any longer, you'll say, man, those years went fast.

I know my parents say that about me and my siblings. Those years went so fast. And so make a good use of your time while you have it.

Your children need the Word of God. Every parent should aim to teach our children the

Bible. If we are going to raise them in the Lord, in addition to bringing them to church.

So the third way how you should train a child in the way of the Lord is by spending time together in God's Word.

The fourth way how you should train a child in the way of the Lord is by modeling to them a

Christlike example. Modeling to them a Christlike example. Now this last one is obviously very important.

If we don't train our children in this way, then the other three will hold little to no weight.

The Lord calls us not just to talk the talk, but to walk the walk. We need to see our parenting as discipleship.

When you disciple someone, you are present, you pray with them, you read the Bible, and you carry out this fourth piece, modeling

Christ to them. The Apostle Paul never married and did not have any biological children, but he discipled so many people.

And one of the men that he discipled was named Timothy. And you know what? He called Timothy his child. 1

Timothy 1 -2, he called him his true child in the faith. Paul told

Timothy as he was discipling him in 1 Timothy 4 -16, keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching.

Persist in this, for by so doing, you will save both yourself and your hearers. Did you notice what

Paul said? He said, first and foremost, you need to keep a close watch on yourself.

What he means by this is your character. If you have a strong character, then your children are so much more likely to listen to you as they will see that the

Lord is the most important one in your life. I remember growing up, I had a childhood friend who was a churchgoer.

His parents took him to church every week, but they weren't believers. It was superficial religion.

And my friend was concerned, though, because his dad was counseling someone at church.

They had people in the church who volunteered to counsel people who were having problems. And his dad, who was not a believer, and whose life was completely out of step with the

Word of God, was counseling people in the church. And my friend, who also wasn't a believer, observed this, rightly observed this, and was troubled by it.

And he asked his mom, Mom, why is dad doing this? He knew his dad wasn't qualified to counsel someone if he wasn't living it out himself.

And this had a big impact on him. And sadly, to this day, I don't think this childhood friend of mine is walking with the

Lord. He sadly followed the path of his unbelieving parents. Your children are watching you.

They watch everything. They will know if you love the Lord, and it will either inspire them to follow the

Lord themselves, or they may run away. If they see that the

Lord means nothing to you, they're going to see that, and it's going to have an impact on them.

There's a tragic story from the 19th century from a Unitarian pastor by the name of William Channing.

He was a heretical pastor, which is really a contradiction of terms, but there's people like that all over the place, even in the present.

And this man was one of those people. He was a leader in the Unitarian Church, which is famous because they don't believe in the

Trinity, and they don't believe in so many other fundamental doctrines of the faith. This man by the name of William Channing, when he was a kid, they went to a

Bible -believing church. And the pastor that Sunday preached a sermon on hell.

And his dad was there, and he was watching his dad as this man was preaching the sermon. And after the sermon, he noticed how little impact the sermon had on his father.

Because as they went home, his father said nothing about the sermon. He walked in the door, took his boots off, grabbed the paper, kicked up his legs, and read the paper.

Didn't say a word about the sermon. Had no impact on him. And his son noticed.

And it made his son question, is any of this even real? Is any of this even important? If my dad doesn't even care about it.

And look at the trajectory this little boy went on. He stayed in the church, but it was a false church.

Because he didn't believe much of the Bible, because his dad, we don't know if his dad was truly saved or not, but the model that his dad showed was a poor one.

He didn't care what the preacher said. It didn't impact him. And when I read that story about William Channing, what a tragedy.

This guy was a chief figure in the liberal Protestant church, which denies the supremacy of Jesus Christ, which denies the glory of God, which robs him of it.

What a tragedy that this is. And he pointed back to his father's negative influence as a child.

Our children are watching us. Children are smart.

They know if the Lord is the most important one in your life or if something else is. And at your funeral, you want your children to say, you know, my dad had some hobbies.

Yes. My dad worked hard. My dad did a lot of things. But what was clear about my dad or my mom is that they love the

Lord the most. And our children need to see that about their parents. Paul told the church in Corinth in 1

Corinthians 11 .1, be imitators of me as I am of Christ. We should be able to say that to our children, not arrogantly, but say, as long as I follow

Jesus, please follow me as I follow his example. And of course, this does not mean perfection.

As children grow older, they will see that you had flaws, but they will also be able to tell a difference between parents who truly love the

Lord and those who just went through the motions. They will tell that difference. My dad grew up in an unbelieving church and they were churchgoers, but he knew that his parents were unbelievers because they didn't love the

Lord. They just went through the motions. It was a superficial thing. It was a cultural thing back then. And some of you remember that where everybody went to church.

And we live in a day and age where it's different, isn't it? 50 years ago, this place would be packed because that's what people did on Sunday.

They went to church. It was cultural Christianity. And so many people saw that their parents didn't care.

It was just what you did on Sunday. And we don't want our kids to think that we're just going through the motions.

And so the prayer and hope that I have for all parents in this church is that our kids would be able to say, dad and mom are not perfect, but largely they live out what they teach us and we want to follow their example as they follow

Christ. So the fourth way how you should train a child in the way of the Lord is by modeling to them a

Christ -like example. Now, as we wrap up here, let me give a little recap of what we've seen.

The sermon has called us to train our children in the way of the Lord. We've seen four ways how we are to be present.

We are to pray for them. We are to spend time with them in God's word. And lastly, we are to model

Christ to them. Now you may be listening to the sermon and your children are grown. You might think it's too late to apply what has been shown to you from the

Scriptures. And I want to encourage you by saying it's not too late. It is true that things have changed and you don't have as strong of an influence as you once had.

However, you still do have an influence on your adult children and you will till the day they die.

And you'll probably die before then, but you get what I'm saying. You can still be present.

You should pray for them. You should encourage them to be in a Bible -believing church and pray that they read

God's word. You can also still model Christ to them. A parent's rich faith in the

Lord has an influence on children even when they are old. Even as they see change in your life.

Maybe you're going deeper with the Lord at a later place in life. They will notice that and it has an impact.

There are children who say, my parents love the Lord, but I do not. And there's nothing you can do about that.

That happens too. And in that case, you did your part. Trust in the Lord as He is sovereign over their lives.

The Lord's only going to hold us responsible for what we did. He's responsible for the results.

God is sovereign in salvation. We can't persuade anyone into heaven by our own cleverness.

Only God can change a heart of stone and make it into a heart of flesh.

And you may also be in the position in life where your children are out of the house and you may have grandchildren now, or you will in the future.

You should stay closely connected with your grandchildren and you can do the four ways to train them in the

Lord. It'll be a little bit more from a distance, but you can still do that. And as I already mentioned, if you were here today and the

Lord's will for you is not to have children, you can be a spiritual parent to the little ones the

Lord has placed across your path. When children grow older, they don't just point to their parents as those who influenced them in the

Lord. They also point to others in the church who modeled what it means to be a follower of Christ.

You can have that influence by applying what was taught today. Wouldn't that be wonderful at your funeral someday, if during the eulogy time, they have a time of sharing and a child comes up and says, one of the reasons

I'm following the Lord today is because of this person, because of their godly example. That's a life well lived.

And may it be said of you that you did that, not only for your own children, but for children who aren't your children.

As you grow in the Lord and as you grow older, you should have lots of children. Maybe you have a few biological children, but you should have so much influence on different young people.

Because that's the Lord's design as you get older, right? He wants you to pass on your wisdom to younger people. You should have lots of children, spiritual children in the

Lord, just as the Apostle Paul did. And so may that be said of everyone here.

May we aim as a church to be intentional about raising our children in the Lord. May the children in this church walk with Christ all the days of their life.

And may they say that the influence of their parents and others in the church had a pivotal role.

And may they be able to say, I was trained in the ways of the Lord and I never departed from Him as He kept me.

May that be said. Now as we close here and look ahead to next

Sunday, next Sunday, we're gonna do a different sermon than this. And one of the questions that was asked a few weeks ago, is there an unforgivable sin?

Are all sins created equal? Are there some sins that make it impossible for God to forgive us?

So we're gonna address that next Sunday. And so I hope each of you join us and I hope that others will join us also.

Let's pray as we close. Father in heaven, oh how we need to live this out as parents, whether biological parents or spiritual parents.

What a huge responsibility Lord before us. Help us not to drop the ball on this.

Lord, we know that we won't be perfect in it, but help us to do the best we can. Help our priorities to be in the right place.

Lord, may you be first in our hearts. It all goes back to that. You need to be number one in our hearts if we're gonna be a good parent.

And so may that be the case for the people here at Eureka Baptist Church.

And not just the people here today, but the people who aren't here today. That Jesus Christ would be the treasure of their heart.

And it would show in the priorities of life. That it would show in setting that example for the children before them, whether in their home or in the church.

Help us to do this, Lord. Use our influence here as parents and adults to bring many to saving faith in Christ.

That they would be mature believers in the future also. Help us to do this, Lord. Help us to take this seriously and live this out.