Presenting the Gospel to Children V | Behold Your God Podcast

Welcome back to the Behold Your God podcast. I'm Teddy James, content producer for Media Gratia with Dr.

John Snyder, pastor of Christ Church New Albany and host of the Behold Your God study series. This is the final episode of the series where we're taking a little series within a series where we spent a long time talking about regeneration, detailing that doctrine, how that influenced the men of the

Great Awakening and the Evangelical Revival. We wanted to take about a month, about four episodes, and detail how do we take the realities of regeneration, the beauties of the gospel, and bring them down to teach them to our children.

We didn't change the content, but we did bring it down to their level. But now,

John, you felt it important, and I agree, that we deal with how do we handle grown children, maybe teenage children, who have rejected the gospel, who are not believers.

As we've done with every week, we've always gone to the past for help. This week we're looking at Edward Lawrence.

Tell us a bit about Edward. I've got my Edward Lawrence information on my computer, so let me use it.

Edward Lawrence was born in 1623, so this is Puritan period. Born in 1645, he goes to Maudlin College in Cambridge, which was pretty much a hotbed for Puritan teaching.

It was where a lot of those guys went. After preaching for some time, he's converted there, he goes into the ministry, and he becomes a vicar, a minister in Shropshire, near where he grew up.

He stays there for some time. One interesting thing about his pastorate is it's not a big church, and he declines preferment.

In other words, larger churches were offered to him, but he wanted to stay there, and he was faithful in that small church until 1662.

In 1662, with the Act of Uniformity, forcing theological uniformity on the

Anglican church, the Act of Uniformity kicked out about 2 ,000 Puritan ministers because they couldn't accept the rigid guidelines that were offered to them.

It was designed in such a way as to remove Puritans from the Anglican church. So he was ejected, and he stayed with a gentleman in the same parish, the same area as where he pastored, until 1666, so four years later.

Then the Five Miles Act was enforced. The Five Miles Act was a parliamentary act that required all ministers, the

Puritans, who had been removed from their churches for being Puritans, they had to live at least five miles from their original church so that their people couldn't keep coming to them for pastoral guidance.

So he had to leave the area. In February of 1667 and 1668,

Edward Lawrence and his close friend, Philip Henry, that we know because of Philip Henry's famous son,

Matthew Henry, the commentator writer, they were invited to preach at a little church in Staffordshire.

When they did, it was reported to the authorities, to the House of Commons, and that, with some other things, led eventually to Lawrence getting in trouble with the law and being fined.

He moves to London in 1671, and eventually when the

Puritans are given freedom again to preach in their own churches, to form their own churches outside of the

Anglican Church, he does, and he pastors until 1695 when he dies.

He is often mentioned, most of what we know, is through Philip Henry's diary.

Gotcha. Now, what we're going to be reading today, or using today, rather, is really part two of a two -part sermon.

Very quickly, what I'd like to do is just go through, he has eight headings in the first sermon.

To just give some context, we're going to hit those. He says that the greatness of the calamity of ungodly children is shown in the passions of the parents, namely fear, anger, and sorrow.

The greatness of the affliction of parents appears in eight aggravations. They remember the pleasure and delight the children brought them in their childhood.

It aggravates their sorrow to see them so miserably disappointed in their former hopes for these children.

It aggravates their sorrows that their children are so void of love to the parents, and to see the company of liars, drunkards, whoremongers, and thieves is more delightful to them than the company of their parents.

It aggravates their sorrows to look upon the holy children of others. It aggravates their parents' sorrow when they have but one child, and that one proves to be foolish and disobedient.

It is an aggravation when God's holy ministers are the fathers of fools, which happens often. It is an aggravation when such children, whom their parents designed to serve

God in the ministry of the gospel, prove to be ungodly. And lastly, it is an aggravation when children are a grief to their parents in their old age, and do, as it were, throw dirt upon their hoary or gray heads, which is the crown of their glory.

Yeah, so in his old -timey language, it's an aggravation. It makes their sorrow even worse when they see these things.

Well, now in the second part of that sermon, he gives us some directions for how to grieve correctly over ungodly children, because we ought to grieve that is appropriate for a

Christian parent to break their hearts over children whose hearts reject

Christ. But how do we do that in a way that doesn't damage us spiritually and doesn't dishonor the

Lord? And I think this is a very helpful topic for us. He only gives a,

I think we're going to cover seven directions. But it's a helpful topic because it really is a minefield for godly parents.

As a pastor and as a parent, I have seen so many people in a church and so many of my close friends whose children, you know, get past the age of, so they get to college age.

And it becomes pretty apparent when the young people are now adults and able to do what they want to do and not what mom and dad require them to do.

It becomes apparent that they have no real interest in Jesus at all. Perhaps at one point, you know, when they're around age 10, 11, 12, especially if they're homeschooled, you know, they toe the line.

They appear to be kids that want to know about Christ, that want to follow Christ. But now that they've become young adults, that has all evaporated.

And it's like walking through a minefield for a parent. And it's so easy to take the wrong step and to just disable yourself spiritually for a long time.

I have many close friends. My children were saved, the last was saved at age 16.

So we didn't go through the sorrows of watching children as adults not love the

Lord. I mean, we have other sorrows as parents, but that's not been one of them. But I have had very close godly friends who labored to point their kids to Christ, and their children have not followed their parents' counsel or example, and have rejected

Christ, and some in very shameful and heartbreaking ways. And the parents, it's so easy for the parents just to kind of go into neutral spiritually.

You know, they still come to church. They still do everything outwardly, but it's like the yearning of the heart is dampened.

The expectation that Christ can do wonderful things, it's gone.

And they just live under a cloud of doubt and despair. And so it really does disable them from following the

Lord in many ways. It leads perhaps to times of just kind of inactive disobedience, and to dishonoring the

Lord, if they're not careful how they handle that. And that is so much easier to say than to do.

I think of it kind of as walking along a very narrow path, a mountain path, and on each side of the path, there's a dangerous precipice.

I want to use that illustration for two reasons. First of all, it is a walk.

That is, it's an ongoing journey, and it's not enough to get the right answer once, you know.

It's not enough when your heart is broken to go to God in the right way one time. Your heart will, the enemy will come back with the same lie, dressed in different clothing a thousand times.

And it's going to be a journey for a while. It will be a valley that you walk through. So it's not just a one -time thing.

Get the right answer, respond in the right way, and then we're through the cloud. But also, this path illustration, sometimes when we recognize the enemy's lie on one hand, we think that the safest place to be is as far from that lie as possible.

So we just, we want to run the opposite direction. And if you think of a path with two edges that are dangerous, you can't do that.

And that's the way it is with this. One lie that's pretty popular is that the enemy will tell us that it's all your fault.

You're the parent, who else are you going to blame? Can't blame the preacher, can't blame the university or the, you know, the college professor, can't blame the television, those people in Hollywood.

So you look in the mirror, and because your heart is broken and tender, and your armor is down, so to speak, you're really a sitting duck for that lie.

It's all your fault. And if you believe that lie, then you can, you just get crippled.

You think God doesn't even, why would God even hear my prayers? Why would He, well,

I don't have anything to offer to people in church or my next -door neighbor. Why would I talk to them about Christ?

I mean, look at what a failure I am as a Christian in the one area that it's so important for me not to fail.

I failed. And so you find that people just, they just lay down beside the path with a broken heart, and it's like they're lame.

The other lie is that it's not your fault at all. I mean, it's not my fault.

I was a good parent. I took them to church. I told them they should read their Bible, or I homeschooled them.

And then you think, well, then it's somebody else's fault. And it's very easy to say, well, it's their peers.

They hung around Joe, and Joe's a jerk, and Joey led my kids astray, or it's that television, or it's modern technology nowadays.

It's the iPhone, and it's the iPad, and it's, you know, or it's the college.

And I hear that a lot from homeschool parents, like, well, look, they were good kids when they were in my house. I thought, you know, they loved the

Lord, but when they went to the university or college, they went off course. Well, maybe it's not that.

Maybe it's that they were under a straitjacket when they were in your home, and when they were free of your authority, they were free to express what they really loved, and that wasn't

Christ. And ultimately, you can blame God. You can say, well, actually, it's not my fault. It's God's fault. I did everything that I could, and God didn't do

His part. And if you believe those lies, it's very damning. So here's the trick.

To walk down the middle of those two lies by constantly bringing every accusation against yourself or against God to God in prayer.

Many times you'll meet Him at the mercy seat and say, is it true? And if it's not true, then you have no right to let the lie get behind your armor, because you belong to the

King who says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. And it is not humble, and it is not pleasing to the

Lord, and it is not safe for any subject of the King of truth to allow lies to take root in our hearts.

It may look humble. It may look honorable. It's not. But if there is some truth to it, some truth, okay, well, it's not all true, but there's a little bit of truth to it.

Where there needs to be repentance, repent. And where you need forgiveness, get forgiveness.

But stick very close to the Lord when those accusations come. Now, Lawrence is going to give us seven very practical directions.

So, TJ, why don't you start us off? Yeah. So, the first direction he gives is, abhor it as a great sin to faint under this affliction.

So, for this, Lawrence points to 2 Samuel 19, 5 through 6.

And remember the story in this chapter, right before it,

Absalom has led this big rebellion against his father, King David. And now the rebellion has been squashed, but Absalom is dead.

And David is in mourning. He's in grieving so much so that he refuses to even see anybody.

He won't talk to anybody. He won't do anything. Joab comes to David, and he says this, you have today covered with shame the faces of all your servants who have this day saved your life and the lives of your sons and daughters and the lives of your wives and your concubines, because you love those who hate you and you hate those who love you.

For you have made it clear today that commanders and servants are nothing to you. For today

I know that if Absalom were alive and all of us were dead today, then you would be pleased.

So what Lawrence is saying here is don't allow this grief, and you've said it before, it is grief, but don't allow it to put you on the sidelines so that you can't even obey

God and the things that He has told you to do and fulfill the purposes that He has given you to do this day.

His second direction is this, remind yourself that this is an affliction that ordinarily befalls

God's dearest children. You are not the first godly parents of ungodly children.

And what has happened to you is not some strange or unique thing.

One of the most popular lies that I see that Christians get tripped up with is when the enemy tells them that their situation is unique.

If you believe that your situation is unique, either because of the depth of the situation, like the depth of my sorrow, so take ungodly children, the way my children are manifesting it is different than the way their children are manifesting it, how visible it's become, how long it's gone on, whatever the enemy says to you that says, look, this is kind of unique, this is peculiar, this is strange, this is not ordinary, if you believe that, then you feel that somehow you are in a special category all to yourself.

Now here's the real danger of that. You will, Lawrence says, believe that God has some extraordinary wrath against you.

You think, well, this happened to my family. My kids are ungodly and unbelieving, but it's so bad, or it's so different than everybody else's kids, the way they're expressing it, that God must be uniquely angry at me, and that's why

I'm being treated this way. And another danger that he doesn't mention, but I find very tempting to, you know, to fall into, is that you think, well, if I'm in a unique situation, then the

Bible, while its comforts apply to ordinary Christians in ordinary situations,

I'm in an extraordinary situation, I'm in a unique category, and it doesn't apply to me.

So all the comforts you read in Scripture, all those statements, you say, well, yeah, that applies to so -and -so here and here, and their children have broken their hearts, but my situation's different, and so I don't think it actually applies to me.

And that's a real danger. He says this. This affliction is ordinary and is consistent with the saving and distinguishing grace of God to us, and it is a rod that is usually laid on the lot of the righteous.

And what he's pointing out is, look, God often allows this, and this sorrow is not unique, and God will use even what's bad, the sorrow over an ungodly child, for good in your life.

You think of it this way. Is not a broken heart over sin in the people we love, is that not a characteristic we see in Christ?

We do see that. We see Him weeping over Jerusalem, who will not embrace the gospel. You weeping over a child,

I mean really weeping, not just metaphorically. You not being able to sleep at night, you waking up, you saying the same prayer the thousandth time, and weeping as you struggle with the thoughts like, is

God even listening? It is a very Christ -like thing. So while it does still hurt, and it is still grief, it is not

God treating you in a unique way that shows He is in some way extraordinarily displeased with you.

The next direction he gives, he says to consider the worst miseries that could have befallen you.

He gives three examples here. The first is that you might be an ungodly wretch yourself.

You could have, you know, we tend to forget sometimes that it was an act of grace from God to open our eyes, to open our hearts, to bring us to faith and repentance.

And so we could be much worse off in that the pain that we feel now is temporary.

It will end. But if we were still lost, if we're still an enemy of the gospel, enemy of Christ, our pain and torment would last in eternity.

Second thing he says, it could be worse if it was your spouse that didn't love the Lord. And sadly, some people are married to a spouse that doesn't love the

Lord. But he points out that, look, in the right kind of marriage, your spouse is closer to you than your own heart.

You know, they're even closer in your heart than your children that you've had together.

And it's one thing to be brokenhearted and have a godly spouse that's also brokenhearted.

And you can comfort each other with the truths of Scripture, and you can weep together and pray together.

But it's another thing when the person who is your right hand, you know, the person who is the other half of your life, your own spouse, has no love for Christ.

And you have no one that you can lean upon and no one you travel those dark paths with. Yeah. The next example he gives is that God might have left all your children to perish in their sins.

So if you have multiple kids and there's one child who is rebellious, and I think of a very dear friend of mine, several kids, but one is an open rebellion to God, and he grieves over that child, but he's joyous that his other children have embraced the gospel.

And so don't let the sourness, don't let the grief of this one overshadow the joy that God has opened the eyes of others of your children.

The fourth major direction he gives after mentioning that things could be worse is that we need to be careful that our sorrow is guided in a scriptural way of expressing it.

And okay, so sorrow is appropriate. So don't believe the lie that if I were a stronger believer,

I wouldn't be brokenhearted. That's not true. But how I allow that sorrow to affect me is up to me.

I am responsible by the grace and the constant help of the Spirit and the guidance of Scripture.

God will give me what I need so that those emotions don't become things that are expressed in a way that poison me.

And so he says, let your sorrow be guided by Scripture. And he talks about not letting sorrow defile your souls with sin against God in your own mind and wounding your own conscience.

In other words, don't sorrow in a way that's sinful, and it makes things even worse. So think of it this way.

Having a child that doesn't love the Lord is like having a heart that has a wound in it.

But that will heal. God will comfort his people. But if the wound is infected, then it never seems to heal.

And the infection here is sinful thoughts that you harbor against God, you know, doubts about his goodness, doubts about his power, doubts about his faithfulness.

And if you let those things into the wound, then they poison it, and it doesn't heal.

And he gives a couple of practical suggestions under that, being guided by Scripture.

And one is, make sure that when you're grieving for the ungodly child, that your grief is moved more by the dishonor done to God than the dishonor done to you.

And that is very good advice for a parent. You know, everyone in town knows that you've homeschooled.

Everyone in town knows you go to a church where you're trying to be careful of Scripture. You call yourself a Christian. You're always at church, and now look at your kids, and they're going the complete opposite direction.

And it can be very embarrassing to a parent. And if you're not careful, your pride is stung, and you're more worried about your honor than the honor of Christ.

And the wound doesn't heal because it's poisoned by pride. Another thing he says is that we don't want to let this sorrow impair our physical health.

And he says truly godly sorrow ultimately is healthy because it drives us to the Lord. It's a

God -centered sorrow. God, I'm grieving that my children don't love you, and you are worthy of their love.

And so ultimately we're grieved on behalf of God, and we go to God with that grief.

And He does give us comfort day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. And grace, he says, is a friend to the soul and a friend to the body.

So he says this. He says, but if we grieve in a wrong way, our health can be destroyed. And he makes this statement.

Do not make your spouse desolate a widow and your children orphans by such a sorrow that destroys you and does not please

God or do any good to your children. So, you know, you can, in a practical sense, you can become so grief -stricken, and you don't guard that grief, and it becomes polluted, and you don't find healing, and it goes on and on, and you suffer physically.

Your health is impaired, and it's like your wife is left without a husband and your children without a parent, and all you've done is dishonored the

Lord, and you haven't done any good to them. And you're not really making a good testimony to that lost child either.

Right. The next direction that he says is to labor to get your spiritual graces or virtues strengthened during this time of great affliction, for you have need of more knowledge and wisdom and faith and hope and love and meekness and patience to enable you to bear under this the most other affections.

So, Lawrence is recognizing here that this grief is a unique grief, and this grief is more painful than many other griefs that are out there.

And so, what he says is, you know, rather than using this grief to turn you away from Christ, use it to drive you deeper in, because you need that knowledge.

You need wisdom. You need virtue more than ever. And he says this, the greater the trouble, the more good you may gain as you walk through it.

And all that he's saying there is that as you draw closer to Christ and cling to his hope, to his strength, to his holiness, and his righteousness, he says, you draw near to me, and I will draw near to you.

He will prove himself to be sufficient for your need for today, and then tomorrow when the grief awakens new, he will prove himself to be sufficient in that grief and in that moment for you, and you will draw near to him again and again and again.

Yeah, I think under that point, it's good to remind ourselves that we can use the very grief that we feel as an argument at the throne of God for greater comforts.

So, in this way, you can say to the Lord, the only reason that I am so brokenhearted over my children not loving you is because you worked in my heart, and you've made me love you.

And so, I care about my kids' souls. I'm not just, I'm not brokenhearted because my kid didn't get the best job or the biggest income.

I'm not brokenhearted because my kid, you know, isn't the most popular or, you know, they have these normal ups and downs in human life.

I'm brokenhearted because they don't love the God that is infinitely lovely and worthy of their trust.

And so, the only reason I even care about this is because of what God has done in my own soul. Other parents look at you and think, why are you so worried about this?

And, you know, why can't you just get over it? So, your kids aren't religious. I mean, you know, you can't make your kids religious.

They're going to choose their own path, and they have a right to do that. And, you know, the unbeliever, the hypocrite, the person who's a church member but not really a lover of Christ, they don't break their heart when their kids don't love the

Lord. So, you can take your heart to God and say this, my heart is broken, and I need extra comfort.

And I'm bringing it to you because you're the one that made it a breakable heart. It's because I love you.

It's because of what you've done in my heart that I even care about these things. So, I'm bringing it back to you.

You made my heart susceptible to this, so you'll have to heal my heart, and use that as an argument.

Another direction he gives is, he said, comfort yourself in the fact that the greatest and best things, the sweetest gifts of God to you are safe.

You know, when we look at our efforts with our kids year after year after year, and then they become adults, and they don't follow the

Lord, the enemy may come to you with this lie and say, well, you were sure that your kids loved the

Lord, and they would follow God, and you poured your heart into that, and that is just, that's just evaporated.

How do you know anything else is going to really stick? I mean, what if it's all just a hoax? And he said, you can comfort yourself with the fact during this time that though your children have not chosen to love the

Lord, and that breaks your heart, God will be faithful to you. As you mentioned in the podcast, you know,

God hasn't promised to save every child of every believer, and God saves many children of many unbelievers.

It is God's free gift, and He is free to give it to whom He will. We have a responsibility, but we don't twist

God's arm and say, well, I homeschooled, well, I took them to church, well, I taught them Bible verses, so you owe it. But God will be faithful to His promises to the believer, and the inheritance that is ahead of us, which is so unspeakably good, so good that every tear will be wiped away from our eye, that is being preserved for us, and Peter says, and you are being preserved for it through the power of God working in faith.

So when you remember that, it keeps you from being ungrateful.

Yes, we want our children to enjoy it. You know, we want to come to the Lord and say, I want my children to also have this, and that's appropriate, but do not let the sorrow make you pout and really accuse

God of being unfaithful and doubt that He'll be faithful to what He's promised you. The last point that he makes is to consider that this trouble will last but a little while.

It's easy for us to think, and it is a lie that the enemy uses, that your grief, that your sorrow, that your pain is endless, and that it will just go on forever, but it won't.

He does say this. He says, I know of nothing that can lift the heart above this kind of sorrow but the knowledge and sense of the infinite love of God in Christ to us, and of the holy and glorious eternity that this love will shortly bring us to.

I mean, that to me is the only real comfort that you can have, but there is a practical means of comfort, too, that he brings up.

He says you can look to other parents. You can look to these parents and see that there are children who were rebellious who have now been converted.

Your child is not beyond hope. As long as life is in them, there is hope.

John, to me, he doesn't say it in the sermon, but I think it's an assumed thing.

It's a beautiful reality that we should be in a body, in a local body of the church for several reasons, but one of those things is so that other parents can be praying for and be praying with you, so that you can be praying for and praying with other parents who are experiencing this very grief, so that you can have a pastor to come to to say, literally pour your heart out to and to go with you to the throne of grace and plead for mercy.

So, I think that is, he doesn't give that direction, but I think we certainly would. Yeah, he probably assumes that, but we don't want to assume it, and I think that also to to walk humbly, not just with the

Lord, but with your Christian brothers and sisters, which means you sit down with them and you open up and say, you know, we're pretty broken -hearted over, you know,

Joe. He's really, lately, it's just the things that he says and the choices he's making are breaking our hearts, and we wish you'd pray for us, and not to try to cover that.

You know, you don't want to expose your children to undue shame. Love doesn't do that, but you do want to be open with those believers that you can trust and ask them to cry out with you to the

Lord and let them walk alongside you and lean on them, and they will be imperfect.

We all are. We're very imperfect comforters, but they are part of what God has established for our comforts.

So, quite a minefield for a believing parent. There is no easy way.

There's no, you know, Lawrence doesn't say seven directions to escape all sorrow with ungodly children, but how to grieve, but how to grieve in a way that doesn't dishonor the

Lord, damage your soul, or disable you from obeying God in a way that would do good to others, and so they are very helpful things, and I think things that we want to really lay hold of.

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We hope that this series of, you know, the previous series of dealing with regeneration and those beautiful and deep realities and doctrines to even this, where we say, you know, here's how we can present it to children, and here's how we can grieve when our children reject the gospel.

We pray that these have been helpful and encouraging to you. And as we usually do, we want to end this week with a prayer.

Today's is by Robert Hawker. Dearest Lord, when my heart is cold and my mind barren and my frame lifeless, you make me rejoice in warming my frozen affection, making fruitful my poor estate, and putting new life into my soul.

O Lord, all I want is a frame of mine best suited for your glory. Truly, when

I have nothing, feel nothing, can do nothing, and worse than nothing, then then, even then,

I may be rich in you amidst all my own bankruptcy. This, dear Lord, is what

I covet. And if you withhold any help that might melt or warm or rejoice my own feeling, but if my soul still hangs upon you despite all, my

God and my Jesus will be my rock that feels nothing of the ebbings and flowings of the sea around whatever the tide of my fluctuating affection.