- 00:00
- We worship together as a whole family. We don't ship the children off to children's church while everyone else worships.
- 00:08
- Why? Two reasons. One, our children learn a lot in the services, don't they?
- 00:16
- In the service, our children learn reverence for God. They learn the forms of worship.
- 00:22
- They learn the songs and hear the preaching. Little Jack came up to me last week and said, can we sing,
- 00:29
- I have a, or he said, I wanna sing a song next week. What's he gonna say? Jesus loves me, something like that?
- 00:36
- That's what I'm thinking. Jack, four years old, what's he wanna sing? He wants to sing There's Power in the
- 00:41
- Blood. Like, what? Why is that? Well, he's raised in a godly home and he's heard these songs we sing together.
- 00:50
- So our children learn so much in the service. The second reason, though, is God expects children to be in the church.
- 00:59
- I think I can prove this definitively from the scriptures, like unquestionably, and I'm gonna just do it real quick from Ephesians.
- 01:05
- Ephesians six, I read this one day, and it like, it stood out so strongly to me, and I think that you might not have noticed it.
- 01:17
- Ephesians six, verse one. Children, obey your parents in the
- 01:24
- Lord for this is right. Now, you hear that and you're like, what does children obeying their parents have anything to do with being in the service?
- 01:32
- Well, maybe not much, but here is the point. Who does Paul address in Ephesians six one?
- 01:39
- The children, right? He's talking to the church, but who's he talking to in the church? The children. Notice something.
- 01:45
- He doesn't say, parents, be sure and tell your children this, right? No, no, no. Paul addresses who?
- 01:51
- The children, as though they're where? In the service. If you read Ephesians, he addresses the husbands, he addresses the wives, he addresses the masters, he addresses the slaves, he addresses the children.
- 02:04
- Why does Paul do that? Because he expects all of them are where? They're in the church.
- 02:11
- So this is God's design. Now, I understand things get noisy in here sometimes.
- 02:17
- Good. Amen? Good. That means children are present.
- 02:23
- Now listen, we need to teach our children and we need to discipline them. It's good to instruct and discipline our children to sit quietly.
- 02:32
- But sometimes, let's remember, church, and you gotta be patient, especially you, your kids are not in your home anymore.
- 02:38
- You gotta be patient, because sometimes children are gonna act like this. Children, aren't they?
- 02:45
- They're gonna make noises. They're children, and we love them, and we teach them, and we're patient with them, and we don't, for one second, ship them off somewhere else to a children's church.
