Episode 118: Part 2 of Let the Children Come to Me

Rural Church Podcast 2.0

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Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast. This is my beloved son, with whom

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I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas?

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You see that one in Pechote, Mexico? Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

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The church is not a democracy. It's a monarchy. Christ is king. You can't be

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Christian without a local church. You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the

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Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible -believing church, and spend your life serving

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Jesus in a local, visible congregation. I definitely want to spend the rest of the episode getting to your wheelhouse here.

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I think it's a beautiful thought. And actually, I wonder if some people who street -preach have even consciously worked through this in their own hearts.

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So why don't you tell us about preaching to children? And number one, convictionally, why you do that?

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Because we've already kind of laid that out. That shouldn't take long. But also, let me hear practically, what does that look like?

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Thanks for asking. I want to piggyback on one thing you were saying, though, about hopefully the parents are teaching their kid the gospel at church.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I just want to add, and this goes into the next phase, is that some people don't.

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You have people in your church who sometimes it's just because they don't feel equipped.

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They don't feel gifted to share the gospel. The same people that don't feel gifted to do evangelism, they're the same people that probably aren't evangelizing their children very well.

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And so although I want people to do that, I recognize that people are at different stages in their

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Christianity. They're at different abilities to take a disciplinary situation and bring the gospel to bear on it with their child.

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And some people are better than others at doing family worship. And so for some of those kids that come to church, sometimes it's a kid from the neighborhood.

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I don't know about your church, but in my church, we have regular groups of kids that aren't part of the church.

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Their parents aren't part of the church, but they come. Yeah, exactly. They're invited to Sunday school, and they're given some candy at Sunday school, and we have a meal, and people are welcome to come to our meal after church.

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And so we get whole families of people that aren't actually Christian. Some of them, they just like us, and they get the free meal.

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And so you're preaching to those kids, too. But on the street, when you go on the street and evangelize, and you're handing tracks to people, or you're holding a sign, and you're trying to talk to people, those are really good ways to evangelize.

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And I've had a lot of joy doing those things. But rarely do you have a child come up and speak to you.

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And although I'll hold tracks out, and if a child walks by and takes them, you know,

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I don't withhold it from them. But a lot of times people will keep their kid from you when you're handing out tracks.

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And I've had people approach me very angry that I handed their child something. And I can kind of respect the idea that, yeah, you don't want random strangers just giving your kids pieces of paper, you know, with text and images on it on the street.

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But if you're on the street and you're preaching, everyone who's walking by you within the radius that your preaching is going is hearing what you're saying.

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That means that families, believers or unbelievers that have children with them are in the hearing of the preaching of God's Word if you're a gospel preacher.

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And so then what you end up with is you end up with, let's take an Ohio State Buckeyes game. You end up with hundreds of children who may or may not ever hear the gospel.

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They might not ever hear biblical preaching. Maybe they're churchgoers and they go to a church where, you know, it's basically a rock concert with a

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TED Talk, right? And you get these kids walking by you and they're not jaded yet.

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They hear a guy standing on a street preaching and they think it's interesting. What's he saying?

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Yeah, they're not like, oh, that's a kook. Let's ignore him. They're just like, okay, what's he saying?

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And they'll listen. And I have so much hope that I will see hundreds if not thousands of people in glory someday who will somehow be able to communicate back to me that they heard me preach when they were a little kid.

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And their dad told them, cover your ears. Or their mom said, put your fingers in your ears and keep walking, buddy.

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He's a weirdo or whatever. I mean, I've heard the stuff people say to their kids when they walk by. And I have great hope in that.

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And I think that that's a way to reach a lost generation. I think that if you neglect that, and like I said, you don't get that by standing there waiting for people to talk to you.

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You don't get it by giving tracts to adults. You might be able to hold a sign, but some of the kids aren't reading the words on a sign.

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And I'm not sure if a dead baby picture communicates the gospel to a little kid either.

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I know that people have the abortion signs that I think are useful at times. And so for me, for men to stand on the street and preach

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God's word, knowing that children will hear them is just like step one.

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And then step two, and I'll let you comment on all this, is you have to preach to the children.

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If I just stand on the street and keep preaching with adult words, and you already,

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I'm going to say, dumb it down. I mean that respectfully, but you already removed some of the

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Christian terminology so that you can explain things in a way you think a non -churchgoer would understand the gospel.

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And then when you start preaching to the children, you use a different vocabulary, and you focus on different sins.

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And I talk, I will preach about obeying parents. And I will preach that Jesus, a little boy, obeyed his parents.

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He was submissive to them, and he did everything according to God's law for even a little child who disobeys his parents and needs forgiveness.

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So what do you think of that? No, I think it's beautiful, brother. I think that we need to be careful even with words like repent.

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And so twofold position here. One, I believe we should preach repentance, the word repentance, the word repent.

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Of course, we should say that Jesus did that. Also think that we should not assume that when we say you need to repent, that every person hearing that understands what that word means.

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So I love what you said there. It's dumbing down for lack of better wording right now.

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But yes, you're saying repent. And what that means is you must turn from your sins.

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You must have a change of mind according to your for your sin, a change of heart.

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Of course, we know that only God brings that God grants repentance as Acts 11,

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I think 28 says, but the fact of there's an overlap here between in the pulpit and then out on the streets.

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And that is, yes, there's an expectation that children are hearing you. That's like, as you said, phase one.

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But phase two is actually saying, little boy, little girl, you need

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Christ. You need to repent and believe the gospel and then working through what all that means.

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So I'm in agreement with you. Not only my own agreement. I wish that more pastors and street preachers would think about these things and make application.

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You know, theology matters. So if we're Reformed Baptists, particular Baptist, if that's what we are and that's our position, then why would we not have as part of our preaching a focus upon the little children?

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You know, I sometimes I don't want it. We don't want to be the disciples in that in that narrative. We're like, hey, no, no, no, no, no.

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Hey, y 'all sit back play with your toys. Let let the adults are talking because the reality is now look this get us in a whole new category.

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But the reality is we believe that little boy that little girl if something should happen to them and they die on the way home from whatever event they're at and they don't have

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Christ they will suffer under God's righteous judgment. And yet here we are with the opportunity to bring them the gospel and we should we should we should take advantage utilize that.

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And I think you agree with me on this one that there is there is some sense that there's an election of infants.

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Of course the confession. Yes. Yeah that that there's possibility of it. I preach it like the way

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Spurgeon does a little more than others where I preach it more as all but I think even though you might yeah,

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I think even though you might hope that that some little kids would fall under that umbrella

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God didn't give us an age of accountability. That's right. We yes, that's right.

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So so we preach to all the children as if you know hell's in the balance here.

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Yeah, and and we teach them the truth of Jesus at an age when

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I mean, let's face it. You can get up in the pulpit. If you taught about Santa Claus enough every kid would believe it.

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And and so you you almost take advantage of the childlike faith that Jesus applauds when he walked the earth and you take advantage of that and you teach kids everything you can about Christ while they're basically going to believe whatever you tell them and you lay that foundation in such a way that the necessary facts are there for God to change the person and give them the heart that will trust

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Christ and you fill them with the teaching of God's Word. So that if they do repent they have some ideas of what to do.

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You know, I preached at Washington DC a couple weeks ago. This was would have been late March and there was a school field trip.

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It must have been where there was about, you know, 80 kids just sitting on the

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National Mall or whatever it was is a big green area near the National Mall. At least they were just having their lunch.

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I walked over and started preaching. Well, a couple little boys were super interested and came and were listening and this happened multiple times.

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I have two recordings of it one with a little boy named Cooper and the other little boy. I didn't get his name, but this boy was listening to me so intently.

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And I stopped and I said, do you do you believe this? And he said yes. And I could tell he he believed it and he just kept listening.

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It was like it was really amazing how much joy you could see in this little boy's face.

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All his friends running around playing the teacher kept pulling them away from me, you know, it was it was crazy and I resisted the temptation to just start rebuking the teacher, you know, like like calling out millstones and things.

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I think I did resist. I think I resisted that because what I decided to do is

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I'm just going to keep preaching to this kid. I was loud enough that even though he was pulling them away.

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I knew he could hear me. I could tell by the way, he kept watching me even when he got far away. I just kept preaching to this little boy and I preached you need if you're a

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Christian you need to submit to the authorities. God gives you be respectful and and then

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I reminded him that no matter what Christ will never leave him and I told him you must cling to Christ and he will not let go of you.

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And you know, I don't I don't know what's going to happen to this little boy. He didn't get my name. He doesn't as far as I know.

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I don't know where he lives. He could have been from a far away school from even DC, but I tried to preach to even this one soul.

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Hey, here's something that might help you get through the day. Here's something that might help you cling to Christ as you're persecuted for your faith in this, you know, maybe godless school where you attend where all the other kids wanted to laugh and mock and you wanted to stand and listen and and I think that other people heard it as well.

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And there could be another kid there that I wasn't focused on that. I didn't notice who

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God's doing the work in that person's heart. And so you you you preach to all you preach specific things that help sinners to repent and help sinners to know how to live a life that honors

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Christ. Yeah, let me just address this. Amen, everything you said

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I think of one objection that someone may say and I can

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I can be sympathetic toward the objection, but I do think that we're going to answer it.

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Well brothers what I just don't know that have the right, you know parents at this place with their children.

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I'm out preaching that child's their responsibility. They're the ones in the authority over the child.

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I just don't know if I really feel comfortable addressing that child because they're a child there.

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They're there under 18 there, you know, is it is it is it okay to even have that right to preach past the parents into the life of that child or not because in the in the in the story that we're using the parents were bringing their children to Jesus and so in this scenario outside the church, the parents aren't bringing their children to Jesus.

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They're just out at some event whether I'm preaching at Harps or you're preaching in Washington or you're preaching at a

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Buckeyes game or wherever the case the parents aren't bringing. So do we have the right to preach the children?

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That's that's an objection. I have considered as you were talking about let's go ahead and address that now

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I would say this I'm okay being wrong on that and dying doing it wrong my whole life.

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Yeah. Yeah, I that's one of those ones that you don't think I'm committing the sin of presumption that you know, if I'm not supposed to preach to other people's kids in public

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Christ going to have to cover that with his blood because I don't I don't see a restriction there.

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I understand the objection but I'm in public and I'm speaking to people in public and if you bring your kid in public, he's going to see billboards of women in bikinis.

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He's going to see drag queen story our things at his own library. There's all sorts of things that happen in public that we give tacit or implicit permission to our children experiencing it by simply taking them there.

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And so I would say that that's just part of the nature of things being public. I'm not going on somebody's lawn and doing it.

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And I'm not going to go in a private school and force myself. I guess, you know, I do it in public school.

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You send your kid to public school, but I remember years ago when I would go evangelize at a movie theater and I would stand outside the movie theater and his people came out.

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I try to talk to him and give him gospel tracks. I was talking to these teenage kids at one point and and this parent pulled up and was, you know, picked him up and I think they must have told the parent what it was because they weren't mad at first.

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Then the parent came back, you know, kind of angrily said like how dare you, you know, speak to my child, you know, and and I thought you just dropped your kid off at a movie theater.

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Where they no doubt we're watching something filled with trash. And you're mad at a

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Christian guy that's telling him about Jesus. I just to me. It was like water off a duck's back. Like I can't

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I honestly just can't take it seriously. And and I I see it more as this is this is

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God's way of gathering his elect and if God has placed his elect in an unbelieving household, which is

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Baptist, we think is perfectly legitimate because it's not by blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God that one could be born again if God's placed a little boy or a little girl in the house of somebody who's not going to teach him the gospel.

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And God has elected that little boy or little girl his means of reaching them may be them hearing the gospel from me on the street from receiving a

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Bible on Halloween, you know, when their parents let them go house to house. And and take whatever the people give them.

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I mean, you could go to someone's house and they could give your kid porn. Your kid can go to public school now in the elementary and they're going to see pornography on somebody else's phone.

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Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm in agreement with you. I'll start with something you said at the end and then kind of work backwards. But there's this mentality.

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There's a sort of a Presbyterian mentality that the church is a household of households, you know?

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And I think his Baptist we would we should disagree with that. We we may confess that ordinarily a church is made up of several households, you know, of converted families praise

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God, but the church itself is the household and God is bringing in his people.

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For example, we have a young man exactly what you talked about his parents don't come last year.

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He was converted. He's a teenager. He doesn't come with his family, but he's part of our church.

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He's 17. He's a faithful brother faithful young man. I mean, obviously there's he needs to grow and of course as you would expect and understand but but the point is that yes,

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I'm in agreement with you that God saves moms and dads and children at times and but sometimes he saves just the wife.

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Sometimes he saves just the father or maybe sometime. I mean, you read the New Testament. That's what that's what you get.

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That's the kind of exhortations, you know, it's the way Paul's teaching but I would go back to this too and say the world does not have the mentality that or the objections that we bring up.

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Do I have the right, you know, Disney is not sitting around wondering you know, do we have the right to press this

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LGBTQ agenda to these children? They don't think that at all. In fact, they think that it's their duty.

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It's their great calling to press this upon children. So I would say shame on us if we're going to let

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Disney out preach us, right? So I do want to be considerate of the fact that and there's probably certain things like look, we're not going to there's probably tertiary doctrines or whatever that we're

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I'm not trying to force this upon your child or whatever. I mean like stick to the gospel as it were and and repent and and believe on Christ.

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I guess we could work through that but but but the point that I'm making here is like unashamedly

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Christ is King and I think it's a terrible analogy but I think about that silly show

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Parks and Rec and I've never I don't think I've ever seen an episode but I've seen like clips and but there's that guy whatever his name is

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Swanson or whatever but he's going to the the park and he's like he's got a permit and it says

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I can do whatever I want. Well, Christians we have a permit and the permit is not you can do whatever you want, but the permit is

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Christ is King. So I'm 24. Yeah, preach preach preach preach

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Christ and the fullness thereof. Amen.

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Can you bring up the point, you know, nobody opposes? Disney preaching, right?

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Because they don't mind and and so ultimately it just exposes that we all understand that everybody is always preaching something.

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Whether it's with their words with their silence with their actions with their inaction, we're all always preaching something to everybody who encounters us.

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It's just a question of who you going to let your kids encounter and and you know,

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I respect Disney's right to promote whatever agenda I frankly disagree with and I think it's, you know, harmful, but I guess they're they have a right to make those kinds of movies with those messages.

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I just have a right to not pay for them or watch them and people don't have to send their kids to church, but I'd be fine if that kind of messaging was outlawed.

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But you know, that's for a different discussion, but there's there's levels of it that you know, but but I essentially

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I understand I agree with what you're saying like if preach, you know, I said the other day in a sermon.

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It's not hard to preach. All you got to do is just open your mouth and you know, speak loudly, but it is hard.

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It is hard to preach faithfully preach biblically but a lot of people out there preaching including companies and a lot of people are giving messages.

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So let's take the only message that saves sinners and builds the kingdom and that is the message of the gospel of our

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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Yeah, and what's important to note at this point is that we believe children can get saved praise

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God. So although you might with your own child, you might say, hey, let's work out your salvation with fear and trembling for a little while before we baptize you and make you a member of the church.

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Okay, a lot of Baptist fathers treat it that way and that's fine.

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But it doesn't mean you doubt their conversion or that they could have been converted.

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It's just you want to make sure that they're walking with the Lord before you give them baptism, which which actually should function as assurance to people.

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And so because we believe children can be converted. We want to preach to them on the street in the church in Sunday school and in in one -on -ones when you're sitting there just chatting with someone and I think that because people are easily offended.

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We have. We've learned. So, you know, walk on eggshells and to be careful and and you know, that what what what is that gotten us?

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It's gotten us an entire generation of people on college campuses that can't profess that an embryo is a human being worthy of life because we haven't preached certain truths in the presence of children for years and years.

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And they have but they've heard. Preaching from other sides of a lot of moral issues, right?

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Because we thought well if we call it murder, you know, I'm talking about abortion if we call it murder that can be kind of extreme or scary for kids or maybe they don't get something.

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It's like no, it'll teach them that it's murder and then when they're older, they'll remember that is the hope

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I heard a testimony. I know you're going to say something but I heard a testimony of a young lady. Who had had a one or two abortions and then in her 20s, she she got saved

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I guess or she at least realized the truth about abortion. I don't remember. And one of the things she said is that when she was a little girl, she said she wished that she had encountered street protesters or somebody who would have actually called it murder.

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She said if I would have known from a little girl that it was I I would have thought twice about it.

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She said but I grew up with with moms and aunts or whatever people who just they just went and did that.

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It was just a normal part of life. She said I never heard anyone say there's anything wrong with it.

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She said she said I wish when I was a little girl somebody would have risked scarring me by calling it what it was.

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Well, I just want to say again. I want to start at the end here, but then

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I want to go back. I just want to say it's completely hypocritical and inconsistent because you know, let's take

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Kyle Rittenhouse or let's take the George Floyd situation people on the left were not afraid at all to erroneously even with children and teachers in their classrooms and stuff.

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They were not afraid to erroneously call those things murder. They're not afraid to indoctrinate children.

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You know, the it's not about it's not about indoctrination versus non indoctrination.

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Everybody's after indoctrination. And I don't even say this. I'm unapologetically after and I'm trying to indoctrinate my children, right?

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Like we can work through what I mean by that. But the point I'm trying to say is like everybody's after that.

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And so we need a less cowardly Church and we're going through acts right now. And one of the manifestations of the

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Holy Spirit in the life of the church in acts is boldness. And you see that I think about 11 different times.

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It's explicitly said but then you have other times where it says like these men are turning the world upside down.

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So the word boldness is not used there. But but that is certainly a manifestation of the

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Spirit's boldness. And I think we're afraid and there is let's say this there are there are jerks.

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There are people who are there. They're just they they run this into a ditch.

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We're not trying to be jerks, but same time you can't you can't be so afraid that you're you're not going to stand for truth, right?

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And then the other thing and I've got to go soon because of you know, we've got the my meeting with the brothers in Mexico, but I wanted to circle back earlier to something you said about your church and I just want to show how all of this should tie in together.

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So you said earlier about your church and I feel like our churches like this too. Is a welcoming

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Church to children and that's not having children

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Church, which I am convictionally opposed to. It's not about having a children's pastor a youth pastor, which

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I am convictionally, you know opposed to but it is about having an environment and a culture in your church that is welcoming the children.

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So let me just throw this out there how this fits together. So you've got Street preachers that are out on the out on the street preaching to children.

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And then all of a sudden you have churches that are open to these welcoming these children.

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Oh, you're coming without your parents or maybe even members or maybe there's even a bus ministry, you know, they're bringing these children to church and you see how that beautifully partners together where you're like you have a you have a preachers out on the street who care enough about children to preach them and then you have churches that care enough about children to have a welcoming and open environment a culture that love children and it all fits it all fits in together.

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I mean you want to make any comments to that or say anything. No, just I think that you're right that our churches are similar in that way.

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Where we value children and I would just phrase it more generally. We value other people's souls.

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Amen. We value other people and we simply include children. That's a great way part of that group.

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I mean we value older we visit an old folks home. Not a lot of churches still have a ministry that does that, you know,

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I think it says a little bit about your Christianity who you're willing to help and who you're willing to serve and and I think that a lot of us probably need to grow in humility and realize that serving the least of these, you know,

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Jesus. Jesus wants us to serve children was in Hebrews 8 it says.

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For they all shall know me from the least of them to the greatest and there's something there's something about the fact that in the in the new covenant, we know what the least of the greatest means but there really isn't we're all just sinners at the foot of the cross of a perfect Savior and the smallest child that walks up to you with a weird question at a

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County Fair. He he's as important as you know, if a celebrity preacher guy walked up who could maybe help you out, you know, your character is often demonstrated by how you treat people who can't do anything for you and and that's a way that we can all grow is by loving children and I would add, you know children in the womb.

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I would add elderly people. These are people that God has given us consignment or Commission to help and to serve and to bring into the family of God and I'm I'm convicted to do it as well as you well, you know again

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Luke's on my mind because we're going through acts and it's under the inspiration of the Spirit Of course, but Luke take special care.

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And to to to and we were so afraid of these words because they've been they've been woke if I'd is that a word they've been woke if I'd to death but but Luke is not afraid to show the ministry of the church to the marginalized, you know to the children to the women to the poor.

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How about this to the only place that we hear of this ungodly tax collector

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Zacchaeus is in the gospel of Luke and and Luke Luke just makes a point of those of those again for lack of a better term right now marginalized.

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I know it's misused but I think that's what you're saying it we're going to care for souls.

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We're going to care for souls because that's our Commission and that's our responsibility and whether that soul is a child or an adult or whatever their ethnicity may be or whatever their age may be or even if they're in the womb particularly if they're in the womb the most vulnerable among us.

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We're going to care and and if you don't care, well, that's a very at best.

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That's a very terrible sign of your heart before the Lord and at worst it just means you're unconverted so wow.

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Wow, I want to say great episode, but man, we may turn this into two episode.

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It helps me sometimes if I can get two for one so we'll we'll see I'll think through that but brother it's it's really a privilege to have you want me the same what you said.

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Yeah. Yeah, you pay me the same no matter how you cut it up. So that's fine. Yeah, that's good.

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I'm glad I have your your blessing on that anything else. Hey, I really appreciate you brother.

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I love you and and Aaron and your family. I'm grateful for the

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Lord's Providence and putting us together and our friendship over the years. You've been an encouraging an encouragement to me anything else you want to say before we wrap up here?

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Yeah. Well first, thank you for having me on. I enjoy just talking to you brother frankly and talking about the

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Lord's work, but I would just encourage anyone listening, you know. Next Sunday at church find find a child and just just talk to him ask him.

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I was how was your week? Yeah. What did you do this week that you remember ask him questions that aren't too open -ended where kids can't kids can't think yeah, but ask him something.

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You know, what was your favorite thing you ate this week kids think kids would think those are neat conversations.

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And and they'll they'll appreciate you and and I think that the second thing then is is if you find it hard to care about the children and care about other people's children, then then go to the

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Lord. He's a forgiving God who's in the business of heart change. Yeah, and and if you realize yeah, you know, maybe

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I don't care as much as Alan and Michael made me think I should ask the

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Lord say Lord give give me this desire to want to talk to other people's kids and minister to them that I don't have today and he can do it.

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Hey man, that's that's wonderful Council brother. I think that's I think that's great.

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I hope that I haven't decided yet, but I hope that either this episode or these episodes have been a blessing to our listeners and and would really make you think and if you have a pastor or an evangelist, you know, that is already doing these sorts of things, would you take a moment and just pray for him encourage them?

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I promise you that I promise you they're not overly encouraged, you know, they're not having too much encouragement.

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So so be willing to say something to him and thank them or encourage them or send them a note or text or just take them before the

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Lord and pray for them and the Lord would continue to bless them and and help them because it's impossible to do these things apart from our gracious and holy

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God. Amen. Amen. Well, thank you guys for joining us on this episode or these episodes of the rural church podcast and we will we'll catch you again next week.

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If you really believe the church is the building of churches the house the church is what

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God's doing. This this is his work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the poem us the masterpiece of God.