Evangelizing Children (Part 1)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said,.

But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you. In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry, Tuesdays the day. Buenos dias, mis amigos. Steve, we just got an email the other day, and maybe people are tuning in for the first time. Monday is a taped sermon from Bethlehem Bible Church.

Tuesdays, we have Steve Cooley, pastor. Steve Cooley in the office here, in the studio, in the study. Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays are other shows. So Steve is the regular for Tuesdays. I think there's maybe been one exception over two and a half to three years.

And it was a day of mourning nationwide, pretty much. I think all the flags were at half-staff.

I read the entire book of Lamentations that day for the show.

I didn't have much time to prepare. With a dirge playing in the background.

Oh, hi. My name is Mike Abendroth. I'm a new pastor, and I think I'll teach through Lamentations to start. Halfway through, maybe. We got, finally, our emails working. And so we're responding to those emails, and you can start emailing us again.

I was wondering why nobody emailed, but it emailed straight into the purgatory of No Compromise Radio.

So I finally got them. We're taking care of them. But we did get one. We got a paper release, and all the emails get released at once. Yes, yes. It was a Google indulgence.

And so most of the letters or emails we have received are very encouraging. Some were, come speak, some were, where can we send money, some were, you know, thanks for the show.

We appreciate it. Some were, when are you going to put Steve on Ritalin? Ritalin. Ritalin.

Ritalin. But we got one that was, this particular person didn't think we were very loving, Steve. Tell me about that. Are you loving? I mean, would you like to defend how humble and loving you are?

Well, you know, that was really the issue. I read the email and I said, how do you defend yourself against that? You know, you guys don't seem very loving. Well, yes, we are loving. Let me just tell you all the loving things we do, because what do you wind up doing?

You know, you wind up sounding like you're bragging about yourself, and all of a sudden there's something good in you, which was kind of the point she was trying to make. You know, you guys are so hard on other people.

You know, why can't you point out the good in them? Well, there's no one good. There's nothing good in any of us but Christ. And so, you know, if I'm going to boast about my good works, well, I've completely missed the point.

Steve, maybe it's the format of the show that's taken people by storm. Always biblical, always loving, always in that order.

It's kind of like hitting the beach at Normandy.

Well speaking of Normandy, a word that sounds like Normandy, we have some listeners in Norway. Did you know that? No, I did not. That is funny. So anyway, if you'd like to write us, we will write you back, even if you write us a...

That wasn't a scathing letter, but it was... It wasn't very loving. Well, it was very unloving to call us unloving. I'm sure if you listen to K-Love all day and then somehow stumble to WVNE or No Compromise Radio, and then you hear a couple guys just bluntly saying things like Code Orange was a complete disaster and the Gospel Coalition resignation of James MacDonald is wild.

Maybe they don't like those kind of comments, or hey, hater, Stephen Furtick, but we just pretty much... Tell it like it is. There you go. We're the Howard Cosell. Howard Cosell. Tell it like it is. Howard Cosell.

All right. Well, Steve, if you're Howard Cosell, that means I'm Dandy Don Meredith.

And I think, you know what... And you have to sing Turn Out the Lights, the party's over.

It's not just by the way our voices sound, but I think it's by looks, too. I think I got you on the Dandy Don Howard Cosell comment. Yeah. Okay, well, moving on. What else did we get on email? We got some show topics, and so we want to do one on baptismal regeneration.

You know, Steve, one emailer wrote and said, we'd like you to do a show on bad hymns. Bad hymns, right. You know what? We have not done bad hymns.

No, yeah, and there's a lot of really bad... I mean, there are hymns... That's a great topic, because there are hymns that are so bad, I will not sing them. I mean, you know, they're in our hymnal, and if somebody picks them on a Sunday night, I will not sing.

Well, actually, when it comes to bad hymns, I have H-A-D-H-D, and that is hymnal attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, because I don't want to... Some of those bad hymns, I can't sing. Neither can I.

You know, Wesley, even, I think it was, My God is Reconciled, My God is Reconciled. But you know what? God doesn't need to be reconciled. We need to be reconciled. Yeah, I don't like that line. And so I know it's poetry, I know it's a song, I know he wrote other good things, but sometimes those just...

They bug me. Yeah, it should be more like, My Soul is Reconciled, or something.

That's right. So Bruce Binney, from now on, when you pick songs on Sunday night, don't pick My God is Reconciled, all right? Bruce, do me a favor. You're a pretty good guy besides that. So let's talk today, Steve, about evangelizing, and in particular, evangelizing children.

Okay. Now, someone wrote, and they said, the emailer wrote, and emails are in my mind because I got 250 of them, and they said, well, would you do a show on evangelizing Jewish people? Oh, that's good.

I thought, you know what? But I wrote back and I said, you know what? We will. To the Jew voice. Okay, Edwin. I said, but it'll sound surprisingly similar to how we evangelize Muslims. That is to say, short of addressing God as creator, then getting into special revelation, specific revelation, we want to talk about the nature and person of Christ.

I think we evangelize people pretty much outside the Act 17 paradigm, pretty much the same way.

Yeah, I mean, it brings to mind when I was asked, you know, what are the secrets for evangelizing Mormons? Because my background, I'm like, well, they need the gospel, and they were like, more. And I said, yeah, yeah.

Well, they got a wrong view of Scripture, wrong view of God, wrong view of sin, wrong view of man, you know, wrong view of salvation. You know, there's silence, and they're looking at me, which is what the problem with every unbeliever is, right?

Well, evangelism, we know from the Bible is to give out the good news, good news giving, giving the tidings out about Christ Jesus and His life and His work. And so when you evangelize Jews, you give them the good news about God's program through Christ Jesus.

When you evangelize Muslims, it's the same thing. Now, certainly, Steve, would it be okay if you quoted the Old Testament, Isaiah 53, to Jewish people? Would that be all right? Absolutely. But would it be okay to do the same with Muslims?

Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, and I have minor legal experience in both, in the jail, amazingly enough. What were you convicted of again? I forgot. When I worked there. And real quickly, once a Jewish inmate came to me, and he wanted to give an Old Testament to another Jewish inmate.

And I said, I bet—I think I used that language, sorry. I apologize. Double down. I said, I bet you that Isaiah 53 is not in that. And he says, well, sure it is. And so he turns there, and it skipped from Isaiah 52 to Isaiah 54.

Really? And then months later, I see the guy, and he had professed Christ. You know, the Lord knows that, but, you know, because that had vexed him so much. Then another guy, a Muslim guy, was working for me one night, and I said to him, or he's helping me read the Bible, and he said, well, you know, Jesus Christ never said He was God.

And so we got to talking more about it. And he was stunned that Jesus actually did say that. And he understood when I put those verses in context that Jesus did claim to be God. And I think that changed his attitude towards the whole situation, too.

So yeah, yeah. I mean, you're exactly right. We need to more or less—I'll put this rightly—we need to contextualize the gospel in the sense that we need to hit them at their weakest point. But the good news does not change.

It is the same message. We just have to figure out where their real weakness is and hit them right there.

Steve, I was daydreaming a little bit, I'm sorry to confess, and things about—. I'm going to get you back on Ritalin. Uh-huh. Code Orange, hymns. And I just thought, you know, T .D. Jakes could sing a song about God in three manifestations, blessed unity.

You think he could do that, maybe? I think he could. I heard that T .D. Jakes confessed Trinitarianism on the elephant room, and now everybody's all happy.

Please. That's what I think. So he's going to take back all of his books and all of his messages.

Well, I think if Mark Driscoll asked him the questions, they must be hard-hitting questions. I live in the most unchurched city in all the world, so I don't know. So evangelism in general is giving the good news to people.

And of course, I know there are nuances if you talk to Hindus and you talk about one creator, and when Acts 17 discusses Paul's preaching, let's start with the creator. There are some nuances. But my general comment was, we need to give the good news.

And so let me just read to you 1 Corinthians chapter 15. When you are preaching the Bible, preaching the gospel, talking to your children about evangelism, forgiveness, do not forget 1 Corinthians 15, for I deliver to you as of first importance.

So lots of things in the Bible are important. Strike that. Everything's important, but some are more important than others. That Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas and then to the Twelve, etc.

That is the gospel that Paul preached to the church of Corinth, and he did not want them to run in vain. And so when we evangelize children, the focus needs to be on the gospel of Christ Jesus, his person, his work, his life, his death, gospel according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, those kind of accounts.

Steve, don't you think a lot of parents, maybe they just assume their kid knows that, and then they don't preach Christ enough to kids?

Absolutely. I mean, it's like the gospel by osmosis. Just by being in the atmosphere of your Christian living, your kids are going to sort of get evangelized. Well, that's not really right. I have to say, you know, I got a little excited just the other day because my granddaughter, for the first time, she said Jesus.

Yeah. Was that in Spanish? No. No, it wasn't Jesus. It was Jesus. And, you know, the other day, I've got a video of her, I'll show you this one later, but I've heard just feverishly going through the Bible.

She can't read yet, but... But she knows that's what you're supposed to do.

She was just turning those pages and very, you know, without ripping them or anything, I thought, that's pretty impressive. I asked her what her favorite verse was, she didn't have an answer, but...

She didn't. All that reminds me of with my kids, I was trying to teach them to love the Word of God, and then we would kiss the Bible at the dinner table, and we meaning me, and then I would hold it close to my chest and say, I love the Bible, I love to learn about God from the Bible.

And the kids could get it. They could get it. So when it comes to teaching your children, we want to say, first of all, that it should be a Christ-centered message, but it should be often given. That is to say, if your kid says, I believe in Jesus, they're four years old, I accepted Jesus in my heart, we don't want you to make the mistake of never returning back to the gospel and just assuming they're a Christian.

Why would that be, Steve?

Because parents can get their kids to basically say anything. You know, if I worked at it hard enough, I could probably get some four-year-old to say I'd like to rob a bank. That doesn't, you know, doesn't really necessarily mean anything.

It's not a confession of his intent, you know, any more than him saying what I tell him to say is a confession of his heart.

That's Bonnie and Clyde evangelism, by the way. Dillinger, the Dillinger effect. I saw an article online by the people at Randolph Street Church, and so if you Google Randolph Street Church evangelizing and baptizing children, you'll see an excellent article there, and it talks about things to avoid when it deals with children and evangelizing and baptizing them.

And so the first one, Steve, is oversimplification of the gospel, or oversimplifying the gospel. When we—you know what? I'm probably going to get in trouble when I say this. Yes, you are. But I would say avoid the way of the master oversimplification approach.

And that is to say, you know, if you ever told a sin, therefore you're a sinner. You ever told a sin? You ever told a lie? I've told many sins. I've told a sin. I've told a sin. I rebuke you. I rebuke you.

They do a good job, in many respects, at least talking about sin and talking about the remedy. But I guess, Steve, here's what I'm after. How do we really talk about sin to a child so they understand the grossness and the vileness and the need then to have a Savior relieve them of their sin guilt?

I guess that's my real question.

Well, I mean, just like with anybody else, we need to get down to examples that they would understand. You know, I mean, and there's the problem. I mean, for many young kids, your kids can say whatever they want, but do they really understand how much God hates sin?

Do they understand that God hated sin so much that he had to punish his son? I mean, think about what that took. I hate sin so much that to get rid of it for those who will enter into my presence, I need to have all that sin and all the punishment for it focused on my son.

I'm going to turn away from my son. That's how much he hates sin. And it's hard to communicate that to a four-year-old. You know, I mean, I don't even know what you'd use exactly. I mean, because I wasn't saved when I had four-year-olds in the house.

I don't know, you know, maybe some kind of a diaper illustration or something.

Steve, don't you think this whole issue of oversimplification can be, we can think about it better if we, I almost want to tell the Randolph Street people who wrote an excellent article, we don't have to try to rush this.

We can relax and rest in the sovereignty of God. And therefore, we don't have to try to quickly put a presentation together, a 30-second, one-day, two-weeks presentation of here, you know,. A, admit you're a sinner.

Yes. B, believe in the gospel, you know, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you'll be saved. C, confess with your mouth, you know, Jesus as Lord. And we, you know what, the desire that adults have, parents have, that their child would be saved and worship Christ Jesus the Lord forever and not burn in hell forever.

That's a good desire. It's a great desire. But children are A children. And what can a four-year-old really know? I think they can know right and wrong and they can understand some abstract concepts.

But really, it's going to take time. And you say, well, Edwards said that a four-year-old got saved. I don't think Edwards had any clue if she was saved or not. I don't think anyone ever knows. Maybe she was or she wasn't.

But I don't think we know. We'll know in heaven who was saved at what age. But sin and substitution and a Messiah who's our representative, these are fairly abstract concepts in my mind, especially in our society today that don't have Passover's or anything else.

Well, the more we study and the more we know now, you know, the more we just think, now the gospel itself is simple. But I mean, how do you, again, how do you explain sin? How do you explain a cosmically powerful, holy God?

The infinitely holy God. How do you explain that to a four-year-old? It's hard for us to grasp it, you know, even just to the best of our ability, let alone explain that to a four-year-old.

See, that's a good point. If we meet someone today who lives in Sri Lanka and they've never heard the Christian message, the real Christian message, and we tell them that message. Now, of course, God could zap them.

And I'm using that word loosely. God could illuminate their minds and hearts and regenerate them right then. I know that's the case because the gospel is powerful. But most of the time, people have to process it and they have to weigh the alternatives and they have to consider the cost and they have to say to themselves, well, I've never heard of this concept before.

Let me look into it more. And then as they begin to learn what the Bible teaches, they have knowledge of the object of the person they're supposed to believe in. And so what we're trying to say is, at least I'm trying to say, I don't know what Steve's trying to say.

What I'm trying to say is, it is good to want your children saved. It is bad to rush the sovereign creator of the universe and trying to force it. And so just be consistent in your daily Bible teaching of your kids, or even four times a week.

And then you're going to see the Spirit of God work through this Bible teaching so your kids know who they believe in. So I'm after just the patience of parents when it comes to evangelism. I regularly pull my kids aside and say, you know, Daddy teaches the Bible all the time.

And, you know, how do you know you're going to heaven? Jesus forgave me of my sins. He died on the cross and was raised from the dead. But, you know, Maddie, Gracie, do you really believe it? Do you really think that you believe this yourself?

Those are good. Those are good heart to hearts. Sometimes my kids cry when we talk like that. But we know God saves through the preaching of the word. So preach the word to your kids. And then you don't have to be a Finney-like Arminian person to try to extract the decision out.

Call for a response, but the response doesn't have to be given to you.

That's right. Well, you know, I mean, think about some other things that you do wrongly. You know, you talk about things of first importance. Well, what about, you know, either overemphasizing the love of God for this probably unsaved child or talking so much about hell that they're so scared that they'll say anything, you know, to get out of going to hell because their concept is, you know, well, I better watch out because I'm going to hell, which, you know, and then you can get them to say whatever you want.

So I think balance is definitely called for repetition. You want to pray for them, pray with them, you know, all these kind of things. But maybe we ought to move on to number two. Okay. I want to move on number two.

Okay. But I see that.

I see. I know. I see that hand. Because it's going to have to be a two part show, Steve. I think it might be even three parts. So you should have just seen Steve's demeanor. Twelve part show. It was like I just gave him a flex roll that his just shoulders just went, oh, you know, we don't have to finish this off in the next three minutes.

I actually felt like Ritalin. Oh, wrong show. By the way, with the whole Ritalin thing, if you got a kid that's, you know, runs his motor too much, why do we give him speed?

It's a mystery to me. Well, I, you know, it's just we're going far afield. I mean, I would meet guys who are super hyper in the jail and they were in there for meth. And I'm going, you know, when you get out, you might want to think about switching drugs because that one doesn't work for you.

I like to sleep at night or guys who are just like so, you know, slow moving and everything. What are you in jail for heroin? I'm going, really? You ever think about switching to meth?

You know, well, it's kind of like people that look like their dogs, you know, people's personalities, you know, match their drug use.

Yeah, it's not good. Ron, just say no.

When we talk about oversimplification of the gospel, Steve, I was just going to talk about this. Oh, here's what I was going to say. My suggestion when it comes to evangelizing your children is to, and this is going to seem obvious, but it's to read the Old Testament as well.

There's a reason why we see these pictures. These graphic illustrations of sin, for instance, of Day of Atonement or Passover. I think it was easy for kids those days to understand sin is death, right?

There's got to be a sacrifice, a real sacrifice. There's got to be blood shed, real blood. We don't have blood around today. I mean, Steve, when do kids even see a dead dog or a dead cat, a dead squirrel and a dead bird?

That's the only thing kids see dead anymore. Yep, just roadkill. That's about it. So in the plan of redemption, in the outgrowth of progressive revelation, in the teaching that in the garden shortly after Adam's sin, God killed the animals to clothe Adam and Eve.

There's this process that you see these pictures of sin, substitution, redemption, God's loving kindness. I think you see them more concretely in the Old Testament than you see them in the New Testament in terms of the abstract concept of, OK, God made propitiation.

Well, the way I think of propitiation, Steve, is I've got to go back to think God is angry. God calls for satisfaction. Somebody has to die instead. And that just shoots me right back to the Old Testament.

Yeah. And, you know, along those same lines and getting back to this whole loving thing that we were talking about earlier, you know, it's so profound to think in Psalm 5 when the psalmist writes that God hates sinners because we don't necessarily think of it.

I mean, you know, we want to tell our children that God loves them unconditionally. And yet the Bible says that God hates sinners. So how do we reconcile those two? I mean, there are a lot of things going on here.

But my main point in bringing that up is we want to talk unconditionally about the love of God. But there are other factors involved, too. God isn't just one attribute or another. And how do you explain that to a child?

You know, how do you explain that God simultaneously loves us and doesn't love us? How do you explain that he's simultaneously wrathful and all these kind of things all going together for a child? Maybe those things don't make too much sense.

So the good news is you can entrust your children to the God who gave them to you. And you don't have to rush things by making things so simple that they become oversimplified. And you're trying to get the right response.

Because as Pastor Steve has just said, you can get your kids to say anything. I could get my young kids when they were four and five years old to believe in Buddha if I wanted to. Right. Buddha's going to send you to Buddha hell.

And if you don't believe you're going to burn forever. Buddha, Buddha, Buddha, Buddha. Of course you can do that. Please, Pastor Buddha. So how do people get saved? Answer. They get saved by hearing the word of God.

So regularly teach your children the word of God. And regularly, even if you are in Exodus 12, teach them the gospel. Jesus Christ, the God-man, dying in our place, being raised from the dead as a representative sacrifice.

Regularly and often teach that. When you're talking about the Old Testament, I mean, just think about we know from the New Testament, the Old Testament's there for illustrations. Just think about how many times people do gross sins or, you know, just walk away from God.

And it's a great illustration. You just go, isn't that stupid? You know, here God just brought the Israelites out of Egypt and look at how they repay him. And kids can understand that part. You know, they can understand the rebellion part.

They get it. They know that it's not the right thing to do. And you can build on those kind of things and say, that's how we act a lot of times toward God. And you just walk them through, you know, what repentance means and how God is forgiving and all these kind of things.

And you can get them to understand, I think, through the illustrations of the Old.

Testament. Ted Tripp, I think, says that when your kids are teenagers, make sure you study the Minor Prophets.

God always judges sin. There you go. No two ways about it.

So No Compromise. Today, we just initially have begun to talk about evangelizing children. And so we want to make sure that you evangelize your children.

Preach them the gospel early and often. It's kind of like voters in Chicago, early and often. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry.

God bless you. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's Word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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