Our Children Must Learn

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Transcript:

Well, 2 Timothy 1. 1, Paul writes, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the will of God, according to the promise of life, which is in Christ Jesus, to Timothy, my dearly beloved son, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. I thank God, whom I serve from my forefathers with pure conscience, that without ceasing I have remembrance of thee in my prayers night and day.

greatly desiring to see thee, being mindful of thy tears, that I may be filled with joy, when I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois and thy mother Eunice, and I am persuaded that in thee also. Let’s pray. Our gracious Heavenly Father, Lord, we come to you once again this morning, and we pray that you’ll bless the reading and teaching of your word.

We pray that your word would work on our hearts, And Lord, that you would use it to form us into who we need to be as we try to serve you. Lord, we love you and we ask these things in Christ’s name. Amen.

So Paul in this passage writes to Timothy, who he considered to be his son in the faith. And he refers back to some of the teaching that Timothy had received and some of the learning that he had done in his formative years as a Christian. You see, what we need to know as Christians doesn’t come naturally any more than most of what we need to know just in life comes naturally.

I remember when Benjamin was a baby. And I’ve thought before, I may tell too many stories, but then I got to thinking, Jesus told a lot of stories to make points, so I’m going to keep telling stories, because you can’t get a better example than Jesus as a teacher. I remember when Benjamin was a baby, And those feedings all night, every two hours.

Every two stinking hours all night long. And when he got to be several months old and finally was able to hold the bottle for himself. I’ve said this before and some of you all thought I was joking.

No, I was serious. It brought a tear to my eye when I realized he could hold the bottle for himself. So yeah, we might have to wake up for the feeding and give him the bottle, but then we could go back to bed.

It was wonderful. And he had learned that. Well, I got used to him knowing that.

And Madeline came along, and that first night that we had her home, I quickly remembered, oh, wait, she doesn’t know how to hold the bottle. You mean they’re not born knowing that? Because I’ve been asleep for six months.

I don’t remember catching up on sleep. I don’t remember a time when Benjamin didn’t hold the bottle. You see, she wasn’t born knowing how to hold the bottle for herself, and neither was he.

And there are all kinds of things that our kids and grandkids need to know for life, to get them ready for life that, quite honestly, they’re not born knowing. I tried in my mind yesterday to make a list of all the things we’re born knowing. There’s a very short list. There may be more, but as far as what I knew, it was a very short list. We know how to breathe, even though we really are not consciously doing that as babies.

It’s just an automatic thing we do, and we’re born knowing how to eat. Other than eating, pretty much everything we learn or just comes automatically, but there’s not a whole lot that we’re born knowing how to do, is there? We’re not born knowing how to talk.

That’s why you could take a. . .

Brother Poulin was telling me last week about his kids and how the youngest one is more comfortable with Spanish than English. When they watch DVDs, he wants to watch them in Spanish. Daddy, can’t we put it on in Spanish?

He said they were starting to forget some of their English words until they came back to the States. That’s because being born to English-speaking parents doesn’t make you genetically programmed to speak English. You don’t come out of the womb talking.

And you could have a baby born to English-speaking American parents, and you could send them over to Germany to be raised, and they would be raised speaking German, wouldn’t they? We’re not born knowing how to talk. We’re not born knowing how to read.

Benjamin also likes to carry off people’s shoes. And yesterday, he came into my room carrying a pair of Vincent’s shoes. He said, Vincent’s shoes, I said, you take those back to him right now.

And he took them back, and somebody said, you could get a marker and label whose shoes are I said, he can’t read yet. Unfortunately, he can’t read yet, and I don’t think it would make a big difference if he could. See, we’re not born knowing how to read.

We’re not born knowing a lot of things. Think about the things you do in your life every day that we just take for granted. They’re second nature for us now, and yet somebody had to deliberately teach us how to do it.

Either that or we watched from example, but somebody taught us how to do those things. Folks, the Christian life is the same way as our natural life. It’s no different that the things that we do don’t, the things we’re supposed to do don’t come naturally.

Now, through the reading of the Word and the teaching of the Holy Spirit, we can, if we’re forced to, we can learn on our own, but it’s a whole lot easier if we have somebody to show us. And I said I was going to start a series on discipleship when I get back from vacation, but it occurs to me that we’re talking about discipleship this morning, so consider this a preview of what’s to come. In this passage, Paul is writing to Timothy about the things that Timothy had learned, about some of the things that Paul had learned too as a Christian, and these were not things that came naturally.

These were things that were taught. And he starts talking about it really in verse 3. He sets it up in verses 1 and 2 talking about his great affection for Timothy as his son in the faith.

And Timothy had certainly learned things from Paul, but it didn’t begin there. I’ve talked to you all about the way I was discipled. And a man named Mike Mobley, who’s still a good friend of mine today, was my youth pastor when I was a teenager.

And let me follow him around for two summers and some of the school year in between there. And I did hospital calls with him. We’d sit around his office and I’d throw Bible questions at him and he’d try to answer me or we’d dig out the answer or he’d show me how to dig out the answer for myself.

And I’d spent two summers and maybe more with this man learning from him. But my growth as a Christian didn’t start there any more than Timothy started with Paul. See, he goes back to talking about other people in Timothy’s life.

My upbringing as a Christian started with my parents and I’m thankful for that. If you saw my article in the bulletin this morning, my mother is the one who led me to Christ. Now, she’s not the only one who ever talked to me about Christ before that. I had the fire scared out of me in children’s church about a week before that when they were teaching on hell, and that’s why I started asking my mother the questions in the first place.

But I had parents who took me to church, who taught me about Jesus, and at one point when the Holy Spirit started working on me, my parents were there to answer the questions, and they taught me after that. And they also took me to church where I could get additional teaching. And I could list Sunday school teachers and children’s workers and different people who were instrumental in that.

And if we look back, if we take the time to look back, each of us who are believers in Jesus Christ should be able to point to people who were instrumental along the way who taught us and helped us learn some of the things that we need to know. Many a person gets saved and then we tell them they’re supposed to pray. But you sit down with them and say, why don’t you, you know, one-on-one or two-on-one or something like that, why don’t you lead us in prayer?

What do I say? You see, after a while, we start to take prayer for granted, but it’s not something that comes naturally that people know how to do in most cases. People can cry out to God out of a desperate situation, but as far as any kind of meaningful conversation with God, that’s something we kind of have to learn.

Bible study is something we have to learn. Anybody who can read can read the Bible. But studying the Bible and getting what we’re supposed to out of it is a completely different story.

And that’s a lifelong process of learning to dig into the Bible and get everything out of it that you’re supposed to. And you can read a passage for years and years and then suddenly read it in a whole new light and discover things. But we’re not born knowing how to get everything we’re supposed to out of the Bible.

We’re not born again knowing how to get everything that we’re supposed to out of the Bible. There are things that believers, that young believers need to know. There are things that our children need to learn that they are not going to know.

They’re not going to learn unless somebody teaches them. And it’s our job to teach them. Now, if you have children or grandchildren, it is first and foremost your responsibility to teach them.

Beyond that, it is the responsibility of this church to teach our children and to teach our young believers. When I say young believers, I don’t mean people my age and down. I mean people at whatever age who have just come to Christ and who are babes in Christ. It is our responsibility as a church to teach them because otherwise they won’t know.

And very often churches fall down on the job with that responsibility. We see so many people, I’ve told some of you before, I think one of the reasons we see so many people appear to fall away from the faith is not that there are so many people who make false professions, that there are so many false conversions. I think one of the reasons we see people make a profession of faith, say they get saved, we baptize them, they may come for a few weeks, and then we never hear from them again, is that we don’t take the time to invest in them and disciple them and to teach them the things that they need to know.

And folks, it’s our job. And I will say this, even though it is the job of the church to teach our young believers what they need to know, I want to make clear, if you have children or grandchildren, you cannot abdicate that responsibility solely to the church. Because we have them maybe two, three hours a week tops.

And there are 168 hours in a week most weeks, except for time change. There are 168 hours in most weeks. We get them two or three hours out of those weeks.

There’s only so much you can do in two or three hours to combat what the world throws at them the other 165. And so the responsibility lies first and foremost at home. And then the church comes alongside to teach what needs to be taught.

We have a responsibility. We have a command from God, as Brother Poulin talked about last week. We have a command from God.

It’s not an option. It’s not a suggestion. We have a command from God, not just to go, not just to lead people to Christ, but to make disciples.

The Bible says to teach all things whatsoever I have commanded you. Paul and Timothy are good examples of how this should be done. Some of the things our children need to learn, I’ve outlined for you in the bulletin today if you take notes.

The first thing is that our children, and again, figure out how this applies in your own situation. You may not have children at home, but we have children in church, in the church. And we have young believers in the church.

This may apply to you as it does with me, to your own children. I teach Benjamin things, and I need to be teaching him about Jesus as well. Maybe you don’t have kids or grandkids at home, but you’re still a parent in this church, still a grandparent in this church.

Our children, first and foremost, need, they must learn to walk in the fear of God. Our children must learn to walk in the fear of God. Folks, if that doesn’t get an amen out of you, I don’t know what will today.

We sit around and we complain about the younger generation. I say we, I’m part of the younger generation, but I’m an old soul, so I do it too. We sit around and complain about people of my generation and younger, and how they’re going the wrong way, how the country’s headed the wrong direction.

Are we really concerned about it, or do we just want something to complain about? Let me reiterate, our children must learn to walk in the fear of God. If not, all is lost. Folks, in verse 3 here, Paul says, I thank God, whom I serve from my forefathers with pure conscience, that without ceasing I have remembrance of thee in my prayers day and night.

Folks, Paul was taught, I know this may sound strange at first, given what we know about Paul’s history, but Paul was taught from a very young age to fear God. now yes Paul was I’ve likened him to the Osama bin Laden of his day he was a kind of a terrorist going to arrest the Christians and round them up wherever he could find them and a little bit different from what bin Laden did but his job was to strike terror in the hearts of the Christian churches wherever he found them and in that regard he was not a good man and it’s kind of kind of a bold statement to say he has a pure conscience but the Bible tells us there’s no longer any condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus his sins were forgiven and he could stand there with a pure conscience. But he was taught, he says, even from his forefathers to serve God.

I thank God whom I serve from my forefathers. Folks, Paul was not a Christian, but he was taught to fear God. That’s a start.

That’s where it must begin. And then trying to wrap my mind around this yesterday, the thought that as he persecuted the church at Damascus, as he persecuted the church at Jerusalem, as he persecuted Christians everywhere he found them, As horrible and reprehensible as his deeds were, he really did it because he thought he was serving God. See, Paul was a Pharisee.

And Paul, I don’t see as a hypocritical Pharisee. Paul was a true believer. There were some men who were in it for the power.

There were some men who were in it for the prestige or the money. Or having people look at me and say how great, how righteous, how religious he is. Paul was a true believer.

And the Pharisees not only tried to live in strict accordance with God’s law, they actually put up hedges around God’s law and says, if God’s law says don’t go here, then we won’t go here because we don’t want to get close to passing and transgressing God’s law. And they live by this strict code, and Paul did that. And Paul was faithful in doing that, even though he was wrong.

Even though he was wrong, he did it out of a fear for God. Now, I won’t tell you that just because somebody thinks they’re doing things for God that that makes everything okay. There are people, and have been people, all around the world have killed and tortured, and they said it was in the name of Jesus Christ. Folks, no New Testament believer tortures or kills.

They just don’t. But this man believed he was doing the right thing because he had a fear of God. And it took the experience on the Damascus Road to direct that fear in the proper direction, but he was trained even as a child to have a fear of God.

And I’ve told you before about the rules and regulations the Jews had to follow, and I would be a terrible Jew just from the standpoint of memory. All the rituals and the cleansings and the different sacrifices they had to go through, I don’t know how they remembered all of that, except that by a certain age they had to have the first five books of the Bible memorized. And they were taught in a way that I think we need to go back to teaching our kids today, that the God of the Old Testament is still on the throne.

The God we serve today is the same God who was there at Mount Sinai. The God we serve today is the same God who was there at Eden. The God we serve today was the same God who was there with Elijah on Mount Carmel when he faced down the prophets of Baal. And ladies and gentlemen, if the God of the Old Testament is the same God in the New Testament, and he didn’t play with sin, and he didn’t ignore sin, and he didn’t overlook it in the Old Testament, Why would we think he does today?

And we need to have a fear of God. We need to have a proper fear of God and teach it to our children. I’ve heard people say that we wouldn’t have these school shootings and all these things if they would just put the Ten Commandments and school prayer back in classrooms. I don’t know if I buy that or not.

Because just putting something on the wall, I’m not sure how effective that is. But I can tell you, we wouldn’t have school shootings and we wouldn’t have these things if the parents of this country would teach their children to fear God. I’m not perfect, and I won’t tell you I was, or that I am.

But I didn’t act up a whole lot in school because I feared God, and I feared Mama, and Daddy too. But my parents taught me at a very early age, God can see everything you do. And when it comes to sin, He’s not playing.

And I believed that, and it affected how I lived, and it affects how I live even still today. We can wonder why our kids go astray. We can wonder why our grandkids go astray.

We can wonder why the youth of this country go astray, or we can start teaching them a fear of God. And I’ve heard and said for years that when the Bible talks about fearing God, what it means is just a healthy respect. And like I said, I’ve said that for years.

And to an extent, that’s correct. But also when you look at the God of the Old Testament, Isaiah got a vision of God in the Old Testament, and he trembled. Folks, if we look at God and there’s no fear and trembling at all, we’re not looking at God the right way.

He’s our loving Father. He’s our friend. He’s our Savior.

We can call on Him at any time, but folks, let us never forget He’s not an equal. He’s the Creator and King of the universe. He is a holy God, and there should be an awe and a trembling before Him. We need to teach that to our children, like Paul was taught from his forefathers, and like Timothy no doubt was as well.

Our children must learn to walk in the fear of God. If our children don’t fear God, they won’t fear much else. Second today, our children must learn to live a genuine faith.

Our children must learn to live a genuine faith. It says in verse 5, Paul says he calls to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in your grandmother and your mother. That word unfeigned, we don’t use a whole lot anymore, but to feign means to fake something.

To say an unfeigned faith means a faith that is not a show, it’s not a put on, it’s real. And incidentally, a genuine unfeigned faith comes from a real fear of God. But see, Paul doesn’t say that Timothy’s life was affected by the appearance of faith in his mother and his grandmother. Timothy didn’t become Timothy because his mother and grandmother were faithful Christians on Sunday.

Paul says that Timothy was the man he was because his mother and grandmother exhibited a genuine faith, an unfeigned faith. And Timothy had the same. She said, which I’m persuaded is in you also, the faith that is in thee.

We need to teach our children to fear God, but we also need to show them a genuine faith. I could do all the talking I want until I’m blue in the face and tell my children about how there’s a holy and righteous God who sits as judge in heaven over the quick and the dead, and I could convince them of that, but if they don’t see some evidence in my life that I believe that, then they’re not going to pay that much attention to what I have to say. And when people have done studies, and I wish I had some numbers in front of me, although I’m a little skeptical of statistics from time to time.

I told somebody here at church that 84% of statistics are made up on the spot, and they said, really? I just made that up. But it sounds like it works.

I’m a little skeptical of numbers, but if you have several studies all saying the same thing, it’s a good indication that you’ve got something there. And I’ve read studies and I’ve heard reports before where they’ve talked to people who were raised in church and asked them, why are you not in church anymore? Well, I didn’t see it at home.

Didn’t see it at home. I want, I desperately want my children to remember me as being the same man on Tuesday afternoon that I am on Sunday morning. We can’t play church, ladies and gentlemen.

And by the way, I realize I may be saying harsh words and kind of even scowling at you, I realize I don’t mean to be. I’m not mad at you. And I’m not saying we are playing church.

But we cannot play church on Sunday. And I’m not even saying go out and live like the world and do wicked things the rest of the week. It’s not even a matter of being that wicked.

Folks, we cannot play church on Sunday and go home and not give it another thought. Live good moral lives, but no mention, no thought of God, no mention of our faith changing anything for the next six days and expect that our children are going to take it seriously. It’s not just watching us be wicked that it’ll send our children and our grandchildren and our children in the faith over the deep end.

It’s seeing that it’s only real on Sunday. Does the faith that you have on Sunday make any difference to the rest of your life? Does it change the way you behave on the other six days of the week?

Is Jesus Christ at the center point of your home and your family? I’ll admit to you, He’s not always in mind the way He ought to be. I’m convicted that even now, even at such a young age as Benjamins and Madeleines, I should be praying with them a lot more.

Yes, I pray, but they may not see me pray except at mealtimes. Folks, my kids need to know it’s real. My kids need to know that a faith in and a relationship with Jesus Christ carries us beyond Sunday morning. It carries us through Monday morning and on into Saturday night.

That he’s not an addition to our lives. That he’s the center of it. You see the difference, don’t you?

The difference is the importance you place on the relationship. I know a lot of people, and I’ve known a lot of people over the years, who are or have been additions to my life. Friends in high school that now I run into them when I go back home and I can’t even remember their name.

I remember the face, but it’s not supposed to happen. I haven’t even had my 10-year reunion yet. I know we used to be good friends, but I can’t remember your name.

If it wasn’t for Facebook, I wouldn’t know who you are anymore. Folks, that’s an addition to my life. when I’m around you, we can be friends, but I don’t think much about you when we’re apart.

And I’m not saying you all, by the way. My wife, on the other hand, is, I can’t say the center, because Jesus is supposed to be the center, but my wife is in a different position from those people who are just an addition to my life. I think about her when we’re apart.

I call her. I make decisions in part based on what she wants or what she would like. There’s a difference, isn’t there?

And the question of genuine faith or feigned faith is, is Jesus an addition to our lives on Sunday, or is he at the center of it all through the week? As I said before, it’s not enough that we don’t go out and drink and carouse through the week. I mean, that’s bad enough.

Yeah, don’t do that. I’m not telling you to go do that. But the question of, it doesn’t take being here Sunday and then drinking and carousing the rest of the week to have feigned faith.

All we have to do to have a feigned faith is to be here being good and faithful on Sunday and then put it on the shelf the rest of the week and go about our lives. Our children need to learn to live a genuine faith. And third of all this morning, our children must learn from watching godly examples.

They must learn from watching godly examples. They can read and study and pray, and those are good things. And they could learn as Christians to live the way they ought to.

But a lot of times it’s in theory. And I will read passages of Scripture, and they will convict me, and I will realize I need to do something different. But when I see somebody doing that something different that the Scripture calls us to do, that makes a whole different impact and makes me realize, maybe I could really do what the Bible says too.

I’ve watched some of you and your concern for other people and your kindness and your generosity, And that’s something God has had to work with or work on me over the years on. I used to be a little bit more fire and brimstone than I am now. Let’s just say, not in preaching, but in my everyday life, a lot more harsh and judgmental. And God’s had to work on me on that.

And I’ll read passages in Scripture that talk about how we’re supposed to behave as Christians. Speaking the truth in love, being wise as serpents and harmless as doves, and things like that, things the Scripture tells us we need to do and we need to be. And I think, I know I need to do that, but it’s really hard.

Surely, surely, surely that’s, you know, God knows that’s not possible. And then I see wonderful Christian people living the way that God calls us to do, and it makes me realize it’s possible to do what the Bible asks us to do, tells us to do. And I’m not saying I was mean when I got here and I’ve only just learned to be nice.

God’s worked with me or worked on me over about a 10-year period. But sometimes we see things in the Bible that God commands us to do that are hard. And we may admit we need to do what the Bible says and we may need to change something, or we can sometimes ignore it, but then we see it lived out.

Ladies and gentlemen, our children, our grandchildren, our children in the faith here in this church, they need to learn from godly examples. It’s good. It’s good that we teach them.

Let me rephrase that. It is essential that we teach them what it means to follow Christ. It is essential that we teach them the right way to live. It is essential that we teach them the truth of God’s word, but it is no less essential that we model that out for them.

Because I can take you to, as I said earlier this morning, I could point you out to, if I could get them here, I could bring people up on stage and show you, This was my Sunday school teacher in kindergarten. This was my children’s church teacher all through grade school. Various people.

And I may not remember a single lesson that they ever taught, but I remember to this day the lessons that they showed us in how they lived. You may not remember, I hope you do, by the way, I hope you remember at least a single lesson that I brought you here. But even if you don’t later on, Well, I hope you’ve learned from it and applied it and then forgotten that I said those exact words.

But I hope you remember what I model for you. Because I hope I do it right. And I can guarantee you, your children, your grandchildren, our children here at the church, our young believers, 20 years from now, if the Lord tarries, they will not remember everything we said, everything that we taught them.

But they will remember the example that we set for them. And he ties that in here in verse 5 when he says, the faith, this unfeigned faith that they had, was first in his grandmother Lois, then in his mother Eunice, and then in him. Ladies and gentlemen, he learned from their example.

We have a responsibility to teach those who come after us. And this morning I wanted to talk to you about something that was applicable to Mother’s Day, but wasn’t just a message for mothers, because not everybody in here as a mother. But every adult in here, every adult in here who is a believer in Jesus Christ is an example to those who follow us, whether they’re our children or our grandchildren or whether they’re the kids here at church.

And we have a responsibility to make disciples. And there are things that they need to learn. And just like the holding the bottle or the learning how to talk, the learning talk, I need to go back and learn how to talk myself sometimes.

the things they need to know don’t come naturally. They have to be taught. And we have to be the ones to teach them because God has left us here for that task.