Biblical Parenting in a Chaotic Culture (Part 4): Commitment to Biblical Parenting -Pastor Greg Addison

Ministering to the heart of Western Arkansas's River Valley for over 165 years, welcome to Chapter and First, the Bible Teaching Ministry of Fort Smith's First Baptist Church.

You'll find sermons and teachings from Pastor Greg, our ministry staff, and guest speakers.

Thank you for listening.

I want you to turn with me in your Bibles again to Deuteronomy chapter 11, and we're going to continue our study on biblical parenting in a chaotic culture.

Deuteronomy 11 · chapter mention

I want to remind you what our goal, our definition of biblical parenting is that we have studied each week, and I've reminded you that each week.

And that is raising your children to have a relationship with Jesus.

And that's why songs like that, where we're talking about praying and communicating with Jesus and Him being involved in our lives and answering our prayers, that's why those are so powerful to us.

And that testimony speaks to us because when you have a relationship with Jesus, you know that's exactly what it is.

It is a relationship, and he is faithful and active and loves us and cares and answers those prayers.

And so we want our children to know those things and to have a relationship with him.

And we want to do it in such a way and invest it so much in their lives that when they're adults, they'll walk with him and they'll serve him.

And it's a special testimony to have Jessica share that this morning.

Her dad loved Jesus, Sunday school teacher, great guy here in the church, and you can see that generational influence.

That's exactly illustrated what we're talking about in this series.

And so that's our goal for us as parents.

Well, here's what we want to talk about today are some practical principles for biblical parenting.

So I want to get very, very practical today.

Now I want to remind you these are the these are the these are those foundational truths that we've talked about, right?

That we love the Lord, obey his commandments in scripture, gratefulness and stewardship for his provision, live as God's people for his glory.

Those principles we've shown the last several weeks.

And so what I want to do today is get very, very practical.

In fact, I have ten practical principles that I'm going to give, and I'm going to just go one at a time, and I'm going to get through about five or six of them this week and finish the other ones next week.

Now I want you to look with me in Deuteronomy chapter 11 real quick, and I just want to remind you of the text that we're unpacking here.

Deuteronomy 11 · chapter mention

Deuteronomy chapter 11, verse 18.

Deuteronomy 11:18

Imprint these words of mine on your hearts and minds.

He's talking to the parents that you have to own this relationship, you have to own these principles in order to teach your children.

So he says, to the parents, you imprint these words of mine on your hearts and minds.

Bind them as a sign on your hand, let them be a symbol on your foreheads.

Teach them to your children, and then here's what he says: talking about them when you sit in your house, when you walk along the road, when you lie down, and when you get up.

Write them on the doorposts of your house and on the gates, so that as long as the heavens are above the earth, your days and those of your children, see, we are projecting a faith that is so passionate, it calls our children to follow him.

It casts a vision for them, so that the days of your children may be many in the land the Lord swore to give your fathers.

For if you carefully observe every one of these commands I'm giving you to follow, to love the Lord your God, walk in all his ways, and remain faithful to him, then the Lord will drive out all these nations before you, and you will drive out nations greater and stronger than you are.

I want to just give you this thought as well.

Look in verse 26.

Look today, I set before you a blessing and a curse.

There will be a blessing if you obey the commands of the Lord your God, I am giving you today, and a curse if you do not obey the commands of the Lord your God, and you turn aside from the path I command you today by following other gods who have not known you.

And so what happens is we are learning now that our choice of obedience impacts our family.

We teach our children choices and to follow, and that when we follow God, He blesses and honors that.

So I'm not here to tell you this is what you need to do with each of your kids and some legalistic sort of a thing, right?

These are principles.

But these are biblical principles that every parent should be building into their lives and into their families.

These principles may be applied differently with each of your kids based on how they learn, or may be applied differently from one house to another based on the context of what you have going on.

But these biblical principles should be in every single family.

Okay?

Now, for the sake of time, I'm not going to give you every single Bible first that goes with every single one of these, but they are all biblical principles grounded in Scripture.

Okay?

Scripture teaches us not just the what we want to teach our children, but has all kinds of examples of the how.

Now there's always a risk in this moment when I go into some of these things, and I've begun to have some of these conversations in our church, and even Janet and I have had these conversations in our house.

When you talk to parents who are in the midst of raising their kids, and you're saying, here's a principle of how to teach this, and here's a principle how to teach that, and if we have grown kids, our tendency at times is to listen incorrectly.

What I do not want you to hear is something that makes you think, oh, I did this wrong.

Okay, that's not the point of what we're doing.

And Janet and I have already had times we've talked about, oh, we even knew better and we did that wrong.

You know, this that's not what this is about.

Here's the deal.

If you taught your children who Jesus is, how to be saved, and you show them Jesus in the course of their years, you did what you're supposed to do as a parent.

Our children have choices of their own.

And our children make choices, and they make choices to go this way, and they make choices to go that way, and sometimes they make choices not to follow the Lord, or sometimes they make choices not to follow the Lord for a period of time.

And sometimes if they are not following the Lord right now, they can make choices and will many times to come back to the Lord.

So your journey as a parent is not over just because your kids are not in the house anymore.

Janet and I are thinking all the time, holy cow, this is a whole lot more stressful parenting adult kids than it is parenting little kids.

I could tell my kids what to do then, right?

I mean, and here's the hard part.

When I would tell my kids what to do, I could say, who has the checkbook?

And they'd have to follow me because I write the checks.

As the parent of adult kids, I write the checks without the ability to tell my kids what to do.

It's a little stressful, amen?

But here's what I want you to understand.

If you've already raised your kids, do not let the whole, do not let the devil come in and be what the scripture calls him, the accuser of the brethren, and try to make you feel guilty about things you did or didn't do.

That is not how the Bible teaches us.

And you are still parenting and you still have influence, and you just keep growing in what you're doing and praying for your kids.

This gives you an opportunity, maybe if you have conversations with your kids, how you can, maybe it gives you some language or a better way to explain how you try to approach and how you can show them wisdom as a parent still.

Listen, nobody bats a thousand, okay?

And nobody batted a thousand as a parent.

We didn't bat a thousand as a parent.

You are not going to bat a thousand as a parent if you're raising your kids right now.

And so here's what we need to do.

We need to go to God's Word to learn and to grow and to seek that wisdom, not for Satan to accuse you, but for you to continue to grow and learn how to have more influence in a positive way.

So I want you to be careful about that.

Now, here's the other deal.

If you are raising your kids, or maybe you're newly married or you're engaged, or you know, you're married but don't have kids yet, here's what I need you to understand.

The fact that I have to address that with people whose kids have already left the house should tell you this.

There is a day when your kids are not there, and you will evaluate what you did when they were in your house.

No one that I know as a parent thinks, I wish we had played more sports.

But most of them that I know love Jesus wish they had found more ways to teach their kids about Jesus.

I don't know anybody who says, gee, I wish I'd spent more time with my kids doing algebra homework.

But all of us look back and think, was there more I could have done to teach my kids to love God's word?

To build that discipline in their lives.

And so if you're with parents right now, I want to encourage you.

If you're parenting your kids or you're looking into that journey and you see it coming up soon, I want to just encourage you.

The fact that parents look back with hindsight and ask these questions ought to tell you, man, what we're talking about is vital.

Don't give up, don't stop teaching, don't get tired, don't get frustrated, keep loving your kids and keep pointing them to Jesus.

The window of time that we have is incredibly small.

The time when my daughter was born and she turned 18 and we sent her to Arkansas State University on certain days seemed like it was never ending.

And when we left that university and left her there, I thought, my goodness, how quickly did that go?

And so I want to just encourage you, if you are parenting, keep going, keep going.

Let me um let me uh, and I'm gonna use some notes today, which I don't normally do.

So if I get a little bogged down, you'll know why I don't teach notes.

But I've got things I want to share with you, and I want to make sure that I get them in and I'm careful to do them.

I'm gonna give you ten practical principles that I hope are a blessing and encourage you.

They come from lots of study, they come primarily from the foundation of God's Word, they come from Janet and I, and our experience in parenting, and our experience, our parents parenting us and our friends, that we are blessed to have a group of friends that love Jesus and we have had relationships together and raised our children, trying to raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord together.

And so I'm going to try to encapsulate some principles for you.

The first one is this you need to prioritize teaching children Bible stories.

Turn back to verse 1 and 2 of Deuteronomy 11.

Bible says that God speaks that Joshua speaks to the parents.

The Lord is teaching them through Joshua.

And he says, Love the Lord your God and always keep his mandate, his statutes, ordinances, commands.

Again, he continually goes to the parents.

But then here's what he tells parents.

You must understand today that it is not your children who experienced or saw the discipline of the Lord your God.

And then he rehearses all of the testimonies or lots of the powerful stories about how God drew the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt and out of slavery and guided them into the promised land.

So he is going back and rehearsing these stories all throughout Scripture.

Scripture is written as a story, it is a compilation of episodes that that story is a microcosm of the gospel, who God is, what his plan is for us, what holiness is, what sin is, that choices have consequences.

And then each of those stories, each of those episodes is a chapter in the overall narrative of the Bible itself and the story of redemption.

There's a reason that is organized to tell us the story from creation and end in revelation and eternity.

And so stories are incredibly powerful.

Stories are universal.

I've preached in six or seven different countries.

I've had translators and all kinds of different deals.

And when I start trying to explain some concept or I tell some American joke or something like that, man, they're lost.

But when I tell the story of David and Goliath, it doesn't matter how many interpreters it takes, they get it and they're drawn to it, and the power of the story speaks to their life.

The only time I've missed that experience was in Argentina one night after preaching a Sunday night service with one of our host churches in Argentina we were working with.

This is in a city called Mendoza.

It's about a million people.

It was kind of similar to Memphis.

And that night we go to dinner at the pastor's house, and he and his wife graciously host us, and we sit down, we're sharing our stories and our testimonies, and he's intrigued by the fact that I started out life in my professional life as a lawyer.

And you can see it kind of bothers him.

And I'm kind of going through my call to ministry and all that.

And then he stops me and he says, May I tell you a lawyer joke?

I guess some things are universal.

And not only did he tell me a lawyer joke, but the pastor from Mendoza, Argentina told me the joke that I already knew the punchline to.

Some things are universal.

But what's universal are stories.

And stories are powerful.

Stories are how we teach.

Stories are how the children of Israel have been teaching before they had the capacity and the technological ability to promulgate enough scrolls for every house to have one.

How did they teach before that?

They taught the stories of who God is because that taught their children the person of God and who he is.

All throughout scripture we are we are taught that.

In Psalm 78 is a song that was used as a teaching model, and the very first verse of that song in Psalm 78 is teach your children who God is, his great works, so that they can grow up and trust in him.

It's incredible.

In 1 Corinthians chapter 10, don't turn to it, just write this down in your margin.

1 Corinthians 10 · chapter mention

1 Corinthians chapter 10, beginning in verse 1.

1 Corinthians 10 · chapter mention

Here's what he says.

Well, where did Corinthians 10 go?

You guys moved it.

Oh, here it is.

Isaiah 10:1

Chapter 10, verse 1.

Now I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and he's talking about back in the Old Testament, the children of Israel following Moses.

He's going back and pulling the story, just like Joshua did, of the children of Israel being led out of Egypt.

Our fathers were all under the cloud, all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.

They all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink.

For they drank from a spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Jesus Christ.

In other words, he's saying this Old Testament story when they ran out of water and they're journeying in the wilderness, and Moses struck the rock, and water came out.

That's an Old Testament picture of Jesus the rock.

Water is the sustenance of life.

It's an Old Testament story that's a picture of Jesus.

He says they were all fed from that.

It's all the same spiritual truth.

Verse 6, these things became examples for us, so that we will not desire evil things as they did.

Do not become idolaters as some of them were, as it is written.

And then he refers back to the Old Testament.

Let us not commit sexual immorality as some of them did, and in a single day 23,000 people fell dead.

That is a story from the Old Testament.

Let us not test Christ, as some of them did, and were destroyed by snakes, nor should we complain as some of them did, and were killed by the destroyer.

Another Old Testament example.

These things happened to them as examples.

And they were written as a warning to us, on whom the ends of the ages have come.

You see that?

He is telling us that the purpose of testament, of stories and scripture, are to teach us who Jesus is and how this works.

In your home, you should be teaching, you should prioritize almost more than anything else, teaching your children Bible stories.

Here are some benefits from that.

First, teaching stories is tangible and literal in its teaching methodology.

And the younger children are, the more they are literable, literal, and tangible, and they learn by example and they put things together that they can see.

They learn, and so when you teach a story, it is concrete, it is real, it is tangible, they can grasp it and they understand the lessons that you're teaching.

It is hard to teach younger children truths, but you can teach them a story that illustrates that, and they'll get it like that.

The power of story.

And so you need to be teaching your children Bible stories.

Also, these imprint and they remember them forever.

They remember them forever.

I mean, you think about, don't ever forget how powerful stories are.

I mean, you think about all throughout literature, all throughout, you watch sports and they talk about an underdog, and what do they do?

The example of David versus Goliath.

Stories of Scripture are imprinted on society and everywhere else.

Kids remember these stories in an incredibly powerful way.

And you are inserting scripture in their lives when you are telling them the stories of what God did and how he did it and who he is and all of that.

You are literally, when you teach stories, you are teaching a personal and active God.

When you teach David and Goliath, you're teaching, listen, he didn't just accidentally hit that stone.

God taught him that.

When you teach them, man, that Goliath is disrespecting the people of God, and that's why David got mad at that, and he put his finger in the face of Goliath, and he said, You will not blaspheme the people of God.

He also taught them that God is active in their lives.

He said, Listen, God protected me when I fought the lion, God protected me when I fought the bear, and God is going to give me you.

And we're teaching our children that's who God is, and that He's active in our lives, and in all those stories, God is the greatest actor in every one of those stories.

It teaches God's character.

And that's what Joshua's trying to get here.

When your children don't know the stories of God and how he's provided and how he's disciplined and how he's forgiven.

And how he's provided.

When you've not taught your children that they don't know who God is.

But when you teach your children these Bible stories, then what happens is they learn the character of God.

God is love, God forgives.

God has a standard.

You have to meet that standard.

God sent Jesus.

And as your kids get older, then you begin to unpack the subtleties and the details of those stories.

You can go back and pull from those stories and teach unbelievable, deep, meaningful life lessons about who God is and where he is.

It teaches cause and effect.

One of the things we'll talk about next week is teaching your children choices and consequences, choices and consequences, and stories teach cause and effect.

Samson and Delilah.

The Ark.

Daniel and the Lion's Den.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

All those things they teach cause and effect, and they learn and begin to understand.

They begin to develop critical thinking skills because you're teaching them those stories.

You teach them a love of the Bible.

Man, how can you not love the Bible?

I remember our son was left-handed, and so we were trying to get him to love things, and he loves swords, and he loves swashbucklers, and he loves Zorro, and he loves pirates, and he loves Peter Pan and all of that.

And we're trying to teach them, and there's an incredible story in the book of Judges, where there's a judge who is left-handed, the Bible says.

Is that awesome?

If you're left-handed, God loves you too.

My son reminds me all the time, the statistics say that left-handed people are smarter than us, right-handed Neanderthal knuckle draggers, right?

That's kind of what we get.

This guy kills this evil king, and the Bible tells us, this is in the Bible, you go read it.

This king is so fat, he's got these huge fat rolls.

And when the judge goes in, he sticks the knife into his gullet and leaves it hidden in the fat rolls, and that gives him time to sneak out, and the king dies and can't pursue the children of Israel anymore.

That's in the Bible.

That's awesome.

You tell that to a seven-year-old boy, he's gonna go tell me more.

And they love it.

And then they never forget that story, and then you can come back and teach them why that was happening and who the judges were and what's happening in that and how God protects his people.

And when we trust him, you can teach them about heroes and men and women that God raises up, and you begin to teach them more through the book of Judges.

And you've created a hunger and an excitement for the Lord.

There's a guy in the New Testament named Eudicus.

He's famous because they're preaching in church one day, and the sermon goes along, and this is a warning to you.

He was sitting in an upper story window in the building they were in, and he fell out of the window because he fell asleep.

Y'all don't fall asleep up there in the balcony now.

He fell out of the window because he fell asleep during the preaching and died.

And his name was Eudicus.

And the old preacher joke is, well, Euda cuss if you fell out of a window, too.

Eudychus.

I mean, there's incredible stuff in Scripture, and you teach these things and they get fascinated and they love Scripture, and then they begin to believe Scripture because they love it.

And it teaches lessons of characters in ways that they can understand.

You can try to teach your kids things like love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, whatever.

And they don't understand all that.

They're learning all that.

When they're older or teenagers, they can begin to understand that.

But listen, when you've got those kids and you teach them, you want to teach them trust, tell them the story of David and Goliath.

You want to teach them trust?

Then Noah put his family in the ark, and the rain began, and the Bible says, God shut the door and protected them.

And they trusted because they were in the ark.

Man, you begin to teach.

You want to teach about the importance of prayer?

Daniel, it was so important that Daniel prayed that when they put up this law to try to get him in trouble, Daniel continued to pray, and it violated the law of that country, and so the king had to throw him to the lions, but he prayed, and God shut the mouth of the lions, and he was alive the next day.

I mean, you teach them these stories and you teach them in ways that they understand, and they want to be like Daniel, and they want to be like Noah, and they want to be like David, and you're teaching character when you teach Bible stories.

You cannot teach enough Bible stories.

And then what you do is you create a foundation for now you to take a faith's testimony from your family and you layer it on top of that story and you teach the same thing.

Kids, God did the same thing in our house.

God did the same thing in our family.

And then you lay it on top of that story, and it is riveted and owned in their heart forever.

All the points don't take that long, but that is the most important.

And you see the foundation of that here.

You see it in Psalm 78.

Go back and read 1 Corinthians 10.

This is the foundation how we begin teaching our children.

And don't stop teaching them when they go to first grade.

David and Goliath is not a children's story.

It is a Bible story.

There is even more for us to learn as adults as there are when they're children.

And the beauty of story from Scripture is you can layer and add the lessons as they grow.

Number two, repetition.

Repetition.

This is a biblical principle, repetition.

You repeat stories and repeat stories.

How many of you have this experience with your kids now, or you remember this experience?

They play the same song over and over and over and over.

Right?

I'm telling you what, if I'd have heard the Barney song one more time when my kids were that age, I'd have shot somebody.

It was awful.

I mean, it was awful.

I couldn't take it anymore, right?

They sing them over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

How many of you watch the same video every day for six weeks in your house, right?

Why do they why do they?

Because they love repetition.

It speaks to them, it creates a learning experience.

They dig into that story or that song or whatever it is, and they can begin to squeeze that and pull through it.

It creates a comfort that allows their mind to invest in that and move.

And so repetition is important.

The Bible teaches repetition.

For example, the word meditation.

What is the word meditation?

It is simply, we use the idea brew around here when we talk about meditating on scripture.

And what is the R?

Read and repeat.

Meditation.

The word meditation, there are lots of words for that all throughout Scripture.

Just that word alone is used 23 times.

It's used 19 times in the book of Psalms, and the book of Psalms is the devotional guide in the middle of Scripture.

It is a song book that we teach and that we worship.

It is a devotional guide.

Is it a prayer book?

It is there to touch our heart.

It's to draw that.

And so 19 times in just that one book, the concept of the word meditation, the concept is repeated even more than that.

And so we linger, we rest in, we soak in these truths.

And so repeat them over and over and over and over, right?

It's how children learn through repetition.

And then you are ensuring that these principles stick in their minds and their hearts forever.

Number three, use scripture to teach.

All throughout this passage, and in the anchor one we began with, parents, you put it on your on your on your arms and you put it on your foreheads.

That was a teaching methodology that they used where they would strap something to their arm, they would strap something to their forehead, and it was illustrating this is what I'm learning, this is what I'm focusing on, this is who I am.

And those are scriptures and commands of God all throughout this passage of Scripture.

You've got to teach right on your heart, be careful to obey the commands of God.

So teach them by memorizing scripture.

Listen, your two-year-old, three-year-old, four-year-old, they can learn and memorize scripture verses.

Don't tell me that they can't.

They memorize all kinds of stuff at that age.

They're sponges at that age.

And if you teach them younger, when they become 10, 11, and 12, it is easier to teach them the principle of memorization of scripture.

And then when they become teenagers, it's so much easier to have developed a habit of memorization and a habit of having a quiet time if you have been teaching them scripture.

Now do it in a certain way, okay?

You don't need to be teaching your five your four-year-old Malachi 3.10, right?

That isn't going to work.

But what you are going to teach them are two types of scriptures, the younger that they are, and the you expand it as they get older.

When they are young, you teach them scriptures about the person of God.

For example, the Bible says God is love.

It says it multiple times in 1 John.

It says it in the Gospel of John.

Trust in the Lord.

Proverbs 3, 5, and 6 was one of our ten favorite verses as a church family that we studied this summer.

God created the heavens and the earth.

They need to know that God is the creator.

And you can teach them that scripture verse from Genesis chapter 1.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

You can begin to teach them, John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son.

And you begin layering the groundwork of the gospel.

Teach them about the person of God.

And then teach them verses about his instructions.

Don't start with concept verses.

Start with instruction verses.

You can teach them, what time I am afraid I will trust in the Lord.

From the book of Psalms.

You can teach your children a soft answer turns away anger.

But loud words or grievous words stir up harm.

You can teach them that.

From my earliest memory as a kid, my life, my my gift, my personality in life was howling at the moon.

I complained about everything.

I would nitpick everything.

I could gripe about everything.

I mean, I'm really good at it.

If you want to know what's wrong, let me tell you, let's go get a milkshake and I can list you.

Whatever thing in life you want to know, I know what's wrong with it.

That's like my, that's my gifting.

That's my wisdom in life.

It's my skill set to be able to do that.

And so I would teach my parents all the time what was wrong with everything they ever told me about what they wanted me to do, right?

And my mom took, do all things without, in that version of scripture we use then, murmurings and disputings.

That sat on our refrigerator with a refrigerator magnet so long it yellowed the paper dip.

And she'd say.

I mean, I learned from four, five, six, eight, it is imprinted on my brain now.

Do all things without murmuring and disputing.

You can teach them those things.

Pray without ceasing, pray without stopping.

You can teach your children those instructions.

And so you begin with those kinds of verses and you teach them those instructions and you help them grow through those scriptures.

Number four, as a parent, you must study and learn how to be a biblical parent.

Every family needs to build a family library.

You should have a library of resources that you use as a parent.

Now, let me tell you what I get as parents.

We're on this journey now where we've walked this journey with so many people who've already parented, right?

And you have a continuum and different struggles that parents fall into.

We've watched a lot of people, man, they just let their kids do as they do.

They just let their kids grow as they grow.

They take this lie from hell that we're just going to let our kids decide that when they get old enough to decide on their own.

Okay, Satan wrote that to you.

I don't care who says it on television, but it's a lie.

The Bible calls us to parent.

On the other end, you have people that think they already know everything, and this is what they're going to do, and they're not going to learn anything, and they're going to do it this way, and this is what they're going to do.

Well, you have to be humble and teachable as a parent because you don't know everything as a parent.

And your kids are different than you are, and they learn differently.

And you have three kids, they're all three different.

And so you've got to learn and you've got to be humble and become a student of how to be a parent.

And then we have people who parent, and their philosophy of parenting is no way am I ever going to do anything my parents did to us.

And they do everything as a reaction to what happened in their family.

I know people that I'm close to.

Their family didn't have a lot of money when they were growing up, and their soul design as a parent was, I'm going to spoil my kids, I'm going to give them everything that I didn't have as a kid.

And they think that's loving, and I think their motivation came in part from a good deal.

But what happens is they spoil their kids rotten, and they don't teach them choices, and they don't teach them stewardship, and they don't teach them that God provides.

And then they teach them to be selfish, and they teach them, and that's not what they're trying to do.

Their motivation is I'm trying to provide to my kids what I didn't have, but that comes from a wounded place where they are reacting to what they are hurting about.

And because of that, they are not seeking truth and focusing their kids with the skills and resources the Bible teaches us to aim their kids towards Jesus.

They are reacting to their own things.

People who didn't like discipline, they grew up in a disciplinary house.

They're not going to discipline because their parents disciplined them and they thought it was too harsh, and they're not going to do that.

Listen, you cannot raise kids without discipline as a principle, and I'll talk about that next week.

You don't have to do that the way your parents did, but you have to discipline.

And so you have to learn, the Bible says in 2 Timothy chapter 2, that we are to study to show ourselves approved unto God, a workman who needs not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

2 Timothy 2 · chapter mention

And so we've got to learn.

If you are just following your instincts as a parent, I hear this all the time.

I love my kids.

I can't do that because I love my kids.

Well, I'm a loving parent.

I'm not going to ever do that in my kids.

Listen, here's what the Bible says about you.

Your heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.

Don't be following what your, oh, I love my little kids' instinct is.

You've got to shape that according to the wisdom of Scripture.

Or you're going to have some area out of balance.

For example, the Bible says in the book of Hebrews, whom a father loves, he disciplines.

And so we've got to take all those feelings that I have as a parent, and I've got to understand that those are going to lead me astray.

The Bible says in the book of Proverbs, there is a way that seems right to a man, but the end thereof is destruction.

And so we've got to understand, I want you to love your kids.

I want you to be motivated, but I want you to turn that motivation into, I'm going to go learn how to do this biblically.

This week on social media, I'll post some examples of parenting resources and studies for you that I pray will be a blessing to you and help you in that.

But as a parent, you need to study these things.

For your kids, you need to build a library of tools that you use in parenting your kids.

These areas: music, entertainment, images and pictures and all that around your house, art, and then find ways that are exciting to them to reaffirm the stories of Scripture.

Okay?

Music, we'll talk about some more next week, but music is one of the most powerful learning tools that exists.

Our minds and hearts were made to respond to music.

That's why we worship before we start the service.

That's why those songs have an impact to us.

That's why we find every generation of song that we can put into the church because every generation has its own voice of worship, and there is no more powerful method of teaching and drawing to the Lord than Scripture.

God put a song book and devotion guide right in the center of Scripture, and it is the biggest one in the whole Bible.

And He did not put music charts with the lyrics on purpose.

Because it sounds different from generation to generation, it sounds different from nation to nation.

It sounds different from heart language to heart language.

It sounds different from culture to culture, but music is powerful in and of itself.

And so you need to teach your kids.

We found all the Jesus songs that we could find.

There are so many incredible resources of people who are teaching Jesus songs that you can bring into your family, your life.

Every time Janet has done one of those worship Spotify things, she has tried to put songs in there for kids as a modeling for parents to see where those resources are out there.

Man, we were singing those seeds of worship things, and we were singing Go Fish, and we were singing the vacation Bible school songs, and we were doing all that, and you need to build that in your life, and it needs to ring all the time, and you need to play it all the time until you think your ears are gonna bleed.

But you need to do it because your kids learn it.

When they're 14 and they got their earbuds in and they're listening to whatever they're listening to, you are now competing with the same power that music has.

And so you need to have laid a foundation and set a standard long before they get there.

For entertainment.

Entertainment.

We were always looking for stuff to play for our kids.

This was in the days of cassette tapes and everything else, and we found these cassette tapes, and they told these Bible stories, and we had play them all the time.

When we were going on vacation, we had adventures in Odyssey.

You can find those in our library, and we played those all the time.

Anytime we were called, we played those all the time.

They were telling Bible stories, they were telling Bible truths.

The characters were fun.

We felt like they were part of our house.

We built all of that in.

When our kids were young, we made the intentional choice to teach them the Chronicles of Narnia, and then Harry Potter came out.

And our kids were too young when it first came out.

And we're reading studies where the study of witchcraft exploded around the world when those books came out.

And Christians were giving them out like candy, and teachers were going, oh, these are so well written.

And I'm thinking, you're not a literature teacher because they're garbage.

It's pitifully poor how they're written.

But kids responded to them.

Why?

Because kids love story.

They love story.

And so they build into that world.

Why do you think things like that?

Why do you think video games?

And why do you think things like Harry Potter and Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings?

And why do you think Star Wars?

And why do you think all that stuff?

Why do they love that?

Because they love that imaginative deal to create them in a world that they can step into in the power of story.

And so we taught our kids positive alternatives.

There's no greater story and allegory of Scripture than Chronicles of Narnia.

And we listened to them in a car, and there's all kinds of dramatized things, and we found every kind of video we could ever find that had all of that, and we taught them all that.

We bought the swords and we did all the stuff and we taught them all that.

You get as much of that as you need.

There's more available now than ever before.

Man, you've got the chosen, and you've got movies, and you've got all kinds of, you got things that people didn't have in other generations.

Go find that stuff and intentionally put it into your home and your family.

And then things around your house.

Art.

We had art of Noah, and we had Noah's Arks to play with.

And at Christmas time, we had Nativities, and we had Jesus Tree that we've talked about last year, all the names of Jesus and all that stuff.

We found the Lego Bible.

Did y'all know there's a Lego Bible?

Did you know that Legos are a gift from God?

If you don't love Legos in a moment, we're going to give an invitation and we're going to have an opportunity.

Legos are awesome.

And there's a Lego Bible, and it's awesome, y'all.

It takes the stories of Scripture.

It's like a comic book, but it's like Lego scenes, and they're unbelievable.

And I even found the story of the fat guy in the story I told a minute ago that the judge killed, right?

And he got him and he built this fat tummy on it, and he's holding a turkey leg.

It was awesome.

Like, but here's what happens: throw the Legos in the floor.

Build a story of Scripture.

Have them retell the story.

Engage in that story.

When your kids get older, there's a graphic novel version of Scripture called the Action Bible.

It's unbelievable.

And so find ways to teach your kids and to build that into your life.

Why?

Because it is vital.

It is vital to teach them to love Jesus.

I'll finish the next points next week.

But listen, those are foundational right there.

Next week we'll pick up a few more how-to's, but I want to encourage you to teach your children to love Jesus.

Because anyone who has not accepted Christ as their Savior will spend an eternity in judgment paying the price for their sin.

I want you to bow your heads as we close.

And I just want to ask you a question.

We talked about and started off with the principle of the parents have to know first.

As we close our service this morning, I want to know: do you know Jesus?

Do you have a relationship with him where you've trusted him as your Savior?

He guides you in your life.

And he teaches you how to love and teach your children.

If you've never accepted Christ as your Savior, I'm going to invite you in a moment to come and to give your life to Christ.

That's what we're going to do here.

Our people are going to stand up and sing a testimony of Jesus.

And we'll have pastors at the head of these aisles, somebody in the balcony.

If you need a relationship with Jesus, you come.

We'll tell you how to place your faith in Him, give you scripture to stand on.

We'll walk you through that decision, but you come and accept Christ.

If you need a church home, I'm going to invite you to come.

If you want one of us to pray with you, we are here to respond and pray with you, and we'll do that this morning.

Listen, this invitation time, this response time we have, this is simply a time for you to leave here different than you were when you came in.

Maybe you love Jesus and you're a parent, and this is just challenging you and exciting you to make a commitment to dig deeper in your role as a parent.

Make that commitment this morning.

Don't leave here the same as when you came in.

We pray this message has been a blessing to you and helped to strengthen your walk with Jesus.

Please know we want to minister to you and pray for you.

Send an email to contact us at fsfbc.org and let us pray for you and help you in any way we can.

Thank you for listening to Chapter and First, the Bible Teaching Ministry of Fort Smith's First Baptist Church.