Biblical Parenting in a Chaotic Culture (Part 3): 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.

Thank you, choir.

Praise Team and Orchestra and Church.

It's so great to sing about the fact that we win.

Amen.

Watching ball games on Saturdays reminds you you don't always know how it's going to turn out.

But praise the Lord.

We know how it turns out for us as followers of Jesus.

We know he has conquered death and sin.

We know that heaven is real.

We know that he's going to come and take his people home.

And it is awesome for us to be reminded of that because there are times in life where we think we're not sure what's going to happen, but we can be and know that those battles are already won.

So I appreciate that theme as we were singing today.

We are continuing our study on biblical parenting in a chaotic culture.

Excuse me.

And I want to remind you this is the definition that we have been aiming towards of that biblical parenting.

Raising your children to have a relationship with Jesus so when they are adults, they will walk with him and serve him.

So, in other words, what we're doing in the time of kids being kids is we are building that foundation and work to build that foundation so that they can know how to develop a relationship with Jesus and that flourish and grow throughout the course of their maturing years so that when they are adults, they are walking with Jesus.

They are the people of God, they are serving Him.

And one of the things we used to do at uh at Williams Baptist University and at Washita Baptist University, we'd have a luncheon for the business students.

And we would bring business leaders who loved Jesus and were serving the Lord and their professional careers, and they we would have them at round tables and all the business students would be in there, and they would have an opportunity to sit with a business leader and talk to them about what it meant to be a Christian business person and all of that.

We'd have men and women from every different type of industry, and it was an incredible deal.

And at the end, I would get to give my little thing, and what I would tell them is look, we want you to meet folks like this business leaders who love Jesus, they're involved in their church, they teach Sunday school, they go on mission trips, they do all of that.

And here's what we want you to do: we want you to study hard, make A's, go get a great job, go get involved in a Baptist church, tithe and teach Sunday school.

Because you're the future generation of the church.

And they would look at me like, really?

And I'm like, yeah, really.

That's really what we want to do.

That's our goal for our children, is that when they're adults, they are serving Jesus and advancing the gospel and are a part of that.

And that happens, that foundation and that relationship most of the time is built when kids are kids, when they are growing up.

In fact, um, studies tell us that for generations now, more than 70% of the people who give their life to Christ do so before they're 19.

Now, that doesn't mean that if you're older than 19, you come to Jesus.

You can be saved, right?

But what it means is in those formative times, they are learning and they are open and they are sponges, and it is the time that we learn.

And as we get older and we get into life, the things of life kind of grab us and pull at us, and we have scars and baggage as adults and all of that stuff we are working through to come to Jesus.

And so you do that.

If you need Jesus, you come.

But it shows how important it is for us to understand this definition and pursue it.

Now, let me ask you a question.

Especially if you're raising kids at home, here's what I want you to think about.

Here's the question.

When have you invested enough, Jesus, in the learning process of your children?

When is it enough?

How many hours in a day, how many hours in a week?

How much financial investment?

How much time you spend?

How much is enough, Jesus, to accomplish that?

An hour day, half-hour day?

Church three times a week.

Same grace over the meal.

How much is enough?

When have we reached that point where I feel like I have invested enough Jesus in my children that it is sufficient to combat what the world is trying to invest in my children?

That's an important question, and a lot of people are making those choices without really understanding that's what they're doing.

So today we've been talking about the last couple of weeks, the foundation of what it means in a parent's life.

I want to start moving towards now that actual parenting part of that.

So I want you to turn with me in your Bibles again to Deuteronomy chapter 11.

Deuteronomy 11 · chapter mention

And we're going to talk about the commitment to biblical parenting.

Because there is a deep commitment that you must make as kids.

And I just want to take a moment and brag on our students in our ministry.

I mean, who wants to be 15 and come and hear the pastor talk to parents?

Like nobody wants to do that.

And our students have been awesome the last couple of weeks, and I just want to brag on you guys for that.

Thank you for how well you're doing, and we love y'all, and we are so excited about what you're doing.

And listen, I'm not talking to kids in this, right?

I'm talking to parents.

So there are times, like I'll give some statistics in a minute about social media usage and all that.

That's about what parents are allowing, not what kids are doing.

Okay?

It's about what parents are allowing.

So this is about parents, right?

So think through with me.

Here's what the Bible says.

We've been studying this passage of scripture in Deuteronomy chapter 11, verse 18.

Deuteronomy 11:18

Here's what the instruction is as he brings home this message.

He's told the parents, your kids don't know how who God is, they don't know how great he is, they don't know what he's done.

You have to teach them.

He rehearses all those things, and here's what he says to the parents Imprint these words of mine.

What?

How great God is, as we've been singing about, how much he loves us, what he's provided.

Imprint these words of mine on your hearts and minds, bind them as a sign on your hands, and let them be a symbol on your foreheads.

That was a sort of teaching method deal they had.

They would have this deal they would wrap on their forearm, and they would have this little box that they could put on a strap on their head that was a so this is a very specific teaching deal, and it was an illustration of when you put that box on your forehead, it's telling you, I'm making a commitment to imprint this in my brain, right?

So it's a teaching method they're talking about here.

And then he says in the next verse, teach them to your children.

Now listen to this description.

Talking to them about these things when you sit in your house, when you walk along the road, when you lie down, and when you get up.

What part of the day is not covered in that description?

That's everything, right?

That's the whole day.

In the morning, through the day, everything you're doing when you go to bed at night.

Think about the investment of time that requires.

Think about the focus that it requires of a parent to be looking and paying attention to what your kids are doing in that moment, and having prepared yourself spiritually because you have written the words of God on your mind and on your heart, and you're doing the things of God, which is the picture of that written on your forehand or strapped to your arm, talking about what your hands are doing, and you've done all that preparation and you're walking through the day, and you're looking for every moment that you can seize where you can begin to teach about Jesus or use that moment to teach them who God is.

You get that picture?

This is a highly committed level of discipleship that is being commanded to parents.

Like we are to be that invested.

So let me remind you of that question again.

How much time you invest in teaching your kids scripture about who God is?

How much time is enough to combat what the world is trying to teach them?

How many resources are you creating in your house?

How much have you invested in the training and discipleship of your children versus the cost of dual composite bats for baseball and softball?

And monogram bags for cheerleading and PS5s and everything else.

How much is enough?

When have we reached the level that I am comfortable that I'm saying I am going to stop investing Jesus in my kids because I think I've put enough in there that the world can't get to them now?

And so we're going to go do something else.

See, here's the picture of this.

Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit in your house, when you walk along the road, when you lie down, and when you get up.

And then he gives this instruction: write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, so that as long as the heavens are above the earth, your days and those of your children may be many in the land the Lord swore to give to your fathers.

You see, that's that vision of our children and their spiritual lives and our children's children and all of that.

Now here's the four commitments when he says, write these things on the doorpost of your house, write them on your forehead, teach them to your children throughout the day.

These are this is a one way to categorize these four things that come from this passage of Scripture.

Love and worship the Lord.

Over and over and over throughout this instruction and others like this.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Worship the Lord and no other gods.

Obey the commandments of Scripture.

Over and over and over, he says, You are to write these commandments on your forehead, keep them in your hands, teach them to your children, because I'm going to require you to obey them.

And he even says, be careful to obey them.

He talks about gratefulness and stewardship for God's provision.

When we used to take our kids on vacation, we would be pulling out of the driveway.

And part of this we learn from my parents.

Janet, often, because I was driving, she would say a prayer with the kids for God to keep us safe as we're traveling.

Generally, better for Janet to do the praying if I'm driving, right?

I mean, I'm from Memphis.

Most people there drive with their eyes closed, but I wouldn't say that's a good way to do that.

But then we would also say this.

Now, kids, before we get very far from the house, we want you to know that we're able to go on this vacation because God has provided for us as a family.

Every time we could find a way to talk about everything we had came from the Lord, and we love him because of how he has provided.

We're to be teaching that to our children.

And then the fourth thing you see in these instructions from God's word live as God's people and for his glory.

Now he is telling them, your kids have got to get these things.

They've got to know who God is.

They've got to have a relationship with him.

They have got to understand his scripture, and they've got to know that these are not suggestions, these are commands.

This is God's word.

And they have to know that everything we have, God provided this for us, and he did all this for a purpose.

We are to live as God's people and to be an example of all this.

God is going to use our people to bring the Messiah into the world.

And we are here so that the world can see who God is and what he's doing.

Those things we're supposed to teach.

And we're supposed to teach over and over and over.

We're supposed to teach them when we wake them up in the morning.

We're supposed to teach them as we walk through the day.

We're supposed to teach them as we do the different things that we do.

We're supposed to teach them every time they make a decision, every time we see something, every time there's an issue.

We teach, we teach, we teach, we teach, we teach, we teach, we teach.

And when we put them in bed at night, we teach them again.

And rehearse today just to teach them that.

Why do we have to work that hard?

Well, God gives us a warning in Scripture.

I want you to turn with me over in your Bibles just a couple of pages over, not too far, to Judges chapter 2.

Judges 2 · chapter mention

This is after the ministry of Judges.

In Deuteronomy, as we've talked about, God is preparing the people of Israel to go into the land of Canaan and to become his people there.

And now at Judges, we pick up at the end of Joshua's life and listen to how important the instructions that God gave to his people are.

Here's what the Bible says in Judges chapter 2, verse 7.

Judges 2:7

The people worshiped the Lord throughout Joshua's lifetime and during the lifetimes of the elders who outlived Joshua.

So that full generation, with that leadership from him, they're loving the Lord.

They had seen all the Lord's great works he had done for Israel.

Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110.

They buried him in the territory of his inheritance.

Verse 10.

That whole generation was also gathered to their ancestors.

So, in other words, they all passed away that generation.

After them, another generation rose up who did not know the Lord or the works he had done for Israel.

Because of that, the Israelites did what was evil in the Lord's sight.

They worshiped the Baals and abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of Egypt.

They went after other gods from the surrounding peoples and bowed down to them.

They infuriated the Lord, for they abandoned him and worshipped Baal and the Astereths.

You see that?

He had warned them when you go into that land, you conquer that land, and you create yourselves as God's people, and you teach them.

If they were five, they were not there when we crossed the Jordan River, or they were too young to understand that.

They do not know the story or understand how their great great-grandfathers didn't have enough faith to come into the land.

And they had to wander in the wilderness for 40 years.

They didn't understand all that.

They didn't know about Moses and all of the plagues and God pulling us out and creating us as his people.

They don't know that unless you teach them.

And Joshua looked down the corridors of time through the wisdom of the Holy Spirit and the leading of God, and he told them, You have got to teach your children and your children's children, or they won't know.

You have got to give them a spiritual vision of the time that their children and their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren will live in the blessing of God because if you don't teach them, they won't know.

And you see how wise Joshua was.

It only took one generation to walk away from the Lord.

And that's not the fault of the generation that walked away from the Lord.

Understand what Scripture says.

That whole generation was gathered to their ancestors, and after them arose another generation who did not know the Lord or the works he had done for Israel.

Why did they not know?

Because their parents and their grandparents did not teach them.

The church, any church, our church, the church collectively, we are one generation away from dying.

You understand that?

The church is one generation away from dying.

The primary investment that the church makes as a church is in the next generation coming up behind us.

We cannot allow ourselves to be the generation that did not teach the next generation the Lord or his wondrous works.

I mean, it is that is it is it is the number one thing that you do as parents, that we do as parents, and it is the number one thing I do as a pastor, and it's the number one thing we do as a church family.

There is nothing more important than children and student ministry and the investment that we make in that, because if we do not, there will be a generation that comes after that does not know the Lord or know the works of the Lord.

I mean, I don't know how to make any clearer than that.

Now, the beauty of it is that kids learn.

Kids are hungry to learn.

It's awesome to be around kids when they learn.

I mean, it was, I used to love that.

We'd put our kids in the den, our daughter and son, and we'd throw stuff in there and we'd just stand back and watch them learn.

It was fascinating.

We'd put puzzles for a long time.

We had puzzles on the coffee table.

You've got a big old square coffee table, put puzzles on the coffee table, because it was fun to watch them learn and how they're going to figure it out, and how our daughter, who is now a scientist and a medical health person, and our son, who is a writer and a thinker and a philosopher and all that, how they'd approach all that differently and be fascinated.

Kids learn.

In fact, kids learn so powerfully, I want you to understand this.

By the time your kids are 14, they've already set their worldview.

By the time they're 14, they have set their worldview.

I want to quote to you again.

I mentioned last week on the podcast this book, Raising Spiritual Champions, and is by George Barna.

And I want to encourage you again to understand how important it is that we understand this fact.

In fact, what we are talking about is not parenting children.

We're talking about discipling children.

Now, in church life, when we talk about discipleship, we often talk about what adults are doing for adults, and we don't ever look at children's ministry as the core of our discipleship.

In fact, you shouldn't even be allowed to do adult discipleship until you're doing children's discipleship.

We don't understand Scripture as adults if we don't understand the primacy of the gospel being invested in the generation to follow.

We don't even know what we're doing yet if we don't understand that.

Again, when God built his people and he sent them into the land of Canaan, the foundational preparation that he gave to the church or his people was the vital importance of training the next generations.

And as soon as that generation died off, because they didn't understand it well enough, the next generation, one generation, walked away from the Lord.

And so what we've got to understand is the picture that's being given to us in this model of how deeply the investment must be made by families, by parents, by grandparents, and then the church in supporting parents and doing that.

Now listen, I want to get you back to that question.

How much time investment is enough for you to put in your kids?

I want you to listen to this.

We don't understand and think about this, and we sure don't talk about it clearly enough.

Let me read to you just a little section from this book, and it's important that you understand the wisdom of this.

And again, I want you to get this book.

Not that I agree with everything and everything you ever read, but I'm telling you, we've got to spend a whole lot more time learning these things.

I had a text stream with some guys I pray with and are praying for me.

I said, look, the hardest part about this is I need about eight hours a day to get everything that needs.

To be gotten in there.

Here's what he entitles this section, Competition for Influence.

And I want you to hear how they are fighting for our kids.

Okay?

The world is fighting for the attention of our children.

Okay?

And what he says is in this study, there are six influencers that are struggling for our children's attention.

Government, school, family, media, and then there's a couple others that just, those are the big ones right there.

And what he says is 70% of the influence time that gets invested in your children is by school and entertainment.

Seventy percent.

On the seven greatest influencers of information being invested into children today, the church does not make the list.

Now part of that is just calendar.

Part of that is Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights.

You already have an inherent advantage in the schools, and please understand, I am not being critical by our schools.

We have people that love Jesus, that are teaching in schools, coaching in schools, administrators in schools, and we are so grateful for them.

And we are developing great partnerships with our schools and able to do things.

So understand this, we love and serve our schools, okay?

But here's the deal: they get them this much time Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

And you are captive to what information goes into them Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, this much time.

Average family, what does it take you?

45 minutes to get ready for school?

45 minutes, and then you got this much time.

You get home, you're making dinner, whatever, what do we do?

They get on cell phone, they get on television.

Let me give you this information.

Let's talk about entertainment media just for a second.

As of 2019, a majority of kids, over 50%, have a cell phone by the time they're 11.

70% have a cell phone by the time they're 12.

I'm not commenting on whether you should let your 11-year-old have a cell phone or not.

I don't want to get emails.

Pastor Greg said you could have a cell phone by 11, and now we're having an argument in our house, okay?

That's not the point.

56% of 8 to 12-year-olds.

70% of 13 to 18 years, 18-year-olds.

70%.

What's in those videos?

Well, how much time do they spend on that?

Eight to ten year olds, six hours a day in front of a screen.

Eight to ten year olds.

11 to 14 year olds, nine hours a day.

15 to 18 year olds, seven and a half hours a day.

Let me give you one example of what's happening.

Everybody's heard of TikTok, right?

Right?

TikTok, right?

Developed and owned by the Chinese government and corporate entities in China.

Did you know that in the United States, when you are on TikTok and you're scrolling through and it's showing you those videos and all that, that they establish a completely different algorithm for the United States and Western Europe than they do for their own country in China.

If you're a 14-year-old and you're on TikTok in the United States and you're on screen times as a 14-year-old nine hours a day, you are being fed models, makeup and clothing influencers, and hooks into adult entertainment.

In China, if you're a 14-year-old, TikTok only provides encouraging and educational videos for their 14-year-olds in their country.

Did you know that?

How much of an investment are we making in figuring out and planning what we put into the minds and the lives of our children, what we protect them from, what they are seeing.

Here's what I want to show you from this passage of Scripture.

If we're going to teach our children, we have to learn the lesson from the children of Israel in the land of Canaan.

When he tells us that we are to teach these things to our children, when they get up in the morning as we do everything that we do throughout the day, and as we go to bed at night, you are teaching two major things.

First, you're teaching your children to know Jesus and to pursue a relationship with him.

You cannot start early enough.

Cognitive development begins in the first year of a child.

They begin to make causality, logical understanding, and connect the dots between two and five.

When they are seven years old, they begin processing information, making linkages, and defining their own self-identity.

By the time they are 14, they have already established their worldview.

And unfortunately, as parents, we think education begins after they can learn how to read.

And we miss the entire formative section in their lives when you are setting the foundation of what they're teaching.

It is so important that we learn to teach our children to know who God is.

This is who God is.

This is who Jesus is.

This is what he has done.

Your house should resonate with worship music and singing worship music.

It should resonate with Scripture.

You should teach your children the stories of Scripture from the earliest age.

By the time they're in kindergarten, they should already know and be able to tell you all of the great foundational Bible stories of Scripture.

You should be teaching all of these things to your children.

Why?

Because the warning for us is in one generation they did not know the Lord and they did not know his great works.

And because of that, they walked away.

And you are fighting nine hours a day with a 12-year-old looking at screens.

You are fighting 30 plus hours a week in the schools.

When you walk around and you are seeing kids and they got earbuds in their ears and they have their phone and all of that, you are losing time.

Losing time.

And that's why he tells the children of Israel, you've got to do this all day long.

You've got to not quit.

You've got to start the day and end the day and connect the dots throughout the day.

There is no amount of teaching that is enough to combat the world that we're in.

You've got to teach them to know Jesus and to build a relationship with Him.

They have to have a sense of the person of Jesus.

They need to know that God is the creator.

It would shock you if you understand the industry that exists and the billions of dollars that are made in creating dinosaurs for children so that we can affirm that God is not the creator.

I mean, you're fighting all of that.

And you've got to understand, I've got to invest, invest, invest, invest, invest, invest.

And I am competing with a massive amount of information that's being dumped on my children from the earliest age.

You also need to teach them to trust Scripture and to submit to its authority.

Trust Scripture and submit to its authority.

Let's talk a minute about this passage where he says that you were to write it on the doorposts of your house.

Write it on the doorposts of your house.

What does that mean?

Now, we did like everybody in our house with our kids.

I was blessed.

Janet found ways to put scripture all over our house, and we love that.

And we had that little black brass plate that everybody had that we all bought at Lifeway or wherever that said, as for me and my house, we will trust the Lord, right?

We will serve the Lord from Joshua.

We read that the first week.

We put that by the door button.

We got all that.

That's great.

Hanging it everywhere is important.

Hang it over.

We had scriptures that Janet researched and we talked about, and we put it over every door in every room.

Over my kids' bedrooms, they had a verse that we had prayed over them that they saw every time they walked in and out of their bedroom.

I mean, we did all that, we put it on their house, but there's deeper to this teaching.

You think about you're a child of God, you're in the children of Israel, and they talk about putting something on your doorposts.

What's the first thing that comes to mind to a Jewish person when you talk about putting something on your doorpost?

You think about Passover coming out of Egypt.

Now, what is that?

If you remember that the children of Israel had been living in Egypt and they grew, and all of a sudden pharaohs that didn't know Joseph and they didn't like the children of Israel and they turned them into slaves.

And then God calls Moses and he says, I want you to bring my people out of Egypt.

And so Moses with his brother Aaron, they go to Pharaoh and they say, Let my people go, and then you know the ten plagues, right?

The frogs and the locusts and the Nile ran with blood and it was dark and all that sort of stuff went on, right?

And they would have the frogs, and you know, it'd be frogs everywhere.

I mean, frogs in your hair and in your food and your beds, frogs everywhere.

And and Pharaoh says, Okay, let my people go.

And he says, Okay, you can take your people.

This is what I always fascinate with that.

Pharaoh says, you can take them in the morning.

Like you want to live with the frogs one more night?

That's kind of stupid.

But he says, you can take them.

And so the frogs go away, and then Pharaoh says, Nah, I'm just kidding.

I'm not gonna really let them go.

And so then he'd bring another one, and then he'd say, Yeah, let him go.

And then it would go away, and then he was now.

So they got tired of doing that, and the Lord got tired of that.

Here's what he told them: here's what we're gonna do.

The death angel is going to pass through the land of Egypt, and I'm going to kill the firstborn of every house in judgment for your sin.

And he told the children of Israel, You are to prepare yourselves to leave, because after this Pharaoh is going to let you go.

And you are to pack, and then you are to prepare a meal.

And they had a sacrificial preparation of a lamb that represented the picture of Jesus and the shedding of his blood.

And he said, You're to eat the lamb and prepare your family to leave, and then you are to take the blood of the sacrificial lamb and you are to paint it on the doorposts of your home.

And if you do that, when the angel of God sees that painted on the doorpost, he will pass over your house.

And that's why that became known as the Passover.

But if you do not see that, then that angel of the Lord is going to go in, and the firstborn in every house is going to die.

On Tuesday, I had a chance to fly to Washington, D.C.

and spend some time with my son.

And when I got there, he was not done with work yet.

And so I went to the Museum of the Bible.

How many of you are familiar with the Museum of the Bible, right?

We need to learn more about this.

It's incredible.

It's an incredible level museum that teaches the historicity of the Bible, the truth of the Bible, and all that.

And one of the things that they have is an interactive deal that you walk through where you experience the story of the Old Testament.

Use a common phrase today, the meta-narrative, the overarching story in the Old Testament.

And there's a point where as you're walking through this and you would step into this room and you'd have these interactive things and videos on the walls and all this kind of stuff.

When they start talking about Moses and the burning bush, you walk past the burning bush and you walk into a room, and in this room is this incredibly breathtaking wood statuary of a family seated around a meal, kneeling, holding hands.

You walk into this room, it's incredibly dark, and it's just lighted on this family.

And then there is over the wall, you see this wipe like someone has just placed the blood on the door, on the door facing, and then on the door posts.

And then in a representation to try to get you in the mindset of this, you're watching this family, and they are kneeling and they are holding hands, and you hear in the darkness this incredible wind and this whipping, and all of this goes on.

And then you begin to hear the wailing of the neighbors who begin to discover their firstborn who's passed away.

And I'm in the middle of this experience and I'm praying through this message, and I hear right on the doorposts of your home the commandments of God.

You get that picture?

This is a statement of a family and a leader of the family making a commitment to the authority of God's word, and we are surrendering to the commandments of God.

When we write this on the doorpost, they are thinking back to if we had not followed the commands of God, our oldest child and all of his grandchildren would not be here because we would have lost him in the past.

They were thinking about the gratefulness that they have to the Lord as their redeemer in the process of redeeming his people and pulling them out of Egypt.

He saved their firstborn from judgment.

It was his command and his instruction that created the way for Moses to lead them out and to create the opportunity for them to come here to the land of Canaan.

They are in the land of Canaan because of God's provision, and they are living in this incredible country with all of this lush produce and everything else that God has provided because their grandfather committed themselves to the authority of God's commands and they painted that blood on the doorpost.

And what he's saying is, a family here is this is more than just neat facts to have a good life.

This is more than just I'm learning about who God is.

When you write it on the doorposts of your house, it is just like the leader of that family painting the blood of that lamb that is covering them from the judgment of God over their home.

And that he is saying, as parents, you say that this is the authority of our house.

And we will live this way as we are able and as God's grace teaches us to.

And we are surrendered and submitted to the plan of God.

Listen, that's what we've got to teach our children.

We live in a world today that is a world of rebellion.

We have multiple generations now that they are against every authority.

Every authority is bad.

Everybody's a crook.

Everybody's an abuser.

Everybody's doing it wrong.

We live in a cancel culture where if anybody does anything and I don't like it, we cancel them all and we go crazy and we boycott everybody and everything else.

Everybody's against everything.

And so we are have our children in this whole walking around in the world and nine hours on their cell phone and every TikTok video that they see and every piece of music that's in their headphones, and we're doing all of that when we are supposed to have written on our homes the authority of God's word.

And if we don't teach our children to surrender to the word of God, if we don't teach them to understand that Scripture is the authority of how life works, how are they ever going to repent of their sin and trust Jesus in a relationship?

The Christian life is a life lived in submission.

There is no such thing as personal rights and all of that for believers.

We don't get any of that opportunity in our lives.

You have given your life to Jesus.

It is not yours anymore.

This is not my church.

This is Jesus' church.

None of that, we don't have any of those things.

And we live in a world that is pushing your rights, your deal.

You do this, you do this, you do this.

We live in a world today where parents and others, they are so narcissistic and selfish in their view, they will say, listen, we need to be able to do this to children or do that to children or do that to children, and here's why.

Because I want to feel good about myself as an adult that I have this open-mindedness and this whatever, without any thought to the impact of the next generation.

And what we've got to understand is we must be submitted to the authority of Scripture, and we must teach our children.

Listen, God says so, that's enough.

My kids would say, Dad, why do we have to do that?

We have to do that just because you're the pastor.

No.

We have to do that because we're Christians.

Because we're Christians.

And we have to teach our children.

If we don't teach our children to be submitted to the Word of God, how are they going to do it when they begin making their decisions on their own?

And when they turn 14, and now their worldview is set, and we have not taught them the necessity to submit to the authority of God's word, what is that worldview going to lead to?

And how are they going to process the things in a chaotic culture without an understanding that this is the definition of how it works?

And so we've got to learn to teach our children those things.

It all begins with a parent and a grandparent who has a relationship with Jesus because they have submitted to the authority of Scripture and the gospel.

If you've never trusted Christ as your Savior, I cannot explain it any better.

I don't have anything else to give you.

That's what it looks like.

You have got to know Jesus to teach Jesus to your children.

I want you to bow your heads as we close.

If you've never trusted Christ as your Savior, just a moment, we're going to sing an invitation hymn, and I'm going to invite you to come.

God's people have been praying for this moment.

Our praise team is singing.

Our people are going to be singing a testimony of the Lord.

There will be people praying.

And if you've never trusted Christ as your Savior, I want to invite you to come.

If you are saved, but you are not living under the authority of God's word.

If that has not been written on the doorpost, not hung on the wall, that's good, but written on the doorpost to where we have committed to surrender to the teaching of God's Word.

Listen, I want you to make a commitment this morning.

There's no judgment in this.

We're not jumping up and down.

What I'm trying to say is you have the opportunity to trust in the grace of God.

You can write it on the doorpost today, even if it hasn't been written before today.

And God will bless and honor that.

He has brought you here to hear that.

And if you need to make that decision today, make that decision today, and God will bless that decision.

Clean it up, get on track, step forward, and let God bless.

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 First Baptist Church.