Discipleship Begins at Home

Good graciously I would come.

I was just surprised to get another phone call.

We'll preach for food.

Well, it's good to be back.

A little nicer this week than it was two weeks, not quite as much snow on the ground, so that's good.

And uh not quite as many trips this week as I had uh previously before coming up here a couple weeks ago, but uh um found my way back, so that's good.

This morning we're gonna look at uh Deuteronomy.

Last week we spent some time talking about Joshua and Caleb and we're going back a few years into Deuteronomy 6.

Now, as Patrick pointed out, I've uh been in ministry for a number of years, about 20 years.

Most of that, as I mentioned previously, was in student ministry.

And of course, you know, student ministry, youth ministry has its own set of idiosyncrasies.

Um, you know, I get lots of interesting questions when I was a youth pastor, like, have you ever thought about becoming a real pastor?

Someday, maybe.

And then students ask more than one occasion, what's your real job?

I said, Well, I'm a youth pastor.

No, but what do you do the rest of the week?

I just pull my hair out because of you.

So, you know, there's diet concerns in student ministry because your diet primarily consists of pizza and burgers and hot dogs and sodas.

Um the age of your congregation never changes.

It's always somewhere between about 12 to 18.

And I suppose that's in some sense allows me to kind of can keep, at least in my mind, to see life through the eyes of a 12 to 18-year-old, more so than the 40 some year old that I am.

But uh, youth ministry is good, and uh not presently in youth ministry, but that's where I've been.

And um the bigger picture of youth ministry, though, is this, and one of the key principles, one of the key philosophies I always had in student ministry is that we are para-family.

And what I mean by that is we come alongside the family, so we're like a para-church organization, comes alongside the church to help raise the family from the Greek para from which we get parallel.

We walk with you.

And uh in student ministry, and I know it's Greg's heart too, that we come alongside parents to help you raise your children in the way that they should go.

And so, student ministry, in my mind, has always been a real ministry because we're here to help families.

Now, we've all seen many philosophies of how to raise kids, and I think every parent has some sort of desire to raise their children in the way that they should go.

But unfortunately, there's so many different books it's hard to determine, you know, have the perfect teenager by the weekend.

I think, I forget who wrote that book, something to the effect of that title, same person that wrote have the perfect husband by the weekend.

I'm not sure he's hit the mark on either of them just yet.

But we desire to have that perfect family, to have it all together.

Well, this morning, here's what I'm gonna talk to you about.

I'm gonna talk to you about how to ruin your kids.

I'm not gonna talk to you about how to have perfect kids.

I'm gonna talk to you how to ruin your kids.

And for those of you who are empty nesters, those of you who have no children of your own, don't check out because you're not off the hook.

Because take a look with me as we look at the book of Deuteronomy.

Deuteronomy 6 says these things.

It says, These are the commands, decrees, and laws the Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing, the Jordan, to possess.

Now, this is Moses standing before the Israelites.

He's standing before the nation.

He didn't say, Okay, we're having a special parents meeting at the end of the day's service, and if you'd all join me, come together.

This is him addressing the nation.

So that you, your children, and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life.

Hear, O Israel, and be careful to obey, so that it may go well with you, and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your fathers, promised you.

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

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

These commandments that I give to you today are to be upon your hearts, and impress them on your children.

Whose children?

The nation's children.

This isn't commands just given to parents, this is commands given to a people of faith.

So this morning we're going to talk about impressing things upon our children.

But before we get there, I'm going to tell you how to ruin your children.

And it comes from four models that we tend to see exercised in many families, in many ministries, in many denominations.

Perhaps not yours, maybe one, maybe a combination of some, maybe none of all, but here are some that I've seen and some that help ruin a child.

And the first ministry model is this: what I call the bathysphere model.

By show of hands, who knows what a bathosphere is?

Oh, I see a couple hands.

You know, those are those deep sea submersibles.

And they would go into the very, very deepest parts of the ocean, and they're very ironclad because the pressure of the ocean is great.

And uh, if you saw when they were uncovering the Titanic, you know, they went down there and they had the cameras and they saw it.

But to go down there with someone in there, the walls would were thick and the windows were real thick.

I don't know if it's plexiglass or what kind of material it was made of, but the whole point was that it would not implode upon the person in the ship, in the bathysphere.

And sometimes what we do is we get in this practice of shielding our family members to keep them from imploding from the pressure of the world around them, right?

But here's the problem with that one little crack and the whole thing collapses.

And it's a lot of work to maintain those ships to keep the cracks from coming in.

And we'll unpack each of these models a little bit further in just a moment.

The second model is this is what I call the Big Mac model.

So in John 8.39, it says this Abraham is our father.

So he was addressing the Jewish people, and they come back with this retort.

Abraham is our father.

If you were Abraham's children, Jesus says, you would be doing the deeds of Abraham.

There are many people in the world today that grew up in a Christian home.

And because they grew up in a Christian home, they experienced the Christian teachings.

Maybe this is true of you.

And you were immersed in the context of Christianity.

And as a result, you make assumptions that because you grew up in a Christian home, then you are a Christian.

That's sort of like assuming that if I spend a lot of time at McDonald's, then I'm a Big Mac.

This is why I call it the Big Mac model.

The reality is this: that just because you grow up in a Christian home does not make you a Christian any more than spending time at McDonald's makes you a Big Mac.

So the Bathosphere model, the Big Mac model, the third model is this, what I call the brood parasite model.

Getting a theme?

Brood parasite.

A brood parasite is a bird or an insect.

That's what they will do, we'll go with the bird.

The bird will take its eggs and lay it in the nest of another bird.

And that other bird then would raise these eggs as their own.

And they would care for them and nurture them.

And what happened to the other one?

They're gone.

And they have no responsibility then to care for the eggs that they laid in another nest.

You drop them off and leave them be.

You know, we live in a world of professional life, don't we?

We take our kids to be part of travel teams and sports teams, and we take them to the professionals at school for their education, and we take them to the professional pastors so that they would make them disciples.

We leave it to the professionals and we drop them off in the religious nest, and we hope that that bird there will be able to raise the children for us.

You know, youth ministry has been around for only a little over 50 years.

And with the introduction of professionals, there has become this tendency to let the professionals do it.

But the problem is this God's desire is that fathers and mothers turn their hearts towards their children.

And the fourth model is what I call the buffet model.

The buffet model is the model where we offer a plethora of opportunity.

We get them involved in every activity and everything we can possibly do under the sun.

There's a constant barrage of programming to meet every individual's wants and needs.

A lot of it's done out of a pure motivation because if we offer this, then maybe somebody would come that might not otherwise be here.

But then we get this attitude: okay, I want a little piece of this worship, and I'm going to take a little bit of this old chubby bunny over here, and I'm going to do some uh self-centered messages over here, and I'm going to do a little retreat here, I'm going to take this little piece here, and it becomes custom-made.

Certainly contributing to this factor is this eye generation in which we live, right?

As a youth pastor, I remember back when I started, it was a big deal.

We would have concerts, and you could bring in a concert, and it was a novelty because, like, wow, there's a concert in town, everybody's going.

But today we have iPods.

Nobody buys an album anymore.

They buy a song from an artist here, and they buy a song from an artist here, and they pick this one here, but they don't buy the whole album.

They pick and choose and create their own playlist.

I have my playlist, you have your playlist.

And they're not the same.

And as such, we try to do the same thing with church, and we create your playlist of the things that you want to do, and you have your playlist of the things that you want to do.

And my faith practice isn't your faith practice because it's my personal playlist.

The problem again here is that programs never satisfy and opportunities never end.

We become overscheduled, hyper-busy, don't we?

With plenty to do.

Am I right?

We don't want to ruin the next generation.

We want to see them make disciples, who make disciples, who make disciples.

But how do we go about the business of making disciples?

Well, let's consider the biblical model this morning for making disciples.

We see that in Deuteronomy chapter 6.

Deuteronomy 6 · chapter mention

It's often called the Magna Carta of the family.

But as I mentioned, this isn't just about families, this is about the faith family.

As we look at this passage, we can see that it refutes the ministry models I've addressed.

First of all, consider contrary to the Bathysphere model, in Deuteronomy 6.1, it says, These are the commands, the decrees, and the laws the Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you were crossing the Jordan to possess.

Do you remember when the Israelites first left Egypt?

Many of them said, Oh, at least back there we had some leeks and onions and we could, we had food to eat.

Let's go back.

And remember when the spies went out, the spies, the twelve went out, and ten came back and says, There are giants in the land.

It's not safe.

It's better that we protect our families.

In fact, when they come back, the report in the ten of them with this negative report about the giants in the land.

In Numbers chapter 14, verse 3, the complaints of the Israelites, here's what their complaint was.

Numbers 14:3

It's why is the Lord bringing us to this land only to let us fall by the sword?

And then the next part of that, the verse immediately following says, Our wives and our children will be taken as plunder.

What were their priorities?

Our wives and our children will be taken as plunder.

We prioritize safety.

Instead of trusting God, the Israelites put the safety of their wives and their children first.

God, we will only trust you as far as this, but if our families are at risk, forget about it.

In essence, they had made idols out of their children.

They had put them before God and chose the familiarity of the desert over the promises of God because of their fear.

Coming back again to Deuteronomy chapter 6 and verses 2 through 4.

Deuteronomy 6 · chapter mention

With the reason why, we see the reason why the Israelites should observe the commands and decrees of the Lord.

It says, so that your children and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live by keeping all the decrees and the commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy what?

Long life.

Hear, O Israel, and be careful to obey, so that it may go what?

That you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey.

Just as the Lord, the God of your fathers, promised you, hear, O Israel, the Lord, the God, is one.

You see the contrast.

Back in Numbers, they were afraid of what could happen if they followed God into the wilderness.

And here Moses is pleading with the Israelites, the ones he's pleading with a people who had rebelled against God and put their families first, but now they're in this place, and he says, put God first, and everything else will be cared for.

When we put our children first and make them idols, we lose sight of God's plan.

But when we put God's plan first and his promises, our children and our grandchildren will live long and experience God's blessing.

That's what it says here in Deuteronomy.

Is it sometimes costly to follow God?

Yes.

When the Israelites finally entered the promised land, were the giants gone?

No.

But it's the land of promise.

How tempting it is to put the needs of our family first.

We think they've got to have the best education because if they're going to succeed in life, we want to make sure that they have that 4.0 so that they can go to that prestigious college.

Because by going to the prestigious college, then they'll have a prestigious job.

And if they have a prestigious job, they'll have a prestigious house.

And we put their safety and their security, at least their financial safety and security first.

And sometimes we get this notion on our head if we get them in enough sports teams, get them involved in enough travel teams, that they will have success in sports and so that college will be more affordable.

Why?

So they can get a prestigious job and a prestigious home and a prestigious community.

Financial security has become the center of our focus for the future of our children.

In the quest for safety and security, we push God to the side.

Jesus said this, Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

But what we've done is we've pursued these things and we're doing this and that and the other thing.

We've got our kids enrolled in piano and hockey and basketball and you name it.

A healthy model of ministry begins by trusting God to protect your children, to protect your family.

And we take the responsibility to pursue God first.

And with that, we find security, but not by pursuing security first.

It's interesting that when you explore the depths of the ocean and you s in the the bathosphere and you go down and and the deep sea explorer, Jacques Cousteau, or whoever it is, he's peering through the window.

And sometimes you've seen these pictures of these very delicate fish.

They're not ironclad, are they?

They're delicate, very thin-skinned.

What makes such a thin-skinned fish survive in the context of such a high-pressure environment?

The internal pressure is equivalent to the external pressure of the fish.

Here's what the Bible tells us to do.

Remain in me, and I in you, you will bear much fruit, but apart from me you can do nothing.

We invite the Holy Spirit to live in our lives.

We invite God to be the center of our lives.

And when God is what is within us, the pressure of the world cannot stand against us.

When the presence of God is so great, he that is in you is greater than he that is in the world.

When that God is inside of you, there is no pressure external to you that will cause you to implode.

The problem begins when we begin to push God aside and create that vacuum inside of us that leaves us vulnerable to the pressures of the world.

When we fully submit to God and invite Christ into our lives through and allow the Holy Spirit to take up residence in our hearts, that's when we have the ability to stand against the world around us.

Trusting in God is where security is found, not in pursuing the comforts of the world.

Contrary to the Big Mac model, it's the inherited faith model.

Having done youth ministry for a lot of years, there are plenty of students I know who come in who have inherited their faith.

And as I began to express in chapter 8, verse 39 of the book of John, Jesus, the Israelites say to Jesus, but Abraham is our father.

I was once witnessing to a woman in Central Park in New York.

And she explained her faith as this, I'm a Jewish atheist dabbling in Buddhism.

And the thing is, philosophically, for them, they had made sense of all that.

Jewish by heritage.

Because Abraham was her father, a distant father, understandably.

Well, of course I'm a Christian because my dad was a Christian, right?

Moses is speaking to a new generation of believers.

Their parents had faltered, so they weren't really, there weren't any coattails to pursue or footprints to fill.

This new generation had to be a new commitment.

It was their own commitment because they had seen their family who had said, no, let's go back, and now they were left to wander in the wilderness because of the choices that they had made.

In verse 5, in verse 6 of Deuteronomy says, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, with all your strength.

These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts.

Discipleship begins with a personal decision.

If you want your own children to succeed, if you want those around to succeed, you begin with your own personal commitment to Christ.

This generation had to make a choice that was their choice.

It wasn't their parents' choice.

Would they love God with all they had, or would they do their own thing as their parents did?

This is the same decision that each one of us has to make.

Will we love God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, with all our body?

Or will we love the world and all the things of the world?

Will we love God with everything that drives us?

Will we love God with every ounce of effort that we can muster?

God wants to be the center of our attention.

He wants to be the focus of our lives.

He wants our all.

It's about a personal choice to pursue God.

We choose for ourselves whom we serve.

There is no guarantee that just because your parents believe that you believe, you choose for yourself whom you will serve.

It's not because Because you go to church, live in a Christian family, this does not make you a Christ follower.

Following Christ makes you a Christ follower.

And that's a decision that each of us makes individually.

Contra the brood parasite model, it goes further in Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse 7.

Deuteronomy 6:7

It says this impress these commandments on your children.

Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down, when you get up.

Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.

You know, some read this passage and say things like How do we do this?

We're not certainly binding things to our forehead.

You know, there's critical roles here.

When we walk, when we stand, when we go along the road.

There are those who have given up on the family in this world, but the reality is this is that God created the family as a place to nurture the faith and created the faith family to nurture the families.

There are extremes in the pendulum out there that some say it's all up to me, some say it's all up to them, but let's find this place where we're all working together because this command is given to the Israelites.

He's addressing the faith community.

He says, impress on your children, faith community, not just you parents, but faith community.

The church plays a role in the discipleship of students.

It begins as a personal decision.

It's found in the context of a family, but it's the broader context of others that are involved.

So what I've often called the soapy ministry, significant other adult people involved in the lives of students.

There's not just one person that can do it, but it's many.

In fact, research showed that when students were anonymously, of course, because they're not going to admit this to their parents' face, but the number one influence in a child's life is their family, is their parents.

The second greatest influence in the faith life of a student is the extended family, and the third one, significant other adult people involved in their lives.

Coaches, Sunday school teachers, youth pastors.

You coming alongside them.

He says, talk about it.

When you lie down, when you sit at home, when you get up.

The whole thing is, it's as you go.

Jesus says what?

As you go, make disciples in Matthew 28.

It's this rubbing through the skin of bumping up against each other's reality.

You in John 3.22, it says that Jesus spent some time with his disciples.

Literally, it means he rubbed through the skin of them.

Proximity is how you make disciples.

You've heard it said, well, I'm going to have some quality time set aside.

Let me assure you of this.

Quality time is an accident of quantity time spent.

You can't schedule quality time.

All you can do is schedule time.

And the more time you have, the more chances you have of some of that turning into quality time.

I want to give you another reality.

Pastor Greg, your youth pastor, I've had a few opportunities to interact with him, and I know this is he cares about students.

And he's doing all that he can to disciple students.

But the reality is this, he has about 40 hours a year that he spends with students.

Because if you figure 52 weeks in a year, okay, some students are maybe coming twice a week, so you might be able to up that a little bit to 80 hours, assuming they make it every Sunday morning, every Wednesday night.

Okay, if they make it every, then it's 100, but there's not always Sunday school, so the numbers drop.

Parents, you have approximately 3,000 hours a year with your child, at least before they go to school.

Once school comes, well then it's probably closer to 1,500 with high school students.

But 80 hours versus 1,500 hours.

And it's not the okay, we're gonna sit down and study the Bible for 1,500 hours for the rest of your life.

But it's hey, let's go throw the baseball around.

Let's go play a little game of my son just got this new game, what's it called?

Sheriff of Nottingham.

Conversations that can come out of that.

Spending time is when you have opportunities.

One youth pastor is not going to do it for you.

It's all of you working together in cooperation with each other that ministry happens.

And you don't go it alone.

As we go, make disciples.

We do it together.

It's the faith community, right?

If you want to leave a lasting impression on your child, risk it for Jesus.

Instead of being so afraid of risk, jump in.

Erwin McManus has said this.

If you haven't failed, you haven't risked.

If you haven't risked, you haven't lived.

Take some faith risks with your children.

The rest of the faith community, the same goes to you.

We hear all of this doom and gloom statistics about the loss of a generation.

These young adults who were leaving the church.

Now, some of those statistics are faulty, I'll just tell you right now.

If you there's been more and more research about them that show that they're faulty.

You know, when they said these numbers about 80% of students are leaving the church, what that what that was was a youth pastors' conventions.

How many of your students leave high school after after the grad or leave the faith after they graduate high school?

And some youth pastors in the room, about 80% of them raised their hands.

So they said 80% of the students leaving the faith.

Poor research, not accurate.

Closer to maybe 50%.

Is that better?

It's not much better.

But is it different?

That's one of my questions.

But how do we improve that?

We do it together.

But here's one of my, I'll pal my fist on the pulpit moment.

Is so often in student ministry, what do we do?

We say, you need to be engaged on your campus.

You go reach your friends for Jesus.

Go on mission trips for God.

Take some time and go to Asia, go to Cambodia, go to Guatemala, Dominican Republic, wherever.

Go there and serve Jesus because you are on fire for God.

And then we become adults.

And do we share our faith in our workplace?

Do we go on mission trips?

Do we live this radical kind of life that says, Jesus is driving my life in all that I do?

Or do teens now look at us and they're saying, there was all this passion and all this excitement when I was a student to live my life for God, a sold-out, 100% commitment to Him.

And then I become an adult and I look around and everybody's too busy to pursue God.

To live risky lives for God.

And they look and they say, What happened to it?

What happened to this?

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

Pursuing Him with all you have.

You know, I touched on this last week.

I was speaking at Cooperstown Bible Camp for the men's retreat.

And there's this reality that, boy, it's hard to share your faith at work.

It's hard to find time to do things for God.

But you know what?

Your children and the faith of the children, whether they're yours or not, the faith family of students need to see in you a lived out faith that is on fire for God for others to see.

It kind of brings us to the buffet model.

It says, tie them as symbols on your head is what it says here in Deuteronomy.

Bind them on your foreheads, write them on doorframes of your houses, on your gates.

They need to see that your life is consumed by these things.

But by what things?

Singular focus on God.

The phylacteries, the little boxes that would have the verses written down in them were nailed on doorframes, and they were worn by these devout Jewish men.

And they saw that, the younger children, and they saw their faith lived out in front of them.

And that's what we need to do is offer faith that is lived out in front of students.

Discipleship isn't about the plans that you have for your life.

It's not about what's in it for you, it's about God's kingdom mission.

Are you engaged in it in such a way that students say, I see it written on their lives?

Their faith is obvious to me.

It's like the difference between a cruise ship and a battleship.

I like cruise ships, don't get me wrong.

My wife and I on our honeymoon some years ago, we went on one, and it's nice.

They've got food, and they have food, and then they have some more food.

They've got towels, they've got people that will bring you towels, you know.

It's like you have your own personal, you know, oil boys.

Please come here, come here, help me out.

And it's nice, and sometimes that's how we treat church.

Hey, would you bring me a little bit of this?

And can I have some of this?

Life's not like that on a battleship.

You've got decks to swab, and you've got guns to clean, and you've got missions to pursue.

It's not about you, it's about the mission.

Are you part of the mission or are you expecting the church to come to you and serve you?

God is calling us to be part of a mission that we live in our lives that is evident for those younger generations to see that they say, I want to have what they have.

I want to be a part of what they're a part of.

I want what they have.

And you bring them alongside you, and your skin rubs through their skin, and you impact their lives up close in person with them.

And you're saying, I want what they've got, and or they're saying, I want what they have, and they're saying, There is something about them, this love for God that they have, this singular devotion, and I want to have a piece of that.

Give me some of that.

And their lives are, they pursue God because you've pursued God, and you introduce them to Jesus, and they make Jesus their own, and they make disciples who make disciples who make disciples.

From this generation to the next.

Why?

Not because we pursued what we wanted, but because we pursued God.

Can you imagine what it would be like if this is the reality of our churches today?

We would see the hearts of fathers turn towards their kids and saying, I love this kid and I'm going to take him with me as we pursue the Father and his mission.

What would it be like if we truly committed to living what this passage says?

To love God with our whole heart, soul, mind, and body.

To write these things when we get up, when we lie down, every moment of our life is consumed by living out our faith for others to see.

There's one student in a study that said these things.

He says, We spend no time with adults from junior high on.

Maybe 15 minutes every other day is the best we can ever get.

What if you began to spend time with students?

And I understand parents, sometimes we're short on time, but parents, you're not alone.

What if everybody in this church, when those students walked into the door, they went up to somebody and said, Hey, how was your week?

Tell me all about it.

How can I pray for you?

So that generations are involved in the lives of students.

Imagine the impact you can have on the life of a student when you begin leveraging the time that you do have in a God-honoring way.

What would it be like if we truly did come alongside one another to partner together, to make disciples of the next generations?

Psalm 127, verse 4 compares children to arrows in the hands of a warrior, arrows that are meant to be sent out, not kept in the quiver.

Psalms 127:4

We live the faith that they might see it, that they might go.

Wouldn't it be great?

So, what's keeping us from doing it?

We have our excuses.

God has his purposes.

Let's live out his purposes.

Can we pray?

Lord, hero Israel.

The Lord our God is one.

And we should love the Lord our God with our our whole heart, soul, mind, strength.

Let us do so, Lord.

I pray, Lord, that the life that we live is so passionate for you that the passion pours out on those around us, the emerging generations, that they might want what we have and pursue you with her whole heart, soul, mind, and body, because we've done so first.

That those children that were up here singing just a few minutes ago might just desire with great intensity the intensity that we have for you.

We trust you, Lord, to be the light of our life and the purpose of all we do.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.