Calvary Road Baptist Church
“HOW CHILDREN ARE HARMED BY MISSING CHURCH”
Can we all agree at the outset that life is counterintuitive? Many people claim that a credible philosophy of life is to do what you think is right, to go with your gut, or to do what feels good to you. But is this the right way to go? Is this the right approach to living out your life, to functioning effectively in marriage, or to be a successful parent?
Proverbs 14.12 and 16.25 both suggest that doing what you think is right, living by your own lights, going with your gut, and other such self-centered approaches to life might not be advisable. Both verses read,
“There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”
The wisdom of God’s Word suggests that doing what you think is the right thing to do, living by your own lights instead of considering the guidance provided by God’s Word, going with your gut, and other such self-centered approaches to life eventually result in death. Therefore, not only is it not generally advisable to live your life in a manner that merely seems right in your own thinking, but the same caution should be applied to raising children.
Are you not as astonished as I am that children who are raised in an intact family unit by stable and caring parents frequently grow into adults who become parents that choose to rear their children in a manner that is quite perplexing to their parents? I find it baffling when grown children become parents who want laxity over discipline and end up tolerating disrespectful conduct toward them when they should be training their children to honor them.
Turn to Psalm 127.3, where we read,
“Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.”
Clearly, children are shown in God’s Word to be a blessing from God and to be valuable in the sight of God. Yet how infrequently children are prized as God would have them to be prized in His Word.
We know that children are born spiritually dead in trespasses and sins, Ephesians 2.12. We know that children are born liars, Psalm 58.3. Thus, because of inherited sinfulness from Adam, everyone born into this life arrives headed in the wrong direction and with an adverse destiny. Children come into this world in serious trouble. Yet all is not lost. Proverbs 22.6 reads,
“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”
Allow me to temper your understanding of this verse by cautioning you against the naïve optimism that is often clung to by well-intentioned Christian parents whose children have disappointed them.
Bruce Walke is the best scholar I have ever read on Proverbs. Let me read a portion of his commentary on Proverbs 22.6:
“The proverb, however must not be pushed to mean that the educator is ultimately responsible for the youth’s entire moral orientation. ‘Rather, it gives a single component of truth that must be fit together with other elements of truth in order to approximate the more comprehensive, confused patterns of real life.’ Other proverbs recognize the youth’s freedom to choose sin (cf. Ezek. 18:20) and apostatize by taking up with villains (Prov. 2:11-15) and whores (5:11-14). The book is addressed to youths, not parents. Were the parents ultimately responsible for his moral choice, there would be no point in addressing the book to youth (see 1:4). Moreover, Solomon himself stopped listening to instruction and strayed from knowledge (19:27). In sum, the proverb promises the educator that his original, and early, moral initiative has a permanent effect on a person for good. But that is not the whole truth about religious education.”[1]
Your sons and daughters are their own free moral agents. They will make their own decisions and will either receive or reject the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Does God promise that if you raise them correctly, they will undoubtedly convert to Christ? No, He does not. That said, parents do play a vital role in the rearing of their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, Ephesians 6.4.
Consider Deuteronomy 6.4–7:
4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD:
5 And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
6 And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:
7 And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
We recognize that our children are individually accountable to God for their spiritual condition. Further, we recognize the divine command to obey the Gospel. Listen to these verses and how they reveal that the Gospel is not optional. It must be obeyed!
Galatians 3.1:
“O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?”
Galatians 5.7:
“Ye did run well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth?”
2 Thessalonians 1.8:
“In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Hebrews 5.9:
“And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him.”
1 Peter 3.1:
“Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives.”
1 Peter 4.17:
“For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?”
“Obey the truth.”
“Obey the truth.”
“Obey the gospel.”
“Obey him.”
“Obey the word.”
“Obey the gospel of God.”
Throughout the New Testament, a proper response to the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is expressed by a single word; obey. Though no mother or father can make a child trust Christ, or should even attempt to coerce a child to turn to Christ, a mother or father is negligent if they fail to communicate to their child that the Gospel is not optional with God. The Gospel is not optional. Trusting Christ is commanded by God. If the message of God’s Word is that parents cannot trust Christ for their children, or should ever attempt to coerce their children to embrace the Gospel, mothers, and fathers can both hinder and help their children spiritually, according to what they do and do not do.
These things understood, and recognizing the numerous passages in the Bible that revealed how parents could help their children spiritually, allow me to reflect on the spiritual damage that can be visited upon children by their parents:
First, THE DAMAGE INFLICTED UPON CHILDREN BY PARENTS WHO IGNORE OR ARE OBLIVIOUS TO THEIR PROFOUND SPIRITUAL NEEDS
First, denial of spiritual reality by parents. I would guess that the vast preponderance of moms and dads in this world do not consciously advance or oppose the spiritual development of their children, but merely neglect their children’s spiritual needs. These are mothers who are more concerned about training their daughters on how to apply makeup and select push-up bras than they are about persuading their daughters to glorify God, trust the Savior, and present themselves as chaste virgins to their husbands on their wedding night. These are the fathers who pay more attention to teaching their sons how to tune up a car while ignoring the great need to train their sons to prepare for eternity or thinking it is more important to teach a son how to shoot or fish than to teach a son the Word of God. There are windows of opportunity in the life of every child. As a child grows older, he or she will be less inclined to listen to spiritual truths taught by mothers and fathers. Therefore, to neglect spiritual reality and the profound spiritual needs of your child is equivalent to consigning them to Hellfire.
Next, promotion of error as truth by parents. It is not only nature that abhors a vacuum. The spiritual realm also abhors a vacuum. And where truth is not presented to children by their parents, error is inadvertently promoted as truth by parents. During my first pastorate, I was issued a traffic citation. I chose to go to traffic school rather than pay a hefty fine. The first-class session was held on a particular Saturday morning and was conducted by a CHP officer. During his opening remarks, he said, “Some of you are here this morning because you think weekends are made for Michelob. But I’m here to tell you that weekends were made for Jesus Christ.” What that CHP officer said illustrates a valid truth. If parents live like weekends do not belong to God, and particularly that the Lord’s Day should not be spent in Church, they are, without saying a word, advancing an erroneous concept. They are teaching by their example something which is not true, that God does not have a right to their worship and service.
Third, refusal to provide God-ordained training for life and eternity in a timely manner. How many mothers wait until their child is five years old to begin potty training? How many mothers wait until the child is five years old to begin teaching them how to eat food with utensils? How many mothers wait until the child is five years old to begin training them to brush their teeth regularly and to bathe? No mother with any sense at all would wait so long in her child’s life before beginning such training. Mothers recognize that delays to teach certain things at certain times in a child’s life can be catastrophic, and cannot only be unhealthy but also retard the progress of the child’s development. The same holds true in the spiritual realm. Talk to moms and dads who came to Christ before their children were born, or while their children were very young, and learn about the challenges of rearing their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Then talk to parents whose children were in middle school or high school and take note of the resistance that even the best kids showed to radical changes in their accustomed style of life. The longer parents wait before addressing the spiritual needs of their children, the more challenging will be the difficulties and the resistance they face from their children, who are by nature inclined against the things of God. After all, it is because children are sinful that they need the Savior.
Fourth, failure to declare the good news to their children who desperately need the Savior. No mother or father can teach their child to love God or to love the Savior. No pastor or Sunday school teacher can teach any child to love God or to love the Savior. One does not teach someone who is dead in trespasses and sins to love God or to love the Savior. That said, mothers and fathers are in the best possible position to teach their children that they ought to love God, that they ought to love the Savior, and that unless their sins are forgiven they will never love God and they will never love the Savior. Such instruction of children can be reinforced by the pastor, and can be reinforced by Sunday school teachers, but should never serve as substitutes for truths that should first be taught to children by their mothers and fathers. Once children are taught about the need to love God and the Savior, and then they are taught about their sins which prevent them from loving God and the Savior, they can be presented the Gospel. Should pastors present the Gospel to children? Yes, continually. Should Sunday schools present the Gospel to children? Yes, continually. But the first presentations of the Gospel to children, and typically the most effective presentations of the Gospel to children, come from godly mothers and fathers.
“Pastor, when should I begin presenting the gospel to my son or my daughter?” My recommendation is that you begin presenting the Gospel to your son or daughter several years before you think they are capable of comprehending what you’re saying. Talk to your child about God, His holiness, His righteousness, His goodness, His mercy, and His grace. Talk to your child about the Savior, about His virgin birth, about His sinless life, about His many miracles, about His substitutionary death on the cross, about His glorious resurrection, and about His ascension to the Father’s right hand on high. Talk to your child about Christ’s Second Coming and His majesty and glory. And talk to your child about the glories of sins forgiven, of life in Christ, of praying to the Father, in the ministry of the indwelling Holy Spirit.
Then, THE DAMAGE INFLICTED UPON CHILDREN BY DENYING ACCESS TO CHURCH MINISTRIES
Four comments in this regard:
Positively, the danger of neglecting children’s ministries is first. I know that there is a movement in the USA in which some congregations opt for never separating children from parents. Their view is that children should always be with their parents. In such gatherings, there are no nurseries, and there are no Sunday school classes for children. While I do not favor any ministry philosophy which encourages parents to turn their children over to the Church for child-rearing, which happens in many larger Churches that have high-powered youth ministries, I do believe there is a place for age-appropriate Bible teaching. I do not believe that it is criminal, neglectful, unspiritual, or irresponsible of mothers and fathers to allow their children to be taught the Word of God by someone they know and trust for one hour a week. I believe there can be a great benefit when a child receives the benefit of age-appropriate Bible teaching from someone other than mom or dad, so long as mom or dad are aware of what is being taught and interact with their child after the Bible lesson to verify and explain to make sure their children understand the Bible.
Contrariwise, I think it is more than a missed opportunity when children are withheld from responsible children’s ministries by their parents. I believe it is harmful to prevent a child from benefiting from the godly and experienced Bible teaching of another person, and from interacting with other children in the congregation. I think it is not only unwise but also folly for moms and dads to think their Disneyland excursion with their children is more beneficial than Sunday school, or that a fishing or hunting trip with an unsaved father is more spiritually beneficial than a Church camp where the Gospel is presented clearly and persuasively.
Positively, the danger of neglecting adults ministries is second. Though children’s ministries can be very beneficial to children, I am not an advocate of children being raised in a Church environment where their only exposure to Church is in children’s ministries. I believe it is imperative for children to have exposure to a children’s ministry, but also to be exposed to the pastor’s ministry in the auditorium with the grown-ups. Children should be raised to become adults. One of the profound errors of the last 150 years in the West has been the introduction to our thinking of the false notion of an adolescent period in a child’s life before reaching adulthood. This is unscriptural and, in my view, a terrible mistake. In my opinion, anything advocated by Sigmund Freud should be rejected out of hand.
Therefore, though children are initially in children’s ministries where truth is presented in an age-appropriate manner, once children are old enough to sit in the auditorium and listen to the sermon being delivered, they should be transitioned to the auditorium. Thus, they will hear grown-up sermons, grown-up truth, in a grown-up environment, to help them prepare to be grown-ups. It should surprise no one for children to not like this experience very much. After all, they are dead in trespasses and sins. They do not love God. They do not love God’s Son. They will not love God’s people, for the most part. So it should be anticipated that they will chafe to some degree in the auditorium. This is to be expected. All the more reason to pray for them, that the Spirit of God will deal with them and that the Father will draw them to Christ.
Negatively, the interruption of personality and lifestyle formation is third. You do understand that being a mother and being a father is so much more than feeding, bathing, and clothing a child. Parenting is nothing less than personality formation, with an emphasis on persuading your child to consider the claims of Christ and contemplate what life as a Christian might be like. The reality is that no one can make you trust Christ if you do not want to trust Christ. Neither can anyone prevent you from trusting Christ if you want to trust Christ. Conversion to Christ is a personal transaction that takes place between the awakened sinner and the awaiting Savior.
Should you not want your son to grow up imagining what it would be like to be a godly man, a Christian man married to a Christian woman, and a spiritual father paired with a spiritual wife to raise their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord? If you want your son to become that kind of Christian, should you not do your best to encourage him to contemplate being that type of Christian? And the same goes for your daughter. Should not a mother engage her daughter in conversations about what it would be like to be married to a wonderful Christian man, what it would be like to raise children for the Lord, and what it would be like to have a real relationship with Jesus Christ? Then, of course, there would be the conversation about how your child gets from where he or she presently is, lost, to where your child needs to be, saved, through repentance and faith in Christ.
Can these kinds of conversations with your child be entirely divorced from Church ministry and interaction with other members? Dad is not the only Christian man your kids will ever see. Other godly men in the congregation are pointed out to them. Mom is not the only Christian woman your kids will ever see. Other godly women in the congregation are pointed out to them. But this cannot happen when children are kept home from Church.
Negatively, the diminution of spiritual safety as more important than physical safety is fourth. Which was the greater concern to the Lord Jesus Christ, spiritual death, or physical death? Which ought to be the greater concern for the believer in Jesus Christ, spiritual death, or physical death? I refer not to your own spiritual death if you are a Christian, but the spiritual death of your child. Do you have any idea how many times the phrase “fear not” is found in the Bible? More than 60 times in the Word of God, we find the phrase “fear not.” I would urge you to look up every place in the Bible the phrase “fear not” is located so that you can acquire some idea of how you ought to relate to being afraid. I mention this because of one particular statement of the Lord Jesus Christ made during His earthly ministry. In Matthew 10.28 the Lord Jesus told His twelve disciples,
“And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”
Could this loosely be interpreted as “Don’t be afraid of dying?” I think an argument can be made for the Lord intending this to His disciples. “Don’t be afraid of dying.” I point this out because it is increasingly evident to me that 21st century Christians seem to me to be more afraid of dying than were Christians of past eras, or than Christians of other regions. Don’t mistake my meaning. I’m not interested in going to heaven any sooner than God wants me to. Neither am I interested in being irresponsible to hasten my departure from this world to the next. I guess what I am saying is that I am perplexed about the fear that so many professing Christians in the West seem to be expressing. I don’t understand it in light of what the Lord Jesus Christ said I should be afraid of.
Do we want to encourage our children to be scared? Do we want to raise our children that they should be fearful? Is it our goal to raise children who are scared or brave, fearful, or courageous? I am not decrying caution. I am not advocating folly. However, I think we should be cautious so as not to train our children to the fraidy-cats.
Fear God.
Fear no one else.
Exercise wisdom.
Prepare for eternity.
Your children are your children. They are not my children. God has given to mothers and fathers wide latitude regarding the rearing of their children. However, there are certain things every parent must do.
I do not think you are given the option of whether or not your children honor you or dishonor you. I believe the Bible shows that God demands you to raise your children to honor you, and that physical chastisement is appropriate to deal with not only childish folly but also rebellion and the failure to honor you.
Additionally, Deuteronomy chapter 6 shows that God’s plan for parenting involves great diligence. You are to be all over the training and the raising of your children, and that would include attendance to their spiritual welfare in the hopes that they would someday be converted to Christ.
Sometimes, genuinely godly parents raise sons and daughters who are disreputable as adults. Jonathan and Sarah Edwards had a daughter who married godly Aaron Burr. Those two produced a son who became the infamous Aaron Burr, Jr. So, it doesn’t always turn out great.
Your job as a Christian father or Christian mother is to be faithful to God, doing your best to raise your child in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Your concern should be faithfulness. How your child turns out, whether great and godly or wicked and worldly, will be that child’s own choice of his or her response to the claims of Christ.
Do your best.
Avail yourself of the means of grace.
And trust God’s goodness, God’s wisdom, and God’s mercy.
__________
[1] Bruce K. Waltke, The Book Of Proverbs Chapters 15-31, (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005), page 206.
Would you like to contact Dr. Waldrip about this sermon? Please contact him by clicking on the link below. Please do not change the subject within your email message. Thank you.
Pastor@CalvaryRoadBaptist.Church