Finally, An Instruction Manual for Raising Children Deuteronomy 6:1-9

1 Finally, An Instruction Manual for Raising Children Deuteronomy 6:1-9 If you have a Bible, please turn to the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 6. This morning we re going to wrap up the series we ve been in for the last four weeks entitled All in the Family. The title of my sermon this morning is, Finally, An Instruction Manual for Raising Children. In one of the many books that my two year old daughter Avery has, there s a familiar children s prayer that says this, Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. Watch over me throughout the night. And bring me safe to morning light. Now, that s a sweet little prayer. But this week I stumbled across the parent s version of that prayer and I like it better. It says, Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray my sanity to keep. For if some peace I do not find. I m pretty sure I ll lose my mind. I pray I find a little quiet far from the daily family riot. May I lie back not have to think about what they re stuffing down the sink, or who they re with, or where they re at and what they re doing to the cat. I pray for time all to myself, did something just fall off a shelf? To cuddle in my nice, soft bed. Oh no, another goldfish dead! Some silent moments for goodness sake. Did I just hear a window break? And that I need not cook or clean. Oh well, I ve got the right to dream. Yes now I lay me down to sleep, I pray my wits about me keep. But as I look around I know I must have lost them long ago! Can I get an AMEN?! Parenting is not for the faint of heart. I remember the day that Heather and I brought our first daughter, Avery, home from the hospital. When we were loading her in our car I felt a sense of shock that these foolish nurses were just going to let the two of us take this human being back to our house with us. Granted, we had done fairly well with a miniature dachshund for the last year, and they were about the same size, but surely they should have given us some sort of aptitude test before we left! I mean you have to go through an application process to get a credit card and to drive a car and to own a house and to get into college but there are no requirements for becoming a mommy or a daddy and yet the stakes are so much higher. It took us fifteen minutes to drive those two blocks from the hospital to our house because I miraculously morphed into Mr. 10 and 2, I have never been a more cautious driver. When we got home, we went into sleep deprived survival mode and thankfully we have survived thus far. I can tell you without a doubt that I now have more sympathy for the downtrodden mother in Kroger who loudly rebukes her children. I don t get nearly as frustrated anymore when a baby is crying in church or at a restaurant. And now, when we re going out for a family dinner, we don t search for a nice, quiet romantic atmosphere, no we try to find the loudest restaurant in Jackson so that our children aren t a nuisance. It s amazing how parenting changes you. Now, before we move on, I realize that a lot of you don t currently have children in your home, but before you tune me out let me give you two reasons why this sermon should

2 matter to you. There s an old African proverb which says, It takes a village to raise a child. In our context, it takes an entire congregation to raise a child to love and fear the Lord. As a daddy of three little girls, I m telling you, I need you. Some of you are Avery s Sunday school teachers, others will teach Hannah and Lily at VBS. I need you to come alongside me and teach the gospel to my children with me. It is primarily my responsibility to lead my family spiritually, but it is also your responsibility as the church, the body of Christ, to help me in this endeavor. Most of you have already committed to this task. About four times a year here at Englewood we bring all the newborn babies into this sanctuary and we do a baby dedication. The parents make certain commitments at the beginning and then the congregation makes a few commitments. Here s what you have committed to: You have agreed to deal with all of the children in this church lovingly and tenderly, seeking to manifest the Christian spirit toward them always. You have also promised to provide religious instruction to them, giving of your time, talents and money to make this possible, so long as you are a part of this congregation. And finally, you have promised to encourage the parents in this church as we seek to do what we have promised in rearing our children. So everyone in here should pay attention because this is a shared burden. But more than that, you should pay attention because this text isn t just about parents, it s about all Christians. Read Deuteronomy 6:1-9 Prayer God s Manual for the Christian home: In our world s history, there have been many great nations that have fallen meaning they once were powerful and prosperous but now they either cease to exist or they ve lost all prominence. Here s the interesting thing these nations had very similar views on marriage and family during their decline. In his book, Family and Civilization, Harvard sociologist Carle Zimmerman, discusses the rise and fall of these once great nations and the ways that their perspectives on marriage and family shifted before they fell. Listen to these and think about how eerily they describe our nation: 1. Marriage loses its sacredness and is frequently broken by divorce 2. The traditional meaning of the marriage ceremony is lost 3. Feminist movements abound 4. There is increased public disrespect for parents and authority in general 5. There s an acceleration of juvenile delinquency, promiscuity and rebellion 6. There s a refusal of people within traditional marriages to accept family responsibilities 7. There s a growing desire for, and acceptance of adultery 8. There is increasing interest in, and spread of sexual perversions and sex- related crimes

3 What alarms me the most about these patterns is not just that they re prevalent in the United States and they are exceedingly prevalent but the alarming thing is that they ve become the norm for people calling themselves Christians. I m confident that these patterns are only going to get worse in the United States, but my concern is that as our country grows more and more immoral, we as Christians must shine brighter and brighter in contrast to the darkness so that the world will see our conduct and glorify our God. How do we do that? Moses here lays out a blueprint, a manual of sorts for the Christian home. And what we see first of all is that: 1. Godliness in the home begins with me (6:4-6) Look at verse 4. I can t stress to you enough the importance of these words to the Jews. In fact, verses 4 and 5 are the basic and overarching confession of Judaism. They are referred to as the Shema, which comes from the Hebrew word for hear. Why are these verses so significant? Because Moses is affirming in a pluralistic society, much like ours, that God alone is God. He is completely unique; there is none like him. All other religions are a dead end but the God of the Bible is worthy of the devotion of our hearts, and our souls and our strength and all of our being. The whole of man must respond to God. This is the chief priority in all of life. Some of you may be asking, How do we reconcile our understanding of the Trinity with this confession of the Jews? God is an unchanging God. He has always existed as three persons, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and each person is fully God and there s only one God. The truth is that this verse completely affirms the doctrine of the Trinity because the Hebrew word for Lord, the word El, is in the plural here it is Elohim. So this literally says, the plural God is one God. And it also affirms our understanding of the Trinity because the word one, echaad, is the same word used when God spoke of marriage saying, the two shall become one flesh. Sometime after Moses spoke these words, the Jews began reciting them every morning and every evening. The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. This became a way of acknowledging God and personally committing to him every single day. The question for us is, do we love God in this way? Verse 6 says, These commandments I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Your heart represents who you are in the secrecy of your thoughts, feelings, and emotions. The heart is that part of you that no one else sees but God, and it s the part of your life that he cares about the most. This is why Jesus also said, Love the Lord your God with all your heart. This is why Solomon said, Trust in the Lord with all your heart and Above all else, guard your heart. God is immensely concerned with your heart, but our problem is that because of the sin of Adam, all of us were born with a wicked heart a heart that gravitates naturally toward sin. I m not sure how anyone can be a parent and deny the doctrine of total depravity that our hearts are completely sinful from birth. My youngest daughters, Hannah and Lily turn one

4 this Wednesday and the deceitfulness of their little hearts is on display for me every single day. From the moment they gained mobility a few months ago, Hannah crawls and Lily scoots, from the moment they began moving they selfishly went after one another s toy. It s comical to watch. We can have 150 toys on the ground and we can set the twins in opposite corners of the room, but eventually they make their way towards each other and they desperately attempt to snatch the toy that the other one is holding. It doesn t matter what the toy is! They ve fought over a lent roller before! The point is that their little hearts are full of sin and selfishness and they just don t know how to hide it yet. In fact, that s the only difference between us and them - we know how to hide it. It has been this way since the beginning of time. Shortly after God created the heavens and the earth, Genesis 6:5 says, The Lord saw how great man s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. And thousands of years later, the same was still true when the prophet Jeremiah said this about the heart, The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9) So that s the bad news, but the good news is that God, in his mercy, made a way for us to receive a new heart, a clean heart. This is what we see in the New Testament. Jesus Christ, the son of God, obeyed the law perfectly. He was without sin, without blemish and he perfectly fulfilled the Old Testament. Here s the gospel: through faith in Christ we are hidden in him. God no longer sees our constant wickedness but instead he sees Christ s righteousness. Because of the death of Jesus, our hearts can now be cleansed and our terminal illness can be healed. And so I ask you, do you love God with all your heart? Do you have a divided heart? Is there anything that you love more than him? The answer to that question can be determined easily by simply looking at how you spend your time and your money. Before we can even think about passing along the Christian faith to our children, it must be living and active in us. We can t give them something we don t have. If church is merely a Sunday routine for you, don t expect it to be something more for your children. If Bible study bores you or if you don t ever open the Bible at home, don t expect your kids to have a deep relationship with God. And this leads right into the next section of this chapter: 2. As a parent, it is my responsibility to lead my children spiritually (6:7) The most loving thing that you can do for your children is not to let them play every sport imaginable, it s not to make their life comfortable by filling your house with all the material possessions that you didn t have as a child, it s not to insist that they get straight A s so that they can go to a good college and it s not to let them do whatever they want to do so that they ll like you more no, the most loving thing that you can do for your children is to train them in Godliness, to hand down your faith to them. The word impress used in the NIV here literally means to sharpen or prick. The idea is that you are to teach them in such a way that you leave a lasting mark.

5 How do we do this? Look at what Moses says in verse 7. He s saying that parents should constantly look for practical ways to talk about God in the monotony of the daily routine. It doesn t matter if you re sitting around the house or out for a walk or driving your car or going to bed or getting up in the morning. God expects us not only to know his word, but to know it in such a way that we can teach it to our children. Sometime in the 1960 s a transformation took place in the way we do church in the United States. During this time, parachurch ministries began reaching out to kids according to their age and this outreach was effective. The church was quick to follow and the youth ministry movement was born. Today, most churches have at least one person, if not two or three people on staff whose job is to minister to the youth. Here s the problem: at some point along the way during the last 50 years, parents began believing that it is the youth pastor s job to train their children spiritually. This seems to make sense because we do this with most other aspects of our children s lives. If they want to learn piano, they go to a piano instructor, if they want to learn basketball they learn it from a coach and so on. The problem is that God didn t set it up this way. His plan from the very beginning has been for dads and moms to impress their faith on their children. The church is here merely to help you in that. Now, I am no expert, but let me just give you an example of how this plays out in our house. On Friday we went on a family outing to Big Lots. We were looking for a bed frame because my parents are coming into town this week and we re trying to get their room ready. Anytime we go out in public it is a recipe for disaster. We are guaranteed at least one public melt down by one of our children. At one point, Avery began to get sassy with me and so I picked her up and asked her the question that Heather and I often ask, Avery, what does God say to you? To which she replied, HONOR MOMMY, HONOR DADDY in a very disgusted voice. She s got the letter of the law but not the heart. So then I asked her another question, The Bible says that your attitude should be the same as who? This is a verse that we ve been working on recently. With a little help from me, she said Jesus. And we took a few seconds to talk about what that means. Faith at home is as simple as that. Let me give you some other ideas of things you might begin doing at home even this week: -In the morning, if you drive your kids to school say a prayer over them. Pray bold prayers that God would use them to do great things for his kingdom. -At dinner time, try do read a verse of scripture together and discuss the verse while you eat. -Take your son or daughter out to breakfast, or hunting, or on a short trip and be intentional in your conversation. -When you re disciplining your child, take time to pray for their heart. Don t just correct the action but correct the attitude and explain to them what God s word says. -Tuck your child in at night and rather than just reading nursery rhymes read the Bible together and pray with and for your child. I think God has wired children to be more vulnerable and talkative at night. My two year old already knows how to stall so that she can stay up later. Make the most of it. -Set aside a time once a week for family worship or a family game night.

6 Here s the truth, most of you don t need to change your routine, but you need to be more intentional. Now, there are some of you need to change your routine. Kids typically spell love, t-i-m-e. If you want to pass along your faith you ve got to spend time with them. 3. As a Christian family, it is our responsibility to impact our community (6:8-9) Read verses 8-9. Regardless of the intentions of Moses in these verses, at some point the Jews took his words literally and began tying things to their foreheads and attaching them to their doorposts. Here s a picture (show image) of a Jewish man with a tefillin attached to his head. Inside this little box are little scrolls with verses from the Torah. The Jews also began placing mezuzah s on the doorframes of their homes. A mezuzah looks something like this (show image). These boxes are usually attached to the outer doorposts of a Jewish home and they also contain scrolls with verses from the Torah, in particular they have these words from Deuteronomy 6 that we ve been studying. Now, before we judge the Jews as being legalistic and foolish for taking the commands of Moses literally, we need to ask ourselves a difficult question. Does anyone in your neighborhood know that you are a follower of Jesus Christ? If you moved today, would there be a gospel void? One of the benefits of these little boxes is that they re like nonverbal megaphones declaring to everyone that this is a Jewish home. I don t think Moses was commanding them to put little boxes on their heads, but I do believe that he was saying that we not only need to talk to our kids about the commandments of God, we need to impact our community with the commandments of God at the doorways of our homes and at the gates of the city. I want you to notice the progression that we ve just discussed and as we close I want you to ask yourself this question Where am I in this progression? Godliness begins with a right understanding of God that impacts me and changes my heart (is that you?) so that I can impact my family and my children (is that you?) so that we can impact the world (is that you?).