Fellowship Bible Church Sermon Series Modern Family A Passion for God s Word (Part I) Dr. Crawford W. Loritts, Jr

Fellowship Bible Church Sermon Series Modern Family A Passion for God s Word (Part I) Dr. Crawford W. Loritts, Jr. 08-26-2012 TEXT: DEUTERONOMY 6:1-9 (ESV) PRINCIPLE: You cannot separate the voice of God from the person of God. To love God means to love what He says. To love what God says means to love God. PRINCIPLE: The key to developing a passion for the Word of God in the next generation is to teach it with authenticity. One of the things I want to say to parents is this. Stop underestimating the ability of your children to understand and grasp things. I think we sell them too short. I was deeply moved by that. Really, the purpose of this whole series is for us to drive home the fact that faith is real. It is not theoretical and it is the most important thing that we can build our families around. If you have a Bible, I want you to turn with me to Deuteronomy chapter 6. I have to let you know that this is really a two-part message within this series entitled, Faith at Home, or Modern Family. I have entitled this message today, A Passion for God s Word, and this is the building block upon which all of our families and our homes need to be based. Today I am going to talk broadly about the what and maybe broadly about the how. Next week Karen is going to join me and we are going to do a message together and talk about the how. We are going to talk about personal application and how this stuff works out practically speaking in our home. I wanted to anchor today and talk about raising the obvious question, can you teach a passion for the Word of God? The moment you put teach and passion together, you go, Oh no, that has to be natural. I think you can, and as you read this text and we walk through this you will understand, at least hopefully, how and why we can do this. This is enormously important. Last weekend Karen and I were up in the Washington, DC area for a wedding and on our way up there, we stopped in Roanoke, Virginia. Roanoke, Virginia, is a place where my mother, father, and sister are buried. I had not been back to Roanoke in 10 years since 2002. So, we decided rather than going up 95 to go up 77 and 81 and go through Roanoke, Virginia. I have to tell you the first stop we wanted to make was to visit the old 1

house. Again, I had not been by that place since 2002. We sold it to a church that was adjacent to it, oh, about six months or so before my dad died because it was a big old place and they just could not keep it up and all of that stuff. So, I had not seen it in in a while. We get off the expressway, the highway. I know my way over there by heart. We went through the back roads and I turned the corner and I recognized the hedges, but there was an empty lot. I was not ready for that. It was like. Karen and I both went. it was like somebody kicked me in the stomach. I was looking for the visible reminder. I was looking for the house, the wraparound porch, the mulberry bushes, the grapevines and the backyard, and all these memories. They were gone. Well, right after that, we drove through the cemetery where mom and pop were buried. I had not been there in 10 years. I once again was ambushed by emotion because greatness is buried side by side there in Old Dominion Cemetery. I looked at that and I thought, Well, just like the house, that is gone, and they are gone. They are with Jesus. They are with Jesus. I paint that picture before you right now because one of the things, and you have heard me talk about this a great deal, one of the things that most Christian parents lack is vision. We lack it. Oh, we have it in our heads and there are desires that we have for our children, but we get so terribly transactional and most of us are too busy for our own good. I don't need to guilt anybody here, but most of us are too busy for our own good. We get to a place where we cannot respond to our kids but we are reacting to their activities. We are just carting them along and we want to do these things. We want to build significant memories. We want to build them into our lives, but we end up procrastinating these things. So, the value somehow of what we really value gets lost because we are not intentional about being the steward of the value. The memories are there to last forever. You see what my parents stood for and their values are a part of who I am and what I value today, even though the house is torn down and I cannot physically visibly talk to them, nevertheless what is written on my soul is what they represented. I want to back up a little bit here and ask the question. I do not know which comes first love or commitment? I do not know. I lean toward commitment first, but there has been an age-old argument. Which comes first, love or commitment? You commit first; then you love. I am not really sure; however, I do know that love is nurtured by and through commitment, and I am going someplace with this. You see commitment focuses and targets love. It is important to understand this that you don't wait for a nebulous feeling to hit you before you do something spiritually. You don't wait for that. The commitment really deepens the love. What are you saying? 2

Look, an illustration. There are many men in the world that my wife could love. There are many women in the world that I could love, but on May 22, 1971, we said I do, and we committed ourselves to one another and that pushed others out of the way. The commitment, the decision, becomes the basis for the love to flourish. Don't miss that. Don't miss that. There is too much emotionally driven Christianity. The decision creates the context for the love to flourish. The commitment makes it possible for that love to flourish. Every person I know who truly loves God s word is committed to learning it and living it. That is what I am trying to say. I was thinking about this as I read this text and I was torn with the question, How do you teach passion for the Word of God? I just pushed back a little bit. I started thinking about my friends, thinking about other people, thinking about my parents. Actually, every person that I know that authentically loves God s Word, they are committed to learning it and living it. It is in the learning and living, the learning and living, the learning and living, that the passion deepens and deepens and deepens. It is the commitment to do it that takes place. I would say this, too, for those of us who are followers of Christ. I really loved what Bob said last week. This whole idea of distinguishing between a fan and a follower; that says it. We will never cultivate a passion for God s Word if we are just fans of Christ and not followers of Christ. When I heard that statement, my mind went to John 10:27, because Jesus said, My sheep, my sheep, my sheep, hear My voice, and they follow Me. It is the followers who nourish and nurture the passion. By the way, My voice, this book represents His voice. In fact, I want to put an anchor of perspective up on the screen right now and I want us to grab hold of this. Let me set it up by saying this. I really believe there is just far too much, and we have it in our church too, far too much of an emotional approach to our walk with God. There is too much of that, far too much of it. We are emotional. Do not get me wrong, but we are allowing our feelings to drive our decisions, and there is just too much of that. That ends up taking you to the wrong place or not allowing you to do what must be done. You are sitting around waiting before you feel like doing it. The other thing is that we think that somehow or another we can separate our relationship with God from the diligent study of His Word. So, I want to make this observation. You cannot separate the voice of God from the person of God. You cannot separate the two. You cannot separate what God says from who he is, yet we bifurcate all the time; but you cannot separate the voice of God from the person of God. To love God, means to love what He says. To love what God says, means to love God. You cannot separate them. My dad would call me. I heard his voice, but I knew he was there. I knew he was there, so to have an authentic relationship with the Word of God means to have an authentic relationship with God. I think those of us, and I have been guilty of quoting this. Those of us who 3

try to correct the legalism of our heritage and our background, whether they are rules, do s and don'ts and this kind of thing and disingenuous and hypocritical quoting of Scripture and their lives did not measure up, we would make this statement. Look, you don't worship the words in the Bible. You worship God. Well, I know what we meant by that. We tried to make sure that we were not doing that, but the truth of the matter is you cannot separate what God says from who He is. No, we don't worship His Word, but we better love His Word because His Word is attached to His person. Do you follow what I am saying? So, don't make that separation in trying to overcorrect from the hypocrisy, legalism, or whatever. No, you do not worship the words, but do not go too far. It is God s voice. You cannot separate the two. That is the building block. I am going to quickly move through the text, but I want to establish these anchors here. Now in Deuteronomy chapter 6:1-9, the way this is written, the driving force behind what Moses is saying to the children of Israel, the priority of the word that God is giving to them in terms of shaping future generations is really anchored by two outcomes. The first outcome is mentioned in verse 2. The opening line says, That you may fear the LORD, your God. The second outcome mentioned is in verses 4-5, or what theologians call the Shema. Hear, O Israel, the LORD your God is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. Do not lose sight of these two things because the reason why we want to give a passion for God s Word is because we want to produce children in the next generation who fear God and love Him supremely fear God and love Him supremely. We want to see them authentically worship God and love Him supremely, for that fear and love is anchored in truth. You cannot fear God if you do not know His Word. You cannot love Him supremely if you do not know His Word, because in the Bible love is always associated with obedience. Reverence is always anchored in truth. So, anybody that says they fear God and they love Him but they spend no time in His Word, they just have empty sentimentality. It is not a substantive worship. The worship of God, you worship Him in Spirit and in truth. The worship of God is always anchored in what He says. To experience His love is always framed by and anchored, not some experience, but in what He says. I am particularly strong on that because there needs to be a bit of correction in how we have done our Christianity. We use the 4

Scriptures as if it is just inspirational when we get around to it and it meets me in my journey or it will help me. No, no. We are to be baptized in His Word, His truth. It is terribly, terribly important. Now I really believe that the point of Deuteronomy 6:1-9, if I was to summarize it one statement, would be this. Our relationship to the Word of God is the demonstration of our love for God. That is what God is saying. Your relationship to the Word of God is the demonstration of your love for God. You can say how you feel Him, how you like Him, how you love Him, what He has done for you, and this kind of thing, but the truth of the matter is how we are related to this book tells the truth about our relationship with Him. This is another sermon for another time, but I have to tell you this. There is abundant evidence in the Bible that one of the evidences of our salvation is our love for God s Word, our love for His Word, what He says. DEVELOPING A PASSION FOR THE WORD OF GOD TO THE NEXT GENERATION Now having framed that, let me make a transition statement that sets up the four things that I think Moses is saying in this text, where God is speaking to Moses in this text, about how we develop this passion for God s Word. The key word is the word teach. There are four ways in which we need to teach and it is right here in the text. So, here is the summary statement. You can see it on the screen. The key to developing a passion for the Word of God in the next generation is to teach it with authenticity. That last prepositional phrase is terribly important. You can teach God s Word and cram it into the hearts and minds of your kids, but if it does not come from an authentic heart and an authentic life, what you are going to get is pushback, repulsion, and rebellion. They are going to cast it aside because it is not genuine. As you read Deuteronomy 6:1-9, the word is not used here, but genuineness is the feeling that you get from this. Authenticity is the feeling that you get, that it is not just the spitting out of content, the spitting out of words and making them memorize stuff. There is a heart here. There is a passion here. There is an authenticity that is here. So, as we move through this, and I am not going to be long here, just a few more minutes, I just want to outline the four ways in which we need to teach from the text in order to create a passion for the next generation. A little station break here I want to say a word to those singles of you who are tempted to put your brain in neutral right now because I am talking to parents. That is a huge mistake. I want to say a word to single parents, who are moms, and you are tempted to say, Yeah. That is a huge mistake. The point I want to make is that we are all in discipleship relationship. We are all in mentoring relationships. We are all influencing people, and although I am being more specific here about traditional families, I think we need to 5

open it up. Even grandparents here, this is true for us. Karen and I are discovering, and this is amazing, and in a very real sense our grandkids listen to us better than their parents did. Yeah [laughter]. We have a common enemy. Do you know what I am saying? [laughter] Are there any grandparents here? Is that true? It is typical. Why didn t your knucklehead father listen to me? That is another issue. So, here are the four things. Let me give them to you and then we will put some meat on the skeleton. 1. We Teach "To Do" 2. We Teach "To Sustain 3. We Teach "To Internalize" 4. We Teach "To Integrate" This is a masterful piece of instruction here. This is how we create a passion for God s Word. We teach to do, you teach to sustain, you teach to internalize, and you teach to integrate. 1. TEACH "TO DO" (6:1-2) Number one, you teach to do. Deuteronomy 6:1 says: Now this is a commandment, the statues and the rules, that the LORD your God commanded to me to teach you, that you may do them. In verse 2, there is the phrase: In verse 3, there is this phrase: by keeping all his statutes. Hear, therefore, oh Israel, and be careful to do them. God s truth was always meant to be applied. It was always meant to be applied. Every word in the Bible, and now some of it is history, some of it does not relate to us, but all of it was meant, whether directly or indirectly, to do something with it, to do something with the Scriptures. It is meant to be obeyed and experienced. So, the issue is whenever we hear or read God s Word we should ask ourselves what do I need 6

to do about this? When you teach your children in the home, and Karen and I are going to come back next week with some applications, so I am not going to give you a bunch of illustrations now as I will give them next week, but I will say this. When you teach your children in the home content, always have a hook, a transition, as to helping them to understand what they need to do about what they just heard. You say, Why do you say that? Well, here is the point. Behavior both produces and affirms convictions and passion. You see, this is the reason why you can home school your kids, you can send them to Christian school, you can send them to public school and have devotions every day and you can make the assumption that because you are pouring content into their hearts and minds and their cranium (they have memorized everything, they have come to Learning Center, and they have all this stuff going on, you can make the terrible assumption that they have convictions. No, no, no. Convictions only come out of application. You do not develop conviction because you know stuff. Truth does not change people s lives. What changes people s lives is the application of that truth to life situations, and that gives them conviction. That is the reason why God says, Teach them to do. To do -- go after this! God is not interested in people who have the equivalent of a Ph.D. in theology but have no life practice. Guys like myself have unwittingly taught people that just cram the Bible in them and they will be great. Well, I have seen the legacy of that. Cram the Bible in them, no. They will be rebellious. Do it. So, the very first thing God says is you teach this next generation to do this stuff and you help them as they develop to apply the truth You see when they experience results from the application of what they know that strengthens their convictions. That is how it is forged and framed. 2, TEACH "TO SUSTAIN" (6:2) Secondly, it says you teach to sustain. You teach to sustain. Notice the line in verse 2. It is amazing to me how God always uses, I should not say always, but often there is this for motivation purposes God will use vision and family in future generations to get His people to do something passionately, because everybody cares about their heritage. Everybody cares about their legacy. Everybody cares about what my grandkids or great-grandkids or great-great-grandkids will know, do, and believe. So, he says teach to sustain. Verse 2 again says: You may fear the LORD your God, you and your son and your sons son. What is he saying? Practically speaking what he is saying is this. Look, the question we need to ask as parents is simply this. Are we giving our children enough to sustain them? I think by posturing it this way, teach your 7

son and your sons son, and your sons sons son, and your sons sons sons son, you keep his commandments, by posturing it this way. What he really is saying is, Look, what you do has got to have a generational impact, and what you are giving them has got to have a generational impact. The only thing that is going to have a generational impact is truth. Are you giving them enough to sustain them? I want to encourage you, and I do not mean to make you feel guilty, but I want to tell you something. Listen to Karen and myself, and I do not know if she is going to get into this next week, but listen to us. Our kids were extraordinarily busy, okay. They were extraordinarily busy. Karen and I are both high activity people and our kids were extraordinarily busy. I mean baseball, recitals, this, that, and that and this and that, and there were times in which we overdid things. I want to tell you right now. Be careful parents. Be very careful. Don't procrastinate your children s spiritual growth and development or put it in a C- category because you are spending all this time running them from one game to the next, one adventure to the next, one little thing to the next, and this kind of thing. You have to ask yourself the question and realize that your kids are growing up much faster than you realize. I do not know about you, but having dropped four kids off at college, every last one of them, I had this sense of guilt in me. I said to myself, did you really give them what they needed? For those of you who are raising kids right now who are 8, 9, 10, and 11 years old, think about that. Please think about that. Please think about that. Are you really giving them what they need? Not what they want to do, not what you want, because that is hard, too, but are you giving them what they need? You see, through generations memories and family traditions will lose their grip. I was thinking about this. We had our grandsons with us this summer and they love to hear stories, so I tell them stories of their greatgreat-great-great grandfather, Peter the slave, and their great-great-great grandfather Milton, their greatgrandfather my dad, and me and we tell those stories all the time, okay. But it dawned on me this summer as I am telling the stories and this kind of thing, they never touched my dad. They never heard his voice. They never felt him. Try as I might, they will remember top line maybe framework, but through the generations they are going to forget that stuff. All the stuff that you thought were great memories with your kids growing up at the lake and at the mountains and the games and all that stuff, they are wonderful memories and I say continue to do that, but the truth of the matter is their kids and grandkids are not going to remember that stuff. Heaven and earth will pass away, but My Word abides forever. I want to encourage you. You make sure you are giving them what they really need to sustain succeeding generations. Whisper the truth in their souls. Let them come face to face with it at every turn. 8

3. TEACH "TO INTERNALIZE" (6:5-6) Teach to internalize. Please notice there are a couple of lines here. In verse 5 he says and back to the Shema in verse 4: Hear, O Israel, the LORD your God is one. You shall love the LORD You shall love the LORD. I think in context here, as you drop the Shema in the overall context of what he is saying about teaching with passion, what he is really saying is, Let truth be relational. Let truth be relational. Let them know This is how you love. You study what He says. You listen to His voice. This is how you love Him. I am not telling you this stuff just to cram it in your brain, but I want you to know this book because it is God s love letter to you. The more you plummet the depths of it, the more you apply it in your heart and life, the more you are going to love Him. You are going to love Him. So, you teach them to internalize this stuff. Make it part of who they are. It also means that we model and become the truth that we know, too, because they need an incarnational model of the content of this loving of God. So, we need to be vehicles of hope, mercy, forgiveness, love, and ask for forgiveness, so that we are giving the truth in a relational context, so we do not become a stumbling block to the love of God. So, there is both this modeling of it and describing God s love as being anchored in obedience. Now the point is, however, you have to keep your children close enough to you and to God s Word for His Word to get in them though. You have to do that. You really do. You cannot be distant. You see you cannot separate relationship from their appreciation for God s truth. You have to be close to them if you want God s truth to be close to them. They need to hear somebody that loves them communicating God s truth to them so they see the relationship, particularly men. Guys, the most important time in your son s life is between the ages of 10 and 16. You have to get close to them. I need to say a little word quickly here, however. This may be a tad one off, but I need to say a little word about parenting here and styles of parenting. Cattle ranches probably understand a little bit better than we do about the balance in parenting. You say, Where did that come from? Well, cattle ranches understand that you cannot raise healthy cattle in a corral. You put them in a corral where they are close to one another, they will not get the exercise that they need, they will bump into one another, they will not have enough to eat, the dominant ones will take over, and it will not be a healthy situation and there will be collision. Too 9

many well-meaning parents are raising their kids in a corral. They are thinking that all they need to do is have the Bible dump on them and tell them all the negative stuff in life and do not give them opportunities and freedom to try to experience how to apply this stuff to their lives. They are thinking that all they need to do is saturate them with that and they are going to turn out to be healthy, godly people. Cattle ranchers also understand that you cannot rear cattle on an open range. Why, you will lose track of them. You do not know where they are. They become subject to predators and the predators come after them and kill them and this kind of thing. You just cannot say, okay, let it go. We are grace oriented. Well, I hope we are grace oriented, but some of us define grace as license and just they will figure it out. No, they won t. They will succumb to forces. Cattle ranchers understand the best place to raise cattle is in a pasture where there are fences. There is the opportunity for them to roam and eat and experience, but there are boundaries. There are boundaries. So, what we need to do is create the pastures in our family, where the boundaries, the Word of God is clear to give them opportunity to experience incremental failure so we bring them back to the truth of God s Word and it strengthens them and allows them to be what they need to be, but it has to be internalized. 4. TEACH "TO INTEGRATE" (6:7-8) The next expression that should be on your heart is conscience, consistent reflection of God s truth. We teach to do, we teach to sustain, we teach to internalize, but number four we teach to integrate. A. CONVERSATION (V. 7) We teach to integrate. We look at verses 7-9 and verse 7 talks about our conversation. He says: You shall teach them diligently to your children [meaning God s statutes and rules] and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise. 10

What is he really saying here? I don't think the point is that every single conversation ends with a Bible verse. I think you would miss the point. I think what the point is that God and His Word should be the common natural topic of conversation, which might take place anywhere or at any time. It is normative for me to talk about God s truth. It is normative for it to be a part of my conversation. It is normative for it to be my worldview. It is normative for it to saturate everything. There is never a conversation to be taken one off. It is all under the canopy of God s truth; and if God s Word cannot relate to it, then you do not need to talk about it. It is normative. Again, I am not saying you do not talk about sports or this kind of thing. Don't read it that way, but what he is saying is that this truth is not compartmentalized. This truth is integrated in my overall approach to life. B. CONSTANT REMINDER (V. 8-9) So, he also ends this by saying there needs to be a constant reminder then therefore, verses 8-9. He says: You shall bind them as a sign upon your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. I do not know if this is literal or some of them took it literal where they had phylacteries and this stuff that they put on their head. I think you miss the point if you get too literal with this. I think the larger point that he is making here is that the Word of God needs to be etched permanently in the hearts and minds of your children. It needs to be there. We should do all that we possibly can Scripture memory yes, whatever, to get that truth down inside of them and they are constantly reminded of biblical framework, always. When Karen and I were in Washington D.C, we had the great privilege of visiting the MLK memorial monument. Actually, the pictures on TV do not do it justice. It is a spectacular thing, so we toured that for a while. But I was struck by the fact that on the monument and then on the granite walls around it there are words, his words, snippets and excerpts from famous speeches, permanently etched for succeeding generations. Obviously, the question is, What are we etching on the souls of our children? What is written on them? Warning: Don't wait. There are other people and forces waiting to make their mark on your child, and they will. You are not raising kids in a neutral environment. Other forces are going to make their marks. 11

The challenge that I have for us this morning is simple. You do not have to be a theologian to do this. I am going to talk about this next week, but I want every parent, grandparent, single parent, single, that has influence on the next generation to commit yourself to build your family on the Word of God. Make that decision. You are not going to build it. You are not going to build it on their career. You are not going to build it on their dream to be dominant. What you are going to do, you are going to win where it really matters. You are going to win on the memorable stuff. You are going to win on the stuff that will see you through and sustain everything that you do. I think you need to make that decision. I think parents need to make that decision, and we will talk about how that is done next week. Father, thank You for Your Holy Spirit and thank You for the truth of Your Word and thank You, oh God, you have given us this calling and the hope that we have. You have not called us to be perfect, but You have called us to be intentional. So, LORD Jesus, we ask that You will work in a great way as we wander through these things, as we commit ourselves to doing them. God, may faith be real, genuine, authentic in our homes. In Jesus' name. Amen. SHANE FREEMAN: Crawford, first, I want to say on behalf of our church, there are those of us who know that you live out that passion. You have a passion for God s Word and so thank you for that. Thank you for modeling that to us, as families. Just to ask you a couple of questions, and I love your statement, You cannot separate the voice of God from the person of God. I think Wayne Grudem even said that, to disbelieve or disobey God s Word is to disbelieve or disobey God. it is very similar. Why do you think it is so easy for us in our culture today to separate those two, the voice of God? CRAWFORD: I am just like everybody. We do not live in a neutral environment. It is easy for me to stand up here and say these things because there is no technology distracting me. There are no issues distracting me. I have the accountability with other people, but we live in a fallen world. We have our own sins to deal with and we have to deal with our own stuff. So, we have the distractions that we need to work through, too. So, it takes a degree of intentionality to wander through that. SHANE: That is great. As you talked about that, talking about a passion for God s Word, that you and Karen will really apply next week to us. One of the thing I was thinking about and probably most of us in here were saying we definitely want to have that passion for God s Word, but there are so many other things in this culture and you mentioned technology, so many things that compete for our affections and our passions. 12

How do we guard that passion? Maybe you can tell us how you have over the years guarded your passion for that? CRAWFORD: A number of years ago a friend of mine told me something that I never forgot. I kept making excuses about not being able to do certain things that I would like to do, and how busy I was, and this kind of thing. He put his hand on me and said, Crawford Loritts, everybody does what they want to do, including you. It is really true. I think it is a hard thing to say, but I think you have to decide what your priorities are going to be and you say no to some things and realize if this is important, then I have to do it. SHANE: Thank you for that. Hey, let s take a moment and pray together. Again, I want to ask you a question, like I did last week. Let s just take a moment and let God speak to you. There were a lot of good things that were said this morning. Maybe ask God in this moment of silence, what is that one thing, maybe two things, that God would want you to take away today from this message on the passion of God s Word? 13