01/27/2022
From one of our seminary lectures, Joe Morecraft says:
"Beloved, burn this into your conscience. Peace with the Canaanites can only come by surrender to the Canaanites. They didn't teach their children. We live on a battlefield. We are at war with this culture. It is not safe here. Don't let your children be naive enough to think that they can grow up into this culture and it is going to be nice and sweet and friendly to them. Everything about this American culture is out to seduce and r**e your children. Teach them how the wars of the Lord are to be fought and won. They must be fought with dependence upon God in prayer. Faith in the Lord and his covenant promises. And obedience to biblical law. But we are at war.
So let me make three applications and we will quit for today. First application. Don't lose your children. Love them, hug them, pray with and for them. Kiss them on into teen age years. Discipline them consistently and fairly. Teach them how to think and talk and behave and relate and dress as Christians. Make sure they are getting a distinctively Christian and biblical and reformed education. Bring your children to church with you on Sunday morning and Sunday evening. Get them in the habit of doing that, whatever the sacrifice. Don't mislead them into believing that coming to church on Sunday night is optional or unnecessary and that they can get along without it.
Second application. Don't lose your children. Make sure they obey you. Do not leave it to them to determine whether they will go to church or not. Talk to them. Counsel them how to relate to people, how to dress, what kind of music to listen to. Read good books and poetry together. Take walks together. Put them on a Christian reading program. Get on one yourself. Show them the reality of Christianity and your devotion to the Lord and his word in your own life and marriage. And show them that you and your wife are not hypocrites. And let them see in you and your relationship with your wife a happy, loving affectionate marriage.
Third application. Don't lose your children. Christians begin losing their children when they fail to teach them in the earliest years to understand and love the reformed faith of our confession and catechisms. Our failures are serious. But at this very young age they do not have to be irreversible. If we repent. Some of you hearing this sermon may have lost your children. Some of you hearing this sermon may be losing your children right now. But you have not known it or been afraid to admit it. And they will break your heart some day. If they have not already. You had better act now to reclaim them because the longer you wait the more painful it will be. Start now worshiping God with your children. Twice on Sunday. And at home as many evenings as possible. Start teaching your children about the wars of the Lord in your generation. Teach them about the antithesis between good and evil. Tell them war stories that you have been involved in.
This impressed me one time when I was Ukraine at a Romanian Baptist church. After the demise of the Soviet Union, the Romanians were able to come to their churches without fear. And it was great to watch them at their fellowship time after church. They would drink Kool Aid or whatever, some kind of apple juice. And they would all sit around. And what would they talk about? They would not talk about sports. And they would not talk about movies. They would not talk about jobs or investments. You know what they set around doing? They set around and compared scars. And it was a moving thing to see this person over here with his ear cut off. This person with his eye gouged out. The person with the crippled arm. Men, women. They set around and encourage each other.
Remember that time we were tortured for Christ’s sake? You got any scars. You have any war stories to tell your children? They want to hear them. I remember when I was a little boy and my daddy didn't see me until I was 13 months old. He was in WW II. In the south Pacific. As I grew up I wanted him to tell me war stories.
Tell your children war stories about your participation in the wars of the Lord in western culture. Prepare them for the battlefield. Start now teaching them about the character and will of our great God. Our Christian heritage. The glorious future that awaits the faithful people of God and the doctrines and distinctives of the reformed faith. Of our confessions and catechisms which our biblical Christianity in its purest human expression. Teach your children by word and example to be courageous. And discerning in their faithfulness to the faith. And in their defense of it. Start now counseling them in their problems and conflicts by the word of God. Teach them how to be holy and chaste in their relationships, dress, manner and countenance, behavior and thoughts. Guide in their choice of a vocation. A mate, a ministry. Show them how to be loving and winsome and courteous and chivalrous.
If we lose our children, beloved, our efforts at saving this nation we love, are worthless. The reconstruction of America must begin in your heart and mine. In your home and mine. Because the church in this land has lost enough of its children already. Let this ring in your ears. What does it profit a man if he should gain the whole world and lose his own children?"
