Using The Bible In Raising Children Series

INTRODUCTION:

A. I am deeply concerned for the family.

1. It is my hope that this session will help you, as parents and teachers to understand how to train up children God’s way.

2. The key is the Word of God and it is to be an essential part of every stage of life, from infancy to adulthood.

a. Use it, and you will have greater success in raising godly children who will in-turn serve the Lord and raise godly children of their own.

b. So let’s get started.

B. Turn if you would to Judges 2:8-11 And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died, being an hundred and ten years old. [9] And they buried him in the border of his inheritance in Timnath-heres, in the mount of Ephraim, on the north side of the hill Gaash. [10] And also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers: and there arose another generation after them, which knew not the Lord, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel. [11] And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and served Baalim:

1. Did you catch that? Did anything in this passage surprise you?

2. How many generations was it until they forgot God? 10? 5? 3?

3. No – the NEXT!

C. How could that be?

1. The generation that died was the one that had grown up in the wilderness and entered into the promised land.

2. Many of them saw miracle after miracle in the desert.

3. They had seen the miracle of crossing the Jordan and the fall of Jericho.

4. They had seen battle after battle that the Lord had fought for them.

5. They had set up memorials - Joshua 4:5-7 And Joshua said unto them, Pass over before the ark of the Lord your God into the midst of Jordan, and take ye up every man of you a stone upon his shoulder, according unto the number of the tribes of the children of Israel: [6] That this may be a sign among you, that when your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean ye by these stones? [7] Then ye shall answer them, That the waters of Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord; when it passed over Jordan, the waters of Jordan were cut off: and these stones shall be for a memorial unto the children of Israel for ever.

6. It is their children that knew not the Lord, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel!

D. Who’s fault was it? Joshua, the priests, the judges?

1. No. Lets back up and read Joshua 4:6-7, That this may be a sign among you, that when your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean ye by these stones? Then ye shall answer them,…

2. It was the fault of the parents!

3. They failed to speak to their children about the things of God: they did not show them or speak to them about the things God had done, nor were they showing them what the Lord was presently doing.

4. They got caught up in the things of the world and they were acting like the world: religious but worldly!

5. To this Judges 17:6 is insightful. It says In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes.

E. The Christian family is never more than one generation from extinction - That ought to scare us half to death!

1. You and I must learn from the past as set before us or we are destined to repeat it

2. It is this repeating of failure in the area of parenting I hope to help avert, with this session today.

PRAY

F. I have sat in counseling sessions and had parents crying because their children have gone “astray.”

1. “Pastor I don’t understand why my son has no desire for the things of the Lord.

(Slide # 4)

2. They hold out the passage in Proverbs 22:6, Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it, and ask, doesn’t this say that if I train them up in a particular way they will not depart from it when they are old?

3. And I tell them, “Yes, generally speaking, that is what it says. But the question I have for you is, how did you train them up?”

4. I then take them to two important passages of scripture to find out how they have trained them: Deut 6:4-9 & 2 Tim 3:15-17

I. DEUTERONOMY 6:4-9

A. The first of the two passages I want to take you to is found in Deut. 6:4-9 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. [8] And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. [9] And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.