Focus On The Purpose Of Parents Series

INTRODUCTION

• If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it will always be yours. If it doesn’t come back, it was never yours to begin with. But... If it just sits in your living room, watches your TV, messes up your stuff, eats your food, uses your telephone, takes your money, and doesn’t appear to realize that you actually set it free in the first place, you either married it or gave birth to it!

• In the beginning God created male and female and God said it was good. Then they got married got in trouble and had children. It can be quite a challenge to raise a family today.

• I believe that the family structure has been weakened because the family is getting away from God and His principles.

• We can blame the schools or society, but really the downfall of the nation and of the family comes from the fact that the family has no idea what its purpose is.

• Today I want to start out a series called “Focus on the Family”. Today we will focus on the purpose of the parents.

• Dr. Laura says in today’s American society, the role of the family, and of the parents, has been stripped down to its bare minimum. Emphasis, it seems, is placed on everything else--school, friends, oneself, TV, media--as the "shaping factors" in a young person’s personal and intellectual growth and development. Children are expected, even encouraged, to seek influence, teachers, and mentors outside the home. The radical groups are trying to say that there is no such thing as a traditional family. (DR. LAURA)

• As adults one of the most important jobs that we will do is to raise our families.

• Today I want to look at 4 tasks that will define our purpose as parents. These tasks will help enable the family to fulfill its’ purpose.

SERMON

One of the purposes of a parent is:

I. PARENTS MUST START WITH THE TASK OF LEARNING! 1-6

• READ DEUTERONOMY 6:1-6

• This seems like a given. Before we can do anything the way God wants us to, we have to learn for ourselves what God wants us to do. We have to know what we are to obey.

• Notice in verse 1, Moses is saying that he is teaching the people what God commanded him to teach. Moses knew what he was teaching.

• Notice what Moses says in verse 6. READ AGAIN SHALL BE ON YOUR HEART!

• Ignorance of God’s word is one of the things that are killing the church as well as the family.

• We are raising a generation of biblically literate people. We can blame the church, but this has to start in the home. It has to be taught by parents who themselves know the word of God.

• Notice that verse two tells us that Moses is teaching the people so that the parents can pass it to their children who will pass it to their children.

• We are not to just learn, but we are to do also! Verse 2 says that if we fear (respect) the Lord God the days of our lives will be prolonged. God’s Word is good for us!

• If we do not know God’s commandments, statutes and judgments, what are we passing on to the next generation?

• The next generation cannot do what they do not know. This starts at home.

• I believe that if you ask people in education they will tell you one of the problems with education today is that many parents have totally turned it over to the school, they do not participate in the education process. We turn our children completely over to the schools, and then wonder why they are not performing.

• Ask some of our people who work in the schools, they will tell you the ones who have been worked with and the ones who have not. In general, a child will not do well at school if they are not worked with at home. If we use terrible English, our kids will pick up and do the same thing. If our children are seeing a bad example of what it means to follow Jesus at home, chances are they will follow the same way.

• Our churches struggle because a lot of our children are not seeing true love and obedience to Jesus from us. When they see we do not take Jesus seriously, they will not either.

• Verse 5 gives us the key to the whole chapter, a key to our mission as individuals. READ IT.

• We are to follow verse 5, and then we are to model and teach that to our children.