WHAT WILL THIS CHILD BE
(The Birth of John the Baptizer)
Luke 1:66
“What manner of child shall this be?”
A baby can draw a crowd. The one in the cradle gets the attention. Some of the onlookers are prejudiced. They are the grandparents who know why these children are called “grand”. They are the parents who know this baby is the best. If you want to make a daddy happy just say, “He (or she) looks just like you.” Using the cradle of little John the Baptist, we will think about the fascination for and the future of babies.
A. THE FASCINATION OVER A BABY
1. Mystery.
A baby is fascinating because he is a mystery. Where does he come from? Timid parents say “the stork.” Dick Van Dyke said “Mr. Cabbage.” Scientists say he crawled out of the slime, wore a monkey suit and became human. The truth is - a baby comes from God.
The Bible says, “Children are a heritage from the Lord, children are a reward from Him” (Ps. 127:3) Here is where we parents go wrong. We see children more as possessions then persons. God does not give us babies as much as He lends them to us for a few years. They come through us but not from us.
2. Independence.
A baby is fascinating because it is unique and independent. We think it looks like every other baby, but God has given it a face different from any other face and on the tips of its little fingers, God has placed a unique mark - the fingerprint. It says, “This baby is one of a kind.”
3. Power.
Babies are fascinating because of their awesome power. When the intellectual giant of Scotland, Thomas Carlyle, held his cousin’s baby in his arms, he said, “To think, Shakespeare was once like this!”
When Israel languished under the iron heel of Egypt and cried out to God for deliverance, God sent a baby named Moses. When the Roman church buried the truth for centuries in darkness, God sent a baby named Martin Luther to lift the light of the Reformation.
We are always worrying about a possible invasion of America. We already have an invading army that cannot be stopped. It is on the way and it will take over our schools, our churches and our government. It is the army of arriving babies.
II. THE FUTURE OF A BABY
Will it grow up and be president or grow up to assassinate a president? Will it discover a cure for cancer or die from a drug overdose? No one knows. But let us look at some determining factors.
When a young boy made three “D’s” on his report card his dad asked him why and he said, “Dad, there are two reasons – heredity and environment.
One is heredity.
Men may be created equal but they certainly are not born equal. Every child has the right to be well born but some are cursed at birth. They come into the world with poisoned blood. Unfit parents who give themselves to life’s lower levels build weaknesses into the fabric of their children’s souls and curse generations yet unborn.
Next is environment.
You can grow beautiful flowers easier in a sunlit garden than in a dark basement. It is far easier to rear children with sound minds and bodies and beautiful characters in a wholesome, healthful environment.
This is why we need morally good towns, capable schools, and honorable homes. By far the most important factor is training. The Bible says, “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it” (Prov. 22:6).
Heredity and environment are powerful forces on the side of evil. But they are no match for a child, with freedom of choice, created in the image of God and influenced by God through the twin channels of church and home. The God of heaven, Christian parents and a Bible believing church make up an unbeatable team.
How tragic it is that absentee parents, bent more on making money and fulfilling personal goals than in accepting the responsibilities of parenthood are letting children grow up like wild weeds.
As a Beatle’s song put it, “She’s leaving home after being alone for so many years.” How tragic it is that parents no longer see to it that their children are in church on Sunday and Wednesday nights. How can we as a church and you as a parent be part of this unbeatable team.
1. We Must Teach the Truth. (Deut. 6:4-9)
At the head of the list is propositional, doctrinal Christian instructions. The world, Satan’s tool, goes first of all for the mind. Once the mind is reached, the total person will be enslaved. The cults go for the mind.
Once the mind is reached, the total person will be enslaved. The liquor industry, pornography, and all the “rights” movements, go for the mind. In public education, literature, music, television and (God help us) even in church, our children are being fed a steady diet of lies - what the Bible calls the “doctrines of demons” (1 Tim. 4:1). This poison will contaminate their value systems, warp their moral judgments and pervert their whole way of life.
The Christian home and the Christian church must work together to expose the lies being fed to our children and teach them the truth that will set them free. We must take the hand of the child in one and the Word of God in the other and stop being ashamed to tell them what God says. We must brand this foul world system as a liar and a destroyer of lives. Until we do they will have no confidence in us or any commitment to us.
When our godless educational system tells them they are, like all animals, the product of evolutionary chance, we must tell them the Word of God says,
“And the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being.”
We must tell them they are special creations and quote God’s words to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart ...” (Jer. 1:5).
When our godless business world system tells them they must cheat and lie and step on other to get ahead, we must tell them God says, “ALL liars will have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone” (Rev. 21:8).
When godless TV and movies tell them sex outside of marriage is fun and games and homosexuality is not wrong, , we must tell them God says, “Adulterers and fornicators ... shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal. 5:21).
When godless religion professors, even in Baptist colleges, tell them Christ was not virgin born, sinless, or uniquely divine, we must tell them God says, “Every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of antichrist ...” (1 Jn. 4:3).
When our godless psychologists tell them homosexuality is a normal alternate lifestyle we must tell them God calls it “shameful and perverted” (Rom. 1:26-27) When godless social workers tell them to “express themselves” all the time we must tell them the fruit of the Spirit is self control (Gal. 5:22).
When even Southern Baptist literature says spanking is wrong, we must tell them that God says, “He that spares the rod hates his child” (Prov. 13:24).
I could go on and on. For every lie God has a truth. In this age when everything is relative and there are no absolutes we must not be ashamed to appeal to propositional truth to counteract the devil’s propositional lies.
You cannot build a hotel on a dog-house foundation and you can’t build a strong child or a strong nation on the garbage diet of human wisdom. Turning from the Bible will not only destroy this country, it will destroy your child.
One great sin of modern protestant parents is that we do not know the Bible and teach it to our children. Our children are ignorant of the Word and ways of God. This is not the fault of the church.
What can we do in one hour on Sunday? That’s all we have because most of you think Walt Disney is more important than Sunday night church. If we changed the time you would think your Sunday afternoon nap was more important.
It is not dull worship services here, but the absence of family worship in the home that affects a child the most. It is not the church staff or the volunteer workers, it is the parents. It is not poor preaching, it is poor parenting. Step number one is to get back to the Bible.
2. We Must Live the Truth.
What you and I say must be reinforced by what we are. We don’t always practice what we preach but our children should see that this is our goal.
3. We Must Trust in God.
Our babies come from God and they are going back to God. Thus we can and should trust Him for their ultimate welfare. Of course, He is trusting us and works through us, but after we have done our best we know how feeble our best really is.
We must, like Hannah and Mary and Elizabeth, give our children to God. If we cling selfishly to them and seek our way or even theirs, we shall only hurt them and ourselves. But if we seek only God’s way then all the power of heaven will flow their way.
Bill Bright defines evangelism as “sharing Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit and leaving the results to God.” I define Christian parenting as “rearing children on the Bible, in the power of the Holy Spirit, and leaving the results to God.”
C. THE FAITH FROM A BABY
Maybe God gave you your baby to change you. People get right with God for different reasons. One is that God send them a “little baby evangelist” to inspire them to lead honorable, noble, Christ-like lives. Many a new physical birth has led to the new spiritual birth of parents or grand parents.
Illustration: When that great Methodist preacher, Clovis Chappell, was pastor in Fort Worth, there was one particular man he tried to win to faith in Christ. The man literally ran from preachers.
When Chappell cornered him in his store, he would suddenly get busy and start wrapping every item in sight. Dr. Chappell could never get his attention. One day Chappell asked a friend of his if there was any one particular thing the man was interested in. The friend said the most important thing in life was his little daughter. He practically worshiped her.
The next Sunday, when Clovis Chappell stood up to preach, he saw that man in the church. On one side was his wife and on the other was his little daughter. Chappell said he forgot everybody else in church that day.
He preached heart to heart to that one man. He pleaded for parents to give their children the very best chance. He spoke of the wickedness of failing to give them Christian strength and example in their fight with wickedness and suffering. He told of the awful cost of their failure in this life and the life to come.
The man listened. For the first time he got hold of the man’s ear. He laid hold of his heart. The man only listened, he responded. He fought and won the victory and came to Christ. A few weeks later Chappell was back in his store and noticed that he had a customer in deep conversation.
As the pastor walked up he turned and said, “Here is a friend of mine who has two daughters at home and he is not a Christian. I am trying to win him to Christ. Will you help me?”
Here was a man led to the foot of the cross by the tender hand of a little girl. I wonder how many of you today God is reaching out to through your children. I have often thought of the worst possible sight a human being could see. In our crime riddled, sexually perverted, amoral society, our imaginations can conjure up all sorts of horrible scenes.
But I believe the worst sight human eyes will ever be forced to look upon will be to wake up after the Judgment to find yourself in hell, and to suddenly see the tortured face of one of your own children - there because of you.
Oh mother, oh father, don’t let this happen to you. Give yourself to Christ for time and eternity. Turn from your
ungodly sins. Believe and teach the Word of God. Live for the Lord. Trust God in everything. Go to heaven and take your family with you.
