Episode 154: If We Don't Instruct Our Children, the Devil Will | +Quigg Lawrence

Alright friends, if you have a Bible or Bible app open to Deuteronomy 6. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 6.

But before we get there, I want to do a public service announcement. Do you notice this stole made by an 80-some year old woman from Franklin County? What color is it? Camo. On the back there's a deer. And some people don't like that—they say it's not liturgical enough. I say find another church. If an 80-year-old lady gives me this and does it with her arthritic hands, I'm wearing it.

But the reason I wear it today is to remind you that deer are going to be chasing each other for the next month. So this would not be a time to play on your phone while you're driving or to be thinking about other things. They're going to be darting across the road. In our family, we hit three deer in five years. Then the church got me a new car and had it two weeks and we hit another deer. So what I'm saying is: be awake, be alert. I love you. Be careful.

The Four Points

Now, let's dig into God's Word. Deuteronomy 6. Here we go.

I'm going to tell you what I'm going to tell you: four points. I'm going to tell it, explain a little bit, and then I'll tell you again. That's a good way to learn. The military calls it BLUF—Bottom Line Up Front. Right? So you know what you're buying.

Point number one of Deuteronomy 6: We are to know the commands of the Lord and keep them so that it may go well with us. See, God is fine. He's great whether you keep his commands or not. He's really perfect. So it's not like you're doing this to help him out. It's actually for yourself, because his commands are not burdensome—they're life. He's warning us, he's encouraging us, he's teaching us. So know the commands of God. Keep them so that it may go well with you.

Number two: We are not polytheists. We don't believe in all kinds of gods like the Hindus. We don't believe the tree is a god. We don't believe the lizard is a god. We don't believe you're a god. We believe there's only one God—the Most High, not made by hands. There's one God.

Hear, O Israel, the Lord, the Lord your God is one. — Deuteronomy 6

A lot of the Jewish people, when they come to the Shema which they say every week in synagogue, when they read it, they say, "See, that's proof that Jesus is not God. Hear, O Israel, the Lord, the Lord your God is one." And I get it. I get where they're coming from. But what I would say is, like Jesus said to the Pharisees, they had the scriptures memorized, but they did not know them. They didn't know them. That's what Jesus said: "You don't even know your own scriptures."

What I will tell you is, in the Old Testament there are whisperings that you can hear. There's foreshadowing. But there's definitely whisperings that God is one, but he's also—while he's one—he's also in a fellowship of three: three persons in the Godhead. Father, Son, Holy Spirit.

Number three: It's not enough to have head facts, because a lot of people can memorize the Bible. You could teach a parrot to memorize scripture. You literally could teach a parrot to say more scripture than most of us know. But what the scripture is calling us to do in the Shema—Deuteronomy 6—is to actually love the Lord. See, without love, it counts for nothing. We're not just here to do good and remember scripture. We're here to actually love the Lord and be in relationship with him.

Fourth point: One of the ways we love God is that we step into that good work he has prepared for us to walk in. So we're not saved by doing these things, but before the foundation of the earth, he prepared good works for us to walk in. After he makes you a son or daughter, you walk in these things. We are to teach God's commands diligently to our children, and especially as we walk through our daily lives and see things, we teach them about the kingdom of God.

So: know the commands of God and keep them so it may go well with you. We're monotheistic, but it's still one God in three persons. Love the Lord your God. Teach them diligently to your kids.

A Living Example

Now, I want to give you a little clip that came all the way from Joslin, Nigeria. Who gets an archbishop to send him a clip? We did it for you guys. He and Mama Gloria have prayer every morning with 74 kids that they've adopted. I mean, they don't just have them on the range over here. They're actually in their home. They get up every morning at some outrageous hour and they sing and they read scripture and they teach their kids to memorize scripture. I wish I could show you some of those.

There's one girl age 11, she did the entire genealogy of Jesus. And I'm like, wait a minute, she's in a country where they kill Christians, where the Muslims are killing Christians. She doesn't have hardly anything. She was an orphan, and she has devoted herself to learning God's word. Wow.

So let's run the clip. I want you to see these kids, and Ben's gonna tell you why they do it.

Hello, family at Church of the Holy Spirit, Bishop Big and all. This is the Kwashi family, and we want to share with you how we raise our children using the scriptures, and I'll ask Gloria to explain.

Well, we wake up very early in the morning, and we pray, we read the scriptures, we explain what that means, and encourage each other to apply the scriptures to our lives. We also encourage the midst we pandemic. Also after meals, we thank God still for the provision. And in school, when we come back in the evening, we pray again, we read scriptures. Ben loves to sing with the children. Songs are also part of what helps us. The regimentation with scriptures and prayers is what has helped us prosper.

Well, we believe that the only way to raise children is to refer back to the manufacturer's manual, the Bible. Deuteronomy says we should teach our children and to succeed in generations. And believe me, when you grow old, you'll not regret it.

Proverbs says, train up a child in the way he should go, and when he grows up, he will not depart from it. — Proverbs 22:6

And there's no other way than to do it the manual way. And that's the way we do it. And if you do it, you save yourself a lot of heartaches in old age.

Children say hi. Amen.

Friends, what I'm telling you is these kids know God's word. Why did the tooth fairy sprinkle dust on them? Did it just happen? Ben and Glory have already raised their kids. They go, hey man we've been there done that. But they've opened their lives for kids that are not even their biological children, but now are their adopted children. They all have Kwashi. Go to Jos, Nigeria, everybody's named Kwashi. It's like 200 kids named Kwashi. But I just wanted to use that as an encouragement like, if they can do it, you can do it. We just have to make time. That's it. It's really a priority thing, isn't it?

The Command to Teach Our Children

So let's go into the scriptures. We're in Deuteronomy 6. It starts out like this:

Now, this is the commandment, the statutes, the rules that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you. — Deuteronomy 6

First of all, we want to look back. What did Moses—God through Moses—just give the people in Deuteronomy 5? Go ahead. Say it. It's not a trick. The Ten Commandments. Right.

So he goes:

Now, this is the commandment, the statutes, and the rules that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, so that you may do them in the land to which you're going over to possess it. And so that you may fear—really that's a holy reverence for the Lord your God—you and your son and your son's son, by keeping all of his statutes and his commandments, which I commanded you all the days of your life, so that your days may be long. — Deuteronomy 6

I'm trying to understand what the Lord's trying to drive home: his commandments are not burdensome to our life. We are to hide his word in our heart. And he actually wants us to do them, not so we'll be saved, not so he'll love us more. Because Ephesians 2 is very clear:

It's by grace you're saved and this not of yourself. — Ephesians 2

But then it says in verse 10:

He's appointed for us to walk in good works. — Ephesians 2:10

Those good works only happen after a son or a daughter—not before—but there are good works he wants us to walk in, and one of those is discipling and training our children that they may know the Lord.

Is there anything more sad? If you love Jesus, if you're a parent or grandparent, would there be anything more sad to you than your own bone of your bone, flesh of your flesh, your own progeny, your own children did not love the Lord you loved? Or that you wake up and your grandkids don't know the Lord at all. Not only did they not love him, they don't even know him.

Friends, we're seriously just one generation away. There's no great, great, great, you know—you either instruct your kids, point them to Christ as you're walking through life, or they probably won't know Jesus.

Here's the problem. God gives us commands, tells us to walk in them, to do them, so that our days may be long. What's the problem with that? Well, we don't like people telling us what to do. So, you know what? Hey, God. Appreciate it. I'm gonna go find me a God that doesn't require me to do anything. I'm gonna go find me a God, kind of like James and John last week. We were talking to Jesus and they go, hey Jesus, we want you to do whatever we ask of you. We want to find a God that's an Aladdin's lamp, that's a concierge. And God says, no, I'm God, you're not. You listen to me, you follow my ways.

My ways are higher than your ways. The bottom line is we don't like people telling us what to do, but sometimes we need God's commands. He says of His own word, His own law, that it's a light and a lamp. So if you don't have any of God's word, if you're not taking it in—it's not that you're a bad Christian, you're just a Christian that's going to bump into a lot of walls. You're a Christian that's going to pierce yourself with many griefs. That's why the Father gives us commands. Not for performance to measure you on a chart, so that you can be close to him and so he could spare you a lot of grief.

So then it says in verse three. Verse three says:

Hear therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them that it may go well with you. — Deuteronomy 6:3

See the love of God there? And that you may multiply greatly as the Lord, the God of your fathers has promised you in the land flowing with milk and honey. That it may go well with you. That it may go well with you.

And he picks up in verse four, which is the Shema. The Shema is the prayer that all Jews say every time they gather for worship. It is their version of our Lord's Prayer. Every Jew knows it. Listen. Pay attention, Jews. Listen. The Lord, the Lord our God is one. And that's exactly what it says in verse four.

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. — Deuteronomy 6:4

There are three things in that. The first thing is that we're to listen. Are you listening? When's the last time you just shut up in the presence of the Lord? There's a time to tell God all about it, but there's also a time to be quiet. When's the last time you just sat before the Lord and said, "Lord, you speak to me. You instruct me."

The next one is the Lord is our God. See, all the pagans had these impersonal gods. In fact, they're so impersonal they couldn't speak. They couldn't do anything because they're made of human hands. But what they're saying in the Shema is for Israel, the Lord is our God. He's not just a God out there—he's actually our God. There's a relationship, a real relationship.

And then it goes on and gets theological: the Lord is what? One. There's not a million gods. We don't believe in reincarnation. You're not going to come back as a god. You're not going to come back as a lizard. You're not going to come back as a tree. There's one God, only one—the Lord our God. The Lord is one.

The Mystery of the Trinity

Now, why might that be a problem when you read the Shema, when you read Deuteronomy six? If you're a Christian and you read that, you would agree with it, but there's a little problem. What's the problem? God in three persons. Blessed Trinity—the Trinity. The word Trinity is never found in the Bible, but it doesn't have to beat you over the head. It's in there. It's kind of like stuff you put in soup and you can't see it, but it's still in there. It's there.

The Shema is right: the Lord our God is not many gods, it's one God. And the mystery of the Godhead is what God has revealed to us in the New Testament, and a little bit in the Old Testament, but mainly in the New Testament. God is Father, God is Son, God is the Holy Spirit.

God is Father. Nobody seems to have a problem with that. The next one's a little tougher for some people: that Jesus is God. And what I will tell you is this—if you actually read the New Testament, you'd be hard pressed to come away and not thoroughly believe that Jesus is God.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. — John 1:1

Jesus said:

I am the expressed image of the Father. If you've seen the Father, you've seen me. — John 14:9

Jesus used the "I am" statements, which is the name for God. He was claiming so directly and so clearly to be God that they killed him. That's how clear it was.

Now, there are whisperings in the Old Testament. If you have the eyes to see, let me give you a couple and we'll do it real fast.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. — Genesis 1:1

Now that sounds singular, except the word in Hebrew is Elohim. "In the beginning Elohim created the heavens and the earth." Elohim is not singular—it is plural. In the beginning Elohim, plural, created the heavens and the earth.

Look at Genesis one twenty-six:

God said, "Let us make man in our image. Let us make man in our image." — Genesis 1:26

Do you see the whispering?

The Lord God said, "Behold, man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil." — Genesis 3:22

And around the Tower of Babel:

Come, let us go down and confuse their language so that they might not understand one another's speech. — Genesis 11:7

Let us plural. Isaiah, we've got two more.

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send?" That's singular. Whom shall I send? "Who will go for us?" Plural. — Isaiah 6:8

So, do you see the singularity and the plurality of God? One God and three persons. Now, it doesn't say one God and three persons, but it's enough for you to get the idea. It's a whispering, it's a foreshadowing until Jesus reveals it more fully.

I think there was one more I want to share with you. Oh yeah, here it is.

For unto us a child is born, a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. — Isaiah 9:6

So the Lord speaking by the Holy Spirit through the prophet Isaiah said, there is a child that will be born. Right? He's not talking about God the Father. There's a child that will be born and it says he's gonna be son and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be a Wonderful Counselor and a mighty God. Do you know how blasphemous that would be if it were not true? They would have stoned him to death. He's saying that there's one that's going to be born that will be a mighty God. Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. And so friends, there it is. God is one, right? But he's also Father, Son, Holy Spirit in the fellowship of the Trinity.

Now, we push on. So we know those theological things, that's great.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. — Deuteronomy 6

What is the keyword in that phrase? You shall do what? Thank both of you who are awake. Seriously, you shall do what? See that's the thing—evangelicals, we're so cognitive. We're so cognitive that we just think, "Let's go to seminary for twelve years and put facts in our heads and then we can wow people with our knowledge."

You know what? There are a lot of people who know Greek and Hebrew who could school all of us tied together in all these fine facts. They can speak Ugaritic and all kinds of crazy Near Eastern languages, but they don't love the Lord. Don't even know him. And what God's saying is, "I don't want to just have your head filled with facts. I want it to lead to something, and the something that it's supposed to lead to is a relationship where you love me back." We love because he first loved us. Amen.

Alright. Let's go to verse seven. Now, this is really my focus point—you can have a lot of focus points here, this is the one I chose today.

Teaching Our Children Diligently

You shall diligently teach them the laws and commandments that God gave, right? Deuteronomy 5, the Ten Commandments. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you arise. — Deuteronomy 6:7

In other words, the first thing is that we are to teach our children. I don't know what happened—I think it was around 1920, somebody invented Sunday school, which was great, except for it became a dumping ground for parents to go, "Whoo, glad we got a professional. Thank God for Will. Will's going to be the spiritual father of every kid that graces the doors of this church."

Friends, it's impossible. It's impossible. He's actually called parents to be parents. I was raised by a single mother and so there's no harm, no foul. If you're a single parent, praise God for you. Praise God for you. You have the ability, even as busy as you are, that God will magnify your time and give you the grace to speak these words of life to your children. Teach them diligently to your children.

I doubt many of us when our kids are grown will say, "You know what? I wish I had spent less time with my children. I wish I had spent less time reading the scriptures with my children. I wish I had spent less time on my knees praying with my children, rubbing their back, praying with them." Very few parents go, "Gosh, I wish I'd spent less time." In fact, most of us say, "I wish I'd spent more time."

And it's not just that we sit our kid in a chair and we do catechism and stuff like that. Jesus says you're to teach them diligently, but how shall you teach them diligently? There's a way that actually works with kids better than sitting them in a chair and drilling them. That doesn't work too well, especially if they're attention-enriched, like moi. Jesus says, "Teach them as you're walking through life."

Right? Like today, I could go, "Hey guys, see the mountains? They're pretty awesome. They're gonna be even more awesome in about two days. Do you see the colors there? They're beautiful. But you know they're dying just like the grass of the field."

You know the grass of the field that was green and early on in spring, maybe even in the summer if you watered it, the grass is dying, the flowers are gonna fade, the leaves are going. And it's true with our lives as well. You use little teaching points like that. Jesus said, consider the lilies of the field.

Consider the lilies of the field. They neither toil nor spin, they don't work. And yet, not even King Solomon in all his glory was arrayed like these lilies. — Matthew 6

So we teach our children diligently God's word, but instead of just drilling them in a chair for ten minutes, do it as you're walking through life. The scriptures that you read, God will give you the ability as you see things to share those with your children.

Let me give you a quote. J. I. Packer was a very famous Anglican, a very famous Christian, he was a godly man. And J. I. Packer is reported to have said this: If we don't instruct our children, the devil will. Like he was an older man when he said this, a wise older man. He says, if we don't instruct and catechize our children, the devil will, and in fact, he's already at work.

Now, you may go, catechize? What's that? That sounds negative. Catechize just means sit down and open God's word and teach your kids the way of the Lord. Teach them God's word. So we have a choice. We can either step into that gift or we can let the church do it all. But what I'll tell you is the church doesn't have time to do it all.

Do you know the average kid, especially a teenage kid? Do you know how much time the average teenager spends on their phone a day? Seven hours a day. Right? Seven hours a day. And then if you add in movies and video games and all that, they're getting catechized, they're getting instructed, they're getting values, they're getting a worldview. And if you think you can drop your kid off here twice a month—we actually meet all four weeks, do you know that?—but if you just drop them off like twice a month, and we have life groups for kids and other things in Sunday school, but if you just drop them off, then they're gonna have about this much truth to fight this much error.

And so really, it has to be the mother or the mother and father. It has to be the parents or parent. It has to be. If not, your kids will not know God's ways, they won't know him. If it's all dependent on the church, God never intended the church to be the concierge of the hotel where you drop your kid off and say, "Hey, can you do that spiritual thing with my kid?" It's us. It's us.

And so we have a decision to make. Either we can step into it or we can't. We can step into it or say, "Nope, I'm not going to do it." But be sure of this, there is a serious cost for not stepping into that role.

And maybe if you're older and you say, "Well, my kids are gone." So are the Kwashis. Their kids are all raised. They're doing great. They're doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs. And in their old age, they have what? Seventy-five kids in their family, five hundred at school. And they're like, they may not be our biological kids, but they're our kids because they're His kids. And so they're teaching them diligently God's word.

The Closing

Remember, I said I was going to tell you something and then we're going to unpack it, we're going to restate it.

Number one, we worship the one true God, a God that's not made by human hands. He commands us to keep His commands, not to earn favor, but so that it may go well with us. That's truth.

Number two, we are also commanded to love the Lord. All the facts, the religion, all the spirituality—if you don't love the Lord, you're a clanging symbol, right? It counts for nothing. If you don't love Him, that's the whole point. That's the whole point of the story. He loves us so that we might be able to love Him back. And one of the chief ways we love God is to keep His commands. And one of the chief commands He wants us to keep is that we would step into the role of instructing our kids. Or if you don't have any kids, step into the kids God's appointed to you. Those ones He's put in your basket, so to speak.

So my question is this: What are you doing now to instruct your kids in God's word? What are you doing? Or let's be honest, have you decided I'm going to drop them off somewhere and let the church do it? Or the pastor do it? It's not enough. God didn't appoint us to be their parents, He appointed you. He didn't appoint us to be their grandparents, He appointed you.

And what I'm telling you, friends, is J. I. Packer's right. If we don't instruct our kids in God's ways, the devil will.

And in fact, he's already at work. Rise up, rise up, rise up. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.