I begin our sermon, which is going to be on 2 Timothy 1, 1 through 5, as we do continue on. Now, in the book of Timothy, we started last week. I did an introduction, and now we're going to go over the first part of Timothy once again. Do remember you can send questions about the sermon. We do have our question and answer time, which starts after the sermon. We take a brief break at around 11.30, and then we do spend some time discussing what we've gone over. And if you do have questions, please either send them to the email address on the back there, probquestions at gmail.com, or go ahead and just write them down in the sermon question space in your folders and then drop them in the basket in the back. and we will try to answer all of those questions. So, today's sermon is going to be dealing with those wonderful promises that God makes to his people. We remember that God is the great promise keeper. While we may be promise and oath breakers, the Lord never turns his back on his promises. He remembers them always. So, before we come now to the word of the Lord, let's go to that promise keeping God who has given us his word, and let's offer up our prayer to him. O Sovereign Lord, I do pray now that you would help us to understand your Word. Drive from our minds all those thoughts of other things. We know that whenever the Word is being preached, our enemies, and particularly our great enemy, the devil, is always trying to turn our attention from you. He fills our minds with other things. He sets our attention on things that are just a little less good, saying, shouldn't you be thinking about this instead of the word that can actually help us in this moment. I do pray you would not allow him to distract us. As the seed is falling, may it find good soil, make our hearts ready to receive it, and then may it produce that harvest of good works that you desire. Oh, Lord, help me to preach this word. I can't open it up. I'm a sinful man. Without Your help, I will fail totally to hit the mark. So I pray for Your help, Lord. Give me wisdom greater than I have, and allow me to reach not just ears, but hearts with this word. And I do pray all of these things in Jesus' holy name. Amen. 2 Timothy chapter 1, and we'll be reading verses 1 through 5. 2 Timothy. Paul, an apostle of Jesus by the will of God, according to the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus, to Timothy, a beloved son. Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. I thank God whom I serve with a pure conscience as my forefathers did, as without ceasing I remember you in my prayers night and day. greatly desiring to see you, being mindful of your tears, that I may be filled with joy when I call to remembrance the genuine faith that is in you, which dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am persuaded in you also. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God will stand forever. I read all those verses by myself. I hope you saw that. I even read, and I think I got it right, I even read big words like conscience. I was able to pronounce that correctly. And why was I able to do that? Because I am such a clever boy, of course. No, that's not the reason. I was able to read those verses because of the tireless efforts of Wendy M. Webb. And that's my mom. She sat down every morning, starting when I was about three years old, and taught me to read from the Peter and Jane Lady Bird Hardback teaching series. So she would read things like, Peter and Jane like the dog. I like the dog. And I was expected to follow along with her. This was by no means an easy task for her because I did not want to learn to read. I did not want to learn at all. I did not care whether Peter and Jane liked the dog. I liked to play, and that's what I would rather be doing 24 by 7. So often, my mother would have to close the book and hit me on the head with it, and then continue on after she had once again regained my attention. And as a result of her tireless labors and the fact that, luckily, it was a hardback book, I learned to read. And by the time we reached the end of the series, I actually wanted to find out what Peter and Jane were doing and how Peter and Jane felt. And I think I even developed a bit of a crush on Jane as well. But that was all due to the daily exertions, the thankless exertions of a mother passing on something to me of great value. The ability to read, something that has served me to this very day, something that has incidentally served you. Had she not taught me to read, I do not doubt for a second that I would not have been able to go on in college and then seminary and so on. I certainly would not be here. Now, I'm sure there are many wonderful things that were passed on to you by your parents, skills, knowledge, tastes, habits, hobbies, just know-how in one area or another. I remember being taught first how to swing a hammer by my dad, things like that, the little things that we don't even think about, but they pass them on. But in the verses that we just read, Paul discusses the most wonderful thing that a parent or a grandparent can pass on to a child, and of course that is saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, Timothy, Timothy, his spiritual son, had that faith. It was so strong and it was so genuine that Paul was able to derive joy whenever he remembered it, as he puts it in verse 5 of the section we just read. But that faith in Jesus that Timothy had wasn't original to Timothy. And also that faith that Timothy had wasn't something that Timothy just made up on the spot. It also wasn't something that hit him like a lightning bolt one day as he was walking down the street. It wasn't the case that his mother said, go pick up some vegetables in the Agora, the marketplace. He went down one day and suddenly, boom, a faith lightning bolt hit him and he came home saying, guess what, mother, I believe in Jesus now. That wasn't what happened. And it wasn't something, certainly, that he absorbed from the pagan Greek culture around him. He didn't pick it up from them. It was not something that would have been taught to Timothy by the Greek academies and Lystra, where he grew up. It was a gift. a gift that was passed on to him by his mother and his grandmother, and then was perfected under the preaching of Paul, his spiritual father. And so, as Paul is writing these things, he's sitting in a cold and lonely Roman jail cell, ultimately awaiting his execution, which, as I said last week, probably happened in three to six weeks of him finishing this letter. But yet, although his circumstances are dark and gloomy, his cell is cold and wretched, and he's in chains, despite all that, Paul isn't dark and gloomy. Paul is grateful to God. What is he grateful to God for? He's grateful to God for that faith, that shared faith that he has with Timothy, that great gift of faith that Timothy has. He says, I thank God whom I serve with a pure conscience. Paul had a pure conscience. What a gift a pure conscience is. Those of you, I hope you haven't spent many days like this. You know, when you've done something wrong, and it doesn't matter what other people say, it's on your conscience. You can't sleep. You fret over it. You want so much to be free of it. Prior to coming to faith in Christ, I lived with that kind of thing almost every day. I tried valiantly to push off the knowledge that I was a sinner constantly. But I had so many things on my conscience, so many things that I'd done wrong. Well, Paul, though, serves God with a pure conscience, not because he hadn't sinned himself. He reckoned himself the chief of all sinners, but because he was saved by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and he had been washed of his sins. His guilt had been washed away by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And now, although he is about to be executed as an evildoer by the Romans, he knows that the gospel, the same gospel that saved him, the gospel he was preaching, he knows it's true. And he has continued to preach it regardless of what the Romans thought. He knew it was what God wanted him to do, what God had called him to do. It was his reasonable service to the Lord. And he is continuing on in that service. And he doesn't think that He is the first person who's ever been called to that particular service. Far from it. He says he is continuing on in the same kind of service, in the same manner that his forefathers had. And by that he's referring back, of course, to people like Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and Benjamin, the head of the tribe that he came from. And then after them, people like Isaiah, and Jeremiah, the prophets, and Malachi, and so on. All of them served God in the same manner that he served God. because all of them preached the same gospel. Now, the prophets, Isaiah and Jeremiah, they didn't preach Jesus by name, but they preached the coming Redeemer of Israel. They preached, as Isaiah called Him, Immanuel, God with us. You remember Isaiah told the people that the virgin would be with child and that she would bring forth the Redeemer. You remember how Jeremiah had called the coming branch of Jesse, Jehovah Sidkenu is what he called him in the Hebrew, the Lord, our righteousness. Remember how Job had blessed the Lord. the fact that he knew that his Redeemer lived and that he would see him someday. You remember how Jesus had said that Abraham, Abraham had seen his day as he's speaking to the Jews. He says to them in John 8, 56, your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day and he saw it and was glad. And how did Abraham see that? Well, he saw it with the eyes of faith. He believed the promises of God that from him would come the blessing to the nations. That was part of the promise that God gave to Abraham. He said to him, Abraham, you will have, you will bring forth, even though when he made this promise to Abraham at first, it was just Abraham, an old man, married to Sarah, an old woman. They had no children. And yet God says to him, Abraham, from you I'm going to bring forth a nation that's so numerous it'll be like the sands of the seashore. It'll be like the stars in the sky. That's an amazing promise, considering where he was. And yet God was gracious to fulfill it. And then generation after generation, those promises were repeated. The Messiah is coming, and so Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness. He had faith in God's promised Redeemer, just as Paul had faith in God's delivered Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ. The same Jesus whom Abraham saw as coming, Paul knew had come, and he knew he would come again, and so he preached that message. So understand, brothers and sisters, understand how Paul sees himself. Paul is not an advocate of a new religion. He's not a member of a dangerous sect that suddenly sprang up in the midst of the Roman Empire that came from virtually nowhere. No. He's just another believer in a long line of believers stretching back through history, all the way back to Adam in the garden, all the way back to that first gospel given to us in Genesis 3.15. God's great promise that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. All the way back in the garden after the curse falls upon mankind. God immediately follows up with a gracious promise of the gospel, that they would not be left without a Redeemer, and that Redeemer has come. And Paul doesn't just look back in time to all those who had gone before him preaching the gospel. The wonderful thing is he looks forward in time. He knows that the biblical faith isn't going to end with him. And sometimes that's something that afflicts believers. I mean, we see it in the Bible, people like Elijah running from Jezebel. Here's Jezebel, the Sidonian princess who's swept in, who's decided to establish ball worship throughout Israel. She rounds up the prophets of the Lord, as many as she can get her hands on, and she kills them. This is Elijah, and Elijah finally feeling as alone as alone could be, and he says, I've been jealous for the Lord, but I alone am left. He tells the Lord that. The Lord has to tell him, who are you kidding, Elijah? I have 7,000 in Israel who haven't bowed the knee to Baal. My promises haven't fallen apart. The faith isn't going to end with you, Elijah, but we can feel that way. So often we feel like the faith is gradually going out. We look at how darkness is creeping in all around us, how apostasy and heresy and so on and all the things ending in C seem to be growing all around us and we may be tempted to lose our confidence. It's one of the reasons why I try to keep an eye on Christianity in places like Africa and Asia and so on, where the gospel is expanding. Brothers and sisters, we need to remember the gospel is spreading. It's spreading even in places where, and especially, this is the amazing thing, especially where places where it's most under fire, where persecution abounds, the gospel abounds even more. We hear about jihad attacks in Africa, but the news media seldom will point out how many conversions are taking place, even amongst Muslims, in not just sub-Saharan Africa, but in Northern Africa. So we do not lose confidence because we know, not that we have this great confidence in the abilities of men, but we have, or at least we should have, what Elijah should have had confidence in, which is the promises of God. that he will never allow his faith to be extinguished from the earth. And so, Paul knows that the biblical faith, even though he's in a jail cell, even though Paul was a smart man, he probably knew he was going to have his head chopped off very soon, but he knew it wasn't going to end with him, it's going to go on. And although Paul had never married nor had children of his own, he does have a son in the faith. His son, Timothy. And so when he thinks of Timothy, he thinks of him with the light. And what a wonderful thing that is, to be able to think with the light on your children because they have that great gift of faith. And he is confident. that Timothy will continue on after him, long after Paul is gone. He knows Timothy, and then whoever follows Timothy will continue on. So, he writes to encourage him, Timothy, I know you were sad the last time you saw me. He mentions Timothy's tears in verse 4. It might have been that the last time he saw Paul was when Paul was arrested and dragged off to jail. But he says, in essence, to him, Timothy, don't lose heart. Be thankful to God. Be thankful because He is the one who gave you the gift of faith, and then He is the one who will keep it going. And he specifically mentions Timothy's own spiritual parents, first Lois, his grandmother, then Eunice, his mother, And he, of course, mentions himself as his spiritual father, calling him his beloved son. He mentions, though first, his mother and his grandmother as the ones who first passed on the faith to him. Now, Eunice, we know while she was Jewish, she married a Greek man. She married a non-believer. So Timothy's biological father, did not have that genuine faith that Paul speaks of here. Timothy's father probably believed, like most of the people in Lystra, that is a Greek city in Asia Minor, he probably believed in the Greek gods. Now, Timothy's father may have sincerely believed, but that did not make his faith genuine. And that's because the contents of that faith is false. There is no Zeus. There is no Artemis. There is no Mount Olympus. And so to believe in them isn't any better than believing in the Easter bunny. That kind of faith can't save, any more than faith in the unsinkability of the Titanic could have saved the life of a single passenger. It was a faith founded on a falsehood. And a sincere faith in a falsehood is nothing but believing a lie. Now, the faith of Timothy's mother, on the other hand, was a faith that was grounded in promises, not just promises, but also the acts of the living God. And thanks be to God, she had taught him that faith. In chapter 3, Paul will exhort Timothy when he speaks about the Scripture. First, he's going to actually talk about how his mother taught him that Scripture. 2 Timothy 3.14, but you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood, from childhood, from a very early age, you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. Now, I don't know whether Timothy's mother had to occasionally roll up the scroll and whack him on the head with it, but I guarantee you, teaching him the faith was probably not that much more easy than teaching anybody the faith. So parents, please understand, Timothy probably did not come with a delightsome voice to his mother every morning saying, oh, mother, I know the other children in Lystra are going out to play, but I want to study the Hebrew scriptures. Please sit down and go over these scriptures with me, can you? Oh, please, oh, please. I will put away all my toys. No balls for me, mother. No tops, no anything. I want to learn about God. Doesn't happen. Rather, you have to yank him, sit him down, and then begin telling them the story. And that's probably what happened with Timothy. Eunice was zealous for the Lord, and so she taught her children the Scriptures from childhood. Now, Eunice could have said, well, we're going to respect my husband's religious beliefs. I know he doesn't believe in the Lord, but I don't want to upset him, so I'm going to go ahead and I'll tell him all the fairy tales about Zeus and so on. Or she could have said, very modern style, we'll let Timothy grow up and then let him decide what religion he's going to adopt, what truths he's going to take in. And as I said, that kind of thing sounds good to modern ears, but Eunice knew what the truth was and she wanted her son to know. She knew that allowing Timothy to learn or choose lies wasn't going to do him any good, any more than my own mother letting me play instead of teaching me to read would have been in my best interests. And I hope you parents know that, or to be parents someday, know already that you need to teach your kids the truth, and that they won't naturally love the truth. You have to teach them. to love the truth and to turn away from lies, because the culture is going to feed them lots of big, juicy, candy-like, honey-sweet lies. And you have to warn them, it may taste good, but it's poison. And if you eat enough of it, it'll kill you, and not just for time, but for eternity. So she taught him the truth with the help of Lois' grandmother. And that is so wonderful when you have multi-generation setting forth the truth before your children and helping to instruct them day by day. And then probably in answer to their prayers, I have no doubt that Eunice and Lois did not just teach their child the faith, they prayed for him. And then in answer to their prayers, Paul comes along and he provides that male spiritual mentoring that Timothy needed. He became Timothy's father in the faith. So now, having seen that true faith nurtured and growing in Timothy, Paul entrusts Timothy with his own mantle, like Elijah turning it over to Elisha. Paul is passing away, and it's time for Timothy to take up that work despite His youth, despite his infirmities, despite his introvertedness. Paul knows that Timothy can do it by God's grace, and he is proud of his son in the faith. That's a wonderful thing to be. Isn't that what we as parents all long to see? Our own children, or perhaps the children we've mentored, taking up the faith and then continuing to serve God and His kingdom by sowing the seed. Is that what every parent wants to see? Kids, isn't that what you want to do someday? To take up the seed bag, so to speak, and to go out and sow seed yourself? So many kids, I wanted to join their parents in their work, to go to work with them and to help them. Someday, though, parents go away, and then the kids, well, they continue on in the same way, hopefully, that Their parents set out. It used to be, of course, that you went into the same trade that your father went into. You don't see it very much anymore, but I know growing up it was always and sons. Did you ever notice that with business names? Even in sitcoms, Sanford and Sons and so on. But it was always, you know, your family continued on in the trade that you had established. We don't do that very much anymore. We're very transient people, but it should be the case that our kids continue on in the faith that we've established. so that his mom and dad shared the faith with them. They, in turn, share the faith with their children, parent to child. Now, when we think about the transmission of the faith in the Christian church circa 2018, we make a mistake. And what's the mistake we make? We usually think entirely in terms, or almost entirely, in terms of the evangelization of strangers. people like me who were brought up outside the faith, who had no Christian background whatsoever, and then who were brought into the church via the preaching of the word. Now that does happen, and that is a wonderful thing, but I have to tell you, we make a grave mistake if we think that is how the church usually grows, and how the faith usually spreads. How does it usually spread? It spreads parent to child. Or often, as in the case of Timothy, mother to son. I mean, let me do a brief experiment. Now, I could end up with egg on my face asking this question, but I don't think I'm going to. How many of you were brought up in Christian households with at least one parent who genuinely believed in the Lord? Okay, phew, I rest my case. Genuinely, it's usually the case that faith is something that is passed down from our parents. It's a wonderful thing when somebody who was not raised in the faith is given that great gift by God, but that's not the way it normally happens. God designed the Christian faith from the word go all the way back to the garden, that faith in His promised Redeemer to be covenantal and familial. What does that mean? It means based on promises given to parents and their children. And that is how the apostles preached the faith. They didn't preach a radically individualistic message tailored to people entirely outside of the covenant community, that is, the believing community, the community that had accepted the promises of God. Rather, they preach this way in Acts 2.37, and you hear this whenever we do baptism. Now, when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, this is Peter stands up, he preaches to the Jews on the day of Pentecost. After they had, you know, about a month before, they'd called upon Jesus to be crucified. Many of the same people would have been standing there. Now they're listening to Peter preach the gospel, preaching how Jesus is the Messiah, how Jesus had come, the promised one of Israel. And what had they done? They'd taken him with sinful hands, and they had handed him over to the Romans to be crucified. Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, men and brethren, what shall we do? Then Peter said to them, repent and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit for the promise is only to you as individuals. God has nothing to do with you as a covenant people any longer. That time is over, we're moving on to plan B. No, that's not what he says at all. He says, for the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call the promises, the covenant promises, the promise of salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not just being made to you, it's being made to your children. They need to believe as well. Acts 16.30, here Paul is preaching to the Philippian jailer, but his address isn't just to the jailer by himself as an individual. Who is he preaching to? He's preaching to the Philippian jailer and his household, and he brought them out, that is the jailer, and said, sirs, what must they do to be saved? That is the most wonderful question, especially when the head of a household is asking it. So they said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household. The idea that the jailer would believe and then not transmit the faith to his household, them not to come into the covenant community with him, that was just unthinkable. And keep in mind, this is not a Jew we're talking about. This is a Gentile. But the idea is that that covenantal faith will continue on within those who have been brought in to the believing community, even if they were Gentiles. Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house, and he took the same hour of the night and washed their stripes, and immediately he and all his family were baptized. Brothers and sisters, Our faith is a covenantal faith. It should be something that's being passed on and delivered to families. And if we ask why the Christian faith is retreating in America, It's largely because the next generation is not taking up the faith. We look at the rates of transmission to kids in the faith, and they're catastrophic. It used to be that we did these polls on the number of children raised in believing families who aren't continuing on in the faith now, and they were so catastrophic, people were like, no, that can't be right. Now we've done so many that we know the number of 70 or 80 is about right. 70 or 80% of the kids are falling away. Whereas in the last century or the beginning of the last century, the numbers were almost exactly flipped. Eighty percent would stay, but only about 20 percent would fall away. Why has there been this great flip? Well, I think it's largely because our three great enemies have interrupted that process of seeing the faith passed on parent to child, that covenantal transmission. Imagine, for instance, if Eunice and Lois had not taught Timothy the Scriptures. How would Timothy have learned them? And we've been persuaded, even as Christians, that teaching our kids the Scriptures is something that's someone else's responsibility. A youth pastor will do it. Oh, they'll get it from the church. Somebody will do it. Maybe Awana will do it. You know, during the time where we're driving to our local church and they are cramming desperately the memorization scriptures that they should have been practicing for the last two weeks, but now have opened in the last five minutes, that that somehow is going to be the key to bringing them into the faith. Or that a lock-in or a pizza party, that's going to be the key to them coming into the faith. It's not. How is it that we teach the children the Scriptures the same way my mom taught me to read, day by day, opening up the Scriptures, going over them, explaining them, bringing our kids back to them, daily family worship, daily catechesis, teaching them that their chief end, what is man's chief end, kids? Can we do it a little better than that? Man's chief end is... And forever. Right. Now, a hundred years ago, in a Presbyterian community, all the kids would have known that immediately. Boom. And even outside the Presbyterian communities, there were many catechetical systems of instruction that were given. Nowadays, hardly any kids are catechized. And I ask question one, if I ask question 107 of the Shorter Catechism, how many kids know that one? I'm not going to test that theory. But we're not following that process, that natural process of teaching the faith to the next generation. Secondly, what if Lois and Eunice had not only not taught the faith to Timothy, but they'd sent Timothy out to the academies that would have rigorously trained him in Greek philosophy, Greek religious belief? Would he have been primed and ready for the gospel when Paul came into town? Not at all. Like so many, he would have had that kind of, what is this babbler trying to say, approach to things. Now, of course, God can overcome that. I mean, He overcame that in me, but certainly that's not what the Lord intends for us to do with our believing kids. Now we, unfortunately, have been persuaded to do that. What do we do? We send our children out to be instructed in popular philosophies like Darwinism and materialism and socialism, and then we are surprised when we receive back neo-Darwinian materialist socialists who are absolutely opposed to anything that smacks of Christianity in the gospel. If we send them to be indoctrinated in those things, and we don't teach them the truth, then it shouldn't surprise us if they end up believing those things. It shouldn't surprise us that they're not creationists, they're not supernaturalists, they're not biblicists, and that they don't know the Bible. Those things are not going to mysteriously happen in their lives without somebody instructing them in it, and it needs to be us. If our children are going to learn the faith, we must teach them, and then we must ensure that they come under the influence and the preaching of men like Paul. And like Paul, we must pray for them. Now, how did he say he prayed for Timothy? Once in a while, when you come to mind, every now and then, I pray for you. Is that what he said? Now, how often does he pray for him? He says he prays for him night and day. Now, there's a certain amount of hyperbole in that. I'm sure it wasn't a 24-hour process of praying for Timothy. You know, when the sun's up, I'm praying for you. When the sun's down, I'm praying for you all the time. But what's he saying? Daily, every day, sometimes multiple times a day, when I pray, I pray for you. I remember you in my prayers. Is there anyone we remember night and day in our prayers? When we wake up and when we go to sleep, we should be praying for our kids. We should be setting them before the Lord. Job used to give sacrifices for his children if perhaps they had offended the Lord on a regular basis. They were constantly in his mind because the thing that was most important to him was that at the end of the day, his kids would be right before God. We know that we can do all of those things that I've mentioned. We can teach in the faith. We can send them to places where they're going to be instructed in the faith, not taught against the faith. We can pray for them constantly, and yet they can turn out as unbelievers. Faith is the gift of God. It's not something that we can hand out like tickets. And we need to remember that Esau and King Saul and Judas, they were all covenant children. But this duty that we have of spiritually raising up our children is the most important thing we can do. This will make the difference between when we stand before the Lord and He asks us, what did you do with those children I gave to you, that heritage, those little lambs, my little lambs? How did you treat them? How did you instruct them? Oh, them. That's not the conversation that we want to have. If it really is the case that we have not instructed our kids, their blood will be on our hands. But if we have instructed them, and they turned out to be prodigals, then their blood is not on our hands, it's on their own head. But raising up our children spiritually, it's something that's poo-pooed in our society, is unimportant, but it is the most important thing we can do. Here's a quote from Spurgeon. It's actually in your worship folders. Go ahead and take a look at it with me. He writes this, he says, those who think that a woman detained at home by her little family is doing nothing think the reverse of what is true. Scarcely can the godly mother quit her home for a place of worship. However, dream not that she is lost to the work of the church. Far from it, she is doing the best possible service for her Lord. Mothers, the godly training of your offspring is your first and most pressing duty. Christian women, by teaching children the holy scriptures, are as much fulfilling their part for the Lord as Moses did in judging Israel or Solomon in building the temple. And he's not speaking hyperbolically there. The most important thing that you can do is to train up the next generation of Christians. And even if you don't have kids of your own, if you are mentoring, if you are spiritually discipling in the way that Paul spiritually discipled Timothy, you're involved in that process as well. And I hope that you are doing that. You're teaching children, whether they be yours or the children of other people around them. You're mentoring them. You're giving that godly example. That's the most important thing that you can do. Each one of those children is a stone or will be, by God's grace, a stone in God's living temple. And mothers, here's the hard thing. You have to do that even if you aren't being supported by your husbands. And Eunice, at least, wasn't the first mother. who didn't have the support of a godly Christian husband. I received an email from, it breaks my heart when I receive this kind of thing. How do I raise my kids? How do I spiritually be the head of my household if my husband doesn't want to help, if he's not interested in the things of Christ? That is hard, but through prayer. I've been debating what to send back, but I know this, I've got to encourage her to pray for the Lord to be her tower, her refuge, her strength in the midst of all of that. But you have to go labor on, and God will bless that. It's not the case that our generation is the first time that this has happened. It's happened throughout church history. 1 Corinthians 7.14, for the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband. Otherwise, your children would be unclean, but now they are holy. One believing parent in a household makes that a household set apart to God. Now, it's not right that women should have to take, in addition to all the other duties that they have, the duty of being the head spiritually of the household. But believe me, the Lord will bless that. And often it's been the case that some of the strongest preachers of the Christian faith have come out of households where it was the mother who was the spiritual head because the father would not take up that call. Saint Augustine was raised by a mother like that. The low-hanging fruit in terms of sermon illustration for me would have been to go immediately to Monica, but everybody does it. And I figure you've heard the story of Monica and Augustine so many times that I could maybe bend your ear with the story of Wendy M. Webb at least once. But brothers and sisters, it is the case that women have been blessed in their faithfulness in raising up those children in the next generation. Now, let me give one last word. I've been talking to the parents, I've been talking to the mothers, I've been exhorting you guys, let me... kids, because you have a critical role in this as well. And it is this, to not fight against that process, to not stand against the process of that covenantal instruction that you're receiving, to not go against it, either by your indifference, thinking it's of no value, no purpose, no importance, or actively opposing it. Because know this, the faith of your parents will not save you. And there is a day coming for all of you, sooner perhaps than you may ever expect, when you will stand before the Lord. And He will ask you, what did you do with that faith that was given to you, that inheritance that was vouchsafed to you, those promises? I sent you a promise of my inheritance. I said, you will be an inheritor of eternal life if you will but take up that inheritance. What did you do with it? Did you cast it aside? Did you spurn the promises of the Lord and trample them afoot? William Guthrie was a godly Scottish minister, and he wrote a wonderful book called The Christian's Great Interest. I know I've given you a bunch of books that you need to read before you go to heaven, but add that to the list, if you would. Add The Christian's Great Interest. It's a wonderful book about what it means to believe in the Lord. And he talks about covenant promises and how we pass them on to our children. how normally faith is a family thing, but then he brings this point home, and I hope, kids, you're listening to this. These are big words, but I hope you will understand what he's saying. He says this, believing on Christ must be personal. A man or a child himself and in his own proper person must close with Christ Jesus. The just shall live by his faith. This says that it will not suffice for a man or a child's safety and relief that he is in covenant with God as a born member of the visible church. by virtue of the parent's objection to God's ordinances. Neither will it suffice that the child had the initiating seal of baptism added, and that he then virtually engaged to seek salvation by Christ's blood as all infants do. Neither does it suffice that children are come of believing parents, their faith, will not instate their children into a right to the same spiritual blessings of the covenant. Neither will it suffice that parents did, in some respects, engage for their children and give them away to God. All these things do not avail the children of the kingdom and of godly predecessors who are cast out, unless a man or unless a child in his own person have faith in Christ Jesus and with his own heart approve and acquiesce in that device of saving sinners, he cannot be saved. I grant this faith is given unto him by Christ. But certain it is that it must be personal. What does this mean? Kids, it means you got to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ or you're not going to heaven. You can have the best promises made to you. You can have the most godly parents on the face of the planet and they can strive and they can seek and they can do everything. But if you stubbornly, willfully spurn the gospel, you will end up going to hell. Walking from the very gates of heaven to hell is the dumbest thing you will ever do in your entire life. But so many kids do it. Don't do it. Continue on in the path set for you by your parents. Continue on by God's grace and know that you will inherit a kingdom that can't be taken away from you. And understand this, you are rightly understood princes and princesses royal. And if you don't inherit that kingdom, you will have no one to blame but yourself. Let's go before the Lord. God, our Father, we do thank you for the wonderful promises that you make and the examples that you give us in people like Paul and Timothy. I do pray now, Lord, for our own kids, that you would help them to see the wisdom of continuing on in the road that's been set for them by their parents to continue to walk by faith. Help us as parents to establish that road for our children. While we can't regenerate them ourselves, that's something that the Holy Spirit has to do, yet it is our responsibility to set the means of grace before them, to pray for them, to read the gospel to them, to teach them, to instruct them, and to make it our number one pursuit. Oh, Lord, we repent because there are so many things that we make number one instead of that. We often make games number one. We can make anything of greater importance. How many of us, oh, how many Christians have sacrificed their children on the altar of their career or their pursuits, their hobbies? How many men have fly fished when they should have been teaching their kids? How many of us have been exercising or playing games when we should have been teaching our kids? Oh, Lord, let us not make that mistake. Let us instead devote ourselves to doing all that we can to raise up the next generation. We pray in Jesus' holy name and according to your promises. Amen.