order is going to be a little bit different this morning. The scripture reading is Deuteronomy 6, but I'm going to read it at the end of the sermon. And you'll see why as it kind of sums up the subject of the sermon. The sermon text is Ephesians chapter 5, verses 17 and actually down through the first four verses of Deuteronomy. of chapter 6, and we'll be reading those shortly here right in the sermon. I included that in the sermon. So let's ask the Lord's blessing then on the ministry of his word. Father, we come now to the Holy Scripture, which we know and believe is your word. We thank you that you've given it to us, that you've spoken to us, and that we can now, together as your church, hear you. And so we pray, Father, that your spirit would teach us, that he would empower your word to do its work in us for your glory, and we pray this all in Christ's name, amen. We know and believe that Christ will always build his church, and that Satan can never stop that, right? The gates of hell will not prevail against his work there. He always has his remnant. He always has his elect. Elijah thought he was the only one that was left. And it turns out that the Lord told him, well, as a matter of fact, I have preserved 7,000 who have not bowed the knee to Baal, even in that time of terrible persecution under Jezebel. God's true church is not only a remnant, but it's a scattered remnant. And it really always has been. That's one of the marks that identifies Rome as a false church. Rome has its headquarters. Here we are, and so forth. But the true church is scattered. It's a remnant. It's scattered, and it's scattered by persecution and by false shepherds who creep in among Christ's people. They don't feed the flock. And so all of these factors we know from Scripture go together to result in a scattered remnant. Acts chapter 8, for example, there arose on that day a great persecution. against the church in Jerusalem. And they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. And of course, as they were scattered, what were they doing? Preaching the gospel. And so the word of God then was scattered. They were to take the gospel into all the world. And Christ uses a scattered church then to do this. And we've seen this. We've seen these things. playing themselves out in our own small flock here. Christ's true people who hear his word and love his church are scattered around this nation. They're scattered around the world. But Christ builds his church. Now, what I want to do this morning is to call your attention to Paul's letter to the church's epistle to the church at Ephesus and examine one of the chief ways that God builds his church, that Christ builds his church. And we've been studying this passage in the midweek Ephesian series Bible study. But I think it's so important, it's so important that I want to make sure we all hear it and hear it more than once. Now, many people, many Christians, when they hear, well, we're going to have a teaching on Ephesians chapter 5 on marriage and the family, they approach this with trepidation and fear, right? Here it comes now. Here it comes. One of the reasons that I want us to look at this passage together again and more closely is that of late, as I've been teaching through it, I've seen that this passage presents a beautiful picture. Not only is it not something that we should be afraid of, but it's something that we should see the beauty of Christ in it. Because what do we see here? We see Christ and his bride, the church, and his love for the church, and the church's love for him. So if you've got reservations, we're going to get hammered again about this submission thing and headship thing and so on. If that's the way that you've been feeling, like you approach this scripture, and let's just hustle by it and get through it, well, put all of that stuff aside, because that's not where we're going to be going then this morning. I think that I more fully understand this passage now, more than I have. Well, follow it. It's in your handout here. As I read it, Ephesians 5, starting at verse 17. And you don't want to just start down at verse 22, where it starts talking about wives submitting their husbands. You've got to back up to the main heading here, verse 17. Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit. Underline that, right? Be filled with the Spirit. Addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. singing and making melody the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor. without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound, and I'm saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, This is the first commandment with a promise that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Well, when Christ's people understand this instruction, these commandments, and obey God's word here, and when marriages and families, households, are functioning as Paul instructs us here, one of the chief ways in which Christ builds his church will be working. The next generation. Psalm 78, Deuteronomy 6, the next generation will arise and fill the ranks in the body of Christ in the church. It's not fail-safe. Godly parents certainly have, like the father of the prodigal, right? God himself has prodigal children, so this is not fail-safe. But nevertheless, one chief way that the Lord builds his church is through godly parents, godly grandparents, godly great-grandparents, and raising the children and the generations to come up in the Lord and passing on, handing on that baton of the gospel and true faith in Christ. Now, here's something that's not so beautiful. We'll let the Lord apply it. I think it's a truth here that we know is true. And it's this. Largely, this has not happened in this church. And we're not alone in this. This is happening in churches all across the land, probably even around the world. Because how can we say that? Where's the next generation? Where is the next generation in this church? Abraham's here. We got one, right? But where is the next generation? There's been a few exceptions, but the large majority, those of you that have been here for, which is most of you, for very long at all, the large majority of the next generation, children who grew up, we watched them grow up, in this church today are not in the church. They're in the world. They've embraced the world. They're not following Christ. And why is that? I know what the chief reason is. The chief reason is because the parents were like the Israelites in the wilderness. If there ever should have been a generation of people on this earth who successfully would have been, who it would have been easy to pass on the Lord's word and obedience to the Lord, to pass it on to the next generation. It should have been that first generation of Israelites. Think of the incredible things they saw, right? The plagues, the Passover, the crossing of the Red Sea, thundering at Mount Sinai, on and on and on. But what happened? What happened? They didn't pass what they knew about the Lord onto their children. They perished. They perished in the wilderness, like Korah and his children. They all perished in judgments. The parents hardened their hearts against the Lord. And as a result, Christ here was not present in these families, that the children are off and out into the world so that the The parents led their children right down Broadway, all the while insisting, oh no, oh no, we're certainly following Christ. Now we need to face up to that and examine it in light of this scripture. It's not my purpose this morning to discourage anyone. It's the Lord's job to convict, right? It's my job to present you with what God's word has to say and to bring it to bear upon this vital subject. So that where we need to repent, we repent. And where we ask the Lord to empower us and lead us in obedience to his word, well, then we certainly want to do that. And if you're thinking, well, you know, Well, that's great if I had a time machine. I could go back and raise my kids, right? We always have opportunity, even as grandparents, even as great-grandparents, to influence the next generation, maybe even the third and fourth generations then. So let's begin at the beginning, where Paul begins here. It's in verse 18, really. Do not get drunk with wine, for that's debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit. Be filled with the Spirit. As we've studied this passage in detail in the midweek Bible study, we saw that Paul, before he gets into his instruction regarding husbands and wives, children and parents, employers, employees, and so on, the first thing he says, be filled with the Spirit. That's the prerequisite. Be filled with the Spirit. In other words, as we're going to see, he says, the first thing that has to happen, you must be born again. If you're going to raise up godly children, you've got to be a godly person, right? A few years ago, you might remember, I preached a sermon series on the family, and specifically in the subject of raising up godly children And the first message in that series was along these lines. You must be born again. And the subject of that sermon was simply, parents can't pass on the baton of Christ to their children if the parents don't know Christ. It's not going to happen. And as I found out later, indirectly and so forth, there was a couple of sets of parents that did not like that. They took offense at that. And what they're reading into it is, how dare you say I'm not a Christian? Well, I actually didn't have anybody in the congregation in mind. I was simply presenting this should be very logical. But you see, there was conviction happening there. Why? Why? Because they knew full well that their children weren't walking with the Lord, and it was becoming more and more Evident. You can fake it. As a parent, you can fake it with a two-year-old, right? But try to do that with a 15-year-old, right? Things begin to get more difficult. But these parents, they had this attitude, hardening of heart. How dare you imply that I am not a Christian? But the thing is a no-brainer. It's where you have to start. And that's where Paul's starting. I'm going to give you instruction in these practical relationships in life, but I'm speaking to you as Christians. You must be born again. Be filled with the Spirit, and that's where he starts. I can kind of sum that up this way. If our marriages and families and other relationships with brothers and sisters in Christ are going to be all that the Lord intends them to be, we must be born again. Only Christians are indwelt by the Spirit. And Paul is giving us hands-on examples here of how the Spirit of Christ in us will lead us, particularly in the church. He's addressing Christians here. He's addressing Christians. He's addressing Christian husbands and wives, children of Christian parents. He's addressing Christian employers and Christian employees. And he's doing this because he's saying, You all have an opportunity here in your daily walk and conversation in the world to model the beauty of Christ to a lost world. You have. But the first thing you've got to do, you have to be born again. And if you are going to be ruthlessly honest with yourself and you have doubts about that, then it's time to start saying, Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner, and to humble yourself. But we've seen it over and over and over again down through the years, parents who claim to know Christ. And it's not just in this church. Verla and I experienced the very same thing in the first two churches we were at in Montana, the very same thing. Because years have gone by, the next generation and the next generation. And I can kind of check up on people like that. You can do that, look on the internet and so forth, and you see these results have not been good. The results haven't been good at all. Here and there, here and there, there will be a godly next generation, but not all that often. So I don't think I'm overstating the case. The evidence supports this. And so here's a very sobering and serious thought for us to consider. If we don't know the Lord, if we're deceiving ourselves about being a Christian, then as parents, grandparents, as the previous generations, as a church, if we're faking it, then we're going to be leading the next generation down Broadway to destruction. And this subject weighs on me because we've seen this happen in this church over and over and over again as the years go by. Verla and I saw it in our own families that we were raised in. The family that I was raised in, church-going, claiming to be Christian, and so forth. But I was the only one saved out of that family, my parents. led my other siblings down Broadway, Verla's parents. Siblings went then the same direction. Now, we know from the parable of the rich man in Lazarus something very, very sobering. Here it is, Luke 16. And he said, this is the rich man in Hades in torment, father, talking to Abram, I send him, that is Lazarus, get these guys mixed up, Diaves, we usually call the rich man Diaves, and even though it's not in scripture, and then Lazarus is the poor man. And so Diaves is saying to Abraham, send Lazarus to my father's house, for I have five brothers. Now remember, they've all died. So in order to send Lazarus back to his family, Lazarus is going to have to be raised from the dead. This is not the same Lazarus that Jesus raised from the dead in John 11. But he's saying, send him back into that world that he can warn them, warn my five brothers, lest they also come into this place of torment. But Abraham said, what did he say, basically? Too late. And besides, they have God's word. They have the scripture. They have Moses and the prophets. If they won't believe them, they won't even believe if a man rises from the dead. They won't even believe it. Now, don't miss this. Part of this wicked man's eternal torment, that was some maybe 2,000 years ago. I think these were real characters here. And Jesus named the poor man, beggar Lazarus. But that's some 2,000 years ago. He's still there in torment. He's only just begun, you see, eternity. But part of this wicked man's eternal torment is his knowledge that he helped lead his brothers to hell. He knows it. And so it will be. So it is with ungodly parents, right, when they perish for all eternity. They will lament that they led their children to hell instead of pointing them to Christ. You see. And that will be there. I don't know if they will see one another in hell. That's kind of doubtful. You don't get the idea that there's fellowship in hell. If they did see one another, I'm not sure what they would say to him. Thanks, dad. Right? He's going to know it. So facing these hard convicting issues, right, convicting for all of us, if you're listening and you see that, you know, I've been failing in my marriage, in my family, God's word is, look, look, to anybody, today, If you hear his word, do not harden your heart, right? This is today. You're hearing God's word today. Don't harden your heart. Humble yourself. Start calling out to the Lord to show you mercy, to save you and your children. Don't play the hypocrite. Look, we have God's word on this. He can't lie. Whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. Right? That's a fact. That is truth. Now, let's summarize Paul's instruction here about marriage and the family. Talk about the way that it is supposed to be. Verse 21, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. Now he's just said, be filled with the Spirit. And then he gets to this, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. Submission is central. He's going to address it not only in marriage, not only in the family with children and parents, and not only in the workplace with the Christian employers and employees there, He is telling us, then, those are just three examples. He could go on and on. He's telling us that this submission out of the fear of the Lord, out of reverence for Christ, that he's talking about is not a slavish, servile submission. It is a fruit of the Spirit. That has to be good. It is a fruit of the Spirit then. It is actually then an expression of love for the brethren, this submission business then. So if we're going to raise godly children, they have to see the fruit of the Spirit modeled for them by their parents in their homes. And this entails, then, submission. Wives to husbands as to the Lord out of reverence for Christ. Here it is again, verse 23. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its savior. Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. And if you'd like more detail in this study of this passage, you can go to those videos on YouTube, and we covered that in more detail. And we talked about that word everything. Everything doesn't mean an absolute everything. Tells you to go kill this guy. Well, that's not included under the umbrella there. Wives, moms, grandmothers model Christ to their children, model the true church to their children in this way. Their submission to their husband models submission of the church to Christ. The Lord's made the husband head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. Now, to do this, you must be born again. It is a fruit of the Spirit and being filled with the Spirit. But failure to live out this divinely ordered submission is what's going to happen. The children aren't going to see Christ. They're not going to see Christ. Why would a child growing up in a home that's characterized by hypocrisy, Why would that draw them to Christ? It really isn't a big puzzle as to why the next generation isn't happening then, you see. Now, at this point, I can emphasize with a wife who might be responding to this with anxiety and discouragement, why would she be filled with anxiety and discouragement. It's because, if she's a Christian, it's because she's married to a man who's not fulfilling his role, his head, right? This thing, see, marriage in the family, as Paul is describing it here, it's a beautiful thing, but all the parts have to be working, functioning as they're supposed to function. or it won't be a beautiful thing, it will be broken. Well, God moves on now, Christ moves on, Paul moves on to instruct the husbands, and he has a lot to say. Listen to it again, verse 25, husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound, and I'm saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects husband. Now note that here then that the Lord has a lot more to say to the husband than he does to the wife and that makes sense. He's made the husband the head. He's the one who is ultimately responsible. And what is the essence, the central meat of God's instruction to the husband? Husbands love your wives. Husbands, love your wives. Now, if a husband is a Christian, and if he's obeying then Christ's commandments, if he's loving his wife as Christ loved the church, how tough is it going to be for a godly wife to submit to that headship? It's not going to be hard. She desires it. A Christian wife desires that, craves it, to have that kind of godly headship. The marriage will be functioning as God intends, the home and children and everyone will be blessed. But if you violate these commands, If you violate, well, I don't like God's instruction here. I think we can do this maybe a different way or whatever. Or, oh, that just seems too hard. I don't want that responsibility. If you violate those commands, if you reject God's instruction for marriage and a family, you will be leading your children to hell. And there's no soft pedal way to put it, all right? you will be leading your children to hell. And I think that in ways we could sum up, you know, the Lord's blessed this church a lot over the years. He's preserved us. He's given us a good ministry and outreach. We've seen people come to Christ and to be saved. But largely, as a whole, If you put the names and faces and families and households up on a big wall, right, and there would be a lot of them, and you had to give that a title, I think a fitting title would be The Lost Generation. The Lost Generation. Parents have not raised their children up in the nurture and admonition, then, of the Lord. And the fundamental problem. The fundamental problem is mom and dad didn't know Christ. They're faking it. Easy believism. Doctrine matters. Doctrine matters. We have to be challenged by God's word. You must be born again. You must be born again. You have to be born again. You won't even be able to see, let alone understand, the kingdom of God or God's word. than if you're not born again. Now, a little note of encouragement here so that we don't lose anybody. I think that people listening to a message like this sometimes might be saying things like, I believe all that. I believe all that. But I can't do that. You don't know how messed up my life is, and you don't know how messed up our family is, my marriage is. You don't know. There's no point in even trying. Nobody can fix this. Well, if that's your thinking, first of all, you need to be admonished before you're encouraged, because that's unbelief. That's unbelief. But let me ask you this. Are you more messed up than these people? Just listen to a few. Are you more messed up than these? Mark chapter 5, they came to the other side of the sea to the country of the Gerasenes. And when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs, a man with an unclean spirit. He lived among the tombs, and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain. He'd often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day, among the tombs and on the mountains, he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones." Are you more messed up than that? Jesus healed him. He freed him. Right there. Don't think that Christ can't invade your your family, if you will humble yourself, call out to him. Whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. Or Luke chapter 8, soon afterward, he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the 12 were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities. Mary, called Magdalene, check this out. from whom seven demons had gone out. Have you got seven demons? Are you as messed up as Mary? Jesus fixed her. He delivered her. We could go on and on. 1 Corinthians 6. Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Don't be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God." Here's the punchline. And such were some of you. That was the makeup of the church at Corinth. That's what these people, they were a bunch of worse than losers, right? But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. and by the Spirit of our God. Are you more hopeless than any of those people then? Are you more hopeless than the Apostle Paul, chief of sinners, who's persecuting then the church? How many of them did Jesus cure? 100%. Every single one of them, because he came to set us free. If you're not free just because, You haven't humbled yourself and pleaded with him, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. Whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. But these situations that we've seen come through this church one after another, one after another, one after another, and the next generation is lost. And off out into the world they go. What was it? What was it? It was that parents would not humble themselves and say, Something's wrong. Something's wrong in our home. Something's wrong in me. They wouldn't do that. They wouldn't do that. The heat was turning up, the light of God's word, and they run on to continue their own facade and hypocrisy and delude themselves into thinking that their children are just, well, they're just, they're fine, you know, they're off. in the world. How is the husband to love his wife? Paul is not talking here about a mere warm fuzzy feeling, right? That's not what he's talking about. He's talking about the love of God, which is the fruit of the Spirit. You must be born again. You cannot love your wife, husbands, as Christ loves his church if you're not born again. The thing's impossible. You can't do it, you see. So Paul doesn't leave this instruction to love your wife with just that. It's not just a feeling or an attitude. It's far more. This is the love with which Christ loves his church. And that love acts. It does, right? We see two exercises of this love in this passage, verses 25 and 26. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word. The first action of this love that Paul's talking about here is Christ gave himself up for her, for his bride. The giving of self. The giving of self. Christ came into this, he emptied himself of his glory. We don't even comprehend what that means, right? That he had with the father. Comes into this dark land of Mordor. fallen world, surrounded by sin, where he would literally give himself, his life, his blood, on the cross then for us. That's the love of God for his the love of Christ for his bride. That's the love with which husbands are to love their wives, giving themselves for her. And you can work out the details of the application there. It is a fruit of the Spirit. It is denying oneself for another. It is taking up your cross to follow Christ and to obey him and the husband giving up himself for his bride. It is not simply giving things, it is giving oneself. that Paul is talking about here. Many marriages, many that claim to be Christian, are devoid of that giving of self. It's two people living under one roof, and that's about the size of it. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, that two shall become one flesh. This requires union with Christ. and union then with one another. If this is not what a marriage is, some serious self-examination needs to take place. Am I born again? Am I filled with the spirit here, you see? But that's not all that loving one's wife means. Listen again. That he might sanctify her. having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself." Now, here, in this instruction, in this exercise of love, it becomes very apparent that this is impossible for an unregenerate man. You must be born again. You must be filled with the Spirit, because this exercise of love, this functioning of the husband as head, the leader in spiritual things, involves him having on his heart to promote the sanctification and Christian growth of his wife and his children. He is to teach and model the word of God in his home. And it is by that word that he washes his wife, you might say, that metaphor, enabling her to grow in Christ and to be without blemish. So any husband who's not obeying this command, you see, to deny himself, to take on, to be the leader, the spiritual leader in the home, seeing that his family knows the Word of God, he's teaching his family, he's leading his family in the things of the Word of God. Apart from that, let's not be deceived, the husband is not loving his wife. He does not. He loves himself, but he does not love his wife. So in many marriages and homes, many that even claim to be Christian, the next generation has never seen these things, which means it's never seen Christ in action. You see, this is why it's a no-brainer why Satan has attacked marriage and the family as he has. He knows the family, a Christian family, Christian husband and wife, is a seedbed. for the next generation of the church then, you see. But I think I can see, at least in the three decades that I've been here in this church, this thing's been hanging on us like a plague in this church for a long time. This thing can become, as it did with the Israelites in the wilderness, generational, so that we begin to ask, We know Christ has his remnant, and he will always build his church. But still, you ask, will there be a next generation? Where is this generation that is to fill the church? A nasty, destructive cycle is set up when husbands and wives, parents, are not functioning. in this beautiful way that Paul describes for us in the home. Because if the husband, as so often happens, absconds, he's AWOL from his position and responsibilities, headship, head of the home, right? He's AWOL from it, so what happens? The wife often picks up the responsibility, you see. And then he starts to resent that. And this thing in it just keeps feeding in this vicious, nasty, nasty cycle, you see. Both must be functioning in this manner. Now, I wanted to make, say a few words here about Baptists, right? We can talk about us, we're Baptists. Specifically, we are a Reformed Baptist church. And that means, among other things, that we differ in doctrine or practice from our pedobaptist brethren in regard to how we view the children in the church. Typically, Baptists will view the children in the church one way, and pedobaptists, like conservative Presbyterian churches, will view them another. And herein is a source of our problem that we've seen here in this church. Let me explain. Pedobaptist churches, Bible-believing true churches like conservative Presbyterian churches, practice infant baptism, which we don't. But in some ways, more importantly, their attitude toward children of believers in the church, church members, believers, differs. from what I think we as Baptists need to take a careful note of. Pedobaptists believe that the new covenant in Christ has some similarities to the old covenant in which children of parents in the old covenant were also in the covenant, all right? In other words, pedobaptists believe that the children of believers are in the church. Not that the children are regenerate, or that the infant baptism saves them. That's not what they believe. But that they are in this fear, influence of the church. They are separated from the world. They're separated from the world. Let me read you a passage here. First Corinthians. It's first when Paul's talking about marriages and so forth. And it's verse 14. And he's telling a Christian woman to stay, remain married if her unsaved husband's willing to live with her, to stay there in the marriage. And he says, for the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife. And the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband. For otherwise your children are unclean, but now they're holy." How can he talk about, in the New Covenant, the children being holy? But we Baptists say, no, no, no, they're just like all the other pagan kids in the world. They have to be born again. But Paul's telling him, the presence of believing parents, even one believing parent, sanctifies, in a sense, sets apart that family, those children in a way that the rest of the world's children are not, that there is a difference there. So we should take issue with the thinking that the unregenerate children of Christian parents are no different than the children out there in the world then at all. No, they're not saved. But in some way, because they're children of believing parents, they're regarded as holy before the Lord. You might explain it this way. They are extended certain privileges by the Lord that other children then are not. So it's an error to just stand up and say, Well, the children in this church aren't in there. They're not in the church. There's no different. And I've heard one guy that used to be an elder here say this frequently. He would just say, well, you know, my kids are, yep, they're going that direction and this direction. And some of that's not all good and stuff. But it's up to them. It's up to them. They have to decide. I can't save them, it's up to them. They have to believe in Christ. Well, the problem with that is like any half-truth, that's leaving out the rest of the truth. And he was simply saying that because he didn't want to have, he was removing any responsibility then for this from himself. Children of believers have the privilege of being among God's people on the Lord's day. They have the privilege of being taught by believing parents in the instruction of the Lord. They have the teaching to be separate from the world, to be encouraged in a biblical way to be separated from the world, to be provided with Christian education and catechism and teaching them the truth about Christ's churches. And I think we have to say that in many ways, pedo-Baptist conservative churches have done a better job than many Baptist churches then. have, you see. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction, then, of the Lord. I heard a man, and also a guy who at one time attended this church for a long time, he said to me, I mean, he actually said to me, after hearing decades of biblical teaching and instruction in this church, He said, you know, I'm proud of my children. They're adults, right? I'm proud of my children. They're honest. They're hardworking. They're responsible. Now, none of them have shown any interest in Christ. But I am proud of my children. And he showed no grief whatsoever, the fact that his children are on Broadway and headed for hell, which apparently he was then How could a real Christian father say that? How could he say that and not be bothered at all? Yeah, I'm proud of them. They don't have any need for Christ. Well, buddy, apparently you don't either, you see. If parents, I don't say this absolutely, but absolutely it's generally true, all right? Put it this way. If parents see their children one after another, growing up and choosing the world instead of Christ, then something is seriously wrong in that home. A Christian husband who loves his wife as Christ loves the church, and a Christian mother joyfully able to submit to such a husband, raising up their children in Christ's instruction, should expect to see their children growing up in Christ and being that next generation in the church. And I think we see that. Well, let me read to you here. from Deuteronomy 6 as we end, and you have to say, well, apparently that's what God is saying. If we obey his word, he will bless our efforts and we'll see the next generation, a godly generation. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and 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 rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant. And when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. It is the Lord your God whom you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear. You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you. For the Lord your God in your midst is a jealous God. Lest the anger of the Lord your God be kindled against you and he destroy you from off the face of the earth. You shall not put the Lord your God to the test as they tested him at Massah. You shall diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God and his testimonies and his statutes which he has commanded you. And you shall do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord that it may go well with you and that you may go in and take possession of the good land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers by thrusting out all your enemies from before you as the Lord has commanded. When your son asks you in time to come Parentheses. Your son, your children, are not going to ask if they don't see you doing these things, all right? When your son asks you in time to come, what's the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rules that the Lord our God has commanded you? Then you shall say to your son, we were Pharaoh's slaves in Egypt, and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. We were slaves to the devil, and Christ brought us out of that slavery with a mighty and powerful hand. Father, we pray that the words of your scripture here would strike deeply into our hearts and minds now today, that you would enable us to examine ourselves by your spirit see if there be any hurtful, harmful way and sin in us, that we might see it and repent of us. We pray, Father, that you would give us all hope and show us ways that we can instruct the next generations and where necessary to confess to our children that we have not obeyed the Lord's commands and that we would begin then to do so and show our children Christ. And we pray all of these things in Christ's name, amen. You take your Trinity hymnal and turn to number 674, I Need Thee Every Hour.