This week I had two very long conversations with people from churches other than our own, but who know about our church. And one of them was a conversation in which an individual paid us a tremendous compliment for our simplicity, our emphasis, in fact, upon simplicity, because emphasizing simplicity in a complex world, emphasizing simplicity in the context of churches that complicate people's lives by busyness is an exception and not a rule in contemporary Christian culture. In fact that person said that we were unique in that and I'm thankful for that emphasis upon simplicity. The second conversation I had was about a two-hour conversation with some old friends in Walmart, or as they call it in East Texas, Walmarts. And in the context of that discussion, they were graciously, and I say graciously criticizing because they were not vindictive or vitriolic toward their pastor, but they were just saying, our church is too busy. In fact, they said our church is so busy that really it is deemphasizing the gospel, deemphasizing Bible study, And they gave me a for instance on Wednesday night, they said the minority crowd shows up for the Bible study. The majority crowd is involved in all kinds of other activities in the church. And so our singing this morning, which is very simple, and our praying, which is very simple, and our quietness and reverence and those things served as reminders of those conversations and of reminders of how we have a relatively distinct approach to worship. One of the things we emphasize about simplicity is the importance of simplicity for your home. You live in a complex world. Your life is probably very complicated. The last place that you should find complication is church. Church should be a refreshing change from the complications of the world, whether that's the intensity of life or the problems that you face in life. Church should be the last place for things to get complicated for you, and that should feed your philosophy of home. Now, one thing I've talked to you about through the years was the importance of evangelizing your home. You have no higher responsibility, other than your responsibility for your own home. And of course, this primarily falls upon fathers as the spiritual leaders of their children and husbands as the spiritual leaders of their wives. You have the high and hardest responsibility of all. God holds men first accountable as examples and encouragers in their homes. Though fathers and husbands, it's squarely upon your shoulders. but also squarely upon the shoulders of mothers and wives is responsibility of leading your children to the Lord Jesus Christ. And so my topic today is how shall I bring my little child to Jesus? Again, other than your responsibility for your own soul, which is your first and foremost responsibility, you have no greater responsibility than bringing your children to the Lord Jesus Christ. Of course, there are many philosophies and methodologies out there about how that is to be done. I remember years ago, when I was first preaching, that would have been 36 years ago, and I believe it was 36 years ago to the year, A former quarterback from a Southwest Conference University was now an evangelist. And bannered all over Tyler, Texas was this banner that said, David is coming. You drive a little ways and you'd see another banner say, David is coming. And I thought, wow, I need to go hear David. And so I went to hear David. And when I drove into the parking lot, there were scores of big church buses that had brought children from everywhere. And I walked in the auditorium of a huge church, and there were not just hundreds, but at least a couple of thousands of children in there, not just in the pews, but lining the aisles and in the balcony. They were everywhere. And so they had a song service, and then David came to the pulpit. And it was David's job to scare the hell into children. That's exactly what he did. He preached on hell and rhetorically roasted all the children in the congregation. And then at the end of his sermon, he asked the children how many of them wanted to go to hell. And of course, I don't think anyone raised his or her hand that they wanted to go to hell. And after that, he gave a stirring appeal about going to heaven. And guess how many children were saved that evening? countless hundreds of children were saved. That's a very common deception. Jesus Christ did not come into the world to save us from hell, but He came, thou shalt call His name Jesus, He came, thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins. Being saved is about being saved from sin. And by the way, if you're not saved from sin, you're not saved. Because salvation has a transformative effect upon us ethically and morally as well as spiritually. And of course, there are many other deceptions. And here I will cautiously say, because I have so many dear friends who are Paedo-Baptists, people who believe in the sprinkling of infants. that paedo-baptism is an unintended deception. It causes the conscience to relax, making the parents and the child think that the child is now a member of the kingdom of God, not just a member of the church. In the words of the great Princeton theologian A.H. Hodge, quote, we treat our children as Christians until they prove themselves otherwise." Well, if that were my case with my sons, it would have been about two years old when I figured out they were not Christians. And if you've ever had a baby, you know that depravity sets on early in its demonstrative proof, and maybe even earlier than that, because even babies can lie from the crib, can't they? David said, the wicked are estranged from the womb They go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies. But you have this profoundly sobering responsibility of bringing your children to Jesus Christ. And this will be a very simple sermon. And little Hannah was my inspiration. for this sermon, and we're so thankful that she's made her profession of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And God willing, this afternoon we're going to baptize her, and I showed her all the magic motions of baptism and the magic handkerchief with which I cover her face. And Edward, thank you for your prayer, because the ordinances do preach. The only ordinance that preaches the death, burial, in resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ is the ordinance of baptism by immersion. Now, parents, I want to give you three principles whereby you may bring your little child to Jesus. Listen carefully. They're easy to remember. One is the imperative of the law. You bring your child to Jesus by the imperative of the law. Two, you bring your child to Jesus by the narrative of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And three, you bring your little child to Jesus by the demonstrative proof of the duties and the beauties of grace. Now, listen carefully. How do I bring my little child to Jesus? The first way you do that is by the imperative of the law. The imperative of the law. Some of you know the word pedagogy. If you are familiar with Christian education, particularly classical Christian education, you hear the word pedagogy banded about. And the word pedagogy, you may know, comes from two Greek words, pedo, or paideia, or paidos, which is another form of the word. But pedagogy, paideia, means a child, a child. The other part of that word, pedagogy, comes from the Greek word A-G-O, not like a while back, but a-go is the word for I lead or I bring. And so educational pedagogy has to do with leading or bringing a child. Well, there's a pedagogical aspect to bringing your child unto the Lord Jesus Christ. And just as there's an elementary school and a middle school and an upper school in education, there's an elementary school in bringing your child to Jesus as well, and the elementary school of bringing your child to Jesus is the imperative of the law. In fact, in Galatians chapter 5, when Paul says this, the law is our what? The law is our schoolmaster, you could translate it, the law is our headmaster to bring us unto Christ. If you want to know how to bring your children to Mount Calvary, take them first to Mount Sinai. No sinner ever reached Mount Calvary, but first he traveled to Mount Sinai. The law is very important for your children to know for two basic reasons. Listen carefully. Number one, the law is God's instrumental means of fortifying the conscience in preparation for salvation. God's law is his instrumental means of fortifying the conscience in preparation for salvation. Now, when you tell your child, don't do this or do that, what happens in his little mind? Well, he or she begins to process no and yes. Do I say yes to yes? Do I say no to no? Or do I say no to yes? And do I say yes to no? Do I do what my parent says not do? Or do I not do what my parent says do? Anytime you tell your child yes or no, do this or don't do that, you are instigating in your child, you're triggering a process of moral rationalization. In other words, you're activating the conscience of your child. Now, parents, you have to be very sure that what you ask of your children is proper, appropriate, and ethical in concert with the righteousness of God. But when you say, don't do that, or do this, you are triggering the mechanism of conscience. And when the mechanism of conscience is triggered in a child, that child will begin to think about yes or no to what you say. This is precisely what the Apostle Paul taught the Romans. He said, when those who don't have the written law by nature do what is in the law, those who don't have the law show the law written in their hearts. And here's a profound thing for you to know, parents. When you say yes or no to your child, and it's in concert with God's holy word, not only are your words reinforcing the law of God, but your words are echoing something that is already in your children's heart. The Bible is very clear that With a pin of iron and point of a diamond, God has inscribed His thou shalt nots and thou shalt in your children's hearts. And the parent who is negligent of affirming God's yeses and God's no's is allowing the inwritten law of God to recede into darker and darker recesses of a fallen soul, whereas the righteous who reminds his child what he should do and what she should not do is, as it were, constantly dusting off the law, constantly shining the light of God's truth upon the law, constantly fortifying the child's ethical sensitivity. Paul says when people, even if they don't have the writ law, yet have the law upon their hearts, And when they have a sense that they shouldn't do this or they have a sense that they should do that, it begins this trigger of thought processing. And in thought processing, you can do one of two things. You can excuse yourself or you can accuse yourself. In fact, those are Paul's exact ideas. When you know something is wrong, you can excuse yourself and say, oh, for this reason I can do that, which is what your child does when he or she wants to disobey you. You say, no, don't do that, and your child somehow processes a conclusion that's contrary to your negative command, and the child says, oh, yeah, I can. Yes, I can. That's the conscience excusing. What you want is the opposite effect. You don't want the conscience to excuse the child when he faces a no that is a right no, or a yes that is a right yes. You want the child's conscience to accuse the child. You want the conscience, as it were, to say to the child, your mom said no, God's word says no, that means no. That's what you want your child to learn. And when the law says yes, or the mother's tongue says yes, you want your conscience accusing the child with the rightness and righteousness of the mother's decree. Now, in theological terms, the little yeses and nos of the home, while they are ethical and they are inherent to your authority as parents, and by the way, that is part of God's law, honor honor your father and mother, or as Paul put it in the New Testament, children, obey your parents. He qualifies it, obey your parents in the Lord. So, the very yeses and nos, even if it's on little things like don't touch that candelabra, or no, you can't have a cookie, or yes, you are going to bed right now. Even those things, they're not specific to the law, they're yet specific to your authority as parents. Dr. James Dobson says one of the great failures of contemporary parenting in the United States of America is the loss of parental authority. Parents tell their children, Grady, when they should get up, but they don't necessarily reinforce it, or they tell their children what they want to do, and they don't reinforce it. There's a loss of power in the parents' words, and in that loss of power in your words, there's a loss of authority, and in your loss of authority as a parent, you are in fact violating and enabling your child to violate God's holy word. so if as a parent your authority is impotent or anemic you are in fact contributing to the sinful behavior of your child in dishonoring you so even the little yes's and no's of the home are tangential to God's concept of honor thy father and mother and I know you know the other commandments and by the way In your Bible study, in your homes, one of the most important things for your children to know is the Ten Commandments. I am Yahweh, your God, and you shall have no other gods before me. Do not make unto yourself any graven image. Do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Do not kill. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Honor your father and your mother. Do not commit adultery and do not covet. Your children ought to know the specifics of the law of God because God in the creation of the human being saw fit to inscribe upon the fleshly tables of the heart His law. And if God has ordained the writing of His law upon the hearts and minds of men, how high is the responsibility of parents to echo that law, reverberate that law, clarify that law to their children. Now, the law of God is not just an ethical imperative. Ethical imperatives are important in the rearing of your children, but they also inherently possess judicial consequences when violated. God is a consistent parent. Every son he loves, every son whom God loves, God faithfully parents that son. And if he tells that son yes, and that son says no, if he tells that son no, and that son says yes, you can be assured that God is like David. Not a single word of his mouth falls to the ground. And parents, don't you see how incumbent it is upon you to be like God? Because it's through you that your children are seeing God. And as you uphold the ethical commands of God's laws, the rights and the wrongs of God's laws, not only are you responsible to uphold the ethical precepts of those laws, you are responsible to uphold the judicial consequences when those laws are broken. You can't just say, do this and not do that, and then leave the child to no consequences when he or she disobeys. To truly uphold the law of God, you must uphold it both in its ethical and its judicial force. Now, the point here is to fortify the child's conscience. You want your child's conscience to understand right and wrong, yes. You want your child's conscience to be continually reminded that it is wrong to lie, that it is wrong to disobey the parent, that it is wrong to covet, that it's wrong to violate an appointed day of worship. You want your child's conscience to be sensitive to God's holy law, but you also want your child's conscience, listen carefully, you also want your child's conscience to be aware that if he breaks God's law, there are consequences. And how important it is in your home, not just to be preaching to your child by example and preset, but proving to your child that the law has power. One of the most important things a child can learn is that when he or she does wrong, there are consequences. And again, parents, if your children are violating your ethical commands, not only is it undermining your authority as a parent, and undermining and defying the will of Almighty God. If your children are saying no to you without consequences as well, you are twice denigrating God's holy law, because by your lack of consistent discipline of your child, you are emasculating the ethical force of the law and denigrating the judicial or the penal force of the law. How much we need wisdom as parents to be like God in our affirmation of His righteousness in our homes and in our correction of our children as needed. You want to fortify your child's conscience through the imperative command of the law. Now, the law will not save your child. This is the whole essence of Paul's very complicated doctrine of justification. By the works of the law shall no man be justified before God. And so as you train your child right and wrong, and he or she sees their perennial failure, to do things perfectly as my parent would have me do, or to do things perfectly as God would have me do, is your child has this increased sensitivity to the ethical and judicial power of the law. He or she will also have an increased reality, I can't do it. I can't do it. And so you see there how training in the home is preparatory like a schoolmaster to bring the child to Christ. And how beautifully the law affords a glorious occasion to talk about what Jesus did and what I cannot do for myself. The second thing whereby you may bring your little child to Christ after the imperative of the law is the narrative of the gospel. Now, parents, the most important thing your children can know about in the gospel is Jesus Christ. It's important that they know about the law, but it's important infinitely more so that they know about the person of Jesus. and not just the sayings of Jesus, but the sayings and the doings of Jesus, and in the informing of your child's mind about God's mind, and the informing and influencing of your child's mind about the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is important that the child see Jesus. And by the way, it is equally important for you and me as adults, above all things, as professing Christians, that we see Jesus. And the way to see the Lord Jesus Christ is not in the epistles of Paul, not primarily. It's not in the epistles of John, not primarily. I think it's very interesting how much time, particularly, scholars devote outside the Gospels of the Lord Jesus Christ, and preachers as well. What's most important is seeing Jesus, and the way you see Jesus is in the Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Those are the resources. that are primary to bringing your child to Jesus Christ. My best friend in college became an agnostic, and he and I trafficked back in emails and letters about his apostasy and denial of the faith. He's a great Hebrew scholar, not great used lightly. He was a formidable Hebrew scholar. And one of my arguments was that the reason I believe in Jesus Christ is because when I see Jesus alive on the pages of the gospel, I see God. Jesus himself said that. He who has seen Me has seen the Father. God, who at various times and in sundry ways revealed Himself in the past to the ancestors, through the prophets, in the last days revealed Himself by His Son, who was the radiance of His glory. and the express image of His person. Yes, we ought to hammer the law home to our children, but in hammering the law home, we hammer the law home to take them somewhere else, and that is to the person of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Read the life of Jesus to your children. And beyond the intellectual and imaginative and spiritual apprehension of the person of Jesus through the divine revelation of the Gospels. The sayings of Jesus, particularly the symbolic sayings of Jesus, have a capacity to capture a child's mind and transform a child's mind more than anything in all of Holy Scripture. You know, it takes us a long time to explain what Paul meant. It takes us a long time to discuss Paul. He's complicated. But I would say that all of the writings of Paul put together cannot match one glorious saying of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And all of the writings of Paul fail in power to capture the mind and imagination of children. When Jesus can say to a little child, I am the light of the world, I am the bread of life, I am the true vine, I am the living water, the power of those glorious revelations of who Jesus Christ is. anointed with the Holy Spirit to the mind and heart of your children, can arrest that child in a contemplation and even an adoration of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Parents, if you would bring your children to Jesus, bring them to Him in the gospel narrative, His biographies and His sayings, His words and his doings. But also, the gospel includes three basic components, and Hannah, this afternoon when we baptize you, we're going to show via your baptism the three basic components of the gospel, and your children ought to know these three basic components. And just with these three simple things, any wise parent can explain to his or her child how it is that he or she comes to Jesus Christ. You remember what Paul said in 1st Corinthians 15, how that Christ died according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, you see Hannah, Christ died, he was buried, and then he was raised again the third day according to the Scriptures. Even the eye of a little child when watching baptism can see the gospel in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And as you train your children up in the way they should go, and bring them up in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord, and teach them the narrative truth of who Jesus was and what he said. You also preach to them the gospel of the cross of Jesus, the gospel of the burial of Jesus, and the gospel of the raising of Jesus Christ from the dead. So how do I bring my child to Jesus? By the imperative of the law, by the narrative of the gospel. And thirdly, listen carefully, and this is the most difficult part for parents, by discerning demonstrable proof of the duties and the beauties of grace. Now look at those words very carefully, discerning. For a parent to know when his little girl or when her little boy has truly come to Jesus, that parent must have discernment. Discernment is the spiritually supernatural capacity to know truth. Parent, your spiritual walk with the Lord is so absolutely critical. Your nearness to God is so absolutely critical. You're being filled with the Holy Spirit of God. It's so absolutely critical. You're having a biblically informed mind and a biblically sensitive conscience are so absolutely critical to your being able to discern a work of grace in your child. A discernment of, important word, demonstrative proof. Only God looks at the heart of your child. But you see on the outward countenance. And just because your inward vision of your child's heart is limited does not mean that your outward vision of your child's actions and demeanors and words is blind. A wise man's eyes are in his head. By your, or their, fruits you shall know them. And if you are a discerning parent, you ought to be able, by the grace of God and the edification of the Holy Spirit, to see with spiritual eyes demonstrative proof of two things in your child if he or she is coming or has come to Jesus Christ. What you should be able to see To discern in your child if he or she has come to Christ is demonstrative proof of the duties and the beauties of grace. Now, the duties of grace are one thing, and the beauties of grace are another, but there's no such thing as the duties of grace without the beauties of grace, and there's no such thing as the beauties of grace without the duties of grace. But you must know what they are. if you would identify them in your child. And here are the duties of grace. There are two. The first of which is repentance. Repentance. Repentance is the first duty of grace. And here I would be amiss not to remind you that the law is so important to the doctrine of repentance, because repentance is the ultimate conviction of conscience. The law, as you know, is necessary to an increasing ethical sensitivity and an increasing sense of the power of God's command over me, and the ultimate command of God. to you and to your child is to repent. Do you realize the first message John the Baptist preached was repent? Matthew 4.17, the first word publicly out of Jesus Christ's mouth was repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The Apostle Paul tells us that God is commanding all men everywhere to repent. That's what your child needs to know. And this happens all the time. There are little repentances going on in your home every day. Did your children repent of everything? You did that only for that long this week? Sure. Repentance is an ongoing thing in the homes of parents who are seeking to raise their children in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord. And all those little repentances are preparatory training. for the big and ultimate repentance that's going to come in the life of your child. You take a little sin, a little lie, and your child tells a little lie, a little deception, maybe it wasn't verbal, maybe it was just hiding something with the hand, or under the pillow, or doing something, or taking something, and they didn't think you heard or saw. Well, in that violation of the law, if you catch them, you confront them with and you convict them that they indeed did wrong. You ought to be able, as a wise parent, and you know, I don't have any patience with parents who can't bring their children to repentance. I'm sorry. Goodness alive! What is wrong with people who can't make their children repent? Now I can tell you when they get adolescence, it can be tough to make a child repent. But I think a formal father and a magnificent mother can make their child repent. And when your child has done something for which he needs repentance, parents, you need to make him repent. You need to do whatever is necessary to make him repent. And in that training of repentance, you're preparing them day in and day out for that ultimate moment of repentance. Now, there is a caution to be uttered here in relation to the law. And this isn't just a minor point. It's a huge theological issue in contemporary Christianity where there's misinformation about repentance. And I don't mean to say that men should not repent of lying. Men should repent of lying. And your children should repent of lying as well. And men should repent of stealing. And men should repent of every sin listed in the Decalogue. But repentance of sins delineated in the law. Listen. Repentance of sin from sins delineated in the law is not how you are saved. And I would say the whole history of fundamentalism is probably based upon a false doctrine of repentance as repentance from sins. Repentance, this is where the whole smoking and dancing thing comes in with Baptists and abstinence and prohibition. and bad movies and short skirts. You know, if I just started individualizing your sins, I wouldn't have to know what they are specifically. I could just make a little list at home and bring them in and preach about it and give them an invitation. Well, shoot, it'd be like shooting a shotgun out here. I could hit the whole mess of you. And then we could have a big invitation and a big altar call and we'd get down here and we'd repent of all that. But that wouldn't save a single soul. Because the ultimate power and force and meaning of repentance is not just a turning from individual sins, but rather it is a turning from sin to Jesus Christ. I'm not saying that the little repentances, what we might call the practice repentance, It's not important. It is. Because it does mechanize the conscience and it does exercise the will. You see, you're creating a context in which the Spirit of God can plow more easily. The day of planting comes. Please understand that if you're looking for the proof that your child has come to Jesus, It will be a deep sense, not of sins, but a deep sense of sin coupled with a deep longing for the Savior. And don't you see here how the law is yet our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ? It spells out our failures so that we can turn our eyes away from Moses and turn our eyes to Jesus. turn our eyes away from Sinai and turn our eyes to the cross of Mount Calvary. Parents, you need to have a discerning eye with regard to real repentance as the first duty of grace. Secondly, a duty of grace is the duty to believe. Believe doesn't have to do with whether or not your child wants to do that, or whether or not you want your child to do that. In the same way that repentance is an imperative, it's a divine command where God is commanding all men everywhere to repent, God is commanding your child to believe, just as He's commanding you to believe. This is often in the imperative voice in the Gospels. Believe. Believe. on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved. And here again, the power of transformation in your child's life is so important to the legitimacy of that belief. Belief in the Lord Jesus Christ is not a decision. It's not a bowed knee. It's not a bended head and prayer. It's not mere mental ascent. Believing Believing in the Lord Jesus Christ is a transformative phenomenon. When someone really repents of sin, and when someone really believes on the Lord Jesus Christ, it is metamorphic. It has a transformative impact upon them. Now, your children have different personalities. Maybe one of your children is the most rebellious in your home, and another is the least rebellious, and one is more compassionate, and one is more distant and cool. Children have different psychologies, and you know, the sweeter the kid, and the nicer the kid, and the more obedient the kid, Perhaps the more difficult to discern. Also, the sweeter the kid, the nicer the kid, the more obedient the kid, arguably the greater chance he'll be a Pharisee. We have to be very wise as serpents, harmless as doves in discerning the transformative power of repentance in faith, which brings us to this second element not the beauties of grace, but the beauties of grace. And here again a high and deep spirituality in yourself is so critical to knowing whether or not your child is a child of God. One of the most glorious things and one of the most profound proofs that Christianity is real is what we might call the spiritual reverberation. that occurs between Christian people. Last night I was watching a firework show and the lights and the boom were here, but then the boom was over here. Boom, boom. There was a reverberation. David's talking about something like this in the Psalms where he said, deep answereth unto deep. And Paul said, his spirit, singular, his spirit bears witness with, plural, our spirits. And Andrew Stupansky, a person who is mature in the Lord, possesses I won't say the infallible ability, but certainly possesses the supernatural ability to discern the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the spirit of God in other Christian people. The Bible's clear about that. Paul affirms it. His spirit testifies to my spirit that you're a child of God, and his spirit testifies to your spirit that I'm a child of God. There's a spiritual reverberation. going on in the Christian community. Well parents, you want to hear the echo of heaven in the heart of your child. And the echo of heaven in the heart of your child is what we call the beauties of grace. Now maybe I've overused this verse of scripture in this church but it is surely important to having spiritual discernment. If your child has been brought from the law to grace, if your child has been brought from Sinai to Calvary, if your child has seen Jesus Christ, if your child has come to Jesus Christ, if your child has repented, truly believed on the Son of God, Your child is going to witness to the beauties of grace from his soul. His little soul, her little soul is going to begin to emanate with love and with joy and with peace and with gentleness and with goodness and with patience and with faith and with meekness and in self-control. Those are unmistakable, concrete, definable, observable characteristics of the heart that has been renovated by grace and regenerated by the Holy Spirit of God. Your child will demonstrate the beauties of grace. in seminary, the most learned professor under whom I've ever sat, was in his 80s at the time. And he said that upon his tombstone, he wanted this epitaph. Quote, he brought men to Christ, unquote. Now, he knew that he was an academician. He knew he was a theologian. And he spoke often of his admiration Charles Haddon Spurgeon and Billy Graham. He said, Oh, I wish that I had brought more men to Christ. And what a noble desire that is for the academian. But, parent, you could have no better epitaph on your tombstone than to read, He brought His children to Christ. She brought her children to Christ. May we stand?