Sermon Tone Analysis

Teaching These Words

Part 1: Teach

Many parents are practically obsessed with making sure their children are successful.

People will move to another area to be near a school they think will give their child a better edge in life.

Some set aside money to be sure the child will be able to college or have a trust fund.

Many of us have life insurance so that our children will be taken care of if our life was cut short.

There are camps and classes and training for just about anything a child may show interest in, and we will pay the fees to be part of those activities and spend many evenings driving to and fro, and setting our calendars around the kids scheduled activities, and for many people, that means the family gathering, or the church takes back seat to those important activities, because we well ourselves that the thing we must do is to set our children up for success.

Yet, for the believer, our minds should be continually be set on the things above, not the things below.

Our outlook should be an eternal outlook, not a temporary one.

Our generation is not the first to have has this overwhelming concern for our children’s success.

But really, we must ask ourselves if this apparent concern for the children is truly unselfish.

Is it not sometimes the parents who seek to leave a legacy, so they work to build more and more wealth?

Or the parent will tell themselves that the hours they are working, so that the family is left without a parent present for most of their growing up years, that parent will tell themselves they are doing it for the children.

And yet, the thing the children really need the most is not to be left with wealth, but to be shown the way to live, and to live eternally.

Socrates noticed in his day that parents would work to build wealth, but in the end, they were abandoning their children.

He said: “Fellow citizens, why do you turn and scrape every stone to gather wealth and take so little care of your children to whom one day you must relinquish it all?”

And so it is that in today’s church, parents are doing what parents have done for all of human history, they are forgetting what is most important, and focusing on things that will not last, and often we do this to the detriment of our children.

This morning we are going to consider the next verse in the passage we have been on the past several weeks;

We must remember the context of this verse.

This is Moses speaking, and he is a prophet and priest, speaking for God himself to the people of Israel.

This is a command that is from the very heart of God.

It is not a suggestion or some sort of idealism that we should all try to attain, it is a command.

An imperative.

Every follower of God is to do this.

Moses says this in the middle of a speech where he has repeated the ten commandments and the greatest commandment.

Let’s look at the full context:

We discussed last week about verse 6, these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.

We talked about the patterns of the world, and how the church in many cases has adopted the accepted practices of the world in how we teach our kids.

One of the biggest issues is the outsourcing.

We have an entire world system in which for most people, nearly anything their kids learn is not from a parent or family member, but from a paid professional or an internet search.

How many of us go to YouTube to learn how to do something?

There is nothing wrong with this, of course, but many kids are not even given some basic life skills at home, and so they are constantly searching for answers on how to do something.

This may be concerning enough when the child leaves home and doesn't know how to wash their clothes or cook any food or manage money, but how much more concerning should it be to a Christian parent to think that their child has left the home, and even after years of church attendance, still does not understand the basics of their faith, or learned how to discern between truth and lies?

How many children leave the home and encounter strange doctrines, and because they were not solidly grounded in the truth, they are deceived and follow a false teacher, who can tickle their itching ears?

I’ve watched a lot of videos on YouTube that expose false teaching and error, and I have heard some people say that this sort of ministry, focused on calling out errors in the church, is so negative, and not a good focus for someone to be in ministry, and yet Paul and Jesus warned again and again of false teachers, those wolves in sheep’s clothing.

In fact, in nearly all of Paul’s letters to the various churches, he warned of false teaching.

Early church fathers had councils and meeting in order that the church come out strongly against heretics and their teachings.

The warnings in scripture are plentiful that there will be those who twist the words of God, just as the serpent in the garden did.

Paul commanded Timothy to preach the word; Why? because there will be plenty of teachers who appeal to the lusts of people, so those who can preach the truth must continue to be a witness for the truth:

There is a compare and contrast in this passage to be sure.

There are several imperative words in this passage that Paul command Timothy:

Preach: proclaim in a prophetic way the truths of God’s Word.

Why do people say they hate to be preached to?

Be ready

Reprove: means to bring conviction.

People who are reproved will hopefully feel convicted over their sin

Rebuke is more direct.

Exhort, that is to encourage, to spur on.

And the other imperatives are Be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

Again, those imperative words in this passage are Preach, be ready, reprove, rebuke, exhort, be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work, fulfill your ministry.

And wedged right in between all those commands is a reasoning for those commands: 2Tim4.3-4

Paul is writing this to Timothy.

Timothy is pastoring a church.

Timothy is to preach, and do all those other things in the church, why? because the time is coming (really that time is already here) when people will not endure sound teaching, they will accumulate teachers who won’t preach to them but tell them comforting words.

Like the prophets Jeremiah rebuked who told the people there would be peace and prosperity when the reality was they were being prepared for exile, so today teachers do not love people enough to tell them the warnings and commands of scripture but have figured out that if you want to win the crowd, and the TV show, and the book deals, you want to give them their best life now.

And those who accumulate these teachers who will tell them nice things, they will turn away from listening to the truth.

And how many of us, who grew up in the church have seen many people wander away for this very reason?

The danger of false teaching is just as dangerous when Jesus warned people, just as dangerous as when Paul warned, and so today those who call out the false teachers indeed have a valuable ministry.

And it saddens me that people who should know better, and frankly many pastors who I am friends with, do not concern themselves with precision when it comes to teaching doctrine and the bible, and when they see someone point out serious error in the teaching of some current popular preacher, they will rebuke not the false teacher, but the one who pointed it out, because they have a mean ministry, all they do is point out error.

Why don’t they do something more positive?

Yet, isn't that often how we learn?

Not only by learning the right way, but having the wrong way pointed out, and then explaining the wrong way and why it is wrong in light of the truth?

I know people who I think are solidly orthodox, yet when you point out the bad teaching they will say that is the wrong focus, look at the good things that false teacher also does, so stop focusing on the negative.

And perhaps now you are thinking to yourself that the preacher today has digressed beyond the passage, I thought we were in Deuteronomy?

But I have said everything here so far to drive home this very important point, that there must be no mild thoughts, no flippantly throwing away the command to teach our children to the best of our ability the things of God.

The basic lies of Satan haven’t changed much, but his methods have grown more sophisticated since the garden.

When we release our children into the world, they will encounter lies.

They will encounter people who would take delight in destroying their souls.

Look at the hate towards children in our world.

Abortion, mutilating kids who have been told they should not be satisfied with how they were born, telling them that all preferences are equal, there is no moral standards, you can do what ever you want.

Not only that, but everyone ought to support everyone else, no matter how depraved their preferences are!

I believe the USA is now a post-Christian nation.

You would have a hard time today arguing that Judeo-Christian principles are the driving force in our country.

maybe 50 years ago and longer than that there was a solid framework, that even believers adhered to societal norms that had a background in Biblical truths.

But it is not the case anymore, and the sooner the church realize that, the better.

If you think just one more election and things will get better, you need to disabuse yourself of that thinking.

There is no Christian party.

Many of the politicians still use language they know will get them Christian votes, but then they do nothing to promote moral values.

They talk about it and do nothing.

They act outraged but do nothing.

Church, it is time for us to realize this nation is not a Christian nation.

But in the church, we do not need to fear this.

Christians throughout the history of the church have thrived and the church seen growth in some of the darkest times and in some of the most threatening environments.

A modern example is China, where despite the control of the government, and how they track all their citizens, they cannot stop the exponential growth of the church.

We are in dark times.

Could God turn things around?

Of course he could.

He will do whatever He has predestined to take place.

But we can’t live our lives as though the world is going to suddenly become a place of morality.

I don’t say this at all so that we all leave here shaking our heads and acting defeated.

I say this because we need to be motivated more than ever to give our children, and every believer, the foundations of faith they need to go out into this world.

Who among our children may not be the next one God uses to light an entire region on fire for him?

And so we are to teach them diligently, these words, to our children.

And we must realize that what we spend time doing, what we spend time talking about, has much effect on them.

If you are the type of person who dreams a lot at night, what do you dream about?

Often you dream about the things you thought about during the day.

So when should we teach these things, when should we talk about them?

ALL THE TIME!

When you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise.

Do you see what is being said here?