In this sermon, the speaker shares personal experiences and observations about the transformative power of God's word. He emphasizes the importance of having a fear of God and recognizing His judgment. The speaker also discusses the dangers of idolizing worldly things and neglecting our love for God. He highlights the significance of teaching children about God's commandments and cultivating a love for His word through family devotions and memorizing Bible verses.

Train up a child in the way he shall go, and when he's old, he will not depart from it. That's a promise from God, that if you and I train up a child in the way he shall go, when he's old, he will not depart from it. And yet, in 2002, a report released by a major US denomination on family life, they claimed, quote, 88% of children raised in evangelical homes leave church at the age of 18, never to return. 88% of children raised in evangelical homes in the United States leave church at the age of 18, never to return. I mentioned previously that we have three children, one of each. When our children were young, we were warned by sincere Christian folks that when our children became teenagers, they would naturally go through a stage of rebellion. Folks, it didn't happen. Our children never gave us one moment of grief. Not a moment. And I believe it's because my wife and myself instigated certain biblical principles, principles that kept our children in their teenage years. And these principles are not an absolute guarantee that your children won't have a rebellious teenage time, but they certainly work for us, and I hope and pray they'll work for you. I'm going to share with you seven principles that work towards bringing a child to Christ. Principle number one, true and false conversion. Make yourself familiar with the biblical truth that when people make a commitment to Christ, when the net, the gospel net, is filled, that true and false are alongside one another. Do not assume that everyone who names the name of Christ is genuinely saved. And many Christians do. It's a tragic error. In Mark chapter 4 and other places, Jesus gave the parable of the sower, in which he spoke of the good soil harrow, the stony ground harrow, and the thorny ground harrow. The stony ground and the thorny ground harrow are false conversions that sit among the church, but in a time of tribulation or temptation or persecution or the cares of the world, they fall away. Tears among the wheat, foolish virgins with the wise, bad fish with the good, goats with the sheep, true and false conversion alongside one another until the day of judgment, when God sorts out the genuine from the false. These are people that would expect heaven. They'll cry out to Jesus, Lord, Lord, and he'll say, Depart from me, you worker of iniquity, I never knew you. These people expect heaven, but they'll end up in hell. What an absolute horrific tragedy. Something I'm sure you don't want to happen to any human being, let alone your beloved children. And children are very vulnerable when it comes to false conversion. It's very easy to get a decision for Christ from children. And many children Bible teachers actually do that. They don't realize the damage they're doing. So you can get me 100 kids in the room, I can guarantee to get you 95 decisions out of those 100 kids. All you will say this. Anybody know how you get to heaven? Tell me. That's right, you give your heart to Jesus. Any of you kids want to go to heaven? All of you. Who wants to give their hearts to Jesus today? All of you, except the kid that's not listening. Seriously, it's so easy to get decisions from children. And what it does is it reveals the shallow nature of our theology. The Bible says salvation is the law of the Lord. No man can come to the Son unless the Father draws him. God gives repentance, acknowledging the truth. Unless you repent, you shall perish. And a child must have a knowledge of sin, which comes by the law. Paul said, I had not known sin but by the law. That knowledge of sin produces genuine contrition, sorrow. And godly sorrow works repentance. And when a child exercises repentance towards the God he has offended and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ, when his trust is in the Savior, then he brings forth fruit worthy of repentance. Fruit to show that he's genuinely regenerate. Then you can say, aha, this child is genuinely saved. From what I see. Many parents and children's workers have zeal without knowledge. Zeal without knowledge is a bad thing. If you get on a plane and you meet the pilot and he's got zeal, but no knowledge, you're in trouble. He says, oh, I love to fly, it's so exciting, I just don't know how to do it. Let's go. That's zeal without knowledge. When you lead a child in a sinner's prayer, when he's four or five or six or seven or eight or nine or ten, and then he hits the teenage years, and the sexual desires begin to arise, and suddenly girls or guys look more exciting than boring Sunday school, then they fall away. And the latter end becomes worse than the first. They say, I've tried it and it didn't work. I was talking to a woman the other day. She came up and she's all excited. She says, my little Tommy, or whatever his name was, he gave his heart to Jesus. He was looking at the communion juice, and I said, you can't drink heaven unless you give your heart to Jesus. Do you want to give your heart to Jesus? He said, yes, and then he was allowed the communion juice. It's kind of like planting trees. You and I can prepare the soil. We can put the seed in the soil. We can water it, but we can have nothing to do with it actually growing. That's God's business. He makes it grow. And we can prepare the soil of a child's heart by teaching them the commandments and teaching them the fear of the Lord and necessity of repentance. We can plant the pure, good seed of the word of God. We can water it through prayer, but it's God that gives the increase. We must remember that. And the way to give that pure gospel is just to do what Jesus did. He used the moral law, the Ten Commandments, to bring the knowledge of sin. You can see Jesus doing that in Mark 10 verse 17 and Luke 18. And that's what we teach through our program called The Way of the Master, our television program. Again and again we say we must do what Jesus did. We must imitate Jesus as we've been commanded to if we want to see people genuinely saved. Listen to this letter we received from a lady who watched the television program. We were so excited to see and hear this message, we went to the website, and I listened to True and False Conversion, which is an audio teaching on our website livingwaters.com. She said, It was incredible. I've been very concerned in particular about our oldest son Isaiah, who had made a profession of faith about a year ago, but I hadn't seen any evidence of fruit of true repentance. When I heard True and False Conversion, I realized that he hadn't truly repented. The Lord led me to begin with the fruit of the Spirit versus the works of the flesh. He was clearly convicted. From there I went into the law. I kid you not. At two different times Isaiah was so broke and he tried to literally run out of the room. He cried so hard he almost fell out of his chair. I have never seen anything like it before in my life. When we went from judgment to the foot of the blood stained cross, his entire demeanor changed. Broken without hope, he reached for our blessed Savior. I was right there when my baby was saved from hell. I cannot express my gratitude for the Lord's hand upon your ministry. I've observed little buds of fruit in him. The most beautiful fruit is his tears now for the lost and his desire to share Christ with others. He was so hard-hearted before. The second principle is to trust the instruction book. I have a friend. His name is Scotty and his wife Carol. They drove me to do some meetings once. As we were driving back, we talked about music, Christian songs. Carol said to me, Scotty's written a few songs, one got published. I said, really? Sing it, Scotty, go on, sing it. So Scotty says, I don't know. I said, sing it, come on. Scotty began to sing the song that he had written that got published. It was from Psalm 27 verse 4. One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple. And as Scotty sung, tears rolled down my cheeks. Because 7,000 miles away, years ago, I heard the song that Scotty had written. It was a worldwide Christian hit. It just spread through the church, internationally. Like wildfire, because it was such a beautiful, anointed song. But Scotty sung it a little different from the version I'd heard down in New Zealand. A little different from the Praise 7 album that I'd heard it on. But I didn't dare correct Scotty, because he was the author. He was the composer. The arrangement that they'd published just was slightly different at one point. The ungodly think that they can ignore the Bible and call the tune in life's issues. They're self-appointed experts, and they don't realize that God is the author of all things, and we dare not even whisper a word of correction. Especially when it comes to instructing and bringing up children. As parents, what we've got to do is always do what the Word of God says. The world will try and correct us and say, Oh no, you do not use a rod on your child. The Bible says, if you spear the rod, you will spoil your child. But if you chase them regularly, you'll save a soul from hell. That's what the Bible says. Proverbs 23, verse 14. And what parent wants his child to go to hell? And what we've got to do is think about the eternal welfare of our children, and not how we feel when we become upset and having to chase our child. Our oldest boy, Jacob, was six years old. He said a word to his mother that he wasn't supposed to say. It wasn't even in rebellion. He just said it, and I told him never to say that word. I said, go to your room. He went to his room. I let him wait for a moment. I went in there and I said, what did you do wrong? He said, I said that word I shouldn't have said. I said, bend over the bed. And I got a little stick and went, like that. He burst into tears. I went out, got a Kleenex or a tissue, brought it back, gave it to him to wipe his eyes. And I said, I'll be back in a few moments. I went out the room for five minutes to leave him to himself. I came back in. I knelt down and looked in his eyes and said, you know why I spanked you? You know why I used that rod on you? Because I love you. I care about you. I want to teach you right from wrong. I said, you better pray and ask God to forgive you. And then we'll go out and you can apologize to your mother. I said, you pray. And he prayed. And then I prayed for him. We went out and he apologized to his mom. Then he sat at the table writing something. I began helping my wife with the dishes. And I felt tug-tug on my sleeve. And I looked around and my little six-year-old was reaching up, holding a note to give me. I opened the note and the note said, I love my dad. That made no sense to me. I just got to stick and spank my kid in the place designed for that purpose. And he had burst into tears and pain. And yet he was saying, I love my dad, because at the age of six, he could see the motive for why I did what I did. Because I love him. Even a child can understand that. Now, one of our neighbors had a six-year-old kid. My boy used to play with him. She would never spank her child. She loved him too much. If he was naughty, she'd give him candy to go to school. He said, I'm not going to school. Yes, you will. Here's some candy. OK, I'll go to school. She would bribe him to obedience. At the age of six, he was holding a toy gun at his mother saying, I hate you. I hate you. I'm going to kill you. You see, there's the world's way, and there's God's way. Tragically, the world refuses to use the rod of correction to drive foolishness from the heart of the child. Because that's what the Bible says. If you use the rod, you will drive foolishness from the heart of your child. If you leave it there, he'll grow up, become a teenager, get into drugs, get into sex, and bring tragedy and grief to his parents. Principle number three. Never, ever give in to moral compromise. You see, the Bible says without holiness, no one will see the Lord. What is holiness? It's separation from sin and from the sinful world. And only you know if you're living in holiness. Only you know if you truly are a friend of the world, and therefore an enemy of God. And what you and I must do is have a tender conscience and ask God if we love the things He loves and hate the things that He hates. You see, if you and I have a casual acquaintance with the sinful world, what we may see as a casual acquaintance, our children may see as blatant hypocrisy. If we love entertainment, which many professing Christians do, entertainment that glorifies sex and violence, the question arises, are we loving the things of this world or the things of God? Every time we compromise our Christian walk in front of our children, we're letting the word hypocrite enter their minds. A good friend of mine was given an opportunity to star in a movie, a Hollywood movie. And he called me, he says, Ray, he says, I've got a problem with this movie. He says, it's a beautiful romantic story, it's so wonderful. But he said, right at the end of the movie there is an intimate conversation and then I have to kiss the woman at the end. He says, I can't do that. He said, what would my wife think and what would my children think? And what would people who know that I'm a Christian think if I kiss this woman at the end of this movie? He said, the offer is $100,000 to do the movie. I said, what about getting some plastic lips? I said, how about the both of you ride off on white horses together into the sunset holding hands? I said, how about a stunt double? He says, no, it would still look like me from the back and they'd make a 10 second kiss, look passionate, last for about 20 or 30 seconds. He says, I just can't do it. And he turned it down. I wonder how many of us would be tempted to kiss a member of the opposite sex for 10 seconds and reap $100,000. I so admired him for his integrity. And I told him a story. A famous British politician was sitting at dinner table. And he turned to a woman next to him and said, would you go to bed with me for a million dollars? And she said, I would think about it. He said, would you go to bed with me for a dollar? And she said, what kind of woman do you think I am? He said, madam, we've already established that. We're now negotiating the price. You see, the question arises, how much would you and I prostitute ourselves for? What would tempt you and I to compromise our Christian walk? $100,000? A million dollars? A dollar? It makes no difference to God what the amount is. And you and I should not be tempted by any amount to compromise our Christian integrity. We should have the mindset that we wouldn't be morally compromised in our Christianity and cause our children to stumble for any amount of money. Principle four. Establish a family altar. What do we mean by that? It's essential that you and I make the time. We don't just take the time, we make the time to establish a family altar and build it out of the heavy rocks of resolution. We've got to resolve in our minds to say, I will be stubborn about this issue. I'm going to have an altar of sacrifice, a family altar, because there is going to be a battle on. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual powers and spiritual wickedness in high places. And they will seek to discourage you from doing this because it's so important. What's more, your flesh won't want to do it. Circumstances will come in and make you too busy to set aside a time of family devotions where you read the Bible and pray with your children. Circumstances crop up. The kids may moan, but what you've got to do is make it a priority. Make it a priority. As I said, it will be an altar of sacrifice. Your sacrifice, your time, your energy, and sometimes your dignity. For years, our children heard, 6 o'clock, reading time. And whatever we were doing, we would ignore it. Come together as a family. Open the Scriptures. Have a time of prayer. Again, you'll find many excuses. You're out working, and in the heat of the day you come home, you're tired. You say, I've got no ability to teach the Bible. But there's one very powerful reason why you should do it and why you should ignore those excuses. Eternal salvation of your children. So I'm going to give you some practical points on establishing a family altar. 3,000 times we've gathered together as a family over the years. And these principles do work. The Bible says in Ephesians 6 verse 4, And you fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Often pride will masquerade as inadequacy. You say to yourself, I just don't know if I can read the Bible or teach the Bible in front of my wife and my family. Uh-uh. Humble yourself. Forget what your wife thinks. Forget what your kids think. Forget what you think about your inabilities. Be concerned with what God thinks. If you're not used to praying out loud, tell everyone to close their eyes so they can't see you. See, think about your instincts as a human being. Your instincts as a parent. When you have children, this is what you'll do. You will teach them what will harm them and what will not harm them. You'll teach them about fire. Don't put your hand in the air. It'll burn you. Don't go and fall in that water. You'll drown. You'll teach them instinctively from your experience what is harmful to them because you love your children. And what you must do is the same spiritually. Do you love your children? Feed them then spiritually. Clothe them in righteousness. Teach them the importance of learning to clothe themselves in humility. Educate them as to what will harm them and what will not harm them in this life and in the next life. So when you gather together as a family, open in prayer. Say, how do you open in prayer? I'm just not used to that. Well, just begin with thanksgiving. The Bible says we enter His presence with thanksgiving. Say, oh God, thank you that we're together as a family. Thank you for food. Thank you for clothing. Thank you for your Bible, for the gift of eternal life. And then open the Bible and just read through a few verses. Go through them before, become familiar with them, and then open them up. And with your children, you'll get your kids saying, say, what do you think of that verse? They'll say, I don't know. Kids do that. You find kids go through certain stages in their life. This is how a teenager worships God. They go through stages. They just stand there, waiting to get out of church. And I guess thousands of times I heard my kids say, I don't know. I'll tell you what I think it means. Our children are all grown up now serving the Lord. My daughter is making babies. Easy's wife, she used to work for a ministry. Now she's busy bringing up those children. But my two sons work for a ministry. They love the Lord. Use devotions, that family time, to communicate with your children, to build a relationship with them. Do not wait until your children are in their teenage years to begin communicating them with them, having a relationship. By then it may be too late. When my daughter was little, I'd been preaching open air in the local square. I suppose I had about 50, 100 people listening as I preached for about half an hour to an hour. Afterwards, a group of guys came around me to ask questions. And I'd taken my daughter into the local square that day. And while I was speaking, I heard... Now I'd trained my child, my daughter, not to interrupt when I was speaking to adults, especially when I was talking about eternal issues. And she was saying, Dad, while I was talking. I thought, well, I've trained her not to do that. And then I heard, Dad, a second time. So I reached out my fatherly hand and just rubbed her warm little head just to let her know that I knew that she wanted to talk to me and she was just to wait for a few moments until I was finished with this important conversation. And as I patted her warm little head, I realized what the problem was. An incoming seagull, a bird had dropped right on her head. And she was saying, Dad, you see, what you and I have got to do with our children is cultivate a relationship with them so that when they are hit by life's seagulls, they will come to tell us what is on their mind. We're the ones they'll seek out for their problems and their concerns. As I said earlier on, when you establish a family altar, it will be an altar of sacrifice. You will have to lay down your dignity. You see, play act with your children. For many years, I acted out Bible stories. I would stand up on a couch and I'd be Goliath, defying the armies of the living God, and my little kids would get pillows and throw the pillows at me and they'd go, whoa, and fall down. I'd act out Daniel in the Lion's Den. And so do that with your children because when you do that, they remember what they see and what they experience. If they hear a story, they'll remember a certain portion. If they hear and see, they'll remember more. But if they hear, see, and experience, they will hold on to what you've taught them. And there are only a certain amount of years when the kids are impressionable. I remember once my kids were growing up a little, and I was on the floor, and I was illustrating something brilliantly on the floor, rolling back and forth, and I looked up at my kids and they weren't impressed. They had an expression on their face as, what kind of nut is my dad? And I looked back up and thought, boy, they're not impressed any longer. The impressionable years had gone. So you've only got a certain amount of time with your children to teach them what's right and what's wrong. The other thing that made a difference in our family devotions is that we would not have four hours of family devotions reading Leviticus. What we did is have little Bible stories. They'd last 15, maybe 20 minutes. We'd have Bible verses they'd memorize. When they memorized the verse, we'd give them some candy. If you don't like giving your candy to kids, give them some broccoli or something as a reward, or some cauliflower or something exciting like that. But it's important to make your children feel that it's a good time and then just say, having a good time, kids? Right, we'll stop here, we'll close in prayer, and we'll come back tomorrow and pick up the story. Give them a little book, and when they learn a memory verse, have them write it out, and let them be that special book that you take it off, and after a week when they know that memory verse, you give them some sort of little reward as an incentive. And use anecdotes, little stories with humor in them. We've got something called the Evidence Bible that's filled with anecdotal stories. And always remember, a family that plays together, stays together. There's the old saying, a family that prays together, stays together. That's true. But also a family that plays together, stays together. When my kids were little, I went through a second childhood. We went hunting frogs, just for fun. We didn't eat the frogs, we sold them. Frogs are wonderful toys for kids. They don't need batteries, you don't need to wind them up, and they hop everywhere, and they eat flies. Great toys, frogs, and we used to sell them. The kids made some pocket money. We'd go and buy a chicken from the supermarket, roasted chicken, and we'd, on the way to this pond to catch frogs, we'd sit in a forest and eat it, caveman style. And the kids just loved it, we loved it. I loved the disappearance. When my wife would go out, as soon as she stepped out the door to go to a meeting, we'd open a recipe book and bake a cake together. I mean, the cake was often a failure, but it was so much fun with the children, that we'd eat it afterwards. And it wasn't just a matter of eating roast chicken and eating cake that didn't work out, it was building that relationship, that friendship, with the children that have lasted a lifetime. And then a family that prays together does stay together. Every day, before our family parted, we'd gather together for prayer. The kids would hear TLP talk, time of prayer. We'd gather together for a time of prayer and just pray God's protecting hand would be on the children. After we had devotions, we'd pray before devotions, after devotions. When the kids went to bed, we'd pray with them. We'd teach them to pray. Which brings us to principle number five, and this is so vital. Teach your children the Ten Commandments. Again, the key to bringing any person to Christ to do what Jesus did. To bring that law which brings the knowledge of sin, to apply it to the conscience. To open up the divine nature of the law as Jesus did on the Sermon on the Mount. It's what Paul taught in the Book of Romans. It was the great key to the success of the ministry, such as Charles Spurgeon, John Wesley, George Woodfield. Charles Spurgeon said, I do not believe that any man can preach the gospel who does not preach the law. Such a statement is contrary when it comes to modern evangelism. All they think they have to do is preach the gospel. But there is a biblical way to preach the gospel. The law prepares the way for the gospel. What it does, it's like if you want a little light to shine, you don't go out in the noonday sun and say, look at my little light. No, no. You take it to a dark place, and then your little light will shine. And what you must do with the gospel is preach the darkness of Mount Sinai. Paint a black picture, so when the light of the gospel comes, it's a glorious gospel, it's a brilliant gospel. It's the cure that comes to the disease. It's the seed that's planted in the soil that's prepared. Spurgeon said, You lower the law and you dim the light by which man perceives his guilt. He said, This is a serious loss to the sinner rather than a gain, for it lessens the likelihood of his conviction and conversion. I say you have deprived the gospel of its ablest auxiliary, its most powerful weapon, when you have set aside the law. You have taken away from it the schoolmaster that is to bring men to Christ. They will never accept grace until they tremble before a just and holy law. Therefore the law serves a most necessary purpose and must not be removed from its place. So is it biblical to teach children the Ten Commandments? Well the Bible says so. God told Israel through Moses in Deuteronomy 6, verses 7 through to 9. He said after the law was given, He said, Teach the law diligently to your children. He told them to talk with their children about the commandments when they sat in their houses, when they walked with them, when they lay down with them, when they rised up with them or raised up with them. He said, Bind it on their hands and on the front of their eyes. He told them to put the law on the posts of their houses and on the gates. It couldn't be more clear that God wants children to be taught the moral law of the Ten Commandments. So what I'm going to do is go through the commandments very briefly in the book that's been published by Genesis Publishing Group, How to Bring Your Children to Christ and Keep Them There. We've expounded the law far more fully. But I'm going to go through some of the commandments so you can see the power of God's law to bring the knowledge of sin. The first commandment says, I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other gods before me. That means God should be first in our affections. We're to love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength and to love our neighbor as much as we love ourselves. Many years ago I purchased a television set for my children to watch TV in the afternoons, cartoons, wholesome cartoons just to entertain them. And the first day we had the television, I came home from work, opened up the door and said, Hi kids, I'm home. I thought, where are the kids? You know what they were doing? Watching television. Dad's homecoming, the highlight of their day, had become a non-event. So I walked in, I says, Kids, I turned the television off. I said, kids, I got that television set for your pleasure, but if it comes between you and your love for me, it is going because you're setting your love on the gift rather than the giver. And if you and I love mother, father, brother, sister, husband, wife, sport or our own life or our ministry or our sport more than we love God, we're setting our affection on the gift rather than the giver. It's called inordinate affection and it's a transgression of the first of the Ten Commandments. The second commandment is you should not make yourself a graven image. You should not make a God to suit yourself either with your hands or with your mind. For one say, I believe God is like this. I believe God is, and they shape a God to suit themselves. They make a God in their own image. When there is one God, He said, I am the Lord, I change not. See, some say, oh, my God would never create hell. My God's a God of love and mercy. Well, if someone says that to you, agree with them. Say, you're right. Your God would never create hell because He couldn't. He doesn't exist. He's a figment of your imagination, the place of imagery. You've shaped a God to suit yourself. It's called idolatry, and it's the oldest sin in the book, and the Bible says idolaters will not inherit the kingdom of God. Third commandment says you should not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. Well, let's go back to the second commandment. Here's an illustration that will be remembered forever by your children. Go to your refrigerator and get out an egg. You know, a liquid chicken. An egg. And what I want you to do with that egg in front of your children is drop it. You say, I can't do that. Yes, you can. You can do all things through Christ who strengthens you. You say, no, I can't just drop an egg. Well, don't drop it. Just put it in the air. Gravity will do the rest. You see, what you want to do is illustrate something very important to your children. They may see you get a thousand eggs out of the refrigerator and break them into a ball. They'll forget that. But they'll never forget the day you opened the fridge and got an egg out and dropped it on the ground. You say to your kids, why did that egg break? They say, ah, it hit the floor. Say, it was because of something called the law of gravity. You can't see it, but there is a law. And if you jump out of a plane without a parachute, you end up like the egg. So kids, don't break the law of gravity. Don't step off buildings. Don't jump out of planes without a parachute. Remember that. Kids, you're surrounded by all sorts of laws. If you get a fork and stick it up an electric socket, you don't want to do that either because there's the law of electricity. But both the law of gravity and the law of electricity are nothing compared to the moral law. If you violate that law, the Bible says you will die. The soul that sins, it shall die. And it's not just one death. The Bible speaks of two deaths. It speaks of the second death, when your soul is cast into hell. And so let your children's eyes widen a little as you talk about the uncompromising nature of natural laws and of that spiritual, eternal law that each of us have transgressed. The third commandment, do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. I don't know how anyone can use God's name as a cuss word. But people do that internationally. God gave them life itself and every blessing they ever attained and they use His name to express disgust. They hit their thumb with a hammer instead of saying some filthy word that comes to their mind to express their disgust. They take the name of Almighty God that godly Jews won't even speak or even write because it is so holy and they use it as a cuss word. And the Bible says the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain. In fact, Jesus said humanity hates God without cause. They don't hate the God of their own creation but when they read the God of the Bible they are offended at that God. And when your children hear people in the world cuss His name it will substantiate what you've already told them that humanity hates God without cause because what greater insult can you pay your enemy than to use His name as a cuss word. Fourth commandment is remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. A good way to illustrate this to your children is you get seven pieces of candy or seven vegetables and you say here is a gift for you. You're going to have a whole seven pieces of candy. There you are. That's a gift. I give it to you because I love you. May I have one back? Just one. He said that's all God requires of you. He gives us seven days a week. He wants one back. Remember to teach your children that that law isn't something we keep to make it to heaven. The law can't justify us. It just shows us we're selfish by nature. God gives us seven and we don't want to give Him one day. See I went for 22 years before I was a Christian knowing that God had given me life and never once did I say God you gave me life what do you require of me one day in seven. The fifth is honor your father and mother. Ephesians 6 verses 1 and 2 says honor your mother and father that your days all may be well with you and your days may be long upon the earth. Teach your children to honor their parents. Why? Because God says if you want everything to go well with you and you want long days on the earth a long life, honor your father and mother. And some may say I can't honor my mother she was a prostitute or my father was a very wicked man. We're not told to honor our parents because they're worthy of honor. We honor them because God commands us to do so. I said to my children you honor me not because I deserve it but because God tells you to. I'm a sinner by nature. I don't deserve honor. When God says something do it. Sixth commandment you shall not kill. But Jesus said if you get anger without cause you're in danger of judgment. And the Bible says whoever hates his brother is a murderer. The seventh commandment is you shall not commit adultery. How do you tell your children about that one? I remember we were having family devotions and we were sitting around as a family and I looked down at my Bible and it said let your fountain be blessed and rejoice with the wife of your youth. Let her be as a loving hind and pleasant roe. Let her breast satisfy you all times. Be ravished always with her love. I thought how can I read that? So I looked at my son and I made a big mistake. I said Jacob would you like to read that verse? I didn't say Jacob read that verse. I said would you like to read that verse? He says nope. I said Rachel would you like to read that verse? She says nope. So I looked at my wife. I thought she'll help out. I said would you like to? She says nope. So I had to read it myself. And the reason I had a problem with that verse is because I suffer from what's commonly called Smirkinson's disease. You see when I go to talk about the subject of sex with children I smirk. I can't help it. My mouth turns up at the edges. I get slightly embarrassed and smirk. It's called Smirkinson's disease. You may have it too. I don't know. When my boy was six years old I says Jacob are they talking about sex that your friends talk about? He says yes. I go oh no. I have to talk about what's commonly called the birds and the bees with my little boy. So I went to start talking and the Smirkinson's disease started coming. I started smiling. I had to walk out. Three times I went. But I eventually did. Well how do you do that? How do you talk with children about such a sensitive subject as adultery? Well all you do is say that you should only sleep with a person to whom you're married. Nobody else. Children are happy with that. And then tell them you know Jesus said if you even desire to go to bed with a member of the opposite sex even desire it you're committing adultery with them in your heart. And teach them the words of Jesus. Matthew 5, 27, 28 You've heard it said by them of old you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you whoever looks upon a woman to lust after her has committed adultery already with her in his heart. Review that verse again and again and again. Psalm 119 verse 11 says Your word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against you. And that verse may keep your child from sexual sin. And have them learn 1 Corinthians 6, 9 and 10 Do not be deceived. The unrighteousness, do you not know the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Be not deceived. Neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor effeminate nor abusers of themselves of mankind nor thieves nor covetous nor drunkards nor evildoers nor extortionists shall inherit the kingdom of God. Here's a good little illustration. Go and buy a brand new toothbrush. Clean, fresh toothbrush. Get it in this packet and say Kids, look at this. It's a new clean toothbrush. Follow me. Take it out of the packet. Go out to your car and clean the wheels with the toothbrush. Then clean your shoes. And then grab your dog and clean the dog's teeth. And then go inside and get some nice white, pure white paper and wrap it up. Get some tape. And then say to one of your kids I'm giving this toothbrush to you as a gift. And explain what marriage is about to children. Why a wife is dressed in pure white. In marriage a woman dresses in white to signify purity. But if she has slept around with other men she is offering her husband a used toothbrush. And say to your kids, say Kids, keep yourselves pure for the one that God has for you to marry. Eighth commandment, you shall not steal. Teach them if they open someone's wallet and take out one dollar it's as serious as taking out a hundred dollars. God's not impressed with the amount that we steal. And say thieves will not inherit the kingdom of God. And then tell them what a lie is. It's bearing false witness. And open up scripture and show where all liars will have their part in the lake of fire. See, we may not think lying is a very serious thing. God does. It's a very serious thing in God's sight to bear false witness. And the tenth commandment is you shall not covet. Teach them that it's wrong to desire things that belong to other people. And then show them James 2.10 Whosoever shall offend in one point of the law is guilty of all. Get a mirror. And then draw a little square on the mirror. No, no, write out the ten commandments. It's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. And then get a hammer and say, Okay kids, see one of these commandments? I'm just going to break one of them with a hammer. The kids are like, don't, don't, don't hit it. If you break one, you'll break them all. It's the same with God's law. The law of the Lord is perfect. Psalm 19, verse 7 says. If you've got a perfect vase and you drop the vase and get one crack in it, you've shattered its perfection. If we violate in one point of the law, the Bible says we're guilty of all. And then look for the stopped mouth. When you go through the commandments, if they've done their work and the conscience is tender, what will happen is the child's mouth will be stopped. He won't justify himself and say I'm a good person. He will know that he's sinned against God. Look for a humble heart, a humble attitude. And if they're present, then bring the good news of the gospel. The soil has been prepared. Bring out the pure seed of the gospel. The disease is being diagnosed. Bring out the cure. Say children, God knows your heart. He's seen your thought life. Nothing is hid from the eyes of him with whom we have to give an account. There's going to be a day of judgment when God punishes murderers, thieves, liars, fornicators, blasphemers, and those who have spoken idle words. That God doesn't want you to end up in hell. He sent his son, born of a woman, born of a virgin, a perfect sinless man to suffer and die on the cross, taking your punishment upon himself. You broke the law. Jesus paid your fine in his life's blood. Then he rose from the dead and defeated death. And you say to your child, if you'll turn from your sins and say, God, please forgive me, and put your faith in Jesus, God will give you a new heart and make you a new person. Should you lead a child in a sinner's prayer, if you look at the good soil hearer in the gospel of Luke 8, you'll see the good soil hearer is he that hears and understands. I was there when my three children were born. Childbirth wasn't as hard as I thought. It was hardly painful at all. And I saw my children get born. In fact, I think the third child, the doctor was late. He was playing golf or doing something, but he was late for the delivery. So a nurse brought the child into the world. And I realized when there's no complications, childbirth is a breeze. It's a kind of supernatural process. All you have to do is guide the head. The man is there. And it's the same with the supernatural spiritual birth. If there's no complications, all you and I have to do is guide the head. Philip, the evangelist, said to Ethiopian eunuch, he said, do you understand what you're reading? He was guiding the head. Is there a knowledge of sin? Does a person understand there's sin against heaven? Do they understand that Christ died for them? Then you say, well, you pray. You ask God to forgive your sins. And then you pray for the child. And finally, just teach your children the fear of the Lord. Psalm 19, verse 23 is perhaps my last verse. The fear of the Lord tends to life, and he that has it shall abide satisfied. He shall not be visited with evil. Do you want your child to live a satisfied life? Do you want them to live forever? The fear of the Lord tends to life. So teach your children the fear of the Lord. Teach your children about the reality of future punishment. You see, the Ten Commandments preached without future punishment are like aiming ten unloaded cannons at someone. Who's going to be fearful of cannons that aren't loaded? We must say God has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness. That will produce the fear of God in his heart. The fear of the Lord is such a powerful thing. And the Bible says of the ungodly, there is no fear of God before their eyes. But even as a child, Romans 2, verse 15 told me, the work of the law was written in my heart. I had a knowledge of God even as a child. It wasn't brought up in a Christian home at all. God has given light to every man. At the age of 16, I was at this teenager's dance. And I found myself out the back of this dance, in long grass, lying with a pretty young girl, beautiful girl, in the dark. And I looked at this girl, and she looked at me, and she said something that I'll never forget. You know what she said? She said, you know, God's watching us. I thought, because I was a red-blooded teenager, beautiful girl, and she says, God's watching us. It was like a big bucket of ice water. And I said, well, let's go inside. We went back to the dance. You see, I didn't say, oh yeah, God's watching us. So what? He doesn't see everything. I didn't say that. I knew in my heart. I knew in my heart. I had a conscience. I knew God in my heart. I knew He held me accountable for wrong deeds, all written in my conscience. And that little bit of the fear of the Lord may have saved two lives from a terrible tragedy. So teach your children the fear of the Lord. You know where Jesus said in Luke 12, verses 1 to 5, He said, and I say to you, my friends, do not be afraid of them that can kill the body and afterwards can do no more. But I will forewarn you whom to fear. Fear Him who after He has killed has power to cast them to hell. I say to you, fear Him. I don't know if you're like me, but I tend to say, amen, amen, without thinking very deeply. But think what we've just heard. Think of this scenario. A man comes to you with a knife that long, with serrated edges. And he takes it and plunges it into your chest. And you feel a knife go through your chest and out the other side and a gush of blood comes. And you know you're going to die in seconds. Just the thought of that terrifies me. You know what Jesus said? Don't fear Him who can kill your body and afterwards can do no more. What was He saying? Jesus was saying, does the thought of a man coming to you with a knife and plunging it through your chest terrify you? That is nothing compared to falling into the hands of the living God. Fear not Him who has power to kill your body and afterwards can do no more. But fear Him who has power to kill your body and cast your soul into hell. Fear Him. Why doesn't the world fear God? Because they're encouraged into idolatry. You see, the seed of idolatry is already in the heart of the unregenerate imagination. And modern preachers often provide generous man-made fertilizer to make it grow. Especially American television. Television preachers. They will share life's principles on how to succeed as a human being. How to do this. How to do that. How to have a good marriage. How to have a successful business. How to be successful. They'll preach everything but sin, righteousness and judgment to come. They don't preach repentance. They just preach biblical principles for the world. It doesn't produce the fear of the Lord. In fact, they stay away from preaching the fear of the Lord. They're known as seeker-sensitive churches. Churches with thousands and thousands of people who come in and never hear the word wrath, judgment, lake of fire, repentance. Never hear words like that. Why? Because they don't want to make people feel uncomfortable. They don't want to upset them. They're filling their churches with false conversions. The Bible says there is no fear of God before their eyes. You see, sin has merely become something that separates from God and stops us enjoying a wonderful plan. When in truth, sin is a super-magnetized anvil for the steel hammer of the justice of a holy God. There's no fear of God before their eyes because it hasn't been brought before their eyes. But not with you. You've got to teach your children the fear of the Lord. Because the angel of the Lord encamps around them and delivers them. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Blesses the man that trusts in Him. Oh, fear the Lord, you His saints. There is no want to them that fear Him. Psalm 34. So make sure you teach your children the Ten Commandments. Because if you skip around the law, they may just skip around the cross. And finally, this is the final finally, be a good example to your children. You have an opportunity to have a great influence over the life of a human being. And if you're evangelistically minded, that will impress his or her mind as to what a genuine biblical Christian should be like. If you're not evangelistically inclined, then ask yourself this question. What would you think of a rich man who was waxing his car, polishing his car? He's got a real nice shine on it. And he looks over and some kid from the neighbors is falling into a swimming pool and the child is drowning. But he says, oh, look at that child drowning. Man, I love my car. What sort of man would do that? And that's what the contemporary church is filled with people just like that man. They're waxing bold in worship. They're loving God and worshiping Him. Sinners are sinking into hell and they couldn't care less. Don't be like that. Reproduce after your own kind. Show your child what a Christian should be. Be an example to those children you so love. So to summarize those seven points on how to bring your children to Christ, obviously with God's grace involved. These principles that are based on Scripture is teach your children, teach yourself about the reality of true and false conversion. Trust the instruction book. Never compromise your Christian walk. Establish a family altar. Teach your children the Ten Commandments. Teach them the fear of the Lord. And finally, make sure you have a concern for the salvation of the lost. Let's close in prayer, shall we? Father, thank You so much for Your Word which is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. It shows us what we should do and what we shouldn't do. And we pray that You would help us to understand the exceeding sinful nature of sin. Help us to understand what You did on the cross for us. You'd give us wisdom and that we would be fully instructed in the doctrine of the fear of the Lord. That we would fear You and thus obey You. In Jesus' name we pray.