A Vision For Our Children

Very fitting song for the message this morning. Good morning, everyone. God bless you all.

It's good to be here. It's a beautiful day out there again. For an October 5th day, I thought, I think it's a little bit unordinarily nice for this time of year, but it's always my favorite time of the year when it's harvest season.

You see the harvesters going. It always compels me to pray for the farmers that they will receive a bountiful harvest. And it seems like it's harvest season for everyone, though.

Even in construction, people wanna quickly come and finish their things. And everybody's busy, kind of like the bees are busy flying around, quickly doing what they need to do before the year's over, or the, yeah, the year's over, the winter begins. And so, yeah, it's what a blessed day.

All I can think about is that this is a day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it. And so, brother, when you ask if we're rejoicing, yes, we rejoice, we rejoice.

We have much reason to rejoice. So, yeah, welcome, everyone. God bless you all.

Let's start with a word of prayer, and then we'll get into the message. Our Heavenly Father, we come before you this morning. And Lord, we give you this hour.

It is a time when we are gathered to hear from you. And Lord, I pray that you would even speak to me as I share the message to your people. Lord, open our hearts, open our ears.

Help us to understand, help us to receive the words that you have for us today. Lord, as a vessel, I come again. Pray that you would use me to encourage your people and bless your people.

So, Father, as we spend time in your word, just open your word to us, and we will be careful to discern and to apply what we learn. For your honor and glory, in Jesus' name, amen. Continuing on that thought on this harvest season, we think about a harvest season, and we think about it the way I just explained it.

We have the harvests coming in, the food for, plenty of food for the people. God is providing, and we can praise him and rejoice in that. And then I thought about Jesus, how that he is the Lord of the harvest.

And the harvest that he's most interested in is the harvest for souls. And if we think about everything else, except for our soul, that will burn away, and that will be done away with. And that's why Jesus is so concerned about the harvest for souls.

And our souls, we were designed to be with God to begin with. And so Jesus has come, and to make that way open for us again. He has reconciled us to God, because it's the most important thing for Jesus, to receive the souls onto him again, to bring them back to God.

It's the most important thing in life, to be reconciled to God. And so Jesus is interested in that harvest, the harvest of souls. And then thinking about the responsibility that he's given to many of us here today, maybe not all of us, but many of us.

He's given us souls into our care. He's given us our children. He's given us our sons and our daughters.

And he expects us to care for them, just as a farmer would nurture and care for plants and hope to receive a bountiful harvest. Jesus expects us to nurture our children, bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, as Ephesians would say, in hopes that one day we could bring them in, into the harvest. There will be a harvest at the end of the age, one harvest for the righteous souls and one harvest for the unrighteous.

But Jesus wants the souls onto him. And so we have that responsibility. I was reading in Revelation, at the fifth trumpet, it said, an angel announced to someone like the son of man, and he said, thrust in thy sickle.

For the harvest of the earth is ripe. And then Jesus thrusts in his sickle and reaps all the righteous souls. And he reaps them onto eternal life.

I thought about us here at Eagle. We have many blessings. We have many little blessings.

We are fruitful in that. Many of us have, we're young families, but there's, some of us have one, all the way up to six children. And so we have a blessing that we've been given by God.

And our responsibility is to care for those children, bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Psalms 127 says this, that children are an heritage of the Lord and the fruit of the womb is his reward. And I looked up that word heritage.

If anybody would want to guess what that word heritage is, what would you say? When it says children are an heritage of the Lord, it says something different than I would have thought. That word means possession, property, inheritance, or gift, or all of them mixed together somehow. So if we rephrase that, then we can say, children are God's property and they've been given to us for a gift.

That's how we could rephrase it to understand clearly. And so that puts more of an accountability on us then. It can, for me, it put a new light on it that our children are God's more than they are ours.

And they've been given to us as a gift. And so my goal here for this afternoon, or for this morning, sorry, is to encourage us as fathers and mothers. So, yeah, not all of us will, it won't apply to all of us, Brother Myron and Lily and some of the younger people, but it can encourage you for the future still.

So Lord willing, that will be a blessing for you one day too, and it can be inspiring for you in that sense then. But my goal is to inspire mothers and fathers today to see our children as tender little plants and feel accountable to nurture them up and bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And that there, that I could instill a vision in us to bring up our children right for God.

And overall, I don't, I see a blessing. I see a blessing. But at the same time, we need to continually be inspired and continually to be encouraged to go that route.

So when we wanna, if we wanna bring up our children in the admonition, nurture and admonition of the Lord, and we wanna bring them to God one day as righteous souls, then we have to do a few things. And the first thing is we need to have a vision. Need to have a vision for that.

We can't just wing it, we could say. We can't just wing it. There has to be a vision to bring our children to God one day.

Proverbs 29, 18 says, where there is no vision, the people perish, but he that keeps the law happy is he. And I think many times we use this proverb a little bit too shallow. We would say maybe you have to have a goal.

You have to have a plan. You have to have a vision. But we don't see the depth of that word vision.

I think it's true, we do need to have goals and plans and have a bit of foresight to what we want for our children, for our families. But that word vision, it actually means a prophetic vision. If we remember the dream that Daniel had, he had a dream about this statue and you had the head of gold and the chest of silver and the waist of brass and the ankles and feet of iron and the toes mixed with iron and clay.

Daniel there had a vision. That's the same word. The verse says here, now I am come to make thee understand what shall befall thy people in the latter days for yet the vision is for many days.

So it's a prophetic vision. It's not just a vision. But there has to be a prophetic vision in order to prosper.

And so, okay, so another way that you can put that word is God's guidance. Not only is it a prophetic vision, but in a way it's God's guidance. It's God moving within people, guiding them and directing them.

And a lot of times God does that through people that have a bit more of a prophetic vision. He guides and directs that way. So the Hebrew word for vision is chazon, C-H-A-Z-O-N.

It means to behold, to gaze, to look or prophesy. That's that word vision. So we could say, again, we'll translate it into more understandable terms.

We would say, when there is no prophetic vision among God's people, they perish because without it they forsake God's law. And when they forsake God's law, they perish, they self-destruct, which we talked about last time. So there has to be this inner vision that God has put in here for us to see what we want for our families.

And it has to be a godly, something from within, kind of like a prophetic vision, God's guidance for us. And if God doesn't guide us, and if we don't have a vision, then it will perish, it won't prosper. And so I'm not up here standing saying that I'm a prophet.

I'm not saying that, but we do need to be inspired by God. And I think a lot of times there are brothers and sisters in the midst of a body that do have a bit more of the prophetic or more of a vision. They can see a little bit further ahead, or they can see where it will go.

And I feel like that has been in my life, where I feel, I've felt that God has put a burden on me, where I constantly ask, where is this going? What will the end of this be? If we go in this direction, I actually don't look at it about what it's gonna look like tomorrow. I don't actually look like, look at what it's gonna look like today. I actually look at what's this gonna look like in 10 years.

That's normally how I think. 10 years from now, where will this be? 20 years from now, where will this be? And I want us to think that way a little bit. Where are we going? What is our vision? The direction that we're going, where will we be in 10 years? Where will we be in 20 years? And I will say that I've especially felt this burden when we had our first child.

Children do something to us where it puts an extra burden on us. We could be going a certain direction, or we could be doing a certain thing, or we could be in a certain group of people, and we can say, well, if it's just for my sake, I'll be okay, or if it's just for mine and my wife's sake, we'll be okay. But you put a child in the midst, and it's like God puts that burden on you.

And you feel so accountable to that sweet child. And I think that's from God. You know, Samantha and I realized when we had a child that it not only affected us anymore.

The things we do, the decisions we make, the places we go, it will affect our children. And remember, children are God's property, and they've been given to us as a gift. And he expects to receive them back one day.

And so we had, I will just share a little story. We had our first little girl when I was 26 or 25, I forget. But that does something to dad, you know? That does something to, I had such a proud dad heart.

I was so proud of this little sweetie. She was so beautiful. And I remember we were in church, and then they announced her.

So where we were before, they would announce, they would announce every time there was a new birth because there was something like 300 or 400 members, couldn't always personalize everything, but they would announce that. So they stood us up, they asked us to stand up, and the pastor there introduced Lydia, Lydia Jane Nelson to the congregation. And so here I am holding the baby, and Samantha's there with no baby.

I took the baby. And then later, we sit down, sorry, honey. Later we sit down, and at the end of the message, they sent us out, pew by pew.

And here I am with a baby, walking out, and Samantha's carrying the empty basket. I think I was like halfway out, and I'm like, hey, this isn't right. And I gave her, I think I gave you the baby, right? And I took the car seat out of your hand.

No, I went all the way out, sorry. I thought I went halfway. Children do something to you, especially when you have your first one.

It softens your heart. And I was a bit immature, and so here my wife probably, two weeks, and she's carrying the car seat, but I was so proud, right? I had my little sweetheart and showed her off to everyone. And I think everybody knew that I was a proud dad.

But I started making decisions based on the love that I had for her. We started making decisions based on the love that we have for our children. And I think that's right.

I thought about how's it gonna be in 10 years from now? How's it gonna be in 20 years? How's it gonna be in 40 years? How's it gonna, I want my child to go back to God. I wanna teach her the things of God. I don't want my child to one day ask me why she can't wear immodest clothing and jewelry and makeup.

I don't want my child to ask me those questions. I wanna spare her from that. So we made decisions based on a vision that I believe that God instilled in us.

And I want to testify that that was God's guidance. Our actions based on his instilling conviction was God's guidance. We did some very difficult things and we look back five, six, seven years later and we can see exactly how God guided that.

And so we made decisions based on our children because we feel accountable to them. We feel accountable to God for them. And I think that's good and right.

Have you thought about it, brothers and sisters, where you want to dwell together in eternity with your children? You want to dwell together in eternity worshiping God in heaven one day with your family? Would it be a blessing? Would it be a nice family vacation or a family trip? I had this imagination that we go to these places, we go to Florida, we go to Banff, we go to these beautiful places. You know, West Lawrence is so beautiful. We go on walks to enjoy God's nature because in a way we see God in his creation and we feel close with God.

And here we are walking together just enjoying God's creation and we kind of get the sense that we are with God and we know that we are. And it's beautiful and it's relaxing and it's a blessing. But one day we're gonna go on a trip to a place that's far more beautiful than anything we've ever imagined.

And we're gonna behold God face-to-face. We're not gonna behold him through his creation. We're gonna see him face-to-face.

It's gonna be the most wonderful trip of our life. We're gonna experience eternal life and we're gonna have our family with us. What a vision.

Isn't that a beautiful vision? I think that's a vision for all of us. So in order to bring up a godly seed, to bring them unto the Lord, that was the first point I wanted to make, that we need to have a vision. And not just a shallow vision, a deep God-working-within-us-convicting vision that will compel us into action for the sake of our children and for the sake of our wives and for our family.

Finally, or sorry, next I wanna mention another thing. If we wanna have, if we wanna bring our children to God one day, if we have this vision, and that's good, but we need to have a partner with the same vision. That partner is your wife or your husband.

We need to have the same vision. I don't like the idea that we can agree to disagree. I think we need to have a vision together.

Maybe there's some times in minor areas where we can agree to disagree. But our vision has to be the same. Our direction has to be the same.

And so we have to have a godly marriage. And we might ask then, well, what is a godly marriage? And we can maybe say, well, to be kind to each other, to love each other, to encourage each other, to serve each other, to bless each other, and to pray together. And all these things are good, and they're all part of a godly marriage.

But I'm gonna lay something out here that's very simple that I believe is fundamental for a godly marriage. And it's out of Ephesians 5.22. And so if you don't have children yet, here's laying a foundation. Here you can start laying a foundation.

Wives, submit to your own husbands. As unto the Lord, for the husband is head of the wife, even as Christ is head of the church, and he is the savior of the body. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be unto their own husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives even as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. That is fundamental for a godly home. That must be in place in order to bear good fruit.

That's foundational. If that foundation is built in marriage, and then we start having children, then we're building on a rock. We're building on the rock of God's truth.

Wives, and I just wanna mention something here. We're talking about bringing our children unto the Lord, right? I'm telling you, over half of this message will be, it won't be practical yet. Because most of it goes into laying a foundation, having a vision, and building that foundation, which we can say is a godly marriage.

And what is a godly marriage? And then the fruit of that will automatically cause us to have fruitful children. And so I just wanna stress the importance here. Because even in Christian homes, we see that this very often is not in order.

So wives, respect and honor your husbands and submit to his leadership. And you'll notice men react positively to this. Men will react positively.

You know, honey, can you please lead in this? I don't know what to do here. Can you please lead in this? And the man will naturally say, yeah, I'll lead, 100% I will. I'm gone.

He will lead. He will react positively to that. And men will react negatively to the opposite.

Try to take the leadership position away from your husband, and you will see someone who will be insecure and discouraged. So wives, just do as Ephesians 5.22 says. Remember that God's commands are for the benefit of man.

Right, they're not because I said so. Even if they were because I said so, that's good. But remember that God's commands are for the blessing of God's people.

Husbands, love and cherish your wife. Lead out of servant leadership, not out of demanding leadership. And you will notice that when we lead out of love, wives will react positively to this.

And if they don't feel loved, it will be hard for them to then in return give respect. But when we lead out of love, wives will react positively to this. So that's the foundation for a godly marriage.

When love, respect, and humility are the glue for wives submitting and husbands leading, then this type of marriage is foundational. It is the perfect starting point to raise up godly children. Now, is that the goal for marriage? I would say yes, to raise up godly children.

Malachi says, and wherefore hath he made them one? That he might seek a godly seed. That's why he made them one. He's looking after fruit.

He's looking for good fruit. He's looking for souls into his kingdom. The verse goes on, and this will be maybe, yeah, this will be a response to us as men again.

The verse goes on because we can see something happened that God wasn't well-pleased with. Therefore, take heed to your spirit that none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth. Okay, so men need to lead in love.

Women are not, wives are not the doormat. They are not a floor mat. They are not our servants.

They are help needs given to us as a gift by God. And so we need to lead in love. But what happened here was that the men in those days, and that's why Moses said, because of the hardness of your heart, Moses suffered you to put them away, but from the beginning it was not so, but the people in these days were extremely hard-hearted.

They treated their wives like nothing. That wasn't right. That wasn't good, and God was mad at them.

I'll give an example of what I experienced one time when I went to visit my cousins in Mexico. And this is maybe along the same lines. We were all sitting around the dinner table, and I was probably 18, my cousin about the same age, aunt and uncle, and all my little cousins.

There was another cousin who was about 13. She was a girl. And we sat down.

We had our quiet prayer. The 16-year-old, Pancho was his name. He was my cousin.

He looks at his sister. He looks at his sister to the right, and he says, And his sister gets up and she said, His sister gets up, calm, opens the fridge, grabs a Coke, opens it for him, puts it down there for him, sits down, keeps eating, like it didn't even faze her. Unacceptable.

But that's their culture. That's normal for them. Wrong, wrong.

And I think that's what happened here, okay? Go get your own Coke. Go get your wife a Coke. Open it for her and pour it in the glass and give it to her.

Leading out of love as servants. Okay, that's in the beginning how it was. Can you imagine how it was when God presented Adam or Eve to Adam? Can you imagine? Hey, perfect, go get me a Coke.

Unbelievable. And how people get to that point. No, God, Adam would have said, Eve, wow, what a beauty.

Thank you, God. What can I do for this girl? You know, the other day, a sweet little neighbor girl came over. She was three years old and Benji's gone.

He goes into the garden and he's yanking on carrots. He wants to go bless her with a carrot. You know, he wants to serve her.

I think that's natural. Men want to provide and serve the women, okay? Young men, learn how to treat a woman, okay? Learn how to treat your sisters, okay? Learn how to treat your moms, okay? Learn. Don't ask her to get you a Coke unless she's there and you do it nicely.

Learn what it is. And I hope I can instill that in my little buddy to serve his sisters and to learn what it is to be a real man, okay? That's a burden for me, as you can tell. Jesus Christ loved the church and gave his life for it.

Fathers and husbands, husbands almost always, I think, would do the exact same thing, especially if their heart is right. And just as the church submits to Christ, wives must submit to her husband. And when that is in place, when that is in place, husbands treating their wives like gold, as a gift from God, and wives serving them even as Sarah did, calling him Lord, when that is in place, you have a beautiful picture for your children of Christ in the church.

And then they're going to say, I want to be part of that one day. You haven't said anything yet. All you've done is acted the way God wants us to act.

Isn't that a blessing? Do we have a vision yet? Do we have a vision, brothers and sisters? I hope so. I hope it's starting to come. Wives, remember this.

Part of Eve's judgment was that her desire would be towards her husband, but that her husband would still rule over her. That was part of her judgment. And so as husbands lead with their God-given authority, not their own authority, their God-given authority, there will be times when you don't agree or don't understand and wish that you could choose the way.

I will encourage you to yield to your husband's leading because God said so. And husbands, remember this. Sorry, I don't mean to stare at you when I'm saying husbands.

When you're older, you remember this from when you get married. Caden. Elton, you too.

You're hiding behind there. Remember this. Remember this.

Adam's temptation was that he did what God told him not to do in order to make his wife happy. My heart is pounding. Sometimes, husbands, sometimes we need to stand our ground, even if it makes things a little bit hard temporarily, okay? Sometimes we need to stand our ground.

And when husbands lead out of love with a vision and wives submit out of respect with a vision, then we are prepared to raise a godly seed. Can two walk together except they be agreed? The answer is no. We go down the driveway and we say, we're gonna walk together and one wants to go that way and one wants to go that way.

We won't walk together unless we're agreed. We need to agree. Which way are we walking? And I think when they're agreed, they won't only walk together, they will run together.

They will run the race that God has set up before them together. And I thought about if God commands a blessing on brethren when they dwell together in unity, how much more will God command a blessing on a marriage that is founded upon him and when they agree together and dwell together in unity? Even more. God may just fill our quivers all the way full of arrows that will go way farther than we ever could have gone.

He may just do that. I don't know what kind of blessings he would all put on that type of unified marriage, but there could be a rich blessing there. So we've laid the foundation for raising a godly seed.

We have a vision. We have a partner. In marriage, we have the same vision.

And so now we can say the rubber meets the road. I will say up front, I don't want to teach in areas where we don't have experience. So what I share will be very limited.

It'll be from what I've experienced and from what I understand out of God's word. And from what I see has worked and what hasn't worked. But I cannot share above that and I won't.

I can't give what I don't have. And so I don't have that. Okay, so I look forward to some of your teaching us.

I'm open to that. I need to learn too. Always willing to learn.

Proverbs 22, six though. So I'll speak from early childhood training. Can I share on that, early childhood training? Proverbs 22, six says, train up a child in the way he should go.

And when he is old, he will not depart from it. I've shared it before how the early years of a child's life will set the path for the rest of his or her life. And there have been many secular people that knew this.

There have been many ungodly people that knew this. I mentioned it before that Hitler knew this. And I learned also now that Aristotle knew this.

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and he knew this. And he said this, give me your child until he's seven and then I will show you the foundations of a man. So it's like those first seven years are foundational.

They are so very critical, those first seven years. I thought about a tree, how it grows the first seven years, it will probably be hard to start straightening it out after that, or a full grown tree that's crooked. How are you gonna straighten it out? You can't, but train him up straight, raise him up straight and teach him the way to go the first seven years.

After that, it's almost like when he is old, he will not depart from it. Aristotle knew it, many ungodly heathen knew it. But who cares? God's word said it.

We didn't need to consider what the Greek philosophers, the world's top thinkers of the day 2,000 years ago said. Solomon was wiser than them and it's in his word. And it's very base, very practical.

Train up a child in the way he should go and when he's old, he will not depart from it. Very basic, but it took a Greek philosopher to confirm this and everybody's like, oh, yeah, huh. It's very basic.

We have all the godly wisdom we need, brothers and sisters, right here, okay? We have the Bible, God's word. In God's word, we're encouraged to pray. We have the middle wall of partition taken away.

We can come boldly to the throne of grace now that Jesus has made that sacrifice for us that we can come to God, like in prayer. We can come boldly. So we have God's word, we have prayer.

God's word tells us if any man lack wisdom, let him ask God who giveth unto all men liberally and upbraideth not. So we have prayer and we have the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit within teaches us things that men can't teach us.

We have the wisdom, we have the tools, we have the weapons given to us to face the battles that we face as we seek to raise our children for him. We have it. Apparently, I learned that it's against the law for an army, I forget where I read, I might've been on the weekend where I heard it, but it's against the law for an army to send a soldier into battle without a weapon.

That makes sense. Is that considered a war crime or something? But God doesn't do that. We are like soldiers facing the battle against the devil, facing many battles, but he doesn't send us, God doesn't send us unequipped.

We have the weapons that we need to face those battles. And we can ask God for wisdom. And wisdom would call us to take action.

Wisdom actually is knowledge applied. So we know what to do and then we apply it and then together that equals wisdom. Knowledge applied.

So we know what to do. We have God's word, we have God's spirit, we have God's presence, we know what to do. Now, we need to take action.

So then what does God tell us to do? How does God tell us to do it? How do we raise godly children? In Genesis 18, 19, speaking about Abraham, God says this, for I know him that he will command his children and his household after him and they shall keep the way of the Lord. Okay, these verses then imply that God will be pleased if we teach and command our children in God's ways. So now we know what to do.

Teach and command our children in God's ways. And then in Deuteronomy 6, it says, these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children and talk of them when thou sittest in thy house and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down and when thou risest up. And then the preceding verses there were, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind, all thy heart, soul and mind or in might.

So we have the motive then, the motive. We teach our children God's ways and then we teach it out of love for God, love God. We teach our children to love God and to obey his ways.

This is the knowledge that I could say, God has given to us how we raise our children. Teach them knowledge, teach them or give them the knowledge and teach them the love for God, what to do and why to do it. How about when I talk about obedience? If I were to ask the question, is obedience important? Teaching our children obedience, should we do that? Is it important or should they gain their own conviction or should we teach them to obey? Some say that we should just let them figure it out on themselves.

We shouldn't teach them to obey. We should let them come up with their own decisions that will open their mind and they'll be better for them. In the long run, I would say that's completely wrong.

We need to teach our children obedience. And I ask myself the question, why? Why should we teach our children obedience? You know what answer I came up with? Because dad said so and that's good enough. Because dad said so, because mom said so, that's good enough.

Obviously, we know there's a deeper reason but when it comes to teaching our children obedience, because I'm dad and because I'm mom is a good enough reason. That should be good. Why is that good? I grew up in a home that was not filled with godly influence but I was taught this thing, to obey dad.

For sure, I knew to obey dad. I knew to respect him and I knew to obey him and all my sisters and brothers knew that too. To obey god or to obey dad is good, okay? One time we were outside playing with the neighbors.

We were running around and it was getting dark and dad opens the door and he says, children, come in. And we tell our children or we tell our neighbors, hey, like our neighbor friends, we gotta go. Have a good night.

Dad told us to come in. And then one of the neighbor boys asked me, why do you obey your dad? Like he thought it was strange that we would obey our dad. Now, I thought it was strange that he would ask that question.

And I said, because I have to? I don't know, because I have to. Okay, see, I'm obeying dad. You figure that one out, right? But that should be good enough.

Why, because, dad said, that's good enough. We'll go deeper yet, but that should be good enough. Because dad said, one day when we were in church, it's probably like seven years ago, six years ago, something like that, somebody asked me and Samantha, somebody asked, how do you get your children to sit so nice in church? And I said, because I demand it.

That's all. Didn't do anything special. We didn't like, no, I demand it.

That's why they sit nice in church. I love them and I bless them and we have a lot of fun together. But they sit nice in church because I demand it.

And that's good enough. And I think it's okay that our children learn that. But we know, brothers and sisters, that deep down in here, there's a deeper motive for why we teach our children obedience.

There's a deeper reason for why we teach our children obedience. Brother Cornelius mentioned it here a little bit. We want to teach our children the blessing of obedience.

I've thought about, if I wouldn't be able to get my five-year-old to obey me, what in the world am I gonna do when he or she is a teenager? What am I gonna do? I will say, I've lost it. If my five-year-old couldn't obey me, how can I do it? How can I teach them the ways of the Lord if they don't listen to me? There's a deeper motive. We want them to receive a blessing for obedience.

God said, God said, not just dad or mom, God said, children, obey your parents and the Lord for this is right, okay? That there will be a blessing. That for this is the first commandment with promise, okay? Obey your parents and the Lord for this is right, for this is the first commandment with promise. There's a blessing.

I want my children to have a blessing. A blessing in this world that the days may be long upon the earth. There's a blessing in this life.

It will bring joy and peace and happiness and order and many, many blessings to our children if they learn obedience. And if our children learn obedience to mother and father, listen, there's a very good chance that they're gonna learn obedience to God and receive eternal blessings. I'm gonna use Stephen as example because I don't wanna put anyone on the spot, but I'll use my little buddy Stephen as an example.

If my buddy Stephen, he grows up, he's two years old and I say to Stephen, hey, Stephen, come, and he joyfully comes. You know, we used to do this more. We used to actually just set up training sessions just to teach our children obedience and I think we should get back into it a bit.

For no other reason but we told them to come and they came, good. God bless you. Don't touch.

We just set up for no other reason but that we wanted to teach them to not touch. Good, God bless you. My Stephen's now five and I say, hey, Stephen, come.

We're gonna go do some work together and he comes like that. My Stephen's now 10 and I say, hey, come. Let's do this together.

Let's clean up the garbage. Let's clean up the garage. And he does it.

My Stephen's now 12 and God says, Stephen, come. He comes. He comes.

If Stephen learned to always obey joyfully and willingly and lovingly, do you think he's gonna reject God when he calls? I don't think he will. I don't think he will. I'm not there yet but I don't think he will.

Why do we teach our children obedience? Because dad said so but guess what? There's a better motive than that but for now, dad said so, mom said so. Do we have a vision? I hope so. Do we have a vision, brothers and sisters? I hope so.

Why should my children obey? Because I said so. Why else should my children obey? Because I love them and I want them to experience a blessed life here in this world. Why should my children obey? Because God said so.

And if they learn at a young age to obey us, then they will easily transition one day when God calls them to obey him. Is that a good reason? I think it is. And I know you brothers and sisters understand that but it's good to be reminded, right? There is a rich, rich blessing in obedience and we want our children to have that blessing.

And we have a vision for them, not a short-term vision but a long-term vision. And I encourage everyone here, brothers and sisters, to get a hold of that vision. And if you don't have it, if you have it, great.

If you don't have it, let's get a hold of that vision. And let's seek God in this matter and apply what you know to the rearing up of your children. Be wise.

And know that there's a great reward waiting for us, that we can be all with God one day, with our children. It will be a blessing. I will only give one practical example yet and then I'll close.

And I don't give practical examples because partially, yes, there's a burden. Partially, yes, I've seen it but I hope it doesn't come across as condemning, okay, for any one of us. We have meetings at work once a week and we're just open.

Hey, this works, this didn't work, this worked, this didn't work. You know what, most of the time the problem is me and I admit that and I receive it and I accept it. And I realize that it might be like that this time too.

But I wanna give one practical example. I had some more but I'll give one for today because the time is closing here. Leviticus 19.32 says this.

Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head and honor the face of the old man and fear thy God, I am the Lord. You know, I have a feeling that most of us or a lot of us don't even really remember that verse. Somehow we don't, it's not one of those verses that sticks, that we have as one of those proverbs that we remember.

It's not even socially adapted anywhere that we would respect and honor the elders. I think, brothers and sisters, we would do well, myself included, I'm trying, I'm actually really trying. When somebody shakes my children's hand and says God bless you, I would like them to say God bless you back.

Just if somebody greets our children, I would like them to have a proper response. I would like there to be a bit more reverence and respect from our children to the elders. Why? Well, because.

I ask the question here again. What did God, I ask the question, like why? Like I ask that question, why? Well, it says here, I am the Lord. He doesn't give an answer.

Rise up before the hoary head, honor the face of the old man, I am the Lord. That's why, because I said it. Somehow, somehow I think we're missing that.

Not as a condemning way, okay? I think we can grow in that. Me, our children, us as families, the Eagle Congregation, other congregations. Here's one thing that maybe brought it out to me.

When we were in the meetings last week, they had some very strict lines that the children weren't allowed to run in the building or outside of the building. And really, that seemed to leave them more strict than I would wanna see. But for the most part, it was respected.

And there was like 900 people there. And I was surprised that they just, they honored that request. I think we could do well to teach our children the same, to honor the elders and what they say that means something too, even if it's not your dad, or even if it's not your mom.

I think there's, why? Why else? Okay, I said because, why else? Because there lies a great future blessing for our children in doing so. That's why. Dad taught us to respect him, number one.

Remember I told you that? We had to obey him, we had to respect him. He taught us to respect our bosses too. If I ever would have got fired from a job, I was in big trouble.

I was not allowed to have a bad report given to my dad from me, from my bosses. And even though we didn't go to church very often, he taught us to respect the pastors and bless the pastors. He always, when we was at church, he would shake the pastor's hand, said, thank you for the message.

Oh yeah, that was really good, thank you. Even though, I don't even know if he was born again, but he blessed and respected the pastors. In teaching our children these things, there lies a great blessing ahead for them.

This blessed me in three ways. Number one, I have a good relationship with my dad because of it. Because I never knew that it was even okay to disrespect him.

And so that kept my relationship good with my dad. I can't disrespect him. I still don't wanna disrespect him.

It blessed me in another way when he told me to honor and respect my authorities at work. I did so. Here's how it blessed me.

Young man, this will apply to you. I was your age, you too. Kate, well, I was 14.

How old are you two? 15, okay, I was younger than you. I was 80 pounds when I was 14. I was a tiny little man.

Dad takes me into Howard Huey's office one day. That was the new boss I was about to have. And he said, hey, Howie, will you hire my son? And he looks at me and he says, well, he's a little bit small, but we'll try him out.

We'll try him out. But dad taught me that I was not allowed to have a bad report from him. I was a little bit small, but I gave it all I had.

Guess what? I was so small that I couldn't even pick cucumbers because cucumbers were like that high. And I had to, so I couldn't pick cucumbers with all my other peers that were there. So what did I get to do? I got to pull the weeds on a 10 acre farm on the ground.

And it was always leaking water from condensation and it was a nasty job. It was a nasty job. I did it with all my heart.

I picked the weeds, I picked the weeds. I learned that if I take a bunch of cucumber leaves and I bunch them up and I can like literally scrape the leaves and it was way faster. I put it in a bucket and I got rid of it.

It's 10 acre farm. It took me about four weeks and I was all the way down the farm. And then guess what? The weeds grew again, so I got to start over.

Fun, right? Serious, no joke. I was halfway done, so another two weeks in, about six weeks of every day, seven to five, hot greenhouse, pulling weeds, all by myself, nobody else. I was small, right? So I couldn't do the jobs everybody else could.

And he gave me a raise. I was getting seven, he gave me 750. That like, that touched me.

That my boss actually would give me a raise. I felt like I didn't deserve it, but that touched me. Here I am pulling weeds that one morning and Howie walks by.

He's just gonna ignore me and just keep walking. But it was something within me said, I got to thank him, I got to thank him. And I, believe it or not, I cried, I cried.

I said, Howie? He's like, yeah, Ben? Thanks for the raise. I don't know why I did that. But it really meant something to me.

I respected my boss. And he says, you know what he says? No problem, Ben, you deserve it. Good job, keep it up.

I was gone. I was gone. That winter, he gave me a $1,500 cash bonus.

I was 14. That was 20 some years ago. Today, young man, I'm in a position at work where I understand Howie.

I've had men working for me who are smarter than me, stronger than me, better looking than me. They could have maybe ran the business better than me. They will never, ever become a leader in my company as long as they have that prideful, I'm not gonna serve with a servant attitude.

I'm not gonna, I know better than you. They will never, ever amount to anything with us. I've fired guys that are better, smarter, harder working.

Like literally, they were. I'm not just saying that. I remember working with a one guy one day.

I'm trying to keep up and I can't keep up. And then he's all of a sudden rebuking me. Okay, what are we doing? You keep fumbling.

I don't know, you take over. I'm out of here. So he takes over and he does a better job than I could have.

And then a couple months later, I had to fire him because guess what? Couldn't get along with any of my men. He thought he was better than everybody else. Learn to respect your authorities everywhere.

Not just dad, not just your bosses, okay? Everywhere, learn to respect brother Dave. Learn to respect brother Myron. Learn to respect brother Peter and brother Peter and brother James and brother Ben.

Learn, young ones, medium ones, learn. Why, because I said so? Sure, not good enough reason. Why, because it would be a blessing to you.

For real, it will be. And because why? God said so. I am the Lord.

I am the Lord. One time, it blessed me, what my dad taught me to bless the pastors, okay? The pastors, he didn't tell me to bless the pastors. He just did.

When the preacher was done preaching, he gave him a handshake. He says, oh yeah, that was a good message. Thank you for sharing that.

And I don't even know if he meant it sometimes, but I think he maybe did. But he shook his hand and said, thank you. Thank you, thank you.

That meant a lot to me. Here I am now, 23 years old, 22 years old, in the dumps, made a mess of my life, and what do I do? I go find me all the ministers. I said, please, I'm trying to win the battle.

I'm trying to be a Christian. I don't know how. What am I doing wrong? Can you please pray for me? Please pray for me.

You know, when I asked a minister to help me, I didn't ask one minister. I asked one minister to invite all the ministers to a room where I could talk to them. Why? Because I had respect for the minister.

Dad taught me at a young age to have respect for authorities, and I think it's, rise up before the hoary head. I am the Lord. And it's not just because I am the Lord.

It's because God loves you, cares for you, wants you to be blessed, and wants you to prosper. You know, one time I told you the story where my friend died in a car accident, and one time I was sitting at the, I went to the funeral there, and it was a drinking and driving accident. You remember that story.

Well, guess what? We went to the funeral. It was the same funeral graveyard where we buried Kiana a few months ago, and it was around the same time. It was July, and the preacher said to me, he looked at me, during the funeral service, he looked at me, and he said, "'Look what you've done!' He said that to me in front of everyone, as though I was the one who killed Jake.

"'Look what you've done!' And that hurt me like crazy. And you know why that hurt me? Because I had respect for him. If I didn't have respect for him, I wouldn't have cared, but that hurt me like crazy.

He said, "'Look what you've done!' And I understand today that I was responsible for that, because I was an influencer in his wicked life, and I could have probably changed that. "'Rise before the man with the hoary head. "'I am the Lord.'" Much more could be said.

I hope we have a vision. And a vision isn't just because I said so. There's a deeper vision.

But I say so is enough. And when God says so, that's enough too. God says, I am the Lord.

Let's trust him in that. So God bless you, each one of you. You're doing well.

Keep going, okay? I need to learn from you, and I'm willing. I'm willing. Teach me.

I have much to learn. I want to learn from each one of you, brothers and sisters. And I hope that if anything in this message was challenging or convicting, you would take it with a grain of salt and apply humility to it and run with it.

God bless you.