Sermonette: Teaching Children
#314s
John W. Ritenbaugh
Given 20-Nov-97; 25 minutes
summary: Everything we do in our lives, including the teaching of the children, has to be evaluated with our number one priority (Seeking first the Kingdom of God) in mind. Should we teach our children or should we allow the church to do that? Did Y.O.U. have a positive impact on the youth in the church? Did it hold them in the church? It did not have much of a positive impact on the church's children. Having the church teach our children inverted the biblical priority. The major priority of the church calendar in October of 1989 was Y.O.U., which demanded an inordinate amount of time and excessive inter-congregational coordination, all catering to one group within the church. The tail seemed to be wagging the dog. Major activities of the church could not take place unless it cleared with the Y.O.U. calendar. The children are the parents' responsibility, not the responsibility of the church or the ministry. When parents teach their children God's way, there is a blessing attending it. The church cannot compete against television, but parents can. Rearing children is a 24 hour a day responsibility. The responsibility of the parents is the converted saints'; the responsibility for the education of the children is squarely on the parent.
transcript:
When I visited one of the church areas probably about three or four months ago, a question came up regarding the teaching of children, especially in regard to teaching children within the framework of the Sabbath service, with a program somewhat like Y.E.S., and Y.O.U. And the question came up because they had a program going in this particular area, and they were looking at what we had done in the Worldwide Church of God, what Global was doing, what Philadelphia is doing, and I believe United is doing as well. Well, having had seven children in the church and also having been a church pastor, I think that I am in a unique position to judge this question, and maybe give some instructions along these lines. I will tell you right up front, that I am very skeptical of the value of Y.E.S. and Y.O.U. toward the Kingdom of God. Now Matthew 6:33 says that we are to, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these [other] things will be added to us.” What this verse means to me is that everything that we do has to be evaluated in the light of the number one priority in our lives. And that includes things like the teaching of the children. Is this going to assist them toward the Kingdom of God? Is it going to impress God that we do it? Or that we allow the church to do it? So I think a question that we need to ask at this point is, “Did Y.O.U. have a positive impact on the children in the church? Did it hold them in the church when it broke up?” Well, from my position as a church pastor evaluating this situation, I would have to say that there was undoubtedly some good fruit. But as an overall response to that question, I would have to say that I would give it a resounding No! It did not really have much of a positive impact on the church's children. Now there is a reason that I feel this way and the reason is biblical. And that is because having the church responsible for teaching your children, or my children, inverted the priority that is given in the Bible. When we directly disobey or invert a command that is given in God's Word, it is not going to produce good fruit. It will produce some fruit, and some of that fruit could be good, but because God's Word is pushed aside, it is not going to have a real resounding good effect. I had an interesting experience in Pasadena while we were there. It took place in 1988. I cannot remember the month. I only remember that it was cool outside, and so it was very likely sometime in October or November of 1988. And for those of you who might be unfamiliar at that time, there were, I believe, around 15 church congregations around the Pasadena area. I pastored at that time, North Hollywood and Glendale. And so Joe [Tkach] Jr. got the pastors of the churches together, because it was getting to that time of the year that each one of the church pastors was going to get together with the elders and deacons and so forth, and make up the church calendar for the following year, 1989. The one major priority for getting all the church pastors together was Y.O.U. activities. Now Y.O.U. activities took up so much of the calendar of the local congregation that we had to get everybody together, and make sure that we coordinated our activities so that they would not impact on other congregations, or the area as a whole. So they had to be aligned most specifically with what Pasadena was doing—the four congregations that were there—and then of course the other congregations as well. Well, a semi-heated discussion took place that was initiated by Dr. Zimmerman, who at that time I believe was pastoring one of the Imperial congregations. And basically, he said this: “Look at this! We have got 15 pastors here taking this time, putting together a calendar over one organization within the church. And it is so dominant!” He said, “I think we better rethink this because the tail is wagging the dog.” And I mean major activities of the church could not take place unless it was cleared with Y.O.U. Not the people in the Y.O.U. office but just the Y.O.U. schedule. When I say a semi-heated discussion took place, it was Doc Zimmermann and I against the others. And it was not a knock down heated discussion like that. It was just a matter of we were the only ones who saw negative things in what was going on. And we were willing to say something about it. So here we had one sector of the church—children—who were dominating the church calendar. I mentioned earlier about inverting the order of things here, and in Acts 5:29 Peter said and the other apostles answered and said, “We ought to obey God rather than men.” I have drawn up a little line of authority chart, and maybe you can see it. At the top I have “God.” In a straight line down from Him, it says “Individual.” And then in parentheses under that, it says “Parent.” And then straight down from that, in the bottom box, it says “children.” Now off to the side (not in direct line authority to the individual at all, because every single converted child of God has direct access to God and answers directly to Him, not the ministry, not the church, but to God) is the ministry. And, in parentheses under the minister is “church.” I drew this like this so that you would understand that the children are your responsibility, not the church’s. You are directly responsible to God, not the ministry, not the church. It is your solemn obligation, not the church’s, to teach your children. Now, let us look for authority for that in God's Word. We are going to go back to Deuteronomy 6. One of the things that brought this up was because people (you hear scuttlebutt going around not necessarily people in the Church of the great God, but scuttlebutt from the greater church of God), are blaming the ministry for their children leaving the church, when it is actually the parent's responsibility to decide what you permit or do not permit in their lives. Deuteronomy 6:4-9 "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” That is awfully clear! That is spoken to each individual Israelite. Deuteronomy 11:19-21 “You shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land of which the LORD swore to your fathers to give them, like the days of the heavens above the earth.” Again, that is pretty clear. And actually, that particular wording of it carries a blessing with it. See, there is we do this and God will respond; giving both you and the children a long life. Let me ask a question here. How in the world can the church compete against television? That the television set is in your home. You are with your children 24 hours a day. I am just using this generally. And God is intimating by these two verses that the rearing of children is a full-time responsibility. It is a 24 hour a day responsibility. The church cannot do an adequate job. I mean, it is behind the eight ball totally. The church cannot set the example. It takes the parent to show on the hand, and the thinking processes to do that. It takes the parent to write them upon the doorposts and so forth. You see what I mean about inverting the responsibility? The responsibility got shifted. This began to take place during the 1970s. It got shifted from the parents to the church through the agency, first of all, of Y.O.U., and then possibly even more effectively through Y.E.S. And it got so bad I understand in the Worldwide Church of God that the parents were excluded from Y.O.U. meetings. I do not mean that that took place in every congregation, but I understand it was a general policy coming out from headquarters in Pasadena that parents were not supposed to be there. Now let us go back to Ephesians 4:11-15 and use a general principle of evaluation that God gives in His Word. He says, “look at the fruit.” The fruit that was produced not only in the children, but also in the parents, and also in the administration of Y.O.U. and Y.E.S. Reflect back on it now, and we can look at the administration of it, and if anybody is issuing an order that parents are to be excluded from the education of their children, you have got to know there is something wrong with that. So the fruit there was not good. And we know just from the records that Pasadena kept, and you hear somebody complaining every once in a while, “Why are we losing so many kids?” Well, this is why: God's instructions were not being followed. What happened with the parents was that when Y.O.U. and Y.E.S. really began to get going, then the parents shifted their responsibility to the teachers at services. God is not going to bless that. Ephesians 4:11 And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, . . . Now here comes the important verse as far as this sermon is sermonette is concerned. Ephesians 4:12-14 . . . for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children. . . That is a very clear description of the responsibility of the ministers. The responsibility of the ministers is to the converted parents—to the saints. The responsibility of the ministry is to the Body of Christ, which is made up of the converted children of God. The children of the children of God is the responsibility of the children of God. Each parent is responsible. Now there is a very clear example. Let us look at it here in Genesis 18. The example is of Abraham who was our father in the faith, the father of the faithful. Genesis 18:17-19 And the LORD said, "Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing, since Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? For I have known him, in order that he may command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the LORD, to do righteousness and justice, that the LORD may bring to Abraham what He has spoken to him." Well, that is very clear. Abraham, God knew, would be faithful in teaching his children. He would not pass off the responsibility to anybody else. He would be responsible. A child's spiritual education is the parent's responsibility. The church's responsibility is to prepare the parents to enable them to carry out the responsibility with their children. So let us go back to Exodus 21: Exodus 21:15 "And he who strikes his father or his mother shall surely be put to death.” Exodus 21:17 "And he who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death.” Now why is this so strong as to receive capital punishment? Now you might say, well, if a child kills his parents, that is understandable. But what about cursing? We take that today as not being anywhere near as bad as killing; that God somehow thinks that it must be on the same level as if the parents were actually killed. Well, the reason is because the relationship of parent to a child is very similar to God's spiritual relationship with His children. In other words, a parent is in the place of God. So this has very interesting ramifications. Now what is God to us? He is the Almighty Creator; the Potter creating us, molding our character, shaping us to be in His image. And we, God expects, are to be the molder and shaper of our children's carnal character. And if your child grows up to curse you. . . I will leave it unsaid. You see, we have failed at least in a portion of our responsibility, because we molded that child to be in that position [to act that way]. So we have a direct responsibility, and the authority from God to do this. The one thing I am thankful for is that God is merciful in His judgment. I have given this to you in a bare bones, “this is the way it is,” attitude. But I know that He understands, and those of us who are older, we understand too that there are an awful lot of extenuating circumstances these days that influence our children's minds and their character. But we cannot take this lying down. By extenuating circumstances, I mean everything that comes out of this world; influences at school; the influence of television, and those kinds of things. But we have to do whatever we are capable of doing to try to shape our children's character because God holds us responsible for this. There is no place that I can find in the Bible where this responsibility is given to the church except indirectly through the parents. Now what is the key to success here? The key to success in rearing our children is our own personal relationship with our Father in heaven, because it is from Him that the resources flow that will enable us to have the right attitude, to have the patience, to have the persistence, to have the endurance, whatever it takes to be able to do this job. The key to spiritual prosperity really in every facet of life, including this one, is our relationship with God, and God can give us the gifts to enable us to reach our children to have the right attitudes around them that will motivate them to respond to us, because He is the giver of life—the abundant life. So the church is only indirectly responsible to your children. And that responsibility actually goes through you, so exercise your faith in His Word. I think that it is okay for the church to have occasional activities that involve groups of children. I do not feel that there is anything wrong with that. A bowling activity here, or hiking, or overnight camping, or whatever it might be, those kinds of things are fine in their place. I do not want you to get to think that I am not for groups getting together at all because those things are good on occasions. But to establish an organization and institution within the church, I feel would very quickly turn into what happened in the Worldwide Church of God. It started out with good intentions, but it was not but about 10 or 15 years before it was actually dominating the church, and motivating the parents to drop their responsibility because there was somebody else to do a responsibility that had actually been given to them by God.
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