Because of the pivotal nature of preaching in the church and the impact on the rising generation we have two back to back broadcasts on the role of preaching to families in the local church setting. In this session, Paul Washer instructs both parents and children on how to best get the most out of preaching. In the next episode of the Church and Family Life Podcast, we will be talking to Dr. Steven Lawson about the same subject. 

Hey, thanks for joining us for the Church and Family Life podcast. But before we get going with the podcast, I want to tell you about a few things. First, we have a remarkable conference coming up called Jurisdictions Under Fire, church and family in the balance. That is going to happen October 28th through 30th in the evenings. It'll be live streamed.

Hope you can join us with that. We have some really remarkable communicators that will help us deal with that issue. Also I just wrote a book called The Family at Church, How Parents Are Tour Guides for Joy. This is a book that is designed to help families fully engage in local church life and make it the sweetest thing ever. Also our national conference has been scheduled for May 20th next year at Ridgecrest, Theology of the Family.

But just before that conference, we're going to have a singles conference on May 19th. And I hope you all can come and join us with that as well. And with that, go to our website. We have thousands of resources to equip churches and families to be ordered by the word of God and the word of God alone. And you can get there by going to churchandfamilylife.com.

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. I'm Scott Brown and with me is Jason Dome. Hi Scott. Hey Jason, welcome. As you know, Jason, Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture for Church and Family Life, for the spread of the gospel throughout the generations through biblically ordered churches and families.

So that's what we're doing. And this week we're going to discuss preaching to children in local churches with Paul Washer who's the director of Heart Cry Missionary Society and he is a preacher. And so welcome, Paul, so glad to have you with us. Thank you, it's a great privilege. So, Paul, this week we're gonna discuss preaching to children in local churches, and we wanna cast a vision for how the ministry of a local church is poised to saturate a family with the gospel of Jesus Christ to expose them to the whole counsel of God to save their souls to grow their love for the Lord Jesus.

And hey, I believe the most important place parents ever take their children is to a local church to hear the preaching that's there, because faith comes by hearing the Word of God. And my view is that, my hope is that parents will make sure that their children hear thousands of hours of preaching in their growing up years because faith comes by hearing. I think we should admit that the way a child hears will determine where he will spend eternity, and so it's very critical that parents get this right and preachers get this right as they preach to children. We want to give children 10,000 reasons to believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that the Word of God is the only authority. So that's why we're here.

And Paul, you and I, you know, we don't preach kiddie sermons, but we're always preaching to children in our churches and in the church that I'm preaching and Around 70% of the people are either children or unmarried young adults, So I'm used to giving sermons to children. And I know in your local church, you do the same thing. You're always preaching to children. You have a tremendous heart for children, which I'll just give a plug for your proverbs study, which will never end. I think the world is going to end before your proverb study ends, Paul.

That's just the way it looks to me. I'm just projecting. I'm just looking at the data. Yeah, I think we've got 60 some sermons and we just are just got out of chapter 3. That's great.

I love it. Okay, so keep charging on. That may mean that you're going to live a long time. I hope that's the prophecy of this trajectory that you're in. Okay.

So Paul, what should preachers keep in mind as they're preaching to children? And let's just talk about maybe in the preparation of their sermons first. Right. Well, you're trying to, bring two mountains together in one way and cause them to unite. The one mountain, of course, is the scripture itself.

What is the text saying? But then from there, you're asking yourself, I think there's another mountain that we sometimes forget about, and that is actually the congregation. And how do I bring those two objects together? The truth of that text, how do I get it into the mind and the heart of the hearer? And of course, you know, we know that the Holy Spirit is the one who ultimately does the work and the application, Yet at the same time, we need to be very aware of what we're doing.

Here's something that I always keep in my heart. I cannot stand it, And I can pretty much see it when it happens. I can't stand it when a preacher gets off the pulpit and he's happy about what he said in the sense that he feels like there was eloquence, there was a little bit of power that he did well. The test of preaching is how did the people comprehend, and that should always be in the forefront of our mind. How did they understand?

And in order to do that, I think it's best to follow the instruction of Charles Spurgeon. Charles Spurgeon said that he not only studied scripture, he studied men, he studied his hearers, and he wanted to know how to communicate truth to them, and he wasn't satisfied, nor should we ever be satisfied until we know that the people are understanding and being transformed. And so I think we need to work just as hard at teaching what we have studied as we do in studying it and learning it. Another thing I think that's very important is this. I recall a preacher several years ago and he told me, he said he started doing a sort of something like a children's sermon before the main adult sermon.

And he said that people started coming to him adults and were saying, man, I tell you what, I'm getting so fed by your preaching. And he said, you mean the preaching afterwards? They said, no, the children's sermon. These were adults. And I think we need to really be willing to humble ourselves and put away the idea of waxing eloquent.

And we should prefer simplicity of speech. That is very, very, very important. The proverbs study I'm doing is for children. And yet I can't tell you how many adults, parents and everything are listening to it saying that they've never learned truths like that before. And I think we should call.

Yeah, let's let's let's hang on that for a minute. So you've got this conscious self-consciousness that you have children out there. Yes. What what particularly should preachers consider in terms of the mind of a child. Think that children can learn nothing, that they have to be entertained.

No, children can learn every doctrine that's in the scripture by the power of the Holy Spirit and a clear teacher. I mean, we have all stories of Children of the reformers and Children's of Puritans who who understood the catechism and who dealt with great issues like predestination and election and the eternal decrees of God before they were even teenagers. And so never underestimate the ability of the mind that God has given children. And yet at the same time, realize our context. Most children today are not brought up with a lot of instruction, with a lot of reading.

A lot of them, their days are filled with video and their attention span is very short and their parents themselves have not disciplined them in order to concentrate. So you have to work between those worlds. And so when you're talking about teaching children, you see, here's the thing. You can't have a child who's living in a world where there's little instruction, little need for concentration seven days a week, and then for an hour and a half a week, he's going to sit under a monumental sermon. So pastors need to teach parents on how to prepare their children.

And there are things they can do, not just on Saturday, but the way they raise their children, the way they read books, even secular books to their children, will enable those children to better understand the sermon. Another thing is I talk to children. I talk to them after I preach. What did you learn? You know, that's a, it's not really a mystery.

You should even do that with adults. I mean, you come down from the pulpit, get into some conversations. Where did you understand me? Where did you not understand me? How were you blessed?

You see, and just it's two way communication. You know, in a marriage, I could be reading the Bible all the time and still be failing to communicate to my wife. What can really help me maybe is not read more of the Bible, but just ask my wife, am I making myself clear? And I love to talk to children and I love to find out, you know, what did you think about what was just said here today? You know, and I've got some of the most amazing answers that showed me, you know, next time I need to clarify a few points.

No, that's great. You know, Scott, here's the thing. I would ask preachers, how many of you actually talk to your people, maybe even bring some of them into the office or whatever, call them on the phone and talk to them and say, what did you understand? What did you not understand? How can I do better?

So it is, it is remarkable to recognize how much children actually do here. But, but we, I think we have to help them as well. I find when I talk about nature, almost anything in nature, the children just light up and I don't do it enough. I'm terrible. I'm the worst, but I do recognize that there are certain things that just unlock the heart of a child.

But it's not just the heart of a child. Like you said, that the adults are the same way. Yes. One of the things I think that's important is to realize that, you know how, if You know, you raise a child all its life, all its young life, on sugar and junk food. And then you, you know, hope to take them to a doctor once every six months to somehow get them well.

It doesn't work that way. So now I am not going to eliminate from my children, you know, there are electronic things they're going to have to learn to deal with. And I want them to learn to deal with those things in my home, whether it's media or computers or whatever. I want to be there when they're learning how to handle these things in a biblical manner. Yet at the same time, if I spend more time with, I have a four-year-old daughter, if I spend more time with her reading even children's books, it's going to help her to be able to sit and listen to a sermon.

So, you know, don't, you know, I don't want parents, you know, sometimes your disciples take things to an extreme. We live in a very electronic age. And so if you keep all that from your children all the time, probably when they're 18, they're going to bust out and run wild. So teach them biblically how to handle these things. But really put an emphasis on reading, on listening, audio books, just all kinds of things like that that can contribute to when they come in to the Sunday morning service.

They're more prepared to listen and to understand. Yeah, and also, you know, I'm aware of the reality that the children, many of them, There's a greater percentage of the children who are unconverted than the adults in my perception. So you're always preaching to unbelievers and most of those unbelievers are children in your church. And so to, you know, try to portray the sweetness of the gospel and all the contours of the goodness of God and And the wrath of God, you know really really need to be in that preaching and that's why we don't preach kitty sermons I mean we want We want to be like Spurgeon and make sure that we are driving home the power of the risen Lord, you know, during those times. You know, I'm preaching on the resurrection this coming Sunday, and, you know, I'm just thinking through the different children in our church?

And have they experienced the power of the resurrection? Can I try to explain it? Well, of course, how do you grasp these remarkable things? We never get it perfect. We don't get it right in terms of the intensity that it deserves.

But so yeah, you have that challenge. Children are there. Children are, you know, we're preaching to children all the time, and we should just really recognize that. Anything else, any of you guys want to say about this matter of what pastors need to pay attention to? So I'd like to open up sort of a vein of conversation here around a verse from Isaiah 64.

It's Isaiah 64 verse 6, but we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousness is like filthy rags. So the Bible's not teaching that you're not perfect, I'm not perfect, you can get anyone really to concede that. What it's teaching is that the best people, even the things that they do that they're proud of, is still stained by sin and unacceptable to God because he's so holy. So it's a real struggle to convince an average person on the street, or even an average person in church of that, how much more so children who haven't been even allowed to do sort of some of the openly scandalous type sins. How do you preach in a way where we can be convincing the children who are hearing our preaching that what Isaiah is saying there is actually true, even the things that we're proud of or unworthy of God because of his holiness.

One of the things that I go to is the Pharisees in that Jesus dealt with with prostitutes. He dealt with the dealt with all sorts of things, but he came down with one of the hardest words upon the religious unconverted. And I will always tell my Children, no, because when we would go out on the street or do something in town or travel to another country and they would see maybe children doing horrible things or saying horrible things as we walk down the street and they would, I knew what was in their heart, you know, we're not like that. And I would point out to them, you're exactly like that. It's just that you've learned something of Christian culture.

And so what I always bring home is before God, that the worst situation you can be in is being someone who's privileged to sit under the word of God and your life has actually, you've tasted of the good things to come through the preaching of the word of God and being in a community of believers and yet not to go all the way and make Christ your own is the most vile thing you could ever do. And I believe that when you teach like that, that they begin to see. Be very, very careful. I mean, we homeschool. Homeschooling is very, very dangerous.

Because it can lead to a principle-based lifestyle and not a relational faith lifestyle. It can lead to pride and so many of these things. So the moment you see it in a child, you've got to point that out and say, that pride that you just demonstrated in your upbringing and what you know about the Bible is far worse than that uninstructed child doing things that for you is almost unmentionable. And so, you know, we're talking about helping children feel the weight of sin and to never come to the conclusion that what this Bible is telling them is just be a nicer person, you know, just get it together, but that their problem is massive because sin runs through everything. And I think that's what you're, you, what you're communicating, Jason, you know, through this, through this, citation in Isaiah.

So helping children feel the weight of sin. Let's just talk about that for a minute. Well, there's a couple of things one one is What what we must always go back to It's not our illustrations It's not our ability to even apply the scripture. The scripture itself is powerful. Just just loose it.

And it'll take care of itself, you know. And I think that is why just simply taking the children through all those scriptures that that really define what you what fallen humanity is, and let the Scriptures speak for themselves. I've learned, you know, my illustrations are hollow. Everything is hollow compared to the Scriptures. And so, you know, starting in Genesis, going all the way through the Bible, say, This is man.

This is man. This is man. And in doing that, I've never really had a problem with the Children recognizing whether or not they're sinners. But one thing I will say that may seem kind of strange for someone like me is if I could go back in my preaching and everything, I would preach on sin just as hard as I have, but I would have given also more emphasis to the image of God and to what man was created to be and say to them, oh, like for example, and I've done this, let's say I sit down beside a girl who's a drug addict and immoral, Her life is destroyed and everything. She she's beaten down.

I mean she knows what she's done. She knows what she's hit. I don't sit there and go through Isaiah and Romans three and everything else. She's there. I just look at her and say, dear, if you only knew what God made you to be, if you only knew what could be in Christ and the restoration.

And so I also wanna talk about human dignity in the sense of original creation. And also, and what, you know, to tell my sons and my daughters, you know, God is creating a new race in Christ of nobility and purity and honor and strength and all the virtues we find in Christ. So I'm going to I talk about that more than I did in my younger years. Hokema's book on the image of God really helped me there. He deals with sin tremendously, but he also deals with the fact that look at what man was made to be and look at what God is going to do through Jesus Christ in the hearts of those who repent and believe.

You know, hope of that. Amen. Yeah, let's do that. Let's shift gears, Paul, and let's talk about how parents can help their children hear the preaching, how parents can be good shepherds, to shepherd them into the preaching. First of all, one thing that I'm not much of a physical specimen anymore, I'm pretty beat down, But if a father ever comes to me and says, I don't spend a great quantity of time with my children, but I spend quality time with my children, I will pick up a two before and hit them.

I can't plan quality time with the Lord, but quality time with the Lord comes out of a quantity of time. It's the same way with children. Quality time with children comes out of a quantity of time. And the first thing is, don't think about, okay, I'm going to sit down and read with my daughter five minutes a day. Don't think like that.

That's pitiful. It is growing in our relationship with our children by spending time with them. And you'd be surprised what they learn by just watching us and spending time with us and hopefully see a mixture of solemnity and also joy. And they see how important Christ is in our life. And that's why we read the Bible.

We don't read the Bible for the sake of reading the Bible. We read it to find our beloved, our savior, our king, this person in whom there's infinite delight. And so, you know, first of all, I would encourage especially fathers, look, I'm tired. I work 10, 12 hours a day. I get home.

This is my job. And it's a wonderful job. Spend time with your children. That's the number one thing, spend time with them. And then, and then read with them, play with them, talk to them, explain things to them.

And as you do, especially when they're younger, It has a way of developing the mind and setting a disposition. You just can't give your child a lecture about how important preaching is and expect it to stick. This is going to be something that literally they grow into as they watch you and spend time with you. That's the number one thing that I would see. Secondly is don't put a child in a situation where they're going to fail.

Where they're just going to fail. And some People would disagree with this, but like when we go to church and my four-year-old is sitting there, you know, I'm going to do this. I'm going to give them a piece of paper, a notebook, a pencil, and I'm going to say, I want you to do one thing for me during this sermon. I want you to draw something you understand. I want you, you know, and I have, I mean, if I've saved, if I would have saved all those drawings, I would have some, you know, and then, and then go home and talk about it.

Go home and talk about it. You know, and just, you know, so don't put them in a position while you're, you know, you're trying to make them into Jonathan Edwards when they're four years old. And then they know you're disappointed in them. Don't do that. The other thing is, is as soon as you possibly can, start sitting with your child, fathers, with your child on your lap, playing with them, talking to them, and then reading to them.

And I always started out with, I don't like pictures of Jesus. I don't believe in that. I don't like it. It even angers me. But I will try to find what's called a rhyme Bible.

The most simple, I don't know what it is, but when, you know, it's not a Bible, it's maybe 20 pages, it's a kid's book. And I will sit there with a two-year-old and we will read through that and I will make voices and I will change my voice, my accent, I will go through it and we'll go through it until yeah we've gone through it several times and they kind of get it and then I find the next stage. I find that the one that's just a little bit more developed, go through it. And by the time they're about five, there's a book, a bible by crossways called the 365 a day bible or something like that. And they can go through that.

And by the time they're five years old, they've got a new American standard. And we're going through that. And so, you know, that little child like my daughter is there in our family devotions, but she has to be treated separately some other time. Family devotions is primarily for her to get involved with the family and to hear things and also to learn to sit. But I've got to treat her differently than I do my 18 year old.

Right. So, hey, let's, let's, let's talk to children now. Let's, let's say, okay, you children, you know, here's, here's what you can do to maximize your hearing. Do you have any, do you guys have any thoughts about that? I think one of the things that's always been helpful is the instruction to watch the speaker, eyes on the speaker.

Now, the really young children may be drawing things that they're hearing in the sermons or things like that, but I think it's always helpful to have your eyes up and on the speaker. It definitely, as a sermon here myself, it definitely keeps me dialed in on it, and that was always the instruction to our children. One of the things that I tell not just children but new believers is when they say, look, I'm struggling and concentrating in the sermon. I tell them, so am I. I let them know that, you know, I heard something from Dr Piper years ago that really helped me.

I guess I've modified it. I can't say it word for word, but it was something like this. I have to fight for just about everything. And what some people think is they don't read their Bible because they think that people who read their Bible a lot are just gifted at it, and it's not a struggle. Or they think that people who pray a lot, they're just gifted at it and it's not a struggle.

The fact is everything's a struggle for me. And when other people know, hey, you know, dads, when my children know, hey, dad's mind wanders and he has to pull himself back to center, this is just one aspect of Christian discipline and Christian virtue that we have to grow into, then it's really helpful for them. Right, yeah, I think that's really important. You know, and what I found when my kids were growing up is I had to pull them back in to help them, you know, pay attention to the speaker, look at the speaker, honor, honor the preacher, God has put him there. You know, there's a sense of high honor that I wanted my children to have to the person who is preaching.

And they need to understand the sacredness of the moment that everything stops. And of course, minds will wander. Hey, the Puritans wrote some great stuff about how to keep your mind from wandering. But it's a reality that we all, we all struggle with. We all face your children are going to, their minds are going to wander, but how do you help them?

And how do you help them when they're two or one or three years old? It's, it's harder and harder the younger they are. One of the things that I so appreciate, I'm not an elder here so I can brag on my elders, is one of the things I think it is it's commanded in Scripture and it is so neglected And that is the reading of the public reading of scripture in the church and teaching the children look at this moment. This is the word of God coming forth and not even diluted by a preacher. I mean, this is the word of God.

And you know, in our church, usually it's a chapter, sometimes two chapters. And I think that is very, very helpful, very helpful to learn to listen. And that can be done at home, and that can also be, should be, it must be done in the church because it's commanded, do not neglect the public reading of Scripture. Okay, any final, any parting shots here that Jason or you, Paul, have before we close out? So I've got one.

I just finished a good biography of William Wilberforce, the great English abolitionist, and in the biography it mentioned a book that he wrote. It was originally published in 1797, and it caused a stir at the time. And the title was so intriguing, I ordered the book. I just wanna give you the title and then make a comment on it. The title is this, A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians Contrasted with Real Christianity.

And, you know, we're part of, with all their flaws, we're part of Bible-loving churches. And I want the children in our church to know that there are many Bible-loving churches, we're not alone in the world, but that not all churches are really Bible-loving churches, and there is a kind of a prevailing religious system of Christianity that is not the same as real Christianity. And I try to find ways in my preaching to let our children know that there is such a distinction to be made. I read that book to my girls, or most of it, four or five years ago, And there are phrases in that book that could have been written today. It's just very, very, very relevant for the environment that we live in.

Paul, what about you? Any parting shots here? Yeah, one of my favorite words is progression and progressive that, that in all of us, there is progression towards a greater sanctification and that I want to take a child where they are to where they ought to be. And I want to be very patient and loving. I don't want them to be discouraged.

I don't want them to see discouragement in my face. I want them to see someone who can point out to them. Yes, you did wrong here. You weren't concentrating today, but I also want them to know that I am for them, and I believe that God is going to do a great work in them. Discouragement.

And some families that start taking seriously the things we're talking about can be so demanding upon their children that they quench, that they put out the lamp that's smoldering. And we need to be very, very careful. God has been so merciful with me, so kind with me, and I want to demonstrate that same kindness and mercy to my children and that even when I have to point out, you know, there's a reproof or a correction, When God reproofs me or corrects me, I know that his love is not altered. And I want my children to know that my love is not altered. And really, it's patience.

And one thing, guys, for fathers, again, man, don't expect your children to build a spaceship with baling wire. And what I mean is, if you're not going to invest in your children and spend time with your children and develop a relationship and read books with your children, then don't be disappointed in them. Be disappointed in yourself when it doesn't turn out right. I mean, this is a calling. You know, My life is a concentric circle.

It starts out with my godliness because if I'm not Christ-like, none of it's going to work and the greatest thing I can do for my wife and children is to grow in conformity to Christ. Then it's my wife. If you neglect your wife, don't expect your children to be hearty. And then third, you know, pour yourself into those children, because if you don't manage your own household well, you don't even qualify as an elder and then go out from there. I mean, the family is not a substitute for the church, nor the church a substitute for the family.

They are both extremely important institutions in the economy of God. Amen. Well, I think all of this is just to encourage ourselves as pastors and parents to be wonderful tour guides through the scriptures, through the preaching, to love the preaching, to help our children love the preaching, and the preachers, you know, making it as rich as they can. And I pray that the children that hear us would say, your word to me was like the joy and the rejoicing of my heart, like Jeremiah said, or like David, you know, when he said, your testimonies are my delight, that there would be such delight in our churches because We really did the best we could to promote the preaching of the Word of God. And we preached to children, and we understood who they were, and we brought the Word of Truth.

So, That's it. Hey, thank you for joining us. I'm really grateful for the time. And so check back with us next Monday. We're gonna discuss the family church with Steve Lawson.

So until then, remember that scripture is sufficient for the church and for the family. God bless you. Thanks for listening to the Church and Family Life podcast. We have thousands of resources on our website, announcements of conferences coming up. Hope you can join us.

Go to churchandfamilylife.com. See you next Monday for our next broadcast of the Church and Family Life podcast.