How important are children? How should we demonstrate their importance? Join us as we discuss Jesus' view of children and the implications for the 21st century.

Well, welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture, and we're here today to talk about the sufficiency of Scripture regarding children. And Jason, we have this privilege today to talk to Carlton McLeod about children. He's practically a guest host at this point. He's practical.

I wish, yeah. Good to see you, brothers. So good to be with you again, Carlton. What a blessing. You're a joy to our hearts.

But you preached a sermon just really recently called, Don't Mess with the Children. I did. Why did you do that? Well, we have been working our way through the gospel according to Matthew for a few years now. We started at the end of chapter 4 and we found ourselves in chapter 18 this last Sunday, the first six verses, and that's where it came from.

It came from our Lord's own admonition, particularly in Matthew 18 and verse 6. Now in this sermon, you pointed out at the beginning that the devil was waging a war against children, against the seed of the woman that confronts us in Genesis 3.16, and you make the point that the devil wants to kill your children, and you said, and I'll quote, our culture, although it says otherwise, hates children too. It increasingly desires to expose them to and to cause them to hardly embrace all manners of ungodliness and perversity. That's our culture. So why did you say that?

Well, just looking around, being a dad, first of all, having waging hopefully the good warfare here in my own household for the hearts of my own children, but just looking at culture, looking at all the cultural icons, entertainment, education, just what's celebrated and what isn't, some of the statistics concerning how many people are embracing alternative or perverse lifestyles, I mean, on and on and on. You know, once popular and relatively pure cartoons, I mean, you name it, you know, just everything under the sun seems to indicate the spiritual war to us if we're paying attention. And of course, chief in that spiritual war is the devil himself, who certainly, in the dark side of it at least, and certainly hates God, hates the family, hates the church, and hates children. And from the Garden of Eden, again, as you said, we made that point that he hates the seed of the woman, ultimately fulfilled in Christ, but all of Christ's children, including the little ones. And everything in culture kind of says that if we're paying attention.

And sometimes at our church, the language is somewhat shocking, but you can, being in this world, but hopefully not of it, but being in this world, you can, you can lose sight of that. You can just kind of go along with the cultural flow and pick up a, you know, an idea here or maybe a compromise there and not even realize that you've kind of gotten on board with the wide road in some areas. And so that language was designed to go all stop, wait a minute, take a hard look at what's coming into our homes and what's coming into the hearts of our babies. Yeah, yeah, the culture is against children. You know, Disney is the great Satan, the great Satanic voice to tell you to go find yourself, to regard your parents as idiots, and to follow your own heart.

That's the voice of Satan. That's the voice of Satan. Amen. It's saying that. You got that right.

Yeah, The whole entertainment industry is waging war. Even Kermit the frog is now gay. So, you know, it's everywhere. The war waged against children in the media, which people, which children are drinking in like crazy. I read the other day, the average child spends eight hours a day in front of a screen.

And most of the stuff on that, yeah, most of the stuff on that screen is probably not, not the healthiest in the world. Yeah. So anyway, I, yeah, I just thought that was very interesting the way you said that our culture hates children. Absolutely. And even when it doesn't, I mean, obviously if you asked, you know, many in that culture, do they hate children?

They would say, of course not. We love children, but if, you know, increasingly as we embrace the sufficiency of Scripture and develop a biblical worldview, what's happening to our children can't be turned, can't be turned anything in any other way other than hatred from a biblical perspective. When you're trying to kill them, when you're trying to take them as far away from God as possible, when you want to pervert their sense of who they are in terms of gender, when you laugh at the scriptures, when you laugh at holiness, and so forth. Yeah, that's hatred. Hatred against God and hatred against his children.

Now you ended this sermon talking about Jesus and the millstone. If you caused one of these leaps of these little ones to stumble, it'd be better if a millstone was hung around your neck. Was that why you called this Don't Mess With the Children? Because there's a millstone in your future. Yeah, we, you know, and we went ahead and defined the millstone and its usage in, you know, in ancient Israel and in Bible times, we displayed a picture of it and this big old rock sitting on another big old rock.

And, and we talked about the fact that the Lord said it would actually be better. We emphasize that he said it would be better if a millstone, yeah, if a millstone were hung around your neck, just think it weigh hundreds of pounds. And, And so you're going straight to the bottom there if you're cast to the sea. And that's a better, that's a better judgment than what's actually coming for those who would cause his little ones to stumble. Yeah.

So don't mess with his children. Don't mess with his children. So you bet, you, well, this was not really a negative message. You started out talking about the danger to children in our culture, and then you ended it with the millstone. But in between, you really cast a vision for God's great plans and desires for children.

I really found that to be wonderful. Like you quoted Psalm 127, 3-5. God sees children as a blessing. Absolutely. You sort of, you took us to this view of God.

Children are a blessing, you know, they they are a heritage. Right. They are, a heritage is value, you know. There's tremendous value in children. You know, people think their children are a hassle.

No, they're, they have tremendous value. That's right. They're, They're made in the image of God. They're alive from the moment they're conceived. They're, as you say, a blessing in the heritage, blesses the man who has a quiver full.

They are part of the people of God. I mean, we went through many things. We kind of went back and tried to make sure we had a biblical theology as it relates to children to help combat some of the more harmful mindsets that can creep in and seep in if we're not careful. Absolutely. They're wonderful.

And of course, being an age integrated church, that is particularly helpful to remember that. You know, when you're when you're kind of tussling with them and working on it, discipling and helping and praying and when you help another families and so forth, it's just I just love the culture of life and the culture of beauty concerning that life that can break out in a church, you know, when we take the Lord at His word as it relates to children. You know, I was in an ordination service with one of my friends a few years ago, and everybody was like over 50, and there were no kids there. It was the creepiest thing. I thought, this is so weird, there are no kids, there's no life here, there's no jiggling here, you know.

Pete Slauson So, here's a verse out of 1 Timothy 3. It's qualifications for elders. And interestingly enough, how a father cares for his children is part of that qualification. Here's what Paul says, one who rules his own house well, having his children in submission with all reverence. Then he says this, for if a man does not know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the Church of God?

So he gets right to the bottom of the thing, which is how will he know how to take care of the Church of God. So he gets right to the bottom of the thing, which is, how will he know how to take care of the Church of God if he hasn't been taking care of the ones who are even closer to him whose care he's been charged with? It's all about the care of children. So God wants children to be really lavishly cared for, and He puts fathers and mothers in the home to provide that care for them. So if you wanna know if a man's ready to lead the church and if the church will flourish under his care, you look at his kids.

If you look at his kids and his kids are flourishing under his care, then you have good reason to think that the church will flourish under his care. Yeah. And you pointed out a passage that takes that to a whole other level, this caring for children, that the children are the responsibility of parents, but you were quoting 2 Corinthians 12, 14 through 15, which says that the children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children. The parents lay up. God wants children to have an inheritance.

Isn't that interesting? God wants your kids to have some, in other words, you shouldn't just spend it all, you know, live in such a way to have something to give to them, and then give it to them. Exactly. And in our day, just emphasizing the principle, you know, is interesting too, because, you know, in a day where people can't wait to get rid of their children, to just remind them again that you have this tremendous, God-given honor of responsibility toward them, to lay something up for them, to give them an inheritance, hopefully financial, but certainly relational and spiritual, is again, something that catches people a little off guard, even today, again, is that confusion and that deception where we think we're in a culture that values children and loves children, but we can't wait to get rid of them. Well, they're too noisy.

Can we get them out of here? Or when people come and visit an agent and go to church, say, hey, what do I do with my kid? Hey, you don't know us. And why are you so quick to do that? So again, it's these things that are built in that we don't even realize that we're built in to emphasize that parents have this wonderful responsibility, and it comes from God.

Yeah. You know, you also quoted Deuteronomy 6, you know, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and you shall diligently teach them." The Lord wants children to be taught, not just taught though, taught out of a heart of love, out of love for God. In other words, like children are this conduit from the love of God. That's how much God treasures children. Not just teach them, not just pour the stuff into their heads, but there's a whole motive behind it.

Yeah. I'll never forget hearing Kevin Swanson say this. He was talking about parents, and particularly fathers and children, and he said, you know, there's just got to be more love here. There's got to be more love here. Let's disciple the children we love to the God we love.

And that's exactly it. I was so blessed by that even many years ago. The motive is love. Yeah. He also quoted Psalm 78, 5 through 8, And He commanded our fathers that they should make them known to their children and so that they would have their hope in God and they wouldn't forget God.

They wouldn't forget the works of God. And God loves children so much, He wants them to have hope. He doesn't want your children to lose hope. The hardest thing for a child to endure other than to be lost in their sins is to lose hope. You want your children to have hope.

You got to be giving them hope because there's a lot of hopeless stuff going on. And God loves children so much that he wants them to have hope. And I suppose that's in part why he commanded it so in Israel. You know, and so one of the points we made was that it is a commandment. It is a command.

This is what God wants fathers to do for all of these reasons, lest there be this great forgetting, and as you said, a loss of hope. Again, it's that whole idea that parents, you have this not only this responsibility, but we must obey God here and tell our children of the great works and the wonder and the beauty of the Savior that that saved us from our sins. And you know, having been doing this a while now, focusing on families and focusing on fathers, you can, you know, I look out there sometimes, or I talk to men sometimes, talk to some of the sisters sometimes, and there's a little weariness. And there's a little, you know, it didn't always go the way we think it's going to go. And so sometimes just bringing this heart back up again just pours new encouragement into the saints to keep on going, that God's still in control of it.

He's still going to use our feeble efforts. He'll take our fish and loaves and do something special with it if he desires. And that's kind of what I was after, too. Don't stop now. Don't quit now.

The devil hadn't quit, so let us not quit out of it. Amen. So you also quoted Proverbs 13, 24, He that spareth his rod, hated the Son, but he that loveth him, chasteneth him betimes. In other words, well, God wants children to be chastened. Yeah.

You didn't leave that one out. Yeah, you didn't give me the amen. You didn't give me the amen. Not from the children, anyway. Yeah.

Hey, you got to let the Word of God roll. I mean, you know. That's right. I just let it roll. Yeah, we're talking about discipling, but part of that is, of course, discipline.

So, yeah, not the most popular subject these days, but nevertheless, a huge tool in the parents toolkit. The prophet Isaiah says, woe to those who call good evil and who call evil good, and that's exactly what we see. The world says, we love our kids, and then they do all the things that actually communicate, so they don't love kids at all, they hate them. And then they call the disciplining of children hatred, abuse. And of course, there is such a thing, of course, there is such a thing as physical abuse, but that's not what the Bible is ever advocating for.

The defining of all physical discipline as abuse, though, is just a flipping on its head of good and evil. You know, and you quoted, just to take off on that, Jason, I mean, he quoted Proverbs 19, 18, chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying." In other words, God wants parents to intervene. Children need the intervention of their parents. Somebody has to step in and say this is this ships are going in the wrong direction, right? And that's love not hatred.

That's love Yeah, right and it may not be what the child even though the child needs it It may not necessarily what the child wants and so one of the encouragement when you get a group of I get a group Of parents together get a group of men together One of the encouragement says sometimes, you know, you are it feels like you're you're the bad guy In the cultures telling you you're the bad guy And your child's Facebook friends are telling you, you're the bad guy, but you did exactly what you're supposed to do. You intervened. This is going in the wrong direction. Here's how it needs to go. Yeah.

You quoted Proverbs 29 and 17, correct to thy son and train up a child, Proverbs 22, 6. Train him up. Train him up, correct, intervene. But it's interesting chasing thy son while there is hope. In other words, you better do it.

You better do it early enough. You can't let you you cannot let this stuff run. Because there's a time when there's a time when there won't be any hope if you let it run. Parents have to be really vigilant. They can't be too busy.

They got to have bandwidth to intervene while there's hope. I know in my own personal household, sometimes when I think I'm over hypervigilant or over vigilant, turns out that I'm probably not as vigilant as I needed to be, particularly in the day in which we live where so much sneaks in through so many different mediums, so many different ways. So yeah, absolutely. And most of the time when I feel like I'm under parenting or over parenting, I'm actually under parenting. I also, I was very struck by your quoting Exodus 20 12, the fifth commandment, honor your father and mother.

Yes sir. God loves children so much that he wants parents to help create a generous, thankful spirit. A generous spirit toward their parents, toward their imperfect parents, to honor their father and mother. Which, Chris, we would say that honoring father and mother sets you up for success in everything. That's what the command actually says.

And the Apostle Paul reiterates it in Ephesians 6, but that God would have parents create an honoring spirit toward all authorities. That's right. To me, honor is so sweet. It's really the grease that keeps the train moving. Even when there's disagreement, if there's honor, we can go forward together well.

We can still hear each other. We won't collapse into unforgiveness and all kinds of, it really is a big deal. And one of the points that I made was, for those of us, for those of you who are blessed to have parents who are still alive, the relationship changes a little when you have your own household, but you're still supposed to honor them. And so how you never outgrow honor was my point. And I've watched men like you, Scott, you know, how you, you know, your mom and your dad, and you know, just what an example, you know, of honor.

And of course, not only are we supposed to teach our children that, but hopefully we're modeling some of it too. You also quoted Proverbs 1, 8, and 9. My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother, for they shall be an ornament of grace upon thy head and chains about their neck." In other words, God loves children so much that he wants them to have the instruction of their parents as an ornament of grace. So he wants the teaching to be an ornament of grace. Parents have to make sure that they are, you know, teaching for ornamentation, not just outward appearance, but it's, it's the ornamentation of God of the word of God in their lives.

So it's a shift of heart, you know, You know, what my wife and I strive for. And just the other day, my oldest daughter, she's 16, she came to me after we let her go to a friend's house that she plays soccer with. And she saw, you know, met some good friends there, some good girls there. My, She heard them talking about their relationships with their parents, and she came home. She had a wonderful time.

It was a godly event. And she came home, though, and she looked at me, and she said, you know, I'm really glad that you're as hard on me as you are. I said, what do you mean? She said, I'm really glad that you and mom set the boundaries that you've set, and how it's all about protecting me and protecting my heart. I don't say it enough to say thank you.

Well, after crying a little bit and tearing up a little bit, that's what we want her to perceive, what we're teaching her as an ornament of grace, right? We want her to see, hopefully by God's grace, the beauty in the commandments of God being followed by a child. You know, in one way, the world doesn't love their children enough, and in one way, they love them too much in the sense that they put them at the center of all things. And so, they're never willing to cross swords or contradict anything that their children do, just sort of make all of life about catering to every whim of the child, which is never good for the child. It's not real love either.

Amen. So there you have it. Don't mess with the children. Don't mess with the children. Think about the millstones.

Think about the millstones, the millstone in your future. Yeah, it's so important. And God has done so much in His Word to help us to cherish and treasure children in a very particular way by teaching them, correcting them, helping them, you know. It's such a beautiful picture. What a fantastic experience a child can have in a Christian home.

Amen. Hey, thanks for preaching that message. Oh, appreciate the encouragement. Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah. Okay, so there you have it. Don't mess with the children, except in God's ways. Hey, thanks for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast, and we'd love to see you next time. 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.