How should we as Christians engage our culture and the world around us? Many different answers have been proposed; from free and full adoption of the culture to complete withdrawal, and many positions in between. A proper Christian understanding of the world will recognize two things: First, the fact that God made the world good, to be enjoyed, and to be a blessing to his image bearers. And second, that this world is fallen and miserable under the burden and curse of sin. Understanding this, we can see how to use the things of this world legitimately (1 Tim 4:4-5), as well as how we must not use the things of this world (1 John 2:15-17).

Turn with me, please, to 2 Timothy, or 1 Timothy, 1 Timothy 4, 1 through 5. I'm going to look with you at how to use this world without abusing this world. And my goal is to give you three ways of using this world positively and this world's culture, and three ways of not abusing this world and its culture. So I want to look at the three positive ways from 1 Timothy 4, one through five, and then the three negatives from 1 John 2, 15 through 17. 1 Timothy 4, one through five.

Now the Spirit speaketh expressly that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from merits for meats which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth." And here's a key verse. "'For every creature of God is good and nothing to be refused if it be received with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified by the word of God in prayer." And then 1 John 2, 1 John 2, 15 through 17, "'Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever." Let's pray.

Great God, we ask thy help in delivering this message. We pray that at the end of it, every parent, teenager, child will have a better understanding of how to use this world and how not to abuse this world. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, John Calvin had a Latin phrase that summarizes in two words how we are to relate to this world's culture.

He called it complexity oppositeorum, the complexity of opposites. And what Calvin was saying was this, on the one hand, with regard to this world, you go to one extreme way over here and you say, this world is a wonderful place because in this world we receive, particularly as Christians, many good things from God to enjoy. We receive everything to be dedicated to God. So when you look at your spouse, you look at your children, you look at your car, you look at your home, you look at all your possessions, you look at your gifts, you look at your leisure time, you look at your work, you say, it all comes to me through the right hand of God's favor in Jesus Christ. God's benediction is upon it.

It is a wonderful thing to be a Christian in this world. This world is a great place to live because I can live for the glory of God. Hallelujah. Now Kelvin says, hold on a minute, don't get giddy with excitement, because over here, this world is a terrible place. You see, this world, he said, is a sepulcher, it's like a graveyard with smoke and we live in the midst of the smoke of sin and this world is just horrific and we long to be with Christ forever.

This world is stained with sin everywhere. Oh, would to God we would long to be with him. He who does not hanker, " said Calvin, to be with Jesus Christ has made little progress in the Christian life. Now, the complexity of these opposites are such that in this world, we're called to bring these two together and to walk the Christian walk. And what Kelvin says is this, When you bring these two together, you will not walk with giddy excitement because you remember you're still a sinner and you're still battling indwelling sin, nor will you walk with your head hanging down and depressed and discouraged because you remember you're in Christ, you're on your way to the celestial city and he who rides need not count a few rainy days as an impediment.

He who rides to be crowned, Kelvin said, but you take both of them, you merge them together and you walk circumspectly. You walk godly in this world. You walk humbly, keeping your eye upon the Lord. So there's this tremendous tension as we walk through this world, battling sin, looking to God, trusting in Christ, hating sin, counting the smallest sin, said the Puritans, greater evil than the greatest affliction. What a contrast.

Opposites coming together in your life, in your family's life, in your church's life, so that we walk circumspectly in this world, praising God for Jesus Christ and hating sin. Now, Paul and John set the complexity of these opposites before us in the two passages that I read to you. So turn again now to 1st Timothy 4, keep it open there, we're going to look at three ways in which this World can be used as God's good gift Paul you see is warning People through Timothy. He's actually warning Timothy to warn the people that There are people that are walking through this world Well meaning Christians perhaps or else just legalists and they see only the negative, only the negative in this world. And they're being ruled by seducing spirits, even by devils, And these devils are teaching them, you shouldn't marry, you shouldn't have children, you shouldn't have families, you should abstain from meats, et cetera, et cetera.

They are damaging Christians, Paul says, And they're insensitive really to right and wrong because they have skewed views of this world. And so Paul concludes, notice that, for every creature of God is good. Our Reformed heritage encourages us to acknowledge and rejoice in the beauty and goodness of God's world despite all the sin. So Paul is saying to Timothy in so many words, when we gaze upon towering mountains or listen to singing birds or taste bread spread with butter and strawberry jam, we can confess the Lord is good to all and his tender mercies are over all his works. You see, a stunning truth revealed in the Garden of Eden is that God not only created the world to meet our needs, but also to give us pleasure.

The Lord didn't feed Adam and Eve with dry crusts of bread, but he surrounded them with luscious fruit, beautiful trees, sparkling rivers, and land containing gold and gemstones. So Paul declares that God, the living God, our creator, gives us richly all things to enjoy 1 Timothy 6 17. So in reflecting on this side of the complexity of opposites Calvin said God has provided food not only to provide for necessity but also for delight and good cheer. He then goes on to ask this intriguing question, would God make flowers so beautiful and fragrant if he did not intend us to enjoy them with our eyes and with our noses? God also invented the diversity of colors, he says.

Why? Because this world has an element of goodness in it for us to enjoy. Now how do we enjoy this world properly? Three ways now. Number one, we are to use this world with a heart of gratitude, a heart of gratitude.

Look at 4 verse 4. For every creature of God is good, nothing to be refused if, if, this is a big if, it be received with thanksgiving. You see, If we receive this world as God's creation, as a gift from God, as a gift from heaven above, as James 1.17 says, that all good things come from God, then we look beyond the gift to the giver. As Calvin put it, all things were created for us that we might recognize the author and give thanks for his kindness toward us. So here's the point of using the world rightly.

Gratitude deems the giver to be a greater treasure than the gift. Gratitude deems the giver to be a greater treasure than the gift. Let me illustrate that. If you have a four-year-old child and that child maybe has colored a picture and has gone way over the lines and really you can hardly tell what they were coloring and what they weren't and brings it to you, what do you say? You know, you did a lousy job and you throw it away and crumple it up in front of the child.

Of course you don't. In fact, you would probably treasure that picture more than you would a fairly expensive gift from a stranger because it's from your child. In fact, I recall taking pictures that my kids colored and taking them over to my study and pinning them up. I mean, let other people see the handiwork of my child. This is beautiful because it comes from my child.

Well, you see, that's how a Christian feels about God. You receive everything with thanksgiving because it is all a gift of God. Even affliction. It is the hand of my Father. We had a man in our church, an elder who went through three knee surgeries and every time he would get infection.

And finally, the last surgery, The surgeon said to him, if this doesn't work, we'll probably have to take your leg off. And for the first two weeks, we thought it was working. And I called him up one day and I said, how you doing today? He said, I'm doing fine. I said, that's great.

Yeah, he said, but the infection is back. I said, I thought you were doing fine. Well, I am doing fine because my father must have more to teach me. I'm grateful to him. Would you respond that way when your leg was about to be taken off?

You see, in everything, says Paul, in everything give thanks, for this is the will of God, 1 Thessalonians 5, in Christ Jesus concerning you. A true Christian is someone who believes in this world that all things work together for good to them that love God to the called according to his purpose. So we must not use this world to use God to get more of what we want but we must use this world to get more of God. We want God. Every glimpse of majesty we see in the starry galaxies will then make us say, O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth.

And every drop of honey or maple syrup that we taste will then make us say, God is so good." When my dad came out of one of his surgeries, I went to see him and he was crying and I said to him, dad, why are you crying? You know, this surgery came out well. And he said, well, a nurse just walked in and she, I was very thirsty and she moistened my lips with an ice cube and I got to thinking, the rich man in hell didn't have a drop of water to cool his tongue. Who am I to receive moisture upon my lips? Have you ever been thankful for one ice cube?

You see, a Christian enjoys this world because he's thankful for everything. And there's so much to be thankful for. Many of the Psalms reflect on that. Psalm 148 calls upon every part of the world to praise the Lord because he made it. The whole Psalm is a catalog of God's amazing creation.

The heights of heaven, the hosts of angels dwelling in them, the sun, moon, stars, clouds above us in the firmament, sea monsters in ocean depths, the fire, hail, snow, vapors, storms that sweep over the dry land, mountains and hills, fruit trees and cedars, wild beasts and cattle, creeping things and flying birds, kings, generals, judges of the earth, young men and maidens, old men and little children. Let all of them, " this psalm says, "'praise the name of the Lord, for his name alone is excellent, his glory is above the earth and the heaven. Creation moves us to praise the Creator because the cause is always greater than the effect. The whole earth is full of God's glory. And so we use this world with a spirit of gratitude.

Gratitude is love returned for love bestowed. True thankfulness is a childlike response of love to my Father who greatly loves me in Jesus Christ." True gratitude views all of creation through Gospel eyes, seeing the world as the handiwork of the God who sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. And so we look around this world and we cry out with John, we love him because he first loved us. We use the world with a heart of gratitude. That's number one.

Number two, we use this world with the mindset of a pilgrim, the mindset of a pilgrim. Look, look further at verse five. Paul says, we are to use this world not only with thanksgiving, but we're to sanctify everything by the Word of God. So we must not use the things of God's creation to break God's commandments, but to sanctify. We must allow the teachings of the Bible, in other words, to shape how we think about this world and our activities in this world.

Now in the whole context of this passage, Paul is talking about the doctrine of the Word of God in relation to the return of Christ and the end of the age. Notice in verse 1 he talks about the latter times. In verse 8 he mentions the life which is to come. He returns the theme of using this present world in light of the world to come in chapter 6, four times. We must also, he says, always view the things of this world in the light of the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ.

614. So we must use this world knowing that it is neither our true home nor our lasting treasure. We're just renters here. We're on our way to our eternal home. If you're a student, for example, from another country and you're visiting, you enjoy the time that you're here in this country, but you're always thinking about, well, I'm going home.

I'm going home in one week. I'm going home in two weeks. You see, in this world, our goal should not be to accumulate large quantities of possessions and hunker in and put our tent stakes in the soil too deeply, but we must remember that we are traveling through. We're not tourists in this world living for pleasure and entertainment, but we're wanderers banished from paradise, longing to return to the heavenly paradise. For if heaven is our homeland, said Kelvin, what is this earth but our place, our temporary place of exile?

So positively, We're here, we enjoy everything with the spirit of gratitude that God sends our way, but we are still pilgrims. We don't find our heart in Vanity Fair. Now what does it mean to be a pilgrim? Well, the Puritans handled that very well. They said, when you relate to this world's culture as a pilgrim, you operate with a sevenfold outlook, and this is what we need in our families as well.

Let me give them to you quickly. Number one, a biblical outlook. Everything you read, you see, you experience through the lens of scripture, for your faith and for your practice. Number two, a godly outlook. You want to lead your family in every way and everything to promote conscientious living in the childlike fear of God, which esteems the smiles of God and the frowns of God to be of greater weight and value than the smiles and frowns of men.

And so you live in the fear of God, in your duty to God, in your duty to family, in your duty to the church, in your duty to the country, in your duty to your employer. A godly outlook. Number three, you're a pilgrim not only because you have a biblical outlook and a godly outlook on life and on culture, but you also have a churchly, a churchly outlook that is concerned preeminently with God's glory and with genuine worship and spiritual fellowship with believers and you want the doctrines and the government and discipline of God's church to be in accord with the Word of God. Number four, live a war-faring outlook. Since the church on earth wages war against indwelling sin, the Puritans said, because the remains of our old nature lie dormant within us like a volcano that can burn out of control at any time.

And so you are always in the posture of warfare. You always have on Christian armor. And you're waging war against a beckoning, seducing, hostile world that does not yet agree to cease-fires and does not sign peace treaties with you. You're in a battle, the holy war of Romans 7 internally, but also the holy war with the enemies, the world, and the devil outside of you. Fifthly, you are to live, the Puritans would say, against this culture with a methodical, a methodical outlook, coming from the word method.

And what they meant by that was that you should have certain things you do every day, preferably at stated times, that strive to keep you in close communion with God. They're thinking here primarily of your private devotion time with God. Every day you read the scriptures. Every day you have family worship. Every day you have private prayer with your wife.

Every day you use the spiritual disciplines God has supplied you so that you can live more unstained from this world. A methodical outlook. Sixth, a Christ-centered outlook that gives the triune God the glory for all things, you want to worship Christ, you want to be Christ-centered, you want to emulate Paul who said, I determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified. You want your children to be able to look at you and say, though my dad and my mom have flaws and faults, this much we can say about our parents, they love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. A Christ-centered outlook on life.

And then finally the Puritans would say, you want to beat back this world's culture by having a two-worldly outlook, T-W-O, worldly outlook. That is to say, as you keep one eye on this world and your responsibilities and the affairs in it, you focus your other eye always on eternity. In a sense, you're a cross-eyed believer. And even that second eye that you focus on this world, you do so in light of eternity. You're always thinking about eternity.

I'm traveling through, I'm a pilgrim. So let me just ask you this question. Would this sevenfold outlook be how you are confronting this world's culture now, today? Do you have a biblical, godly, churchly, warfaring, methodical, Christ-centered, two-worldly outlook? So we live this world, thankfully, but thankfully as pilgrims.

Our heart is in here in this world. Our energies are expended, yes, on our work, our families, our churches, but we're looking for the world to come. And thirdly, we use this world with an attitude of dependence. Notice what the text says. Paul says the creatures of God are sanctified by the Word of God and prayer.

Prayer, the very word prayer, means appealing to someone in power, in the Christian sense, to God, to take action. It reminds us that since God is our creator and the Lord of this world, we are dependent upon him and receive all things by his grace alone. Our prayer teaches us two things about our attitude, not just to this world's culture, but to God as we react to this world's culture. The first is, we live a life of dependency. It's why we fold our hands when we pray.

It's why we close our eyes when we pray. It's an attitude of dependency. We want to shut out when we pray. All that is around us that would draw us away from God, to lift up our souls to the Lord. You see, we live through this world prayerfully.

Prayer is the most important thing in our communion with God And my dad used to say to us when we were kids, he'd say, remember, communication is always a two-way street. God comes to us through his word, we go back to God through prayer. One time when I was nine years old, he took me into his bedroom, He sat me down in his bed, and I'll never forget. He said to me, son, do you know what the difference is between a believer and a non-believer? And of course, I always said no, because I never quite did get a right answer with my dad's questions.

He always said something more in mind. So I just always said no. And he said to me, well, a believer always has a place to go. And then he said this to me, I wish I could write it with an iron pen on your heart. And he did, because I still remember it.

He said, remember this, don't ever forget it, that an open throne of grace is worth more than all the money in the world. And he got out his wallet, he laid some money down there. He said, no amount of money would be a substitute for prayer. And then he told me another time, he said, you know, your mom and I will not believe in you. This is when he's a bit older.

We will not believe in you much money. We don't have much. We've given our life to work and to the church. But he said there is one thing we'll leave behind for you. We'll leave behind for you a treasury of prayer.

And as Matthew Henry said, far better to leave behind a treasure of prayers for your children than a treasury of gold and silver. And we know in our family, both My parents are gone now. My mother died six years ago now. My dad died on the pulpit 25 years ago. Just had a heart attack on the pulp and went straight from the pulp to glory.

My mother died, she was 92. When she died, she was an only child, but when she died she had 92 great-grandchildren, and she was a praying warrior and we treasure as a family those prayers of our parents far, far more than whatever else they could have left behind. This is the way to live in this world. Counter-culturally, you live a life of dependency in which you sanctify everything by dependent prayer. Oh, the treasure of an open throne of grace.

To be able to hear God and to be heard of God through his word and back to him through prayer is unspeakable gift. But also prayer teaches us contentment. When we live a prayerful life, we're saying, Lord, you're in charge. Steering wheel is in your hands. And we're willing to bow under your sovereign dispensations over us.

Prayer teaches us submission. Speaking of my mother, I still remember when I was 10 years old going to her one day and saying, mother, if you could be any age you want, and she was 42 at the time. I said, if you could be any age you want, what age would you pick? And she said, 42. I said, wow, that's a coincidence, that's just what you are.

And she turned and she looked at me and I'll never forget her look in her eyes. I have learned in whatsoever state I am therewith to be content. Do you really want to be younger? Like this world's culture? No, you want to be content don't you?

At every age. Boys and girls do you want to be older? If you're 10 do you want to be 12? No, no, no. You say I want to be content with where I'm at.

That's the way to live And you don't get to live that way without a life of secret prayer, of communion with God. It's through communion with God you learn to be content with what God gives to you. So that's how you use this world. Three things, a heart of gratitude, the mindset of a pilgrim, and the attitude of dependence, which gives you prayerful humility and prayerful contentment. Now, how do we abuse this world?

How are we not to abuse this world? Well, turn with me now to 1 John 2, 15 through 17. You see, John here says, love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. What he's referring to here is Satan's kingdom of darkness, not the world as created, but the world in rebellion against God. By the world Here, John understands everything connected with the present life apart from the kingdom of God, apart from the hope of eternal life.

By the word world here, he's thinking of worldly pleasures, worldly delights, worldly allurements by which the natural man is captivated so as to withdraw himself from God." He's thinking of worldliness. You see, when we engage in worldliness, then this world becomes our God, it becomes our idol because we put it above God, then culture and pleasing men become our idols. Then God becomes small and man becomes big. Worldliness is human nature without God. The goal of worldly people is to live horizontally rather than vertically, to move forward rather than to look upward.

Worldly people seek material prosperity and despise holiness. They burst with selfish desires and disdain heartfelt supplications. They live for this world's Trinity, pleasure, profit, imposition. As sinners you see, we belong to this world by nature. It's our natural habitat.

But by grace, we are born again. And we learn to live for God rather than for this world. But all of us, all of us still struggle with this, don't we? We have the old nature that wants to regain lost territory. Whirliness, you see, is something that can coexist within us with high moral standards, with lofty idealism, even with Christian convictions.

James says that you can be stained by the world by showing favoritism to the rich, by having a bitterly destructive tongue, by getting into quarrels because you're not getting what you want, or by taking advantage of your employees and workers. A straight A student who does not go to drinking parties can still be worldly in his or her heart. Worldliness does not always mean blatant conformity to popular culture either. We often tend to think of worldliness maybe as a young woman who shops all the time for the trendiest clothing or dates one young man after another looking for someone to make her feel good about herself or perhaps we think of a young man who's addicted to the latest technology or to sports trivia but in reality a monk eating vegetables in a hut with no internet connection can be worldly as he lives by man-made rules for spirituality. So how does worldliness display itself?

Well, let me give you three ways from our text in 1 John 2. First, we abuse this world with selfish greed, selfish greed. 1 John 2, 15, Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. By nature we're selfish and we're greedy, and self-love is what puts out our own eyes and makes us go astray.

And as a result John says in verse 16 that worldliness is love degraded into lust, not just sexual lust but greedy lust of any kind. This selfish greed makes us break the tenth commandment every day by nature. Thou shalt not covet. You see God created man to enjoy all things in creation by receiving God's grace, by relying on God's power, by obeying God's will, and by pursuing God's glory. And when we get that out of focus in our lives and we live out of selfish greed, we mistake our wants for our needs.

You know by nature we all do that. We think we need things that are really wants. My wife teaches in our neighborhood Sunday school where we bring in all kinds of children every week from the neighborhood. And she teaches like five year olds. And one day she's asking for prayer requests and a boy raises his hand, he says, I need a bike.

And the little girl sitting next to him says, That's not a need, that's a want. A pretty good theology there for a five-year-old. But you see, the point is this, the point is this, that you and I can mix up our needs and our wants until the two loves that we think we have within us, love for God and love for this world, are so mixed up, so incompatible, because we have two masters, we're trying to serve them both, but Jesus said, no one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other." Love of this world, greediness for the things of this world, Jesus is saying, will destroy us. You know, the Bible doesn't say money is the root of all evil. It says the love of money is the root of all evil.

If we live greedily, selfishly, we will destroy ourselves through not waging war against this culture. One love must rule our lives, a holy passion for God and the things of God. Greed is an abominable sin in the sight of God. Number two, we abuse this world with a mindset of materialism therefore. This flows out of it, you see.

Worldliness values physical appearance more than the image of God in a person's soul. And so John describes it as the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. And these things conspire to make us crave things for the body. And so there's a yearning in this world's culture more than ever before for what is beautiful, what is expensive, what is pleasant. We live in a world that schools our children to value possessions and outward appearances more than God and preparation for eternity.

So our children will naturally covet a good-looking girlfriend or boyfriend, maybe an expensive car, in-style clothes, new technology, many other material things. Our daughters will compete to be the most attractive. Our boys want to be the strongest or the most successful in sports and school or work. Ironically, you see, this preoccupation with the physical and the material can often be turned upside down into sinful abuse of body through religious asceticism, cutting of oneself, or eating disorders. And John says, all of these things pass away, the world passeth away and the lusts thereof, but he that does the will of God abides forever.

You see, we need to learn that this world's pleasures are temporary. What is most precious in the world and deemed especially desirable is nothing but a shadowy phantom. The world is our passage, not our portion. We're on our way to eternity. Spurgeon put it bluntly.

He said, if you live for this world, you'll end up with nothing but a coffin on your back and you'll soon have grave dust in your mouth. It just renders. Our real home is in heaven. And thirdly, we abuse this world with a spirit of pride. The pride of life, John calls it.

Worldliness feeds the pride of life. Pride is a dreadful sin. Other sins flee from God, but pride is a sin that turns itself and attacks God, seeks to dethrone God, and put myself on the throne. Through pride I live my life as if I'm the God of this world. George Schwinnock, a Puritan said, pride is the shirt of the soul put on first in Genesis 3 and put off last in the moment of death.

Jonathan Edwards said, pride is like an onion. You just take off one layer and there's always another layer underneath. Pride comes in all varieties, forms, and shapes. Oh, the depth and the tragedy of the pride of our heart. God says He hates seven things in Proverbs six.

Have you ever noticed that four of them are related to pride? And pride isn't always easy to identify. We can be proud when we get straight A's, we can be proud when we don't get good grades, we can be proud when we obey our parents, we can be proud when we don't obey our parents. We can be proud over anything. Worldly pride always has this problem.

It wants to please myself in sinful man rather than God. True humility always has this foundation, what do I have that I have not received and if I have received it why do I boast? I just want to use my life, whatever gifts God has given me, for the glory of God. That's the way to live. Worldliness then is the hollow shell of our love for people and things minus the love of God.

Worldliness is the sad, empty, blasphemous love of the world. So let me conclude. I want to conclude by giving you eight quick things by which you as a family are called to live, helps to help you live counter-culturally to this world, living in this world, but not of this world and living for good things. Here's eight things. Number one, encourage your children with God's promises in the gospel and encourage yourself with that as well.

When you look at all the enemies against your children, their own hearts, your own natural old nature, the world itself, the devil, flesh and blood, negative peers, so much is against the raising of your children in the fear of God, you could be overwhelmed. But the promises of God, you see, the promises of the Gospel, they are your strength and you need to convey them to your children that they can be saved through the blood of Jesus and be delivered from this present evil world. In the world you shall have tribulation, said Jesus, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. Remind your children of that. You can get the victory in and through Jesus Christ.

And number two, teach your children regularly about the importance and necessity of repentance and faith toward God and the Lord Jesus Christ. You can't be saved in Christ without repenting of your sin and without surrendering in faith to him. And don't teach them these things in the way of shallow, easy believism. Oh well, you admit you're a sinner. Now you believe in Jesus, yes you do.

Okay, you're saved, no. Saving faith is a surrendering of one's entire life to the entire life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That's no small thing. And repentance means that I grieve over sin and I forsake sin and I confess sin and I hate sin with holy hatred and wish that all sin in me were dead and I'm striving to put a sword through every sin, also those darling sins to which I'm prone to fall into. You need to teach your children about these important, basic gospel truths.

Number three, You live counter-culturally by teaching your children to practice self-denial. And it begins in your own family. It begins by teaching your children not to live for the me, me, me, my, my, my, mine, mine, mine mentality. To gratify their own desires, their own passions. You teach them to share their toys with their brothers and sisters when they're very young.

You help them see the importance of cheerfully serving, that life is all about service. You give them jobs around the house. You encourage them to serve in their church, their community. You teach them self-denial. Four, you rid your homes of needless temptations.

You know, there's enough worldliness in all of our hearts that we don't need to feed that worldliness with bringing worldly things into our homes, worldly entertainment. What you are allowing to enter the eyes and ears of your child's soul is so critical. John Bunyan said in Holy War that almost all temptations come through two gates of man's soul, ear gate and eye gate. And it's tragic to hear of parents who allow their children to watch inappropriate movies, to read lewd and materialistic magazines or blogs, to buy music that exploits women or to download evil pictures or texts on their cell phones. Guard your children's access to electronic devices.

Teach them self-control as they get older. Review the books and music they choose and most of all talk to them in family worship about the lust of the eyes and the lust of the ears and the pride of life. What these things are, how to fight against them, how to practice purity, why sex is a joyful part of marriage is not to be engaged in any other setting. Your children need your instruction from your heart on these things. At five, fill your children's minds and hearts with what is good and true like Philippians 4 says and help them to learn to sing the psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with grace in their hearts to the Lord.

Instead of providing entertainment that makes them passive consumers, do things together as a family to make them active friends to one another and active friends to the truths of the living God. And six, train them. Train them to see that no created thing is neutral ground. Take the current news of the day and help them to dissect it through a biblical lens. Teach your children there's no area of their lives over which Christ does not claim lordship.

Material possessions, personal relationships, families, school work, work, spare time, entertainment are all tools the devil can use to conquer our children with worldliness. We need to teach our children in every situation to ask the question, is this according to the will of God? And especially as you get a bit older. My dad used to often say to us when we asked him a question, dad, can we do this? I'm talking now when we were teenagers.

He'd say, well, go to your bedroom and get down on your knees and ask the Lord if he can be glorified in what you want to do. And if you can't feel peace in your conscience that God will be glorified in what you're about to do. Don't do it. See he was forming our conscience instead of just telling us yes or no. Seven, be a model for your children in fighting against the world.

You need to live the life that you're asking them to live. Titus 2 says, in all things show thyself a pattern of good works, in doctrine showing uncorruptness, gravity, sincerity, sound speech that cannot be condemned, that he that is of the contrary part may be ashamed having no evil thing to say of you." You know, many children struggle with worldliness because dad and mom have ceased to struggle with it. Many parents live as people pleasers, regard outward appearances as more important than internal appearance, love material things, live with a temporal outlook on life, feed on pride, and then expect their children to do otherwise. You've got to be an example of what you teach your children. And number eight, pray for God to give your family saving grace.

My dad used to pray in front of us all the time with tears, and we knew he did it in private and so did my mother. Lord don't let one of these children go lost and his most familiar petition I must have heard it 500 times was let us All unite around the throne of grace one day in glory as an undivided family reserved for the heavenly mansions above. We need the Holy Spirit for every one of our children. Let me close then with two illustrations. John Bunyan in Pilgrim's Progress has a picture of a muckraker, you know that boys and girls.

And Bunyan wrote that Christiana was taken into a room where a man held a tool for raking the dirt. He just was raking in the dirt. Another person stood by him and offered him a beautiful heavenly crown in exchange for the muck rake. The crown was above his head, but the man never looked up. He kept raking in the muck of this world.

He was a man of this world, said Banyan, and he refused the crown of glory. Now combine that illustration with this one from Roland Hill. Roland Hill was getting depressed. God wasn't seeming to bless his ministry and one day he looks out of his study window. He sees a pig going to market and all the pigs follow him into the slaughterhouse.

And Roland Hill is there to meet, he's there to meet the farmer when he comes out. He says, how do you do it? How do you get pigs to follow you to the slaughterhouse and I can't get people to follow the gospel truth to life eternal? And the farmer said, well didn't you see what I did as I walked along? I just had a little pig's food in my pocket and every few steps I let out a few crumbs and those pigs are so foolish that they will follow me to their death for a little pig's food.

My friend, don't you be that way. You young people, parents, children, don't follow this world's pig's food to your eternal death. Don't be like the prodigal who ended up eating pigs food but return to God and may God grant you through your words, your example, your training, your prayers, families that may look up from the dirt and muck of this world to see the glory of God in Christ and gladly Trade the muck rake and the pig's food for a crown Let us pray gracious God please help us to use this world rightly and not to abuse it, to truly treasure the things of God. May we ever live in such a way that we recognize that there is more evil in the smallest sin than there is in the greatest affliction and that there is more good in the smallest good work than there is in the greatest prosperity. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.

Well, just real quickly, I've gotten really excited to say two things to you here. One is that we have brought with us from Reformation Heritage books this year, this Puritan documentary, if you use ever a group of people that would encourage you to live counter-cultural to this world, it's certainly the Puritans. This is a curriculum for homeschoolers And it contains a number of things. First of all, a two-hour movie on the Puritans done by a number of very well-known people like John MacArthur, John Piper, Sinclair Ferguson, many others, talking about what the Puritans mean for our life of holiness. And then there's another video of about an hour or more of people like Sinclair Ferguson sitting in front of Bunhill Fields talking about the Puritans where so many of them were buried.

And then there's 35 DVD lessons in here on different aspects, the Puritan view of family, of marriage, of work, and a number of other things. And there's a 280-page workbook, by as many workbooks as you have children that will take the course, in which children can fill out the workbooks of the 35 Lessons. And then there's also a book written by Michael Reeves and myself, Introducing the Puritans, about a 200-page book. The entire set is on a special at this conference. It just came out this week for $100, and it's just a wonderful course for you and for your children.

And then we also have a brand new Bible story book for children three to seven years of age called Follow Me, Translated from Dutch, 116 stories with beautiful illustrations and three questions at the end of each Bible story. 116 stories. The beauty of this book is it doesn't add anything to scripture. So you don't have to teach your children later what is really true in the story and what is added. It's really true to the Bible, no pictures of Jesus of course, and it's really a very readable story to teach the Bible story to your very young children.

It's a thirty dollar book, fifteen dollars, everything is fifty percent off at our table. And last night, Dr. Muller said that we should be thick theologians. So I've got a thick book of theology for you, and This is my Reformed Systematic Theology, Volume 1, and what we're doing here is we're doing four things with each Bible truth. These are basically my lecture notes to his students, simplified a bit, so it reaches lay people and it's particularly for you, dad and mom, you should be resident theologians, " Dr.

Mohler said right over your family. Well, this is the tool to help you do that. And in each chapter we do four things. We first tell you what the Bible says about that particular truth. Secondly, we tell you what church history says about it, both pro and con.

Thirdly, how do you experience that truth in your own soul, in your own life? And fourthly, what are the major practical takeaways from this truth so that you can be praising God and worshiping Him at the end of each chapter. And the goal is that no one will ever again say doctrine is boring, but that everyone will say, every Christian will say with Martin Luther, doctrine is heaven because by these things men live. Thank you very much. We'll see you at the book table this afternoon.

God bless you.