God values his Word. God gave his people his Word so that they would know his will and his character, and so that they would become like him. God's people are to love that Word and value it and make it known to others. Families serve a vital role in making God's Word known to the next generation and households are places where love for God and passion for his Word should be nurtured, especially by fathers.

In the session that's been given to me, the session about saturating our household with the Word of God, we need to know what some of the other religions believe, but even more so than that, we need to know what we believe. And we need to know what the Word of God has to say and we need to then be able to communicate that to our children and that's what Deuteronomy chapter 6 is all about. Let's just read a few of the verses here in Deuteronomy chapter 6 beginning in verse 1 it says this, Now these are the commandments, the statutes and the judgments, which the Lord your God commanded to teach you, that you might do them in the land where you go to possess it, that thou mightest fear the Lord thy God and keep all of his statutes and all of his commandments which I command you thou and thy son and thy son's son all the days of thy life and that thy days may be prolonged. Here therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it, that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest increase mightily, as the Lord God of thy fathers has promised thee in a land that floweth with milk and honey." And here's the text that I want to take here this afternoon specifically from verse 4 down to the end of verse 8.

But he says this, Hear O Israel, the Lord thy God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might. And these words which I command thee this day, they shall be in thine heart, and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and thou shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house and when thou walkest in thy way and when thou liest down and when thou risest up and thou shall bind them as a sign upon thy hand and they shall be frontlets between thine eyes and thou shall write them upon the posts of thine house and on thy gates." We're in the reading right there at verse 9 asking the Lord to add his own blessing to his own word for his own name's sake. I just want to really make a few introductory comments about this particular passage of scripture. And then I just want to look at two points that I think very naturally fall out of this text. One is the concept of the motivation for us to be teaching our children.

Where does that motivation come from? What should be the proper biblical motivation to do it? We heard in some of the other presentations as Chad was talking about just few moments ago there are plenty of improper motivations for doing it but what is the proper motivation for us to do that and then secondly I want to say a little bit about the methodology of how to do that. There's a number of ways, there's helpful hints that we receive a lot of times from various sources. There's a lot of unhelpful hints that we receive as well.

I get a ton of books sent to me. The publishers send me the books ahead of time. And so UPS comes by or Federal Express, or hopefully now they just send me the e-version of the book in the mail. But most of the stuff that I get goes right into the trash can, because there is so much junk out there as to the way that we should approach different things in the Christian life, including the subject that we're talking about today, how we should pass along the teaching that God has given to us, to our children. And so I want to talk about, you know, in those two points, you know, the correct methodology that the scripture gives us to be able to do this.

Let me start by just illustrating where we're going in this passage by mentioning that a couple of years ago I launched into a study in our in the church that I pastor. I pastor what's called the Mountain Bridge Bible Fellowship in Travelers Rest. Very small congregation. It's not much bigger than our group that we have here today. Maybe under 100 people.

And it's interesting, you know, you go to some of these pastors conferences, and some of the pastors themselves will come up to you and say to you, how many are you running at your church? And this type of mentality, and I say to them a couple of things. One, I say, well, we have people, not cattle, at our church, so we don't refer to people in that particular way. And the second thing that I like to tell them is I say that we are in the book of Acts and not in the book of Numbers. We're not concerned about the particular amount of people that we have in the congregation.

It's not about numbers, it's not how many numbers are you running in your congregation. It's more the approach that we have taken is more of a Richard Baxter approach, the reform pastor approach of investing ourselves in the life of the people that are there. And frankly, with the current staff that we have at Mountain Bridge Bible Fellowship, I actually talk about the fact that we probably couldn't handle many more people than we actually have in the congregation and it'd be kind of odd to put this out publicly wouldn't it? You know somebody calls up the church and they say you know we're interested in coming by the church or visiting and could you give us a service time and then we say well actually you know we we're not taking any new people at this particular time, but there are a few older people in the congregation, so a spot may open up for you to be able to come in to the congregation. I'm almost thinking that, you know, if we were doing the job right if we're really spending time investing ourselves into the people that were there that you know maybe we'd have a little bit more mindset like that rather than having a mindset of the whole name of the game is let's see how how what we've got to do the fill the pews and then if we fill the pews, then somehow we've done our job.

So we're trying to think completely differently about this. And a couple years ago, I was praying and seeking the Lord's face about what particular message to start preaching on. I had done all of the New Testament books. I took one week and I did each a summary in that one week of just what each one of the 27 books of the New Testament scriptures was all about. I wanted to give people a place to to hang their hat.

You know a general New Testament survey, an overview, so I went through each one of the books and said here is the main message of this book and I want you to keep in mind when you think about this particular book I want you to have a certain word or a phrase or a term that is top of mind when you think about that particular book. For instance, like the book of Colossians, you know, what sort of word comes to your mind when you think of the book of Colossians? Well, we had determined in our study that the top of mind word there is the word completeness. The world is complete in everything that is necessary for the judgment of God to be poured out upon it. The Lord Jesus Christ is complete in everything that was necessary for him to be able to accomplish a full and complete salvation for us and ye are complete in Christ.

That's the book of Colossians really. So I wanted them to have certain words and certain concepts complete in their mind or ready there in their mind so when they thought about these 27 books that they would have that ready. So we took 27 weeks and we did a survey of the New Testament scriptures. I then wanted to do something in the Old Testament scripture because I actually had somebody come into my congregation who said to me, I don't really see why we even bother with the Old Testament. I couldn't believe it.

And they said that, you know, now that we have the New Testament, what's the sense of the Old Testament even being there? So I just fighting against that whole mentality, I said, you know, I want to go and now go through some books in the Old Testament scripture as well. So I wanted to take them to the Psalms and you got 150 Psalms. So where do you begin? You know, I could start there in the, we do expository preaching, typically verse by verse, if I started in the very beginning of the Psalms we may be there for the rest of our lives.

And so I just said you know I want to do something slightly different. So I selected Psalm 119, the longest chapter in the Bible. It's longer than some books of the Bible and we decided that we would go ahead and do a expository study on all 176 verses they're found in Psalm 119. Now I'm sure that if you were to ran that idea past some sort of a church consultant and by the way there is such an animal out there believe it or not but if you run it by the church consultant he would say this is going to be the death of the church. Nobody is going to sit there for 176 verses, verse by verse, almost one verse each week, and listen to this study.

But it really proved to be a seminal time in the life of the church. You know what the people said when we got to the end of that 176 verses? They said more. We're sad to see the study come to an end. You know, they said that we really would like to hear more about what is said in God's word.

And it's kind of interesting with Psalm 119, because it appears when you look on the surface that each one of these verses are somewhat redundant. If you read through it and you're honest, when you're at first glance, it seems that they're very, very redundant. So, you know, we decided because of our desire to discover a couple of things, we wanted to discover why David was known to be a man after God's own heart. So we wanted to clearly see who was this, what did he believe, what was the major things that he talked about, and so we started to study in Psalm 119. Let me tell you a couple of the things that we discovered in our study and how this is going to relate to Deuteronomy chapter 6.

One of the couple the things that we discovered right in the very beginning was the structure of the book. I spent a week or so, a couple of weeks, doing a study just about the general structure and you know from your knowledge of Psalm 119 as well I'm sure that that the structure of the book is one that we find 22 different stanzas and inside each one of those 22 different stanzas there are eight verses in each one of those standards It is each one of those 22 stanzas, by the way, correlates to each one of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. And then inside each one of those stanzas, all of the verses in that stanza actually lines up with the Hebrew alphabet that is under, or the heading of that stanza. And so you can't see it in the English, but in the Hebrew, each one of those verses then starts with that same letter that is there. In other words, there is this tremendous symmetry in the book.

There's a lot of order found in that chapter in Psalm 119. If you open up your Bible almost to the very center of your Bible, your Bible will open to Psalm 119, somewhere in that passage. You're very, very close to Psalm 119. And so the concept, just in looking at the structure of the book that we drew out of that was that Psalm 119 was a chapter that centers us. Somebody was talking, I think it was Chad, was talking about we get distracted by so many things in this world.

When I'm doing these radio broadcasts, I'm doing it on all sorts of different topics. It's very easy to get off center and get distracted on these little minutia of thinking that's taking place in Christianity today. Here's a book that calls us back to the center, and it centers us, and the way that it centers us is very interesting. It centers us by centering us upon God's word. That's what we discovered was the key to David's success was Out of the 176 verses in that chapter, 174 of those verses mentioned the word of God in some way shape or form.

Now it uses different words to describe the word of God, but 174 times, now you know those old saying, I may be dumb but I'm not stupid you know if you repeat something to me a hundred and seventy four times in a chapter I'm beginning to begin to get the idea that the Word of God is of somewhat importance to David and to the study of something that centers us as we look at the main message of that passage. I thought it was interesting when we looked at this idea of Psalm 119 as well that the very first word in Psalm 119 is the word that you're very familiar with and I was surprised to find it there right in the very beginning. The very first word is the word blessed in Psalm 119. It's the same word that the Psalms itself, the very first Psalm begins with, it's the same word that the Lord Jesus Christ used repeatedly in the Sermon on the Mount this idea of blessed. Now a lot of people will just translate blessed as being happy and unfortunately it doesn't have the same connotation in our day and age.

When we think about happy it's tied to circumstances right it's that it's half a stance is what you know your fortuitous circumstances have come to you and now you're happy as a result of them. That is not what the word blessed is all about in the scriptures. It's almost that you almost have to hear the inflection of the of the psalmist himself. It includes like happiness but it would be like felicity would be the closest thing that we have and we don't use that word anymore so really it's hard to convey but it's like oh how happy is the idea of what the psalmist is talking about oh how happy is the man as he says in Psalm 32 whose sins are forgiven whose iniquity or washed away as transgression is is gone oh how happy is that man That's the word that opens up here in this text. Now in Psalm chapter 1, he tells us something about this blessed man.

He tells us that this, he gives us the marks of a blessed man. And the marks of the blessed man in Psalm chapter one, if you just peek there really quickly here, I'm getting to, this is just introduction to get to Deuteronomy chapter six, but let me just tell you here in Psalm chapter 1 he says this, opening three verses, Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. Notice there's this downward spiral. First he is, he is listening to the counsel, then he is standing with them, then he is sitting with them, it gets worse and worse and worse. And then verse 2 says, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law doth he meditate day and night.

And then verse 3 says, and he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, bringeth forth his fruit, and his season, his leaf also shall not wither whatsoever he do or shall prosper. So he gives us the marks of a blessed man, here they are. It is what a blessed man avoids, first of all, he avoids the world and worldly way of thinking. What he affirms, he affirms the teaching and the blessing of the Word of God, what the Word of God is telling him, and then what the Blessed Man attains. He attains here what's given in this passage, he'd be like a tree planted by the rivers of water.

In other words, it tells us first of all what the blessed man is negatively, what the blessed man is positively, and then what the blessed man is figuratively in that passage. So we're not left to speculate as to what a blessed man is or what the marks of a blessed man. We can identify these marks in an individual, we can identify these marks in ourselves. We can say, am I blessed, am I truly blessed of the Lord? If I am, then these three associated marks, demonstrated marks in the life of the individual, should be clearly seen and demonstrated to other people.

Look what is at the very center of those marks. A blessed man affirms the teaching of the word of God. In fact, it says there that he delights in God's Word. That's the key as we're going down here and we're looking at you know just by way of illustration what's in Psalm 119 what we find here in Deuteronomy as being the key to being a successful father being who we should be in God, the key is the word of God is central to the role of the father. I was pleased to find that with the family integrated churches and what they say about what their mission statement is and where they find the foundation for talking about the father assuming his responsibility the home they go back to the the sufficiency of God's Word that's what they go back to If you have interviewed Scott a number of times on the program and he talks a lot about, which is really a question of the sufficiency of God's word.

Well, Psalm 119 is all about the sufficiency of God's word. And I think that sufficiency of God's word is really where the battle is at today. This is really where people are struggling. Now, if you were to ask people their doctrine of view of the Word of God, they would tell you that they believe in the inerrancy of God's Word and they would tell you that they believe in the the verbal and plenary inspiration of God's Word. We would check that off in a heartbeat on our credal statements as to what we believe about God's Word.

But what I find in my own congregation, yay in my own life, what I find is is that people don't really believe or at least by their actions they seem to deny the sufficiency of God's word. Now years ago, the big battle was that we fought all these battles against liberalism and higher criticism and all of these things. We were fighting for the inerrancy of God's Word and we did a great job. The church rose to the occasion and we have, you know, pretty much settled that argument. We still, it flares up now and then, But that has been done.

The real rub today is, is the word of God really sufficient? Is it everything that we need for life and godliness? I find that people will mouth those words, but when push comes to shove, they will go somewhere else to the world primarily in order to find some other technique or some other way of doing the job that we're told here in Scripture that there is a divinely ordained methodology of doing what we're to do and that's found in the Word of God. That's what we found when we were going through the study in Psalm 119 and I think it provides a really good introduction here to Deuteronomy chapter six. Look at the opening couple of words.

He says here, now these are the commandments and the statutes and the judgments which the Lord God commanded to teach you. Now, those three words that he used there, they are three words that are synonymous with the word of God. You can take each one of those words and you'll find throughout the scriptures, in fact, we found this when we were looking at Psalm 119, that the Psalmist does this repeatedly. And even though they're all synonymous with the Word of God they're distinct in the fact that each one of them brings out a certain nuance of the Word of God That's why there's different terms that are used there. We identified seven of these.

There's more than seven in Psalm 119, but we just identified the seven most common ones that he used there. Let me give them to you and I illiterated a word associated with them so that you could better understand them there. I literate them for a couple reasons so you could better understand it and because I have that disease. If any of the other pastors are here they may have that same disease. I literate everything and so I just do this all the time but anyways seven words that we identified or seven terms that we identify was this God's law let me give them to you here really quickly and then I'll go back and give you the associated word God's law God's testimonies God's ways God's precepts God's and then the three that we see here, God's statutes, commandments, and judgments.

And let me give you the associated word that brings out the nuance of what this means. They all are synonymous for the Word of God and the psalmist will use it that way, but when he wants to zero in on that nuance, when he wants to look at that particular aspect of the Word of God, that's when he selects the particular word that fits with the nuance that he's bringing out that he's developing in the verse. God's law is God's directives. They are God's authoritative instructions to us. Somebody was mentioning that a while ago in one of the Q&A sessions here.

God's testimonies are God's self disclosure. You know he's bearing testimony of himself so he's going to disclose to you something about himself and when he does that that's the term that's used. God's ways are God's directions in this life. They were directives that I mentioned first with the law. They're his directions when it talks about his ways.

God's precepts are his deposit or his charge that he is given. The book of Timothy uses it this way. It says that the church has been given a deposit. We have been entrusted with the gospel of Jesus Christ. When that thought in the Old Testament specifically is being conveyed, the word precepts is used.

The precepts of God have been given to us. God's statutes are God's decrees. I think the proper way probably within Reformed theology would be not to speak of decrees plural but to speak of decree singular. It's all one decree from Almighty God that comes forward and then the unfolding of that decree. God's commandments then are God's demands that are made upon us.

Yes, there are demands of God. You do this, if you do not do this, you cannot be my disciple. It's a demand that is made by Almighty God. Pick up your cross and follow me. It's not a divine suggestion.

It's not just a good idea. It's not God took a poll and a survey and most people think this would be good, it is God authoritatively saying that this is what I'm telling you to do, this is what I command you to do, that's what's here in that word. And then finally God's judgment which is God's decision God's verdict on the situation so many times we run around to get everybody else's opinion and a verdict on it well here is God's verdict This is the only one that matters in the end of the day. Just what does God think about this particular subject when they wanna say that they speak about God's judgment? Now our text then deals with this idea and it says that there is the keeping and the teaching then of God's Word.

We're told then when these three things are mentioned that we should do them, we should keep them, we should observe them, we should teach them. You know there's no there's no speculation here as to what God is telling us to do with these words these these expressions of his his word that he has spoke to us here about now the special instruction then that he gives us begins in verse four. He says, Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one Lord. It's interesting, and Dan Kruver was bringing this out in his opening presentation here this morning, that The instruction to us begins with the revelation of God. And even more specifically, tying this a little bit closer to what Dan said this morning, this is the classic text that we go to in order to talk about the Trinity.

When we want to talk about the uni-personality, you know, the unity that exists between the persons of the Trinity, the tri-unity, the Trinity, we go to this text here in Deuteronomy chapter 6 and verse 4 to say, Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one God. He's not, he's not a, we're not polytheistic. We don't believe in multiple gods. There is one God and that triunity that exists between that one God. So it immediately begins with something about God.

This is where everything begins. It all begins with him. It's all about him from beginning to end. It's not about you. You're not the center of the universe.

It all begins with Almighty God and that's what we see here in this text. Now flowing out of that, the knowledge of God then, is we get direct directions that are given to us first of all given directly to us immediately to us and then instructions about how we should pass this on to our posterity or to our children that come after us. Now that pattern is found here in Deuteronomy chapter six, but it's not exclusive to Deuteronomy chapter six. It's a pattern that we see constantly throughout the rest of the scripture. Here's the pattern.

God sets his love upon us, and then we in turn love God, and then out of that relationship, we then in turn love others. Do you know what we see in the church today? We see some will acknowledge the fact that God has set the love upon him, sometimes even that's overlooked, and then immediately they talk about now let's go out and love other people. You know what, you can't do this in your own strength. Do you remember when the disciples tried to do this in their own strength and what they said you know the woman came and she was crying out and saying son of David have mercy upon me.

She wanted her daughter to be healed. Do you Remember what the disciples told her? Remember what they told the Lord? They went to her and said, Lord, send her away. Send her away.

You know, I'm fed up. I'm tired of listening to this woman say this the whole time. And so they just want to send her away in and of themselves they don't have the ability to deal with same thing is seen in John chapter 6 with the feeding of the 5, 000 you know he specifically asked Philip and Andrew who happened to be from that area, he says to Philip and Andrew, where are you going to get food to feed these people? And Philip and Andrew, they look to themselves. They start counting up the amount of money that they have.

They start looking around. You know, we have a little boy's lunch here, staple diet of the poor, a couple fish, some loaves of bread. He says, but the disciples says, but what are these among so many? You know, he gets to the end of it and the bottom line is people won't even get a little. They won't even get a morsel.

It's not going to work. They don't have the strength in and of themselves to do the job that needs to be done. So what do they do? They take the little bit that they do have, they come and lay it before the feet of Christ. He blesses it and breaks it.

He breaks it from any of dependence upon themselves. He blesses it and multiplies it. They give it out and there's plenty, everybody eats to the full. In fact there's 12 baskets left over, one for each one of the disciples that was there as well. And it's a beautiful picture of us then looking to the Lord and in our relationship and communion with him, then flowing out of that relationship, we are then able to do the work that is here.

Now the basic work that is here for us to do is this. I'll just summarize it under a little pithy little statement. It is to know God and to make him known. That's our basic responsibility as fathers. First and foremost you are to know God and then to make God known.

And I'll tell you if you know God first and foremost it will make the second part of this thing go really easily about making him known. First part is the motivation and he says this, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul with all thy might and with these and these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart. You know this notion I don't know if you heard this when you were growing up some of the older ones in the room here today but it used to be a notion among people common saying that do as I say but not as I do that you know I'm going to tell you what you should do but I'm not actually demonstrating it in my own life that is a completely unbiblical notion The Bible never speaks that way and it certainly doesn't speak that way to fathers here in this passage. You know, I'm your dad, you just do what I tell you to do even though I'm not actually doing it in my life and even though I'm not actually demonstrating that I care to do it in my life.

You know children have this tremendous ability to spot hypocrisy. If that's one thing when you get children you realize that very quickly. They can spot it, they can smell it out like a bloodhound you know a mile away. They can smell out when you are being hypocritical in these things. So look at what the first attention is here.

It is made immediately to the fathers themselves. Now I don't know about you, and I think I'm fairly common in this, but when I read the word of God, or I hear a preacher preach, I'm always thinking in my mind, boy I wish Uncle Harold was here to hear this message. We always want the application to go somewhere else first. I wish somebody else was here to be able to hear this. But the scripture constantly takes us off of that notion and it says make the application to yourself first the immediate application is to us we are to love God diligently we are to love God passionately Chad was making the mention of and I've witnessed the exact same thing, it's remarkable to me how men can understand all of nuances of a various sporting event, have the stats in their mind, the batting averages of every person on the team and then you ask them to memorize a short little passage of Scripture and they either say I don't have time or you know what I just my mind doesn't work that way I really can't do that type of thing.

You know you'll do what you find that you put the effort into doing. Here's a dirty word in Christianity today, diligence. Diligence. I noticed that all of a sudden, a strange word started to appear on the marquees outside of our churches. The word was casual.

Casual. It started to say that, you know, we have a casual service and come as you are You know you could come dress casually and so forth And I understood somewhat of what was being conveyed, you know, that it wasn't this stuffiness or something, you know, where everybody was required to wear a suit or something like this. So I can understand a little bit, but I think it flowed over into something else in the church that we are now telling people listen you're gonna come to church and nothing's gonna be required of you you just come with this consumer mentality and we'll feed you and then you get up and go your way and and nothing will be required of you no change will be required of you at all just come as you are stay as you are, leave as you are in the congregation. And this whole mentality of being casual. Look up the definition of casual someday.

It means to do something without any attention or purpose given to it. You know, to just go through the motions without any real passion or anything associated with it. We're not to be casual in this in our pursuit of God. We're to be diligent and passionate. Look at the words that are here.

With all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your might. Notice what he's saying here, that this needs to be experienced in our life and then expressed in a tangible way to those who come after it. Some people say that some of the things that we try to teach are better caught than taught. You know what they mean by that? You know that sometimes just the way a person carries themselves and you don't have to say a whole lot.

You know you can see immediately in what's important to them, what they talk about when they do talk. It doesn't take long to figure out what they're all about. And so here I think he's given some sense of this. And notice what it's expressly tied to. Love of God isn't some esoteric thing.

Yes, I love God. And you know, you got all this mushy type of terminology and fluffy type of language associated with it. There are very definitive marks of whether or not you love God. Read the epistles of John. Epistles of John is a diagnostic book.

It says you love God and if you truly love God then this should be evident in your life. And he's saying the same thing here. He says this, it's inseparably tied to the Word of God. He says, and these words shall be in thy heart. In other words, we are to love God by loving his Word.

If you don't love the Word of God, and I'll even extrapolate it further, if you don't love the church of God, the people of God, you do not love God. You hate God because The things are so inseparably tied together that you cannot separate those things out and still claim to have the love of God. Those aren't my words. Those are the words of John. Read 1 John.

By the way, the apostle of love. Read 1 John and see the language that he uses there in order to say whether or not you truly love God. So what's the application in this first part? The application is our love for God directly corresponds to our level of knowledge of God that is found in his word. You've heard this saying, to know him or to know her is to love her, or to know him is to love him.

You can't love God in a vacuum. You've got to know something about God in order to be able to love God. Where do you get the knowledge of God? You can get it from general or natural revelation, certain things about God, but primarily we get it from special revelation. The 66 books that have been given to us here in the scriptures.

I had one author on the radio program, he said this, God has only written one book, he would like for you to read it. We go around reading everybody else's book, God would like you to read the one book that he has written and specifically given it to you. Not only this but it should be a head knowledge not only a head knowledge but a heart knowledge as well. You may have heard this said before but some people said most people miss heaven by somewhere between 9 or 11 inches. They actually get pretty close.

9 to 11 inches is the average distance between a person's heart and their head. You know you ever met a person like this that has a tremendous amount of head knowledge and absolutely none of it actually applied to his life. It's the most foul beast upon the face of the earth you know that I've ever met. I was 17 years old. I was hitchhiking to California to join the Manson family.

Obviously wasn't saved And on the way out there I got picked up by a fella in a big rig, got in the vehicle and while I was there in the vehicle there with him I had never heard the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. I grew up in Catholicism, knew nothing about the gospel at all. I'd never even heard the term born again up until this time. I get in the car and the man says to me, do you guys know anything about the Bible? I said, a little bit.

I've read a little bit of the book of Revelation. He goes, well, ask me anything you wanna know about the Bible. I mean, he came across as arrogant and all these things. He opens up the center console and he goes, you guys smoke wacky tobaccy? And he proceeds to get marijuana out and smoke marijuana.

Here he is telling us that he knows about God, he knows about the Bible, and then here he is doing something that is completely inconsistent with. I wasn't even saved and I could tell right away that God was a hypocrite. And so I ended up getting saved in the desert of Arizona. Another man picked us up, a man by the name of Roger, first born again Christian I ever met in my life. He opened up the word of God, he just loved us, he demonstrated the word of God and the way that he treated us and he spoke to us about it.

He preached to us from the word of God about who Christ was, who Manson was and these types of things. And it became the seed that God used in order to bring me to the saving knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I hitchhiked back to Buffalo, New York, and there received the Lord Jesus Christ when I got back and went to our prayer meeting there. You know that the problem is that you can't get to the heart without going through the head. There is a there's a movement today in in evangelicalism there is a tremendous amount of anti-intellectualism in the church today.

There's a whole wing of the church, the hyper charismatic church, that actually believes that if you think too much about the word of God that you will squelch the moving of the Spirit of God. Nothing could be further from the truth. You know, this whole group thinks that any sort of if you engage your mind in the things of God that somehow you're gonna, you know, you're gonna put a damper on the moving of the Spirit. But the truth is that the way that the Word gets into our heart is through the pathway of the mind. And we see here that the the Father needs to have a deep heartfelt affection for the Word of God, Not a compartmentalized idea of the Word of God.

You know, I love Clemson, I love fried chicken, and oh by the way, I love the Bible and the things of God too. That's not what this is talking about. A compartmentalized Christianity. We've had far too much of that in the South already, right? We've had far too much of that here, where people have done this and they've compartmentalized.

What we're talking about is a comprehensive understanding of the Word of God. Cognition with the mind, we love to study the Word of God, affection with the emotions, we love the Savior and we love his word, volition, the idea of the will that is willing to surrender to the Word of God. It's all centered around the knowledge of God. Now let me say something about knowledge here really quickly. We live in a day and age where there is a tremendous amount of knowledge.

You know what the good thing about the Internet is? There is a lot of knowledge and information on the internet. Do you know what the bad thing about the internet is? There's a lot of knowledge and information on the internet. So there's this tremendous abundance of knowledge.

Here's the truth. Not all knowledge is of equal value. There are some things we use a word today that kind of spells this out. There's a word that we throw around that's called factoid. You ever heard of a factoid?

Factoid is knowledge of something that is not necessary. It's useless information, right? You may know the mating habits of some bird in the rainforest, right? It's not really going to impact a whole lot of your life knowing this particular little factoid about this particular animal. To me, how a black cow can eat green grass and yet produce white milk is completely beyond my understanding.

I don't know how that all works. And yet I go to the refrigerator and I get a glass of milk and it hasn't impacted my life one iota that I don't understand how that whole process works. In other words there are certain things in this life that you can be ignorant of and it's going to have very little impact about how you live your life and no impact at all about life eternal that comes afterwards. But there are other things that if you are ignorant about them it will have severe ramifications on how you live this life and it'll even determine where you will spend all of eternity. That's the knowledge that is being talked about in this passage.

The knowledge of God is of infinite value to us. I always thought it was remarkable in in Mark chapter 4 when Jesus calls his disciples around him and he says this, he had just spoke about the parable of the sower. He talked to them about how important it was. He says, to them, all these things are done in parables, but unto you, it has been given to know the mysteries of God you have been given by God the knowledge of God himself it's a saving knowledge of God you know to understand who God is. Once you have that knowledge that knowledge changes everything.

It changes the way that you look at God, it changes the way that you look at yourself, it changes the way that you look at others, it changes the way that you look at creation, it changes the way that you go to work in the morning and work from 9 to 5, it changes everything. The hymn writer brought that out in one of his hymns. You know, he says heaven above is now a sweeter blue, the earth beneath, you know, is a different hue. You know, in everything, everything has changed because of the knowledge of God. Everything has become new to us.

That's the knowledge that is being put here in this passage. And you can't impart to somebody something that you don't have yourself. If you don't first have this knowledge of God, there is no way for you to impart that knowledge to somebody else. If you think well you know I want my son to have this knowledge I think it's very important as Chad was saying you know he was saying that it's that you may want him to be have a good job or a good education and all of these things which are all lesser goals but you may even say hey I want my son to know God you cannot impart that to him unless you know something about it yourself you've got to be able if you want to do the job that God has given you do you must do it for yourself first you know when you're on the airplane in it it goes through the thing that nobody listens to but when they say that the air pressure changes and the mask falls down you notice what they say put the mask on yourself first and then you will be able to help the other people that are there.

Our impulse is that you know my child needs this and go ahead and put it on but they're saying to you you're of no use you know if you die while you're doing that, it's not gonna help. In the same way here, if you're not conveying this yourself to your child, you know, you're missing this essential element. This is what we see. Flowing from the personal knowledge is a desire to give that knowledge to others. Mark chapter five, and in verse 18 through 20 is the story that we have of the maniac of Gadarene.

For some reason I always related to this guy the way that my past was, but 518 happens to be my birthday as well. I was born on May 18th And so this passage is already stuck out to me, but look at what it says here. It says this, and when he came to the ship, this is after Christ healed the maniac of Gadarene. He says, and he came unto the ship, and he that had been possessed of the devils, prayed him that he might be with him, howbeit Jesus suffered him not and saith unto him, Go home to thy friends, and tell them the great things that the Lord has done for thee, and how he has had compassion upon thee. And he departed, and he began to publish into capitalist, how great things the Lord had done for him and all men did marvel.

So he tells him you know he wants to just you know hang out with Christ the entire time and then Christ says no you know I've spent my time here with you or what I want you to do now is I want you to go back go home go home look at where he tells him to go first the first ministry go to your home and tell your friends, tell your family and friends there the great things that the Lord has done for them. There's another example of it in 2 Kings chapter 7. We find the four leprous men that they the Syrian army had besieged Samaria and so the city was dying they were doing these unspeakable things of depravity were taking place in the city there and outside the city these four leprous men are coming the Lord seems to amplify their footprints and as they're walking the sound of it the Syrian army is convinced that Israel has hired an army against them so they leave everything as it is they've run off into the darkness and they leave their tents and the and the the four leprous men come in and they see these tents and they go from tent to tent and they've got you know these golden goblets and they've got garments and they've got food they've got treasures beyond their wildest imagination more than they can ever be able to handle in a lifetime.

And while they're in the middle, they're taking some of it, they're taking it over here and they're digging a hole and they're hiding it in a hole and then they take some more and they go over here and dig another one and they hide it like squirrels, you know, they're hiding this stuff here in the ground. And then all of a sudden, right smack in the middle of this, they say this, and we do, oh let me read it to you here in the passage, it says, when the lepers came to the outermost parts of the camp, they went into one tent and they did eat and drink and they carried silver and gold and raiment and they went they hit it they came again and entered into another tent and carried fence also and they hid it also then they said one to another we do not well to keep our peace this day is the day of good tidings And if we hold our peace and if we tarry till the morning light, some mischief will come upon us. Now therefore let us go that we may tell those of the king's household." And so they run back to the city and they tell them, look at, you're here in this, and being besieged by the city, you're all shut in.

And when the treasures are right here all the treasures that you could possibly imagine And so the gates are opened up and the people come and they partake of this There's New Testament passages the Apostles said this the love of God constrains us to do this work Peter told the council He said we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard Listen in this one sense in which motivation wise if you have a relationship with God, you won't be able to help but tell your children about these things. If you have a true relationship with Almighty God, believe me, it will come out of your mouth. You will tell your children. You won't, you have to physically restrain your mouth in order to stop it from coming out because that is the reaction that we find in the scripture of those who have been truly blessed this way by the Lord. Very quickly, I've got just a little bit of time for the methodology.

He says, and thou shall teach these things diligently unto thy children. You know, a lot of the folks when they read this and they read about the idea of it being upon the pillars of their house and so forth, They have actually taken it literally. In fact, I was in a home of a woman who had been gloriously converted. She was actually a prostitute, and the Lord remarkably saved her never-dying soul, brought her to the saving knowledge of himself. And she literally wrote scripture verses, literally, on the doorposts of her house.

So wherever you went around the house, the scripture was there. A lot of folks like to put up Christian plaques and pictures and these types of things. And that's just fine, obviously, in ways of keeping the Word of God before us but I don't think that's what he's talking about when he says to saturate your home and your life with the teaching of God's Word I think it goes much deeper than that. He is talking about the idea here that we take the word of God and we understand it and apply it to every situation of life. Notice what he says here in this text where he talks about that when you are with your children and thou shall teach them diligently unto thy children and shall talk of them when thou sittest in thine house and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down and when thou risest up.

He's not talking about formal instruction and training. He's not talking about the family altar, although that's a good thing to have at home. And there's certainly a place for formal training, but this isn't the passage to go to in order to look at that. This is talking about the application of God's word about as we go throughout normal life. And as you're going throughout life, you know, you are building into them that the word of God is not disconnected from normal life, but everything that we do in life is connected to the word of God.

That God's word is good for life and godliness. Everything goes back to the touchstone and to the scriptures. Isaiah chapter eight in verse two, right? What does it say? To the word and to the testimony.

If it agrees not with these, it's because there's no light in them. Everything is brought back to the touchstone of God's word. So how does this look in everyday life? I was traveling down the road with my children in Buffalo, New York, and we saw a drunk on the side of the road. And I began to tell them about the man that was there.

They were wondering. The man was laying there on the street. And I said, Well, let me tell you that this man did not get up one day and say, hey, I think I will be a drunk today. I think I'll turn myself into an alcoholic. You know, this happened very slowly in his life.

He believed something and what he believed then changed his behavior. And what he believed was not related to the word of God and this is where it ended up. This is the end of our sin. This is where it leads people. So using these moments as teaching moments in the life of our children.

That's what it's talking about in this passage. Now it means a couple of things. It means you've got to have somewhat of a knowledge of the Word of God. You're not going to be able to look at events that take place and be able to relate them to the word of God if you don't have a knowledge of the word of God to relate them to. It also means that you're going to have to actually spend time with your children because you can't script when these questions come up.

You know, you can't say, well, I'm going to set aside 45 minutes at this particular time of night and then go ahead and bring your questions at that particular time. You know what you're going to get? Crickets. You're not going to hear anything from your children. That's why at the, you know, you try to do it in a formal setting, you get nothing.

But throughout the normal walk of life, as we're spending time with our children, these types of events will come up. Why do we do this? Why do we go to church on Sunday? Why do you go to work on a regular basis? Why go to work?

Because we are to work for the glory of God. God works, therefore we should work. God has given us something to do and therefore we should do it with all of our might. These types of answers that we can give to our children. That's what he is talking about here in this passage.

It's not so much that we put a plaque that says Jesus is the unseen guest at every meal. We've got to move beyond posters and plaques. You know, we've got to move to the place where we understand and can articulate and then convey to our children how the Word of God is relevant in every single aspect of this life. I had Ken Ham on the radio program and Ken was talking about this idea about how so many of the children in the church are going away, you know, they're no longer remaining in church and he deposited that was that we weren't teaching apologetically, We were just saying to them that this is what we believe and you should just go ahead and believe this here without explaining why we believe it. You know, what's the scriptural basis for what we believe?

And really taking the time so that that belief is not just your belief it becomes their belief and when they believe it and can actually articulate it and and defend it for themselves that's when we have done our job of actually teaching our children the plaques not going to do it We're going to have to do more work than that in order to invest ourselves in the lives of our children. Let's go ahead and bow in a brief word of thought. Our eternal God and gracious Heavenly Father, we're so thankful for the Lord Jesus Christ and the change that he has made in our life. He is everything to us, and his word is everything to us. Father, first of all, forgive us for the time that we have neglected Thy word, that we have taken it so casually as we were talking about, given it very little thought, certainly not applied ourselves with any level of diligence to the study and understanding of Thy word, and not any diligence in teaching them then to our children.

Forgive us for that Lord and help to renew a fire within us in this conference. Renew that spirit within us that we see here in Deuteronomy and these other passages that we're looking at, a love for thee. We kindle that flame of our first love, a love for God in our souls, a love for God that cannot be contained, that it'll spill out and overflow into our families, and that we won't be able to help but tell our children about the things of God. Father, help us to do this in a way that is honoring and pleasing in thy sight, a way that we would hear those blessed words at the end, Well done, thou good and faithful servant, that we had done this in a way that you had told us to do in thy word. Bless us, Lord, with thy very richest blessing.

Bless the fathers and the families that are represented here today. Bless them with thy very richest blessing. For we pray this in Christ's name and for his sake alone. Amen.