Here in this message, Matthew Hudson speaks of the importance of evangelizing the next generation in your home and he teaches us what that evangelism looks like. He reminds us that there is no method that guarantees salvation, we cannot save our own children; it is only by the grace of God that sinners our saved. However, that does not mean we neglect our children's spiritual edification. 

The National Center for Family Integrated Churches welcomes Matt Hudson with the following message entitled, Evangelizing the next generation in your own home. Thank you. It is a joy to be with you. It is an honor to be here. And just as a little bit of biography, my name is Matt Hudson.

As Victor said, I've been a believer since childhood. I'm the husband of Emily and I'm the father of Hannah and Josh, of Caroline and Sarah Kate, of Annabelle and of Evie and of Clara. And if you were counting that's six girls and a boy. So we are way outnumbered in our house but it is a house full of joy and it is an honor to be here. I'm speaking to you as a man in the trenches.

My oldest is 12. So we are actively seeking more and more every day to share the gospel with our children and This is an absolutely vital topic. It's so vital that I'm gonna ask you throughout the talk, just as it comes to you, would you ask the Lord to be in my words and to be in your ears? Would you just continue to seek the Lord in a spirit of expectation and desire for him to move? Well, maybe you remember the song that goes, Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so little ones to him belong they are weak but he is strong.

You remember that little ones to him belong and that Jesus loves me is a is an unbelievable thought that Jesus loves the little children is an absolutely unbelievable thought And it's comforting news that Jesus cares for the little ones. As a matter of fact, we're gonna look at several texts today and sort of you might want to put your your Bible open around Deuteronomy 6 because we'll kind of anchor around that passage, but we're gonna be in a lot of different places as well. And I'm gonna begin with a passage from Mark that reminds us about how Jesus feels about the little children in Mark chapter 10 verses 13 through 16 it says and they were bringing the children to him that he might touch them and the disciples rebuked them but when Jesus saw it he was indignant and said to them, let the little children come to me. Do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child shall not enter it.

And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them. So it's not age, and it's not power, and it's not position that gets someone close to God. Jesus drew the little ones close into his very arms and he blessed them. The simple faith of a child expressing in Christ is the kind of faith that Christ says is kingdom kind of faith. That is what's required of our children and that's what's required of us to have childlike faith.

So as we begin to think about how the evangelism of the next generation in our home is accomplished, we want to remember that Jesus does love the little children and we will begin this discussion firmly believing that every child is a gift from God, that he forms children and gives them as gifts. Psalm 139 is so plain that he formed us, that he formed our inward parts, knitted us together in our mother's womb, so we praise him because we're fearfully and wonderfully made. And Psalm 127 reminds us that children are a blessing, a heritage from the Lord and the fruit of the womb, a reward. Had a conversation just a minute ago with a man who noted something that I had said and thought it was humorous. I had mentioned to somebody that I think children are the main tool of sanctification in anyone's life who has them.

That it is the means by which God brings dross up in us. And so when we are sharing the gospel with our children, we're also remembering that children are given to us that God would be more glorified in us and in them and so he he saves us and gives us children for his glory and he also saves children for his glory and as we begin you've heard last night and probably in the sessions even this morning we want we want to pronounce that when we talk about sharing the gospel with our children that we're talking about a Biblical gospel one that that says explicitly that we can't save our children on our own that we recognize right out of the gates that it's not in our power to save them, that if they will be saved, that it will be God who saves them, that it will be God who saves them by the work of his son on the cross. Because it is not of blood, John wrote, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. It's not of our will that saves them, it is of God.

Now the normal means that God establishes in the home for the communication of the gospel to children is parents. That's the normal and expected means in scripture. So much so that Deuteronomy 6 sort of points us in this regard. So if you've got your Bibles open to Deuteronomy 6, we'll look quickly at the passage there beginning in verse four and on through verse nine. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, with all your strength. These words that I'm giving to you today are to be in your heart. Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you sit in your house, when you walk along the road, when you lie down, when you get up, bind them as a sign on your hand and let them be a symbol on your forehead. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

So today we want to see that the Bible has much to say about evangelizing the next generation in our home. For the purpose of this message we might ask what considerations might we make as we seek to share the gospel with our children? So I believe from scripture that we could consider at least three things. These are the three large heads of what we'll discuss today. Our motives, our methods, and our might.

And under those will be lots of different kinds of subheads. But the first, let's consider our motives. What are our motives in sharing the gospel with our children, in reaching the next generation? If you're a Christian, then the first thing that probably rings in your mind is that the commands of scripture are a motive for us to share the gospel with our children. We just read in Deuteronomy six that we are to teach these words diligently to our children, the ESV says.

Teach them diligently to your children. The words of God, including the gospel of Jesus Christ, should be the everyday talk that fills our mouths when we're speaking to our children. Proverbs 26, or 22, verse six says, Train up a child in the way he should go, and even when he's old, he will not depart from it. And the greatest way he should go is in the way of the Lord and the gospel. Ephesians 6, four is plain.

Fathers, don't provoke your children to anger. Dros, fathers, dros, right there. Don't provoke your children to anger. But bring them up, train them, disciple them, evangelize them, bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Father's direct command to us that we would instruct our children in the Lord, specifically the gospel.

Those passages are specifically directed toward families, but lest we forget the broader context, Acts 1, eight tells us, But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes Upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and in Samaria and to the ends of the earth And you know as well as I do that your house is included in the ends of the earth. So the gospel needs to be present in your house. It is a command to go and take the gospel to nations, absolutely, but not to overlook that our house is a part of that commission. Matthew 28, we heard last night, so carefully exegeted, tells us also that we must go to all nations. I believe that nation also includes the nation to which your children belong, and the home that you are in.

That is not the fullest and only expression of gospel sharing, but it is an appropriate expression and a right expression from scripture of gospel sharing that you would share the gospel with your children. Another favorite verse about being gospel witnesses for many is Matthew five verse 16 where it says, in the same way let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. There are others in your house who need to see gospel light, that others may see your good work and glorify your Father who is in heaven. So to artificially limit the scope of those extra passages just to the grocery store or just to Indonesia or just to China is to miss the point that there are little persons in your home whose souls are eternal and who will be demanded an account at the day of reckoning with whom you have the privilege to share the gospel. And so the commands of scripture are clear.

That's one of our motives for sharing the gospel with our children is the commands of scripture. It's very plain that we must teach our children of the Lord and that we must share the gospel with them. Our first motive is the commands of scripture. Second is the call of love. John said, and I think all loving parents would identify with this passage, I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.

Third John 1 four. It likely goes without saying that every parent in the room has a deep and sacrificial kind of love for their children. A mother and father's love for their children can and should be one of the greatest motivations, motives for sharing the gospel with our children. Loving them, we long to see the best for them. We long for them to enjoy the unimaginable grace of God through Christ our Lord.

So loving them, we desire to see them, hear the gospel and respond. We were given an example yesterday in Romans 10 and in Romans nine of Paul's love for the church at Rome, or actually for Israel. And he says to the church at Rome about Israel, would that I would become a curse, would that God would take me and that they would believe. His love for the nation of Israel was such that God, if only you would save them and cast me into eternal hell. God saved them.

Love was his motive in desiring that all Israel would turn to God. How much more should a parent who's been given children love their children so much that the gospel is on their lips when they speak to them. Loving our children, we should be willing to die for them, but we should also be willing to live the words of life and to speak the words of life to them. We might ask ourselves, do we love them enough to live and speak and tell the gospel to them? Side note here, our love for them should not just be a motive for sharing the gospel, but should actually shape the way we share the gospel, that it would be done in love for them.

Our love for our children should motivate us to be clear in our living that we have no other treasure apart from Jesus Christ. Living for ourselves would be a completely unloving thing to do before our children. For they would mistakenly see that I really should love the things my mom and dad love and they love themselves so I'll love myself. Would God that the the gospel that Jesus Christ would be our greatest love before our very children out of love for them show our motive should be that we have the commands of scripture and that we love our children, but a third motive for evangelizing our children is a commitment to God's glory in the earth. In Isaiah 43, verses six and seven, the Lord says, I will say to the north, give up, and to the south, do not withhold.

Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name whom I created for my glory. Whom I formed and made. In Isaiah 42 eight we see that God's glory matters to him immensely. He says I am the Lord, that is my name. My glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols.

So our children's view of God, whether it's a right view of him or an idolatrous view of him, really matters to God. And there are many ways that our commitment to God's glory ought to energize and motivate us to share the gospel, the words of life with our children. We ought to want to see God's glory savored and even multiplied within our home so that the people under our roof are now God glorifying and God is receiving more glory that he is worthy of and deserving of in our very home when God's grace is told and retold time and time again, when the gospel is proclaimed as worthy from your lips to those children's ears, God is receiving glory that he is due as you proclaim his worth. Commands of scripture, the call of love, and our commitment to God's glory are three, maybe not all, but three motives for evangelizing the next generation in our homes. So if we briefly address the motives for evangelizing, what would be some practical applications of that?

How Matt would we do that? How would we share the gospel with our children? What would be methods that we might employ? As we begin, we must say again that God alone can save your children. There is no method that will win them.

God must save or they will not be saved and God is in complete control but confessing that does not mean that we would endorse some sort of careless disregard for our children's souls or some presumption that there's no biblical admonitions for parents about their responsibility before the Lord to carefully steward their children as precious gifts, very much to the contrary. A Puritan, Richard Mather, and grandfather of increase and great-grandfather of early American leader Cotton Mather, once imagined a fictitious setting. So this is not extra biblical, it's non-canonical. Where he imagined what it would be like on the judgment day for these fictitious children whose parents neglected their duty to share the gospel with them. His words are a sober warning, I think, and in the fictitious account, the children said, all this, all this that we here suffer is through you.

You should have taught us the things of God and did not. You should have restrained us from sin and corrected us and did not. You were the means of our original corruption and guiltiness and yet you never showed any competent care that we might be delivered from it. Woe unto us that we had such carnal and careless parents, and woe unto you that you had no more compassion and pity to prevent the everlasting misery of your own children. We might ask, if judgment day were tomorrow and that kind of account were true, what might our children say about us?

So understanding that the Bible's clear in its teaching that we must teach our children the things of God. We'd all heartily agree to that. Then by what means would we do that? It's so simple in one sense. In one sense, it is so simple.

John chapter nine, after the blind man is healed and he's brought before the teachers and he's asked to give an explanation of what happened. He's not had seminary training. He's not had any kind of evangelism course whereby he could give a careful apologetic and give a defense of every single nuanced argument. What he says is all I know is I was blind and now I see. He points to Jesus as the answer.

I don't know how it all happened. So in one sense, there is an ease in which we can share the gospel with our children. Every believer is equipped for that task. Every believer who has been given life instead of death is equipped to tell the goodness of God to anyone, including our children, who asks. Without special training, without certification, without licensure or approval by some higher authority, you are given the ability to share the good news that Jesus saves sinners.

And it is good news. But there might be practical things also, particularly in the setting of a family that we might encourage, that we might see exemplified in scripture and that we might encourage families to consider. The first is this. Pray daily for God to save your children. Pray daily for God to save your children.

How convinced must we be of our own strength if we do not pray? How sure must we be in man-made methods if we will not pray? How confident must we be that I can save my children if we do not pray that the God of salvation would save our children? Pray daily for God to save your children. One of the main means by which we show our confidence in God and by which we live humbly before him is to go to him in prayer seeking what only He can give.

We have a warning about being humble or being proud and 1 Peter 5, clothe yourselves all of you with humility toward one another, for God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Go to God. Likely one of the most active roles that you and I might play in the salvation of our children and in their lives in general is to commit ourselves to time on our knees before the Lord, pleading with the Lord of the harvest, the one who is in the heavens and does all that he pleases, that he would have mercy on us and on our children. Since salvation is a work of God and not of us, something that we can do for our children is pray for them. Prayer is the natural work of every Christian parent.

Prayer is the natural work of every Christian parent. And let's be honest together. If you're not gonna pray for your kids, who's going to? I'm asking you a real question. In your mind, think, who else is gonna pray for their salvation daily?

And who else is equipped like you who know them, who know their frailty and their weakness, who know their own personal temptations, what they struggle with, who's better equipped to plead with God on their behalf than you are? No one. Pray for your children daily that God would save them. A true burden and prayer for your children and for their salvation is a gift from God. Because we recognize that even our own prayers ultimately are a work that God is doing inside of us.

In the Bible we're taught that we should pray, but it's not just that we should pray and kind of hope blindly, it's that we should pray expectantly. That we should have expectant hearts concerning God's real answer to prayer. First John 5, 14 and 15, saying, this is the confidence that we have toward Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, and that He hears us, And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him. We must pray for the salvation of our children. We must not grow weary in this work.

We must keep on asking and keep on seeking and keep on knocking. It ought to be the daily work of husbands and wives, of grandfathers and grandmothers, that we would pray that God would give salvation to our children. And if you want to go really far, how about praying for their children too and the generation after that. Pray now that God would make your legacy a legacy of faithfulness and that he would have mercy to generation after generation in your home. Would you commit to that today?

A second method of sharing the gospel to our children or with our children is to live daily with our hope in the gospel. You must know and believe and live the gospel for your children to understand what the gospel is. You must treasure the Lord Jesus more than anything in your lives if you would ever hope that your children would treasure Jesus more than anything in their lives. It seems very clear to me in my house with my children that my children have x-ray vision for hypocrisy. They're never fooled by what I say because I do what I believe.

And if I say with my mouth to my children that there's nothing more valuable, there is no greater treasure than Jesus Christ. Those are the words of my mouth. And then I treasure idols and worthless things above him. They are not fooled at all. They know and see that my hope is not in Christ, but in something else entirely.

So we must live daily with our own hope in the gospel. In order to be clear on the gospel with our children though, we must battle against the temptations that we face in false gospels. And you're gonna hear over and over and over again at this conference, what is the gospel? It's gonna come up in a myriad of ways, by then far better equipped to answer that question eloquently. But I think in answering that question, it is important to note that there are false gospels all around us, and in our very homes, it might be that we in this very room would be tempted at times to believe or to think about the gospel in right doctrinal ways and then live in ways that present a false gospel to our children.

A few that seem to attach themselves to parenting particularly are these. I would say that there is a false gospel of good works that comes up in many homes. And I'm gonna give this an otherwise known as, an AKA. The AKA of the gospel of good works in a home of a family that might be at this conference would be something like the gospel of modest, obedient, respectful, joyful, well-rounded children. Don't misunderstand, I'm not saying that children acting in obedient and humble and in modest ways are bad things but these aren't the gospel and to make them the ends for our children is to lie to them about the gospel.

If what we tell our children is that God loves good boys and good girls, we have lied to them because there are no good boys and there are no good girls. So we can't tell them day after day, be good and do good and God will smile at you. We must tell them that if they have any hope of being accepted by God, it will be based on the perfect goodness of his son, solely and completely. And that that ought to transform our lives. And because of that transformation, we will live modestly, and we will live humbly, and we will live in ways that glorify God, but that is not the basis or the gospel in which we hope.

Let me ask you, why does modesty even matter? Have you thought through that question for your family? What are we saying when we're being modest? Are we saying that the hemline is the determiner of righteousness? Are we implying that pants will lead someone to hell?

Think through the way that we act about those things and what we say to our children about them. Modesty is about this. More of Christ, less of me. I'm not interested in the world seeing me, making much of me, my beauty, my attractiveness, don't make much of me. Make much of God, make much of Christ.

And so I will dress and live and speak in ways that make less of me and more of him. The soul of modesty is not a righteousness that will bring before Christ. It's a righteousness given by Christ that will bring. At least Fitzpatrick wrote in a book called Give Them Grace, if a Mormon parent or an atheist parent can parent the way you do, you're not parenting by grace. If it's just rules to keep, then you've missed the gospel.

The false gospel of good works must be repented of, rooted out in your life and in your home. Live in ways that glorify God. Please don't misunderstand me. Live in God-honoring ways, but not because that's the righteousness that you'll present to God, but because he saved you, glorify him, teach your children. Another false gospel is the false gospel of easy belief, and I would give that an AKA of just pray this prayer after me.

The gospel of just pray this prayer after me. Many have taken the free and the sweet gift of grace and made it something cheap and meaningless. They mistakenly have understood free as meaning without any cost. And there could be nothing further from the truth. While God freely gives grace, it is absolutely the most rich and costly thing in the universe because it required the death of the very son of God.

One way that grace gets cheapened is when we make the response to grace superficial, when we misunderstand or misuse things like a sinner's prayer. Not that you cannot speak a simple word and that God would hear it and respond. But if you've had an experience like me, where my children at a former time in my life sat in a room where a well-intended woman said a great deal about the hotness of hell and then asked a room full of small children, does anybody want to not go there? Raise your hand and pray this after me. Not lying in any way about the truth of the hotness of hell or the awfulness of sin.

But implying to these children that if you'll say this incantation after me, you will force God's hand and boom, whatever happens after that is up to you because now you're in. And friends, without repentance and faith, we have no hope. Without a biblical gospel, we have no hope. And to present the prayer as The means of manipulating God is to make the prayer our hope and salvation. I can look back on that time and say, I prayed that prayer and wrote it down and got wet and got a certificate and it's on my wall and so I'm gonna take that to heaven with me and show God.

How absurd does that sound to you? I hope it sounds radically absurd, but that is the same demeanor when we say, just say this prayer after me and it's all gonna be okay. We're saying the same things. We're not putting our hope in the gospel, we're putting our hope in a work of man. It's the false gospel.

Third, false gospel is the false gospel of happiness and self-esteem. These are things that we want to recognize in our homes, if they come up in our life, and reject them as untrue before our children. The false gospel of happiness and self-esteem. And I'd say this is AKA the gospel of, If you're happy, you're good. If you're happy, it's all fine.

You're good. We live in a self-obsessed day, and we really have little knowledge of how, particularly in Western culture, how completely self-obsessed we are. If you were to remove, simply remove the words I, me, my, and mine from your language, you would find yourself stuttering throughout the day. Because we, even in our culture, even people who seek to serve others and to place others ahead of ourselves, love ourselves an awful lot, and we speak of and tell of and praise ourselves so frequently. And often this mingles in to the way that we talk about the gospel, the way that we sing about the gospel.

I've heard songs that say things like, I am somebody because God loves me and I'm accepted just the way that I am. And somehow, I have turned grace into a way to make me somebody, and that's a problem. We sing songs like, like a rose trampled on the ground you took the fall and thought of me above all If when we think of the cross of Christ, we think God is making much of our worth, we have radically misunderstood the cross. If you think that Jesus died because you're so good, you deserve it, that's a problem in your theology. You see Jesus died because of sin, because we are not good.

The problem is in us, we are not good. And that's a problem. And so when we mingle self esteem into the gospel, we're corrupting it with a love of self. Now I want to be clear, rightly understanding God's love is important and foundational. And knowing that God loves is a source of confidence and it is a source of real joy.

But it's understanding in the right sense that he has chosen to love me in spite of who I am, not because of who I am. Matter of fact, that makes love greater indeed. It makes love greater indeed that he would love me in spite of the fact that I'm really not such a good guy. I think one way this works into our homes is when we teach our children that they're little angels and they can't do anything wrong and that everything they touch is just like little butterfly kisses from God and you know it's everything they do is just as sweet as sweet can be. And we never approach them with the reality of sin in their life.

We don't speak plainly from the scripture about sin that they commit. We gloss over and look away and wink at their sin. What we're doing then is to teach them to love themselves because there's obviously nothing wrong with them. And they've got it all together, they're pretty good folks. Just ask their parents.

Well all of those are false gospel and there are likely hundreds more, right? There are as many false gospels as there are idols of the human heart. Anything that we would exalt above God, we will insert into the gospel and put as a place of hope for us. And that is no place of hope for us. Then what is the true and biblical gospel?

What must we believe, what must we live and teach to our children? It's throughout the scriptures and you're gonna hear it from a myriad of different passages today, but I would encourage you to take the book of Romans and look particularly at the first four chapters and you'll see a very clear delineation of the gospel marked for us over and over again, very, very clearly. I'm gonna summarize what you'll find in those chapters. In Romans 1, in the first seven verses, you're gonna find that there is a God to whom we are accountable. Romans chapter one, one through seven, Paul a slave of Christ Jesus called as an apostle, singled out for God's good news, which he promised long ago through his prophets in the holy scriptures concerning his son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who was a descendant of David according to the flesh and who has been declared to be the powerful Son of God by the resurrection from the dead according to the spirit of holiness.

We have received grace and apostleship through him to bring about the obedience of faith among all the nations on behalf of his name, including yourselves who also belong to Jesus Christ by calling to all who are in Rome, loved by God, called as saints, grace to you and peace from God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you because the news of your faith is being reported throughout the world. Stops at verse seven saying that there is a God to whom we are accountable, that God himself did these things in Christ. And in verse 16 it picks up, I'm not ashamed of the gospel because it is God's power for salvation to everyone who believes. First to the Jew and also to the Greek, for in it is the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith just as it is written, the righteous will live by faith for God's wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

Since what can be known about God is evident among them because God has shown it to them. There is a God to whom we are accountable and there is a problem. This is the second facet of the gospel. We have rebelled, there's a problem. There's a God to whom we are accountable and there is a problem.

We have rebelled. In verse 23 of that same chapter, he says, or verse 22 starting, claiming to be wise, they became fools, that's us, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal men, birds, four-footed animals, and reptiles. Listen, the problem is that we have rebelled against the holy God of the universe. Our children need to know there's a God to whom they're accountable and that they themselves, both in the sin that they inherit through Adam and in their own choices have chosen to rebel against him and to not obey his ways and to love themselves more than him. So there's a problem, but there's also a solution.

God saves sinners based on the work of Christ. Romans three, Romans two continues on about God's judgment. Romans 3 picks up. Particularly in verse 21 and following where it says, but now apart from the law, God's righteousness has been revealed, attested by the law and the prophets, that is God's righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe since there is no distinction for all of sin and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified freely by His grace through redemption that is in Christ Jesus. There is a solution, that is the work of Jesus Christ and there is good news, the fourth, there is good news.

Everyone who places their trust in Christ, who treasures Christ will be saved. We read that just after, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. He says they are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. God justifies and that is good news. So we need to live this biblical gospel before our children.

What would it look like if you believed those things in such a way that you lived like the gospel with skin on it? How would that change the way we live? What would you look like? I'm gonna suggest just a few things. You'd be a repenter.

You would be a repenter. Even before your children, you would repent of your sin. You would ask for forgiveness, even of your children. You'd be putting to death the deeds of your flesh. You would take the mortification of sin in your life seriously.

You would not wink at your own sin, you would hate it and seek to kill it. You'd be a forgiver. You'd be a forgiver and a peace maker. You'd be joyful. You'd be thankful.

You'd love God's word more than your daily food. You would pray at all times. You'd depend on God and not your flesh. You would nurture the fruits of the Spirit in your life and prioritize others above yourself. Your own life will show your children what the gospel looks like.

Your words must speak a true gospel, and your life must live a true gospel. This is all done in daily conversations. We would like to schedule those things and say, okay kids, watch me, I'm living right. Look here, watch, mommy and daddy, we got it together, see, this is a good moment, right? So do these things.

But they're gonna see us in the real day-to-day life. They're not gonna be fooled by our hypocrisy. And in those moments, instead of hiding and covering it up and pretending to be righteous, could we, like Christians, repent of our sin? Could we repent of our sin and seek to live as someone who's totally dependent on grace. Are you dependent on grace?

Or are you hoping that you'll be good enough and that that'll work for your kids too? If you're dependent on grace, live that way. Live dependent upon God's grace. A third method of evangelizing the next generation in our own home is to teach daily that grace is their only hope. So I've talked about our lives, I've talked about our prayer, and I'm gonna talk about our words and the things that we're teaching our children.

You might have thought that would have been the first thing that we've done, but to skip those for the others, I think would be to miss very important topics. So if the commands of God are honey to you and you love his word and you're treasuring Christ above everything else, then the Bible teaches us that we are to impress those things on our children, right? That's what we read at the beginning. Deuteronomy 6 says, and these words that I command to you today shall what? Shall be on your heart, right?

On mom, your heart, on dad, on your heart. These commands, God's honey-like dripping of word is gonna be on our heart. The gospel, the gospel and the response of obedience to all he commands is gonna be on our hearts and then we shall teach them diligently to our children and you shall talk of them. When, when am I gonna talk of them? When you sit down in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise, you shall bind them on your hands, they shall be as frontlets on your eyes, you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

The kind of teaching that I'm talking about isn't limited to just a formal time of teaching. So like, I'm gonna include the gospel in homeschool, or I'm gonna include the gospel in family worship, is right and good. But please understand, the whole idea of when you lie down and when you rise up is walk around, talk around, type discipleship. That's everywhere we go. And those are the words that they're really listening hard to, right?

So when the guy cuts you off in traffic, they wanna know if your hope is in the gospel, or if you think revenge is a really good answer right now. They're listening to those words probably better than they're listening around the kitchen table in the morning. They're listening to your words to hear if the gospel means anything to you at all. So teach them at all times. Teach them at all times, and all the unschoolers went, yay, right, teach them everywhere, in every moment, not just in formal settings, all over the place.

Here are a handful of suggestions of key pivotal moments when you could maybe even today begin to conscientiously think that every minute Matt that's a really big goal. Okay let's just wrangle in a few of them, put them in a line and say, here are some opportunities that might be kind of peak moments to grab ahold of our children and speak gospel words to them. How about meal times? Don't be satisfied at meal times. As a gospel free zone, right?

Capture the table for conversation about the work of Christ. Commit that sitting down at a table is primarily a gospel activity and secondarily a food activity. It's first of all something that we're gonna do with our mouths to speak the gospel, second of all we're gonna fill their tummies. Use it as a time for fruitful discussion and for prayer on the work of Christ. Center it all on the work of Christ at mealtime.

How about discipline moments? Woo! Discipline moments. How about discipline moments? Listen, some of the hardest but the most productive gospel conversations you're gonna have with your children are gonna be with them over your knee because their sin is present.

You have an opportunity not to say do better, try harder, you made my life hard now I'm gonna make yours really hard. Not to speak those kind of legalism kind of words but instead to say we have a Savior to turn to because of this. Because of sin in our life. We have hope even here, we have hope even here because of this sin, we must run to Christ. Right now, We must run to Christ to let discipline be filled with gospel words.

That's an opportunity, a friend of mine says so often, to take our little one's faces and turn them right up to Jesus. Instead of at that moment trying to behavior them better, to focus their eyes on Christ, who is worthy of their worship, and who is their only hope of salvation from their sin. So use discipline moments, not to teach them to do good or to be better, but to remind them that we too are sinners. You see, Josh or Hannah, I'm a sinner just like you and my only hope is in Christ and your only hope is in Christ my obedience is to him and so in this moment of discipline there's an act of obedience on my part and I'm gonna be an obedient parent in this moment that may be difficult for you but but my hope is not that this trains you to be better at just as some training, but that in it you recognize that Jesus Christ paid penalty for our sins and that our only hope is in him. So using moments of discipline, using bedtime moments.

When else, if I could tell you that you're gonna have five or 10 minutes of like all of their attention, what would you wanna use that time for? Like they're gonna give you their whole attention most nights. You're putting them in bed, They're scattered, they're running around, you get them in the bed, they're tucked in, and they lay in there with those big eyes looking right up at you. Preach the gospel. In that moment, use gospel words.

Sing a song of the gospel with them. Pray that God would save their souls. Use bedtime moments as gospel moments. Use family worship as a time for gospel teaching. It might be easy for some to use family worship as a time to address the corporate sins of the family.

Like we've had Sally and Jimmy are fighting a lot, so we're gonna talk about contentiousness. And so we're really gonna kind of modify behavior by teaching about all these bad things they're doing. That's how we're using family. Well, let's recognize that we're not gonna modify our kids into heaven, that they must be made righteous in Christ. And if we want to address their contentiousness, we need to deal with the fact that it's a sin before a holy God.

And we must deal with the fact that they must have dead hearts, stone hearts, made flesh and alive, and that they must be born again. Their hope is not that they will be sweeter people. Their hope is that Christ would save them. So we turn to him in family worship. We also turn to him in what I'm going to call the on-the-scene moments.

That's just all the rest of them, right? So you're at the grocery store and you see something and you're tempted to kind of say a snarky word about somebody who's really out of line with their parents, I'm glad you're not like them and you know you ever do that I'm gonna yank a knot in your chain or whatever. I mean you're in that moment and instead to use that as a gospel moment and to say that's me too. I'm like the spoiled brat in the checkout line who can't get what he wants. That's me and I need a Savior and Babydoll you do too.

You need a Savior. So to capture moments in the grocery store line and in the van as you're driving and on the way to church before you ever get there and after church and when you're picking up the room and for the 50th time today you're dealing with the same issue to come back and in those moments to you that God would have mercy on us and allow us to speak words of life, the gospel to our children. Those were some methods and then in closing and this will be brief, what is our might? What is our might? By what strength will we accomplish this?

If you're like me, you hear instruction at all of the conferences you go to and you go, I really, really would love for that to happen. How? I am weak and broken. How can that happen? It's not by our might, that's for sure.

So let me just briefly give you three sources of our might. Our might is in the spirit of God. Only God saves. We cannot, only God's spirit will empower, in your life, Gospel saturated living. Only the Spirit of God can do that.

Only he can empower us to be a gospel shaped vessel inside of our homes. Titus 3 says he saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy by the washing of regeneration and the renewal of the Holy Spirit. Who is our living source of power to live what we believe is the Holy Spirit. Paul put it this way to the Galatian church in Galatians 3. He asks the rhetorical question with the implied answer, no.

He says, are you foolish? Have you begun by the Spirit and now you're gonna be perfected by the flesh? No, it will be by the Spirit, sisters, brothers, that we will do the work of parenting. Walking in the Spirit is the daily call for believers. It's a daily call for believers.

And depending on the Holy Spirit, and prayer is a primary work of parenting. It's the way by which God's Spirit will be imparted to us. If you want to accomplish this, that Spirit's working in our life, you don't just muster up more will to do it. So how do we experience more of the Spirit of Christ in our life? Well, Jesus in John chapter 15 said, I'm the vine, you're the branches.

Whoever remains or abides in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit, but apart from me, you can do nothing. So if you long for more of the Spirit of God in your life, can I ask you, are you abiding in Christ? Are you using the ordinary means of prayer in the Word of God to abide in Christ? That His Spirit would fill you more for everything you do. Second, the power of God.

If we are in Christ, so it's the Spirit of God and the power of God, if we're in Christ, in him, in Christ, we are connected to the star flinging, universe creating God. He has limitless power. And Ephesians 1.19 says to us that that power is toward us who believe. It says what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe. And Acts 1.8 promises power from the Holy Spirit to be witnesses.

Parent, his power, Ephesians 1.19 says, is toward you if you're a believer for his glory. And especially if you know your own weakness. Second Corinthians 12 says, my grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in weakness. Are you weak?

Do you recognize you can't do it on your own? God can be strong in you. He draws close to the humble and opposes the proud. When I am weak, I am strong. So we recognize that when we are weak and resting in his power that he is made strong in us.

And finally, Our might rests on the promises of God. Listen, He has promised, He has promised. The Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. He has promised.

He has promised to us, Blessed are all who take refuge in him. He is promised to us. Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. He is promised to us that God is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think according to the power at work within us. Listen, we should use every breath of our lives to glorify God and before our children.

You must, you must understand that if we're gonna live like this, it will be only because God's spirit and his power and his promises ring true in our life. In closing, God is the God of salvation. So with right motives, biblical methods, and the promises of God, let us draw near to him and ask that he would give our children hearts of flesh for their hearts of stone to savor Jesus Christ above everything else. Thank you. God bless you, you're dismissed.

The National Center for Family Integrated Churches is dedicated to proclaiming the sufficiency of Scripture for Church and Family Life, and to the establishment of Biblically ordered churches. For more information, resources, and products, please visit our website at www.ncfic.org. Dot o-r-g.