Is there a specific text that commands the New Testament Church to keep their children in the congregation on the Lord's Day? No there isn't. However, a survey of the Bible shows that the consistent patterns of God's people under both Covenants was one of age-integrated discipleship where families brought their children in to participate in the community of faith.

The Book of Acts has many, many delightful stories that involve young people in the church. This one here was about Eutychus, there with his family or his father, or who knows, all who he was with, but a young boy, probably 8 to 12 years old, at midnight, around midnight, is falling asleep in the meeting of the church and tumbles out the window. And there are a number of recordings of youth in the church in the book of Acts. We'll speak about some of them in a few minutes but we need to just acknowledge that God has given us scripture to help us understand the patterns that are there and of course we have to be careful with all patterns. But the book of Acts and many other places depicts a picture of the church in which all the generations are gathered together.

Now it's no secret where we obtained our current model of age-segregated education in the church and the broader government school system. It's really quite simple. Just do a simple Google search and you can find the philosophical roots and the personalities who have invented our modern age-segregated educational programming. We did not get this practice for worship and discipleship from our Bibles. If we had used our Bibles, if we had trusted them exclusively, if we had held fast to the patterns that we find in scripture, we would have a completely different approach than what is comprehensively practiced in the modern church.

The origin of systematic age segregation in the church began during the Industrial Revolution, although you can trace it back to Plato and other ungodly people. It was driven by apostate educational philosophers that were promoting evolutionary Darwinian thought and applying it to education. These men hated God, they despised the Bible, they desired to dismantle the family, they hated fatherhood, they hated children, and they desired to obliterate the biblical roles and responsibilities that are communicated in the Bible, and they created an educational system that just fit it perfectly. And we have adopted it in the church and we've been doing it so long to change it almost seems like we're acting against the traditions of God, when in fact they are not only the traditions of men, they are the traditions of some of the ungodliest men who have written and acted in history. And of course, again, I want to give you a sense of where we're going here.

We'll first speak about the importance of the doctrine and sufficiency of scripture for the gatherings of God's people. Then we'll spend quite a bit of time on the testimony of the patterns and commands in Scripture. And I'm going to bring you 20 data points, some from the Old Testament and some from the New Testament. And then I'd like to pick up the whole question about what is our disposition to the things that we find in Scripture. I want to bear down on two conclusions and then I would like to land again where we began and that is with the doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture.

So the importance of the sufficiency of scripture for helping us understand how to conduct our gatherings among God's people is is very very critical and always the main issue is always the same in the church in every generation and that is will we allow scripture to be our exclusive guide or will we appreciate And will we appreciate scripture above the propositions of our culture, our conveniences, and our Christian practices? And the importance of our hearts saying, oh how I love thy law. The law of the Lord is perfect. Our current struggle in the church is really how do we deal with the inventions of men and how they contrast with the patterns of Scripture. John Calvin wrote much on this subject.

In almost anything he's writing about, you can find a statement that relates to this principle. Here's one of his statements. Therefore, let us willingly remain enclosed within these bounds to which God has willed to confine us and as it were to pin up our minds that they may not, though by their own very freedom to wander go astray." Calvin is advocating a heart attitude that we would willingly be enclosed by what scripture has said. That we would be governed by it, that we would be limited by it, and that we would willingly desire its government in our lives. And then he talks about to pen up our minds.

It's like to build a pen. To not let our minds run wild into every invention that we might conceive of. But no, to have our minds penned up by Scripture. So that we would be found keeping to it rather than a massive inventions that might come out of the fruitful creative thinking of our brain. John Knox said it this way, All worshiping, honoring, or service invented by the brain of man in the religion of God without his own express commandment is idolatry.

Knox believed that the inventions of man were idolatry. And of course in his day he was looking at the thousands of inventions in the Roman Catholic Church and how they had invented dozens of offices of the church, hundreds of practices of the church, all kinds of things. And he believed, and as I believe as well, that unless the church limits itself by the Word of God, then it's all up for grabs and the church becomes subject to the will of man. He said this, the church may command nothing that is not contained in one of the two, and he means the Testaments, one of the two Testaments. For if it does so, it is removed from the only foundation and ceases to be a true kirk of Christ or a true church of Christ.

Knox believed, and we should also believe, that the church has one foundation. And that foundation is upon the Word of God. And it's not for us to reinvent our picture of the church. It's interesting when you think of Reformation. I believe we're at a time of Reformation now, but there are different seasons of Reformation.

All Reformations in church history don't focus on the same issue. Of course all Reformations are fundamentally about recovering the Gospel. All Reformations really are about returning to principles and patterns that God has established and they all really find themselves in their heart about the gospel. But reformations are often involved in recovering different kinds of things. For example, the Reformation that Luther was conducting had to do with the doctrine of justification by faith.

If you look at Calvin, it was the doctrine of the sovereignty of God and salvation and of course it did include the doctrine of justification by faith alone, but Calvin's emphasis was the sovereignty of God in all things. When you go to John Knox in the Scottish Reformation, it was Christ's headship over church government and the sufficiency of scripture over all things, all practices, all rights in the church. Instead of seven sacraments, he said, there are two. Instead of hundreds of offices in the church, there are two. Knox so believed in the patterns of scripture that he was desperately disturbed at the practices in the Roman Catholic Church regarding communion.

There were dozens of problems and departures from Scripture and communion, one of which was the way that one enters into communion. And John Knox said it is not lawful for a believer to kneel in communion because the Word of God has said that we sit at table. Now, taking seriously the commands and the patterns of Scripture is critical in our generation and in this Reformation that the church is so desperately in need of today. And I believe that the Reformation that's necessary in the Church today is all about the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture, that Scripture should be applied, that we should love the commands and the principles and the practices that we see that are obviously exemplary in Scripture. People today, many of them, believe in the doctrine of inerrancy.

But they do not believe that Scripture is sufficient. And that nullifies the former. I heard a brother say the other day that the problem with the American church is that it has made an idol of inerrancy and it has ceased to apply the Word of God in the daily lives that they conduct in their homes and in their businesses and in their churches. It's nice to believe that Scripture is inerrant, but it doesn't really matter unless you apply it, and all you have is a dead orthodoxy that will eventually just end up looking like another version of the world. Now what I want to say regarding this doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture on this subject of age integration that we see in Scripture is that the Bible breathes a spirit of faithfulness to the rising generation.

And you see it everywhere, you see it in this category that we're dealing here today. The inclusion of children is embedded in the commands and the patterns and the worship and the fellowship and the celebration and evangelism throughout the New and the Old Testaments. So we're here to make a case for age-integrated gatherings among the people of God. And again, we say with the Apostle Paul, hold fast the pattern of sound words which you have heard from me in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus." These patterns are important to to surface and and that's what we're getting ready to do here right now. And so we'll be dealing with the testimony of the patterns and the commands of Scripture in both the Old and the New Testament.

And I want to give you 20 data points that indicate that age-integrated gatherings were the norm among God's people throughout history. And it's important that we are careful in interpreting the patterns of Scripture. We need to apply the proper rules of hermeneutics when we think about patterns. Every event that happens in the Bible is not authoritative and you should go and do the same. And so we have to be careful with all of the patterns and the principles that we draw from Scripture because every event in Scripture does not require obedience in the exact same way.

So I'm certainly not advocating that every pattern of Scripture somehow becomes doctrine. But what we see here in this area is that there is such a consistent theme all throughout scripture that it ought to tell us something about the way that we ought to conduct ourselves in the worship of God. The Old Testament commands and principles and patterns that argue for age-integrated meetings among God's people begin, at least in this presentation, with the Passover. During the Passover, fathers were explicitly commanded to incorporate their children as participants in the Passover celebration. So before the tabernacle, before the temple, before the church, worship was conducted in homes like it was in the Passover.

Matthew Henry wrote a brilliant, preached a brilliant sermon in 1704, which by the way there's a reprint of that sermon in the back called A Church in the House in which he says that before the church age the families worshiped as families and that really is true. If you look back even I'll go all the way back to Adam and the sacrifices there that were taking place in that period of time. The families gathered together for worship and sacrifice and so it was in the Passover celebration. The home was always designed for the glory of God. The home was always designed for prayer.

It was always designed for the sacrifices of praise. Go to the Feast of Weeks in Deuteronomy chapter 16 verses 9 through 11. God's people were instructed to include their children and their whole households in the Feast of Weeks. And the text reads beautifully, and Rejoice before the Lord your God at the place he will choose as a dwelling for his name. You, your sons and your daughters, your men servants and maid servants, the Levites in your towns and the aliens, the fatherless and the widows living among you." Here you get this morass of different kinds of people.

People from all different social strata and your family and your little ones all there all together. This was the way that God drew his people together in ancient times. We could go to the Feast of Tabernacles. We see a very, a very similar thing. God's people were instructed to include their children in the Feast of Tabernacles in Deuteronomy 16.

Celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles for seven days. Wow, isn't that nice? The family together with many other people gathered for worship for a seven-day period. After you have gathered the produce of your threshing floor and your wine press. Be joyful at your feast.

You and your sons and daughters, your men servants and maid servants and Levites, the aliens and the fathers and the widows who live in the towns." The same thing is happening there. It's interesting that the the Psalms of Ascent in the book of Psalms, Asaph, in the Psalms of the Ascent anyway, the picture is of the family going to worship and lifting up their praises to God. Those songs were sung by the families as the little ones you know were behind the father and the mother and the whole family was walking to the temple to come and bring their sacrifices to God and it picks up this the same feast celebration sometimes lasting a number of days. Fourthly, during the recitation of the covenant, the little ones were present in Deuteronomy 29. Moses calls all Israel and he commanded, he commanded them to come.

And the covenant is repeated during that time. But it includes all of the children and the entire family. And it says specifically in Deuteronomy 29 and 11 that the little ones were present. The word translated little ones literally means those who walk with quick tripping steps. This is like toddlers, okay?

And there they are during the recitation of the covenant. This was a long recitation too, by the way. And the little children were there. Moses stands and gives an amazing speech at this time, and again, it's like these other exemplary gatherings where All the family is there. And then, fifthly, family integrated worship continued to be practiced during the time of Joshua.

And, you know, despite what appears to be a very long worship event, the children were present for the entire reading of the Torah. And Joshua 8, 34, and 35 read like this. Joshua read all the words of the law, the blessings, and the curses, just as it is written in the book of the law. There was not a word of all that Moses had commanded that Joshua did not read to the whole assembly of Israel, including the women and children and the aliens who lived among them. So again we just find another, it's just another data point.

Was this the morning worship service? No, no it wasn't. Was the Feast of Tabernacle the equivalent of the Sunday meeting of the church? No, I don't think so. I don't think anybody would argue for that.

But what do we see? We see that when the people of God are gathering, there are often actual commands to include the children in those gatherings. What should we make of that? We see it also during the time of Ezra. The women and children are gathered around for a time of confession.

And Ezra 10-1 reads, while Ezra was praying and confessing, weeping and throwing himself down before the house of God, a large crowd of Israelites, men and women and children, gathered around him and they too wept bitterly. Now you have a gathering of the whole families, whoever was there, and it was a time of repentance and weeping during this time of confession, of sin. In 7th, when Jehoshaphat cried out to the Lord because of an impending attack, the children were there for prayer. All Judah was standing before the Lord with their infants, their wives, and their children. Why in the world are there all these places where there's an explicit mention of children in exemplary gathering of God's people?

Here's the eighth data point. The sound of children's voices were heard at the gathering during the revival in the days of Ezra. Ezra 1243 reads, on that day they offered great sacrifices and rejoiced because God had given them great joy even the women and children rejoiced so that the joy of Jerusalem was heard from afar. Now they were really rejoicing because you could hear them from a long distance away. And it was absolutely an age-integrated gathering.

Ninth, parents were commanded to bring their children to the sacred assembly in Joel chapter 2. Blow the trumpet in Zion says Joel 2 15 and 16. Declare a holy fast. Call a sacred assembly. Gather the people.

Consecrate the assembly. Bring together the elders. Gather the children, those nursing at the breast. Let the bridegroom leave his room and the bride her chamber." Well, this is just another mention of some kind of gathering, a holy fast, a sacred assembly, in which even the nursing babes might be there. You know, there's this idea that, you know, children really can't get anything out of these meetings that we have.

Well, that's a whole subject. I would love to spend an hour talking to you about that because I absolutely believe that though children don't get everything out of big church, they do get something. And particularly if they are on their father's or their mother's shoulder, and we are singing in their ears and they are seeing the people praise God, and they are seeing the prayers, They are feeling the joy in the room. They are knowing the great and wonderful effects of having a Father in heaven and a holy comforter to come among God's people and help them. So I absolutely believe that children should, in all ages, be in the great meetings of the real family of God.

So those are nine data points. Now, in the Old Testament, the Jews were seldom required to come together to worship the Lord in the hearing and the exposition of the law, but when they did, they came together with their children and they were included there. And I'm not arguing that any one of these makes an argument standing all by itself that children should be in worship. That's really not the argument. And I'm not arguing that each one of these finds some perfect equivalent in what we call the meeting of the church today, but what I am saying is that all of these things point to an age-integrated philosophy of celebration and education and worship and equipping.

They all point to this philosophy and they all point to the importance of including the rising generation in the adult world of discipleship and evangelism. The Bible really has a bent toward the rising generation. The Bible loves the rising generation. The Bible talks about the rising generation all over the place and is wise to mention the presence of even the suckling babes in the great meetings of the church." Now we don't need the Old Testament to prove this pattern as a normative among God's people. People often say to me, well yes, I understand age integration definitely is an Old Testament concept, but it has nothing to do with the New Testament.

And so I would like for us to consider the New Testament. First of all, let's just acknowledge that as a 12-year-old boy, the Lord Jesus Christ was an active participant in spiritual life that included adults. He came with his parents to Jerusalem to participate in in the Passover and he at age 12 was about his father's business. He was comfortable to be with the learned men in the community, and he was there at the age of 12, when we pick him up. And so they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them, and asking them questions.

Well, this was a normal occurrence. In our day, if you find 12-year-old boys mixing it up with the scholars and those who are in very serious conversations, It's really weird. But it wasn't weird then because that wasn't the philosophy that was in play because the Jews had an inflection point of appreciation and love toward the rising generation. So Jesus, as a 12-year-old boy, an active participant in the faith community. Number two, children were present when Jesus taught.

In some situations they were present even when Jesus was privately teaching his disciples. Often he would actually point out the presence of children and give praise to it. In fact, one time the disciples were distracted by the children. And the Lord Jesus says, no, no, no. Let them come to me and let me use these children to teach you something.

Because the Lord Jesus had an embracing philosophy to the rising generation. He wanted the children to hear the things he was saying. And he wanted the disciples to see what their presence meant in the whole scheme of things and how important they were in the meeting that they were having there. We find children crying out in the temple in Matthew 21 verse 15. But when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did and the children crying out in the temple saying Hosanna to the Son of David, they were indignant.

So there they are, children crying out in the temple and indignation about it, but they were there. They were being included somehow in this experience. Now I don't believe that everything that happened in temple life or in Jewish life in the first century should be duplicated. I don't believe that the niche in the schools are our pattern. I don't believe that we should do what the Jews did in the first century and send their boys to the Greek gymnasium that had been erected in Jerusalem.

And their Jewish boys were, you know, were working out and doing their sporting events in the way that the Greeks did, which was a despicable way because it did not include clothing. And they had rejected, they had allowed their surrounding culture to woo them to send their boys into the gymnasium. Well, just because the Jews sent their boys to the Mishnah school and just because the Jews sent their boys into the gymnasium doesn't mean that that's the pattern for us today. We ought to look to scripture and scripture alone, not to cultural patterns that we find. But what we do see with these children crying out in the temple is that there was some level of age integration, and it was also causing problems.

Then number four, we see Jesus preaching to whole families on a number of different occasions. The feeding of the 5, 000, the feeding of the 4, 000, the Sermon on the Mount. These were very clearly, you know, age-integrated types of settings. You had a little boy with fish. Where did that little boy come from?

Well, he was incorporated into the spiritual life of the whole family. And again, you know, it's just another thing to click on, Another thing to say, oh yes, here's another one here. One of the most delightful stories in the book of Acts is the story of Rhoda. Rhoda is praying, they're praying for the release of their brothers in the church. Peter is in prison, and constant prayer is being offered for him in the church.

And then an angel comes and says, Peter, get up and tie on your sandals. And Peter did that. And then he said, put on your garment and follow me so he put on his garment and he followed him right out of the prison. And he went back to where the people were gathering, where the church was gathering. And he came to the house of Mary, which was where they were gathered, and there were many gathered there praying, and Peter knocks at the door of the gate, And a girl named Rhoda comes to answer and she recognizes Peter's voice and because of her gladness she just, she didn't open up the gate and she ran back and there's Peter standing out there, you know, perhaps thinking the authorities were going to come and get him if he was out in the open too long, and ran inside and told everyone, and they didn't even believe her.

Oh, you know, hey, I know, I know, you're all excited, But Peter really was at the door. And, but here's just another picture. There's a young girl in the gathering of the church while they're praying for their imprisoned brothers. Number seven, children were present. Oh, let's, oh, here, you know, let me tell you about this one here.

A young boy, Paul's nephew, and the 40 assassins. Now, I actually put this one in just because I love this story. I don't really know what it proves, but I'll tell you what I think it at least indicates. Are you familiar with this story? The Apostle Paul is in big trouble with the Jews and forty Jews banded together and took an oath that they would not eat until they had killed Paul.

I love the story of the forty assassins because you never hear about them again. Whatever happened to those guys? Well They never got to Paul and I don't know but there's this amazing scene where Paul's sister's son, Paul's nephew, a boy, probably around the same age as eutychus because the same word is used, probably 8 to 12 years old, a boy overhears that what the assassins are going to do. And he ends, this little boy ends up getting interviewed by the commander and he becomes almost the center of this whole hub up there. And he's mentioned, and then he just drifts off the page of scripture, and you never hear about him again.

Here's what I like about the story. The little boys were involved in the great conflicts and tumults of the church. Fathers were taking their sons into the great conflicts and difficulties in the church. They were there, I think they were training their sons. I think that boy was there because his mom and dad wanted him part of the action.

They wanted him praying. They wanted him working and he found out about a plot by overhearing some guys and ends up working for the rescue of the Apostle Paul. I'm not using this to prove that children should be in the meeting of the church. I'm just saying, hey, the children were everywhere in the most unusual places you can imagine. It's right for us to take our children into both the joyful times and the hard times as well so that we might train them up in the training and the admonition of the Lord.

I want my children to see me in difficult circumstances. If someone is angry, I don't mind if my children are there, I want them to see how I might respond. And then after we're over, we can talk about how I did well or how I didn't do well. Were there any sins? Did I lose, You know, did I lose my compassion?

What happened? So it's good for us to take our children into the real situations of life. That's how children, that's how there's a generation right now that's 10 to 15 years ahead of the previous generation. They're at age, you know, 10, 12, 14, 16 years of age. I know dozens and dozens of 16-year-olds that are accomplishing more than I did, you know, 10 years beyond.

And praise be to God. This is one of the most amazing things that's happening today. When you get your children out of the public school system and you put them to work beside you, stuff happens. And I mean it's really good stuff too. And so here we find this young boy, Paul's nephew, and the story of the 40 assassins.

Please go read that. It's in Acts chapter 23. It's just a lovely story. Well number seven, children were present during the meetings of the early church as they met from house to house. These, in the early church, the home was the gathering place for the times of worship and celebration.

There were no buildings until the third century and so the church met in homes largely, sometimes in open squares and large meetings like that, but generally, generally they were meeting in homes. Number eight, children were present during the church services in the book of Acts. We opened up this session reading about the presence of Eutychus in the church entire, in Acts chapter 20. And we see this in Scripture, that children are present. Number nine, children are present in the church gatherings in Ephesus and Colossae.

Here in these two churches there was received a letter. And when that letter was received, it was read. And the Apostle Paul, in writing to these churches, is addressing specific types of people in that church. He says, husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church. He's talking husbands.

Then he's talking wives. Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. And then he turns to the children and he says, children, he's eyeball to eyeball now with these children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. Then he turns to servants and he says servants obey your masters. So there were, there obviously was this supposition in the mind of Paul that the children were going to be there when that letter was read.

And it's interesting, the apostle uses a very interesting term when he speaks to these children. He uses a Greek grammatical form called the vocative of direct address. He is directly addressing the children in the meeting of the church. And I don't know about you, to me it's obvious that children were present in the meetings of the early churches. That's why you have Bible commentators like William Hendrickson saying this, the apostle assumes that among those who will be listening, when his letter is read to the various congregations, the children will not be lacking.

They are included in God's covenant and Jesus loves them. Were Paul to be present with us today, he would be shocked at the spectacle of children attending Sunday school and then going home just before the regular worship service. He has a word addressed directly and specifically to the children. I think it's remarkable that William Hendrickson speaks of the spectacle of the idea of children going off to Sunday school. Well, why is that?

Well, that's because we live in an era where something has been invented that did not exist before. The meetings of the church included young boys like Eutychus. They included young boys like Paul's nephew. They included young girls like Rhoda. And they were obviously being addressed in the Epistles.

We need to understand that children were not in age-segregated Sunday schools, but they were in the midst of the meeting and they were taught side by side with everyone else. The meetings of the early church were conducted with a full complement of relationships. Number 11, women are commanded to teach the younger women, " Titus chapter 2. This indicates an age-integrated type of approach in the church, that there is a the presence of the old and the young together. So there's no explicit indication from Scripture that children were ever removed from the meetings designed for preaching and Scripture reading and prayer and worship and celebration.

But there are many explicit statements, principles, commands, patterns, and exemplary examples that argue for age integration. So in the time of Moses, in the time of Nehemiah, in the time of Jesus, and in the time of Paul, you find this principle running clearly through it all. And so the summary of Old and New Testament patterns, there are no explicit examples in scripture of age-segregated worship that I'm aware of. But what you do see are children participating with adults in the community of faith. Jeremy Walker writes, the constant presumption of Scripture is that children were present in the worship of the people of God.

In Nehemiah's time, men and women and all those who could hear with understanding gathered to hear Ezra read the law. Moses certainly anticipated the literal children of Israel to be present when the law was read, Deuteronomy 31. Paul's letters intended to be read in the churches assume the intelligent presence of children, and children were present when the Lord Jesus taught. Well, so in contrast, the modern church has systematically and comprehensively segregated children into their own age groups. And in most churches today in our land, children really aren't even welcome in the main services of the church.

You know, I know men, I know a number of men who have been put under church discipline because they wanted to bring their children into the meaning of the church. I know men who have been put under church discipline because they wouldn't send their 13-year-old daughter into the youth group that was running wild. That's the environment that we live in today. Well, let's talk about this for a moment. Our disposition to the commands and the patterns and the principles of Scripture are very, very important.

What do we really think about Scripture? Do we love its patterns? Do we appreciate them with all of our hearts? Do we say, oh Lord, let me be like that? Do we say, oh Lord, let me live out whatever is good and whatever is true and whatever is lovely in this book that you've given to me.

Do we take the commands and the patterns of Scripture lightly, or do we take them heavily with a heart that pants after the will of God, that says, oh Lord, let me be a living picture of what I see here. Oh Lord, help me to love these patterns. One can approach Scripture hard or cold-heartedly. One can approach Scripture lightly or lukewarmly, and one can approach Scripture whole and hot-heartedly. Of course, it's always for God's people to love His commands and His ways and to appreciate them above all others.

Will we love and appreciate these patterns? Will we say, though none go with me, still I will follow? Will we say, the world behind me, the cross before me? Let me give you a couple of conclusions. One, I'm not implying that it's always wrong to gather children together as a group or of young people from time to time.

We're not saying that the family always 100% of the time has to meet together in the meetings of the church. That's not our message. We've never said that. But what we are saying is this, look at the comprehensive pattern and then compare it with the comprehensive pattern of the modern church. And take note.

Something is wrong. And then The practice of the modern church regarding children is in direct opposition to the discipleship philosophy of the entire Bible. The practice of age segregation in the modern church is an invention. And you will find people who say, well, maybe Rousseau and Dewey and Darwin got it right. Maybe they just came up with a great idea.

Don't ungodly people come up with good ideas sometimes? And to that I would just like to respond and say, do you want to be a child of Rousseau? Do you want to be a child of Darwin? Do you want to be a child of Dewey? Or do you want to be a child of God and listen to Moses and listen to Ezra and listen to Paul and listen to the Lord Jesus Christ and say the same thing that they said all the way through in every category of scripture from the law to the prophets to the history to the gospels to the epistles in every category of history You can sum up the disposition toward children with this, let the children come unto me.

And I pray that that would be our philosophy and that we would throw off what has come upon us. It's a dark cloud that has come over us. And now it's for us to make our way out of that cloud. And I pray that all of you here would do that because it's what God has explicitly laid out in His Word. Would you pray with me?

Oh Lord, we are so affected by these cultures, we can never be disentangled from the sinfulness of them. We're so grateful for the blood of Jesus Christ, cleansing us from all unrighteousness, all of our sins that we're not even aware of, Lord. We are so grateful to You. But also, Lord, let us have hearts of faithfulness that walk in appreciation toward the things that You have established and that we would hold fast the pattern of sound words. In Jesus' name, amen.