God has ordained the preaching of His Word as an integral part of the disciple-making process (Mark 16:15; Acts 10:42). In this session, Joel Beeke will offer practical counsel on how you can disciple your family through sermons. This will include how to teach your children the importance of sermons; five ways to prepare them for the preached Word; four ways of how they should listen to sermons; four ways to put sermons into practice; as well as how to weave sermons into daily family worship.    

Great to be with you again. Turn with me please to Luke 8, 18. Luke 8, 18. And then I want to read five verses from James 1. Luke 8, 18.

Hear the word of God. Take he therefore how you hear, for whosoever hath to him shall be given, and whosoever hath not from him shall be taken even that which he seems to have." And then James 1, James 1, 21b through 25. Receive with meekness the engrafted word which is able to save your souls. But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is likened to a man beholding his natural face in a glass, for he beholds himself and goes his way, and straightway forgets what manner of man he was.

But whoso looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues therein, he being not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deeds. Let's pray. Great God of heaven, please grant that in this address an impression would be left, not only of the importance and greatness of the preached word as the highest event of our lives, but also that we may receive wisdom as parents how to disciple our children through the preaching of the Word of God. Be with us now, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen.

Well, we already heard about discipling from Matthew 28-19, and I just want to use this as an intro rather than as a further section of my message because I was going to read the same text and give an intro of greater length. So this helps me get to the heart of the matter quicker perhaps. But I want to add just a couple notes about discipleship. Discipleship is actually making a student like his master. Hence the topic I was given by Scott is how to disciple your family through sermons.

That means that you yourself as parents need to be mastered by the sermons so that you are, as Spurgeon would call it, a walking sermon yourself and then seek to make your children imitators of you. So discipleship requires an attitude of humility because it reflects a lifestyle of submission to the Master. And in a sense, you are the Master of your children, teaching them about the supreme master and seeking not only that they would be saved by the grace of God but also that they would be discipled by you so that they become conformed to the image of Christ. So discipling teaches us that it's not enough just to get regenerated and squeak into heaven, but we want our children, yes, regenerated by the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit, but then we want them filled with the Holy Spirit. We want them discipled and made conformable.

That's the purpose of life, to be made conformable to the image of Jesus Christ. And that is only possible, Matthew 28 says, when that true discipleship is intermixed with a radical submission to all the words of Christ. So when we disciple our children, we are calling them to view Him, Jesus, not merely as our guide to life, but as our life. Discipleship then involves taking up the yoke of the Master. Disciples are inseparable with their Master.

They're identified with their master. They take up the yoke of the master. They follow the lamb. Withers whoever he goes and leads. And so discipleship is a long-term process.

I have a very close friend who passed away a few years ago, Errol Hulse, perhaps some of you know him, a reformed Baptist pastor from England. He actually was very involved in Billy Graham's evangelism crusade, but finally felt in his conscience he had to step away. He wrote a book called The Pastor's Dilemma, and in that book he has studied the supposed converts of those crusades and came to the conclusion that no more than two to five percent of them, because they were not discipled afterward, actually had any change that manifested fruits in their lives. Then you contrast that with someone like Richard Baxter who saw 600 conversions in his little village of Kidder Minster under his ministry, but was discipling them week in, week out in their homes, catechizing them. And he could say at the end of his life, I don't know of one of the 600 that has fallen away.

So you need to understand this, that this is a huge part of the Church's commission. Go and teach all nations, disciple all nations, but it's also a huge part of your duty as fathers and complementary as mothers working together with your husbands. And so We need to understand that the sermon, the role of the sermon in this discipling process is immense. It's through the worship service, as we heard so beautifully from Scott Brown, through the worship service that the church greatly assists the family. And then it's through the Father discipling His children with the help of His wife by means of the sermons heard that the family assists the church to grow up to be a mature church in Jesus Christ.

So I want to follow my topic tonight with a five-point order, how to disciple your family through sermons. Number one, I'll say just a few words about Kelvin's view of the importance of sermons, how important they are. Number two, I want to give you five ways to prepare your children for the preached word. Number three, four ways of how they should listen to sermons, and then number four, four ways to put sermons into practice, to live them out. And then number five, how to weave sermons into daily conversation, daily family worship, daily family life.

So there's a lot of little points there and sharpen your pencils because I hope you want to remember some of these things and take some notes that will help you as parents and you children. I'm going to be talking to you directly in this talk about how you can benefit from sermons as well. Now, John Calvin said that the sermon is the highest event of the Christian life. It's a supreme blessing. And the people listening to the sermon, this is an amazing statement, he may have gone over the top here, but they should be working as hard as the minister himself in their listening, because they're not a spectator, but they are participants in the sermon.

And in the sermon, as long as the minister is speaking according to the Bible, Calvin said, this message, every message is so important because every sermon is preached by two ministers. The first one is the one who stands behind the pulpit, speaks words according to the word. That's the external minister, and the internal minister, the Holy Spirit, is the one who takes the word, puts it like arrows in his bow, and shoots it out over the congregation, and directs it to every heart according to each heart's need. And so Calvin says there is an inward efficacy of the Holy Spirit when a faithful minister preaches the gospel so that the Spirit sheds forth His power upon hearers that they may embrace a sermon by faith and then go home and live it out. We need to understand that.

Sermons are the highlight of your life. And my dad used to say to us as kids, on Sunday morning, he'd say, remember we're going to God's house this morning to hear what the living God of the heavens and of the earth has to say to every one of you, God is meeting with you today. That's the way we should approach the Lord's Day. That's the way we should prepare for sermons. We get to go here, I would say to our kids, we get to go here, what the Lord is going to say to us.

This is incredible. You never leave a sermon, you never leave a sermon the way you came. You are either hardened under it, or you are softened and brought a step closer either to heaven or a step closer to hell when you're rejected. Now the successors of the reformers, the Puritans, said this in the Westminster Larger Catechism, question 160, summarizing Puritan advice about the value of sermons, it is required of those that hear the word preached that they, here it comes, attend upon it with diligence, preparation, and prayer, examine what they hear by the Scriptures, receive the truth with faith, with love, with meekness, with readiness of mind, as the very word of God. Meditate, confer of it in their hearts, and bring forth the fruit of it in their lives.

That's the eleven duties to do with every sermon. You see, a sermon is critical. You're responsible on the judgment day for every sermon you hear. And therefore Jesus says in Luke 8 18, take heed therefore how you hear. So that's just a word on the importance of sermons.

Secondly, let's look then at five ways to prepare our children for the preached word. Number one, you want to prepare them by prayer. And So what you need to do is something like this. You yourself, especially at breakfast time and Sunday morning or even Saturday night already, at dinner time or in family worship, you're preparing for the Lord's Day. You're preaching, you're praying for blessing with your family on the preaching.

And your children get to hear all those expressions for what you pray for. They hear you praying for the conversion of sinners. They hear you praying for the edification of the saints. They hear you praying for every one of their souls that they would respond well to the Word. They hear you praying for the minister that he'll have great freedom and the great measures of the Spirit in proclaiming the words of everlasting life to sinners and to saints alike.

But then there are also times where you need to ask your children to pray in front of you for a blessing on the Word. And you need to teach them these are the kinds of things to pray for when we're going up to the house of God? That's number one. Teach them to pray for the preached word. Number two, teach them the importance of coming with a hearty appetite to the word of God.

A good appetite promotes good digestion. Peter said, as newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word that you may grow thereby. Solomon advised, keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear than to offer the sacrifice of fools. So we go up to God's house, children, in the spirit of Acts 9 verse 6, Lord, what will thou have me to do? How does God want to change me through this sermon?

How does He want to convict me? How does He want to exhort me? How does He want to encourage me? How does He want to invite me? God is speaking to me.

Am I hearing him? Am I being like that boy Samuel who said, Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth? Now the Puritans, interestingly, used to prepare for the sermon already on Saturday evening. They would discourage their children from going out late on Saturday. In fact, many Puritan ministers use this simple, claint illustration as their wives would bake bread on Saturday sometime during the day and then they would have it on the hearth, so that it would be nice and warm on Sunday morning, a real treat, fresh bread on Sunday mornings, you awaken to the Lord's day.

They said, so you should be preparing your heart already on Saturday evening for the greatest event of your life. You're going to the house of God. You're going to hear God's voice. Prepare, read the scriptures, pray for a blessing. If you know what the minister is going to preach on, if he's preaching expositionally, open some books and study that passage before he preaches on it.

You'll get much more out of it. Bring it into the family worship and show the children, well here's what the sermon's going to be tomorrow. And teach them a few things about it. And when they hear you teach them and then they hear the minister say something similar, they'll glance at you and they're like, yeah, they're involved, you see. They're hearing the word and you're reinforcing it by preparing them for it.

Number three, meditate with your children on the importance of the preached word as you enter God's house. So here's the kind of things the Puritans would say to their own children. The voice you're going to hear, children, is a voice on earth this morning, but The real speaker is in heaven. Acts 10, verse 33. The high and holy triune God of heaven and earth, said Thomas Boston, is going to meet with you children and with your family to speak directly to you.

This is the most important thing you can do. The minister is just an ambassador of Jesus Christ. He's just heralding to you the Word of God. Don't look to Him. See no man save Jesus only.

Hear the word of God as it comes to you this morning. So teach your children, every sermon counts for eternity. The preached gospel will either lift you up to heaven or cast you down into hell. The nearer to heaven any is, said the Puritan David Clarkson. The nearer to heaven any are lifted up by gospel preaching.

The lower will they sink into hell if they heed it not. Take heed therefore, how you hear. Now my parents stress preaching so much. We had a minister actually, we were vacant when I grew up. We had a minister come every Wednesday night.

I don't care how much homework we had or how pressed we were with school duties. You didn't think of not going to church also on Wednesday night because you attend the house of God every time the word is preached because it could be a savor of life unto life for you. So this is key. Every sermon counts for eternity. The Puritans called preaching and the Lord's Day as a whole the market day of the soul.

They actually reduced it to Mart. The Mart Day of the Soul. The Mart was the outdoor market that was open once a week, and they would come and get their groceries and their food materials one day a week. They couldn't go every day like us. One day a week, you get all your supply.

So the Puritans would say, one day a week, you get those two sermons morning and evening, and that gives you, say the minister preached about 60 minutes, that gives you 120 minutes of material to feed your family spiritually for the week to come. Number four, you remind your family, you tell your children that as they enter the house of God, they are entering a battleground. Here's the kind of thing you can say, dear children, many enemies will oppose your listening well. Internally, you may be distracted by worldly cares, by the lust of the flesh, by a cold heart, by a critical spirit. Externally, you may be distracted by the temperature inside the church, or the weather, or the behavior of others, or the dress of others, or noises, or people moving.

Satan will do anything to keep you from listening word by word to the life-changing word of God. Satan will attempt to snatch the word from your mind and heart like a bird plucking away newly sown seed so that it cannot take root in your heart. Be careful, prepare, be determined to listen well. Five, teach your children to pray that they might come with a loving, expectant faith. Martin Luther said, if you don't receive the word of God with faith, it's like a woman making a meal and leaving out the chief ingredient of the meal.

Receive with meekness the engrafted word that is able to save your souls. That's the meekness of faith. Teach them to come with reverential fear of God, with reverential delight in God, with reverential expectation and faith in God's Word. This Word is sacred. This Word is special.

Now may I advise you, never, never joke about anything in the Bible. Don't joke about anything about Jesus, for sure. But don't joke about things about Abraham or Peter or... The Word of God is so sacred you don't want to make it light, a light matter of it. Show your children the reverence you have for the Word of God.

Puritan Richard Greenham said you should teach your children that when they go up into the house of God, they're like a man digging for a hid treasure. Remember the man in the field looking for the pearl of great price. When you go up to the house of God, you're looking for Christ in the sermon. You're digging for hid treasure. That's the way, children, to go to a sermon.

Now what about, this is my third point, what about receiving the preached word? Well, I'm just going to talk as if I'm a father to your children now. Point one, dear children, dear family, listen with an understanding, tender conscience. Don't put anything between your conscience and God as you listen to the sermon. Jesus spoke about four kinds of hearers of the word, didn't he, in Matthew 13?

A stony-hearted hearer who just listened superficially, and the word just kind of sat right on top of the hard heart, the hard path, and bore no fruit. Then there was the easily impressed hearer, but a resistant listener, like seed falling on the rocky ground, plant begins to spring up, But it withers and dies because it doesn't have sufficient nutrients. And then there's the half-hearted, distracted listener, listens for a few minutes, lets his mind wander like the thorn-ridden soil. But be like that fourth kind of hearer, the understanding hearer, the fruitful hearer who applies the gospel teaching he hears to his conscience, to his life as he hears it and then throughout the week to come. That's how you have to listen to a sermon, children.

And pray that you will bear fruit from that sermon, be it 30-fold or 60-fold or 100-fold, as the Bible says in Matthew 13. That's number one. Number two, listen attentively, attentively to the preached word. In Luke 19 verse 48, Jesus, or rather, Luke says, of Jesus preaching, they hung upon him, literally, they hung upon him hearing. Isn't that beautiful?

They hung upon him hearing. In other words, the attended, it means you turn your mind to it and focus on it. It becomes a matter of life and death to you. The word attend here actually derives from from two words the two T-O and the tendo which means to stretch or bend. You bend, you stretch your mind, you grow, you listen, you learn under the sermon.

To stretch your mind by listening, that's what it means. Teach your children to do that. Stretch your mind. That means taking notes. And that helps the children.

By all means, take notes. So as you listen to God's word children, ask yourself this question. How does God want my life to change? Because of this sermon. What does he want me to do with this sermon?

And then number three, dear family, please listen with submissive faith to every sermon. As James says in James chapter one, you've got to listen by faith. You've got to believe it. You've got to compare scripture with scripture, and as long as it's true, you've got to believe it, and you've got to live it. You're just a Pharisee if you don't live the sermon, boys and girls.

You've got to do the sermon. Your life has to be just like a minister. One old Puritan said, a minister's life must be a transcript of his sermons. But you as a hearer, your life must be a transcript of the minister's sermons as well. And then number four, you must listen, dear children, with humility and with serious self-examination.

Do I humbly examine myself under the preaching of God's word, or am I thinking about someone else? See, that's an important question. I don't have time to think about someone else in a sermon. I'm there one by one. Every single here is there for their own soul, for their own eternity.

I am to listen for myself." Remember how Jesus admonished Peter when he said, Lord, and what shall this man do? Peter says, what is that to thee? You, Jesus said that, what is that to thee? You follow me. That's what we must do in sermons.

Block out everything else. If the minister preaches about different marks of grace that belong to the child of God, You ask yourself, boys and girls, do I have those marks of grace? If he preaches about the loveliness of Christ, you say, do I know something of that loveliness of Christ? How can Christ become more beautiful, more lovely, more indispensable to me? A sermon is like a medicine for your soul.

When you go to the doctor and you're sick and the doctor leans forward and tells you what you need, you listen, don't you? And your mom listens and your dad listens and you go out and you get the medicine and you take it. Why would you listen less to a sermon when you get medicine for your soul? And then point four, how do you practice the preached word? How do you practice the preached word?

Children, this is what you tell your kids. Number one, children, strive to remember and to pray over what you've heard. Hebrews 2 verse 1, we ought to give earnest heed to the things which you've heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. Thomas Watson said, we should not let sermons run through our minds like water through a sieve. Our memory should be like the chest of the ark where the law was put.

But Joseph Aline I think said something even better. He said we should go from our knees to every sermon we hear and when we get back home we should go from the sermon back to our knees. One of the best things you can do children when you get back home after a sermon is just go into your bedroom, shut the door, get down on your knees. If you've taken notes lay those notes on your bed before you and Read them and say I need to change here Lord. Please help me.

I need to have more faith here Lord, please help me. Pray through the sermon. I had an old secretary who passed away some years ago now, when she was 85, she worked for me till the end. But I asked her once how her day was on a Monday, how her Lord's Day was. And she said to me, you know, she said the best part of my day on the Lord's Day usually is when I'm all alone at night.

And those days we had three different sermons on the Lord's Day. And she says, I go over all my pages of notes of the three sermons, and I pray over every paragraph of my notes. I said, well, how long does that take? Oh, maybe 45 minutes, maybe an hour, she said. I said, that's the best part of your day?

Yes, she says, when I pray through a sermon, I taste the sweetness of the sermon. That's a wonderful way to listen to a sermon, to pray over it afterward, to put it into practice. Number two, familiarize yourself with the truths you heard by speaking to other people about them. How great it is when children talk to children about the sermons they've heard. Actually we just had a conference last week in Ontario and our Heritage KJB Study Bible with all the notes and the articles in the back and the family worship section.

There was a boy who was 12 years old and he walked up to me and he said, I just love this Bible. Thank you so much for helping put it together. He said, this Bible means so much to me. When I read the Bible, I read the notes below it, and I understand it better. And then I read the personal and the family worship section, and I ask myself all the questions that I ask.

And then I usually turn to the back and read the different articles about how to live the Christian life. And it helps me so much. And I talked to my brothers and sisters about it. And I especially got help from the page on how to honor your parents. And I want to honor my parents more.

Thank you so much for this Bible." Oh man, it did my heart so much good, you see, because this boy is into the Word and he's growing. I don't have to ask that boy, do you listen well in sermons? I know he listens well in sermons. And you can listen well even when you're a young child. Last summer I was with my granddaughter.

By the way, I noticed in the author description, There's no grandchildren listed under my name. I think it's an eight-year-old description because our oldest grandchild is eight and now we have 11 grandchildren. So we've grown. And it's wonderful to talk to grandchildren, isn't it? So We were swimming in the lake and floating on something.

I started talking to our seven-year-old granddaughter. I said, how do you like the sermons in church? Do you listen to them? And she said, most of the time. And I said, most of the time?

What percentage do you listen to? She said, I think 60%. I said, well, Maybe you can do a little better than that, but at least you're honest with me." But I said, do you really believe everything I say in sermons? And she looked at me and she said, of course, you're a minister. Well, That was a little bit reassuring.

She's not at the age to be a deep Berean yet. But you see, the point is, the point is, you want to build that kind of respect in your children for the minister, for the Word, that they believe it. And even if they don't listen 100%, you see, they know they should. Their conscience speaks. And you need to build in them that desire to listen fully to the sermon.

So that's where you can encourage your children to take notes perhaps. We used to do that with our kids even even when they're five, six years old. My wife would say she's gonna write the word God hates sin. She would do dot dot dot dot and the kids would fill it in, dot, dot, dot. God hates sin.

They'd show me the notes. As a five-year-old, they can't even really write yet. But then the seven and the eight-year-old, they'd bring me their notes. We discussed those notes on Sunday evening after church. And Very interesting, our son would always add to my sermons.

He put it all in his own words, which was creative. Sometimes I have to correct a few things, but I could tell he was thinking about what I said. That was great. Our daughter is very, very precise. She'd write down exactly what I said in the sermon.

But we talk about it. And those are sweet times when you talk about the sermons with your children over the notes that they take and they bring them to you. That's a good idea. Now the challenge is to get your children to meditate in private about the sermon. That's a challenge.

But talk to them about how valuable it is to think about the sermons. One way you can do that is you can come home after church, say the minister preaches on Sunday morning, say in this text, James 1, 22 to 25, then you at the noon meal afterward, you read that same portion again. And you say, children, tell me, what did each of you learn this morning from that sermon? You're making them meditate about it. I was at a family recently, I was shocked.

This was incredibly beautiful. I preached for them on Sunday morning, went over to this family at noon, and in family worship at noon, the Father said, okay, he said, let's do our regular thing now. Each one of you, starting with the youngest, moving to the oldest, and you can't have any repetition, tell us one thing you learned that was profitable for your soul from the sermon this morning." I thought, wow, that's gonna be nine different things for these kids? Are they gonna be able to think of those? But they were so used to it.

They just rattled it off like that all night of them And then he told me afterward that if one of them missed and couldn't think of anything they didn't get any dessert now I'm not sure if that's a good idea or not, but it seemed to work But the point the point was you see he was training them to think about the sermon. One thing that you learned that can profit your soul from this sermon. And the things those nine children said, beginning with this four-year-old, it was amazing. I mean, I was deeply impressed. So you can be creative in those ways and find ways to bring this memory out, but talking to your children, holding them accountable is an important way of encouraging them to practice the preached word.

And then number three of course, you need to tell your children the sermon must be put into action. You must do the sermon in relationship to your relationship with your mom and dad and your brothers and sisters and if you're working with your work, every area of your life must be impacted by sermons. You've heard the story. It's a quaint, beautiful story perhaps from Scotland, but there was a man who came home from church a bit earlier. The minister was a bit shorter that day, and his wife was ill at home, and she heard the back door swing open, and she said, Is that you, Donald?

And he said, yes, my dear. Oh, is the sermon done already? She said, no, my dear, he said. It has been spoken, but it has yet to be done. See, that's the way to think of sermons.

And we who are pastors, We need to preach in such a way that people have things to do and things to think about when they go home after a sermon. Sometimes you hear a sermon and you say, I don't know what to do with that sermon. Maybe it's kind of interesting for head knowledge, but What was I to do with it, with my life? How was it to impact my prayers? How was it to impact my relationship with my wife and my kids and my own spiritual fellowship with Christ?

You need to put sermons into action. That's what James is saying. You've got to go out and do the sermon, James 1, verse 23. And then you also need to teach your children to be really, really thankful for sermons preached to them. Yeah, It's a beautiful thing when you preach somewhere and you see a five-year-old walk up to you and say, Sir, thank you so much for bringing me the Word of God today.

And right away, what do you think? Oh, that child has a blessed father and mother. Because those parents are training their children to really value the Word of God and be thankful for. That too, when children understand how much, how valuable the sermon is to you, Dad, and to you, Mom. They will take over that value, even in an outward way.

God has to bless it to their heart, of course. But even that does good. Even that will make them listen better. But if you get more excited about the Super Bowl football score of last week than you do about Jesus Christ in your conversation and they feel that for you coming to church is just kind of a ritual. Don't expect your children to be excited about church either.

So those are some suggestions. Now number five, I want to conclude by looking then at how do you weave sermons into daily family life and daily family worship. I'm going to give you seven really quick points here, really quick. Number one is use the family worship Bible guide. That's a tremendous help for you, Dad.

That gives you the two or three major takeaways from each chapter. So when the minister preaches on a certain chapter, you come home, you read that same portion, and then you read the practical applications. Probably we'll have quite a bit of ground covering what the minister said as well in that family worship section. Takes you only a minute to read it. You ask the question that's asked at the end And then you talk about it a few minutes, and that will lead you to other thoughts about the sermon.

So you talk over the sermon. That's number one. Number two, I've already covered actually. If your children take notes, you can go over them. Number three, you can speak on certain texts that were in that chapter, and maybe you can come up with some thoughts that really weren't covered in the sermon, but that can expand the knowledge of your children.

And that would be great to reinforce the centrality of that chapter in which the sermon was preached. Now, number four is you want to take truths from that sermon and throughout the family worships of the week, this is what the Puritans instructed their men to do. Throughout the sermons, if you yourself take notes, Dad, you can make note of different things. You can look at the chapters you're going to read in family worship every day and say, how can I bring a thought in on Thursday from the sermon so that children realize this is like the market day of the soul on Sunday, and they're gonna get food from this sermon throughout the week? You can remind them of this point of the sermon or that point of the sermon.

That's extremely helpful as well. And number five, by doing these things, you're teaching your children not just to love the sermon, but embedded in the context, the whole worship service. And if you teach them to love the whole worship service and also to love the singing, as Scott Brown was talking about earlier tonight, then what you're also doing is you're teaching them to love the church. And children also, you are called to love the church. Jesus gave his death, he shed his blood for the church.

So the church is very precious to him. So you never talk badly about the church in front of your children. The only time you ever criticize the church is when the church departs from the truth and then you do it with the tears falling from your eyes like Jeremiah saying, woe for the slain of the daughter of my people. No, no. You hold up the church because the church is the bride of Christ and he gave his blood for her.

So God meets us at the church in a special way. There's a text in one of the Psalms that says he delights more in the gates of Zion than in the tents of Jerusalem or something like that. And David Clarkson had a whole sermon on that saying God's favorite place to meet his people is where his people are corporately gathered under the proclamation, the heralding of the Word of God. Let that Spirit flow from you to your children and make as much use of you can, much use as you can of the various sermons. And finally, number seven, pray, pray, pray, earnestly with your children and that the Lord might bless the sermons and then weave something of the sermon into that prayer.

We heard this today, Lord. Please grant this, please grant that to the children. So if you have children, say five to 10 years of age, they're going to miss some things in the sermon, aren't they? Because some of them are going to be above, some words are going to be above a 10-year-old level. But your duty then is to take the things that are at a higher level and simplify them in your prayers, in your family worship, in your talk with your children so that the sermon becomes even more alive to them through your fatherly discussion with them.

So those are some suggestions for how to disciple your children through sermons. May God bless your efforts and may your children know, may they be able to say of you, you know what? My dad and my mom are not perfect, but I know two things about them. They love Jesus and they love going up to the house of God to hear the word of God and they are teaching us to love the sermons that we hear in the church. Let's pray.

Gracious God, please bless this simple message and may its practical points embed themselves in the minds also of parents as well as children and that the whole family will be able to talk about each sermon and treasure it and get much benefit from it. So please grant Lord that thy Holy Spirit would use sermons to the eternal conversion of these dear children, but also to the welfare of the whole family as they discuss the truths of the preached word together as a family under the leadership of the Father. We ask all this in Jesus name. Amen.