In the sermon 'Parents as Tour Guides - Helping Children Listening To Sermons Well,' Scott Brown emphasizes the importance of the church as a vital resource for believers, highlighting the collective capability and support it provides. He discusses the critical role of parents in guiding their children to listen to sermons effectively, as hearing the Word of God is essential for developing faith. Brown underscores the necessity for parents to actively prepare their children to engage with sermons, treating it as a life skill. He points out that the church offers prayers, teaching, and fellowship, which are sufficient according to scripture. Brown also stresses the need for parents to set an example, showing delight in the Word, and to help their children understand the significance of church activities. He offers practical advice for parents, like familiarizing children with sermon texts and praying for the preacher, to enhance their children's ability to listen and absorb sermons.

I'd like you to open your Bibles to Psalm 27, Psalm 27, and keep your finger there. I want to build off what I say from this text. Before we get to it though, I want to just expand a little bit on this matter of the fellowship of the saints and the goodness of the gathered church and people who gather the way that God has commanded them to gather. The way that God has designed the church is, of course, a stroke of brilliance from the most brilliant one, God himself. And what God has done is he has given people a resource called the church, which is composed of a vast network of relationships, particular practices that are very helpful to them.

It's so important to be locked in to a local church. And we can talk about this on many levels. There are many, many things that we could never do by ourselves, but together we have a tremendous capability of doing them. You know, I think, you know, we have sent, you know, two families to Turkey. None of us could have done this on our own, but the families gathering together to spread the word of God throughout the world is just one manifestation of just how wise God is in collecting a group of people together.

The Church, the Church of Jesus Christ, if you're really a part of it, like if you're really a part of it, gives you a resiliency and a wealth that you could never have have on your own. Like for example, when you need prayer, you can have everybody in the church praying for you. Hey, that happened today. Most of the people in this church were praying for Puyang across the ocean. It's a tremendous resource to have prayer lifted up before God.

When we gather together we are called to encourage one another. We're called to teach one another. These are tremendous resources and the encouragement and the teaching comes from the word of God. It comes from the source of all truth. We counsel one another a lot.

You counsel one another. You have questions. You ask your brothers and sisters and they bring the word of God to you. There are experienced people in this church on a broad level of different experiences across lots of industries and many years of life experience. You have a well, a deep well, a resource here in a local church.

You know, I know that people are concerned about the economy and things like that, But think for a moment what kind of strength there is even in this little local church that we have here. How many income streams are there in this church? How many houses are there in this church? How many vehicles are there in this church? How many industries are represented here if somebody has a question about how to navigate or pivot to move to something else.

If we sat down and calculated, it would be pretty staggering if we listed it. In other words, We have a tremendous capability together as a church and we have things that we could never do by ourselves. One of the most heartbreaking things that over the last 20 years in church life was a situation that happened many years ago and there was a there was a family that started coming to our church but the father didn't like to go to church so the family was there very spotty they never became members they had never really become members anywhere and there there was this very sweet family and the wife came whenever her husband would allow it which wasn't very often and then the husband died And that woman died without a vast network of care and help. She was left all alone. If he had become a member of our church, we would have taken care of her.

But they moved on and she had no one to care for her. All I'm saying is that what God has done in establishing a church is really, really wonderful. And there is so much to it. And So I'm really grateful for that. We have just exited a passage of scripture that is a really critical passage for understanding how we function together.

I hope that we just even more and more become a sweeter picture of what we see there in that passage. I believe that the most important place you ever go, the most important place you ever take your children is to a local church. I pray that you have a vision for squeezing your local church out of every ounce of good that's there in the things that it offers. In our church, we really are just planning to offer the things that God has ordained. We're not gonna create something new.

What do you get? You get prayers, you get teaching, you get the Lord's Supper, you get singing, you get relationships. I could go on, but that's what you get. What you get when you come here are gonna be just the things that God commanded the church to do. We believe that's enough.

We believe you don't need to do anymore. If you show up in 10 years, we're gonna still be doing those things. Those are the things that God has prescribed. And that really is a manifestation of a core belief that we have here, and that is that scripture is sufficient. And it's sufficient for everything.

And you don't need to go have some kind of creative new jag to figure out how to have church. You don't go recreate the church for your generation. You do the church the way God designed the church to be done. And Acts 2 42, I think, is a really helpful illustration of that. As a young man, after I was converted, my pastor, he loved this passage of scripture.

He probably gave me my first copy of Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, but He loved the doctrine of the church. And I was brought back to that old copy of that book that I bought 40 years ago, or he gave to me. I'm not sure how I got it, but I had it. But local churches provide dozens of opportunities for help for you and your family. So I'd like to just address that.

You who are parents, it's very important that you understand that you have to be good shepherds of your children to capture the goodness that's there. You have to power up. You have to help them. You have to teach them. You have to lead them to the living water.

You have to be a person who is bringing them up in the training and the admonition of the Lord and that means you have to do something. It's tragic if you just show up and throw your children into a church and just have them sit there. You need to take them and coach them and lead them and help them understand everything that's going on. It means that parents have a pretty significant responsibility in leading their children into this kind of life. I pray that you give your children the sweetest taste of church life they'll ever get.

You know, there are heartbreaking things that happen in the church, but the beautiful things far, far outweigh them. They really do. And I pray that you are the kind of people who do that. Well that brings me to Psalm 27 verse 4. Psalm 27 verse 4 and really I'd like all my comments to somehow correlate with what's here in this psalm.

One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple. For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion, in the secret place of his tabernacle he shall hide me." Well it goes on and on, it's hard to stop there. But I think that When you read a verse like this as a parent, you need to recognize that there is a treasure, there's a beauty in the house of the Lord. Take your children to the beauty, expose them to the treasure, show them what is worthy and beautiful in the church. And I want to speak about that subject, but particularly focus on one aspect of church life, just one.

And that has to do with listening to sermons. And I want to challenge every parent here to recognize how important they are to see how they can help their children hear sermons. The Apostle Paul in Romans 10-7 said that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. And what that means is that how your children hear determines their eternal state. How they hear.

And I just want to encourage you to help your children to hear, to learn how to hear. Faith comes by hearing. Now I pray that your children will hear thousands of hours of preaching and that during those hours you will have been a good shepherd to them. You will have helped them to hear the word of God. When you bring your children here, you're not going to hear kitty sermons.

You're going to hear sermons that are preached to people. Our view is that children will continue to, they'll get a little bit and then a little bit more and a little bit more, but boy will they get a whole lot if you help them. So help them. Be a good tour guide in the sermons. What should be your objective?

I think your objective is really communicated in Jeremiah 15-16. Your word was to me the joy and the rejoicing of my heart. Make that your goal. Or like David in Psalm 119-24, your testimonies are my delight. Or David in Psalm 119 verse 103, how sweet are your words to me?

Or in Psalm 19 10, your statutes are my songs. They are sweeter also than honey in the honeycomb. They are more desirable than gold. Make that your goal as a parent. Help your children to see the treasure, the beauty, the gold, the delight in the word.

Help them. Help them. Don't just bring them to church. Don't just throw them in a seat beside you and sit there like a bump on the log. Help them.

They need help. They're children after all. And they need help to do anything. And so what can you do to help your children hear the word of God? Jesus said, take heed how you hear.

Take heed how you hear. And I really believe that It's an incumbent responsibility on every parent to help their children learn how to hear. That you should be very aware that it matters how you hear and children can be helped. Children need to learn how to take heed. And to take heed means take action it means to pay attention it means to be ready it means to take notice and as you're as you're helping your children just recognize you know you are teaching them to do something.

You're teaching them to do something called hearing and they need coaching and assistance. They need training. It's your job to do that. So here's my appeal. Have a strategy for what you will do before the sermon.

Now by the way our church sets you up to do that big time. We're doing everything we can to set you up as parents. For a men's Bible study all the way through the week, I illustrated that earlier today. You know, have a strategy, what you'll do before and during and after the sermon every Sunday to help your children to listen. In some ways, you're teaching them a life skill.

You're teaching them a way of experiencing something. You're teaching them a method of life. It's really a life skill And they need to have that skill. And by the way, passivity is not your friend. Your passivity is not your friend.

It's not the friend of hearing. You know what that's like. You know that personally. If you're passive, you won't hear very well. It's not your friend.

And so in the same way that you have to sort of stimulate yourself to hear, you'll need even more energy and forethought for an activity to help your children to hear. So I'm going to give you a few things to consider in helping your children. First examine your own heart. Is it a joy to you? Is the Word of God a joy to you?

Now if it's not, you're just not going to be able to power up because it's not that big of a deal to you. It's kind of going in one ear and out the other. You're doing other things, you know, you're thinking about other things. But is your joyful delight in the Word of God? Now if you delight in the Word of God, it's infectious.

You know, If you think it's sweet, then you can help other people see how sweet it is. You've been with people like that. Follow the example of David and lead your whole family to say, on the way, I was glad when they said unto me let us go into the house of the Lord You know most of you drive here I don't know anybody who walks but when you get in that car that ought to be your song I was glad when they said unto me let us go into the house of the Lord. You know, do you enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise? That's what David said in Psalm 122 verse 1.

Do you say what Nehemiah said? We will not neglect the house of God. Here's the second thing. Get focused on mind expansion. Get focused on mind expansion.

On the one hand, sermons are mind expanding, and on the other hand, they are soul satisfying for both believing and unbelieving children. Sermons contain lots of different words and scenes. Think of the scene that we just read about today of a church and all the things that they did think of the just the graphical colorations of all the things that they were doing they were meeting continually they were rejoicing people were fearing they were praying they were you know they were they were learning and there were thousands of them. It's really an amazing scene. These are mind-expanding experiences.

Help them see the graphical nature of what's in the text of scripture. It's, you know, even in the didactic text, there's all this colorful language that helps you. You know, teach your children the biblical language. Teach them words. Teach them words that they're not familiar with.

It's mind-expanding. Sermons, they can be, they can either be mind-expanding or they can just be, don't let them be that way. It's your responsibility to help them to do that. Now, when you require unbelieving children to listen to sermons, what are you doing? Is that bad?

Is it bad to make unbelieving children listen to sermons? Is that child abuse? No, it is not child abuse at all. You are giving them reasons to believe when you make them listen to sermons. You are giving them reasons to believe and you're helping them to catalog those things in their minds.

They're not believers now. But these sermons are very necessary for child development or else the Lord would not have prescribed it to be done in his church. They're necessary for children and I just want to convince you that sermons should be a very important focus of the discipleship and the preparation of your children to believe in the gospel. Pray that someday they will believe but give them a thousand reasons to believe. So parents need to capture that opportunity with vigor.

But they have a lot of help though. The Holy Spirit and the fact that the word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword. So there's a lot of help in the background for that. The word of God is powerful. I was interviewing Paul Washer a little while ago on this whole matter of children listening to sermons.

One thing he said was, he said, you know, children don't really need illustrations. They just need to hear the word of God because the word of God is really powerful. That's what he said. And by the way, I just have completed three interviews, one with Paul Washer, one with Steve Lawson, and another one with Joe Beeke on the same subject. And I wanted to hear them talk about preaching and preaching to children and children hearing and parents powering up.

So I've got three of them at the Church and Family Life website on our podcasts that we've just done recently. And it's very interesting, they said different things. These guys are some of the best preachers in the country, in the world. And they preach to children and they're very conscious of it. And they had really helpful things to say.

I thought they were just very invigorating. Okay, so get focused on mind expansion. Thirdly, familiarize your family with the sermon before the text is preached. You know how we do that in our church. Hey, milk it for all it's worth.

Take advantage of the opportunity. We're encouraging you to do that. We're encouraging the men to come to Bible study. We're encouraging you to read the emails that we send out on Tuesday or Wednesday. We're encouraging you to come to prayer and pray about it.

We're encouraging you to teach in your own home and we're encouraging you to come to Sunday worship service and hear it again. So we're trying to leverage your activity and help it along the way by trying to build everything around the word of God. But familiarize your children with the text before they come. And then prepare them to hear. In Luke, in 1948, we find a people who are, quote, very attentive to hear.

And it's extremely important that you help your children to be attentive. To help them be attentive. To rise up, power up, take action and help them to be attentive. You know what that's like when your kids are zoning them out, zoning out. When they start zoning out, help bring them back.

Well you know that happens to me. I'll be sitting listening to someone preach and my eyes will start to close and my wife will nudge me and somehow she knows when I'm going to sleep and I'm so glad she does it you know and So your children might need that too and they start to zone out. This is why you ought to intentionally prepare your family to hear a sermon. Lots have been written about how to listen to a sermon. I'm going to paraphrase George Whitefield's instructions on hearing sermons.

Come with a sincere desire to know your duty. Pray before, during, and after the sermon. Listen to the sermon as if you're listening to a king, the Lord of Lords himself. Why? Because ministers are sent from God.

They are ambassadors who speak the words of God. Do not think poorly of the minister when you think of his weaknesses." That's George Whitefield on how to listen to a sermon. You can get it on the internet. The fifth thing, cast a vision for the importance of the moment. You need to help your children understand how critical this is.

God gave preaching to the church and it's very important that we understand that. You know, God has always gathered his people together to worship him and hear teaching. He's always done that and he's doing this now in the church age. It is the most important scheduled meeting of your week. So be there, be ready, be attentive, be powered up, Be ready to engage and train and stimulate your children.

Help them understand the prioritization of this moment. And, You know, there's this scene in Nehemiah where the people who shrugged their shoulders and stiffened their necks and would not hear. That's Nehemiah 9.29. They shrugged their shoulders. That's the most dangerous thing in the church.

Hey, when people start shrugging their shoulders they become synchronized to this world. That's what happens. Here's the sixth thing, pray for the preacher before the service. Oh, please do. Take time to give thanks for the preparation that he would be engaged in the labor.

It's often very hard labor. It's torturous most of the time to try to understand the text and how to organize it and what to say. Preachers are constantly crying out to God, often late in the night, often all day long, almost all day long, every day. It's in your mind. So pray, pray for him.

So there you go. Okay, help your children succeed in hearing. And speak to them about what's ahead, speak to them in the moment, and speak to them afterward, and power up. Okay, got it? Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God would you pray with me father we pray that you would give us great energy for the instruction of your word that the Apostles doctrine would fill our hearts and our homes and our town.

Amen. Thanks for watching!