In his sermon titled 'What? Children Crying Out in the Temple?', Scott Brown explores the biblical and historical significance of children participating in worship. Drawing on Matthew 21:14-16, Brown highlights the importance of children crying out 'Hosanna to the son of David' as an example of inclusive worship. He argues for the sufficiency of Scripture in guiding worship practices, asserting that God's design for worship is inclusive of all ages, without the need for age-segregated services. Brown critiques the modern trend of age-segregated worship, pointing out that historically, family-integrated worship was the norm, supported by examples from church history such as John Bunyan and Jonathan Edwards. The sermon emphasizes the role of parents in preparing their children for worship, encouraging them to instill a love for worship through preparation and engagement. Brown concludes by urging parents to see the local church as a vital part of their children's spiritual development and to embrace the ordinary means of grace offered through communal worship.

Please open your Bibles to Matthew chapter 21, Matthew chapter 21 and find verse 14. This is the inerrant, all-sufficient, sweeter than honey word of God. Matthew 21 verse 14. Then the blind and the lame came to him in the temple and he healed them. 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 and said to him, Do you hear what these are saying? And Jesus said to them, yes, have you never read out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants you have perfected praise. The grass withers and the flower fades but the word of our God stands forever. Let's pray. Oh Lord come and teach your people.

Bring us oh Lord up in your ways. Help us to walk in the ways that you have designed for our worship and I pray oh God that you would raise up generations of children that would be crying out Hosanna to the Son of David with all of their hearts as they gather together in your church. Amen. Please be seated. Of course these words in Matthew are a picture of children who were present in the worship of God and they are responding.

And this is the way of Jesus Christ who said let the children come unto me do not deny them do not hinder them from coming to me And last week and this week we're dealing with this matter, this particular matter of the sufficiency of scripture as it relates to the worship of God. And last week we were establishing that the Bible is very clear, that there's a very prominent and observable pattern in both the Old Testament and the New Testament that is an age-integrated method for gathering God's people together, and we walk through various passages of scripture like the one that I just read and we've really been speaking about how the people of God are to worship God and that particularly scripture is sufficient for the worship of God and in the coming weeks my plan is to bring a number of messages, topical messages on particularly what we believe about the Lord's Day, the Sabbath, what do we believe about the law of God, What do we believe about the law of God? What do we believe about the worship of God? All of these really speaking of the sufficiency of Scripture for these things.

And of course as we're headed toward 1st and 2nd Timothy, all of this really correlates with what is ahead in the preaching, my part of it anyway, here. And Second Timothy chapter 3, you know, what we find is we find that all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God might be thoroughly equipped, complete and not lacking in any good work. So this is the whole idea that Scripture paints is that the worship of God, the gatherings of God's people are not man's creative palette that he just plays with, but the worship of God is something that God establishes and ordains and he and he alone is the only one who can design the worship of God and that's why Paul writes to Timothy in 1st Timothy 3 15 he said I write so that you may know how to conduct yourselves in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. This really speaks of the centrality of the local church. And then he also says in 2nd Timothy 1 13, he says that there's a way that you conduct yourself in the household of God.

It's not man's way, it's God's way. And so he says, I write to you that you may know how to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God. And he says, hold fast to the pattern of sound words, which you heard from me. There's a pattern that that we follow. It's the impression of Scripture, the the stamping of Scripture on the church.

And so I'm spending last Sunday and this Sunday to speak of this matter of just the biblical relevance of a family integrated church, which we've been practicing for many years. And one of the reasons I want to do this, I really wanna do this for a number of reasons. One is that we haven't talked about this in years, and particularly for children who grew up in this church, I want you to know in no uncertain terms that this is not some weird homeschooling fad that your parents cooked up in their conservatism. It's actually a historic pattern that the church always followed until just recently. And you must know that the church always met like this, really, until about the middle of the 20th century.

In the middle of the 20th century, there was a new fad that took place, and that was the near comprehensive segregation, age segregation of the church, and the removal of children from the worship of God. But the Bible makes it really plain and we talked about this last week. When you read sections of Scripture about the way that the people of God gathered, you have all kinds of different people gathering and the words that are used in the passages that we brought up last week you know include fathers and mothers men and women children little children and yes even nursing babes And if you see paintings of churches that gathered, you know, pre 20th century, you're gonna see paintings of babies in arms in the worship services because that's the way it always was. Have you ever heard of the Desert Island Challenge? Maybe some of you have heard of this.

I heard somebody, I heard a few people talk about this in the late 1990s. But here's the Desert Island Challenge. If you were like Robinson Caruso and you were stranded on a desert island and all you had was your Bible. How would you conduct your life? What would your family look like if all you had the Bible?

What would education look like? What would worship look like? What would economics look like? What would your relationships look like? What would every if you all you had was the Bible to guide you?

And that really is one way to speak about the sufficiency of scripture. And you know, we have to just be clear about history. You know, did the apostles, you know, ever organize a Sunday school or did they organize a youth rally? Did they, did they, did they segregate the meetings of the people of God? And of course the answer is they they really did not because in the Bible what you find are scenes of all the generations gathering together for worship and for discipleship.

But we live in a culture that does the opposite and we all know that And it can draw criticism from people. But here's the heart of the matter. God is the designer of worship. He is the one and the only one who is qualified to design the way that his people whom he created worship him. In Colossians 2 or Colossians 2 verse 2 and 3 we read that in Jesus Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge and Jesus Christ is the head of the church.

He is the designer of the church. First Corinthians 1 24 says Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Moses said it like this he said he is the rock his work is perfect for all his ways are justice he's a god of truth and without injustice righteous and upright is he so God's ways are pleasant ways all his paths are peace That's what Solomon says in Proverbs chapter three, nothing can compare with God's wisdom. And At the same time, there was this fad that rose up in the 20th century, and it really changed the way that the church operated for the next 75 years. And it created things that the church had never seen before.

Youth pastors, children's pastors, senior adult pastors, sports pastors, whatever kind of pastors, the church a little bit became like the Roman Catholics where they want to invent hundreds of offices just to engage people and to thrill them and to get them mobilized. But only God is authorized to define worship. Now, all of this comes out of really a historic understanding of worship. Our church, as many of you know, we subscribe or the elders really are obligated to teach the doctrine in the second London Baptist Confession of 1689, which has a chapter on worship. It's chapter 22 in that confession and it follows along with the the Westminster Confession and many of the other historic confessions that were written after the Reformation.

And here's how this is described in chapter 22. But the acceptable way to worship the true God is instituted by him and is delimited by his own revealed will. Thus, he may not be worshiped according to imagination or inventions of men or the suggestions of Satan nor through any visible representations nor any other way that is not prescribed in the Holy Scriptures. So all of this really is is about God's design for worship and then in that same chapter of the confession, the activities of worship are defined. The elements of religious worship of God include reading the scriptures, preaching and hearing the word of God, teaching and admonishing one another in Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with grace in our hearts to the Lord, as well as the administration of baptism in the Lord's Supper.

They must be performed out of obedience to him with understanding, faith, reverence, and godly fear. So it goes on. It's a very long chapter, but this is what we believe about worship here. And you know worship is given to us to help us make sense of everything in our lives what's going on in our hearts what's going on in the world everything and worship is designed by God really to be the organizing principle of your life. It shapes us into the people that God has designed us to be by bringing us together in orderly way.

Worship really designs the architecture of your life and it's the foundation it provides the pattern for everything else and worship is that thing that it tunes your heart our hearts are often out of tune we come in here I often come out of here in here with my heart out of tune. And I need it tuned up and I'm so thankful for the things that happen in this service that retune my heart just like an instrument goes out of tune. So do you and so do I. And worship is one of those things to change our hearts, to shift the thoughts and meditations of our minds, to alter our emotions, to direct our affections. And all of this is really designed to spill over into every part of your life.

We don't leave it here, we take it everywhere. That's the significance of the worship of God and it's something that we fit our lives into. It's not something that we create. It's not something that we invent that's exciting. We don't look around and say what would be so cool to do today.

No, we look to the Word of God and we say what has God prescribed and so this this whole matter of the church gathering in a generational fashion is the biblical pattern. Some of the most important pastors well-known you know their names of the past 400 years practice family integrated worship and week by week They found joy in preaching to everybody from babies, from nursing babes all the way up to the oldest. And you find this with John Bunyan, Richard Baxter, Matthew Henry, Jonathan Edwards. They preach to babies just like we are here. Here's John Bunyan, you know, he was the tinker turned preacher, writer of Pilgrim's Progress.

He actually urged his congregation to bring the whole household under public preaching. He said this, I quote, you should labor to draw them out to God's public worship. And his reason was evangelistic. If perhaps God may convert their souls, you know, I think I read a statement by Charles Spurgeon that that children should be should hear the same gospel as the adults and that was his that was his perspective. We've seen this happen here.

We've seen very very small children respond to the preaching of the Word of God and and it's not it's not kiddie sermons it's it's it's speaking normal language to children because that's actually what they need. The child's inability to understand everything was not even considered in Bunyan's church. Here's Matthew Henry. He said, Little children should learn early in life to worship God Their parents should instruct them in his worship and bring them to it Put them on engaging in it as well as they can in other words help help your children engage in these ordinary means of grace. He said, and God will graciously accept them and teach them to do better.

You find Richard Baxter, as you know these are my favorite family and great church pastors, Richard Baxter, you know, living in the 1600s, he was very conscious that he was preaching to children who, as he said, who were just barely able to learn the alphabet. And he was using Bible words, you know, far beyond their capacity. But at the same time, he was aware that children were there. And he said, all our teaching must be as plain and simple as possible. And he's dealing with talking to children.

If you speak them your words as plainly as you can express them as the easiest rules of grammar most plainly taught they'll be understood by a child even before he learns the alphabet is what he said and of course you know in the preaching here we don't intentionally dumb down our language, but I think we use just common language. We don't talk baby talk, and we also don't talk like super scholars either, over everybody's head, because frankly, we're not. And think about Jonathan Edwards, his biography, his biographer Ian Murray said this, he said, no one in those days doubted whether children should be attenders throughout public worship. And yes, you remember Jonathan Edwards probably most famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Yes, children were listening to sinners in the hands of an angry God.

And in his sermon, he speaks directly to the children in that sermon. I'll read you what he said. And you children that are unconverted, he's talking to the unconverted children. Are there any unconverted children here today? Any of you unconverted?

We speak to you all the time in our preaching. Jonathan Edwards did the same thing. He said, are any of you unconverted? Listen to what he says. If you're not converted, listen to this children.

Do you not know that you are going down to hell to bear the dreadful wrath of that God who is now angry with you every day and every night? And then he goes on and he says, will you be content to be children of the devil? Will you? He says, when so many other children in the land are converted and are becoming holy and happy children of the King of Kings. Here he is, he's addressing children directly and he's saying don't you want to be holy?

Please do not go to hell. That's what his message was and directly to children. And then he said this, and he said, and let everyone that is without Christ and hanging over the pit of hell, whether there be old men or women or middle-aged or young people or little children now hearken to the loud calls of God's Word and Providence. This was the kind of preaching that you had two children not using baby language but by using normal normal language in his farewell sermon the last sermon he preached in his church. He said this, I have not neglected you to the children.

I hope that no children in this church can say that their pastors neglected them in the preaching. I have not neglected you. I have endeavored to do the part of a faithful shepherd in feeding the lambs as well as the sheep. Christ did once commit your care, the care of your souls to me as your minister and you know dear children how I have instructed you and warned you from time to time." So this is just the very common pattern and what did Edwards do in his preaching? He did the same thing all the time.

He would explain, he would read the biblical text, he would explain the biblical text, he would establish the doctrine, and then he would reason through it with logic and then he would apply it to different situations and he would apply it to different ages. That's how Jonathan Edwards preached and he addressed every one. Imagine what it would have been like to hear Matthew Henry and Richard Baxter and John Bunyan and Jonathan Edwards as children. What a blessing that would have been. So it's not strange for churches before the 1800s, during the 1800s and before that.

And I think Jesus is so clear, let the children come to me, Do not forbid the children to come to me. Matthew 19 14. You know, you also see this in some of the hymns, particularly Isaac Watts. You know, you remember Isaac Watts was writing his hymns. We sing many of them during the Great Awakening.

And he wrote hundreds of hymns that really fueled the great awakening. Singing was one of the great marks of that revival and it always is by the way singing is always revived when there's a spiritual revival. It always has happened and it was happening during the Great Awakening as well. You remember that song Jesus Shall Reign? I love that I love this whole song but there's one part of it that I love more than all the rest.

People and realms of every tongue dwell on his love in sweetest song and infant voices shall proclaim their early blessings in his name." Infant voices, don't you love to hear the little voices? I'll get to that in a minute teaching your kid to sing. He wrote a he wrote a hymn called Hosanna to the Prince of Grace and here's one stanza. Hosanna to the Prince of Grace, Zion behold thy king, proclaim the son of David's rest, race, and teach the babes to sing. Teach the babes to sing.

Another hymn he wrote, Let Children Hear the Mighty Deeds, and it's a hymn where you can just envision the children worshiping in the community. It's really a version of Psalm 78 that we recited earlier. Here are the words. Let children hear the mighty deeds which God performed of old, which our younger years we saw and which our fathers told, that generations unborn may teach them to their heirs. So we think in modern times that you have to dumb everything down for kids even in worship.

But what if God designed everything so that kids could handle it how about that is that an unusual light You don't have to dumb everything down for kids. You know, the educational philosopher, hero of many homeschoolers, Charlotte Mason, she said that children are born full persons who can handle authentic and substantial truths rather than dumbed down and over-filtered ideas. That's what she thought. I think she's right actually. I don't think you have to dumb everything down for children.

I think it's helpful to speak language that anybody can understand. But I think what we've done in our society, we've reduced what we think children can handle. And it's parents that think this way. So there you have it. So there you have it.

You know, the people that speak and write against the family integrated churches, they use all these arguments. But what you'll notice is they never use their Bibles. They always preface everything with these beautiful words, I think. But they don't preface them with the scripture reference. And their arguments are, well, the children can't understand the preaching.

That's one argument. Kids are bored in church. Kids distract adults. Those pretty much are their arguments. It's actually impossible to find a biblical argument for segregating the church by age.

People often wonder, what can my infinite arms get out of a sermon or out of the gatherings of God's people? Well I'll tell you a story. When we started this family integrated church 25 years ago, a little over 25 years ago, There was a family in that church that had a bunch of kids and a newborn. And Deborah, my wife, held that baby for the first two years of her life in that church during the worship services. And so I bumped into her when she was about 13 years ago, a few years ago, and I saw her and I said, Hey, what's the first thing that comes to mind when you think about your Aunt Deborah?

She calls her Aunt Deborah. When your Aunt Deborah used to hold you in church, immediately without stopping, she said, oh, whenever Aunt Deborah heard something in a song that she loved, she would go, mmm, amen. And if she heard a prayer that really she needed, she would go, mmm, amen. And if she heard something from the preacher, which was usually me, she would say, mmm, amen. And then on the way home, she would tell me what I got wrong.

Scott, you said this, I did not say that. And then this girl said to me, and I find myself doing the same thing, and now she's in her 20s, And my guess is she's doing the same thing. Nobody knows what a child can get out of a gathering like this where all the people are gathered and they're lifting their hearts together and they're praying and they're reading and they're standing and they're sitting. Who knows? You don't know what they're getting, but they're getting something out of it.

Even the littlest child, everybody gets something out of everything, but nobody gets everything out of everything. And God arranged the growth of children so that they, by degrees, one layer at a time, they get something. So all of this to say, This isn't just simply a biblical pattern. The biblical pattern was replicated in the churches since then until modern times. Now, I want to make some qualifications here.

Also, when people critique the family-integrated church movement, they will invariably say this, and I've heard it so many times. They say, these people say that you can never separate the family in anything that happens in the church. You can never separate the family. The family always has to be together for everything. That's one thing that they say.

And we've actually never said such a thing. And what we have said is that we don't believe there's any warrant for comprehensive and systematic age segregation. Comprehensive and systematic. Years and years ago, this is the language that we use to describe what we think and but there must be a warrant in Scripture. What we are against is creating youth culture in the church.

We're also against creating senior citizen, crotchety senior citizen culture. You know, they're all focused on their aches and pains all the time, of which I am chief. But Here's how we described it. You can find this in a declaration for the complimentary roles of church and family life. You can also find it in Vody Bakum's book that he wrote, I think in 2006 or 2007.

We use this language, comprehensive and systematic age segregation. Here's what we wrote, we deny that there's any clear positive scriptural pattern or institution for creating distinct age segregated cultures in the church through age segregated worship and systematic or comprehensive age segregated discipleship. So you know the church had become comprehensively age segregated and but as you know you've seen our practice We separate the family on different kinds of occasions. We don't think that embracing this idea means that you can never separate the family. We have men's Bible studies and women's mentoring gatherings that separate whole families.

We have father-son retreats, father-daughter retreats, you know we had a mother-son banquet. All these things separate the families. You know, during women's mentoring, you know, it's my practice to take those children and we sing and I teach and I teach them what I'm preaching on. And they're separated from their families. It's usually a group of 30 or 40 kids and they age range from infants that Maybe a teenage daughter is carrying around all the way up to teenage kids.

And I try to teach them what I'm going to preach on and give them a tip. I tip them off about the sermon before it happens. And we sing a bunch of songs. Recently Trent and I, we wanted to find a way to spend a little bit more time with the kids in the age 14 to 22-ish age range. And We decided we wanted to meet with them for five weeks to go through the book of James We just wanted to sit with them We just wanted to listen to them.

We wanted them to ask us questions and stuff like that But we don't we don't really plan to do this on a regular basis. We just, as shepherds, we're their shepherds. We just wanted to have some closer contact with them. We didn't think it defied our principle of being in a family, in a great church. But you won't find us institutionalizing youth ministry.

You won't find us institutionalizing this age segregation format that you find. Okay. So if you have an outline in front of you, you'll see where I were we've I've talked about that God is the designer of worship. I've given you some illustrations from from from preaching and from songwriters about this. And I've just worked through at least one of the qualifications about a family integrated church and why every once in a while you might find the elders wanna meet with kids.

But I wanna talk too about skills to develop and refine. And I once heard a pastor say that we shouldn't be too afraid of worship services for our kids because most of the worship service there's actually a lot of activity going on that you you sing you stand you sit you eat the bread you you you drink the cup now the sermon sermon time really is probably the thing that requires the most training for children. Not the only time, because I think parents should teach their children the glory of the reading of scripture and the prayers and the fellowship and just how wonderful it is. Parents have a duty to do that but they also have a duty to do that to teach their kids how to engage the sermon even when they're really young. And what's the goal?

Here's the goal. The goal is to show your children the delights of the Lord. You know there's this song that we sing, Living Waters, bring your children to the shoreline. I love that line. Bring your children to the shoreline.

Parents need to teach their children, they need to bring their children to the shoreline and show them this beautiful expanse of what God has designed. So I want to give you some principles, some skills to develop. Are you ready? Number one, first, bring your children in your own confidence and joy in the gathered worship. It really begins with you.

You've got to love the worship in order to teach the love of the worship of God. And so I think you should just ask yourself, do I really have confidence that this is the best thing for me and my family? If you do, then that should generate your joy in it. Communicate to your children your confidence in God's design, that it's a beautiful design for worship. Help them to see that it's really a good thing.

Help your kids see that every element of worship of God is the best thing for their lives. And you can do that when they're really young. When we were raising our kids, what I would very often say in the car on the way was Psalm 122, I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord. If your kids are bored in church, maybe you didn't prepare them for it. Maybe it's your fault that they're bored in church because you didn't take adequate energy and action and diligence to teach them.

Parents have a responsibility to show their kids this wonderful world that God made. Look at this wonderful world that God made. You as parents, this is so neat about being a parent, you're the ones that are appointed to show your kids all this new stuff that they've never seen before. It's a wonderful world and it's your job to show them how wonderful the God who made this world is. So bring your children in your own confidence and joy in the worship of God.

Second, prepare. Prepare for Sundays. Embrace God's design of the rhythmic pattern of life. You work six days and you rest one. This is a wonderful pattern.

Isaiah said that the Lord's Day is the day of delight and make make the Lord's Day the best day of the week. Teach your Teach your family that this is the best day of the week. Why? God, look at all this work we've been doing. We have a day of rest.

And what do we get to do? We get to be brought into praising God. And Use the day before to prepare your kids. You know, the Jews had the day of preparation, or the day before the Sabbath day. And build anticipation with your kids.

Read the passage of scripture that is going to be preached if you know it. Around here, you know, most of the time, everybody knows what's going to be preached. You get an email saying what it's going to be, or at least the subject. It's... We have a men's Bible study on Tuesday morning because we want to teach men what that section is about that we're going to preach on.

And we want them to go home and teach their wives and their kids, or if they have roommates to teach their roommates, their household. Everybody lives in a household. And then make the Lord's day non-negotiable. Make it the day of delight. Now what really helps in preparing for what happens on the Lord's Day is to conduct daily family worship.

It's a very steadying thing to a family to every day rhythmically gather the family around and read the word of God. You know what else is really helpful to kids to be involved in a setting like this. Just reading to them. Just read to your kids. Reading to children has a very settling effect on them.

And it teaches them to be still, it teaches them to be quiet, not interrupt, it teaches them to control their emotions because when you're reading something everybody must be quiet and they should listen to the reader. You have to teach your kids to listen to the reader. No, you have to teach it. It doesn't come naturally, okay? It has to be taught.

And it's the same thing with church. So prepare for Sundays. I realize that what we're asking families to do is more than they've ever been asked by their pastors. We just urge our parents to prepare for the Lord's day. You know, it's a lot more work to do what we're doing.

It really, it's a lot harder, okay? It's way harder. Is it easier to just drop your kids off in a Sunday school class and grab your cup of coffee and go be with your friends? I think it's a little easier. But guess what?

God gave you children. Bring them to the shoreline. Okay, here's another. Third, teach them to sing. Teach them to sing.

Now, we just conducted a kid's singing camp because we really want to create a wonderful culture of singing in the church. Singing is one of these wonderful things. But you should do that when they're really, really little. Here's a suggestion. When they're really little, hold them and sing as if to them.

And they'll go in their early years, they won't be able to sing the words, but here's a secret, They can hum it. They can hum the tune. So have them hum the tune until they can say the words. And well, you know how kids often mangle words to songs? They will.

They'll sing songs, and they thought they heard a word and it was the most ridiculous word. Well, that's just part of life, right? But teach them to sing. Teach them when they're really really little to hum. Most kids can do that.

You know we have there's a baby in this congregation when her family starts to sing she sings. You can't understand the words at all, but she's making the noises, praise God, I love that. So teach them to sing. Singing is such a big part of what we do. Fourth, here's another one, teach them to listen.

Teach them to listen. There are lots of Puritan sermons on how to listen to a sermon. There are a few modern ones, not very many, but people need to be taught how to listen to a sermon. And this is your job as parents, because they're going to hear a lot of sermons. Hundreds of sermons.

Many of you, your kids have heard hundreds of sermons right here if you've been here ten years you got 500 sermons that your kids have heard it's a lot of sermons You don't want to waste all those sermons. It's a lot of time isn't it? Make the most of it. Well teach them how to listen. Teach them how to listen.

Next, sometimes little children make noise and they cry and you need to learn when to take them out of the service. You need to learn when to take them out of the service. Our people are pretty good at this. They do a good job. You should take your children, a child out of the service, not when they make a little noise.

We're fine with surface noise. And frankly, it doesn't bother us at all. What does bother everybody is a child that just won't stop. And they start screaming, and then it really is hard to hear. So there's a time, and I don't know how long it is, you have to judge yourself, you know, when is that time to take your child out of the service?

It's not just when they're cooing for a minute. But if they don't settle down, then you should take them out of the service. But remember the goal, when you take them out, your goal is to bring them back as soon as possible, as soon as they settle down. Because kids know how to game the system and they can manipulate you to keep them out so they can play okay kids aren't stupid and and they'll work you so you get them settled down and you bring them back in here as quick as you can. Okay?

That's our hope of what you'll do. And we know that very little babies, They don't understand everything about what they're doing when they're crying. That's why we have a nursing mothers room. For mothers who need to nurse their children, children that get hungry and restless, and it's very helpful to have a place to take them to nurse. Or a place to get the kids settled down.

Maybe they need to crawl, maybe they're one years old, two years old, they need to crawl a little bit. So take them back there and crawl a little bit but get you know get them back in the service. Don't just stay there come back in as soon as you've got them settled down. And you know it can help little ones to have a place for a few moments to crawl around, for sure. I heard somebody say one thing that's really helpful is stick a pacifier in their mouth.

Give them something to chew on, something something that you know to put in their mouth. They want to put everything in their mouth anyway. But when your child simmers down, here's another encouragement. We have a hallway, we have very crowded conditions here, It's difficult, but if you if you go on the hallway, we'd encourage you to get back in the service as quick as you can and don't stay out there the whole time. That's that's our encouragement as elders.

Now maybe maybe you're saying to yourself as a wife, I don't think I've heard a full sermon in a year. Maybe you've said that to your husband or to yourself or to your pastor okay because I've heard that for sure well if you feel like you miss too much of the sermon there's a here's a but here's the verse for you in first Corinthians 14 34 and 35 it says if a wife has a question let her ask her husband at home. So ask your husband, maybe he heard the whole sermon. Maybe he should hear more of the sermon than he's hearing. Ask your husband at home and he'll give you the answer, okay?

You wives, you know, who don't hear all the sermons, you know, ask your husband at home and see what you might learn from him. Well, let the church become a true family again. In the last 150 years a massive shift occurred and it completely changed the sociology of the church and it resulted really in shifting the discipleship methodology from a biblical model to a secular model patterned after the public school system. That's what happened in your lifetime. Maybe it wasn't your lifetime, maybe it was before your lifetime when it started.

This was all unprecedented in the church and it was so different that it transformed the nature of church discipleship and the discipleship agenda of the family and it even and it even altered the entire way families related to the church of God. It was so profound in its impact And it did and it did transform the structure of the family. I believe that the most important place you ever take your children is to a local church and that's why I want to just recast a vision for how the ministry of the local church is poised to saturate your family with the gospel of Jesus Christ, the singing of these thrilling hymns of the fellowship of the saints, of the feasting and all the great things that happen in a local church This is what God has designed for the family that the family would be soaking in all these ordinary means Of grace and I pray that the kids growing up in this church They They see Jesus Christ in all of what we do and that they might be converted and that they might be brought up in the training and the admonition of the Lord.

And when they have kids, they'll do the same thing. That's what my prayer is because local churches have dozens of opportunities. Give your children 10, 000 reasons to believe that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world and His word is the only authority. Give that to them. You can give that to them by focusing your discipleship on these ordinary, simple, deliberate, thoughtful, faithful, inspiring means of grace that God has given the church.

So bring your children to the shoreline. Let's pray. Lord we thank you that your ways are pleasant ways all your paths are peace. We thank you that you are a tree of life to all those who embrace you. Oh Father, thank you for sending Jesus Christ.

Thank you for sending the Spirit that we might understand what is true and beautiful in this world. I pray God that you would give these parents such energy, such love, such joy in all of their endeavors in the worship of God. Amen.