A sermon by Denny Kenaston, modified for Christ the Redeemer Church, Manhattan, KS by Nate Wilson 20 June 2010, 1 July 2018
Omitting greyed-out text should bring delivery down to about 45 minutes.
· 4 E’s. Exalting Christ, Equipping the Saints, Evangelizing the world, Encouraging Godly Households.
· Today I want to land on the 4th E – Encouraging Godly Households and fan to a flame in your hearts a vision for leaving a godly heritage.
· This is a well-worn sermon – I first heard it on an audio cassette my brother and sister-in-law gave me over twenty years ago by a preacher named Denny Kenaston. Over the years I have listened to that recording many times, and it still moves me to tears. It’s powerful stuff.
· Now, Denny is a conservative Menonite, which means he’s on the opposite end of the Christian spectrum on a lot of theological issues from me – he’s anti-Calvin, Anti-infant baptism, Anti-Army, and Anti-higher education. He’s a plain-dresser; He’s against reading Christian fiction. A lot of things I don’t agree with him on.
· But Denny’s seminars on the family, I must say, have been the most significant influence on my parenting philosophy next to the influence of my own parents.
· And I’m not the only one. Since he delivered that seminar around 1980, an estimated 100,000 people have also been impacted by it. You can easily find mp3’s of it floating around the Internet if you want to hear the original version.
· So what I want to share with you this morning is not very original, but it is so near and dear to my heart that I want to share it with you. I have modified it to fit our congregation and shortened it to fit in our worship service, but the main points are from Denny Kenaston’s original sermon.
Give ear, O my people, to my law: Incline your ears to the words of my mouth.
I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings of old, which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, Telling to the generation to come the praises of Jehovah, and His strength, and His wondrous works that He hath done. For He established a testimony in Jacob, And appointed a law in Israel, Which He commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children, that the generation to come might know them, even the children that should be born; who should arise and tell them to their children, that they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments, and might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that did not set their heart right, and whose spirit was not steadfast with God.
I believe in salvation by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and every child in this room is going to have to come to the place where they acknowledge their own sinfulness and their own need of a savior. However, it's very foolish for us as parents to neglect the propagating of the faith to our children, as we've read here in these verses. This is not talking about passing on religion. It’s talking about passing on a living, breathing, vibrant Christian faith into the next generation, so that generation can then pass along the same living, breathing, vibrant Christian faith into the next generation, and on and on. According to Psalm 78, it is God's plan to propagate the faith from one generation to the next.
Also note this: The generation to come was most specifically, the father's responsibility. Wives certainly share the responsibility, but fathers, God has laid the specific responsibility of propagating this faith to the next generation primarily upon you. The father is the head of the home. And the responsibility lies heaviest upon him, and God looks to him when there is a failure.
Now let’s look more specifically at these verses. At verse
five we see a beautiful illustration given here in Psalm 78: "For He
established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed the law in Israel, which He
commanded our fathers," That's one generation...
“that they
should make them known to their children," That's the second
generation...
“that the
generation to come might know them, even the children that should be
born,"
That's the third generation...
“who should
arise and declare them to their children." Four generations!
What a beautiful picture! And wherever you find somebody in the Old Testament who did what these verses say, that they got results - just like God said.
· For instance: Boaz was a man of God.
o He married Ruth. And they had a son named Obed. And Boaz raised Obed to be a man of God. And when Obed grew up, he had a son named Jesse.
o And when Jesse grew up, he had several sons, but one of his sons was named David.
o Jesse raised David to be a man of God. And David became the Psalmist of Israel. David was a man of God. And he had a son named Solomon
o And Solomon became the king over Israel; he became the writer of the Book of Proverbs. Now, later on in his life, he went astray.
o But here, we see five generations who followed this very thing that we're looking at, this very precept in the Word of God. And if you turn to the first chapter of Matthew, you’ll find - not just 5 but about 26 faithful generations from David down to faithful Joseph, the earthly father of Christ.
· Here is another one: Abraham was a man of God.
o And he had Isaac, as a son. Isaac worshipped God, and he had Jacob as a son, who later, after he wrestled with God, was called Israel.
o And Israel had many sons, but one of his sons was Joseph. And Joseph was a man of God.
o And Joseph had a son named Ephraim, who was also a man of God.
o There's five generations again in the Word of God.
· One more that we'll take a look at: Amram was a man of God.
o And Amram had two sons, Moses and Aaron.
o Aaron had a son named Eleazar, who became the high priest after him, and Eleazar was a man of God.
o And he had a son named Phinehas, and he raised that young man to be a man of God, and Phinehas was honored for his zeal for God.
These are all examples of how God's Word works, just like He said it would. And we need to get a hold of that in our own lives. How would you like this week, to get a vision, to be able to claim generations of children for the Lord! I believe that it is within your grasp – God is no respecter of persons – it is possible for you. God wants us to live in light of those generations to come! That’s what He commanded in Psalm 78!
It is said that “The test of a man's Christianity is his children.” But I’d like to carry it one step further: looking into the Book of Proverbs, we find that a test of a man's Christianity is his children's children. If a man's Christianity is thoroughly in his heart, he will propagate it so thoroughly into the hearts of his children that they will be stirred up then to go out and put it into their children. What kind of a vision do we have? God wants us to look down the generations further than just the children that are in our home.
Perhaps you’re thinking: “I’m just a kid. I don’t have any children. What’s this have to do with me?” Listen to me: It has everything to do with you. You are a vital link in a chain of generations. One day there are going to be children and grand-children and great-grandchildren standing around your grave. What will they say about you? Will there even be any children or grand-children? How you respond to this message will make all the difference in the world. God wants to kindle a flame in your heart that burns with a passion to have great-grandchildren who love Jesus and who have you to thank for it!
In my own family, I have a godly heritage. Maybe not very far back, but I know my Dad’s parents were believers. They raised their seven children to fear God, and they brought them every Sunday to hear Biblical preaching down at McIlwain Presbyterian church in Pensacola, FL. (There’s a picture of my Mema and Grandpa serving dinner to my mom and a younger brother and sister of my Dad’s around the dining room table that Grandpa made.)
My Dad was called to the ministry and he was truly a man of God. He married a woman who had no godly heritage. Mom was a first-generation Christian. She was starting from scratch. But she was determined to raise children for God.
Dad’s job as a the assistant pastor of a mega-church didn’t leave him a lot of time with me and my brother and sister, but he made sure to disciple us, talking with us while he cooked breakfast every morning and drove us to school, and having discipleship meetings with us every week or two in the treehouse or at a restaurant. I still have some of the notes that I took during these times when I was 4-5-6 years old! I also saw how my Dad made disciples of friends whose dad abandoned them and how Dad made disciples of thousands of children at our summer church camps and inner-city outreaches. Me and all of my siblings have been through some bumps in the road, but all of us are walking with the Lord. (There’s a recent picture of us.)
And when I got married, I knew that I wanted to raise my children for God like my Dad did. How grateful I am for this precious godly heritage!
But even if you don’t have a godly heritage, you can change the entire direction of your generation, simply by submitting yourself to God and obeying His Word. You can do that. I'd like to encourage every one of you to get the same kind of a vision, so that your children, and your children's children, can look back and say, "Yes, I remember Grandpa and Grandma. They were godly people. When they prayed, God came down. When they spoke, my heart burned."
1.
William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, had a wife
named Catherine Booth.
They had eight children together. William Booth
loved God. There was no question in the hearts of his children about his
dedication to the Lord. And he lived out a godly life in his home, and so did his
wife. And those eight children grew up, and they wanted to follow their father
and their mother, so they scattered around the world as missionaries -
preaching in some of the big cities around the world.
Well those eight children had a total of forty-five
grandchildren. And those forty-five grandchildren watched those eight children
and their spouses and saw that they loved God, and that they were excited about
the Lord, and that they had a real Christian life in them, and those forty-five
grandchildren, every single one of them, rose up and said, "I'm going to
follow the faith of my father and mother!" And those forty-five
grandchildren all went out, scattered across the world on the mission field, to
do the work of God.
On a mission
trip to Africa, Denny Kenaston met a woman who had gone to Bible School with
some of William Booth's great-grandchildren, and they're out on the mission
field this day.
That's what God wants us to do! Pass on a
vibrant, living Christianity to our children that will cause them to rise up
and go out and do the work of God, which will cause their children to see that
their parents are serious about God and they'll rise up and do the same thing,
and it just keeps going on and on. The only thing that breaks the chain
is cold-heartedness, and lukewarmness, and sin in the lives of God's people.
2.
James Taylor turned his heart over to the Lord after hearing John
Wesley preach in the 1700’s. He was late for his own wedding because he was on
his knees praying that God would bless his home. It took him about two weeks to
win his wife to the Lord, and he became a Lay-Methodist preacher.
He had several sons, and they all rose up with
the zeal of their father and became Lay-Methodist preachers too.
And then those sons, had several sons, who rose
up and became Lay-Methodist preachers, and one of those sons was the father of
Hudson Taylor. That father used to pray, every day, "Oh God, would you
send missionaries to China. Oh God would you send missionaries to China."
And Hudson Taylor, when he was six years old, got
alone with God and said, "God, I'll go to China."
And it doesn't stop there. The generations of
preachers keeps right on going up to this generation, right now there's nine
generations of preachers in the Taylor heritage! I recently got a poster
advertising a Chinese Mission Convention, and there listed among the plenary
speakers is Jamie Taylor – Hudson Taylor’s Great-grandson!
3. God used Jonathan
Edwards in a great revival 150 years ago. Jonathan Edwards had a wife. They
were dedicated to the Lord. God gave them 10 children. They had a godly home.
They raised those children for God. George Whitefield came to their home and
saw that godly home, and those 10 children and went back to England and said,
"I'm going to find me a wife, that's the most beautiful picture I've seen
in a long time of a godly home."
The State of New York did a study on five
generations of the Edwards family, and here’s what they found: Out of 729
descendants,
300 of them became preachers,
65 of them became college professors (Back in
his day, the schools were made for one
main reason,
and that was to raise up preachers.)
13 of his descendants were university
presidents.
60 of his descendants were authors.
3 were congressman, and one was a
Vice-president.
All from one man who loved God, and set himself with his wife, to raise his
children for God. Can you catch the vision of how the generations flow out from
that?!
· Here’s a poppa and a momma with six children.
· Now if each one of those six children had an average of six children, that would be 36.
· Let’s go down one more generation - 216 descendants.
· And in the next generation there would be 1,296 descendants,
· and in the next generation, 7,776 descendants - more than 10,000 from one poppa and one momma in five generations.
And God didn’t promise to stop after five generations. In Deuteronomy 7:9, He said, "Therefore know that the LORD your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments.” Now maybe that doesn't do anything for you. But to me that is very stirring.
And I'll tell you somebody else that it's stirring to, and that's Satan. He knows the statistics! He knows that if he gets you right up here at the top of the chart, he's got all this down here at the same time (meaning the generations to follow). He is no dummy! He knows if he can shoot mom and dad off the rock of Christ Jesus, he'll get all of these down through here.
But our God also knows these statistics; He designed the statistics! And in Psalm 78, He challenges us to use them. God knows that if He gets hold of a father’s heart and a mother’s heart and sets them in the right direction, they will raise up their children for God in such a way, that they will raise up their children for God, and then their children, all the way down - 10,000 descendants and more!
Now I realize that's hypothetical. Cut it in half if you want. Make it 5,000. It's still a tremendous work of God! And this is part of God’s revealed plan.
God is calling us to our responsibilities, as parents, to see the potential. But, you have to be truly a Christian man. You have to be truly a Christian woman at home.
You can’t raise children for God if you have not bowed your own heart before the God who made the universe and say, “I have sinned against You and I deserve to perish, but I ask You to forgive me on the basis of Jesus Christ who died on the cross to pay the price for my sin. I will be a follower of Jesus for the rest of my life.” If you haven’t done that, then give it up; you cannot do it in your own strength. But children who grow up in an atmosphere of revival, with parents who love the Lord extravagantly and obey His word joyfully will be a mighty influence upon this earth. God can do something tremendous with your life.
(Now, you might say, “If raising godly children is such an important part of God’s plan, why isn’t it emphasized in the New Testament?” My response it that the New Testament assumes all that’s in the Old Testament about raising children. If you want to learn about Jesus’ incarnation or if you want to learn about planting churches among Gentiles, that’s what the New Testament is there for. But if you want to learn about childrearing, you have to flip back to the history and wisdom books of the Old Testament that were written for that purpose, although there’s a few passages in the Gospels and the Epistles.)
We see the requirements of an Elder in the New Testament – 1 Timothy 3:4 “He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church?” (ESV)
One of the requirements of an Elder is to make sure he has a family that's in order. If you find a home that's in order, you've found somebody, who lives right, behind the closed door. You'll find a man who's in order in his private life.
You see, our family gives us away. We cannot hide ourselves. We may think for a few years that nobody really knows what we're like. But it's not true. Our children give us away every time.
· Father and mother are sober - children are sober.
· Father and mother are foolish - children are foolish.
· Father and mother are critical - children are critical.
We cannot hide ourselves. Only thing is, it takes a few years before the children begin manifesting the examples that they lived while they were in your home.
Maybe your parents did not do a very good job. That may be so, but, brothers and sisters, now it's our turn. Now it's our turn! Maybe they didn't do right; maybe they could have done better, but now it's our turn! Let's rise up! Let’s draw upon the power of God’s Spirit. Let's rise up and build for God!
Rearing my children for God is the most challenging, maturing, self-denying, time-consuming thing I do. Raising your children for God must become a priority. It can't be a sideline. You are not going to get the results that we've been speaking about, if raising your children is a sideline! It's got to be a big priority in your life!
Turn to Ephesians 6:4 “And, you fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath: but nurture them in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” It's a very simple statement: "Raise them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." But yet, it has great depth to it.
And as we obey this little verse, God will bless our obedience with godly children because godly children is what He wants! (Gen. 18:18, Mal 4:6) Many of God's people do not believe that. They live in unbelief. They live in fear. They live in doubt as to how their children will turn out. But I believe that if we'll follow the principles that He gives in His Word, we can get lasting results.
In this sermon, I can’t get into the nuts and bolts of discipline and instruction – I hope to do that in a future sermon, but for now, I want you to catch the vision of a godly heritage.
Do not listen to the lies of Satan, who comes along and says, "It's not going to work out." Have faith in the principles of God's Word, that if we do what the Bible says, then God will do what He said He will do!
Another thing: if you are going to be serious about raising your children for God, you can’t afford to ignore criticism and advice. When you try to talk to somebody about their children, they can get very touchy. And I believe one of the reasons for that is because our children are a part of us. Criticism of our children is really criticism of the parents. But I'd like to encourage you this week, that you open up your hearts. If we really have our sights set on a godly home, we will welcome the admonitions that come our way, and I want to encourage you, just open your hearts.
I have gotten lots of criticism over the years about my children. (I think it was just last year that got a scathing letter critiquing two of my sons.) I sometimes wonder about the motives behind some of the criticism that comes our way, but none-the-less, when somebody comes to me, I will try to welcome it. I go home and think and pray about it. I talk it over with my wife. I talk it over with my kids. Why? I don't want to make a mistake! I don't want to find out 10 years from now that I goofed up and created years worth of domino effects of problems! I want to know now! So I would say to each one of you: welcome criticism with an open heart, teachable spirit, willing to learn, willing to examine your home. I believe God will bless you if you can do that.
We don't want to lose our children to the world. We don't want our children to go out into the world and leave Christianity behind, and yet it happens all the time, doesn't it?
· Dr. Voddie Baucham did his graduate research on attrition rates of church kids – as I recall, it was focused on Southern Baptists. He surveyed thousands of college students and found that about ¾ of kids that grew up in these Evangelical Christian homes left Christianity for good while in College. Not a good track record!
· Then Ken Hamm released his research saying that most of those kids had already left the faith in elementary school - before they had left home. The title of his book? Already Gone. Something is bad wrong in America today for most of the children in the church to abandon the faith like this.
We all need inspiration to know it can be done. For me, it came in the year 1996 when I had three little boys and a lot of questions about life. In God’s providence, a man named John Appel lost his job in Washington state and moved to Denver, and we ended up living for a few months in the Appel’s house.
I was enthralled at what I saw:
· Three teenage boys who loved their parents.
· They would hold their mom’s hand and surround her like Secret Servicemen whenever she went out.
· They were intelligent and could talk with me like peers about classical music or theology, even though they were only high school and college age.
· And they loved God – one of those boys preached one of the best sermons I’ve ever heard one Sunday when our pastor was out of town.
The parents were so gracious and generous to us that our socks were blessed clean off! Paula asked Betty one day, “What did you do to get your sons to be such wonderful young men?” and Betty said, “Oh, it’s just the grace of God.” True, only God can mold the hearts of rebellious little boys into godly men, but those parents hadn’t just sat back waiting for God to send a lightning bolt out of the sky. We watched as John led family devotions every day in his living room, discussing Proverbs with his children, and he and Betty worked diligently on their sons character every day too.
I had three little boys that could hardly talk or sit still or listen or anything, but I got inspired at what God can do. I wanted a family like the Appels, so I made it my goal. And I believe God has done it. My fourth little boy is a man now - about the same age as the eldest Appel boy was when we lived with them. And although, there are differences between our families, I am so thrilled at what God has done with my children so far. I know I have a long way to go, though, because we still have babies to raise to adulthood, but I can taste fruit now!
But even before I met the Appel family, I had a tape recording of this Denny Kenaston sermon, and it gave us a vision. Paula and I were so excited about seeing this vision come to fruition in our lives that we sat our little boys down in in those little yellow chairs you can still see in our kitchen, and turned on a tape recorder and told them to listen to this sermon so they could learn to sit still in church and so they could catch a vision for a godly heritage.
We had family devotions and read our Bible, and we sang songs together every evening. We’ve sung “Jesus Loves me” and “Wide, Wide as the Ocean” too many times to count, but our little kids still always want to sing them again!
We have to go after our kids’ hearts. We have to love them and do things with them and teach them and discipline them and pray for them enthusiastically.
We also have to maintain hearts of honesty and repentance and faith and love for God before our children. It’s a constant battle, but the victories are thrilling!
God wants you to leave a heritage for your children and their children! His Spirit is still moving on the hearts of fathers and turning their hearts to their children, just as He promised to do at the end of the book of Malachi! He's saying, "My people! I want you to raise your children, that they'll be a godly example of my glory. It's not right, that there just be a few! It's God's will, that the church be filled with Godly families, filled with Godly fathers and mothers, with a zeal, with a vision, with a vibrant Christianity, that they can pass it on to their children. And their children would take those hot coals and pass them on to their children, and to their children’s children.