If you'll turn in your Bibles to Deuteronomy chapter 6. Let's remember that we are reading the Word of God, the very words of God. Breathe that to us. And now these are the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments which the Lord your God commanded to teach you, that you might do them in the land whither you go to possess it, that thou mightest fear the Lord thy God to keep all his statutes, his commandments, which I command thee. Thou and thy son and thy son's son all the days of thy life, that thy days may be prolonged.

Here therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it that it may be well with thee, and that you may increase mightily, as the Lord God of your fathers has promised you in the land that flows with milk and honey. Here, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might. And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart. And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children and thou shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.

And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thy hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house and on thy gates, and it shall be, when the Lord thy God shall have brought thee into the land which he sware to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give thee great and goodly cities which thou buildest not, and houses full of all good things which thou filest not, and wells digged which you digged not, and vineyards and olive trees which you planted not. When thou shalt have eaten and be full beware lest you forget the Lord which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage. Thou shalt fear the Lord your God and serve Him and shall swear by His name. Ye shall not go after other gods of the gods of the people which are round about you.

For the Lord thy God is a jealous God among you, lest the anger of the Lord thy God be kindled against thee and destroy thee from off the face of the earth. Ye shall not tempt the Lord your God as you tempted him in Massah. Ye shall diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God in his testimonies, his statutes which he has commanded thee. And thou shalt do that which is right and good in the sight of the Lord, that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest go in and possess the good land which the Lord sware to your fathers, to cast out all your enemies from before you, as the Lord has spoken. And when your son asked you in time to come, saying, What mean the testimony, statutes, and judgments which the Lord our God has commanded you?

Then you shall say to your son, We were Pharaoh's bondmen in Egypt, and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. And the Lord showed signs and wonders great and sore upon Egypt, upon Pharaoh, and upon all his household before our eyes. And he brought us out from thence that he might bring us in, to give us the land which he sware to our fathers. And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes to fear the Lord our God for our good always that he might preserve us alive as it is at this day. And it shall be our righteousness if we observe to do all these commandments before the Lord our God as he has commanded us.

Let's pray. Our Father and our God we bow before you, we bow before your word. Your word is truth. We ask of God again to teach us, to instruct us by your Word. You are the true and living God.

You have shown mercy to us through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whose mediation we are even invited to come to the throne of grace to find help in time of need and we are ever in need of that grace. And so we pray now that you would take your word and that you would cause it to live in our hearts. Father that you would take it and apply it as it is needed to each and every soul that is before me for encouragement, for exhortation, for reproof, whatever it is that the soul needs. We recognize and acknowledge our need, our utter need of you to take and make use of this word at all. To our hearts it will be nothing to us if your spirit does not take it and speak to the inner man.

And so we pray that it might be done for your glory and for our good. We pray in the name of Christ our Lord. Amen. Deuteronomy 6 was a text which 35 years ago when my wife and I were in college caused us to determine in our hearts that once we were married and we left college that we would homeschool our children. We recognized at that time homeschooling when it was fairly new and a decade or two before we started it was the early days in which you didn't homeschool because it was nice and cozy and because you had your kids at home and you homeschooled because you had a conviction in your soul that you needed to teach God's word and it wasn't going to happen in the public schools.

It wasn't what the public schools were teaching as much as what they left out. That for 12 years you could go to a public school and never hear the name of God. So I don't care what they're teaching there, it's what they're not teaching. It's a ghetto. It's a spiritual wasteland.

You name the name of Christ there, you name the redemption of Christ, you speak the gospel there and you're in a lot of trouble. So in those days the reason we homeschooled was because we wanted our children to know God. And it was at the forefront of our ideas of what we were doing with homeschooling. It wasn't just about academics. Academics, it was and it has become.

But if all you're doing for homeschooling is for academics sake, then you're in it for the wrong reason. Because Deuteronomy 6 deals with the fact of our, the entirety of our life, interpreting all of life through the lens of Holy Scripture. This topic was, that was assigned to me was a saturation of our households with the Word of God. What do we mean when we say we wish to saturate our children with the Word of God. Obviously there will be information downloads that take place but it's much more than that.

What are we trying to saturate them with? We are trying to saturate them with the mind of Christ and the spirit of Christ as well. Both knowledge and obedience. Our goal is to affect the whole man, the mind with enlightening truth, the emotions which are then stirred by that truth to love our God and then our will stirred to obedience and initiative in the things of God. They say of John Bunyan, as you well know, that wherever you pricked him he would bleed bibline.

And my question is, when you prick your children, what do they bleed? When you ask your children for their thoughts or their opinions on a matter what do they give you? Do they give you their opinions? Do they give you your opinions? Do they just stare at you with a blank stare or do they give you God's opinion in the mind of Christ?

Because as a Christian I do not belong to myself. My thoughts are to be God's thoughts. As Christ said, He only spoke what His Father had Him to speak and only did what His Father had Him to do and that is our goal with our children. If they are saturated with the Word of God it will be evidenced by the fact that whenever we prick them they will bleed Bible. Saturation.

You can take a sponge, go out to wash your car like I do every six months whether it needs it or not and take that sponge and you can put it on the top of the water and let it slowly go down or you can be impatient like me because I've got other things to do and I plunge the thing under and then I start washing. But I soon find out that the water's gone because it hasn't really saturated to the core of the sponge. It just got to the very outside of the sponge. And when we're talking about saturating our children with the word of God, we're talking about doing something more than just an exterior saturation. It's not just, okay, we went to church this week and that was enough and then the rest of the week we can do as we please or not do.

It's not, okay, I got my kids saved and baptized and now the job's done. It's none of those things Because all of those kinds of things, or those kind of thinking is just the sponge on the outside with just a measure of religion that's been given to our children and it hasn't reached the core. Because for it to reach the core, it is a daily, consistent, patient, giving of the Word of God and living the Word of God before our children. And it doesn't happen fast and it takes a lot of patience and it takes prayer and it takes labor and it takes years. Why is it important to use the word of God to saturate us?

The word of God, is it sufficient to meet the needs of the 21st century family? The Silver Tongue Puritan preacher Henry Smith said, Scripture is called a lantern to direct us, a medicine to heal us, a guide to conduct us, a bit to restrain us, a sword to defend us, water to wash us, fire to inflame us, salt to season us, milk to nourish us, wine to rejoice us, rain to refresh us, and a treasure to enrich us, and the key to unlock heaven's gates for us. Deuteronomy chapter 6 verses 1 and 2. Now these are the commandments, the statutes, the judgments which the Lord your God commanded to teach you that you might do them in the land whether you go to possess it. That you might fear the Lord your God and keep all his statutes and his commandments which I command you, your son, your son's sons, all the day of your life that your days may be prolonged upon the earth.

What is the context? What is the context in which God gives these commandments, these statutes and judgments? The context is of a deliverance from bondage because if we go to the end of the chapter he explains that to us in Deuteronomy 6 and look at verse 20, and when your son asks you in time to come saying what means the testimonies and statutes and the judgments which the Lord our God has commanded us. What does this mean? Well my son what this means is if you're a good boy and if you obey me as your father and if you obey God's law then things will go well with you and then God will be pleased with you and you'll go to heaven.

No! A thousand times no. It's not what he says. What does all these commandments and these statutes and these judgments mean and what does he say? He begins by saying, Son we were bondmen in Egypt.

We were underneath the power of an evil one. We did his works for him. We heard his word and we had no power to extricate ourselves from this power. And God came with a mighty hand to deliver us out of there. And I think one of the things that we've got to be very very careful with within the homeschool movement and even within the Christian church is to think that just because our children are raised up and they become good moral people that that means that they are safe.

No, there is a deliverance. There is a deliverance from our sin. There has to be regeneration. There has to be a change of heart. There was a time when I was about 15, 16 in the balcony of a free Methodist church and that night I was going to, with all the other teenagers that were up there, going to pass notes and play around and it was special meetings at the church.

I had already been baptized, I was already a part of the church, they asked me the five questions which everybody knew the right answers to, yes, yes, yes, yes and yes. And I was in and everybody thought I was the greatest kid and I was surely, and I was surely heading toward heaven. And they didn't know Mark Little And they didn't know my thoughts. And they didn't know the emptiness of not knowing Christ in the middle of the church. And in the middle of that service God laid hold upon my heart and the rhema of God, the Word of God came and it spoke not externally anymore but it spoke to my soul.

And what it said to Mark Little was not that you're a wonderful fellow and I have great plans for you. What the Word of God said to me is, you are a rotten, stinking sinner and you belong in hell. Do you understand that? And for the first time in my life, I understood it. Because before that I thought it was just being a good boy.

And it's not just being a good boy. It's understanding what you are before God as a wretched sinner. Who does not glorify God. Who does not desire to glorify God. Who lives for yourself.

Even if I placated my parents by being good and going to church and not giving them too much trouble. I did not have in my soul a burning desire to serve the Lord Jesus Christ. I did not know Christ. And after that night, then I began to seek God and then I began to realize I needed a savior. You don't need a savior until you know that you're in hell.

So I say all that to say this, this is the foundation, This is the context in which God brings Deuteronomy 6 to us. They have been delivered out of their bondage so that now they can talk about and they can think about the judgments, the statutes of God. And he says in verse 22, and the Lord showed signs and wonders great and sore upon Egypt and upon Pharaoh and upon all his household before our eyes. And God showed signs and wonders, Signs and wonders follow the work of the Holy Spirit. And that sign and wonder upon me that night was the fact that I finally was awakened to my sin.

And it was an amazing thing. And I have never forgotten it. And it has never left me. And he goes on to say in verse 23, And He brought us out to bring us in. God brought us out in order to bring us in.

He made us to differ from the world. They have death. We have life in our Savior. He has brought us out of darkness into His marvelous light to give us an inheritance. And to give us purpose in life and to give us direction in life.

That's why you have the judgments, the statutes, the commandments, is because now we understand that there's actually a purpose to life other than my own selfishness. I was talking with a missions director who was, we were having a bit of a debate, he was telling me about the Sabbath, he was telling me about a people group who had no sense of time whatsoever and time just didn't mean anything to them and what he was trying to tell me was that it didn't matter whether they met on Sunday or Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday with these people because it didn't make any difference to them because time didn't mean anything to them. And what I was telling him was that yes, but if they are Christians and they have become Christians, suddenly time does mean something and you realize that the world has some kind of structure to it and that God has given us a structure to it so that on the first day of the week they should be meeting. Don't let them meet on the third day of the week just because they have no sense of time. Give them a sense of time and make them realize that there is a purpose to life and that God is the one who establishes that purpose.

He gives us purpose, direction, instruction so that we understand the purpose of God's law word. And he says in verse 24 and 25 that the Lord commanded us to do these things to fear our God and it's for our good always and to preserve us alive as it is this day, and it shall be our righteousness, that is, it shall be our testimony of a righteous life if we do these things. Because we need a testimony in this world to glorify God with. Adam was created with knowledge and holiness and righteousness. Holiness is being set apart to God, knowledge and righteousness is our relationship between man and man.

We lost that in the garden and the new man is created it says in Colossians and in Ephesians back to knowledge and holiness and righteousness. So that our relationship to God is restored, our relationship to men are restored which means to our sons so that we have a right understanding of how we do relate. But now back in chapter 6 verses 1 and 2. To be saturated by the word of God therefore we must understand the privilege that we have of having the Word of God. And I said all that to say this, is that if we're redeemed then we understand the preciousness of God's Word.

That this book is a precious book to us, It's the very voice of God to us. If this book is not an open book to you, if you don't understand anything in this book it's because you don't know Christ yet. Because the book becomes an open book when He saves you, when He delivers you, when He forgives your sins and cleanses you. In Deuteronomy 6, 1 and 2 we have God's sovereign provision of commandments and statutes and judgments. Clear directions for obedience.

God is not nebulous in His expectations. He clearly defines how we are to walk and so fathers are to be clear in the expectations that they have for their children. God gives us clear expectations, we need to give our children clear expectations as to how they are to walk. There are promises for obedience, there is punishment for disobedience, there are clear rewards expected, both positive and negative. God leaves nothing to the imagination when He deals with His children.

They are made known. They are made to know what is expected of them so fathers should have clear boundaries, consequences and results so that children can learn to depend upon their father's word that when my father says this, this is going to happen. Not three times later or not until my voice gets to a certain decibel. Your voice should never have to be raised. What you say should be the truth and they should understand that.

Because if they don't understand that, if they understand that you sometimes mean it and don't sometimes mean it, what you are teaching them is that God sometimes means it and sometimes doesn't mean it. Because you are the example to them of authority, an authority that God has given to you. Saturating your household with the Word of God. In Deuteronomy 6, 1 and 2 he calls God's Word the commandments, the statutes and the judgments. It's the whole counsel of God.

Paul said that he had preached the whole counsel of God. Thomas Scott saw these three categories as the moral law, the ceremonial law, and the judicial law. Certainly we know this, whether or not you want to take that break out of those particular words. We know this, that every aspect of God's law requires teaching. So if we're going to talk about saturating our households with the Word of God, we cannot neglect any particular part of the Word of God.

And we always as fathers have certain parts or things or areas that, that we are more comfortable with than other areas. And yet as fathers and called to be leaders in our home, we have to delve into those areas in which we're extremely uncomfortable. Because we cannot leave off any part of the Word of God. Whether it has to do with the church and its worship, whether it has to do with the civil realm and magistrates and how they are to behave, whether it has to do with our own personal holiness and our disciplines. We all have favorite topics that we like to pontificate on, but as fathers we are not allowed to just hang on one topic.

We must have the whole council of the Word of God and teach it to our families. We hinder the true knowledge of God's Word if we neglect any part of it. We cannot emphasize for instance doctrine to the exclusion of the application of that doctrine or the working out of it nor can we exclude or just talk about the experience of the Christian life and neglect the doctrine that undergirds that. The Apostle Paul in Romans chapter 12 in verse one, he says, we beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, by 11 chapters of doctrine, inculcated to the Romans by 11 chapters of doctrine. We now, now we beseech you by the mercies of God.

Present your bodies a living sacrifice. In the next chapters, he then works it out and applies that doctrine. So generally we, we swing to one position or the other position. Either we really like doctrine and we want to hone on doctrine but we're weak on applying that doctrine or else we're really great at applying that doctrine but we're not sure what the doctrine is because we're not really much on doctrine. So we need both if we're going to do the whole counsel of God.

Secondly we must appreciate the teachers that God has ordained for us. Look at verse 2. Well back to verse 1, and the judgments which the Lord your God commanded to teach you. Who's speaking? Moses.

Moses says that God commanded me to teach you these things, which then later on we're going to get into the chapter so that you can then teach them to your children. Right? So Moses is speaking and so what I'm saying is that we have to appreciate the fact that God gives teachers. Moses was ordained of God as a pastor teacher, a shepherd of the flock to guide and instruct and it is a part of our training and humbling as men that we recognize our need to be taught by others. So that in Ephesians chapter 4 it is said that God gives gifts to his church through pastor, teachers for the perfecting of the saints, the work of the ministry, the edifying of the body of Christ till we all come into this unity of the faith in the homeschool movement which I have been a part of from the time when I was in college and thinking toward it in the 70s, I have noticed things both good and bad.

Home school parents are, are people who have bucked the system. They are people who have realized that the educational system thought it had a monopoly on this thing and that God had told them and it gave them the responsibility for educating their children. And so they had to buck a huge system and sometimes relatives, my mom was a math teacher in the post school, she went real hot on our homeschooling at first, she got really good with it after a while, it was okay. But we've had to buck the system and then now what I see is that there's a movement among the homeschoolers in the past decade or two that they're tired of the entertaining church, that the church that's out there just playing games, telling stories and not serious about the exposition of the word of God that they are getting tired of that and they are beginning to leave the entertainment church. The problem is that in some cases I have noticed that they have gathered together and created what was not a church.

Which where every single father just each week gave a devotional. And there was no structure according to the New Testament. There was no recognized person who had devoted their life to the study of Holy Scripture so that they could bring the saints into this unity of the faith. There was no sense of a real call of God. And I think we've got to be careful with that.

I am all for multiple elders in the church, but we cannot lower the bar. That's the same thing happened in the public school system. Where they lowered the bar to everything. To the lowest common denominator. And we don't want to do that within the church for elders either.

You want multiple elders? Fine. But you've got to pay a price to be an elder. You've got to be able to know the word of God and teach the word of God. You have to have the gift of teaching.

And you've got to be able to confound those who are opposing the church. Which means you're going to have to spend some time and hours and days and months and years in the word of God. And devoted to that and know that that is the call of God upon your life. Do you see what I say? So what I'm saying to you is this, if we are going to saturate our households with the Word of God, we've got to recognize that there are gifts given to the church that help us in that.

And we're going to talk about that as we bring our children to the assemblies and it needs to be an assembly where the Word of God is seriously taught. It's not stories, folks. My daughter Elizabeth, my redhead, was about five years old. We were down at the Gulf and we visited this church while we were away from our church. And afterwards we were walking out of the church and Elizabeth looked up at me and I hadn't said anything about the message, I hadn't said anything about what went on.

We didn't know the church, we went to one on a Wednesday night so that we could hear the word of God. And she looked at me and she said, Daddy, we didn't need our Bibles tonight, did we? And I said, no baby, we didn't. And she knew. And the reason she knew is because she had never been outside of a church that didn't have expositional preaching.

So we must recognize God's call upon some men to be teachers and have that gift of teaching with a burden and a courage to lead many families. Because this is one of the great means that God uses to saturate our households with the word of God. Faithful biblical teaching, expositional, biographical, topical, biblical preaching, opening up the scriptures. And faithful preaching and teaching can be used by parents to start discussions in the home should be used by parents. That should be a part of how you saturate your households with the word of God.

You have this opportunity that you've been at the assembly, the word of God has been opened up to you. Are you taking notes? Are they taking notes? Is there questions? These are things that you can then bring out at the house.

The Puritans called it Holy Conference, as described in a great book that Reformation Heritage is carrying right now, called Godly Conversation, Rediscovering the Puritan Practice of Conference by Joanne J. Jung, JJJ. The Puritans believed in taking notes during the sermon so it could be discussed later on. Puritan pastor Preston writes this, not repeating the word of God after it's been preached does quench the spirit and that is sin. And now it is quenched thus in the time of preaching when he stirs up motions and we let them die and recall them not, we quench and grieve the spirit not repeating it is the cause that many are always learning but never coming to the knowledge of the truth." What did you think about that sermon, Johnny?

What did you think about this point? Is that what you believe? Did the preacher hold, was there a scriptural reason why he gave this point? Nicholas bound said we ought to privately confer and talk about God's word one with another. He said the prophet of it would be great.

Malachi says, then they that feared the Lord met and spoke often one to another. And it wasn't about the Auburn-Alabama game. It was about the word of God. Isaac Ambrose said, A man that comes into a pleasant garden will not content himself with the present scent only, but he will carry some of the flowers away with him, so that after we have been in the garden of spices and have felt the savor of Christ's ointments in the church assemblies. Let us take some of the flowers away with us and smell them again and again, repeating, conferring, examining the word is like pounding spices that will make them smell the more." And he said, by conference, Zhang said, by conference, the Puritans believe that they have the greatest potential for personal spiritual recalibration.

So we say, I say that to say this, that part of saturating our households with the Word of God is to understand the benefit of the church, make sure we're in a church where there is serious teaching of the Word of God and then taking that teaching, bringing it home, rehashing it and talking about it, and it creates an automatic platform for you to talk about the things of God. In verse three, we have the wonderful promises that are given to those who saturate their households. Hear Israel and observe to do it, that it may be well with you, those who hear intelligently the word of God, that it may be well with you and that you may increase mightily as the Lord God of your fathers has promised you in the land that flows with milk and honey, that it may be well with you, in Hebrew it is literally that you may be sound and that you may be beautiful. And that You may increase mightily, increase mightily, like the Lord Jesus Christ increased mightily as a child. And you young men, look at the Lord Jesus Christ, see him at 12 years of age among the doctors, answering questions, asking questions.

Do not limit yourself and do not limit your children because their young children are a sponge. Children can learn incredible amounts of information and can grasp incredible truths. He grew in wisdom, favor with God, favor with man, he increased mightily and it will cause you to increase mightily for your influence for good as well. Verses 4 and 5. He says, Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

How can you tell if you're saturated with the word of God or your family is? You have one Lord. You have one Lord. You love that one Lord. Here, oh Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.

Christ taught us to have a single eye, a sound healthy eye, one that sees clearly. We see life clearly and rightly when we have one Lord and not many Lords because no man can serve two masters. And when we see our children to begin to serve that one Lord, not because our eye is upon them, but because their eye is upon Jesus Christ, then we smile, we rejoice that our children are saturated with the word of God because they have that one Lord with us. The word of God has saturated, it has gone to the core of their being at that point. The unity of our homes and our churches is a unity not of recreational pastimes, it's not a unity of age groups and genders, it's not a unity of economic status, it is a unity of one Lord Jesus Christ by whom are all things and we by him.

That's the unity. Here, oh Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. But our children will only truly confess Jesus as Lord by the Holy Ghost, as Paul says in First Corinthians, when the love of God has been shed abroad in their heart. In the book, The Sabbath Morning Readings, by John Cumming in 1856, he says, now as the command hears especially that these words be in your heart, let me notice what must necessarily precede. First, the truths must be understood by the intellect before they can be deposited in your heart.

The intellect first discriminates what is truth before the heart consents to accept it as something precious and an important deposit. We may love the unseen but we cannot love the unknown. We must therefore see clearly with our intellect that this is truth before we can embrace fully in our hearts that truth in all the love and all the power of it. And then he says this, listen to what he says here, he says, but in the second place before these truths can be deposited in the heart they must not only be understood by the intellect, but they must be appreciated by the heart. We do not embrace with the affections of the heart that which is worthless or of no value.

The human heart refuses to extend the current of its sympathies, its attachments, and its love to anything that's inferior to itself or of no real and substantial value. Worthless things are tolerated. They are not loved. They are endured. They are not cherished.

You see, to saturate our households by the word of God, we must prove by our life as fathers that we love God's word and that we love the Lord of that word. Because no one is going to love Him. Our children will not love Him if we do not. And if we don't prove it by our actions and our behaviors day by day, we have to prove that everything else is inferior to the word of God. So that when Uncle Joe comes to visit on the weekend and Uncle Joe's not a believer and he doesn't like to go to church but we invite him to go to church and he doesn't want to go to church, we go to church anyways.

And we leave Uncle Joe at the house. Because everything is inferior to the word of God and to the worship of God. All relationships, everything, is inferior to this love that we have. My mom sent me a birthday card the other day, opened it up, expected a little bit of cash. She usually sends me some.

And it said in there, Mark, this year I've sent your money to Bibles in Haiti. I'm a preacher, I'll admit to you, I actually was disappointed for a moment. And then I wasn't disappointed. And then I thanked God that I had a mother who loves the word of God more than her son's supposed needs of a birthday present. And that's what we need to be able to show our children about what the priorities of our lives are.

Are we joyful in the Lord? Do we rejoice in his sovereign care over us? Is there peace in your house? Does your marriage and home recommend to your children falling in love with the Lord Jesus Christ? Do they know He is all important to you?

In verse 6 it says, and these words which I command you this day shall be in your heart. These words, these words that come from your beloved, they shall be in your heart. When you got a letter from your beloved, you read the letter over and over again. You scanned the letter to see what part of those affectionate words attain to you and grasp ahold of those things and every little piece of that letter that you got from your lovely one, you looked at it, you meditated upon it and you wanted to share it with others, though you couldn't always do that, but you wanted to because you wanted them to know how much this gal loved you. And so it should be in the way that we recommend the blessed truths of the scriptures to our family.

Look and see what God has said to me, see what he has said to me today, and have fresh truths to give to them from day to day. In verses seven through nine we have both the formal and informal teaching opportunities that are given to us. When he says, and you shall teach them diligently to your children and talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way, when you lie down, you rise up, bind them for a sign upon your hand and they shall be as frontlets before your eyes. Write them on the doorposts of your house and upon your gates." And what I say this is is the practice of interpreting all of life through the lens of Scripture. This is what that's talking about.

You learn to practice to interpret all of life through the lens of Holy Scripture. Verse 7 says, you shall talk of them. As a minister, I'm used to preaching, lecturing. I talk, you don't. I like it.

And I think for the preaching of the word of God, it has to be that way. I think God has ordained it that way. I don't believe in dialogue during the preaching. But a mistake I made at the house was to carry that into my house and to think that as a pastor I always had to do the lecturing and the pasturing in that way with my household and I found that I made a great mistake in doing that, that I did not do enough talking and allowing them to talk and dialogue back with me so that I understood what was going on in their hearts. I made lots of assumptions.

The great assumption I made was that I was such a fine teacher that they caught it all. And they didn't. So he says, and you shall talk of them. You shall talk of them. So that you need to ply your children with questions so that you can understand what's going on in their little hearts.

So you understand what doctrines they believe or don't believe or are confused about or, and all these things. You need to talk to them. And there's some guys like me that in their devotional times with their family they would just like to lecture. And there's other people that would not at all. And for me, it's been something that I've had to force myself to change and to realize the necessity of this.

When you sit in your house, now here's an assumption that families will actually sit in their house together. Now for the 21st century, that's an assumption that we can't always make, is it? Instead, they're wired up, everybody in their own room. So the assumption of Holy Scripture is, is that you will sit in your house with your children and you will talk to them and you will make them put away all the electronic junk and you will turn off all the electronic junk and you're going to go back to the old fashioned way of actually talking to your children and sitting in the house with them. Someone asked me the other day about did we actually sit together for dinner?

I said yeah we actually do. Wow, isn't that something unique? But it is unique in many a family. And people talk about scheduling problems and all these different things, and I understand some of that, but I also understand that we can use that as an excuse forever and ever and ever. We schedule what we want to schedule.

I understand that there are exceptions to the rule. There's work that takes you here and there, but I was talking about, as the overall we decide, we determine how our life will be scheduled out. And if the word of God says that I need to be sitting in my house talking to my children at some point in the day, I need to try to schedule that in. I remember the story, I think it was the captain of the, oh, it was one of the spacecraft that came down and was going over Texas and came apart. I forgot the name of that.

It was the guy who was the head of that. I think I read a book on him, if I'm getting it right. It was somebody on that crew, but before he left, he had left with his family, however long they were going to be gone, 13 days or whatever, 13 videoed devotions for them to hear while he was in space. And he had taken the time, and I'm sure this guy was fairly busy, getting ready to go into space, and he took the time to have that prepared for his children so that a day would not be missed in which he didn't talk to them about the word of God. And I think that's a great example for us.

There is, as homeschoolers, if you homeschool you of course have a tremendous advantage of time with your children, how it's used. There's formal training sitting in the house and there is informal training as well. In the formal training, do we have adequate expectations of our children and what they can learn and what we require of them? And I have to ask myself this, and I have been asking myself this, even in the past couple of years, what do I require of my children? Am I expecting enough from them or am I just allowing because we're home school and it doesn't have to be and we can be kind of loose with things.

But what I found in my own household is that I was a little too loose with things so that there weren't deadlines and things that were structured where they had to meet deadlines and there were expectations of them because when my girls go off and get married to some fella, there's gonna be deadlines. Like when you get pregnant, there's a deadline. Baby comes in nine months whether you want it or not. And you gotta be ready. So there needs to be structured, formal training as well in which we require things of them.

Catechisms, questions and answers to teaching in the Bible. Here's a catechism that we use at the church. It's the Charleston. The Charleston Confession is very similar to the London Baptist 1689, almost exactly in the back of this, it also has a question and answer on which it takes you through the major doctrines of the Bible. We do this in church with the children on Sunday night.

It has 114 questions. We've been through it many times. Some of the children have been through it two, three times. This is one of the formal ways in which you can saturate your children with the word of God. It has a prove it where you have to memorize why you believe what you believe there as well.

If you want a copy of this, I've got a couple copies right now I'm ready to give away and just give me your address. We'll send you one. We'd love for you to look at the catechism, use the catechism. We've also got little guy catechisms as well. Who made you?

God. Why did God make you? Who made you? God. What else did God make?

God made all things. Why did God make you in all things for his own glory? And takes you systematically through a thought process by which you understand the doctrines of the word of God, even as little guys. Outlining books of the Bible, questions, giving your children something to study that day and make them write something down about it so that you know whether or not they're comprehending it. You know there's a great difference between just reading something and then writing about what you read.

So there can be structured ways in which you saturate them with the word of God. Some of us need more of that. Others perhaps need more of the informal and learning how to, as you walk by the way, when you rise and you lie down, with the everyday lessons of life, informal ways of teaching them, storytelling, stories about your own life. Your children love stories about your life. You've got stories about your life and what God has done.

Your children will love those. When you walk by the way, interpreting life's situations and realities through the lens of scripture. A friend once wrote me a letter about teaching the children as they walked through life. Let me read you just a little bit of the letter. Example after example, obnoxious teens acting up at a grocery store, erratic, art, gross art hanging at a restaurant, storm damage, the pattern flight of geese, the care of kittens by a protective mother cat.

Every day, every hour, almost renders examples and events which provide opportunity to teach scripture, principles of forgiveness, diligence to duty, compassion, faithfulness, perseverance, reward of labor, fruit of discipline, pointing out people, situations, simple occurrences that happen in the human experience that we often overlook without notice and yet they provide a vast and varied portfolio of object lessons by which to point a child continually back to the scriptures to teach them and ask why is this so and how to find the answer in God's word. Do not make the mistake of shunning the ugly and harsh. Those things need to be seen and understood or right like the beggars standing there, sending their children to beg for money. The drunk passed out in a doorway fronting the street, the child's tantrum, two teens cursing each other in the parking lot. Often we seek to shield our children from for fear of contaminating their minds and yet their imaginations will take snapshot images of these things and create scenarios anyways.

It is better I believe to look and to learn and to show them what sin does and how men and women pay the wages, show them the fool of the Proverbs, the raging man, the tongue of wickedness from James, the disobedient children. And then point out the fruits of God's image and his general grace to his created beings. A new mother, children playing happily, laughing couples, beautiful architecture, fountains and gardens, music and pets, evidence that God loves and intends peace and goodness upon his created beings. Peace on earth, good will to men, and so it is in the vast crops of corn, stalks, pastures of baled hay, and contented cows and seedlings pushing themselves out of the earth. Above the earth in the sky and sea, below in the depths of the sea, covers deep across the rolling plains and rocky hills and austere mountain crags.

Wherever you look, one cannot miss a myriad of examples that point to the divine and teach the Word of God and herald His truth, His commands, His statutes and demonstrate the worthiness of those statutes. If we look, we will find and we will open the eyes of our children to see God wherever they rest their gaze. And the Word of God will be understood in its application and will stay in their hearts as living examples, snapshots of God's sovereignty, photos of His providence." And I think they're right. And I think that's what our text is talking about. And perhaps you all, you know, when we first had our first child, to me it was a wonder, it was a wonder of wonders.

And as we had more and more, I had four girls. It was the greatest fun every time. We never told anyone what we were going to have when they were found out. And I got to make the phone call each time and it was so much fun for me because every time they just knew I was going to have a boy. And I never did.

I had four girls and it was fine with me. Whatever God wanted. But you took that child and as you took him outside you showed him a blade of grass and you showed him a tree. It was like you are explaining to them God's world. You are interpreting to them the whole of God's world.

What a wonderful privilege that is, but we have to do it intentionally because as fathers we get so involved with the headaches we have at work and all that that goes on. Sometimes we're so consumed with that when we get home that or even if we're doing it at home that we can get consumed with that and then miss lots of opportunities because we're just all filled up with the problems of our work and our labors. Some things are taught, some things are caught. You are saturating your children with teaching. You are.

You do. Every day you are saturating them with something. Saturating them with something? Because our children watch us as we well know. So I look upon some of your children, I see their face, I see them walk like you.

All the similarities, but every moment they are watching you, every moment you are teaching them something and inculcating lessons over and over again. What do you saturate them with? Faith or doubt, courage or fear? How do you interpret the evening news to them? Is it doomsday or is it God still reigns upon the throne?

Do you teach that Islam will conquer the world by the sword? Do you believe for a moment that Islam will conquer the world? If it does, then the whole of the Word of God is a lie. Because the Scripture says that the knowledge of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. What is the picture of marriage that they daily and hourly are catching from you, what is a normal married life to them?

Because your life, your married life will be their understanding of a normal marriage and of a normal Christian life as well. What do they catch of you when you deal with problems as you walk by the way, as you answer the phone and the third time that salesman rings in, even though you are in the no call zone. And I am guilty, I am guilty as can be about not having the right attitude and things. I remember one night, it was Saturday night, always happens on Saturday night while I'm trying to finish up preparing my message and I get a call in and it's Rajeej on the end of the line from India and he's wanting to sell me a dish, you know, whatever the dish, satellite. And for once, for once in my life I didn't disobey the Lord.

For once in my life I actually obeyed Him. I listened to Him give me the spiel and then I gave Him my spiel and told Him that I didn't need the dish because we had other things to do at the house. I explained what we did at the house, I explained the gospel of Jesus Christ, I explained what was important, and he sat there and listened for probably five to ten minutes without a word. I didn't know whether he was there or not but I kept going. And then when I finished, a room of applause broke out on the end of the line and I realized that this guy was being trained or training others and a whole room had listened to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And I thought for once I did what was right by the Lord. But our children watch us in those things, in the incidentals, the incidentals. So saturating our children with the word of God, like I said, it's not just dumping in their head a bunch of knowledge, download. It is that like the light dew that comes upon the ground every day in which God waters the earth, it's that light dew that comes upon our children day by day with all the incidentals and how they see our lives. When Alexander the Great set out in his exploit of conquering the world before he left Macedonia, he divided among his captains and friends everything that he had.

One of his friends reproved him and said, why are you being so profuse and you reserve nothing for yourself? Alexander replied, I have reserved much for myself, for I am full of hope of being the monarch of the whole world, which by the help of my captains and nobles I expect to gain. Was he content to set out with nothing but the possession of this hope? O Christian, what is this hope compared to yours? A hope full of immortality.

Though with Alexander you part with all things, yet putting on Christ you possess everything in him. Oh, the infinite blessedness of this, Christ in you, the hope of glory. Though you do not hope to be the monarch of the world, yet you have that faith that overcomes the world and is infinitely greater in being an heir of God and a joint heir with Christ. For the world and all things in it shall be burned up, but you will live and reign with Christ. What do you saturate them with?

Hope of glory or the hope of this world? And when you lie down, it's a time to teach our children, rest and trust in God. It's a time in which darkness obliterates all the distractions. It's a great time to pray with them, great time to read to them at night as well. When you rise up, you will teach them by your attitude, teach them, do you teach them this is a new day, it's fresh with God's mercies, it is a day in which I must discipline myself with my spiritual life to serve God and expect God to go with me, teach them to commit everything into his care.

When our family rises in expectation of the mercies of God and opportunities to serve God, we know that we have saturated our household with the word of God. My time is up. What he teaches in the rest of the chapter is when he warns them, he says, I think my time was up a while back, I don't know. He said, beware when you get comfortable and in the land and you forget me. And what that teaches us is to persevere in this, persevere in this.

As Scott dealt with as well about those who had left off being Deuteronomy six men. This is a very, it is in mundane everyday things. It is a lifetime work. It's not after 18 years or 20 years when your son then goes and he gets off and he gets married to someone else, you still have a responsibility to be an example before him. It is in things in which no one will know about and no one's gonna pat you on the back and you don't need a pat on the back because God is pleased.

If you have his smile, you have everything. So persevere, persevere in saturating your families with the word of God through informal instruction, through formal instruction, through everyday walks with your children, in every possible way through the church, through your time at home, through holy conference. In all these things God has given us a means of grace by which we can saturate our households. Father we thank you for your word, your word is truth, we rejoice in it, we pray that you would forgive our sins, cleanse us, we thank you for the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that makes up for all of our failings and our falterings as fathers. We thank you for your kindness to us, your patience with us.

And I ask Father that you'd be with each Father here, that you would encourage his heart to follow after you, consecrate himself wholly to you in the work of saturating his children and his household with your word. Your word we love and we love you. Amen.