He's my lifelong friend. Jason and I have built, we built a company together. I sold it and left him there. He's still there. We've done a lot.

We've started churches together. We've gone through all kinds of pain and suffering together, but mostly glory. We've had just a wonderful bout of friendship all of our lives really and at least all of his life you know when I met him he was just a kid. But Jason and I serve as elders at Trinity Baptist Church here in Wake Forest, and we've walked this journey together, trying to find our way to encourage one another, and also to encourage our brothers to find themselves on the road map of biblical fatherhood and we have tried to bring these principles into play however imperfectly in our own families you know in our own lives And we've desired to be obedient to the Lord. This passage of Scripture, Deuteronomy 6, is perhaps the flagship passage for discipleship and education of the next generation.

And there is much here that must be completely trusted. And many of the problems that we have today in discipleship and education come from ignoring or replacing these principles that are here. So it is a key passage, it's not the only passage, but it's a key one. And Jason and I have worked with this passage, we've preached this passage in conferences and to our brothers and to one another many times. Jason, is there any comment you'd like to make just generally about this passage?

When I think in terms of this passage, this is a flagship passage for our duties as fathers. So five years ago, when when Trinity Baptist Church started, this was kind of front and center. For what we wanted, really the thrust of what we're about, we wanted to force men into their, their God given roles, the head of their family as the primary discipleship mechanism for their family. And little did I know at the time that that meant I was going to be forced into that position either. You always overestimate where you are until the first shell hits.

And then you get a clearer picture of where you really are. And just just the whole, the whole journey of the last five years in agreeing with the theology and then sorting out the practical application and family life has been just a journey of so much wonderful fruit. And it centers around this flagship passage where God gives us such clear direction, such refreshing direction, such simple direction to how we conduct ourselves in our home in a way that bears fruit and is a blessing to our wives and our children. And so anyway, this is I'm just so thankful to stand up here with this text being front and center because the fruit in our life, it looks so daunting, looks so daunting from the outside, I have to, my children are relying on me, my wife and discipleship is my thing. But what I found to my surprise was that the more I did it, where I expected it was going to be a big sap of energy was going to set me of my energies as big cumbersome thing that God was requiring of me was that I found exactly the opposite to be true that it actually delivered more energy than it ever took away.

And the joy that came from it. It's a this is a self funding program. It's a self funding program. You're going to begin to invest and then your your returns are going to be so near term, so immediate, but also so sustained that you're going to find yourself if you're not already there. I'm probably preaching to the choir here.

But you're going to find yourself having resources come from it. It's not a black hole of resources. Family Worship and Family Discipleship is not a black, black hole of resources. It's a self funding project. You know, since we're talking junk here, since we're talking pragmatism, since we're talking about, you know, the fact, you know, you can do something because it's right, or you can do something because it bears fruit.

Well, hey, everything that's right bears the right fruit. Let's just get that settled forever. But while we're talking junk, while we're talking pragmatism for a minute, this practice that's described here is really important. And do the math. This is a chart that one of the young men in our church did for us.

It profiles a church. It's kind of a hypothetical church. Five hundred couples are in this church. Each couple has 2.2 kids. And for all their descendants, all their believers stay in the church and the believers marry believers and they have 2.2 kids and one-third of the believers marry believers from the outside of the church and two-third of the believers married from inside the church these are the assumptions we punch in hey punch in your own assumptions you know doesn't There's no way to get these numbers exactly right.

What's the transgenerational effect of this 88% loss of the next generation on the church if fathers do not successfully evangelize their children. What's the net effect? Well, what the net effect is, in five generations, in five generations, there's one single believer left in that church from the original generation. Okay, That's the pragmatic issue on the table here. This is why a hundred thousand, I believe the number is a hundred thousand churches have closed in America in the last decade.

This is why people like George Barna say that church attendance in a decade will be half what it is today. It's purely a demographic issue that's going on. If you have a church like this with 500 couples and each couple has 2.2 kids and 88% of the next generation fall away in five generation, one person will be left from that original generation. This is a loss. This is a cataclysmic loss in the church.

So we're talking pragmatically about this. We can talk theologically about it, and we should, but to miss the boat theologically has dramatic, pragmatic implications. And one of the key arrows that comes in from the outside is a you people you just huddle up. Meanwhile, the Great Commission goes to the wayside. Well, this is we can't let the math here get lost in that discussion.

The the fact that we are going to spend a lot of our time and energy, a discipling within our own home is never ever an excuse not to engage the world and bring the good news of the Lord Jesus Christ to the world. At the same time, these dynamics are also employed. And these are these are evangelistic dynamics. These are people who are one and lost for the kingdom of God. And this is what the graph looks like.

Yes, your children end up believing or if they don't. This is what the chart looks like. It's all about evangelism. So forgive us for talking junk pragmatism here for a little while, but it's meaningful. It's something that needs to be considered.

You know, it's not the whole picture. So if you do the math, it's it's really important. It's also important when you read the Bible from cover to cover. And of course, this passage of Scripture is the most famous confessional passage of Scripture for godly Hebrews. It's called the Shema, and it's repeated twice daily by devout Hebrews.

And it's one of the clearest and simplest teachings of discipleship and education for the people of God in all of Scripture. And so what you have before you here in Deuteronomy 6 is God's timeless direction for men. You know, people say, well, God doesn't say much about education. Absolutely wrong. The Bible says lots about the method of education.

The Bible says a lot about the content of education. The Bible says a lot about the structure of education. And to pretend that we should just accept every effective or every ineffective educational philosophy is just absolutely wrong thinking. The Bible says lots about education. And this is one of those passages where lots is said about the who, what, where, when, and why of education.

This is an educational passage. Jason, what are your thoughts on this as kind of an educational passage? I'm not sure you want to develop that. Okay. All right.

Well, this is a call for fathers to rise up in every generation and to take on the mantle of a family shepherd. For a man to put on his pants and take on his role and go do work. And this is work for the kingdom. It's kingdom work that's done, you know, from it's morning, noon and night, there's no rest for it. This is not this is not this does not create couch potatoes, quite the opposite.

It creates vigorous men who have an awful lot on their plate. And it gives them something meaningful to do with their lives instead of washing it down the rathole of some other cultural proposition. So a number of things to say about this passage, it's the most famous confessional passage for godly Hebrews. Secondly, it's the most important discipleship passage in the Bible, it really, it summarizes almost everything that's said about discipleship. You could you can go from this passage and you can you can put out its tentacles and bring and bring forth the corpus of information regarding discipleship and education that's found in the Bible.

It's a wonderful summary statement. It's one thing I really like about it. It's the most important youth ministry statement in the Bible. What is biblical youth ministry? Not what is modern youth ministry.

We know what that is. But what is biblical youth ministry? This is biblical youth ministry. So if you I dare say that this statement is not found in the mission statement of most youth ministries in the country today. And, you know, I used to be a youth minister, and some of my best friends are still youth ministers, and we love each other, but I'll just have to say any youth minister I'm with is going to go on notice that this is the youth ministry passage in scripture.

He needs to understand that. And you know what, most guys really do understand it when they read it. Yes. How would youth ministers address those comments you just made? In other words, a sense to develop an apologetic...

Right. Because that's what we almost have to deal with in the church. Right. So how do you develop an apologetic regarding for or against youth ministry? What would a youth minister say to those comments?

You know that is such a massive undertaking right now. What we really want to do this morning is try to treat the passage. And that's a that's a that is a great discussion. There's a brother here who has some excellent information over here. See, Mr.

Prouty over here and he he's he's done some, I think some pretty serious apologetic work in this whole area. So hopefully maybe during the break or maybe some of the time we can share some of that with you. But hey, this is a youth ministry passage. What does the Bible say about youth ministry? Well there's one thing it says about it.

I believe it's one of the most important counseling passages in the Bible as well. Here you have a father who's constantly counseling his children. He's with them every day. He looks them in the eye. He sees if their countenances have fallen.

He sees how they're really doing. And he asks them questions that are, that arise from scripture. And so a father, a father is counseling every day. Think about, think what would happen to the modern counseling movement, the counseling industry if fathers did this. You know, people's fears would be taken care of daily on a daily basis.

They wouldn't let their fears grow day after day. People's problems and anger would be dealt with with, you know, with short notice. And the Lord would have the ability to speak into the hearts of children and fathers and mothers who are also sinners. It's a really, really important counseling passage. It gives the who what, where, when, why counseling.

And it's, it's beautiful. Finally, you know, Deuteronomy 6 focuses on the family. Why is it, you just might want to just stop with this question, why is it that the most important passage of Scripture for godly, confessional passage for godly Hebrews was about the family. Hello? Why is that?

It's for all the reasons that we've already really spoken of. God has established the government of the family. He's established the civil government and he's established the government of the church. They all have different, they have all different functions and the government of the family is the first institution that was created and it's the foundation for all the other institutions. That's my answer for why is the most famous confessional passage for godly Hebrews focused on the family is because it's the first government and it's just absolutely the critical government that's operating in the world today.

The church, of course, you know, all the church and the government, the civil government and the family all had their different realms of influence. They operate kind of in parallel and they complement one another. They perform different functions, they're not exactly the same. Of course, the church is the bride of the Lord Jesus Christ. Is the church more important than the family?

Yes, the church is more important than the family, but the church doesn't subvert the family and neither does the family subvert the church. But we have been brought into an eternal family, a global family. We are brothers and sisters, all of us, and our relationships though together don't subvert the family, but they do complement it. Well let's try to move through the text here. First of all, the man that is spoken of here in this passage is calibrated by the word of God.

Let's read it. Deuteronomy 6, we'll start in verse 1 and we'll read through verse 6. Now this is the commandment and these are the statutes and judgments which the Lord your God has commanded to teach you that you may observe them in the land which you're crossing over to possess that you may fear the Lord your God to keep all his statutes and his commandments which I command you you your son and your grandson all the days of your life that your days may be prolonged therefore hero Israel and be careful to observe it that it may be well with you and that you may multiply greatly as the Lord God of your fathers has promised you a land flowing with milk and honey. Hear O Israel the Lord our God the Lord is one You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart." Well the first thing you notice about this verse verse and what comes after is the seriousness of the tone.

And these statements are, they reference fixed commands and urgings. These are not casual suggestions. They're the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments. And they're the basis for everything that comes later. And it's an urgent call for men to order their lives under the authority of the Word of God, under the Commandments and the Statutes and the Judgments of the Lord God.

You notice how many times he uses these words, he calls he calls a tangents to these commands and statutes and judgments. They're just repeated over and over again. It's hard to miss the focus of this passage and it's the equivalent of saying you know stop following the world and follow God. I think that's kind of a summary of what this is saying here. One thing I think it's worth mentioning that I hadn't seen in many, many times of looking at this passage, but as I've been studying it over the last couple of weeks it's come clear to me.

I just want you to see the circle, the circle in verses one and two. There are commandments, just look in the text with me. There are commandments and they should be taught. So this is where the circle starts sort of I mean because it keeps going round and round. You have commandments, they should be taught that they may be observed.

Commandments taught observed so that you may fear the Lord To keep all his statutes. And we're right back to observing again. Which I command you today. You and your son and your grandson. And so as I was looking in those two verses, I was looking for cause and effect relationships.

What's causing what? For instance, if you take the fear of the Lord, you got things on the cause side of it and you got things on the effect side of it. The commands of God inspire the fear of the Lord. And the fear of the Lord inspires obedience to the commands of God because faith comes through hearing. We're hearing the word.

And this is really what verses one and two are saying that the hearing of the Word is producing these things and then but it doesn't end there that these these things also continue around the circle to produce the fear of the Lord that the commands kick it off commands kick it off but it doesn't stop at any one of these things, it cycles back around. You know, I've had over the years, I've had people say, Scott, can't you use a different word than calibrated in there? Can't you find a better word? Let's just talk about that for a moment. What would be a better word, Jason, that could be punched into there?

He's calibrated by the Word of God and what I mean by that is that He's conformed to it, he's changed by it, you know, and he takes it, he teaches it, he observes it, you know, and the result like Jason said is fearing and in this this this cycle of this flow of life with the Word of God as it calibrates. But what's a better way to say this? Maybe another word is permeated, permeated by that. I think a great cross-reference passage for this is Psalm 1. Blessed is the man who's not walking the Council of the Wicked or standing in the assembly or excuse me I'm gonna I'm gonna mess up that but it's a man who's planted by a stream of living water because he's meditating on the Word of God day and night and we're gonna see as as we develop this passage we're gonna see that this is a man who has the Word of God in his heart, goes right back to Psalm 1, and then he teaches it diligently to his children.

You know, and God knows that fathers in every generation are going to be under pressure. They're going to be under pressure from what they learned from their fathers. They're going to be under pressure from their own sinful nature. They're going to be under pressure from the fatherhood climate that they happen to live in, which is going to be different from culture to culture in a lot of ways. But God God knew that fathers were going to get pounded and he wanted to give them something timeless that they could use in any culture, in any generation.

And so he gives them his word and he gives them a daily practice to review it. By what? Tuned? Yeah, another word could be tuned. Yeah, Yeah.

Have you ever been to a chiropractor and you get an adjustment? I think I need an adjustment. Have your children ever need an attitude adjustment? Or have you? I have.

And yeah, tuned, adjusted, or whatever. Good, thank you very much. Calibration is more of a modern BPS you got to calibrate. An old map, you're pouring out a map or else you're following the wrong roadmap. Yeah, there you go.

Yeah, good. So where are you on the roadmap for biblical fatherhood is the Word of God. That that permeated, calibrated, you know, kind of a influence in your life? Are you tuned by it? You know, are you orienting yourself by it?

You know, that's, that's, that's probably the point. And these are these are commandments and statutes and judgments. Who was it was a Ted Koppel, who was speaking at a commencement address 10 or 20 years ago. And he stood up in front of, I think it was Harvard or something like this, and he says, these are not the 10 suggestions, these are the 10 commandments. These are the commandments and the statutes and the judgments of the Lord.

Should we move on to the next point? Okay, he has a transgenerational vision. Verse 2, you your son and your grandson all the days of your life so that your days may be prolonged. Now a lot could be said here one thing is Moses is just shouting out don't be self-absorbed you know the universe does not revolve around you and your career and your house and your property and and and whatever it's not about you it's about God's glory across the generations we're not living for ourselves here that's one of the the principles that come out of this. What else, Jason?

Well, it is about passing the knowledge of God through the generations. If you look at Judges 2, it's one of the most shocking passages in the Bible because the first generation that grew up in the Promised Land, not the ones that went across and possessed it, but the first generation that grew up in the Promised Land didn't know the Lord. And you say, didn't know the Lord? There are two generations from Egypt and all the miracles. How could this happen?

Well, this is how this could happen, as a father doesn't have a vision to pass along the word of God, the deeds of God, the faithfulness of God to his children. And also, grandpa's not disconnected either, because grandpa's mentioned it here. And so the thought that your retirement years are for buying a Winnebago and traveling around just doing whatever you want to do with your time is not a biblical thought. Our job is not going to be over when our kids turn 18 and graduate from high school. We're going to help our children pass on the glory, the deeds, the laws, the precepts, the Word of God to our grandchildren and if God will grant it to us to our great-grandchildren.

You bring up an interesting thing. Where do where do we get the idea that your children turn 18? And now you're free? Where did we get where did that idea come from? Defend that from Scripture?

Is that a scriptural idea? Okay, it's not a scriptural idea. So where in the world did it come from? Well, you know, I don't know. I don't know.

I haven't really thought about it. So where did it come from? What are some ideas? All right, I'm gonna play the devil's advocate here. Maybe I don't want to be that after all.

There is a real sense in which your children do leave you and cleave to another, but that's not a magic age, that's a magic event, which is marriage and establishing your own household. I think really in terms of how we think about that, we should look out and see that as the landmark, establishing of your own household and not a particular age. Right. No, amen. Yeah, there's the creation of a new a new family unit that is independent and free to to go and continue the you know the process but it's not it's it's it's not a complete disconnect it's probably a disconnect of jurisdiction but it's not a disconnect of teaching and love and wisdom and that kind of thing.

Yes. Considered to be under the apparent authority as a female, but as men you should be encouraging them to develop their own God-given conscience as an individual to push them to be individuals. Amen. Yeah, they're different. They're certainly different roles that need to be paid attention to.

Some people hear things like that. I agree with you. I do agree with you. Some people hear that though and they start getting really nervous. I think it's because of the culture that we've grown up in.

So let's talk about what that does look like and what that doesn't look like. Come visit my house. I have many girls. I'm about to have our fifth girl. We've got six.

End of June, we will have six children or five of them will be girls. So I'm just going to call myself an expert on girls because we are overrun by them. There are no lap dogs, prima donnas, at the dome house. They know how to think. They read the word of God for themselves, but at the same time, they're under their father's jurisdiction.

My wife is submissive to her husband, but you know what, that doesn't look like what people from the outside think that looks like. People conjure up barefoot and pregnant and never disagree and things like that. This is not what we're advocating. We have very, very robust women in our homes who can go toe to toe, who can think for themselves, and yet they relate to us in a submissive way. And it's a beautiful thing, and they love it.

You know what, there are no oppressed women in our homes. There just aren't. There are women who love their femininity. They love the role that God has given them. And they love it all the more when we are what God has called us to be.

Well this is all on the subject of this transgenerational vision that a man has a life and he has a duty all his life long. And it's transgenerational in its mindset. And Jason's talking about the motorhome mentality that's kind of gripped senior citizens. You know, it's difficult to find grandfathers in our day who are really engaged with their grandchildren. And we trust that the next generation will overturn some of that.

And we need godly grandfathers and grandmothers, you know, Titus two women and, and men with, you know, gray hair who can who can speak wisdom into the lives of the next generation. And that's what this is. This this passage is all about here. I just want to re ask the question for everybody's level. You know, the idea of where this ends, you know, we bow to culture and family doesn't know well, my job's done.

My job is to spoil the grandkids. When that's, no, your job is not. Your job is to reinforce the data. To teach the grandkids. We should be preaching to the choir.

They can get as stringent or more stringent when they go to grandparents, and just get free range at home. But I think it's an improper idea of who the children are. You have a baby just a couple right down the road from us, and she's like, I can't wait to be on the bus every day. They're looking forward to being seen when they don't have to have a home at all. Or expecting that change transgenerational, maybe how do you see that building changing in the future?

You know, yeah, this, this makes it clear that our job is not to quote spoil our grandchildren. Now, now, of course, we should also not be, you know, overly, we probably shouldn't over interpret a statement like that. Because most people when they say that, what they really mean is, I'm just going to cover up my grandchildren with a lot of love and kisses. It's going to be a great time. We're going to have ice cream and there's this tender heartedness about this.

It's a sweet good thing. We shouldn't wage war against that. But when parents think that's it, you know, I'm here to, you know, I'm going to be the entertainment machine. And that's what that's who I am now. Well, that's not really exactly what the Bible says that a grandfather should do.

And in here, it makes it very clear that what a grandfather should do. Jason, have you seen any have you seen any great examples of these kind of grandfathers? Do you have any great stories? Your dad, your dad is one of them. One of the things that really grieves me about what most churches look like is that there is a missing generation.

It really grieves me about what our church looks like. And we abhor the term target demographics in terms of how you try to put together your church. At the same time, there's just such a desire among young parents to have some white-headed people around to talk to who have been through the wars and can help us. And it's such a tragedy that there is a generation that's checked out and haven't taken on this role because a lot is missing. Questions about sharing thoughts about adopted grandfathers in the church.

Hey, could I just go first on that one just for a second and then I'll let you run. This is the beauty of the church. This is the church. Everybody gets a grandfather and a son and a daughter and a... Oh, it's just absolutely glorious.

You don't have a father? Well, God has given you the body of Christ. There are spiritual fathers there. You don't have to, nobody ever has to lack a father in the church, you know. So this is just the glory of the way God has ordained a church.

I think about this whenever we have communion. And here we are the whole church, we're all brothers and sisters, we're having communion together and we are expressing this collective brotherhood and sisterhood that God has created for us. So that's that's one comment. Jason, do you have anything to add? Ditto.

Yeah, me too. Yes. Another idea that we had to struggle with anyway was this idea that you get married and you get established and you have kids later on in life which just spreads out to the generations and makes it so much harder for multi-generational families. Right, yeah. Marrying late, having children late stretches everything out and that can cause you know, difficulties.

You know, it is it is interesting in in Italy, Italy, in the place where you have the lowest birth rates in the world. People get into their 40s and 50s and 60s. And they have no siblings and no parents anywhere, anywhere near them, they're dead, or they are but while they were never born, we're from a demographic standpoint, this is where the world is headed right now. Where there are gonna be generations of people, you know, my age, and they will have no one, they will have no fathers, and they will have no siblings to relate to. That's the that's the brave new world that we're going into.

And who's going to take care of these people? And the answer is, the government, the government will take care of them and the government will kill them in the death camps when they when they become a little bit too cumbersome to deal with. Let's keep moving in the passage. I know we could we could really camp here but this he has a transgenerational vision. He's not just thinking of his own of his own lifetime.

Verse 2, look at verse 2, That your days may be prolonged. What's that all about? Does that mean instead of living to 80, you're going to live to 95? No, that's not what that means. That's just not a reasonable, in any statement there's a reasonable and an unreasonable way to look at the statement.

So it can't mean that, because that's just not reasonable. People die young. One of my most godly friends died when he was 28 years old. Well, does that mean that God is a liar? No, that's not what that means.

But it means that His life will be prolonged in the lives of those that succeed Him. His reach will throw out into the next generation. His days will be prolonged. He will communicate the goodness of God to the next generation, which will go into the next generation. And He will be prolonged.

His words, his life, his legacy will go on. That's what that means. You know, when Paul says to Timothy, you know, that a woman is saved in childbirth, does that mean that we have now, instead of salvation by grace alone, we have salvation by childbirth? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You don't want to build a doctor on that statement.

But what you do want to do is back up and see what this what this possibly could mean. And it obvious means that there that in the same way that days are prolonged in a man, a woman's days are saved in her childbirth and it throws out into the next generation. So he has a transgenerational vision. Any last shots on transgenerational vision? Okay.

Number three. He understands God's desire for fruitfulness and multiplication. Verse three, therefore hear O Israel and be careful to observe it that it may be well with you and that you may multiply greatly as the Lord God of your fathers has promised you a land flowing with milk and honey. Now, this understanding, this mentality is something that has become very rare in our culture. And we have a number of influences in our thinking.

Worldly thinking goes like this, don't have too many children and impede your career, it causes overpopulation, it costs too much. But in contrast, the godly man has an eye for many children and this principle of fruitfulness and multiplication is all over Scripture. It's the normative pattern of biblical thinking for us. God desires godly offspring and this biblical lifestyle has been replaced by a worldly attitude that's driven the world to zero population growth and even in places like Russia where the population is declining, Europe is is being overtaken by whatever population is fruitful and multiplying and guess what, and guess what population is fruitful and multiplying in Islam. There's a there's a book that was just written recently called the West Last Chance.

One of the propositions in the book is that Europe has lost its chance for any demographical sustainability, because Islam will overtake it just by the natural demographic forces at work, America has a chance right now, There's a window of opportunity or it will face the same fate. So, but these are just about demographic realities. There's some really fascinating studies out there, unbelievable facts. You know, in Brazil 40% of the childbearing age women have been sterilized. You know, I mean, in Russia, abortion is used as birth control because it's cheaper than the pills.

So the average Russian woman has eight to nine abortions in her by the time she's 45 or something like that. I mean, the forces at work in the world to kill babies and to destroy the godly mentality of fruitfulness, they're just enormous. And this passage of scripture attacks that issue that's upon us now in the world. But God's desires for multiplication and fruitfulness, and however you decide to work that out, we would just urge you, you know, side with God here. Go with God.

Don't listen to the propositions of the world. Think about the thoughts that you're having and ask yourself, where did this idea come from? Next, he treasures God above all treasures. Verse 4 and 5, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.

You know, the awesomeness of this statement placed right in the midst of this argument. This is the heart. This is the heart of this passage right here. This passage is about the love of the Lord God with the heart, with the soul, with the strength. This is the heart of this passage of Scripture.

And there are a couple of ideas here. One is Moses is declaring a theology of the nature of God, that God is one. And this does not mean singleness. It's the same word that is used in Genesis when the two shall become one flesh. It is multiplicity and unity.

It means a unity and it's consistent with the doctrine of the Trinity and it argues for one God not many and it proposes that God that fathers are called to confess the truth that there is one god in the midst of an idolatrous world. There are many gods but there is only one true God. And this is the confession of a father in his household. When you talk in terms of how do we teach the statutes, the commandments, the precepts of God to our children. This is how we do it.

This is how we do it. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength. Jesus Christ made that so clear. Teacher, which are the greatest commandments? This is it.

This is the greatest commandment. So this is how we train our children to think about the commandments of God. This isn't do's or don'ts so that you get your allowance this week. This isn't it. This is about loving God and it's always within that framework.

We always want our children to see the law of God through the framework that Jesus gave us, which is my loving the Lord with all my heart and my loving my neighbor as myself. And it'll keep us out of all the traps that you're also familiar with, and that you've probably fallen into a bunch of times yourself with anyway, with with thinking about the law wrongly. Yeah, this is a man who just treasures of God. He loves God from the heart You know it's it's one thing To fall into the trap that I've felt fallen into from time to time of just being mechanical just get the stuff done Just get this stuff done. Okay, let's get together.

Come on, ever sit down, open your Bible. You know, you sit down, shut up, you know, you know how it goes. And hey, this is you got a camera at my house or what? This is about hearts turned toward God. It's a God-centered home.

It's not a family-centered home. It's not a success-centered home. It's a God-centered home. And it starts with the heart of the Father. Fathers, we have got to set the pace here, that God is the strength of our hearts and our portion forever.

How in the world can we say anything if our value unless God is not the center of it. And that's the argument here in this passage. This father is making a distinction between the gods of the present age and the true God. He confesses it in his household, but he confesses in his heart first that there's one God, one true God, who stands alone. On Sunday the sermon is going to be out of the great faith passage Hebrews 11 and Scott will be preaching on the patriarchs And so this has just made me think of how this ties into Genesis.

There's a couple of passages of Genesis that relate really well to this. And one is Genesis 15, where the Lord comes to Abraham and he says, Abraham, I am your portion, your very great reward. And it just illuminates the relationship that the Lord had with Abraham. The Lord was Abraham's portion. Abraham saw the Lord as his very great reward.

And this is the relationship that developed. Then you flip forward a couple of pages to Genesis 18, 19 where the Lord says, I have known him that he may command his household after him. This is what God desires to do with us. He desires that we would love Him. He would be our treasure and that He would be our portion and our very great reward and that that would drive these discipleship methods in our home.

That it would be the spring of them. There's no hope for a family unless that father loves God from his heart. I was just wondering if I become, I fall in love with Jesus so much that my kids see it all the time, they hear it all the time, what would that do in their lives? It'd be wonderful, but to be intentional with that. Yeah.

Amen. How do you put something on my desk to remind me of that? Hmm. He treasures the word by honoring it in his heart. Verse 6, and these words which I command you today shall be in your heart what shall be in your heart answer these words my words you can fill your heart with all kinds of words I mean yeah you got You got a million opportunities every day for what you're going to fill your heart with and your mind with.

But this is talking about words in the heart. What were words? Hey, the words that are in the heart always drive the life. Just the way it is. Can't, it's not something any of us can beat.

You can't beat the system. Words drive life. That's one principle. There's a lot. What else do you think is here?

You know, Again, marry this up with Psalm 1. This is the man who meditates day and night on his words. And it's so important to marry them because I think we tend to think Psalm 1-ish and we don't tend to think Deuteronomy 6-ish because Psalm 1 sounds very individual. I meditate on the Word day and night. I hear all the great sermons on the radio.

I read all the great books. I exposit passages. And men have become a great repository for all the wonderful wisdom and they never dispense. Oh, what a shame. We are to meditate on the Word day and night and hide these things in our heart, but not so that we'd be a repository of it and we'd just be singularly blessed.

It's so that we can talk about the glory of God and his ways to the next generation. So a father needs to be a good master of the words that he allows to enter his home and in his own heart. And he needs to be careful what things he loves, you know, the genuine loves of a father's heart will make all the difference in the world in his home. So when my father's have to be careful what they fall in love with in the light in this life, in which there are many, many glorious things fall in love with, you know, how it's a glorious world isn't it? Oh there's just so many there's just so many fun fulfilling great things to do but the genuine loves of fathers make all the difference in the world.

And in a home, you know, the true affections of fathers are not something that they can fake. Children will know what the father really loves. Can't be faked. And that's why this passage is focused on honoring the word in the heart. Isn't that terrifying?

Yeah, isn't that terrifying? Isn't that terrifying? Your children know no matter what you say by how you allocate your time and what you talk about, what your eyes view, they know. You know the Lord Jesus Christ quotes this in Matthew 22, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment and the second is like it, you shall love your neighbors yourself.

On these two commandments hang the law and the prophets. It's fascinating to me that this passage of discipleship and love for God are all mixed in together. It's there and you cannot, they're inextricably linked. You cannot separate these things. There's the love for God, the communication of his love in the family, all these things are, You cannot unbundle them.

They're all part of one package. Number six, He teaches the next generation. He teaches the next generation. Verse seven, you shall teach them diligently to your children. You shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise up.

You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. This is about this teaching role that it's the type of activity. It's teaching, tells you what you're supposed to do with your children and it tells you what to do. Teach them, okay.

You, fathers, teach them. Fathers are called to be teachers. Most men read this and they say, I'm not a teacher, I gotta find one. It's like the old tither. I'm not a tither, I think I'll find somebody else to do it.

I can't love my wife, Let's delegate this. No, no, no, no. I am the teacher. I have to belly up to the bar and drink the drink. I'm a teacher and be bold about it.

We were all inadequate teachers, we know that. Yeah. The beauty of it is that it's not a regular thing to be if the content isn't regular content. It's not mathematics. It's not literature.

I guess it's sort of literature. But it has a character and power of its own. And we can rely on it and rest on it. That's why I say, hey, take the pressure off. If all you do is just make a deposit today out of the word of God with no commentary, consider it to have been a pretty good day, and come back and lay another deposit tomorrow and another deposit tomorrow.

And over time, you'll become a good teacher because you've had a deposit day after day after day. I would say, hey, let's take the pressure off. The pressure's on the word of God and it's adequate. God's word's not feeling stressed out about the need for proper discipleship. It's adequate in itself and even in its completely unadorned form it can do the work all by itself but you know it's not going to open itself.

It's not going to read itself. That part it won't do. Yeah, but it will grab you by the neck and it will stretch you and challenge you. Our stick is pretty simple isn't it for the men in our church. Hey just take that book and flop it open.

Just flop it open and start reading it. Talk about it. Let God convict you about it. Try to understand it. You know, it's a lot of a lot of things.

There are mind benders, you know, they really, it forces you to think and study and, and be careful and, but we really encourage guys to go the simple route. Let the beauty of the words fill the home. Open my eyes that I may see wondrous things from thy law. I mean, if I can achieve that goal in my home, I'm okay. If we just flop open that book and we love it and we're, you know, attempting to obey it, I'm going to feel like we've had a good day.

Not that I gave a great three point explanation of every detail, every arcane theology that comes out of this verse. But that we believe and love the words. Well, he teaches the next generation. Before you move on, I mean the word there, the adjective there, the way in which he teaches it is he teaches it diligently. He teaches it diligently.

He exhausts himself to do it. He applies himself to do it. It's diligence. So what does the Bible say about education? A lot.

Gives you the who, fathers, gives you the what. What's the content? Scripture. Where? Everywhere, including the home.

When? 24 hours a day. Why? So that it may be well with you. This is a great deposit for the theology of education.

We should believe this stuff. And there's not a lot of outsourcing present. Where's the outsourcing here? So this is not to say, this is not to say that it's never appropriate for anybody else to teach your kids. I think that thought's kind of wacky honestly.

But it is to say that the primary thrust when people look at us and how our children are discipled, they should see us front and center. Absolutely. If the question is who's discipling this child isn't clearly, I mean, there has to be a debate on that question, then the Bible is not being followed. Yeah, yeah, you know, is it okay to have somebody give your your baby girl violin lessons? Is that a sin because you're not personally...

No, no, no, no. We just can't radicalize these things, you know, to strange proportions. But what we do need to do is we need to see the force and the tenor of scripture and then evaluate everything by it and be wise and look at the spirit and the letter of it all at the same time. And also look at your family and the calling of your life and your family's life and it may mean that that you do interesting things that family a isn't doing so he makes a public display of the Word of God he writes on his on his doorpost is between his eyes It's this is the principle This doesn't mean that we write it we catch you you know it on our foreheads or we wear you know boxes You know with passage of Scripture. It.

That's that's not what that's not what this is advocating at all This is advocating a public fearless display of the Word of God. People can apply this in a lot of different ways. Well, we can do that. I think lunch, the growling wolves of lunch are upon us now? Because it's after chapter 12.

But I would love to take that question on, but I think we'll break and come back and deal with it. So here is this man. He's calibrated by the Word of God. He has a transgenerational vision. He understands God's desire for fruitfulness and multiplication.

He treasures God above all treasures. He treasures the Word by honoring it in his heart. He teaches the next generation, he makes a public display of the Word of God. That's, that's what this man does. So where are you on the roadmap, you know, of biblical, biblical fatherhood?

We've just passed by some of the great signs along the roadside and we just need to ask ourselves, where are we with all these different propositions that God has presented to us? Would you pray with me? Father, oh that we would be found loving you with all of our heart.