Now, the ninth indictment, psychology
and sociology have replaced the scriptures with regard to the
family. My dear friend, pastors, leaders,
think about this. Our churches, our Sunday morning
services, better said, are so cosmetic. Just because there
seems to be beautiful worship and the sermon went well and
people seem to be moved, that's not evidence. I'll tell you what
evidence is. The home, the marriages, the families. Judges 17.6, in those days there
was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in
his own eyes. If I talk to people, because
I go for all kinds, I find a godly man who has raised godly children
and I go and I latch on to him. But in most cases, you know what
I find out? The people I talk to in church, all of it is wives'
tales and sociology and this and that and every other thing.
What's right in their own eyes and can't give me one biblical
verse. But every once in a while, I find a man and a woman who
set themselves to set their family according to Scripture. And the
difference is overwhelming. When I'm on an airplane, I love
to do this. Men will sit down beside me and they'll go, what
do you do? I go, I'm a husband. They say, what else do you do? Oh, I'm a father. What else do
you do? Well, if I have any time left
over, I preach a little. What does it matter if a man
win the whole world and lose his family? Let me just put it
to you this way. Based upon what are you raising
your children and loving your wife? Based upon what? If you
can't start going into Scriptures right now and pulling them apart
and showing me how your family is founded upon it, I can assure
you, you are a captive of psychology, sociology, the whims and the
lies of this age. You see, you don't have the right
to do it. You have no authority, sir, apart from the Word of God. Look at Genesis 18, 19, for I
have chosen him so that he may command his children and his
household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness
and justice so that the Lord may bring upon Abraham what he
has spoken about him. What a beautiful thing. And listen,
Romans chapter 12 verses 1 and 2, or verse 2, tells us that
the will of God is perfect. So if you ever come up with this
idea, as a man of God, I am sacrificing my family for the sake of the
ministry, I will tell you, you are a bald-faced liar. You are
sacrificing your family for the sake of the little kingdom you're
trying to build. Because the will of God is perfect. That
means I do not have to violate the will of God with regard to
my family in order to fulfill the will of God with regard to
the ministry. God doesn't need you. He does
desire that you be obedient, that you be obedient. Now, I
just want to give you two examples now before. It's like when someone
asked me one time, Brother Paul, are you against evangelism? I
said yes and no. I'm not against biblical evangelism,
but I'm against the way you're doing it. Are you against Sunday
school and youth groups? Yes and no. I want to explain
something to you. Now, for some of you, I'm not
going to be enough, and for some of you, I'm going to be too much.
I just want to use these two things to point out what's wrong
with us. Sunday school. No matter what denomination you're
a part of, if you are a part of some denomination that's kind
of organized, I can assure you that your denomination spends
multi-millions of dollars on Sunday school material. Multi-millions
of dollars on conferences, on teaching teachers how to teach
Sunday school, on doing everything in the book to promote Sunday
school. I know that for a fact. Let me ask you. How much money
does your denomination spend and how many conferences and
man hours are put in to teach fathers to teach their children?
So now you found it, haven't you? God doesn't have a plan
B. He has a plan A. You circumvent
plan A, plan B won't work. Now I'm not saying that children
can't come together in groups and be catechized or be taught
or anything, but if that ever even begins to hint to supplant
the ministry of the Father in the home, blow it to pieces! Do you see what I'm saying? Look
at just that one tiny instance. Everything for Sunday school,
everything for Sunday school. But there's hardly a conference
in this entire country to teach men how to teach their children.
And most of the time in the Sunday school, it's nothing more than
entertainment because the Sunday school teacher doesn't have the
authority to discipline your child. And even if they did,
they wouldn't do it because they don't believe in it. That's just one tiny instance.
Let's look at youth groups. Well, youth need to be together. You know, they need to be together.
Okay, well, let's look. Proverbs 13, 20. He who walks
with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools will suffer
harm. Whoever told you youth ought
to be together? Whoever told you that? I'll tell you who told
you that. 1960s. Psychologists. Generation gap. Youth are to be with adults so
that they stop acting like naive fools and join adulthood and
put away foolishness, which leads to destruction. Now, I'm not saying you can't
bring youth together, but I submit, if you do, have all their parents
there. And you say, well, what about the lost youth that come
into our church? Well, what are they seeing now?
The lost youth come into your Christian youth in church and
they see almost the same thing they see in their own home. No
parents. Kids teaching kids. Or one guy
a little bit older with moose in his hair teaching your kids. But what would happen if lost
youth came into your church and they saw the children there,
the youth, in a loving, wonderful relationship collectively with
their parents, and they would go, whoa, I've never seen anything
like this before. His dad, look at him, he loves
his dad. So is this Christianity? You see, my dear friend, let's
say that I am no doctor, but a man comes up to me with a bleeding
forehead and he says, Brother Paul, I've been everywhere. No one can diagnose my problem.
And I said, well, I'm no doctor, but I'll follow you around for
24 hours. And I noticed that every time
the hour strikes, If it strikes one, he hits himself in the head
with a brick one time. If it strikes two, he hits himself
in the head twice with a brick. If it strikes 12, he hits himself
12 times in the head with a brick. After observing this cautiously
and carefully, taking notes for 24 hours, I come up to him and
I say, you know, I think I have figured out your problem. I'm
no doctor, but I think I figured out your problem. It is that
pathetic among us, church. Why do our children do what they
do? Why is everything... It's like one old dear saint,
someone asked him one time, he wouldn't let his teenage son
go out with a young lady to be in some private place. He said,
don't you trust your son? He said, no, I don't trust my
son. Whatever made you think that?
I don't trust his dad. I wouldn't put his father alone
with a woman that wasn't his wife. And yet I have much more
to lose than a boy. I have much more control of my
will than a teenager with raging hormones. So what would you what
would make you ever think I would do that? We violate biblical
principle after biblical principle after biblical principle, and
then we wonder why everything is a mess. Lastly, Just real
quick, turn with me, you know, when I say real quick, I am speaking
an allegory or something. Go to First Timothy. I was listening a few months
ago at all the horrendous things that are happening to our I don't
know what you would call it anymore, republic, democracy, country,
I'm not really sure. socialistic state. And I was
so burdened as I sat there listening, and I was saying, oh God, what
can I do? Right now, Lord, honestly, with
all that is in me, I'll jump in the middle of the fire. There's
a charging rhino. I'll jump in front of it. Just
tell me what to do. Do you want me to go to Washington
and just stand in front of the White House and preach till they
throw me in jail? I'm tired of just preaching to
Christians and in churches and all this. God, just the country's
going to hell. Just throw me. What do you want
me to do? Just throw me at them. But the Spirit explicitly says
that in latter times some will fall away from the face. 1 Timothy
4.1 Paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons.
Now, he goes on to basically tell young Timothy that all hell
is going to break loose in culture. That everything is just going
to be maddening. Men as beasts. I was with Conrad
Mbewe a few months ago, and I heard him preach. They call him the
Spurgeon of Africa, and rightly so. If you get a chance to listen
to him, listen to him. He's one of my favorite preachers
in the world. And he said this. He said, In Africa, we no longer
fear beasts. We don't run from beasts. We
fear men and run from men. He was talking, of course, about
depravity. But he said here that just the world's going to come
unglued, Timothy. Now, what does he say to do? Verse six, in pointing out these
things to the brethren, you will be a good servant of Jesus Christ,
constantly nourished on the words of faith. And right there, this
text just started unraveling for me, Paul. Yeah, the world
has lost its mind. Everything is going to happen.
It's under my providence. But listen to me. Here should
be your reaction in the midst of all hell breaking loose, in
the midst of apostasy, in the midst of persecution. Here is
what you need to do. Be constantly nourished on the
words of faith. We always want to run out there
and do something. We want to fix something. God
is seeking men of character, polished swords. First of all,
son, be constantly nourished on the words of faith and the
sound doctrine which you have been following. This you have
been following is very important. I think it's indicating to us
that a simple intellectual study of Scripture will not, will not
achieve the goal that God has for His man. They must obey it. They must begin following. You
cannot learn doctrine well until you follow the doctrine you learn. And then he says this, he says,
have nothing to do with worldly fables fit only for old women.
My dear friend, let me tell you something. All this emergent
church stuff, much of the church growth stuff, all the cultural
sensitivity throwing out the window, biblical sensitivity.
It's just a bunch of little boys wanting to play church without
the power of God on their life. And I'll stand on that statement. It's a lesser than David trying
to fit himself in Saul's armor, to the wind with it. The more
you trust in the arm of the flesh, the less you're going to see
of the power of God. He says this, on the other hand,
discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness. Man of God, you
want revival, so do I. We need an army though. If powerful
swords, if mighty flaming pikes and swords and weaponries are
to be dropped out of heaven for us to fight, then we must be
the caliber of men who can yield those things and wield those
things and fight with them with sound character. We should discipline
ourselves for the purpose of godliness. Young men, Discipline
yourself to prayer. Discipline yourself to the systematic
reading of scripture from Genesis to Revelation over and over and
over and over again. Discipline yourself in your speech.
Discipline yourself in the company you keep. Discipline yourself
in when you go to bed and when you rise up. This is a war. Discipline yourself. Young man,
I can tell you this. Unless you are some exception,
being born in the age that you have been born, if you're under
30, yeah, even under 40, you probably lack discipline. Because
you have never been able to work. You have never had need to work
for your food, and your fathers never made you work so hard that
your bones cried. The men who have accomplished
much and used of God have been men of labor in the ministry. This is hard and it will cost
you everything. And by the time you're an old
man, you will be broken, but strong in the things of God. Discipline yourself for the purpose
of godliness, for bodily discipline is only of little profit. But
godliness is profitable for all things. It holds promise for
the present life and also for the life to come. Oh, my dear
friend, who cares about your best life now? Eternity! The day you stand in those granite
halls before the Lord of glory and kings. The greatest men on
earth are divided and split and called. Some cast into eternal
hell and some invited into eternal glory, live for eternity. These
Olympians, how majestic they are, but only for a moment. They
start training when they're four and five years old. They never
do anything but train until they're twenty-two. They run a nine-second
race. For a medal they hang up, and
that's it. Cannot you give equal for eternal
things? Some of the greatest men of God
have been men very limited in their bodies, in their abilities,
they were so limited that they had to focus themselves into
one thing. To the ministry. For bodily discipline
is only a little profit. It is a trustworthy statement
deserving full acceptance for it is for this we labor and strive
because we fixed our hope on the living God. This is not some
martyr thing in which we uselessly give our lives to nothing only
to be pulverized without hope. No, we serve God and God will
honor us. We have fixed our hope on that
and that gives us strength. Strength. Oh, this life is a
vapor. I'm 47, but yesterday I was 21.
Where did it all go? It is a vapor. While you have
strength, preach. I praise God that in His providence
as a young man, I spent myself in the Andes Mountains and in
the jungles of Peru doing what I no longer have the strength
to do. While you are a young man, while there is strength
in you, labor with all your might. Take those stupid video games
of yours and crush them under your feet. Throw the TV out the
window! You were made for greater things
than these! To see if you really know Him.
You see, my dear friend, I have great assurance when I
study my own conversion, when I discuss it with other men,
when I look over the 25 years of my pilgrimage with Christ,
I have great assurance of having come to know Him. But even now,
if I were to depart from the faith and walk away and keep
going in that direction into heresy, into worldliness, it could be the greatest of proofs
that I never knew him. that the whole thing was a work
of the flesh. I know what I'm saying is outstanding
to you. You think, oh my, I've never
heard such a thing. Read Pilgrim's Progress. Pay close attention to yourself
and to your teaching. Preserve in these things. For
as you do this, you will ensure salvation both for yourself and
for those who hear you. May God bless His church.