Your Children Will Copy Your Worst Moment, Not Your Best Sermon (Alternate Recording)

Sermon outline

Only a doer of the Word builds on the rock, and because children learn from what comes out of a parent's mouth under pressure, believers must cut away the slow decay of compromise, take responsibility for their homes, and live the extraordinary life they want their children to inherit.

1. Be a doer of the Word

   The foolish builder hears the Word but leaves the Bible on the sideboard and only opens it on Sunday or when it suits him. The crowds were amazed at Jesus because He taught with authority. When you do the Word, it resides in you, the Holy Spirit changes your DNA, your language and thinking change, and people hear not your voice but the power of God in you. Bible bags, bracelets and bookmarks mean nothing if the Word is not inside you.

   Illustration: Teenagers ignore what their parents tell them, then come home repeating the same thing from someone else as if they had heard it for the first time.

   “If the Word is not residing on the inside of us, the words on the page mean nothing.”

   • Matthew 7:24-29
   • 1 Corinthians 4:15

2. COVID only revealed what you already were

   He confesses he enjoyed the lockdown because his family slowed down long enough to enjoy each other and every meal was a culinary event. But spiritually COVID only emphasised what people already were: a prayerless life became more prayerless and a prayerful family kept praying. Many never returned to church because their house was built on sand, though from the outside both houses had looked exactly the same.

   “COVID only emphasized what you already were.”

3. Your children do not learn from the pulpit

   Children learn at home, from what you do when the pressure is on and what comes out of your mouth. You are the first version of Jesus they see. If what comes out of a parent's mouth under pressure is garbage, that becomes their response to life; if it is Christ, Christ becomes their first instinct. A daughter's first love is her father, so ask whether you would let her marry a man like you, and whether you would let your son marry a woman who would not care for him.

   Illustration: If a father has a double whiskey and Coke with the boys every Friday night, his son will do the same, and his daughter will look for a man who does.

   “You are the version of Jesus Christ that your children see.”

   • Matthew 6:33

4. The circumcision of a new life: the disciplines of the Word and prayer

   When you come to Christ there is a cutting away of the old friendships, speech, thinking and spending. Then you learn the discipline of the Word: start with a Proverb a day and some Psalms, read aloud if it helps you retain, and push through the 'weightlifting' of heavy eyelids until it comes alive. Prayer starts small and self-centred, but as the Holy Spirit stirs the living water it turns outward to other people's needs. Growth in the spirit does not happen in time; it happens in truth.

   Illustration: People can read a magazine cover to cover, even the air freshener can on the bathroom wall, but the moment the Bible opens someone puts five kilograms on each eyelid. One man of God stood on tiptoe on the edge of the bath to read, so that he could not fall asleep.

   “Growth does not happen in time in a spiritual sense. Growth happens in truth.”

   • Matthew 7:7
   • Romans 8:28
   • 1 Samuel 16:4
   • Luke 4:18

5. Psalm 1: the slow decay and the seat of the scoffers

   The blessed man does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, which includes 'poisonous believers' without God at the forefront of their minds. Continual sin brings a slow decay like black mould in the corner of a wall, leading to compromise and finally a backslidden state; nobody backslides in a day. Do not sit with those who ridicule men of God: run. The one who delights in the law of the Lord is like a tree planted by streams of water, whose leaf does not wither.

   Illustration: Treat a scoffing conversation like the viral video where a man throws his bag into the lift, the music says run, and everyone scatters. The youths who mocked Elisha's bald head were mauled by two bears.

   “A person never decides one day, I'm just tired of following God. There's a decay over a period of time.”

   • Psalm 1:1-3
   • James 1:19
   • 2 Kings 2:23-24
   • Malachi 3:11

6. Consecration costs: take responsibility for your home

   Consecration means there are things you no longer watch, read or listen to and relationships you do not keep. If you do not like how your children behave, look in the mirror first. Greatness is taking absolute responsibility for your own life: be the Proverbs 31 woman rather than waiting to be treated like one, and take out the trash and cut the grass before demanding respect. The man sets the spiritual temperature of the home by his prayer and his words. A good marriage is built on your knees, both spouses leave their parents, and you should fix your own marriage rather than criticise another's.

   Illustration: When the children wake up, do they hear their father praying, or Earth, Wind and Fire, or Tupac, depending on the year he was born?

   “Man of God, you set the temperature in your house.”

   • Proverbs 31
   • Genesis 2:24
   • Jeremiah 29:11

7. Called to far more than this

   A man on a mission chooses a woman to match the mission, and a woman likewise. Our lives are not our own; we give ourselves away to God's purposes. Easter is not about the pickled fish but about what conversation the family has together. Bring every need to God with thanksgiving, and before Good Friday ask who you are inviting and who you need to apologise to so that they come back to the house of the Lord.

   Illustration: He leads the church in the worship song My life is not my own.

   “We are doing them a disservice and a dishonor by not living the life that they sacrificed for.”

   • Philippians 4:6-7

In this message