Sunday sermon review - Discipling God-Worshipers

Deuteronomy 6:4-7

“4Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.“

Quite frankly I never gave much thought to these verses until God gave me a son. I knew the Great Shema from verse 4 and that the Great Commandment was in verse 5, but verses 6 and 7 never really entered the realm of conscious thought.

However, now that I have a son, these verses take on a special significance for me. It is MY job to teach my son the commands of God. Whether sitting around the house or driving in the car, when we wake up and when we lie down, I am to teach him about our LORD.

Wow. That is going to take some work! Right now, our favorite thing to do in our house is play with our tractors and trains and read books about tractors and trains. When riding in the car we like to watch Nemo on the DVD player. As soon as we wake up it is play time. On the way to bed there IS always a story read… but only sometimes is it a story about Jesus.

I have a lot of work to do.

But then I ask myself, “What do I want my son to be when he grows up?” I don’t mean his profession, what he will do to earn a living. I mean what do I want him to BE? I want his to be a godly man who faithfully directs his family to Christ. Then it hits me… If that is what I want him to be two things need to happen: I need to train him to do that AND that means I have to be that kind of man myself.

So, I am making the commitment to the LORD to teach his commands diligently to me son. It will take work and sacrifice, but the work is not the difficult. It is the same effort I would invest in him anyway. The difference is what I invest in him. Instead of spending all of our time playing together, I will spend our time talking about our LORD from his word. As we eat dinner together, we will talk about God’s work and his glory instead of just staring at the horses in the neighbors yard.

There is too much at stake in my son’s life for me not to take the initiative in his discipleship. It is not the church’s responsibility to teach my son the LROD’s commands, and it certainly is not the public school’s responsibility to teach him! It is my job and my wife’s job to teach him.

By God’s grace we are going to teach him.