SERMON: “Discipling Our Children in Love” (Deut. 6:4–9; Eph. 4:15–16)
“Discipling
Our Children in Love”
(Deut. 6:4–9; Eph. 4:15–16)
Series: “Together in Discipleship” #3 Text: Deut. 6:4–9;
Eph. 6:1–4
By: Shaun Marksbury Date: August
10, 2025
Venue: Living Water Baptist Church Occasion: AM Service
I.
Introduction
Over the past two weeks, we’ve seen a vision of a church
that practices discipleship together. That’s
because we don’t want simply a top-down view of discipleship but to recognize
that God has gifted each one of us.
We’re at differing levels, meaning that what God has taught you so far
could be used to help others. We should
seek to bear each other’s burdens in some way, sowing to the Spirit through
care that builds us up as Christ’s body. We saw that discipleship is something that we
can all participate in where we are.
Now, as we’ve thought through this together, we’ve probably
had adults mainly in mind. Today, though,
we turn to another vital part of our family: our children. They are here and have their own set of
needs, including the need for spiritual care.
How should the church think about that?
Even if you don’t have children or grandchildren in this
church, this is an important issue for you. Think about how a child singing a hymn,
reading Scripture, or praying during worship contributes to Christ’s
kingdom. Now, consider how you might
respond when you see kids wiggle, whisper, or wail, and how some parents might
feel overwhelmed — there may be a way you can help with this, too.
There are essentially two approaches that churches take toward
children. The first is more common in
church history but rarer today: a hands-off method that places childcare in the
service entirely on parents. The second
is more recent: a take-on method that provides childcare which relieves parents
of any responsibilities in church, meaning that there is a children’s church
and youth group separate from the main service.
The instinct is to advocate hard for one approach or the other.
We need to recognize the weaknesses in the modern
approach. In American Evangelical
churches, student programs have been failing in general. Whole books are dedicated to the subject,
like Already Gone: Why Your Kids Will Quit Church and What You Can Do to
Stop It by Ken Ham and Britt Beemer.
According to various sources, anywhere between 7 to 9 out of 10 kids
active in youth groups drop out of church by their sophomore year in
college. This isn’t just because of
secularist college professors attacking the faith; young people decide to give
up on God years beforehand —some as early as elementary school. With a near 90% attrition rate, it seems safe
to say that these ministries have dropped the ball.
What’s the cause of the problem? To paint with a broad brush, we’ve been
giving children games and coloring sheets, and youth receive gross-out games,
poorly imitated pop-music, and therapy circles.
They then go to school on Monday and learn about mathematics and history
and science, which seems serious in comparison to the trivial. Now, that broad brush doesn’t include
churches with good children’s and youth ministries, like our own, but the
numbers show that the good are not counterbalancing the bad.
One of the issues is that kids can grow up in church without
ever integrating into it. Their parents
drop them off in the nursery when their younger, then to children’s church, and
then to youth, meaning that a child can attend a church for eighteen years
without ever attending “big church.”
When they graduate, they feel like they’ve left church behind, because
the adult services are for the “old” people.
They’ve been trained in looking for something in their own age bracket.
What’s the answer? Pragmatically-minded
churches are focused on getting people in the doors through anything attractional,
such as music, games, food, and feelings-oriented teaching. While one would think that they would stop
and question their lack of success in retention, they simply apply the same
philosophy to the main church services; they attempt to attracting back the
youth aging out by building entertainment-driven adult services with
lights, popular music, and shorter preaching.
We’re seeing, as Thomas Bergler wrote, The Juvenilization of American
Christianity. This is obviously a
step in the wrong direction.
Others might suggest doing away with all ministry geared
toward children and youth, but that’s an overcorrection. While there is wisdom in having
family-integrated services, that doesn’t mean we must do away with
everything. While we don’t have to do
so, our church has offered Sunday School before the main service that focuses
on teaching biblical narratives, and AWANA in the evening that focuses on
memorization and understanding the application of Scripture. I’ve been pleased with what I’ve seen, and we
don’t require anyone to utilize these resources if they don’t want to do so.
What about the worship service, though? Our church has offered what many churches
have: a children’s church ministry. I
don’t know if everyone thinks through the strain that can put on teachers, and
it does remove children from services. While
the children’s church program has also been Bible based, we should consider
whether we are doing discipleship together correctly on this point.
As a church, we should want even our children to grow as
disciples together with us. We don’t
want to be like the foolish disciples who were forbidding the children to come
Jesus! Now, this means more than sitting
quietly; our kids should know that they are part of the larger congregation,
and that means participation in the corporate worship service.
Yet, should we do away with it? Some families are used to it, while others new
to worshiping together might have kids who struggle in the main service. So, I suggest we instead revamp it; let’s use
it to help train our kids to join us in corporate worship.
Why is it so important that children be in worship? We’re looking at what the Bible has to say
about children in worship this morning so we can be on the same page about
this. Both Deuteronomy and Ephesians
show us how parents and the church together disciple children in love, teaching
them to love God and worship with us. Our
care groups will support this, helping families and fostering patience as kids
learn. Let’s dive into these passages to
see how we grow our children as Christ’s disciples.
II.
First, Parents are to Teach Children (Deut.
6:4–9)
“Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your
heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today,
shall be on your heart. You shall teach
them diligently to your sons 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 up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and
they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your
house and on your gates.”
This passage is called the Shema, from the Hebrew words for
“hear” or “listen.” It’s at the core of Israel’s
confession of faith. Moses addresses
God’s people as they prepare to enter the Promised Land, and he tells them
about God’s uniqueness and covenant relationship with Israel when he declares,
“The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!” In v. 5, he commands, “You shall love the Lord
your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” He then urges them to pass their faith to the
next generation.
The primary point of consideration for us this morning is
the generational language of the text.
It is “so that you and your son and your grandson might fear the LORD”
(v. 2); “that you may multiply greatly” (v. 3); “teach … your sons” (v. 7). Jesus calls the Shema the greatest
commandment (Matt. 22:37–38), the foundation for all discipleship.
When God would bless His people with children, He called
parents to take the responsibility of them.
Again, in vv. 6–7, we read, “These words, which I am commanding you
today, shall be on your heart. You shall
teach them diligently to your sons 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
up.” It shouldn’t be controversial to
say, but Scripture presents children as the responsibility of the parents.
Yet, it’s precisely here that we wade into controversy — delivering
children to a children’s and youth ministry is not fulfilling that task. It may be the common sight in any given
church — families go different directions in the church lobby, not to meet
again until it’s time for lunch. That
approach also isn’t very supportive of our teachers, who often need parental
input and involvement. Yet, it’s also
common for parents to assume that fulfills their spiritual duty for the week,
and they are wrong.
The church simply can’t take this responsibility on itself,
nor is it commanded to do so. A Bible
teacher can’t be with young people when they sit at home and when they walk by
the way and when they lie down and when they rise. If your child is in public school, getting
14,000 hours of secular indoctrination by the time they graduate, a
thirty-minute Veggie Tales video and a juice box on Sunday mornings isn’t enough. Only parents can provide the discipline,
instruction, and admonishment Scripture commands.
Parents can even counteract the work of these ministries by
living inconsistent lives at home. Yet,
when you pray at dinner, read a Bible story at bedtime, or talk about God on a
walk, you’re sharpening your kids’ faith. It’s not just Sunday School or AWANA’s job — these
are tools, but they don’t replace your role.
Parents aren’t in
it alone, though (which is why we’re considering this as part of our
discipleship series). Some well-meaning
people may go beyond Scripture and say any gathering that doesn’t involve
father and family in wrong. There’s at
least one example when infants were possibly excluded from a public gathering
(note “all who could understand” in Neh. 8:2).
There would also be times when women were not present (Lev.
15:19–24). So, we must not
conclude that every member of each family must be present at any
gathering, forbidding Sunday School and the like.
Still, we must understand
all of this with an active Titus 2 focus, with the older teaching the younger. There are parents getting started spiritually
later down the line, and they need counsel and advice. Sometimes, it’s a parent or even a guardian
going it alone, and the environment isn’t yet in place. There are ways we can understand this
together as a church.
III.
Second, the Church is to Help (Ephesians 4:15–16)
“but speaking the
truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even
Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every
joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes
the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.”
We’ve already begun considering Ephesians 4:15–16. But let’s consider this in context of the
family. Paul moves on into the household
codes in the next chapter (5:22–6:9), bringing every area of life under
Christ’s lordship. Within that
framework, he addresses children directly in 6:1–3: “Children, obey your
parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor
your father and mother (which is the first commandment with a promise), so that
it may be well with you, and that you may live long on the earth.” When the church gathered, the children were
receiving instruction right alongside parents!
Incidentally, this isn’t odd in the Bible: children are
often alongside parents in worship. This
starts with Moses. You might recall when
Pharaoh asked Moses who was going to worship the Lord (Exod. 10:8), and Moses
replies, “We shall go with our young and our old; with our sons and our
daughters” (v. 9). Later, with his first
giving of the Ten Commandments, he includes the children in the warning against
idolatry (20:4–5) and expects that they were also to participate in Sabbath
observance (vv. 8–10). In fact, what we
read in Ephesians 6:1–3 comes from Moses’s command that children honor their
parents (v. 12), meaning that they were present during this giving of the Law,
as well. On his last day, he commands,
“Assemble the people, the men and the women and children and the alien who is
in your town, so that they may hear and learn and fear the LORD your God, and
be careful to observe all the words of this law” (Deut. 31:12).
This pattern continues into the rest of the Old
Testament. In Joshua 8:34, the reading
of the Law included children. Later, a
national fast under King Jehoshaphat included infants and children (2 Chr.
20:3, 13). After reconstruction of the
temple, when the people reconciled to God, we read that there was “a very large
assembly, men, women and children” (Ezra 10:1).
During the dedication of the wall, we read “God had given them great
joy, even the women and children rejoiced, so that the joy of Jerusalem was
heard from afar” (Neh 12:43).
It's a shame that some churches don’t want children present
for worship. Of course, the disciples
certainly didn’t model it well in Mark 10:10–12. They arrived in a home after Jesus had been
teaching and they were seeking more instruction from Christ (a good plan!). Meanwhile, parents began bringing their
children to the door, hoping to see Jesus.
However, the disciples were rebuking them (v. 13), almost as though they
were saying the adults are talking — keep those noisy brats outside! Jesus said, “Permit the children to come to
Me; do not hinder them; for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” Not only does Jesus command them to permit
the children to come, He holds the children up the image of the kingdom, not
the pride-filled disciples. This shames
our modern church culture.
Children were present in Ephesus when Paul’s letter was
read, as well. He doesn’t stop there, of
course. In 6:4, he then writes, “Fathers,
do not provoke your children to anger.” “Fathers”
likely includes both parents, though it emphasizes paternal leadership. The phrase “provoke to anger” warns against
harshness, neglect, or unreasonable demands that frustrate children. Paul adds in Colossians 3:21, “lest they
become discouraged.” So, right after
children heard that they need to honor their parents, they heard that their
parents need to become people worthy of honoring.
Paul also says in Ephesians 6:4 that parents should “bring
them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” This means to both providing nurturing, correction,
and teaching in the Lord. New convert as
well as seasoned Christian parents can learn how to do this in the context of
the local church, both from the preaching of God’s Word and the encouragement
of the saints, where the body builds itself in love.
Again, this is the ideal, but some need help getting
there. This is where children’s church can
provide a helping hand, especially for families new to worshiping together or
with kids who struggle in the main service. It’s not mandatory — many of you do great
discipling at home. But for those who
haven’t seen family-integrated worship modeled, children’s church offers
age-appropriate teaching while preparing kids to join us in the sanctuary. Imagine a child learning to pray in children’s
church, then joining us to pray here. That’s
discipleship. Care groups will also support
you — leaders can pray for your family or share resources to teach kids God’s
Word.
We can all help. We’re
Christ’s body, called to nurture our children in the Lord. That means being patient when a child fidgets
or cries during worship. Instead of a
frown, offer a smile or a helping hand.
So, how would children’s church also help? If we offer it as a substitute for the main
service, we would be breaking the biblical pattern. If we offer it at all, it must be a means of
helping kids to learn worship habits with the goal of having them join us. We want them to see the adults singing hymns
and praying with us, understanding that they are growing into something
significant as disciples. If not every
family needs children’s church, that’s great, but it’s there for those
transitioning or needing extra support.
This aligns with Galatians 6:1–10’s call to bear burdens and
do good to the household of faith. That’s
what we can do with children’s church.
It would be for those who need it.
It would be arranged like a small service — it would have time for a
hymn or two, a prayer, and a short message.
We would also have packages for the two or three times a month the
children would be together in service.
The goal would be to transition kids into the service time; picture a
child moving from children’s church to the sanctuary, joining us in “Amazing
Grace” and answering questions about the sermon!
But it takes patience. This model means we’re going to have children
in here more often moving forward, and kids can be distractions and disruptions. So, this is a chance for you to sow to the
Spirit (Galatians 6:8). Offer to sit
with a struggling parent, like a care group member might. Our care groups will strengthen this — leaders
will check on families, pray for parents, and connect them to resources like
AWANA materials or Sunday School lessons. We’re also equipping volunteers for children’s
ministry, teaching kids to love God’s Word and worship with us. Let’s commit to discipling our kids in love —
parents teaching at home, the church nurturing together.
IV.
Conclusion
We are called to disciple our children in love. This means parents teaching diligently, but
also the church nurturing patiently. Our
Sunday School, AWANA, and children’s church can be tools equip kids, but our
goal is to see them worship with us, growing as Christ’s disciples. Care groups will also support this, ensuring
every family is cared for and every child is included in our body.
Parents, don’t let the problems of the moment distract you
from this long-term goal. You may be
worried that, without an ongoing children’s church program, your fussy child
may only make it fifteen minutes into the sermon. Who knows what investment was earned in that
time? Don’t feel shame if you must step
out with your fussy child. Maybe next
week, he can make it sixteen
minutes. Maybe in a year, he will be
able to sit through the entire service — what a thought! And you’ll be surprised what he picks up as
he’s scribbling on a piece of paper with a crayon. Don’t give into that temptation to give up
and go to a church where you can hand your child over to a children’s worker
for an hour of peace and quiet.
I think the rest of us can help with this. Yes, kids will be distracting, but avoid the
temptation to respond with angry glances; give parents an encouraging
word. Let the kids know that you’re
happy they’re sitting here with us and that you are praying for them. I think everyone here is already good at
this, and I’m thankful for the love I’ve already seen. We already have someone who occasionally
even takes some kids out to lunch. We
have adults encouraging our kids to be in the Word and reading it for
themselves. We’re working toward these
long-term goals together, knowing that in 10, 20, or 30 years down the road,
we’ll be passing the spiritual baton to them.