The following message by Paul Washer was given
at the National Center for Family Integrated Church's
2010 conference, Love the Church.
This message is one of 35 available in
the conference album found at ncfic.org.
Please welcome Paul Washer on the subject, Reforming
Modern Youth Evangelism and Discipleship.
Father, I pray that you would take this
time, help us Lord, to get to the
important truths, to teach about evangelism, discipleship of
youth.
In Jesus' name, Amen.
One of the first things that we need
to look at is there is a problem
in the title.
There is.
The evangelism and discipleship of youth, that in
itself presents a problem.
Someone asked me years ago, how do you
preach the gospel to the Aguaduna tribe?
And I said, I don't preach the gospel
to the primitive Aguaduna tribe.
I preach the gospel to men.
Anytime we pull out and segregate a certain
type of person or certain people group as
though they needed to be treated differently with
regard to the gospel, already we're starting to
get into dangerous water.
Do you understand what I'm saying?
We've come to the point where there's this
type of gospel for this person, this way
of doing ministry for this person.
And I'm sorry, you're outside of the sufficiency
of Scripture when you start saying those things.
We do not see all this segregation and
specialization in ministry.
We simply do not.
So we need to be very, very careful.
Now, I want to go through just a
few things.
When you talk about reforming youth evangelism, the
first thing you've got to look at is
do you have the true gospel?
What is being preached today in America?
We say that Americans are gospel-hardened.
All people are gospel-hardened, but that's not
the problem.
Americans are gospel-ignorant because many of those
preaching the gospel are ignorant.
We've taken the gospel of Jesus Christ, reduced
it down to four spiritual laws or five
things God wants you to know.
And if someone says yes at the end
of all our questions and pray a prayer
after us, we declare them saved.
Because of that, the church, the entire evangelical
community in the United States of America is
populated with Christians who are not Christians.
With lost people.
So the first thing, you have to get
the gospel right.
If you've ever shared the gospel and you've
never thought about this, you probably have not
shared the gospel.
The greatest problem in all the Scriptures is
this.
If God is just, He cannot forgive you.
The greatest theological, philosophical problem in all the
Bible is this.
How can God forgive?
If God's good and God is just, He
cannot forgive any more than a judge can
be presented with a murderer, proven murderer, and
simply say, I forgive you.
Go on.
That presents tremendous ethical problems.
Tremendous ethical problems when you say God forgives
the sinner.
If you say God casts all sinners into
hell to abide under His eternal wrath, there's
no philosophical problem.
It's exactly what they deserve.
It's what justice demands.
The problem occurs when God forgives a man.
How can He do that and still be
just?
There's only one way.
That God becomes a man, lives a perfect
life as the God-man.
He goes to that tree.
On that tree, the sins of His people
were imputed to Him.
And on that cross, our sins were not
only imputed to Christ, but Christ was treated
before the judgment bar of God as we
ought to be treated.
For this reason, He cried out, My God,
My God, why have You forsaken Me?
God forsook Him and the Son of God
was crushed under the wrath of His Father.
Because only in that way could the demands
of justice be satisfied.
And therefore, the wrath of God appeased and
make it just for God to be, well,
make it this.
God is now just and the justifier of
wicked men.
If you've never shared that or heard that,
you know very little about the Gospel.
So when we talk about youth evangelism and
discipleship, the great problem today is we don't
know what the Gospel is.
Please understand me.
I'm not just speaking clichés or being extravagant
with my words.
This is true.
Someone asked me about discipleship today.
Well, discipleship exploded on the scene in the
early 70s.
Why?
Because had all these people getting saved and
yet continued to live ungodly lives.
And so the idea was, how do we
get Christians to live like Christians?
Well, the problem is we're not discipling them.
No, that wasn't the problem.
The problem was not the lack of discipleship.
The problem is they weren't converted.
And so you bring in all this discipleship,
and what you're trying to do is train
a bunch of goats to act like sheep,
and it doesn't work.
You get someone saved, you turn them into
a sheep, supernaturally they act like a sheep.
Now, we need to do discipleship, we need
Bible training and everything else, but the big
problem is we don't understand the Gospel, and
we know very little about conversion.
So many people today, if you walked up
to them and you said, are you saved?
Yes, I am.
How do you know?
Once in my...
I prayed a prayer and asked Jesus to
come in.
They are trusting in their decision.
They're not looking unto Jesus.
They're trusting in something they did.
They're not laying upon the promises of God.
And so the great problem, starting out, is
getting the Gospel right.
And I could just speak on that the
whole time, but I'm sorry, I have to
go on.
Go to the HeartCry website, we have a
whole section on the Gospel.
About what does it mean for Christ to
have suffered the wrath of Almighty God in
our stead?
To be crushed, for it says, and it
pleased the Lord, Yahweh, to crush Him, so
that God might be just, and yet the
justifier of wicked men.
Let me just go back to that for
a second, I don't want to leave it
off.
In Proverbs, you know what it says.
He who justifies the wicked is an abomination
to the Lord.
And yet Romans 3 tells us God justified
the wicked.
So how can God justify the wicked without
becoming an abomination?
Because He bore the iniquity of the wicked,
satisfied His own justice, and appeased His wrath
and made it possible.
That's the Gospel.
Now, when we preach the Gospel, another problem
with youth evangelism and discipleship is the call
to salvation.
Do you want to pray in prayer and
ask Jesus to come into your life?
Find that for me anywhere in the Bible,
and I will pay you a lot of
money.
Find it.
It's not there.
It does not say this in Mark 1,
verses 14 and 15.
It doesn't say that Jesus comes to Israel
and He says, The time is fulfilled, the
Kingdom of God is at hand.
Now, who would like to ask Me into
their heart?
That's not what it says.
The time is fulfilled, the Kingdom of God
is at hand.
Repent and believe the Gospel.
Turn from your sin and cast yourself upon
Christ.
And so it's a call to repentance and
faith.
And that's a very difficult thing, because if
you run somebody through the typical evangelistic questions,
and then close the deal, it's so easy
to close the deal.
All you have to say is this, Would
you like to pray and ask Jesus to
come into your heart?
Because He will come in, because He promised
that He's standing at the door and knocking,
and whoever will open up the door, He'll
come in.
So if you ask Him right now, sincerely,
He'll come in.
Do you want to do that?
Yes.
So the person asks Jesus to come in,
and when the person's finished praying, the preacher
asks them, Did Jesus come in?
And the person says, Well, I'm not really
sure.
And then the preacher says, Of course He
did.
If He didn't come in, He's a liar,
because He promised to come in.
It's not an exaggeration.
Many of you have heard this, and many
of you have preached it.
The problem is, Jesus isn't knocking at the
door of the sinner's heart in Revelation 3
.20. He's knocking on the door of the
church.
And you need to be very careful that
you don't take Scripture out of context.
The evangelical witness in the New Testament is
this, If you've heard the Gospel message, God
calls all men everywhere now to repent, to
turn from their sins and believe the Gospel.
In the old days, if you look at
all the old books that were written, it
is phenomenal how many of them were written
on the content of the Gospel.
What is the Gospel?
How many of them were written on true
conversion and identifying and understanding repentance and faith
and helping sinners work through the Scriptures to
have assurance of salvation?
You won't find anything like that in a
modern Christian bookstore.
Why?
Because we've reduced it all down to a
track.
So after sharing the Gospel with someone, I
say, Now God commands you to repent, to
repent of your sins.
And they say, Well, what does that mean?
I say, It means to change your mind.
Now, right now you're thinking, Oh, it's got
to mean more than that.
That sounds too superficial.
You don't understand mind.
Mind and heart refers to the very core,
the very essence of everything you are.
Your will, your emotions, affections, everything.
You want a perfect example of repentance?
I'll give it to you.
The Apostle Paul, he leaves for Damascus and
he believes that Jesus Christ is a false
prophet and a blasphemer and still dead, and
he believes every Christian on the face of
the earth at best ought to be imprisoned,
at worst ought to be killed because they
are a blasphemous cult.
That's what he thought in his mind.
On the road to Damascus, he is confronted
with Jesus Christ.
Now, do you want to know why he
stayed three days without eating and drinking?
I'll tell you why.
His entire reality was totally and completely disintegrated.
Everything he fought with his mind was wrong.
And he came to find out everything he
was against was right.
Everything he believed about Jesus was wrong.
Everything he believed about the people of God,
wrong.
And he sat there.
Why?
It'd be the same as if you went
out on your porch tomorrow morning, you woke
up and you found the whole sky totally
filled with UFOs and aliens going everywhere.
Your whole view of reality is shattered.
If you turned on the faucet and the
water ran up instead of down.
The sky was green and the grass was
blue.
Everything.
You see, that's what I mean.
Change your mind.
That's not a superficial thing.
Your literal view of reality is dissolved, disintegrated,
obliviated, and a new reality takes its place.
And you say, here's something you need to
understand.
That old cliche about you got it in
your head but you don't have it in
your heart?
I don't believe that.
You don't have it in your head or
your heart.
Because if you have grasped with your mind
that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the
world, the only way to God, that He
is everything that everything was ever made for,
that thinking is going to change the entire
course of your practical living.
Repentance and faith.
Faith is throwing off all regard in every
confidence except Christ alone.
Faith is you embracing the Christian life, Christ
alone, having someone come up to you and
say, you are such a good person.
If there's anybody going to heaven, it's going
to be you.
And when you hear that, you are so
nauseous that you throw up.
And you cry out, away from me to
God, to God alone be the glory.
Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved
a wretch like me.
I have nothing but Christ alone.
I want nothing but Christ alone.
It's faith in Jesus Christ.
We also have to understand some other things
that are very, very important.
And that is a biblical understanding of assurance.
And we're going to talk a little bit
about that tonight.
Now what do I mean?
Most people today, most young people are disturbed
about the condition of their heart.
So what do they do?
They go to the pastor and they say,
I don't know if I'm saved.
A lot of pastors, most pastors, this is
what they'll say.
Well, let me ask you, was there a
point in time in your life when you
prayed and asked Jesus to come in?
And they'll go, well, yes.
Well, were you sincere?
Well, I think so.
Well, then this is just the devil bothering
you.
You're saved.
That's a damnable heresy that just came out
of that preacher's mouth.
It's not true.
Show me in the New Testament where someone
is dealt with that way.
Paul comes to the church in Corinth.
And there are some wayward things going on
in Corinth.
And please, please understand me, Corinth is not
the model church that we're to look back
on in order to justify carnality.
That's not why the letter was written.
He doesn't come to them and say, let
me ask you guys, when you prayed and
asked Jesus to come into your heart, were
you sincere?
That's not what he says.
He goes to them and he says this,
I'm afraid.
And then he says, test yourselves, examine yourselves
to see whether or not you are in
the faith.
Isn't that amazing?
How are they to test themselves?
Not by other Christians, because he said that
it wasn't wise when people compared themselves by
themselves.
How are you to test yourself?
In light of Scripture.
Let me give you a forgotten book, 1
John.
The purpose of it, it's a series of
tests and I'm going to teach on that
tonight.
1 John is a series of tests that
all the old churchmen used.
And you look at that, the purpose for
which it was written, these things I have
written unto you, believe in the name of
the Son of God, that you may know
that you have eternal life.
The purpose of that book is to compare
your life to that book, to what that
book says a Christian is, to determine whether
or not you've been born again.
Is that done today?
No, it's not done.
Let me go back to another thing that's
very important that I don't want to overlook.
When someone has repented of their sins, they
come to me and they'll say, I need
to be saved.
And I'll say, well, let's look at repentance.
I explain to them what repentance is, but
more than that, I ask them this, have
you heard the Gospel?
Yes.
Well now, this is repentance.
Is it a reality in your life?
Is this happening in your life?
Do you see now that you are wrong?
Yes, brother Paul.
Do you see your sin?
Do you see God's righteousness?
Not only that, but have your affections changed
a bit since you've heard this Gospel?
The sin that you once boasted of, are
you now ashamed of?
The sin that you once loved, are you
seeing how wrong and disgusting it is?
Yes, brother Paul, I see bits of that
and parts of that.
I understand what you're saying.
Good, those are the first fruits of repentance.
Now you lack one thing, believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, a lot of evangelists just close the
deal right there.
Again, they go back to pray the prayer
with me and it's all done.
I can't do that.
Because you see, they're saved by believing promises.
So I look at them and say, faith
is believing the promises of God.
Do you believe them?
Do you have assurance that He has saved
you?
No, not really.
I mean, I understand the Gospel message, but
no, there's not that assurance you're talking about.
Well then, let's go through the promises.
It may go for hours.
It may go for days.
It may go for weeks.
It may go for months that I'll be
ministering to this person with regard to the
promises of God.
I'll give you an example, a perfect example.
I've used it a million times.
Maybe you've heard it.
I was up preaching just south of Alaska.
Got up in the pulpit and this huge
man walked through the door.
Saddest human being I've ever seen.
I preached the Gospel.
He sat there and looked at me the
whole time.
After we were done, I went down to
him.
I said, sir, what is wrong with you?
You're the saddest human being I've ever met
in my life.
And he pulled out a manila envelope and
had an x-ray on it.
And he said, I'm going to die in
three weeks.
I've lived out on a working cattle ranch
all my life.
You can only get there by bush plane
or floating down a river.
He says, I've never been afraid of anything
in my life, but I'm afraid now.
I'm going to die.
I believe there's a God.
I've never been to a church.
I've never had a Bible, but someone one
time told me about some man named Jesus.
But I don't understand what that means.
And so I said, did you hear the
message?
He said, I heard it.
I said, did you understand it?
He said, yes, I did.
But is that it?
For most people, they would have said yes,
that's it.
Welcome to the family of God.
I said, sir, are you believing this?
Can you trust in it?
Can you step off into eternity with what
you have?
No.
I said, do you see your sin?
He was obviously broken over his sin.
There was the beginnings of repentance.
I said, but trust in Christ.
Throw yourself on Christ.
He just couldn't.
He could understand it, but there was nothing
there.
And so I said, sir, I'm to fly
out tomorrow.
You're going to die in three weeks.
I'll cancel my plane ticket.
We'll stay here for three weeks until either
you have assurance of salvation or you die
and go to hell.
And that night we began.
And fortunately, it only lasted that night.
A couple hours into the matter, we were
going through promise after promise.
Not me manipulating him into a decision or
coaxing him into believing that if he prayed
some sinner's prayer, it would automatically introduce him
into heaven.
It's faith.
We went through promise after promise, praying and
calling out on God and him searching the
Scriptures, seeing the promises, me opening the Scriptures
to him.
And then we got back and I said,
sir, let's look at John 3.16 again.
It's my favorite verse in the Bible.
Let's look at it.
He said, well, we've looked at it before.
I said, I know.
Let's pray and look at it again.
And we prayed.
I said, now just read the text.
He began to read it.
And he goes, I'll never forget those huge
hands of his.
My Bible was on his lap.
And he went, well, for God so loved
the world that He gave.
And then he went, oh no, oh no.
I'm saved.
All my sins are gone.
I have eternal life.
I'm going to heaven.
I said, sir, how do you know that?
He said, haven't you ever read this verse
before?
Do you see what's happening?
The Spirit of God.
The new birth.
And do you see what a blasphemous manner
in which evangelism is done today?
Oh, it's horrid.
So we must get that right.
Now, when someone makes a profession of faith,
a young person makes a profession of faith,
on a Sunday morning, I don't put my
arm around him and have him stand up
front and go, I just want everyone to
come around and welcome him to the family
of God.
I'm not going to do that.
What am I going to do?
I'm going to tell them, I'm going to
say, listen, just like I would with my
own children, listen, are you believing in Christ?
Yes, I am.
But the Scriptures say, if you are truly
believing in Christ, you have eternal life.
And I rejoice in that.
I'm not going to crush any spark in
him.
Praise God.
But because we love you and because we
recognize the value of your soul, we're going
to meet with you, explain to you the
way more thoroughly.
We're going to do this until you come
to a biblical assurance of your salvation.
And then I warn them, listen to me,
right now you're full of joy.
Many false converts are full of joy.
If you walk out of here today and
the providence of God begins to manifest itself
in your life and little by little, your
affections begin to change and you begin to
want to be more like Christ and to
know His Word, and little by little you're
growing, and when you fall into sin, it
kills you, it hurts you, and you want
out of it and you start all over
again.
If you're going through that, know that that
is a great evidence of your conversion.
But if you walk out of here today
and you stay the same as you have
or you fall back into sin, a waywardness
from Christ, you care not for the things
of God, you have no affection for Christ,
know this, you've got nothing here today.
Do you see that?
Now, a young person, let's say he's supposedly
converted when he's 9 years old, 10 years
old, seems to go to Sunday school and
everything else, seems like a good kid.
When he gets 16, he turns into a
rebel.
I mean, just a rebel.
What's done in evangelical Christianity today?
I'll tell you for the most part what's
done.
Someone walks up to him, a pastor, a
mom, a dad, and says this, you know,
Billy, you're a Christian, but you're not acting
like one.
And you need to act like a Christian
because you're bringing shame to the name of
Christ.
That is not the way you biblically address
that issue.
Not at all.
This is the way you address it.
Billy, several years ago, you made a profession
of faith in Christ.
You were even baptized in our church.
Made a public declaration of Christ.
And for a few years, you seemed to
walk and make some progress in the faith.
But you have turned from Christ.
You have turned from His Word.
You have turned from the people of God.
Billy, I need you to be afraid.
I need to warn you.
If you continue on in this path, it
is evidence that you were never truly converted,
that you have been reprobate from the very
beginning.
Make your calling and election sure.
Turn to Christ now.
Turn back to Him, giving proof that you
were truly regenerate, that you truly belonged to
Him.
Because if you continue on in this, know
this, He never knew you.
Do you see the difference?
It's the difference between Christianity and American evangelicalism.
It's the difference between dealing with a soul
properly, historically, or dealing with one according to
the contemporary whims of a godless culture that
exists within the so-called church.
And so that's the way in youth evangelism
and discipleship that we deal with people.
Now, I'm not going to be able to
get on to all the things that I
want to get on to, but I want
us to look at some things that are
very important.
First of all, in youth evangelism and discipleship,
we have a film here that Brother Vody
made, The Return of Daughters.
Somebody made it.
It was a great film.
Well, let's make this one.
A return of parents.
Putting parents back into the equation.
Now, just listen to this.
Ephesians 6.4 Fathers.
The Greek word pater, masculine fathers.
Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger,
but bring them up in the discipline and
instruction of the Lord.
The Old Testament is filled with this.
The entire book of Proverbs, Deuteronomy 4, Deuteronomy
6, it is all filled with this, that
the primary discipler in the life of a
child, in the life of a youth until
he leaves your home, is the father.
And if you're not doing that with your
children, actively and consistently, know that you are
in rebellion against your God.
Now, I'm not going to mix words.
I'm not going to say you need to
try to do better.
I want you to know it is gross
sin.
There is a sense in which you're breaking
covenant.
You are not doing what you're required to
do.
You have handed it off to someone else.
How dare you?
God never gave you that right.
The man, the husband, the father is the
primary discipler of wife and children.
It is what we are called to do,
men.
It is what we are called to do.
And there's no way around it.
And these pastors who do not have time
to disciple their own children consistently, and I
would call that four or five times a
week, they do not have time to do
that, I would say that they no longer
qualify as elders.
It is this serious.
You can't jump over commands.
You can't jump over qualifications.
This is not the job of the youth
minister.
It is not the job of the Sunday
school teacher.
And it is not the job of your
wife.
It is yours according to the Bible.
So there's the return of parents.
Secondly, the return of elders.
Now I want you to look at this.
Acts 20, 28.
Before I read that, let me read this.
Putting elders back into the equation, putting our
children under the oversight of godly, qualified elders
instead of turning them over to youth leaders
who are oftentimes immature and unqualified.
Do you realize you have stolen the elders
from your children?
In our fellowship in Radford, who teaches the
children, if any children are taught, elders.
I turn my child over to a 19
-year-old youth leader with mousse in his
hair that knows nothing about godly, manly maturity?
No way.
Or even a sincere little girl who wants
to teach Bible?
No.
It's not in Scripture.
There are elders.
And they are to be the ones principally
involved.
Listen to what it says.
Be on guard for yourselves and for all
the flock among which the Holy Spirit has
made you overseers to shepherd the church of
God which He purchased with His own blood.
Now I'm having to go fast because I've
got a lot of material to go through.
But I want you to listen to this.
Acts 20, 28.
Be on guard, the elders, for yourselves and
for all the flock.
Not the older people in the flock.
Not the young couples in the flock.
The elders are to be overseeing all the
flock.
And that includes the children.
But look what's done in most churches.
The elders delegate that.
It's completely over to someone else who may
be a person who didn't even want to
teach Sunday school, but they were coerced into
it because of the need.
And so the children sit around all day
long painting pictures of Noah.
Oh, my dear friend.
Children, I believe, and I grasp this from
Ephesians 6.3 when children are told to
honor their father and their mother.
Notice that Paul is writing the letter to
the church, but he doesn't say, parents, tell
your children that they should honor you.
He tells the children in the letter.
The letter was to be read in the
congregation.
Children sit and learn preaching.
You want to talk about discipleship?
Why do you want to jump everything that
God created and established to go to some
other means?
Are we more clever than God?
God gave us elders.
Part of an elder's duty is to care
for all the flock.
Now, I want you to listen.
This is the type of person that ought
to be teaching our children.
My covenant with Him was one of life
and peace, and I gave them to Him
as an object of reverence, so He revered
me and stood in awe of my name.
True instruction was in His mouth and unrighteousness
was not found on His lips.
He walked with me in peace and uprightness
and He turned many back from iniquity, for
the lips of a priest should preserve knowledge
and men should seek instruction from His mouth,
for He is the messenger of the Lord
of hosts.
Malachi 2, 5 and 7.
That's the type of man that ought to
be teaching our children if we're talking about
in the context of a church.
And in our church, they do that by
sitting there when the preacher's preaching.
We do about a five or ten minute
thing prior to the larger sermon in which
we go through.
We're going through the 1689 London Catechism and
we're teaching.
We direct that in a great manner to
our children even though we have found out
that the adults coming are going, man, I
like the way you teach in that sermon
because I can actually understand it.
But then the children sit in there under
preaching, under preaching.
My two young boys, nine and six, we
just finished making our way through Romans 9
and 10.
Did they get all of it?
Their father didn't get all of it.
But they got something, didn't they?
They got truth.
They had to deal with imputation.
They had to deal with sovereignty.
They had to hear from their dad, your
dad sits in the hand of a God
who can crush him.
But a God who is good and loving
and kind.
Your life is in His hand.
So we have a return of elders.
Now, here's another thing.
A return of biblical fellowship.
Allow the youth back into the fellowship of
the saints.
Novel idea.
Why don't we let them back in church?
Hebrews 10, 24, 25, And let us consider
how to stimulate one another to love and
good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together,
as is the habit of some, but encouraging
one another, and all the more as you
see the day drawing near.
This is a gathering together of God's people.
There's the oversight of elders and everything else
all working together in this congregation of mutual
edification.
And what you're going to do is take
the youth and put them in another building.
And you have separated them from God's fellowship.
It's just not right.
Now, here's a place for our men.
Men, we've got to do this.
This isn't a fad.
This isn't some new methodology.
This isn't some pragmatic thing that's going to
work in your family.
This is commandment.
This is wisdom from Scripture.
And I know that I look pretty mean
right now, but if you're not doing this,
you're a rebel.
And I'm going to call for repentance.
Now, Proverbs 13.20. Have any of you
read it?
Let's open our Bible.
I didn't even put it down in my
notes because I wanted to make sure we
went to our Bibles on this one.
13.20 He who walks with wise men
will be wise, but the companion of fools
will suffer harm.
That right there shows at least the great
majority of youth groups are totally and completely
against the wisdom of Scripture.
Because what is the youth group?
Where did it come from?
It came out of the generation gap.
What was that?
Was that biblical?
It was the idea that different stages of
development in the human condition required different things.
And that like group needed to be put
together.
Like individuals needed to be put together.
So, man, all the youth need to be
together.
Have you ever asked yourself this question?
Why?
No, you may be sitting there going, man,
I don't like this guy.
Why?
He who walks with the wise will be
wise.
What have we done?
We've taken the youth.
We've put them all together.
Where should the youth be?
The same place the children should be with
the adults.
There was a movie made several years ago
with Russell Crowe in it called Master and
Commander.
I always use this as an example.
In it, Lucky Jack Aubrey, the British commander
of a fleet, is fighting against the French
privateers and they get into a tremendous battle
at sea.
They lash the boats together and Jack Aubrey's
ship is going to make the final attack
on board the enemy ship.
So, a captain has to be called up
to lead the army into certain death, to
jump the gap between the two ships and
fight on sail, on mast, on pole until
the battles won or lost.
And something of a 14-year-old boy
is chosen to lead.
I submit to you, that 14-year-old
boy had more than our 35-year-old
men because of this doctrine of generation gap.
Because of this false idea based on an
evolutionary model of adolescence in which all these
little girls need to be grouped with little
girls.
Companions of fools are on the road to
destruction.
Little boys are supposed to be with little
boys and usually governed by women.
Young men are supposed to be with young
men.
There is nothing more devastating than to turn
loose a bunch of boys between 13 and
now I extend it into the early 20's
at least, into the 30's maybe.
There is nothing more devastating because they are
nothing more than a pack of fools, wild
beasts, running together, untaught, untrained, unconformed to Scripture,
never been taught in virtue, character or anything
serious about the Christian faith.
They could not lead a charge into an
enemy boat because their thumbs will be too
tired playing on their Xbox.
Or walking around malls like little girls used
to.
We have no men.
Because we send boys to be with boys,
we have no women.
Because we send girls to be with girls
and they remain immature, frivolous, foolish and on
the road to destruction.
And it is not, gentlemen, what young boys
want.
I'll never forget years ago when Ian was
about 4 years old, we were at a
park and I was out there on a
Wednesday or something.
I was the only man there.
There were other boys playing.
Ian was playing on the park.
He did some kind of flip in the
air and half broke his neck.
Jumped up and he goes, did you see
that, dad?
And I go, man, that was great.
That was...
Dude, you nailed that one.
Every little boy within the sounding of my
voice came running to me and said, look
at me, mister, I can do it too.
What did they want?
They wanted to be with a man and
they wanted to be confirmed by a man.
Those boys want to be men and they'll
never be men because men have left the
post.
They've left their post.
Our boys have soft hands.
What are we doing?
We don't turn them over to a youth
group, we don't turn them over to a...
No!
Fathers, get your sons.
They are your side armaments.
They walk with you.
They're your men.
And if you can't, if you live in
the middle of Los Angeles or whatever, buy
you camping gear, do stuff, buy a gun,
go kill something, do something manly!
Get those boys with you.
Do you know that boys who hunt and
fish with their fathers are 300% less
likely to get involved in alcohol and drugs
than those who participate in athletics?
Why?
Because still in athletics, don't think because you're
taking your son to football practice, you're participating
in his life.
No, you're just turning him over again to
somebody else.
You get that boy out there.
There isn't a lot of dangerous things to
do, but you get him out there in
a snowstorm trying to track a wounded deer.
You get him kayaking up a river.
You get him going with you.
You take him on Saturdays.
Start something.
Start building things.
Do stuff.
He wants to be a man!
And that little girl wants to be a
girl.
I cannot believe what happens when you really
get interested in a young man or a
young girl's life and bring them into the
community of the adults.
One time, my son Evan, we had been
taking him out bow hunting.
Ian was doing something else at the time.
We were just shooting bow in the backyard.
We had woods all behind us.
And he's sitting there.
He's like five years old.
He's got his bow.
And all of a sudden, I catch something
out of the corner of my eye.
It was a rabbit.
It jumped in.
And I go, Evan.
He goes, What?
It was a rabbit.
He looked over there.
He goes, Can I get him, Dad?
Can I get him?
And I said, Yeah.
I knew he was not going to hit
this rabbit.
So he pulls that bow back and he
takes a step towards that rabbit.
He looks back at me and he goes,
Meat's back on the menu, boys.
But here's the thing.
For the next two days, he walked around
the house like this.
He said, Mom, I'm going outside.
You stay here.
I'm going outside because, well, that's what men
do.
That's what they want.
And fathers, those daughters need you just as
much, if not more.
Just as much, if not more.
Don't turn them over to...
God gave them to you.
He gave them to you.
How many minutes?
I've already gone past my time, I guess,
haven't I?
Who's got the clock on?
I have ten minutes.
He gave them to you.
And it's so hard, because I hear homeschoolers
and they're lecturing on stuff and they live
on 40 acres in Kansas and the woman's
making pasta with her feet and everything, you
know?
And I'm like, yeah, but how do you
do this in inner city Chicago?
Because if it's what God wants, it's for
everybody.
All these people everywhere.
And I have to admit, I don't live
on a farm anymore.
We have to be inventive.
We have to find things that we can
do with our children and that is extremely
important.
And then Lou Priolo has a book called
Teaching Them Diligently.
I recommend that book because what he talks
about is teaching in the midst.
My boys and I, we meet together probably
about 40 minutes in the evening and go
through Scripture.
Right now, we're going through the book of
Romans.
Until they leave my house, they will go
through a section of Proverbs every day of
their life with their dad.
We do Scripture memory.
We do a lot of things.
We try to make it interesting.
We do a lot of stuff.
They need that.
But there's teaching in the midst.
And what that is is when you go
out of your house and when you come
into your house, when you rise up, when
you go down, everything is about God.
Everything is about His commandments.
And everything has significance.
Everything.
Oh dear brothers, brothers, get your children.
They're your disciples, not someone else's.
They are your disciples.
Please understand that.
Please.
It's going to be costly.
Some of you may get a job offer
that's paying twice as much and you're going
to simply have to turn it down.
Why?
Because it's not going to leave time for
you to be what you were called to
be, which is if you're married and you
have children, a husband and a father.
It's just going to cost.
But it is so wonderful.
It is so wonderful.
Now, let me skip through some of these
things.
I want to address an issue that is
very important.
I'm going to read a few things.
It has been a long-standing method to
use children and youth evangelism in order to
reach parents.
It's very, very common on the mission field
here, everywhere.
This is accomplished primarily by sending Christian children
and youth into the public arena to be
a light in what I'll consider to be
a great darkness.
Now, so far, I don't think anybody could
disagree with me on this issue.
Now, we homeschool our children and we are
not sending them out in the grade schools
or the high schools.
As adult Christians, we are not targeting the
children and youth in our neighborhoods through typical
youth ministry.
So the question is, how do we reach
out to non-Christian children with non-Christian
parents?
Because we need to talk about how to
disciple our own children, but if you stop
there, you have no idea what the Great
Commission is.
It's other people's children.
Okay?
So how do we do that?
We can't just cloister in our homes.
We just can't say, well, we've got our
family okay.
That's not what the Gospel is about.
So, again, here's the question.
How do we reach out to non-Christian
children with non-Christian parents?
Now, notice the order.
How do we reach non-Christian children in
order to reach non-Christian parents?
My answer.
I do not think that this is a
biblical question.
Now, why?
And I'm going to read again.
In the New Testament, I do not see
Christian children reaching out to non-Christian children
in order to reach their non-Christian parents.
This is what I see.
I see Christian parents reaching out to non
-Christian parents in order to reach both them
and their children.
That's what I see.
Now, another point.
These sub-points are very important.
We must have respect for God's order of
authority even in the unbelieving family.
Never go outside the father and mother's authority.
You go after somebody's child playing in the
neighborhood, and you go up and talk to
that child, begin doing things with that child
without the consent of their parents, I think
you have violated some serious biblical principles.
I was in Ireland last year preaching, and
this young man who had come from the
U.S., and I didn't think he was
very stable in his way of doing things,
but he was kind of tagging along.
And I came outside of the pastor's house,
and this man was sitting there, and he
had just taken it upon himself to gather
these children in this kind of project area
and start talking to them about Christ and
witness to Him.
All of a sudden, a lady flew out
of that house just angry.
She said, who gave you a right to
talk to my children about anything without my
permission?
Now, she was not a Christian by any
sort of shape of the word, but look
at what had happened there.
She was right.
Now, I want to say something.
We might not be wolves, but we need
to be careful that we do not use
the tactics of wolves.
Do you understand what I'm saying?
Be careful of going after someone else's children.
Be careful of sending your children to someone
else's children.
We need to evangelize, but we need to
look at the way it ought to be
done.
Now, I was out in California recently.
I was talking to this fellow from Asia,
and he mentioned something, and I'd like to
get it documented.
I haven't yet, but I'm going to try
to.
This is what he said.
As we all know, in South Korea, there
was a move of God, and probably the
denomination most affected by that move of God
was the Presbyterians.
Amazing growth.
This is what he told me.
It was his opinion.
The Presbyterian church is so strong in South
Korea for this reason.
When evangelism started decades and decades ago, almost
all the evangelical groups went to children to
do children evangelism, and they based their entire
ministry upon the children.
The Presbyterians, and understand this now, I'm Baptist,
the Presbyterians, what they did because of their
view of covenant and family, they went directly
to the male.
They went directly to the husband and the
father to do the evangelism.
I think that's maybe an important point to
think about.
Do you see though how important this is?
I want you to answer a few questions.
Do we send our children to do a
job we will not do?
Almost all the people that I talk to
that say, well, we're just sending our children
into this because we believe they ought to
be lights and all this.
I go, what are you sending yourself into?
How are you witnessing?
How are you seeking to be a light?
Another question.
Do we send unconverted children to be a
light to their school?
Come on, that's what's being said.
Do we send unconverted children to be a
light to their school?
Now how are they going to do that?
Now, here's another thing my wife brought up
last night.
If we study the casualties of war on
both sides of the fence, how many children
are won to the Lord by sending immature,
uninstructed, and often unconverted children to win them,
and how many children are lost in Christian
families because they have been sent?
Do you see what I'm saying?
But now here's something.
We're homeschoolers, a lot of us.
We don't need someone to coddle us.
We don't need someone to tell us everything
that's right about us because not everything's right
about us.
If you're going to be serious about protecting
your children, nurturing them, teaching them the Word,
until they're converted and they become soldiers of
Christ and they can go out and fight
the battles, if you're going to be serious
about that, you've got to dedicate your life
to their training.
Second of all, you can't wait 20 years
for them to repeat the same process because
still you haven't gone outside of your family.
We as men, once again, have to determine
how we as men are going to go
out and fight the battles.
How are we going to go out and
evangelize other men?
And this is the funny thing.
Almost all missionary movements, methodologies, evangelistic campaigns and
everything target women and children.
Is that not true?
Because it's more difficult to reach the men.
Maybe it's difficult because we men are not
being men and we're not rising up to
evangelize men.
We want to talk all day about manhood,
authority, headship and everything.
Then if there's a battle to fight, we're
the ones that need to lead it.
If there's evangelism to be done, we're the
ones that go out there.
We don't send our little daughters, our little
sons into a public school without even being
converted or instructed or anything else to be
a light to the community.
We are the light to the community.
And some of the best ways to do
that is this.
I know it's not going to sound very...
It's not like street preaching or anything, which
is a good thing, I do that.
But one of the greatest impacts you can
have on a family is to invite them
into your home.
You say, well, they might what?
You know the scariest thing for me, a
nightmare for me?
For me to walk into our church ten
years from now and everybody looks like a
homeschooler.
There's nobody there with tattoos running down the
side of their face or 14 earrings in
their nose.
That would break my heart.
I love the things I've learned about homeschooling
and everything else, but I came out of
that kind of mess because someone went into
that kind of mess and shared the Gospel
with me.
I want my children protected.
I'll tell you something.
I invite lost family into my home.
My children will be protected.
That's my house.
But I am not going to forsake the
world just to have my house clean.
Remember, where there are no oxen, the stall
is clean.
But you can't plow a field without oxen.
You can make your house pretty.
You can be Victorian in all that you
do and everything else, but if you're not
reaching out to the little girl that I
met on the plane a few weeks ago,
a young lady about 30 years old with
tattoos running down the side of her face,
down her neck and everything else with her
hair all cropped up really strange.
If you're not bumping into those kind of
people and pouring out your heart to them
and pleading with them to come to Christ,
then what is the goodness of all your
cleanliness?
We are to be a people reaching out.
Reaching out.
So men, Roy Hargrave said this one time.
Someone asked him a question.
Are you against evangelism?
He said yes and no.
He said, I'm against your kind of evangelism.
Unbiblical evangelism.
But no, I'm not against evangelism.
Men, if we're going to be serious about
our families, we have to think how are
we going to reach out.
If we're going to say that we're not
going to send our children into the battle,
we have to go into the battle.
And we need to figure out how to
do it.
We need to figure out how to do
it.
This is one of the problems with the
Reformation.
You have to work it out.
Once you get all these really good doctrines
and you set things up and build principles,
then you've got to ask yourself, how does
this really work in real life?
I know I've really hit hard, but hey,
I only had a few minutes and you're
men, you can take it.
Guys, I plead with you.
Find joy.
Find joy in pouring your life into your
children, into your sons and daughters.
Disciple them.
Wrestle with them.
Take them places.
Make them work with you if possible.
Oh, just bring them into you, into your
life, and pour your life into them, please.
I beg you.
Don't miss the joys of that.
One of the reasons I come here is
because, oh man, I just get so excited
when I see other men doing things with
their children, things I've never thought of.
I'm like a little boy.
I just run up to them and say,
okay, I just saw you do this.
Tell me about it.
Or you just said this in your sermon.
Okay, I want to know what...
Because I'm not an expert.
And that's why I come here, and I
hope that's why you've come here.
Do youth evangelism and discipleship.
Yes.
Do it in a biblical way.
Let's go to the Lord in prayer.
Father, I come before you, and I ask
you to use this, Lord.
Use this to bless your people and advance
your kingdom.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.
Paul Washer also discusses this topic in a
brand new, high-quality documentary entitled, Divided, which
follows the story of a young filmmaker searching
for answers to what has happened to his
generation in the church.
Additionally, for a comprehensive treatment and exegetical study
on the subject of reforming modern youth ministry,
read Scott Brown's latest book, A Weed in
the Church.
Both can be found at ncfic.org forward
slash store.
A Weed in the Church