Important First Steps for Our Children

Yeah, I feel that was very important for all our children to hear. The first step is like children going to school and learning A, B, C. And sometimes we can assume that they know it. And you know that in any school you cannot learn any subject before you have learned the alphabet, because you won't be able to read a single book.

And because they are born into a Christian home, we can assume that everything is okay. But yet the new birth is a, it actually happens in a particular time, when a person's born into the world, they're not born again. We are born with, I don't say the devil is in their heart, but self is in control.

And you can see that even in a two-year-old child, how stubbornness of self is there. And we have to teach them at the young age itself, the seriousness of sin. Now, for adults, there are many other things that are sin.

But what are some of the sins that children should be made aware of at their level? And they're not dealing with lust and theft and things like that. It's basically dishonesty, which we have to teach our children that to tell a lie or to deceive parents is a sin. And to give an impression that's wrong, to say, I didn't do that when they did it, or to say, he started fighting first.

We have to help them to see their own failure, particularly in the matter of being dishonest. I remember with my own children, the two things that I emphasized, as I've said before, is obedience to parents and telling the truth. I said, all the other things can wait.

But you must never disobey your parents or be disrespectful to parents. In fact, the Bible says, honor your father and mother. It's the first commandment that God himself, who knows all about children, has given.

He's wiser than us. And if that is the first commandment that he has given to children, honor your father and mother, which is by obedience and by always speaking respectfully. Now, they don't know that.

They don't read the Bible. They're two years old. What do they know? We have to teach them from the beginning.

It'll go well with you if you honor your parents. And then there's a, I think it's Psalm 58, which says that children are born, they tell lies as soon as they are born. So that's the other thing, which there's a deceptive spirit.

Just like there's a disobedient spirit in children, there's a deceptive spirit also in children, which we have to, it's Psalm 58, 3. They speak lies from the womb. It's translated in different ways in different translations, but they speak lies from the time they are born. And they can speak, they can tell lies even before they learn how to speak.

They can cry as if they're in pain. I mean, all they want is you want to pick you up, you want them, they want you to pick them up. That's all.

And when you pick them up, the pain is gone. It hasn't really gone. They've never had any pain.

That's the type of lies children start with. And every parent knows that. Lying is there, telling lies is there from childhood before they learn how to speak.

That's what it says there. And so we have to teach them to be truthful, respectful, and obedient to parents. If we start with that, we started with the things that God wants us to start with.

And then slowly, we can teach them what Jesus did, how it's not because we do bad things that we are bad, but because we were born with that. See, dad and mom had that nature too and gave it to you. We don't blame you.

You got it from us. But the parents can say, but God changed us. And he can change you.

And that can be at a very early age. I remember a missionary lady whom I knew in Bangalore. She was over 80 years old when we met her.

And she'd been a missionary in China and Japan. And she said, she was from Europe. She said when she was three years old, she accepted Christ.

I can really believe that. She was born again. And when she was five years old, she heard a missionary from China come to her country and preach about the people in China needing to hear the gospel.

And she got a call from God at the age of five to go to China. And when she grew up, she obeyed it. And she is one of the most godly women I met, who sacrificed tremendously, she and her husband.

And there I saw someone from experience saying they can get a call from God at the age of five. At what age did Samuel get a call from God when he was so young? So don't think that God can't speak to children. He can speak to children sometimes clearer than he can speak to adults.

Because it is not... You know, we think we need a lot of intelligence to be able to hear God. It's not true. Or we need to know the Bible before we can hear God.

No. 1,400 years, people never had a Bible. There was no printed Bible in the world.

How would they hear God? It's clarity of conscience. And very often, children have a much purer conscience than adults. We commit sin so early.

And the clearer and more innocent a child is, there's more possibility of hearing God. And Jesus picked up a little child once and said, Kingdom of God is like this. But because that nature is within our children, we have to tell them, you have to say no when your nature says to do something wrong, to say no.

And I've also felt that it's another thing I taught my children, if they hurt somebody, they must ask forgiveness. That's another thing that we must teach our children from a very young age, to ask forgiveness from their brothers and sisters, and especially from other people whom they play with. That even if the other person does something wrong, if you do something in return, you ask for forgiveness even if the other person doesn't.

And we must insist on that. And never wait for the other person to ask forgiveness. But you heard me say how I once took one of my sons to the neighbor's house to ask forgiveness from that boy.

They had a fight with each other. I don't know who started it. It didn't interest me.

But only four or five years old, I said, you're going to ask forgiveness. And of course, that boy didn't ask forgiveness in return. I said, it doesn't matter.

I told my son, I mean, he asked me, why didn't he ask me? I said, no, we're not here to make other people ask forgiveness. We have to do our part. And so if we do that, our children will grow up one day to do that throughout their life.

We have to keep emphasizing it. You know how when they study any subject like mathematics or something in school, one lesson is not enough. Why do they give homework? Why do they keep on practicing 30, 100 problems in a particular subject, a particular topic in math before they understand it? It's repetition.

And that's why some of these things that I'm saying, we have to repeat to our children again and again and again and again. It's only then that it goes right in. Another thing I find we have to teach our children is what we adults also need to learn is to be thankful.

These are little things that we can begin with. And the reason I say that is because Romans chapter 1 is the great chapter which talks about the terrible sins that man commits, that man falls into. There's a big list of all the terrible sins that man commits beginning in verse 29 all the way to 31.

It's quite a description of a list of sins. Romans 1, 29 to 31. Unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil, envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, gossiping, slandering.

Think of some of these things. Gossiping is listed with murderers and hating God and insolence and arrogance and boastfulness and inventors of evil and disobedience to parents. Without any understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful.

It's quite a list. But it all begins and many times it says God gave them up. Verse 28, middle, God gave them up.

Verse 26, God gave them up. Verse 24, God gave them up. Three times it says God gave them up, God gave them up, God gave them up and they descended to all these wretched things mentioned here.

But where did it all begin? It begins in verse 21. They did not give thanks to God. All sin begins with an ungrateful heart.

Ingratitude, lack of gratitude is what leads down to so many other sins. So I've never forgotten that as I've studied Romans chapter 1. So I don't want my children to go into all types of terrible sins. So I say I've got to teach them to be thankful.

Be thankful to your parents for what they do. Learn to say thank you to mommy for what she does for you. And be thankful to God who gives us, teach our children to be thankful, thankful, thankful.

Because we mustn't let them think this, we take it for granted. See, we live in a very rich culture where you have so much. And we have to teach our children about many other people in the world, in other parts of the world, who don't have these things.

They don't know it. I think most of our adults also don't know. I lived in India, but it's only when I went down to the villages where most of our churches were planted, that I saw the depth of poverty at which people live.

Many of them, they work during harvesting season, and they earn a lot of money there. Then the sowing season first, and then the harvesting season. And a lot of the rest of the time, they don't get much money.

And they have to make do with what they have. There's so many things like that. We have to teach our children to be grateful.

Even, you know, when they are at a breakfast table or a meal table, saying, I want this, I want that. We have to tell them there are many people in the world who don't even have that. I mean, you have a choice.

You want this type of jam or that type of jam or the other type of jam. There are people in the world who don't have any type of jam. So we need to explain to our children how it is for millions and millions of people in the world who have hardly anything.

Then they learn to be thankful for what they have, particularly growing up in a culture like this, where there's plenty available. They automatically think that everybody in the world must be like this. It's not true.

Most people in the world have less than 1% of what people have in this particular city anyway. But our children don't know that. And we have to also explain to them what salvation really is, as we heard just now.

And this one word that comes very often, repentance. Even a child, to teach a child repentance means not that I'll never do it again, but I don't want to do it again. So I can't ask a child, will you tell me that you'll never do that again.

Well, you can't say that yourself. Will you say, I'll never get angry again in my life? I'll never speak a rude word again in my life? You can say, I don't want to do it. And that's all we expect our children.

And when they slip up, don't say, listen, you told me last week that you wouldn't speak like that. Imagine if somebody talked to you like that, that you said last week that you'd never raise your voice. So sometimes we make demands on our children, which we don't live up to that ourselves.

So don't make unattainable demands. You did something wrong, okay, and you were told about it last week, but we know that it'll happen again and again. Okay, tell the Lord you're sorry.

And say, I don't want to do it again. That's repentance. I don't want to do it again.

We've got to emphasize, don't let that child get discouraged because he did it. Say we have a bad nature that makes us like that, but we don't want to do it again. That's what God sees.

And if you're sincere, the day will come when you won't do it again. So if we explain it simply to our children, they'll understand. That is how it is.

And the other thing which we have to explain to our children is, the word that helped me to be sure of my own salvation was John 6, 37. It's good to point our children to God's word. John 6, 37, Jesus says, the one who comes to me, I'll never cast out.

So we have to explain that to our children, that Jesus will never reject you. Even if you did wrong a hundred times and you come to Jesus, he won't say, sorry, you did it a hundred times, I won't accept you. It doesn't matter how often you did it.

He will never say no to you. And then you point out to him how some of the people who did some terrible wrong things, we don't have to explain what sins they are, but some terribly wrong things, when they came to Jesus, he accepted them, like the thief on the cross. So they need to know that anytime they come to Jesus, he will accept them and he will listen to them.

The one who comes to me, I will never say no. He won't knock at his door, he'll open it immediately for you. Or you call him on the phone, immediately he answers.

It's very important for our children to know that, that Jesus is not going to say no to them because they did wrong so many times. Any number of times you come to Jesus, he will never, never say no to you. It's very important from childhood for them to understand that.

That when they pray, he'll listen to them. And the one other thing that we need to tell our children is to forgive people who hurt them. It's easy for children to keep an unforgiving spirit.

I mean, children get hurt right from the time they are five years old, they start playing with others, somebody hurts them, and they can have the same feeling that you and I have towards somebody who hurts us in some bad way. So we have to teach our children, you mustn't keep that in your heart against that boy or that girl who treated you badly, forgive them. They don't know Jesus, so they don't understand the values we have.

Forgive them. I mean, if they are troublesome people, don't play around too much with them because that's not wise, but forgive them. Don't have anything in your heart against them.

When they smile at you, smile at them. Certainly avoid troublesome people, but don't have anything in your heart against anyone. And we must also teach them if they have taken something wrongfully, sometimes because something in school or something that doesn't belong to you, we must return it.

And we don't have to set something right before God forgives us. We have to say, I'm willing to do it. That's enough.

And I'll show you where that is in Luke 19. Here was this guy called Zacchaeus who had cheated so many people in his lifetime. And then Jesus came to him and he said, Lord, I'm convicted.

I've cheated people so many times that I'm going to give back four times to all the people whom I cheated. How long do you think that would take? He had to go find each person's house and return it, maybe a couple of years. But the Lord did not say, okay, when you've finished all that, come to me, I'll save you.

No. He said in Luke 19, when Zacchaeus said that in verse 8, I'll return it all. Jesus said today.

Salvation has come. It came before he returned one cent to anybody. Just when he said, I'm willing to do it.

That's what you've got to tell our children. Okay, you're going to ask that boy forgiveness for what you did tomorrow. But the Lord says today I forgive you.

You've got to tell your children Jesus accepts your word even before you do it, even before you've set right that wrong. As soon as you've said it, he believes you. He believes you more than people will believe you.

You go and tell a person I'll do it and they say, I don't believe you. That's what most human beings would say. But Jesus says I believe you.

You've got to tell him how loving Jesus is very important for our children to understand God is a loving father. If he's strict with us, it's because he wants us to, you know, like you say, why am I strict with you playing with a knife? Use some examples like that. It's because I don't want you to hurt yourself.

That's why God is strict about certain things with you. Don't do this because you'll hurt yourself. Illustrations are very, very important for children.

And so gradually our children will begin to have faith in a wonderful Jesus who's a close friend better than any human friend. Which human being will trust you even when you haven't done it? Jesus will. He believes you.

And that's how we encourage faith in a child. And the other thing, you know, the Bible speaks about justification. Justification is a big word.

But it means justified. It means just as if I'd always been good. That's a good word to tell our children.

You know, when you ask Christ to come into your heart, he comes in and God looks at you as if you were always good, that you never did anything wrong. It's exciting for a child to know that. Otherwise they can feel guilty about so many things I did.

No, God doesn't remember it. Dad and mom may remember it, but God doesn't remember it. He says, I won't remember your sins.

The word justified is just as if I'd always been righteous. So I believe our children can understand much more than we think. And so let's make sure that every one of our children is really a child of God.

And also, all that was spoken today may, I want to say, may apply to a number of older people sitting here too. And I want to speak to the older people. Are you sure that you came to God as a sinner without anything good to recommend you? Only a sinner, willing to see that perhaps you were the worst of the lot? And did you really say to the Lord, Lord, I never want to do it again? And are you seeking God's help never to do it again? The things that you did, have you sought to set right, like Zacchaeus, all the people you wronged and hurt and cheated? The Lord took you at your word when you said it.

Have you kept your word to go and return those things? Or is there something still pending? You said you would do it. And you were quite sincere when you said it. But maybe you have conveniently forgotten about it now.

Keep your word. So let's not think this is only for children. And let us be examples to the children as adults.

Amen.