Pastor Slaughter
Christian Education
September 29, 2024
Theme: With all of your heart!
Text: Deuteronomy 6:4-9
What do you love in life? I mean what do really love? Not just I like these things but that you have a passion, a zeal that almost consumes you. Those things that you spend your time on. Those things that you spend your money on. Those things that occupy your thoughts. What do you love in life?
I love my family. I am going to prioritize spending time with them. A big portion of our income goes to support them. I want what’s best for them. My thoughts are filled with thinking about them and if I am honest I worry about them. But maybe you love some other activity or hobby. Hunting, fishing, playing baseball.
The things we love consume us don’t they? You love football. You plan your schedule around it and if your team loses does that ruin the rest of your day? Ok I think you get the point. So today is Christian Education Sunday. What do the things that we love have to do with Christian education? Everything. Because if we don’t have a love for God, a love that consumes us, a love that we are passionate about, a love that we will spend our time on, that occupy our thoughts, then everything we talk about today will be meaningless. Our theme for today is “With all of your heart.”
Let’s get straight to the point. Do you love God? Silly question to ask in church, right? Of course you do, otherwise you wouldn’t be here, right? Or maybe you are a visitor, testing the waters, seeing if this God is worth loving? So do you love God? I mean really really love God? I mean the kind of love that Moses writes in v. 5, “Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” In other word’s, “Love God with all you’ve got!” So do you?
If you imagine scale and put love for God on there and put other things you love on there, how would it balance out? What occupies your thoughts throughout the day? Is it God and what he has done for me, how I can share him etc? Or is it someone or something else? What do you spend a majority of your time on? Fishing, hunting or being in his Word? What do you spend your money on? Buying new fashionable clothes or giving a portion back to God? I think you get what I am saying.
We have to confront ourselves with this because loving anyone or anything else more then God is idolatry and the things that we love occupy our thoughts, our time, our resources, it’s what we talk about. We pursue those things. We surround ourselves with those things. It then becomes very easy to put God in a little box that we carve out once a week (maybe once a month or maybe twice a year, or only when our kids sing) where we are here for an hour maybe and 1hr and half. Then we can go back to pursuing the things we really love.
What does loving God with all that you’ve got have to do with Christian education? Because if we don’t love God, then we won’t prioritize him. Other things will get in the way, will be more important. And if other things are more important then why does Christian education matter? Isn’t it enough to know that God sent his son. Jesus died for me, the Holy Spirit gave me faith?
On the one hand yes. Believing in Jesus saves. However, can you imagine saying this to your spouse coming back from work, “Thanks sweetheart for watching the kids all day, cleaning the house. I can’t wait for supper. I will go watch the game while you are cooking. Oh and can you stop the kids from fighting? I can’t hear the game” That will fly over really well. The same is true when we look at Jesus, “Thanks for loving me enough to die for me, to take away my sins, and to give to me eternal life. But I think I will spend as little time with you because the game is on.”
The amazing thing about God’s love is that he never stops loving us. God is giving the people of Israel these words as they are wondering in the wilderness. He gave him his commands, not to control them, but for their blessing. Moses writes in verse 6, “These words that I am commanding you today are to be on your heart.”
The same is true today. God’s word should be on your heart. Why? Because God’s word makes the claim that we, yes we, we who have loved other things, other people, more then God. We who let those other loves lead us astray, yes we, are forgiven by the price of his own blood shed on the cross, who rose to give to us eternal life.
Yes, God’s Word should be on our hearts. It not only gives us a reason to love God, but it prepares us to go into the world. Is God’s Word so engrained on your hearts that you prepared to go out into the world? Is God’s word so engrained on the hearts of your children that they are prepared to go out into the world?
In a Barna Group survey in 2014, Made two interesting points, 1) “Is attending church important?” 2 in 10 of those under the age of 30 say “yes.” 2) “The church does more harm than good.” 1 in 3 of those under the age of 30 say agree. 33% said that the church is not only irrelevant but it is harmful. Are you prepared to send your children into a world where they view church as irrelevant and harmful?
What’s the answer? For ourselves, for our children, for our grandchildren? Christian education. To prepare the Israelites to go into the promise land, a land that had foreign gods, a land that is filled with temptations, a land that will try to take their hearts away from the Lord, Moses told the people not only to love God with all of your heart, not only told them to have God’s word on their hearts. But as Moses says, ‘Teach them diligently to your children…”
I am passionate about Christian education. I love serving at a place that has a school where we have God’s word at the center of all that we do and teach. I love teaching catechism classes and leading the youth in Bible study. However, Christian education doesn’t start with the pastor. It starts at the home. Whether you are single or married with kids, or even the kids have left the home and you have grand kids starts at home with God’s Word.
Look at the Moses describes how a heart for God’s word should envelop our lives, “Teach diligently to your children, and speak about them when you sit in your house and when you walk on the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as a sign on your wrists, and they will serve as symbols on your forehead. Write them on the door posts of your houses and on your gates.”
God’s word is to be apart of our lives. We (Not just the pastor or teacher), we as parents teach it to our children. And it is supposed to be a part of our every day lives and not just something that we do for an hour on Sunday. Weather you have children or not, is this evident in your lives? Are you taking time to be in that word? Do your children, grandchildren, friends and neighbors see how important God’s Word is in your life? If you don’t does that show what your heart’s love is, or rather isn’t?
If we don’t talk about our faith, or spend time with children in God’s Word, what does that say to them? What does that teach them? That the idols in this world, success, or enjoyment are more important then the God who loves them. Are we then passing down our idolatry to our children.
Let me put it a little different way. Our children watch us. The things we enjoy, the things we get excited about catches doesn’t it? For example if you drop your kids off at Sunday School, and go out to a coffee shop instead of going to bible study. When they are old enough to be done with Sunday school, what are they going to want to do? Go out for coffee. Why because it is like a right of passage and get to do now what they watched their parents do.
What’s the solution for this? We need to model what it looks like to “Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” The greatest thing that you can do for yourself and for your children is to be in God’s Word. Read the Bible. Read the Bible together. There are lots of Children’s Bibles out there. Speak about these things throughout the day. During supper, “I am so thankful that God has provided this wonderful food today and a wonderful spouse to cook it.” Prayer with your children throughout the day. My wife does a really good job with this, whenever we hear sirens, she instantly says, “God be with those who need help and those who are going to help. Amen” Model what grace and forgiveness looks like. Apologize when you have sinned against your children. Show them Christ’s forgiveness when they have sinned.
Christian education starts at home, teaching the truths to our children. But we are so blessed to have other opportunities to study God’s word. We do that coming and worshiping at church. We have an 8:00am Bible class where we go through a chapter of the Bible at a time. We have our adult Bible class after church. We offer our Sunday school for kids and our teen group as well. We offer small group Bible studies. Can you imagine the lifelong impression prioritizing going to church every Sunday and not just watch online but actually go, have on your children? Can you imagine the impact that it will have when the whole family (not just mom) goes to Bible study after church is done? Our mission statement at our school, ““As a family united in Christ, Trinity Lutheran School exists to assist parents in bringing children up in the training and instruction of the Lord.”
This list can go on. And on. Let’s model what it to love God with all our heart. And how do we do that? Through Christian education. Because the more and more we learn about our savior and his amazing love story for us, the more and more that love for him consumes us and it spills over into the other areas of our lives. As our hearts are filled with love for God and love for his word, we can then teach, model that for our children. Because I can’t think of anything more important then sharing our faith with the next generation. Amen.