Take Back Our Children!

Girl Scout Sunday

March 11, 2001

 

Proverbs 22:6

 

 

Proverbs 22:6 (KJV)
⁶Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

 

We are a nation at war!  Not a war of bullets and missiles, not a war of tanks and planes, but a real war nonetheless.  It is a war that is fought out in the lives of our most precious commodity, our very children.  It is a war that is insidious in nature, devious in implementation, and disastrous in its results.

 

We are concerned with a war that is destroying our nation, killing our children, and causing us to lose our way. It is a war that is being waged from within and is laying waste to our cities, decimating families, and causing heartache for tens of thousands each day. This war is the war upon morality. The casualties are to be found in our integrity, our honesty, and the respect we hold for all of God's creation. This war is going to destroy our country. If we as God's children do not win this war we will preside over the destruction of our nation. Today we shall talk about the "DeMORALization" of America.

 

Day after day our children are bombarded with ideas, thoughts, and images that are contrary in nature to the ideals that you and I grew up with.  Our children are faced with challenges and obstacles that you and I would never have dreamed of in our own childhood.    We grew up in a time when getting high meant climbing a tree!

 

Day after day we read about, or hear on the news of schools that are inundated with drugs, or schools where our children’s very physical safety cannot be assured.  This morning I’m telling you that we must do something about it.  We must put a stop to the assault waged on our children.  We must take our children back!

 

To this end we recognize the work of the Girl Scout organization.  Girl Scout leaders across our nation, and indeed throughout the world spend time teaching girls to be upstanding citizens.  The Girl Scouts is the world's pre-eminent organization dedicated solely to girls, where in an accepting and nurturing environment, girls build character and skills for success in the real world. In partnership with committed adults, girls develop qualities that will serve them all their lives - like strong values, social conscience, and conviction about their own potential and self-worth. In the Girl Scouts, they discover the fun, friendship, and power of the girls together; and through the many enriching experiences provided by the Girl Scouts, they can grow courageous and strong. Girl Scouts. Scouting is where girls grow strong.

 

Yet for all the good that the organization does, it can only do part.  There are other things that must be taken care of as well.

 

Our government decided that God has no place in education. Our children should not learn about God in school. Recent events at schools across our land, beginning with the horrible tragedy in California this week, and spilling over even to local schools in Central Florida, show the fallacy of this idea. Our kids need some sense of direction, and they aren't getting it. Children in today's schools are being taught a humanistic philosophy that denies God! It was not enough to simply remove Him from the curriculum, He has been denied in our school system. Today's moral decay is a direct result of trying to raise a generation of children to believe that we can be good without God.

 

No longer are our children taught absolutes. Everything is a shade of gray and we must be tolerant of all other lifestyles and philosophies. We pride personal choice over and above personal responsibility. We pride popularity over reliability; we pride the freedom to do as we choose over the obligation to do as we should.

 

Our scripture this morning says for Parents to train up a child in the way he should go…the remainder of that scripture promises that when he is old he will not depart from it.

 

Tragedies like the one in California are occurring today because yesterday we decided to remove God from our schools and our homes. If we allow the world to teach our children that alternative lifestyles are acceptable, or that adultery is no big deal, or that lying is ok if you have a good reason we have failed in our responsibility to be the salt of the earth. If we are not holding our selves and our families accountable to God then we are contributing to the downfall of our great nation.

 

How do we reverse this trend? What can we do to bring morality back to our nation?  How can we take back our children?

 

We Must Reacquaint them with God!  (Exodus 20:1-3)

 

Exodus 20:1 through Exodus 20:3 (KJV)
¹And God spake all these words, saying, ²I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. ³Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

 

 

We must turn back to God.  We must teach our children that God’s power is absolute, and that he and he alone is the arbiter (or judge) of human life.  We have so many senseless killings in our schools today because children no longer respect life.  We must teach our children that only God can take a life, we don’t have any right to do so.

 

We must make God our priority. All of the jobs, groups, schemes, and opportunities that have drawn us away from God must be given a secondary consideration. If we expect for our nation to return to God we must first return to Him ourselves. When we fall away from God, sin enters our lives. When we break the first commandment it is but one short step away to begin to break all of the others. When our relationship with God suffers, so does our relationship with those around us.  So does our relationship with our children.

 

We must put our children first and remind them that they are special, created by God, and each person has that uniqueness.  When we make God a priority, then our lives will change.

 

We Must Reacquaint our children with us!  (Exodus 20:12)

 

Exodus 20:12 is the forgotten commandment.

Exodus 20:12 (KJV)
¹²Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

 

 

In our hurry to climb up the ladder to that nebulous rung we call success we have let our families disintegrate. In today's two wage earner society we have allowed the pursuit of our material happiness to destroy our families. A couple of years ago two boys built over 70 bombs, sawed off shotguns, and maintained an arsenal big enough to outfit a squad of Marines, then marched into Columbine High School and killed other children, and their parents never knew it??? Our families have taken a mortal blow in our society and if we are going to change the tide we must bind up the wounds inflicted upon our family life.

 

We must make our children a priority in our lives.  I realize that many families must have both parents working.  In these situations, it is paramount that we make the time we do have available for our children even more sacred.  We must teach our children the morals that have served us well.  We must teach our children to value life.  We must teach our children the great tenets of our faith.

 

Parents, it is time for you to be parents. It is time for the parents in our land to once again accept the responsibility of parenting. We have shoved off that responsibility to the state, and look at the results. It is time we as parents expect obedience from our children. Not ask for it, not suggest it, but rather to demand it. It's time we took to heart the biblical admonition that to spare the rod spoils the child.  We aren’t to let the children rule us, we are to rule the children.  If we don’t return to that model in our society we will never take our children back from the brink of destruction.  Our children don’t need best friends.  They will find friends at school.  At home, our children need parents. 

 

Children, both young and old, it is time we took seriously the commandment in verse 12. We must honor our parents. We must respect the family.  Children wouldn’t do many of the things that they do today if they were honoring their parents.  By the same token, the honor is accorded because of the parents accepting responsibility for parenting.

 

We cannot continue to allow our families to decline. The family unit is the most important part of a young person's development. We must provide stable families for the next generations of children if we are to ever take our children back.

 

We Must Reacquaint Our Children with Love (Exodus 20:13-17)

 

Exodus 20:13 through Exodus 20:17 (KJV)
¹³Thou shalt not kill. ¹⁴Thou shalt not commit adultery. ¹⁵Thou shalt not steal. ¹⁶Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. ¹⁷Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.

 

We must teach our children to love, but showing them love.  When Jesus was asked which commandment was the most important, he said the first was to love God, but He said the second was to love one another. There is no respect for each other in our society today. We have traveled so far down the ME highway that it's difficult to turn back. We do all that we can to build ourselves up, even if it means tearing someone else down. Life becomes less special, especially if it is someone else's life.

 

When we neglect to love each other we don't care as much. We aren't as close as in times past. We become immune to the sadness that sin wreaks upon a community. It takes much, much more to shock us even to the point that nothing surprises us anymore. How many more Littleton type tragedies must we endure before we realize that the status quo isn't making the grade? How many more must die before we realize that all life is precious before God? How many more men must be drug behind a truck before we realize that every man is our neighbor? How many more are to be left to starve in the streets before we give of ourselves and of our wealth and help a fellow man?

The scriptures tell us that they will know we are Christians by our love. BY OUR LOVE! Do we truly love one another today? If we cannot bring an atmosphere of Love back into our society we can never hope to foster change.

2 Peter 2:5 through 2 Peter 2:8 (KJV)
⁵And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly; ⁶And turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha into ashes condemned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly;

⁷And delivered just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked: ⁸(For that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds;)

 

Peter mentions two men, Noah and Lot. Noah lived in a day when the thoughts of men were "only evil continually." Lot lived in a city in which men "burned in their lust one toward another." Both men are called righteous. We would call them "Christians." They were righteous because they were rightly related to God. Noah is called a "preacher of righteousness." He cried out against the lawlessness of his age. Lot, on the other hand, merely "vexed his righteous soul." He was grieved over the unlawful, wicked deeds of the men of Sodom. But he took no stand against it. He never separated himself from it. He put his comfort and prestige before God.

One man took a stand, the other merely wrung his hands and lamented the deplorable conditions of the society around him. Noah "saved" his family. Lot watched his family be broken and destroyed. Having accommodated lawlessness, he saw his family divided in their love and overcome by the sins of Sodom.

Every Christian has a choice to make. We can be like Lot, in-different to the rebellion, tolerance, and delusion which is contributing to the collapse of our nation. Or, we can be like Noah - taking a stand against the unrighteousness of our day.

--Pastor David Zimmerman http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Meadows/5487/Default.htm

 

Our world is awash in unrighteousness, what will you do about it? Will you place God first, make your family preeminent, and finally begin to love one another? This is what we must do to stop this out of control deMORALizing of America.  This is what we must do to take our children back!