Father, we pray that those wouldn’t just be words that we sing this morning, but those are words that from the deepest part of our heart, Lord, we mean that You are enough and knowing You is enough and being Yours is enough, Lord. So we thank You that You have created us to be satisfied in You and You have redeemed us that we can be satisfied in You, God. Thank You, O God, that You fill all in all and You are from one degree of glory to the next sanctifying us readying us for eternity with You, Lord.

Lord, we pray, God, that You would

have Your way with us this morning, that Your Spirit would impact us, that our minds would know more, our hearts would love more, Lord, and we would be ready to serve and to be Your light in the world all the more, Lord.

So Lord, let’s just not have a moment of silence and have another Sunday, Lord, to come and go, but let us be able to say that we O God, drew near to You and we heard Your voice and we weren’t left the same.

We just pray that You would strip everything away,

Father, until just Your Son, Jesus, remains.

Father, we thank You for for the healing of David, thank You that You saw him through a really tough season of sickness, God. We just thank You for that mercy.

Lord, we just pray for other families that are sick this morning, struggling with different things, Lord, struggling with pregnancies. God, we just pray healing. We pray peace. We just pray You would be on their homes.

Lord, we pray for the persecuted church in Nigeria as we constantly pray, Lord, as they suffer great,

just, Lord, martyrdom, great persecution, great trials, Lord. We pray joy. We pray perseverance. We pray endurance for them. We pray You would use them to raise up a godly nation from what is not that right now, Lord. And we know that You can do these things and You desire to do these things. So, Lord, our heart is with them and we just pray Your hand would be on them.

Lord, we thank You for Your faithfulness in taking care of every need we have. We pray, Lord, our tithe, our offering, what You’ve given to us, we would cheerfully give back to You. Lord, be able to always say, look what God has done. Look how God has taken care of us. Lord, we just pray that we would live

to know that You are our provider in all things. Lord, You know our needs before we know them, God. And You are ever trustworthy. We love You. We pray these things. We pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.

I don’t know what it is about rainy Sundays, but it’s harder to get out of the bed on a rainy Sunday. My grandpa used to always say nothing keeps the Baptists away like a little bit of rain.

This is truth in that, I think.

It’s good to be with you this morning. We’re going to be in Psalm 4. I just want to preach from the Psalms to you again this morning. Psalm 48, verses 8-14.

Psalm 48, verses 8-14.

The psalmist says, As we have heard, so we have seen in the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God, which God will establish forever.

We have thought on Your steadfast love, O God, in the midst of Your temple, as Your name, O God, so Your praises reaches to the ends of the earth. Your right hand is filled with righteousness. Let Mount Zion be glad. Let the daughters of Judah rejoice because of Your judgment. Walk about Zion. Go around her. Number her towers. Consider well her ramparts. Go through her citadels that You may tell the next generation that this is God. Our God forever and ever. He will guide us forever.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been to ruins before of an ancient city. Jessica and I went to Mexico once and you go on a tour through these Mayan ruins. Sometimes people go, you go to Greece and you can see old Athens and coliseums like that. Some of that’s still in Rome and you take pictures of these places and you see the remnants of what was once a great city, what was once an empire, what was once the epicenter of life and culture, a way of life of a people. And for them, it probably felt like, well, this is it. This is forever. This is our city. This is our way of life. This is our kingdom. This is our culture. But one by one, those great cities, those great empires, they fade away. And for some of them, nothing is left but ruins. Just a faint memory of a people and a culture in a city. The psalmist is celebrating a city that doesn’t ever pass away. He celebrates a culture. He celebrates a place. He celebrates a people that will go on and will go on and will go on and they’re celebrating because they’re a part of this great, wonderful city. They’re a part of Zion. They’re a part of a Jerusalem that will not fade away. He’s describing the joy for the people of God to say, we are part of God and God’s city. And it’s a city in which there’s real life and it’s a city that will not fade. We love our city.

And I think there’s a question for us as we consider this. If we consider these verses, if we call ourselves God’s people, do we look like the kind of people who are members of the city of God? Do you look forward to being in the city of God? In His place forever?

They say in verse 8, as we have heard, so we have seen in the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God, which God will establish forever. We have thought on your status, steadfast love, O God, in the midst of your temple, as your name, O God, so your praises reach to the ends of the earth. Your right hand is filled with righteousness.

Let Mount Zion be glad. Let the daughters of Judah rejoice because of your judgments. So you see that word Zion

throughout the Old and New Testament quite often. And the very first time that you and I see Zion is in 2 Samuel 5. Where David conquers the Jebusite hold of Jerusalem and he makes Jerusalem his capital city. That’s his place that he rules from in the southern part of Israel in Judah. So Jerusalem is synonymous with Mount Zion, is synonymous with the city of David. So it’s the place where God’s king rules. Zion is where the temple was. It’s where God’s presence dwells. So this is God’s city. It’s God’s kingdom. It’s God’s people. And in God’s city, God’s people live according to God’s rules, God’s customs, God’s culture, God’s ways. God sets the tone for this city. So Zion, as we see it in the Old Testament, very much so, it is a geographical historical place. It’s a place where the Jews lived in the Old Testament. It’s where they worshipped. It’s where they lived. And it’s where they lived in safety. It’s where they lived in prosperity unbounded as long as they were obedient in that earthly Zion that once was. But the absence of obedience and faithfulness to God, it unraveled their earthly paradise. It was the demise. It was destruction of what was once the city of David for God’s people because of their infidelity.

God’s city, God’s people, God’s paradise, a place with God’s blessing, God’s laws, God’s rules, everything a person could really want. It could not abide because the people could not abide. But though that earthly historical Zion that you and I read about in the Old Testament is gone, God makes a promise to renew it someday. And we can see that in Amos chapter 9. He says, In that day I will raise up the booth of David that has fallen, and repair its breaches, and raise up its ruins, and rebuild it as in the days of old, that they may possess the remnant of Edom, and all the nations who are called by my name, declares the Lord who does this. So he says someday there’s going to be Zion again. And when that Zion comes, it’s not going to even be just the Israelites. It’s going to be all my people in this Jerusalem to come. And the Hebrew writer in chapter 12 verse 22, he shows us, he shows us most explicitly this new Zion to come. He says, But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels and festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of the living God. And the blood of Abel. So the Hebrew writer goes on and most clearly talks about this theological motif that kind of increases in clarity from the Old and the New Testament. And theologically then, Zion, it is that eternal city of God to come when Christ returns, or even those who are departed now get a taste of it as they are in heaven now. It’s just that place where God is ruling and reigning, and you are, because of the blood of Christ, you are given entrance into that city. You know and love the ways of that city. You are a citizen in the city of God. That’s Zion. That’s Zion. And you should love and desire Zion. But that doesn’t mean this. If I’m in this life now, and Jesus hasn’t come back, or I haven’t died, none of you are dead, it doesn’t mean that you and I just idly wait. It means that you and I, now we live like we belong to that heavenly Jerusalem while we wait. That’s what it means. And though Israel failed to be God’s people in the old Zion, you and I are called to be filled with the Holy Spirit, living according to the customs, the manner, the culture of the heaven to come, if we identify with it now. If Jesus is my King, I’m going to live under His rule, even though I’m not in His kingdom right now completely. I want to live in the, in the spirit of Christ so as not to displease Christ who is my King.

So if your true dwelling place is not this earth, church, if your true dwelling place is the city of God, do you love God? Do you love His city? Do you love the ways of His city? And while Israel may have been unfaithful mostly, we get windows of faithfulness. And in chapter 48, I think we get a little window of faithfulness in what it looks like. There’s some great battle where we’re not really told what they’re singing about, but there’s some great victory that they’ve had. They’ve won in chapter 48. And it gives them cause to think on God and His Zion, on His heavenly Jerusalem. They say, we’ve heard about this great God and His city, but they say, now we’ve seen it. We’ve heard about it, but now we’ve seen it. They’d heard about Abraham, that wanderer being safe from all evil, all the foreign armies in Canaan, and they even recognizing your God is real and different because you are kept and you are able, though you are a wanderer. They had heard about Moses, who overcame the great Pharaoh and his armies. They heard about Joshua leading the conquest to overcome Canaan and bring the people into the promised land. They’d heard about the judges who saved God’s people numerous times from kings. And certainly they’d heard of the great King David, who had ascended, established His city, that earthly Jerusalem, that Zion that pointed to the greater and better Zion to come. But they say, now we’ve seen it. In other words, everything that we’ve ever known about God in the past has become for us now a present reality.

The God that you could discover in Scripture is the very same God alive and well today in 2021.

You think God’s a little punchier here, but He’s not punchier in 2021. You think He’s a little softer now. This is more of a fairy tale with big stories, but in my life, God’s not so active. He’s not so present. He’s not so powerful. That can’t be so. It can’t be so. Most of all, because you have been arrested by the power of the gospel. And whether it’s the parting of the Red Sea or the fall of the Red Sea, we read about Elisha making the axe head float in the water, or we read about Bear and Sarah becoming pregnant, there is no greater work of God than His gospel awakening sinners to salvation. There’s no greater work. And that grace has happened in you and me. You have been given a pure heart. You. You have a kind and meek disposition toward other people. You can forgive. You can love. You can bear the fruits of the… You have a desire to be with the people of God. You could not have done this. Only the God of the gospel could have done this. Only God could have done this. So if you’re waiting around for, you know, some great manifestation from heaven, I want to see a vision, or I want to speak in a heavenly tongue. Friend, there is no greater work of God than what He has done on the cross. There is no greater work. The cross cannot be topped. There is no place to go to see the power, the presence of God, than what God has done on Calvary. There, He defeated an enemy you couldn’t defeat. His eternal enemy, Satan, destroyed. There, He took away sin and shame you couldn’t wash off yourself. There, He set captives free. There, He promised eternal rest. There, He awakened us to love Him. So read about the parting of waters. Read about food being multiplied. Read about food being multiplied. Then say, the greatest miracle and power of God is at work in me, and it is the power of the gospel. It’s not that God isn’t powerful. I think so often we’re not using biblical metrics for what’s great. And what’s great is your daily abiding in Jesus and not giving up. That’s the power of God to keep sinners like us.

So friend, the victorious God of the Bible is the victorious God at work in you, and He will be forever. That heavenly Jerusalem, it’s an eternally abiding city because Christ is an eternal conqueror, and He did conquer. And since the spirit of the conqueror lives in me and in you, you know what that means? That means that you and I will not be conquered because Christ lives within us. So you and I can have real lasting hope as we dwell on the Zion to come. I can know that it will be mine, and I can live for that kingdom now because the spirit of the conquering Christ is in me. See, that’s what they’re celebrating. That’s what they’re celebrating. Do you look on Zion and faith and hope as it empowers you for obedience now?

And I want you to see the thought here

in verse 9. It says we have thought on your steadfast love. Now that’s not, you know, passing thoughts. You know, sometimes we get nostalgic, like, oh, I miss whatever, my college years, or, oh, I miss growing up in the countryside, or, oh, I miss that. You know, they’re just happy thoughts. You know, they’re fleeting. This is not that at all. This says they went in God’s temple and they thought on His steadfast love. They go to that place where God is most present and the world is most absent. And this word thought in the Hebrew, it means to contemplate. It means to ponder. It means to reflect. And that’s different from passing thoughts, isn’t it? Passing thoughts come and go, but when you really give your best thoughts, you give your best time, your best energy to a thing, that’s the thing that’s going to shape your life. That’s the thing you’re going to end up really living for. That’s the thing that when you just so dwell on it, you live in light of that thing. And that’s what’s happening here. They’re so caught up in the reality of God’s goodness, of God’s power, of God’s love as they think on Him. They are saying, oh, only to be a citizen of Zion. Oh, only to be the people of God. It’s running. It’s running through their system, the ways of God, and they’re dwelling on them. They want to be God’s people. They want to know the ways of the King. They’re lifted up in joyous praise to Him.

And they say, this God’s got righteousness in His right hand. Think about the Assyrians. You think about the Babylonians in ancient times. They were merciless, wicked people. I mean, Habakkuk, chapter 2, this is God’s judgment on Babylon, Assyria, for the way that they conquer people. Woe to him who makes his neighbors drink. You pour out your wrath and you make them drunk in order to gaze at their nakedness. You will have your fill of shame instead of glory. Drink yourself and show your uncircumcision. The cup in the Lord’s right hand will come around to you. So what did their ruling say? Well, it brought debauchery, moral decadence. It ruined people’s lives. It ruined people’s culture. But they say, this God, man, He’s good and He’s great, and righteousness is in His right hand. We love His right ways. To be in this city is to live right.

It’s to live right. Charles Spurgeon said, where God is most seen, He is best loved. Where God is most seen, He is best loved. You ever had culture shock? You go to a country, I think sometimes you can go across the country, not even leave the country, and you’re in culture shock, right? Because there’s just a general disposition of just the way people live, the way people talk, the kind of ethics they hold. I mean, really, it’s just different world views than you have. Just everything is just different and you go through this period of being incredibly uncomfortable because it’s not like you. Your culture, it’s not what you know.

I believe when we come to the Word of God and when we come to the Gospel, friends, we had better not be experiencing culture shock. We ought to all the more be experiencing culture shock as we live in the here and now and desire to be in the heavenly Jerusalem. You know, you don’t even have to go to a temple. You know, Paul says, you are the temple. That means that your heart and your mind can and should, should often go to dwell on who God is and what God has done in your life, who Jesus is and what Jesus has done in your life, who He’s called you to be, what His commands are in Scripture. Often long should you be in the Word. Often long should you be in the prayer closet so that God is more and more shaping you, forming you into a citizen of heaven, knowing God’s blessings of what will be. I’m tasting it now just a little and I’m reflecting and I’m pondering and I am all the more. Being sanctified and raised up to be in that great heavenly Jerusalem someday.

Do you love gathering with God’s people? I think what we’re doing here this morning, our fellowship, it’s the nearest thing to the city of Zion on this side of life. Singing God’s Word. Hearing His Word preached. Fellowshiping. Praying with and for one another. These things grow us up as kingdom people. Hint, hint. We’re not talking about anything too different from what we speak about. We’ve spent years in Matthew, the kingdom of heaven, right? God’s what? Spiritual rule and reign in our hearts and minds and lives. It’s the same thing. I want to be arrested with God’s people to be prepared for God’s great city when His kingdom covers the earth as the waters cover the sea.

You can’t have dual citizenship in God’s city. Israelites tried that. They tried to… They tried to… They tried to be God’s people and they put their leg over the borderline and they tried to be, you know, cool with the pagan nations the same and it never worked. They were always swallowed up in wickedness. Always every time.

I think so often as the church, we are familiar with pop culture. We’re familiar with the latest movies, the latest fashions, the latest trends, the latest technologies, the latest gadgets. But our knowledge of the Holy One is starved. So little time do we ponder Christ. So little time do we just linger in His Word.

From what kingdom are you living for? To what city do you long to be?

He goes on in verse 12.

And He says, Just walk about Zion. Go around her.

Number her towers. Consider well her ramparts. Go through her citadels that you may tell the next generation that this is God and our God forever and ever.

I picked this passage, honestly. It was one of our passages earlier in the week with Darcy and Dawson. We read a psalm practically every morning. We start singing together. And just praying together. And it’s just a daily thing. And I think the burden, to be honest with you, of the importance of family worship, family discipleship, that’s been on me heavy. And so when I read this text, it just jumped out to me. It jumped out to me. Because it’s such a reminder, Christian mother, Christian father, the weighty responsibility to preserve the culture of God in your children and their children. So important.

The psalmist says you should walk about the city of God and you should know every square inch of the city and see her power, see her grandeur, see her might, see God’s blessing, see how this city, this city cannot be undone because it’s God’s city. Treasure this city. And he says it so that the people themselves, their zeal for God, our zeal as church members for Christ would be increased. But not only that, but that you, you and I would transmit, we would send off from us to our children just as much a radical love for Christ and His kingdom. We’re not just talking about a physical city here. We’re talking about the spiritual kingdom. We’re talking about the way of God and the way of Christ.

Your love for the heavenly Jerusalem, it must not end when you go into the ground. Here is a very particular word this morning for mothers and fathers who allegiance lies with Mount Zion. Preserve it in your children. Pass it on to them so they can pass it on, so they can pass it on, so they can pass it on, so they can pass it on. That’s God’s great design. That’s God’s great design. And as much as that’s true, I think you have to admit with me there’s something very broken. I think there’s something malfunctioning in the way the church is doing that. At least, I think, in Western culture. I spent some time looking up all the stats and I was going to bring the stats and hit you over the head like with a slam and chubber. This is how bad the stats are in the church today. But I’m not going to do that. One, because I think it’s pretty obvious if you’ve been alive for a couple years and living in Western culture how bad it is. It’s more than normal for those who graduate high school to leave the church at least for a long while, if not forever. Forever. It’s very normal. These are people that grew up in the church, went to youth group, went to the camps, and they’re gone. Very normal. Very normal in our culture. I think this one stat was up to 64% of 18 to 22 year olds leave the church at least for a year when they graduate high school.

You know it as much as I know it that even inside the walls of the church, the church has been becoming liberal, liberal for a long, long time and saying, well, if people, you know, are going to leave, let’s just change things on the inside of the walls to make church a comfortable place for everybody and lose ourselves in the process. So again, I don’t think you need me to tell you what you know about the place in which you live. Only I want to say to us this morning, we must not be passing on our love for Christ and His kingdom. We must not be. Because a love for Christ and His kingdom sticks. A love for Christ and His kingdom, His kingdom is greater. And I want to read this passage to you. David Wells, he’s a Christian author, theologian, and he just speaks into culture. It’s long, but I think it’s really good and I just want to read it to you. He says, It is one of the defining marks of our time that God is now weightless. I do not mean by this that He is ethereal, but rather God has become unimportant. He rests upon the world so inconsequentially as to not be noticeable. He has lost His glory. He has lost His importance for human life. Those who assure the pollsters of their belief in God’s existence may nonetheless consider Him less interesting than television, His commands less authoritative than their appetites for affluence and influence, His judgment no more awe-inspiring than the evening news, and His truth less compelling than the advertiser’s sweet fog of flattery and lies. That is weightlessness. It is a condition we have assigned God after His death. After nudging Him out of the periphery of our secularized lives. Weightlessness tells us nothing about God but everything about ourselves, about our condition, about our psychological disposition to exclude God from our reality. And that’s powerful and I think it puts the finger right on what’s broken, not just in culture, friends, but what’s broken in the church. We’ve stopped being, we’ve stopped being the church and passing on the love of the city of God to the next generation. We’ve let other people disciple our children.

I’m going to read several passages to you from Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy chapter 5, chapter 4 verse 5. See, I have taught you statutes and rules as the Lord my God commanded me that you should do them in the land that you were entering to take possession of it. Keep them and do them for that which is in you. That will be your wisdom, your understanding in the sight of the peoples who when they hear all these statutes will say, surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people for what great nation is there that has a God so near to it as the Lord our God is to us whenever we call upon Him? And what great nation is there that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law that I set before you today?

Only take care and keep your soul diligently lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and your children’s children how on the day that you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, the Lord said to me, gather the people to me that I may let them hear my words so that they may learn to fear me all the days that they live on earth and that they may teach their children.

Deuteronomy chapter 6 verse 4. Hear O Israel the Lord our God the Lord is one you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul with all your might and these words I command you today shall be on your heart so shall you shall teach them diligently to your children you shall talk of them when you sit in your house when you walk in the way when you lie down and when you rise.

Deuteronomy chapter 11 verse 18 you shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes you shall teach them to your children talking of them when you are sitting in your house when you are walking by the way when you lie down when you rise up.

Deuteronomy chapter 32 verse 45 and when Moses had finished speaking all these words to all Israel he said to them take to heart all the words by which I speak to you and I am warning you today that you may command them to your children that they may be careful to do all the words of this law for it is no empty word for you but your very life.

How many times does the Bible have to say something before you take it serious?

Once.

What does it mean if you take it serious if God says something so many times to us throughout Scripture and that’s just Deuteronomy it means it’s so important it means it’s so critical it means you’ve got to get this you’ve got to get this.

Please hear me say this morning if you are a mom and a dad or a dad

you are the chief disciple maker of your child and it’s God’s intended design all the sermons that your children can hear all the church events your kids can go to they’re necessary supplements to you creating the culture of Christ in your home and that is what’s going to stick and that is what’s going to make the eternal impact for their souls. What you foster in your home now you cannot save your child but believe you me it’s God’s intended means by which he’s so important to you. God so often does raise up your children to salvation your faithfulness in the home your faithfulness in the home it’s so consequential for the eternal destiny of your children. What did Moses say? He said it is your very life. Are you okay with your passion for Jesus? Your love for his word? Your love for prayer? Your love for just being a child of God? Are you okay with your passion faith? Being implanted on your child right now? Are you living a life you say you know what I’m living a life and I just hope my children grow up to be as I am? You should be saying that. You should be saying that. It doesn’t mean you’re perfect but you should be saying that. Paul could say it. He said imitate me as I imitate Christ.

I went to a small Christian school all the way growing up mostly 6th to 12th grade I went to Christian schools and if I saw it once I saw it a thousand times these parents would drop their kid off at Christian school and this happened in a youth group just the same.

Jesus was not really taught or preached in the home at all and there’s this expectation that at Christian school they’ll be turned into good citizens of society and good godly Christian people and you know how many times it worked? Never. They were always the first kids to get thrown out for drug abuse or some heinous something so many times so many times so many times in other words

outsourcing discipleship doesn’t work and I think so often the local church itself has played the part of assisting in that. We’re not doing the thing that really God’s word instructed for us to do and that’s to plead with mom and dad you be serious about your kids loving Christ. You be serious about it because whether you realize it or not they in so many ways will grow up to be you. They will adopt your values. It’s not to say God doesn’t work in other ways and God isn’t good to save when that’s not in the home but so often God’s design God’s desire is for as you follow Jesus and you implant that on your child your child grows up the same to love the Lord. So it’s a big, big deal and I want it to be a cornerstone. I want it to be something that we have great pride and joy in at Providence that we are doing it for. We are doing all that we can to equip, to teach, to encourage mom, dad, you, you oversee the spiritual life of your child before me. It’s not that I’m not their pastor. It’s not that I’m not your pastor. But at the end of the day a father and a mother is something of a first pastor if you will. They’re there to really instill a love and a passion for Christ that I can never give. That I can never give.

And I’m pleading with you

sing songs with your kids every day. And if you’re like, I don’t like my voice. Well, there’s YouTube and Spotify and you can just pull up songs that we do on Sundays and before you start your day or when you end it y’all can just sing a song together. And just open a book of the Bible and just start reading it and just talking about it and get a study Bible to help you understand it and just start showing your kids Jesus is what matters most in our home. And just pray and it doesn’t need to be fancy and it doesn’t need to be long. It’s just you in the Word with your children often and that when you do that over time they’re going to look back and say, gosh, you know, mom and dad, what did they take serious? Jesus. Because that was what they did. And anytime, you know, somebody said something at school or we saw like a bad billboard that said something crazy or had a crazy image on it. Mom and dad were always so quick to like, let’s talk about this feelings of the gospel. Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk. Let’s talk about that. How should we have acted according to Jesus there? What does this have to do with who we are in Christ Jesus? It’s an all of life thing that you and I are called to as mom and dad. And I think if you’re dry heaving like, oh, that’s so much and like, that’s so scary. It is. It is. But this is where I do say to you, Paul says in Ephesians, he has given pastors and elders and teachers and evangelists to equip the saints. So that’s something that Chase and I have been talking about for a long time. It’s something we’re setting our faces to. We really, really want to do all we can to love you, to encourage you, to equip you, to know what it looks like to do family worship well and be a mom and dad that love your children and the Lord well. That’s going to matter a whole lot. It has to. It has to. But I want to say one more thing to those of you who have adult children. And I know that this is, this is many people even here. I know that some of you have adult children and you look back and you go, well, I have this adult child and they’re not pursuing Christ. And I’m wondering, I’m looking back and I think the temptation is to go, oh, I did something wrong. Or the temptation, you know, is to say, well, you know, I failed my child maybe in some way. The devil would love for you to constantly look back and pick yourself apart and like drown yourself in shame. OK, so we’re not going to do that. We’re going to just take grace. We’re going to just take grace. We’re going to do for all of our failures because every parent has a failure. And we’re going to do for adult children the same thing we’re doing for our young children, doing what we can to pray for their salvation, doing what we can to influence them with the truth of the gospel and just doing everything we can to love them to Jesus. And again, that’s the joy of the local church. We’re here to bear those burdens. And I’m grateful for the different ones of you who have shared that and say, hey, that still matters. And you might be an older mama or an older daddy. But guess what? Those still your kid and we’re going to pray for them and we’re going to do it. We’re going to do what we can and just seek God’s face knowing that He can bring a salvation there. So I want us, whether we have toddlers or we have adult children, to set our face to Scripture and say, Lord, equip us, equip us to help our children love the city of God as much as we do and as much as we should. As much as we should. If you don’t want to do that, let me promise you, your television will be glad to do it in your place their school friends will be glad to do it, college professors will be glad to do it, secular media will be glad to do it, the government will be glad to do it. Can I say to you, take up the great joy and responsibility that we have to disciple our children to the Lord and rejoice and rejoice that He’s faithful to save our children.

The very last line of 14, He will guide us forever. He will guide us forever. I think that’s such an encouraging line

because it can so often as a Christian feel like, man, am I going the right way? Am I going the wrong way? Am I going up? Am I going down? How am I supposed to transmit love when I’m not even sure I’m loving Jesus just the right way? The encouraging thing is though, if we come to God and we come to Christ and we come in the Spirit and we say, God, I don’t have all the answers. I don’t know what’s right. I want my children to love you. I want to love you. I want to represent you. You know what He says? Not. I hope you figure it out. Boy, that is awful. Good luck. That’s not what the Scriptures say. The Scriptures give you now a promise after giving us a very daunting task. And the promise is this. God will guide you forever. So if you come genuine to the cross and you say, God, I need you to help me be a citizen of that heavenly, holy Jerusalem now. God, I deeply desire my child to be a citizen of Jerusalem. God, help me. I need your wisdom. I need your power. I need your understanding. God said, I will guide you home. I will do it.

What more could you need to set yourself to such a difficult task than the promise of God’s power and blessing and love in you and through you? Let that stir you up to faithfulness. Let that stir you up to discipleship, certainly in your home and beyond to all that God calls us to. He will guide us forever. Amen? Okay, let’s pray together.

Father, Your Word does not fail. It doesn’t return void. It isn’t weak.

Lord, as we study it, we can believe every single word here. Every single line is reliable. Every single line is life-giving.

Lord, we come,

Lord, in a spirit of just humility,

but desire.

Lord, that our eyes and our hearts would be fixed on Jesus. That our hearts and our minds and our hands,

Lord, they would honor You.

They would be as the mind and the heart and the hands of the Lord. They would be as the hands of Jesus. That we would be led. That we would be governed by His Spirit. That we would represent the Kingdom of Heaven. That we would be the ambassadors we are to be now. That our children would follow us in that, Lord. And we could say, by God’s grace, He guided us and He guided our children. We were faithful. Lord, it’s not because of our power. It’s not because of our wisdom. It’s because of Your grace and it’s because of Your promises in Christ Jesus. So Lord, we cling to those. We hold on to those. We’re thankful. We’re thankful for when, Lord, You so often forgive us for our failings and we know that, Lord, You’re ready to use us again and work through us again. So Lord, open our hearts. Open our minds to You and You alone.

Jesus, You would be our joy. You would be our desire. And we would walk by faith until that faith becomes sight someday and we see You, our great King.

We love You and we bless You. Amen. Amen. Amen. In Christ’s name, amen.