Transcription
Well, for our offeratory prayer tonight, you know, there is another mess in uh Washington and uh the whole nation continues to be in a mess and sometimes our lives are in a mess, too. But we have a Lord who specializes in sovereignty over the messes of life. And we just have to bring it all to him. So, let's stand together as we go to the Lord in prayer.
Dear Lord, as we come to our offeratory prayer, we thank you that we have the ability to give to this church through many different ways, but also to offer to you our prayers and to offer to you our lives. For you are our creator, our defender, our redeemer, our friend. As we've already sang tonight, you are the Lord Almighty, the King of creation, and you are the one who is so good to us. And father, we don't even recognize the multitude of ways, not just dozens or hundreds or thousands or millions, but there are billions of ways in which you are good to us. That maybe even heaven will never be able to inventory. But we thank you for that and that you have given to us a faith to share into this world and into this community. Father, we pray that we would be better at doing it. You've told us to do the work of an evangelist. You've told us that if we follow you, you will make us to be fishers of men and women and boys and girls. Lord, equip us. Help us to become more natural and more comfortable with saying a word for the Lord Jesus Christ and for exhibiting the kind of hopeful attitude and the optimistic joy that makes others ask a reason for it. Father, we pray that in this community, not just the presence of this church, but the faith of every individual here who belongs to you might be radiated through schools and sports teams and businesses.
And then, Father, we do want to pray for our nation, for the leaders that we have in Washington and the administration and the Congress and the Supreme Court. Father, the problems that we are facing are beyond us. And we pray that you would give them wisdom and that you would guide our nation. that you would continue to bring up these spots of revival in our country and on our cal uh c college campuses and and send the fans of the Holy Spirit and the breezes of revival into every one of them and into our military bases and not just into our colleges but Lord into our high schools into our elementary schools and into our churches and Father for those who are here in this room or who are watching online and they're dealing with some kind of mess in their life now. Help us to cast all of our cares on you for you care for us. We ask Lord that you would be the Lord of every single situation, uncertainty, fear, anxiety, person of concern or interest. Lord, families that may have burdens, will you teach us to come to you in prayer, to trust you by faith, and to wait for you to resolve those things that we never can. Lord, bless the ministries of this church. We pray that this coming Saturday night at the fall festival and Sunday morning, there would be tremendous numbers of people here who respond to the preached word and to the word that is sung to them. May we Lord see you work in every way. For we open our lives to you and we pray these things as living offerings to you in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen.
I studied for a master's degree in Christian educ education at uh Wheaton Graduate School outside of Chicago. And back when I was a student there, the primary professors were two sisters, unmarried, older, named Lois and Mary Labar. And they were famous around the world as being experts in Christian education. And I took their classes, every one they had. I was one of their last students because they retired not long after my graduating class. But I learned so much from them. And I remember one day they talked about a family that they had read about or knew in England in which every child in that family ended up going to sea, either joining the Navy or becoming uh a sailor or maybe someone on a cruise ship, but they all ended up with sea fairing professions. And the mother wondered why it was that all of her children had ended up going over the oceans. And then one day it came to her because over the sofa there was a great beautiful oil painting of a clipper ship majestic majestically plowing through the waves. And she realized that that wall painting had exerted a silent but very powerful influence in that home as her children looked at it every day as they were growing up. And the Labars told us that to remind us that the way we create the environments around us and the things we have on our walls are very important. You can see many very interesting things on the walls of this church tonight.
Well, I took that to heart and my wife and I when we built our house in 1990 up in Donaldelsson where I live, we found a beautiful engraving of a scripture at Psalm 118:4. It says, "This is the day the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it." And we put it right by the front door so that everyone who leaves our house, goes across the porch and down the sidewalk, they will see those words. And we ourselves would see them every time we left the house. Well, having scriptures on your wall is a tremendous thing to do. I was uh eating dinner with the family this past Sunday. I preached at a church in Antioch and they invited me for lunch. And there over the dining room table was a verse from the book of Acts and it was inscribed beautifully and it says they ate their food cheerfully and with a joyful heart and it was an exact quote from scripture and I thought what a wonderful thing to have over your dining room table. Well, the Bible says in Deuteronomy chapter 6 that we should have on the gates and doorposts of our houses scripture verses that we should have there for our children to see as they grow up. The most popular single Bible verse that I can detect in my research that has been made into plaques and wall hangings and cross stitches and everything else. It's one that I'm teaching to my grandson right now. We've been working on memorizing it for him. It is from the book of Joshua, chapter 24, verse 15. It's our scripture for tonight. It says, "As for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord." And that's the passage I want us to look at. So, you have notes there. If you have your Bibles as well, turn over to the book of Joshua. And this is chapter 24. And it's just the last part of verse 15. Joshua said, "But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord." It is a very bold proclamation. It is a defiant declaration and it is the most succinct verse as far as I can find in the Bible that describes the kind of declaration that we want our children and the people in our families and the people outside of our families to know about our commitment to be godly parents and godly people, godly children, and godly teenagers. It doesn't matter if you're just a family of one. I'm a family of one right now. My wife is in heaven. But I realized as I prepared this sermon, I didn't have this scripture anywhere on my walls. And so I went online and found a beautiful carving of it. And I ordered it. It came today. I almost brought it to show you. And I'm going to put it over my door. It's sort of a lentil piece that will go over the door. It says, "As for me and my family, we will serve the Lord." I wish I'd had it there all these years.
Well, a verse like that is very wonderful, but it's always better to look at it in the full setting that we find it in the scripture. So, I want to just tell you a little bit about the book of Joshua. After Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt and through the wilderness, they came to the edge of the Jordan. And they were ready now to pass over into the land of Israel that God had promised to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But Moses died over on the eastern side of the Jordan River. Joshua took over. And that's where the book of Joshua begins. I don't think you have these verses, but I'll read them for you. After the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua, the son of Nun, Moses's aid, Moses, my servant, is dead. Now then, you and all these people, get readyed to cross the Jordan River into the land I'm about to give you to all the Israelites. And it goes on to say, "Be strong and courageous because just as I was with Moses, I will be with you. I will never leave you. I will never forsake you." He said, "This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night so that you can observe to do everything that is written in it. And then you will have good success. You will make your way prosperous. Have I not commanded you? Do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged because the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go." Some of the most wonderful verses in the Bible are in that first paragraph of Joshua chapter 1. And so Joshua rallied the people. They crossed the Jordan River. They conquered the city of Jericho and they got ready to defeat the evil tribes that were there and to populate the land. So Joshua chapters 1-5. The first five, there's 24 chapters in all. So the first five chapters are Israel coming into the land. Chapters 6-2 is about Israel conquering the land. And that brings us to the very middle of the book. Chapters 13- 24 are how the Israelites then under Joshua's administration divided up the land so that all 12 tribes had their territories. And then we come to the last two chapters which are chapters 23 and 24. And the book of Joshua ends and so does Joshua's life. So in chapter 23 here we have the final message that Joshua now a very old man wanted to give to the Israelites. So it says in Joshua chapter 23 and verse one after a long time had passed and the Lord had given Israel rest from all their enemies around them. Joshua by then a very old man and he really was. He was over 100. Last weekend, was it last weekend? I think so. I was in San Diego and I went to the birthday party of a friend of mine. It was her 100th birthday party and she is very active and spry. I've never been to a 100th birthday party before. It was my first time. And they asked me to say a few words. And what passage do you think I spoke from? Psalm 100. And I asked her, I said, "Be, what is the secret of being 100 years old?" And she said, "It's having Jesus in your heart and Mary Kay on your face." Well, Joshua here was a very old man. And it says, "He summoned all Israel, their elders, leaders, judges, and officials, and said to them, I am very old. You yourselves have seen everything the Lord your God has done to all these nations for your sake. It was the Lord your God who fought for you." Now, I think all of us who follow Jesus Christ, if we live to be a 100 or 95 or whatever age it is, we ought to be able to look back and say, "I want to tell you something. I've had a lot of struggles and battles in my life, but there was never a time when Jesus didn't fight for me. He will always fight for you. No matter what you're going through, the battle is the Lord's." And so Joshua reminded them here. He goes on in the passage to remind them of how the Lord had led them across the Jordan River and how he had helped them to overcome the enemies there and to overcome the evil. And then he warned them about being seduced by the gods of the peoples among whom they had come to live and whom they had cast out. And then he said in verse 14, this is his farewell address. Now I'm about to go the way of all of the earth. In other words, I'm about to do what every other human since Adam has done. I'm about to die. You know with all your heart and soul that not one of all the good promises the Lord your God gave you has failed. Every promise has been fulfilled. Not one has failed. Amen. I just love that. And he only had the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. But every promise that God had given to the Israelites had been fulfilled down to the last detail. Now, we have 66 books of the Bible. We have the complete scripture. We can it it's immense and all that it covers. And yet, we can hold it in our hands. There are 66 different books and every one has chapters and every chapter has verses and there are about 31,000 verses in the Bible and many of them are promises in one kind or another and all of them have been or are being or will be fulfilled in your life and mine. God is faithful and not one promise will ever fail. Amen. You can count on that. This is a declarative statement about the faithfulness of God in keeping his promises.
But then, just like turning on a dime, Joshua looks at the flip side. But just as all of the good things the Lord your God has promised you have come to you, so he will bring on you. all the evil things you have threatened if you violate the covenant of the Lord your God which he commanded you and go and serve other gods and bow down to them. And basically that's the way he ended his final sermon at the end of his life to the nation that he had so successfully led. But there is one chapter left in Joshua. So after his sermon, he wanted to lead the nation one last time in rededicating themselves to Yahweh Jehovah their God. You know, we very frequently, I think, have to do that. It's called here a reaffirmation down in verse 25. It says he reaffirmed with them all of the decisions they had made about following Christ. And we often, I think, need to come and say, "Lord, I want to rededicate myself. I want to reaffirm myself to you." And here it was a ceremony. So he wanted sort of like we would have the Lord's supper, but he wanted to get the leaders of Israel all together so that in his presence while he was alive, they could all ratify once again the covenant to serve the Lord alone. So it says in chapter 244 and verse one, then Joshua assembled all of the tribes of Israel at Sheckchham. Now Sheckchum is a very important place because that is where in Genesis 12. God promised Abraham, he brought Abraham out of Mesopotamia, brought him down and took him to this place of Sheckchham. I've been to Sheckchham. Maybe you have if you've been with Pastor Allan on one of his trips. But there are two great mountains in the very middle of Israel. There's Mount Garazim and Mount Ebal. And between the two in the valley, there's this town of Sheckchum. And it was in this beautiful place between these two mountains that God had met with Abraham and said to him, "I am going to make of you a great nation and I'm going to give you the land and you and your descendants will serve me." So this is where Joshua brought everybody out. By the way, this is where Abraham's grandson dug a well known as Jacob's well. And it was still at that very place many years later, the Lord Jesus Christ met the Samaritan woman at the very well, which incidentally is still there today. I've been there twice in all of these years. I've drunk water out of Jacob's well. The very place, Sheckchham, it's dangerous to get to now. It's known as Knobis and so you can't always go there. It's in a disputed area. But this was where Joshua brought the Israelites, a place that had great significance to them. He summoned the elders, leaders, judges, and officials of Israel, and they presented themselves before God. And now again, he reviews for them all that God has done for them. And how he has kept his promises, defended them, helped them, led them, provided for them. how they were to never give in to the gods of their ungodly society around them. And then we come down to our key passage, verse 14. Now, he says, you can just see this very old man standing in front of all of these leaders and he's about to give his final words. Now, fear the Lord. literally fear Yahweh, the God of Israel, Jehovah, and serve him with all faithfulness. Not just with some, but with all the faithfulness you have. These words are for us. Throw away the gods your ancestors worship beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt and serve the Lord. But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors serve beyond the Euphrates or the gods of the Ammonites, in whose land you are now living. But as for me and my household, we will serve Yahweh, the Lord. We will serve Jehovah alone. It's a little surprising that he would say this. I want you to serve the Lord. I mean, what if I stood here and I said, "I want you to serve the Lord, but if you don't want to, then serve whatever God you want to serve." But Joshua was simply admitting that none of us can force somebody else to choose our God. We can influence, we can witness, we can beg them, we can urge them, we can demonstrate for them how important it is. But if you want to serve the God of pleasure, then go ahead. See how that works out for you? If you want to serve the God of materialism, if on your wall, you want your plaque to say, "But as for me and my house, we will serve the American dream. We will serve the big cars and the boats on the lake and all of the money we can raise and success for our kids and all of the Ivy League schools and power and pleasure and all of these things rather than serving God." Now some of those things you know you can do if they are subservient to the Lord. But Jesus said you can only have one master. You can either serve God or you can serve money or pleasure or power. One of the problems we have in Washington and other places is people are addicted to power. But the Lord said here you got to serve me. And Joshua said, "If if serving the Lord seems undesirable, if you just are not going to do it, then you have the freedom to choose whatever God you want to serve." What God are you serving? In other words, what is the most important thing in your life right now? What comes first to you? If you had to say, "The most important thing in my life right now is well, whatever that is would be your God. And if it's education, if it's the pursuit of all kinds of accumulations or attainments, then that's your God. Now, if we do some of those things with God as our Lord and they are ordered by him for our lives, then it's a different thing. But if we just go out with self-determination to do what we decide we want to do without regard for the Lord, then that's what your wall plaque will say. As for me and my family, this is the God that we're going to serve. And most families in America have an invisible wall plaque that says, "But as for me and my family, we are going to serve something other than the Lord God." But some of us on our plaque, it is going to be or it is. As for me and my family, you can do whatever you want to. The society can do whatever it wants to. We cannot control what our culture and what our society does. We can seek to influence and we can pray and we can do our part, but we can't control what the universities say or what the government says or what the television commentators say or what it says on Tik Tok. We don't have the ability to control the mental agenda of the world. But we do have the ability to say you can serve whatever god you want to, but as for me, a very defiant word there, a word of declaration, but as for me and my family, we are going to serve Jesus Christ and him alone. What a great declaration.
So the people did that. They said, "That's what we're going to do. That's what we're going to And it says in verse 25, on that day Joshua made a covenant with the people and there at Sheckchham, he reaffirmed, there's the word for them the creeds and laws. And Joshua recorded all these things in the book of the law of God. And it was a lasting movement. It says in verse 29, "After these things, Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110. and they buried him in the land of his inheritance at Timnath Sarah in the hill country of Ephraim north of Mount Gosh. Israel served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua. They remained true to that covenant and of the elders who outlived him and who had experienced everything the Lord had done for Israel. So the commitment they made carried down to the next generation.
Now what I want to say is that this declaration as for me and my family we will serve the Lord is not just a plaque that we put on our wall. It is a pattern that we weave into our lives. It's wonderful to have that statement on your wall somewhere. Maybe I'll motivate all of you to, you know, go on eBay or maybe to the store here and and but it's more important that it is woven into our lives. And I want to give to you 10 things that have helped me a lot in trying to establish. I'm 71. I have my newest great grandson was born just today. And um I was there right before he was born. His name is John Michael. He's a niku. Uh we don't know if he has some difficulties or not. So but but I've got three daughters, 16 grandchildren, and is it five now? Great grandchildren. So and and my family isn't perfect. The Lord knows that we've had our issues. No family is perfect. But I will say that through the years, my wife who's in heaven now and I, there were a few things we tried to do, and I want to encourage if you're a family of one or if you're a big family to try to do these things. And I think they will help to take this from being simply a wonderful statement and make it into a system, a series of systems in your home. And the first one is just to tell the Lord every day individually that you belong to him. The word here again is reaffirm. They reaffirm the covenant. Now I believe that we are saved once. We are born again once in our lives. We come to the Lord Jesus and we ask him to save us and he saves us. But then I think very often we need to come back and say, 'Lord, I want to follow you more closely. I want to be more deeply dedicated to you. And I try every morning when I get up to rededicate myself to the Lord. I have a prayer that I started praying when I was 70. It says, "Lord, may all there is of me belong to all there is of you so that all there is of you might fill and control all there is of me." We just need to wake up every day and say, "Lord, I am your person and this is your day and I want to be dedicated to you." Because if you have children and grandchildren, they will see that lived out in your life as it becomes a part of your daily habit pattern to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all of these things will be added to you. The Bible says if you have a bad day or you've sin in some way, then confess it to the Lord and ask him to fill you with his spirit and rededicate yourself to him. Our Christian life is a series of growth stages from here until we get to heaven. So nothing will affect your home if you're a dad or a mom or a grandparent or a child or a teenager in that home. Nothing will affect your home more or if you have a family of one like me than just saying every day, Lord, you are my savior. You are my friend, my redeemer, and I am your servant today. And just have a family in which the heads of those members are dedicated to the Lord in an ongoing way.
And then secondly, based on that, spend time in prayer and Bible study every day. Because when you're when you're in a family, I was Katrina and I were married for 43 years. And it took a lot of patience for me to live with her and more patience for her to live with me. Where do you get that patience? Where do you learn to have joy in the relationship even when things don't go in life the way you want to? Where do you have peace and faithfulness to one another when temptations come? All of that comes from the Lord. The Bible says the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. Those are the nine qualities that's got to be in every home. Where do they come from? They come from the Lord as he works in you. And he can't work in you if he never can find any time in your schedule to meet with him. So you got to have time every day. It doesn't I don't I'm not telling you how much time. I'm not telling you in the morning or in the evening, but just spend time every day with the Lord in prayer and Bible study.
And then thirdly, if you have children or grandchildren in your home or your husband or your wife, anyone there is, your dog or your cat, just share with them the scripture that the Lord gives you. Now, I think that it's a good thing to have family devotions. Um, my dad and mom only had family devotions a handful of times with my sister and I when I was growing up in Elizabethton, Tennessee. they uh would feel guilty when an evangelist would come and do a series of meetings in our church and he would always spend one night preaching about the family and he would say, "You got to have family devotions together and my dad and mom would feel guilty and they would get my sister and I and no one ever taught them how to do it." So it was always sort of unpleasant and stiff and we all sat there and nobody knew what to do and it lasted for a day or two and that was about it. You know, uh I think if someone had taught them how to do it a little bit better, maybe it would have been an important part. But I'll tell you what I do remember. I remember my dad coming to me and saying, "Robert John, let me show you this verse I found today in the Bible. I found this verse at the end of the book of Micah. He would say or, you know, he read his Bible every day. He would find these verses. He taught Sunday school and he would just come in formally and tell me, "Look at this verse." And he got me a Bible at a very early age in my life as soon as I could read. And he taught me how to read it. Those are the things I remember. My mother did the same. And it says in Deuteronomy chapter 6, the Lord your God, it's the famous Shama of Israel. Here, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, and all your soul. And these teachings that I'm giving you today are to be on your hearts. Share them with your children and talk about them when you sit at home and you get up in the morning, you go to bed at night or when you are walking along the road. Just share them informally. Tell your children what I am showing you in the scripture. And now formal family devotions every night at 9 or something that could be a wonderful thing. But nothing is better than doing just what Deuteronomy chapter 6 says. So you go to the Bible every day. You find verses that speak to you and then you just share them. You say to your husband or to your wife or maybe to the person at work, I found the greatest verse today in the Bible. And it is natural. It is informal, but it is the overflow. And children catch a lot of Bible verses that come out of their parents' mouth just informally in the most wonderful ways. If the Lord is speaking to you, he will speak through you and that will make a difference.
And then the fourth thing I would say is give thanks and offer grace before the meals. You can have now a lot of families don't, you know, it's very hard with the schedules for everyone to come together and eat at the same time. When our children were younger, it was a little bit simpler. We tried very hard to do it. When my wife and I um you know, after the girls were grown, then we But we always had prayer before the mills. Now, if you've never done that, it may seem rather awkward to begin. And every habit, I don't know of any habit that isn't awkward when you begin. If you want to learn to ride a bicycle, it's rather awkward when you begin, but pretty soon you get it. And so just say before we before we eat this, let's the Lord gives us everything. So let's just say thank you to him. Lord, thank you for these hamburgers. I mean, very simple, very natural. Just learn to give thanks before the meal. Jesus did that. He would look up to heaven, pray, thank the Lord, and break the bread and distribute it. So it is a very biblical habit. I don't want to pressure you with it, but I'm just saying it is a biblical habit that allows prayer to become interwoven into the natural routines of your family life. I remember once in Atlanta, I I grew up with this habit and my parents would pray in the restaurants. So, I'd gone down to Atlanta when I was about 21. I wanted to go to the Billy Graham crusade there. he had the Brave Stadium and um uh and so they were filling it up every night and and I wanted to go down and just attend. So I drove down there, I got a motel that afternoon, I guess at lunchtime, I went somewhere to eat. I forget where it was, just some fast food place and got a hamburger uh or I don't remember what I got, but I bowed and prayed and thanked the Lord for it. And a man came up to me and he said, "I saw you pray." And I said, 'Yes, I always thank the Lord for my food.' And he said, 'Well, he said, 'I'm working with the Billy Grahamham team and I'm going right now to the stadium, and would you like to go with me? Well, back then it was a more innocent time. And I said, "Sure." And so I got there early afternoon. I wandered around. I went down to the platform. I met members of the Billy Graham Association team. I began volunteering to do things. I ended up being there for two or three nights volunteering and as a result of that I ended up being hired for a time period to work with the Billy Graham crusades and I look back and it was a wonderful time of learning in my life that came about just because I bowed my head at a restaurant and prayed. So you never know how the Lord will bless these simple routines.
And then number five, tuck your children. If you have young children or even teenagers, but make sure you tuck them into bed. Well, if it's teenagers, you may have to stay up a while, but tuck them into bed with a prayer. My wife developed multiple sclerosis when the girls were smaller, and her strength would give out uh about supper time. So, I said, "Well, I'll take care of the children at night." And so it was my job to get the three girls all ready for bed and get them to the bathroom and their teeth brushed and in their pajamas. And then I would read to them. I'd sit in the middle of the hall. They all had a little bedroom, you know, sort of right there. And I would read to them. You know, a lot of the books that like Walt Disney made into movies. If you read those books, they are very Christian like Swiss Family Robinson and Robinson Crusoe and Heidi. Those were Christian authors. Those are very early Christian novels. And The Chronicles of Narnia, we read through all of those. But then I would go from bed to bed and just tuck them in with a prayer. And to me, that is, as I look back over all of my life, those are some of the most precious moments of tucking children in. Now, I don't have children that age anymore, unless my grandkids come over, and then I do the same with them. And and after the kids were gone, Katrina and I continued praying together at night. If you're there at home by yourself, then you can do the same thing. But just as we began the day saying, "Lord, I belong to you this day," we need to go to bed and say, "Lord, as I fall asleep tonight, I want to be under your care and I want to be thankful and sleep well."
Number six, be involved in a good church. And if you are not attending one regularly and you're just here tonight, I've got a very good one to recommend to you and you'll have a wonderful time here Saturday night at the fall festival. But having your children and your family in church regularly is very it's very important. A lot of people have come back to church after COVID. Not everybody has. I want everybody in America to be in a church like this and to raise their children and be here in a congregation. I grew up when I was growing up, you know, and probably some of you would say the same thing. I went to Sunday school and morning worship every Sunday, Sunday night worship every Sunday night, Wednesday night worship, I went to youth group. I went to VBS. We had two weeks of revival at least every year. We were there. I was sometimes at church more than I was at home. And I don't mind a bit. I learned so much. and those people love me. And being at a good church is critical. Uh a good church program will supplement what you're doing at home.
And number seven, when you mess up, you lose your temper with your husband or your wife or you say something you shouldn't or whatever it is, then apologize and just say, "I'm sorry, and I really hate that I did that." And when you when your children see you humbly saying, "I didn't do very well at that point and I'm sorry." That is a very powerful thing. And children need to learn to do that with one another. I had two of my grandchildren. They were, I think at the time, in the first grade and third grade. Uh, two brothers. And I took them to Zion Park for a week. It was their uh fall break and we were in the pool and the older one pulled the younger one down and I looked and he's going to drown him and I couldn't get over there. I mean I So finally, you know, the little one came up uh coughing and and spitting and spewing and crying and upset. And I said to the older one, I said, "Do you have anything to say to your brother?" He said, "I'm sorry that I almost drowned you." And the little fella in the first grade said, "I accept your apology." Where I don't know where they learned that. But you know, if they see their parents and that's the atmosphere that is in the home, then there is maturity that is taking place there.
And number eight, when hardships come, let the people in your family see you trusting the Lord. Now, my family often saw me falling apart and having panic attacks. They saw my wife trusting the Lord, and they learned more from her than they did from me. But the only way that our children can learn to trust the Lord is if they see us doing it in difficult times, and they hear the verses that sustain us. So, let the children see you doing that.
And then number nine, you've got to really watch. Now of course as you know what is happening with entertainment content and textbooks, screens, movies, television shows, Tik Tok, everything else. This is the greatest challenge that parents have right now is keeping filth out of their homes. Most of the things on the screens that we look like are reminiscent of taking a glass bottom boat trip through the sewers. And you've just got to be careful about that. And of course, it begins with us and what we are looking at.
And number 10, fill your home and your car with the music of the Lord. This has such an impact. I mean, again, I'm a family of one, but I am so grateful with all of the problems we have with our technology. Now, we do have the opportunity of creating playlists. My grandson showed me how to do that. And right now, I have over 400 hymns and Christian songs on my favorite hymns and Christian songs playlist. And when I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is I begin playing it. and it helps me wake up. And when we're in the car, my grandson Tyler will tell you we have on those hymns and those some of them are contemporary songs. This was the best of I' I've always enjoyed attending here, but the music selection tonight. And the opening song is my very favorite hymn. Praise ye the Lord the Almighty, the King of Creation. Oh my soul, praise him for he is thy health and salvation. And I'll tell you this story. I hadn't intended to tell it, but I've got just another moment. Near the end of her life, my wife had a terrible episode. I got her to the emergency room. We thought she was gone really. And she opened her eyes and the Lord gave her to us for another month. And I brought her home. Well, the day that I brought her home was the day before we had promised a group of German church musicians that they could come to our home for supper. There were about 25 of them. I have a very wonderful friend, Johannes Schroeder, who trains worship leaders in Germany. And I've written three books on the stories behind the classic hymns of the faith. and he had written to me and said, "I'm bringing these 25 worship leaders on a tour of America to study church music and we want to come to your house if we can and talk with you." So, I said, "Well, we'll have you for supper." And I'd already planned to have it catered, but I didn't know that Katrina would be, you know, just coming back from a near-death experience on the day before they were to come. And I said to Katrina, "Can you still handle this?" And she said, "Oh, yes." She said, "Let's have them come. I've been looking forward to it. So, we met outside on the patio and we had a wonderful meal and then they came inside and uh and we talked about him and about the German roots of some of our great and famous hymns and um and then they sang two or three songs for us in German and it was just lovely. And then I said, you know, our favorite German hymn was written by Yakam Neander. Praise ye the Lord the Almighty, the King of creation. Oh, they said, we'll sing that for you in German. And I got out my phone. I should have given it to the guys and to show you this, but they were all singing it. And I pan my uh camera over there. And at the very end, Katrina was just drinking it all up and smiling and nodding. It was And then two days later, she went downhill very quickly. and not long not long afterwards passed away. The Lord sent a choir of 25 musicians from Germany to minister to my wife with that wonderful set of songs, especially our favorite one just before he took her to heaven. Now, music in your home sets the atmosphere. The devil has a very hard time doing anything in a home that is filled with Christian music. So those are the 10 suggestions that I'll give you.
I'll end just with this. There was a man named David George Ball who many of us owe a great debt of gratitude for. He became a wonderful American political statesman. worked for the elder George Bush as under secretary of uh labor and he's the one who invented and popularized 401k plans, retirement plans that many of us have taken advantage of. Well, he was a wonderful Christian man and he wrote his memoirs late in his life. All of the proceeds to his memoirs went to the little church in Williamsburg, Virginia that he was attending. But he said that what brought him as a Christian into the political arena, what really established him was his mother and then his father. He said, "My mother Irene was born in Gloucester, England. She didn't have a very good family. At 16, she ran away, went to London, and became a missionary there to deaf children. And when she was 21, the Lord led her to go to India and she served there. She has remarkable stories about the adventure she had serving the Lord in India until her health failed and she had to come home and she came back to Gloucester and she started going to ten uh to Trinity Baptist Church and there was a very tall handsome young man who was the pastor there named Harold and he was British but he'd come to the Moody Bible Institute of Chicago to get his Bible education and he was pastoring ing this church and my mom became a part of the church, Irene and Harold. And one day my mom gave him a plaque for his wall. And it said, "Be of good courage. The Lord is with you." And he loved it and he put it up in his home. She said, 'Now, I've got another plaque that I'm going to give you at some time in the future, but not now.' Well, he wondered what that was. And a few months later, she came to him and she said, "Harold, I really believe it's God's will for you and me to get married." and he was flabbergasted, but soon he said, "All right." And they were married. And at the wedding, she gave him the second plaque. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. And the statesman said, "When I was growing up," he said, "that plaque was there. My parents lived it out. It was a part of the atmosphere of our home. It set my course in life. Not the plaque, but the patterns that were represented by it. And he said, "It's what led me to Moody Bible Institute myself." And from there into the ministry that God gave me in the political arena.
So, I don't know what you're going to do. I can't tell the world what to do. I can't tell or make or force our society or our culture to choose to serve the Lord Jesus Christ. But you and I can say in the words of Joshua 24:15, "But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Amen. Amen. Let's stand together and bow your heads. I want to say one further word with your heads bowed. If anyone here doesn't know the Lord Jesus Christ as savior, but you would like to start following him as your God and Lord and Savior tonight. He died for you. He rose again. There'll be people here at the front who can pray with you and talk with you, pastors and staff members here. And make sure you do that. Or if you're watching online, you can give your life to Jesus Christ tonight. And no matter what's going on in your family, you can say, "Beginning tonight, as for me and my family, we will serve the Lord." And now may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us both now and forever more. Amen. Amen. [Applause]