Faith For the Family | Part 1

From the Love Worth Finding studios in Memphis, Tennessee, I'm Byron Tyler here with Kerry Vaughn, the CEO of Love Worth Finding. Today, Kerry, we're going to look with Adrian Rogers in Hebrews, Faith for the Family, Part 1. Kerry, as you mentioned, the faith of Moses' parents, and something else they did, they recognized God's handiwork in their son, how he created something special. And as parents, our responsibility is to see our children as specific, individual creations of God, and we should raise them accordingly.

Absolutely. I mean, they saw that God was at work. They saw that he was a beautiful child and that God had a plan. And here's the other thing.

They were not afraid. Well, Adrian Rogers says there's a lot of pressures on our kids today, and we better be certain they have something on the inside. And it's our responsibility to help put that on the inside.

Absolutely. And it's our responsibility to remind people not to turn to other people or other things or other resources, but sheep turn to the shepherd. And that's where we find our faith. When we talk about family, Love Worth Finding is one big family, our listeners, and we appreciate them so much. And hearing from them makes it even more special each time that we get a letter from them or an email response or some kind of communication. It means so much. And I think you have something. I do. We have a listener response here. It says, I'm a new Christian in Japan.

My family still worships many gods and creatures, as I did for many years until Jesus Christ saved me two years ago. I appreciate the Bible Center teachings you offer as I try to tell them about Jesus Christ. We love to receive a response back.

I mean, this is the nugget. These are the highlights that we get to read and be a part of. And we see God's work. Well, Kerry, being able to hear responses from listeners like this in Japan and from places all over the world, those who are being touched by the teaching of Adrian Rogers, it takes a team to continue this work, a team of prayer support and also financial support.

You know, it takes everyone. I mean, let's just say it this way, that participation in pocketbook will always follow passion. And so when people have a passion for love, we're finding and they have a heart for the ministry and they love to see God work in the hearts and the lives of people. Can I say this? The involvement in the investment is right behind. And so I just want to encourage our listener today that we've got this strong fiscal year end push that we're trying to finish June 30th very well and very strong for the kingdom.

And if you would like to come alongside and be a partner in that endeavor, we want to thank you in advance for that opportunity. Well, for today's message, here's Adrian Rogers' Faith for the Family, Part 1. Hebrews 11, let's begin looking, if we can, in verse 23.

We're talking today about two champions, perhaps you've never even heard their names before, Amram and Jochebed. Their claim to fame was that they were the parents of a boy named Moses. By faith, Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents because they saw that he was a proper child. And they were not afraid of the king's commandment. By faith, Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season, and he received the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt, for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward.

By faith, he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible. Now, beyond the shadow of any doubt, the most powerful and influential people on earth do not occupy the houses of elected office or run the machinery of industry or handle the business of Wall Street. The most powerful and influential people on earth are parents of faith, and that's why we're speaking today about Amram and Jochebed.

Their claim to fame is that they raised a child whose name was Moses, who literally changed the world. I cannot overestimate the importance of family. The Bible says in Psalm 68 and verse 6 that God sets the solitary in families. And you can understand why the devil has unleashed all of the artillery of hell against the family. But going against the tide where Amram and Jochebed, and I want us to learn four things about faith for the family today, okay? The title, Faith for the Family, and the very first thing I want you to see is what I'm going to call faith's vision. Faith's vision.

Look, if you will, now in verse 23. By faith, Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents because they saw that he was a proper child and they were not afraid of the king's commandment. Now, the phrase in this verse that I'm picking out is they saw.

They saw something. They saw that Moses was a proper child. Now, what does that mean, a proper child? Some translations give it a beautiful child.

Taylor translates it. They saw that he was an unusual child. Now, I believe that Amram and Jochebed were people of great faith. Obviously, they were because the Bible says that they were. They were people of great faith, but you see, they were students of the Word of God. They were both born of the tribe of Levi.

They both were raised, as we could say, PKs, preacher's kids almost. And they had been studying the scriptures, and they knew that God had prophesied that the children of Israel were going to come out of Egypt after 400 years. The clock had been ticking. The pages torn from the calendar, and now 400 years had transpired.

It was time to come out. A leader was needed, and they looked, and here's a child, an unusual child. I believe that what engendered and inculcated the faith in the lives of Amram and Jochebed was twofold. Number one, they had the written Word, and number two, the Spirit of God had spoken to their heart and said, this child is the proper child. This is the unusual child. Well, you say, Pastor Rogers, how about my child? Is my child special?

Absolutely. You better believe that your child is special. Every child is special, and parents need to see every child as a special child. I remember when our first son was born. His name is Steve, named after that preaching deacon in the New Testament, Stephen, and I remember looking at that face, that little red face of that baby, and I thought to myself, I am a daddy.

I am a daddy. Joyce and I were working our way through college. We had a little house trailer, 25 feet long. It had running water, but it didn't have any restroom facilities, no bath or anything. We had a path, not a bath. There was a place over there, that community hall or something, and that's where we bathed and so forth. But I went home.

Joyce was still at the Fish Memorial Hospital. I went home to that little house trailer where we were living, got down on my knees by that flowered couch, and I prayed, and I said, God, if I never have any other kind of achievement, if I never have any material goods, never get to pastor a worthy church, never preach a good sermon, oh, God, I want you to make of me a good daddy. And I believe that the greatest joy and the greatest privilege and the greatest responsibility is to be a parent. I have taken as one of my life's verses, if you want to know what it is, it's Psalm 112 verses 1 and 2. Praise ye the Lord, blessed is the man that feareth the Lord, that delighteth greatly in his commandments. His seed, that means his children, shall be mighty upon the earth. The generation of the upright shall be blessed. Now, you say, Pastor Rogers, do you think that you can control the destiny of your children? No, but I can certainly influence the destiny of my children. Can we believe God on behalf of our children?

Not only can we, but must we? There was a boy that needed help, the father. Came to Jesus and said, Master, if you can, do something for my son. Jesus said to the father, if you can believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. The man said, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.

I think we've all prayed a prayer like that. Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. And the Lord saw that germ of faith and God did for this boy what his father believed for. And so we can, we must, we ought to believe for our children. Now, the Bible says in Proverbs 22 and verse 6, train up a child in the way that he should go and when he's old, he'll not depart from it.

One of the keys to understanding that verse is the word way. It's a Hebrew word that means something like a bend in a bow, that every child has a particular bent. They're not warped. They're bent to a particular thing.

And what it is our duty and joy to do is to discover that bent. Don't see your child like a block of unsculptured granite and you have a hammer and a chisel going to make out of him what you will. Try to determine if you will what gifts God has put in that individual unique person. You see, children don't come in standard packages.

You have to read the label. You have to see what God has put into them. I was reading about Thomas Alva Edison, the great inventor who's given us so many things. We sit under these incandescent lights invented by Edison. When Edison was a little boy in school, his teacher said he is a dunce. He cannot learn. And she suggested to the mother that the boy be taken out of school because he was too stupid to learn anything. Edison's mother said, my boy is not stupid.

You don't understand my boy. I will teach him myself. She homeschooled him. She said, my son is brilliant. He's not stupid.

You just don't understand him. She was able to see a bent in her son that no school teacher can see. And friend, there are things that no pastor, no Sunday school teacher, no coach, no school teacher can see that moms and dads can see if they pray over that child and see that that child is special. Joyce and I have a son who's a missionary.

He's in Spain right now. I can remember when little David, just as a child, just in five and six, would get down maps of the world and pour over those maps, study the states in the United States, even memorizing for whatever reason, I'll never know, the zip codes. But here was a boy who had the world on his heart. Now that dear boy is serving Jesus as a missionary.

I remember our son Steve. I sat down to teach him a little bit of music on the piano. I can play a piano, you won't believe this, but it is true, by ear a little bit.

I can hear the intervals and so forth. And I sat him down as a four-year-old child and to teach him a few finger melodies. And I noticed immediately his heart began to reverberate toward music.

And today he is an accomplished musician and a songwriter and an arranger with a degree in commercial music because he had that particular bent. You may say, Pastor, I didn't know you had a gift in music. I don't have a gift. Well, I had a gift, somebody got it.

And Steve, Steve has that gift. But we have to see every child is special. Now listen, precious parents who have children with Down syndrome, are those children special?

You better believe. You would be surprised how many lives have been transformed, how many people have been encouraged by these precious children. You just take that child and say, my child is a gift from God and say, oh, God, give me the faith that Amram and Jacob had to see a destiny for my child. This is faith's vision.

But now let's move on and think not only of faith's vision, but to get more serious, faith's valor. Look again, if you will, in verse 23. By faith, Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents because they saw he was a proper child and they were not afraid.

Underscore that phrase in your own Bible. They were not afraid of the king's commandment. Now, they had every reason to be afraid because the king, old Pharaoh, and you can read about it, in Exodus 1-22, had commanded that all the little boy babies be drowned in the Nile. But they were not afraid.

Now, it was a dangerous time for them, but the reason they were not afraid is they realized that their battle was not primarily with Pharaoh. Their battle was a spiritual battle. That's what the apostle Paul teaches us in Ephesians chapter 6 and verse 12, where we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Now, you may think that the enemy is the pornographer or the drug pusher. You may think that the enemy is the rapist, or you may think that the enemy is the warmonger. No, friend, the enemy is the devil. He always has been, always will be, and when we understand that our battle is not with flesh and blood, that ought to, in a sense, encourage us because we know that it is a spiritual battle, and the battle can be fought and won by faith. Now, they were dark days for Amram and Jochebed, but the Bible says they were not afraid. Now, I want to say to all of you parents who are here today, put the fear out of your life and say, by faith we're going to raise this child in these dangerous days for Jesus. The Bible says in 2 Timothy chapter 3, verse 1, it says also that in the last days, perilous times shall come. And these are perilous times.

You think about what dangerous days these are. There's liberalism in churches. There's nothing more deadening, more stultifying, more devil pleasing than a liberal church that does not accept the true lordship of Jesus Christ and the true inerrancy and infallibility of the Word of God. And if you're a member of a church like that, get out of it. Get out of it. That's our family church. Get out of it.

Say, Grandma's buried in the backyard. She'd leave if she could. Get out of it. I'm amazed that people will send their children across the United States to get a college education and will not drive across town to get in a Bible-believing church. There's liberalism in churches.

It's dangerous. There is humanism in education. Now, I'm not here to pick on the educators. My son-in-law is a public school teacher, and I thank God for the public schools who are doing the best they can under the circumstances. I thank God for our private schools, and I'm the first to confess that everything is not perfect in the private schools. But overall, the education in America has been given over to humanism, and humanism is just a polite way of saying atheism.

The names have been changed to protect the guilty. Humanism is something that takes God from his throne and thrones man in all of his nuclear glory and makes man the sum and the substance, the center and the circumference of everything, and we begin to sing, Our brothers who art on earth, hallowed be our name, our kingdom come, our will be done on earth, because there is no heaven. The chief building block of humanism is evolution, which is religion.

They say we can't teach creation because that's teaching religion in the public schools. Humanism is religion. Evolution is religion. It's an attempt to explain everything apart from God. It is a negative religion.

It in itself is a faith because evolution has never been proven. It is monkey mythology, but yet our kids in these dangerous days are going to have that coming through the pores of the skin. Take not only the liberalism in the churches and take not only the humanism in the schools, but compound that by the hedonism in society. We have a society that is given over completely, almost totally, to essentialism. I tried to watch some basketball yesterday just a little bit, but I was so put off by the advertisements, the beer advertisements for college sports. The beer barons have gone about to seduce your young people, and they've done a good job. The last statistic that I read said that 95% of college students drink beer. That's frightening to me, 95% drink beer.

Some say, well, a little beer never hurt anybody. Out of every 15 people who begin to drink beverage alcohol of any kind, be it beer, wine, or liquor, out of every 15, one will become an alcoholic. One out of 15. Some say two out of 15.

Listen, if you are wise parents, if you're wise, you have no alcohol in your home. None. None.

None. Number two, you will establish a no drinking tradition in your home. Don't drink it, and just don't make it a tradition. When I go out to a restaurant, especially if my grandchildren are there, and the waitress or waiter comes up and says, would you like an alcohol drink of some kind or something, I don't just say, no, thank you.

I say, no, thank you. We don't drink alcohol. And just to say it clearly and plainly, not boastfully, not like a Pharisee, but let your children hear you say, we don't drink alcohol. Let them hear you say that. And when they go out at night and come in, you be up when they get in so you can give them a big hug and smell their breath.

It'd be better for you to lose some sleep than to lose a child. Now, alcohol is served on television 10 to one over any other beverage. It's hedonism in society. And speaking of television, 88% of all sexual encounters on television are illicit that deal with homosexuality, adultery, or fornication.

I said 88% because, you see, Satan is systematically seducing your children. It's a dangerous situation. We've got hedonism in society.

MTV is nothing but pornography set to music, and kids are feasting on that. Well, these are dangerous days. And in these dangerous days, you have got to raise your children. But the Bible says they were not afraid of the king's commandment. Do you know why they were not afraid? Because they knew the king of kings. They were not afraid because of faith. Now, today, you're not going to be successful raising your children as you ought unless you have the kind of faith that Amram and Jochebed had, faith's vision and faith's valor.

They were not afraid. Don't you throw up your hands. Don't throw in the towel. Don't say there's no hope.

Don't give up the battle. But have the vision and the valor to be the parents that God wants you to be. Now, number three, I want you to see also faith's venture, faith's venture. Look again in verse 23. By faith, Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents because they saw that he was a proper child and they were not afraid of the king's commandment. They did something.

They hid their child from Pharaoh's henchmen. And later on, we're going to see that they built an ark that was used to deliver this little baby boy. The point is that they did not just sit around and say, well, we're going to trust God. Faith without works is dead. When you have the vision and you have the valor, then you've got to have the venture. James says in James 2, verse 17, faith without works is dead. True faith is belief with legs on it.

It does something. Now, these parents did not have fatalism. They didn't say whatever will be will be.

Just let it happen. You take a garden and leave it alone, it's going to turn into weeds. It wasn't fatalism, it wasn't fanaticism. They didn't say, well, we'll just throw him in the Nile and let God take care of him. They didn't do that.

They did something. If you believe God for a house, say amen with a hammer and saw. Sir, if you believe in God for a wife, use a little cologne. Say amen with work. The Bible says if a man won't work, neither should he eat. You do your part and God is going to do his part. Remember our scripture that says, train up a child in the way that he should go and when he's old, he'll not depart from it?

Well then, that is your duty to train him up. Now, political correctness is against that today. They think that you're interfering with a little child's life. Political correctness says don't spank the child, that's child abuse. God's Word says in Proverbs 22 verse 15, foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction will drive it far from him. Political correctness today says, well, give your daughters birth control pills.

The Word of God says in Hebrews 13 verse 4, marriage is honorable and the bed undefiled, but adulterers and whoremongers, God will judge. Political correctness says that the government needs to be partners with the parents. But the Bible says in Proverbs 127 verse 3, low children are the heritage of the Lord and the fruit of the womb is his reward.

Political correctness says, let your schools teach sex education. The Bible says, train up a child in the way that he should go and when he's old, he'll not depart from it. Listen, when you do what God would have you to do, then God will move in and do his part.

Are you training your children? And coming up tomorrow, we'll hear part two of this important message. In the meantime, do you have a prayer request you'd like to share with us? At Love Worth Finding, it's one of our great honors to come alongside you and pray with you and for you. If you can, go to our website homepage at lwf.org slash radio and scroll down to our prayer wall. This resource is one of our favorite ways to keep the ministry and the community praying continually for one another's needs. We can't wait to hear from you today. Again, go to lwf.org slash radio and scroll down to our prayer wall. Well, thanks for studying in God's word with us today. If you'd like to start receiving daily devotions and links to our daily message programs, sign up for our daily heartbeat emails at lwf.org. Tune in tomorrow for the conclusion of Faith for the Family right here on Love Worth Finding.