Sermon Tone Analysis

The other day I was speaking to a devout Christian father who told me that he had been shocked by how his daughter had started a conversation at her public school.

His daughter, while just getting to know another young girl if she “liked boys or girls.”

Now if you have any contact with the public schools you know that this is a totally normal question to ask in a get to know you conversation.

What is shocking about this question was not that the question was asked but that it was asked by a young lady, a baptized believer actually, from a devout Christian home.

After the parents talked to their daughter, and maybe freaked out a little, and then talked to her some more, they realized she had a pretty reasonable explanation for her question.

She had grown tired of making friends and then finding out later about their sexual preferences and how that might affect their relationship.

I wonder what you make of that story.

If what you make of that story is, “man I am glad I have my kid in a Christian school” let me tell you another one or two.

In the last year I have spoken to a teacher in a Christian school is trying to figure out how to handle her school administrations decision to have a young lady who identifies as gay lead worship in the chapel band.

I have spoken extensively to a father whose girls play in Chrisitan school basketball team where many of the girls identify as lesbians.

And when some of the straight kids get close and physical with each other their own sexuality is brought into question.

I wonder what you make of that story.

If you think, I sure am glad, I homeschool.

Well I could tell you stories of a homeschool kid who figured out how to spend his days avoiding homework and watching porn, or a homeschool kid who spent his senior year depressed and doubting the existence of God, or a homeschool kid who could crush any liberal political ideology with brilliant ben Shapiro arguments but has not, will not, embrace the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I wonder what you make of these stories.

I’ll tell you what I make of them.

What I am reminded of when I hear these stories is this fact.

There is a spiritual war for the souls of our children.

In Ephesians 6:4 we are told “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”

I suspect if you are here then you know those words, you know something of their importance.

You know that Fathers (and alongside them, mothers) are to discipline and instruct their children to words, the ways, and the wonders of Jesus.

You know that, what we sometimes forget is that just five verses later we are told that a kingdom of demons is working to undermine and destroy all the efforts we make to see our kids see and savor Jesus.

When we realize how Ephesians 6:10 looms over the command 0f Ephesians 6:4 we realize that we don’t just have lessons to teach, we have a war to be waged.

Not exasperating your children requires that you put on a breastplate of righteousness.

Instructing them means putting on a belt of truth.

Disciplining them should be done with the awareness that we do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against powers and principalities.

When they sink into despair we must have the readiness given by the gospel of peace.

When false worldviews fill their minds we need to be ready to do surgery with sword of the Spirit, and when doubts will their head we need to teach them how to take up the shield of faith.

And of course in all this we need to do this with what Paul calls, “all prayer” looking for a power beyond our own to help us out.

We love Truth 78 because they understand that war and they understand how it is fought.

It is fought with truth, truth that leads to righteousness, truth that is the gospel of peace, truth that shields from the devil's fiery darts, truth that is the sword of the Spirit, truth that can quence the devil's fiery darts.

I’ve seen that truth work wonders.

I’ll tell you are few stories about that.

I watched God’s truth take a young lady through four years of public school walking in purity, through it all looking for and finding opportunities to share with her math teacher (who she brought to church), her mormon friend, her nominal Christian friend, her very depressed and damaged friends.

God’s truth did that.

I’ve watched God’s truth take a young woman through years in a dysfunctional home, and a classical Christian high-school, and now into a god-glorifying marriage and loving service to her Church.

I’ve watched her siblings come out of that same home, and now shaped by the truth they are preparing to serve God on the mission field and doing the work of an evangelist and discipler in their remaining years here in America.