| Salvation by Grace Alone | |
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| Salvation by Grace Alone | |
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By Elder Bernard Gowens FEEDING LAMBS AND SHEEP ... The word of God contains much information concerning the requirement for sound and consistent Biblical teaching and preaching to God's children, both to the lambs and sheep of Christ. I confess that I have all too often used terms in sermons without hesitating to explain these terms to make them clearly understood by children within the context of the subject. It is Biblically true that all ministers should declare all the counsel of God and speak in such a manner that all can understand. Subjected issues should be addressed that are needed by the entire congregation, both for lambs and for sheep. Each message should be directed of God, however. Although Primitive Baptists [PBs] are losing many of their children from the church attendance and membership, I don't have specific criteria to indicate that the loss is so much to Arminian churches as it is to the "world" and its enticements. In spite of their Sunday Schools, and other church-related festivities and recreational activities, our acquaintances of other religious orders are also complaining about declines in their church memberships. They are also posing the like question and statement: "Where are our children?" and "After reaching a certain age in their teen-years, our children are, to a great extent, vanishing from church attendance and membership." These cries are not limited to PBs. Arminians are not losing their children to the PBs, except maybe in some few isolated cases. PBs are losing their children to the world more so than to the "humanistic" systems of religion. So often, the report is made that while "Christianity" is declining, Satanistic "occults" are growing in recognizable numbers. This forces the question: "What and where is the problem?" 
I believe that certain of God's little children, untaught in Gospel principles, reach a state in their youth when living in a "fantasy" world is not satisfying to them. While being ungrounded in the fundamental principles of God's doctrine, reproofs, corrections, and instructions in righteousness while they are young, and upon their reaching the experimental stage of life in which answers are required and sought with which to face "real life problems for real people," and because of the "vacuum" within their lives, it is with response from depraved nature to which various occults are so enticing and seducing. Absent the teaching of God's word, idolatry, is the prime factor in one's life.
The environmental and contemporaneous humanistic menu of the world is so enticing to the unmortified flesh to indulge illegal drugs, alcohol, pornography, extra-marital sex, and all kinds of attending destructive and ungodly acts and attitudes. Our children are today faced with these temptations to a larger extent than were many of us older ones in our youthful days. Largely, we were shielded from much of this when we were young. In America's contemporaneous culture with its financial plentifulness, partly based on plastic credit cards, most children are given everything they want without having to budget, plan, or labor for it. To a large degree, parents either "example" or express the idea that they don't want their children to have it hard like they had it in their youth. Consequently, and largely, an irresponsible generation or two of children have been produced that do not know or care what is real responsibility and liability. Earthly values have replaced godly virtues. Apathy [lack of interest or concern] and spiritual complacency [contented self-satisfaction] have replaced the virtues of Christian knowledge and responsibility. Where lies the blame? With the preachers? With the parents? Perhaps both to some degree. However, primary responsibility for children belongs to their parents. A preacher or pastor cannot "undo" in an hour on Sunday mornings what parents have exampled and practiced all week long. One-hour sermons, fifty-two times a year [liberally, assuming a child's church attendance to be 100%] will not substitute for what is not Biblically exampled, taught, and lived by the family-unit of the home the rest of the time. It is in the home that the pattern for the child's life-style is founded, established, and builded. This life-style, of whatever sort it may be, often is molded into the fabric of the minds and personalities of the home's occupants for a lifetime Any derogatory trait resulting from this life-style will generally remain unaltered unless repentance is wrought in submission to either the word or the rod of God. Parents are the principal and responsible parties so long as the child remains a minor and/or lives at home. Both the parents and the church are either blessed or must often suffer adverse consequences for the rest of their lives for the way the children are trained in the home during their youth. An actual case was told me a few years back. It is a real and typical situation that frequently occurs in today's American lifestyle. The case went something like this: Throughout a young male member's teen-age years, the pastor frequently inquired of the parents as to the reason of their son's absence from the church services. The often repeated response by the parents went somewhat as follows: "You know our son is very popular in school, an outstanding athlete, makes top grades in his classes, and has so many extra-curricular demands placed on him for the development of his social life so that he stays exhausted much of the time. He played so hard, was the star in yesterday's football game and was out late last night. We just told him that, rather than coming to the church meeting, he could 'sleep-in' this morning." This was the recurring story for most of the boy's high school years. During the son's senior year in high school, he meddled some in illegal drugs, drank some with the boys, had a "brush" with the law, and was preparing to leave home for college. The boys mother sternly addressed the pastor with something like the following: "I'm going to 'force' my son to attend church on Sunday His dad and I are going to expect you to preach a sermon directly to him that will change his life-style and set him on the right path for his college years." The primary responsibility of a child's youth-training in the nurture and admonition of the Lord is charged to the parents. God has so charged them with this obligation. Parents do not scripturally or legally have an alternate choice in the matter. Timothy's mother and grandmother were vividly and intensely aware of this God-directed responsibility. Timothy first learned about the Scriptures from those who parented and nourished him in his youth. Nothing can replace God's pattern for spiritual home training and instruction. The church or its pastor cannot adequately compensate for the lack of home Biblical and spiritual training. When deviation is given to God's plan consequences must be suffered in some way. Paul did not have to make an attempt to reconstruct Timothy's attitude or personality or ways of life in order for him to be qualified to function as God's servant. Those spiritual traits were developed in Timothy from his youth. "Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth while the evil days [old age] come out, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them" [Eccl. 12:1] 
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