Children, God's Special Gift

They call it the urge to merge marriage is where God blesses couples with children. The Bible calls. Children are a heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb. A reward kids are a wonderful blessing, but they can also be an immense challenge. Today we navigate the uncertain waters of child rearing. Please stay with us from Chicago. We welcome you to The Moody Church. Our weekly service of worship and teaching under the ministry of Dr. Erwin Lutzer on this program. We continue a 10 part series on fighting for your family. Later in our service will learn about children. God's special gift. Pastor Lutzer comes now to open our service and we are so glad that you have joined us today.

We hope that already.

You've spent some time preparing your heart and mind for today's worship service. You know, one of the most indisputable marks of the ministry of the Holy Spirit is joy. The Bible says that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, and then it lists the other fruit of the spirit Bible also says that the joy of the Lord is our strength may be one of the reasons that we are so weary oftentimes is because we have so little joy in a moment the choir and orchestra are going to be performing for us and they're going to be singing for the beauty of the earth, but the operative line that I want you to notice is the last one, Lord of all 2D we raise this our joyful hymn of praise in the first part of the song lists all the things that should cause us joy, but at the end of the day. It is a gift of God given to us. Would you prepare your heart and mind for worship this morning as we bowed together.

A moment of quietness and then were going to honor the Lord our God, as we listen and then will have our opportunity also to participate. Our father we come into your presence today in we are aware that it is good to be here most of all, we hope that you will receive glory because of our worship. We pray that the meditation of our hearts. The song that we sing the things that we learn the transformation that you hope to bring us. We hope that all of that. We pray that it might take place.

Even as we thank you for the beauty of the earth and all of the other things that you have created. This is our hymn of joy we ask in Jesus name, amen. I agree with George Barna who said that ministry to children is the most important strategic ministry in God's kingdom. It is so satisfying to me to know that Moody Church was birthed as a Sunday school and then morphed into a church and still 150 years later, children are a priority in our children's ministry is growing and continuing and very effective. How wonderful that is in an age when the need are so great, but it's hard to be a child today. It's hard because the contemporary culture says that your value is dependent upon your your appearance. If you're not attractive you're basically worthless. You know these that reality shows that emphasize beauty and to people not knowing each other, still able, in a few moments to figure out whether or not they really connect that not only is trash.

It is destructive trash to her children, then we live in an era where there are no values asked that which you choose in our school systems. We have value clarification, which, as I studied I discovered that where kids and is already determined by the curriculum and how to say a word about the next message that I'm going to preach in this series I always thought that the destruction of the family was something that just happened because society fell apart.

I didn't know that it was strategically planned by a Marxist philosopher who so influenced what we call today the radical left that all the attacks against the family were part of his agenda. I'll tell you about him. For example, he believed that the families were so strong in Europe and the United States that the only way that Marxism can triumph is if the family be broken up and so he plotted to destroy the family. One of the things he said is we have to get women mothers out of the home and we need to tell them that they are victims and when that happens, the children are going to be floundering and this is very important because not until we destroy the family. Will the families finally be willing to accept big government that will take care of them. I didn't know that it was so meticulously planned and all share that with you next time. Today's message is largely for parents though. If you are single there's going to be some things in it. Also, for you so I'm going to ask you as a parent is a Christian parent to question what do you aim for in the lives of your children you say well I want them to be able to do well in school. Be honest, Excel want them to stay out of drugs and sex and alcohol and to become good honorable citizens so that they can be productive to society.

Now if you ended there. If that's the end goal. You are not a Christian parent because the games that I just outlined. Those can be the very names of Buddhists and Hindus and Muslims and even atheists who have a moral consciousness because God created them in his image. Did you know that out of atheism.

No values whatever can arise. None. Logically, it can be proved, but nonetheless, atheists because they are created in God's image, they have a sense of rightness and wrongness and they could achieve the very goals that I've outlined is not Christian parenting. Christian parenting has to take things a step further and say that we are aiming for children who have been redeemed by the gospel, who love God with all of their hearts and God has burst with in them. The new life of Christ and they love God.

Not just because they have to or because rules are good but there varying motivation has been changed by the gospel. That's what we're aiming for. As Christian parents will. How do we get there very quickly for five principles that I think are going to be life-changing, especially as we move ahead in the message and the only passage of Scripture. I'm going ask you to turn to. Today is really the 10th chapter of Mark, Jesus speaks about importance of children in Matthew 18, but this is the only passage I'm using others, but I'm just going to be quoting them in reminding you of what they say because we have much to cover in Mark chapter 10 verse 13 it says and they were bringing children to him that he might touch them and the disciples rebuked them.

But when Jesus saw he was indignant and said to them, let the children come to me and do not hinder them for two such along the kingdom of God. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like this child shall not enter it, don't you love this, and he took them into his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them, was the problem with the disciples. Jesus, they're just kids.

Why are you bothering with kids.

I mean look at all of the adults would like to hear you teach. They might even be able to take notes, but children camped the first thing that we have to convey to our children is this that we love them. We value them but I agree with Chip Ingram. I heard it snatch of a message he preached recently in which he said that children are always asking two questions. How much do you love me and where are the boundaries because if you simply say you love your child and there are no boundaries or the boundaries are unclear, you say well I'm not going to get him mad at me.

He can do whatever he likes, he will grow up hating you, no matter how often you say I love you it will be meaningless.

Children say if you love me, shown me the boundaries and I'm putting the whole emphasis on love and boundaries, and values together. Parents you're the only one who can convey value to your child in school here. She may be ridiculed is going to go through life. Life is tough and the child is asking who am I am I worthy MI MIA is significant and you alone have the ability to convey that to him or to her and you do it by giving them attention by listening carefully.

I wish I had done that more as a father. I remember when one of our teenage girls was going through problems like teenagers have with boyfriends and all her number. Her lying on her bed in the room and I went and I lay on the floor and put a pillow under my head and listened for an hour just listen. She still refers to it and I think to myself, why didn't I do that more often you connect with them. You remind them use discuss with them what they are anticipating in school you talk you communicate and you convey value love, but you can do it without boundaries.

You know, is a parenthesis to realize what divorce does to children, Rebecca and I were in a restaurant. One time we overheard a conversation couldn't help but overhearing it in the next booth between a father who was dropping off a girl that was probably six years old and giving the child to the mother because the father had the child over the weekend.

You know, God puts it into the heart of every little child to have a mommy and daddy and mommy and daddy should love each other.

Now imagine what this little one goes through, she's to love mommy during the week she's supposed to love daddy on the weekends but mommy and daddy can't stand each other that they had an argument right there about money.

Now of course God is a redeeming God as we shall see, but you understand what happens, there are values that you as a parent can convey to your child that cannot be adequately conveyed by teachers and babysitters. However, well, they made you there is nothing like the power of apparent, and if you connect with that child and you value them. Your influence will be greater than the influence that they have in schools regarding drugs and all the other thing that happened to you, you love boundaries value. Secondly, children need someone whom they can emulate a lifestyle that they can follow. It's an old story, but it is a true story. And by the way, the passage there is in first Corinthians were pulses on your father follow me. It's an old story but it's a true story about a man walking through the snow going to the bar. He had to go there regularly because it is addiction to alcohol and is walking through the snow.

He looked back and there was his little son perhaps four years old trying to walk in his father's steps as best he could and the man said hey what are you doing.

He said dad I'm just trying to follow in your footsteps man turned around and went home with tears in his eyes when he ask you some questions you want children to honor God. Don't you do you do they ever see you reading the Bible or praying ever see that you want children who don't drink, do you drink you want children who tell the truth do you tell the truth or have the kids seen and heard you lie modeling modeling powerful. There is going to come a time in the life of your teenager when all that you say in all that you do will not be heard, but it will be your life, even in the midst of struggle that will impact them what they remember we had family devotions all the time without fail, in my home, but interestingly the thing that I remember is when a hailstorm came in, knocked out the crop and in those days. My father didn't have insurance and when it was over. Hope I can get through the story okay. Our parents said let's get on our knees and thank God for all of his goodness.

That's what kids remember, a model of godliness in the midst of trial.

Third, what kids really need is some obedience to authority. The passage is Ephesians 6.

It's worthy of a sermon in itself. Children obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother you, so I can't honor my father my mother because my father was abusive and may be the mother was to by the way, in a future sermon. I'm going to deal with the whole issue of abuse so you be patient will talk about that, but for now, honor your father and your mother that it may go well with you children, obey your parents. You know you've seen this, let me give you a bit of advice. First of all, have few rules but be consistent with them absolutely consistent and just teach them obedience. You've seen it a thousand times we've all done it. Let's suppose little Peter is playing there with the blocks and you say Peter, it's time to go does nothing Peter I Said That We Are to Go Do Something with the Blocks Put Them Back in the Box Plays Is No Need to Go yet.

Peter Joseph Hendrix, Would You Please Put Those Those Blocks Back in the Box When He Hears His Middle Name.

He Knows It's Time to Go. What Is in a Kind of Obedience Happened the First Time Say It Is Your Fault It's Mine. When the Bible Says Some Fathers Don't Exasperate Your Children and That's the Rest of It. How Do We Exasperate Our Children Father's It's by Overcorrection Overcorrection by Yelling at Them and Always Criticizing Them, Always Finding Some Reason to Find Fault Bible Warns against Should Be a Separate Sermon Is Ill Should We Ever Use Physical Punishment. I Say Absolutely, When It's Necessary to Apply the Board Of Education to the Seat of Learning. My Father Had a Razor Strap. Now Some of You Don't Even Know What That Is but It Was Hanging at the Back of the Door. My Older Brother Should've Written over It. I Need the Every Hour You Know We've Still Reacted against the World Because the World Is Simple, That's Child Abuse Course.

It Can Be Child Abuse That's Done in Anger.

If You're Hitting the Child As Such, but a Proper Spanking at a Proper Time with a Proper Reason and a Proper Ending Where There's Reconciliation Afterwards. Probably Nothing Quite like to Help the Kid Know Where the Boundaries Are Well. We Must Hurry on and There's 1/4 Principle, and That Is That Children Must Be Taught Both Law and Grace. And in This Section I Been Held by a Book I Read This past Week. It's Entitled to Give Them Grace in Its Written by a Woman and Her Daughter Names Are Fitzpatrick and Thompson Give Them Grace.

Children Need Both. Let Me Talk about. First of All, the Law We Have To Give Them the Law.

The Bible Says in the Book of Deuteronomy We Should Teach Them the Law, so We Teach Them the 10 Commandments. We Teach Them the Sermon on the Mount.

We Teach Them the Book of Proverbs We Have Good Standards in the Home.

We Say If You Long As You Live Here.

These Are the Standard. These Are the Rule.

You Basically Two Responses from Children. At That Point. One Is the Good Child. Perhaps the Compliant Child Seldom, the Firstborn, the Firstborn Oftentimes Competitive Than What Are Some Other Things I Could Say about Firstborn's Being the Last Born, I Can Comment. I Won't Tell You the Faults of the Last I Pretty Well Got Them All. But You See the Compliant Child Says Okay I'm Going to Do That I'm Going to Excel. I'm Going to Get Good Grades and to Study Hard and Stay Away from Drugs and All the Other Things That the Kids Are Doing. I'm Going to Be the Good Child I'm Going to Excel. I'm Going to Have a Good Job. I'm the Model Child but One Response. But Then There's Another Kid in the Home, Was That You and I Can't Live up to My Older Brothers and Sisters and All of These High Standards All Put up with This Home until I'm Old Enough to Leave Home and Then What I'm Going to Do Is I'm to Do My Own Thing and Finally Be Away from Mother and Father, and Especially If He Hates His Dad or His Mother Is Going to Say in His Mind.

I Hate My Dad and I Hate Is God.

So I'm Not Here to Different Responses from Law. What Is Missing in That Scenario What's Missing Is the Gospel and Grace.

It's Totally Missing from the Scenario, Let's Talk about Child Number One for Just a Moment the Good Child. He Doesn't Understand Gracie Team Really Doesn't See Any Need for It Really Because Look at How Well He's Doing Bring His Report Card Home and Pretty Well Got Straight A's, and He's on His Way.

People Are Looking at Him Saying He's Going to Be Successful You Need Grace, Not Really. Well, You Know, Church and God. It's All Nice. If You're Desperate, but He's Not Desperate Child Number Two Entirely Different Scenario Child Number Two.

What Does He Need He Needs Grace Because You See the Reason That He Leaves Home and Does His Own Thing Is Because He Figures He Can't Live up to This High Standard That His Parents Have Set out for He Can't Live up to This Standard. And Why Should He Even Bother Trying to Live up to the Standard When He Can't Do It and He Can't Do It.

What He Needs Is the Gospel He Needs Grace Because You See the Bible Says That Jesus Christ Came on a Rescue Mission Died for Our Sin and Was Raised Again. For This Reason, for Number of Reasons, but One Is so That We Could Be Forgiven and Actually Have the Righteousness of Christ Applied to Us to Make up for All of Our Deficits in All of Our Inabilities and All of Our Sin. And Secondly, to Change Our Hearts If Any Man Be in Christ He Is a New Creation the Old Things Are Passed Away Behold All Things Are Become New.

The First Commandment Says Thou Shalt Love the Lord Thy God with All Thy Heart with All Thy Mind and with All Thy Soul. Can We Wake up in the Morning and Keep That Commandment Course.

How Can We Even Begin to Keep That Commandment Unless We Been Born Again in God Births within Us a Supernatural Love of God Can't Be Done. And with This Boy. He Needs You See He Says in His Mind after He's Been in the Far Country.

He Says You Know I Blown It so Badly. God Is Probably so Mad at Me. There's No Use Coming Back God and Being Reconciled Because I Can't Live up to It Anyway.

But What He Needs to Know Is That That's Why Jesus Came. Of Course We Can't Live up to It.

Of Course He Can't and Neither Can You, and Neither Can I but God Receives Sinners and Gives Them What They Don't Have.

It Gives Them the Gift of Righteousness and Acceptance before God and and He Also Gives Them the Motivation to Live Differently.

How Many Failures They May Do along Life's Way Just like I've Done and You but This Boy Needs to Know That He Doesn't Have To Come to God and Promise to Live like His Older Brother. He Comes Just As He Is Is a Song Which Sometimes Sung Probably Not Sung It Often Enough.

That's Is the Vilest of Sinners Who Truly Believes That Moment from Jesus Apart Receives He Can Come As He Is with His Weaknesses and Sins, and He Will Be Received by God Because of Grace. Let Me Ask You a Question. Which Group of People Did Jesus Have the Greatest Problem with When He Was Here on Earth. We Know He Was Criticized for Hanging out with the Drunkards and the Prostitutes in the Tax Collectors and All of the Things They Said You Know He's He's He's Hanging out with These People but Jesus Had Was Received by Them but but the Goody Two Shoes Who Are Keeping the Law What Yo-Yoing If You Haven't Read Matthew 23 for A While, You Read Matthew and I Read and I Say, You Know, I've Never Had the Nerve to Even Preach on This. Is This the Loving Jesus Talking Excruciating These Self-Righteous People Get a Bigger Problem with Them. In Fact, That's Why He Once Told a Parable about a Man Who Had Two Sons. The Older Brother Who Stayed Home the One Who Worked on the Farm Day and Night Dated Six and Then the Other Kid You Know Who Ran into the Far Country, and Then in Desperation Decided to Come Home and What Jesus Is Saying Is It That Older Brother, It's Possible You Know to Be in the Father's Work and Not Share the Father's Heart. He Was Working Hard, but He Was Disconnected. He Didn't Have a Personal Relationship with His Dad. The Younger Son, the Prodigal, He Came Home.

I've Been Thinking about This This past Week.

I Think That All of Us Would Prefer to Raise an Elder Brother Than a Product Who Leaves Home but You Know at the End of the Day. I Do Have To At Least Ask the Question Which Son Please the Father and the Answer Was the Prodigal Because He Came with Nothing in the Father's a God of Grace and Said Hey Bring Head of the Best Robe and Put It on and Put a Ring on His and Shoes on His Feet. Let's Have a Party Older Son Didn't Care for a Party with the Father, the Older Son Was into Works of Righteousness, and It Was He Who Made That Farm Go and He Never Entered into the Father's Grace I Was the Whole Point of the Parable, Both Needed Grace Is a Will Is There a Problem with the Law Know the Problem with the Law Is That We Keep It Superficially. We Think That the Law Was a Matter of Outward Obedience and We Don't Understand That the First Commandment Was. Thou Shall Love the Lord Our God with All Our Heart and That the Law As Paul Says Should Drive Us to GE's Because All of Us Know We Don't Keep It, At Least in Our Hearts. The Pharisees Thought As Long As We Keep It outside. We Give Our Tithes. Everybody's Watching. We Say Our Prayers in the Street Corner and We Keep the Law. We Don't Have To Have a Changed Heart to the Law Didn't Do Its Work. Supposed to Be so Jesus Says That Both of These Need Grace so That's What Children Need. They Need a Law They Need. Grace When They Transgress As They Will.

You Should Not Be Surprised. Don't Ever Underestimate the Evil and the Deception of the Human Heart. Don't Underestimate but at the Same Time You Don't Jump on Them Just Simply Law Law Law Law Would You Say Is You Know I Understand What You Did and I'm Really Not Surprised.

That's Why Jesus Came to Die for Us and to Rescue Us from Ourselves and to Give Us the Strength That We Don't Have. You Keep Pointing Them to a Gracious, Loving and Accepting Jesus or Something Else That the Children Need and That Is Praying Parents. This Is so Important That I Hope to Preach an Entire Message on It. Near the End of the Series of Messages Praying Parents. Why Do They Need, Praying Parents Wide-Awake. Why Do Children Need Parents Who Are Following God Will Tell You It's Because Conversion Is God's Work and It's Not Yours Is Not Mine, We Think to Ourselves, You Know, As Long As We Teach and Ram It in Cram It in People's Heads Are Hollow Remedy and Cram It and Make Sure There's We Think to Ourselves When We Put Them to Sunday School. We Put Them in Camp. He Memorized 100 Versus so It's Time for Him to Believe on Jesus, Don't You Think It's Time to Believe on Jesus. Yeah I Guess so.

Parents Say Pray This Prayer Because We Want to Make Sure You're in the Kingdom. Child Grows up No Transformation of Life at All. They Live the Way They've Always Lived. There Is No Evidence of the Work of God in Their Hearts and They Begin to Say, I Wonder If I Was Really Saying Back in the Parents Unwisely Say Oh Yeah You Were Because Remember, You Pray This Prayer When You're Five Years Old. Remember We Were Kids.

Okay, I Guess so Parents Never Presume That the Your Child Has Seemingly Believed on Jesus. Let the Holy Spirit and the Word of God Grant Them the Assurance and Don't Try to Get You Know the Chicken Out Of the Egg You Share the Gospel with Them. Lovingly You Share from Your Own Experience of Weakness How Weak You Will and How Much You Need the Gospel You Humble Yourself Because That's What Grace Is All about, and Then Having Humbled Yourself and Shown Them the Gospel You Trust God to Do on Miracle That You Can't Do. I Don't Want to Be Misunderstood That Parents Don't Overestimate Your Ability to Bring up Kids Right so That They Will Follow the Lord with Precision and Make You Proud Don't Overestimate Your Ability. Your Sale Would Only Have a Promise in Proverbs 22 Verse Six Bring up a Child in the Way in Which He Should Go on Afterwards He Will Not Depart from It. While I Have News for You Write This down. You Know What the Book of Proverbs Is. It's a Book of Proverbs Is What It Is. Did You Get It Proverbs Are Not Universally True.

They Are Maxims by Which We Live Our Life. I Could Go through a Whole List of Proverbs and Show You That They Always Are Not True. For Example Just One Example. A Soft Answer Turns Away Wrath Said Was True. Every Time You Get a Soft Answer. You Give a Soft Answer Wrath Is Turned Away Know Sometimes You Give a Soft Answer Your Swatted across the Face and You Might Even Be Jailed. Son Always True, but Generally You Bring up Kids. This Way You Generally True but Don't Overestimate Your Ability. You Say Will What Are We Left with Finding This Is Scary Tell You What Were Left with Were Left with Calling on God for Grace in Our Children's Life That Only God Can Supply That's What Were Left with Because You As a Parent Can Change a Child's Behavior. What You Cannot Do Is to Change a Child's Heart That Is God's Business and All That We Can Do Is to Create an Environment in Which the Gospel Is Shared and Live and Trust God and by the Way Rules without Relationship Equals Rebellion. Should Said That Earlier. So First of All Grace Means That Only God Is Able to Save the Children. Secondly, Grace Means That No Disobedience, No Disobedience Is Final or Fatal Unless of Course the Child Dies and Disobedience. But You Have No Idea about God's Ability to Rescue People, Even from the Get. I Was Sharing with Someone Recently Who Was Involved in Moral Failure, and I Read to Him from Psalm 40 I Waited Patiently for the Lord. He Heard My Cry and He Delivered Me from the Miry Pit. I Think My Translation Says from the Miry Got the Deepest Pit God's Been Able to Reach and Deliver As a Woman at Permitting Whose Name I Will Not Mention She's an Elderly Lady, but She Is There. Every Single Wednesday to Pray. So I Asked Her Last Week I Said How Many Years a Given Coming and She Said Ever since I Came to the Church 20 Years Ago. She's Been Praying for His Son and She Has Been Praying Consistently, Not Just 20 Years. But Even before That Time, God Is Given Her the Assurance That Someday Her Son Will Believe the Gospel and Be Saved. No Disobedience Is Fatal Because Grace Works in Unexpected Ways. Thirdly, the Grace of God the Grace of God Often Makes up for All Kinds of Human Failure and Sentence.

None of Us Is a Perfect Parent. I Look Back and Wish That I Could Relive Some of My Days As a Parent. My Parents Prayed A Lot and I'll Tell You That Story When I Speak on Prayer, but Boy, If You Judge Them by Certain Standards. They Were Not Know the Ideal Parents. Not Sure If Anybody Has the Ideal Parents and God Sometimes Comes along and He Saves People, and He Transforms Them despite Their Background. Some of You May Be Adopted and You Don't Know Who Your Parents Are Some of You Perhaps Have Been Conceived Out Of Wedlock so You Wondered about Your Worth, I'm Here Today to Tell You That There Were All Kinds of People like This That I've Met throughout the Years Who Are Mighty Warriors for God Because God's Grace Is Greater Than Human Failure and Sin. Aren't You Glad for That. Just Think for a Moment. Joseph Is One Man in the Old Testament, about Whom There Is No Sin Recorded Primitive Eddie Kid Was Perfect It Was. Joseph Was a Little Unwise in Sharing This Dream with His Brothers. He Should've Known That That Wasn't Going to Go down Very Well and All I Saw a Dream and in the Dream You Guys Bow down to Me Who You Were Very Happy to Do That. Joseph You Know Who His Father Was His Father Played Favorites with Him, All Because the Father Loved That Wife Because She Was More Beautiful Than the Other Wife That She Married That He Married so He Let These Kids More Than the Others Boys Ever Sinful. That Was the Context and by the Way, This Is a Parenthesis You're Getting It All Free Today Part of the Program.

I Just Was so Amused When I Discovered This, You Know, It's Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Okay. Did You Know That the Ancestry, the Ancestors of Jesus Go Back Not to Rachel to Leo the One Who Wasn't Pretty. I Love God Digests Is to Fluid with All This Business of Who Looks Best. I'm Going to Choose the Unloved One, and It Is Going to Be through Her That Judah Will Be Born, and Then Eventually Jesus. From That I Can Do Whatever I like. I'm Speaking On Behalf Of God When I Say That, but Just so That You Understand I Just Marvel at Got.

I Shake My Head and I Say While so Here's a Here's Joseph Brought up in That Context and Turned out Pretty Well Actually Betrayed by His Brothers. I Think for Example of Moses Who Was Really Reared by a Woman Who Was a Sun Worshiper. She Wasn't His Mother, Though His Mother Did Have Him Act Because His Mother Was Kind of the Nurse That Took Care Of Moses in His Early Years, He Turned out Pretty Well Actually Considering the Fact That He Didn't Have a Stable Family That He Could Depend on. And Then There's That One That in the Old Testament That I've Often Thought about a Man by the Name of Ahaz Who Was a Wicked King, Not Ahab. He Was Wicked Too, but I'm Thinking of Ahaz and of the Bible Says That He Put up Idols and Did That Which Was Evil in the Sight of the Lord, and He Has a Son by the Name of Hezekiah Hezekiah Is a Righteous King He Tears down the Idols. There Are Some Mistakes in His Life. To Be Sure, but Basically Hezekiah Follow the Lord All the Days of His Life. The Bible and Then Shock of All Shocks. He Has a Son and the Son's Name Is Manasseh and It's His and Matt, Manasseh Did More Evil in the Sight of the Lord Than All the Others before Held That Was at Hezekiah's Fault. To What Extent Was Invisible. I Don't Know. It's Just That the Grace of God Sometimes Comes along and Converts and Changes in the Most Unlikely Places and Then in the Middle of All of This, Grace. You Also See the Power of Sin. I Don't Know What Your Background Once. I Don't Know Where You Are Coming from but I Do Know This, That If You Reach out to God. Grace Can Fill Your Life. The Grace of Forgiveness, the Grace of Acceptance the Grace of Transformation. God Changes Are Hard to See When Were Converted Born Again.

There's Actually Something with in Us, That Wasn't There at the Beginning Because There's a New Nature There Is Something Created There That Is Supernatural and That's What Gets to the Very Heart of Our Desires in This Message. I Played off This Whole Thing about Grace and Law so I Conclude with a Story from Jesus. Jesus Loved Stories. He Said the Two Men Went into a Temple to Pray Once That I Thank You God I'm Not like Other People, Cultures, Fornication I Fast Twice a Week. The Other Man Your Member Wouldn't Look up to God. He Couldn't Look God in the Eye, so to Speak. He Was a Publican. He Was a Sinner.

He Was an Outcast of the Bible Says He Smote His Rest and Just Said God Be Merciful to Me, the Center, the Greek Says Be Propitiated to Me the Center Jesus Said Which One Do You Think I Am Went Home Justified and I Can't Help but Think That Today I'm Speaking to Do Classes of People. In Fact I Know I Am in This Large Crowd and Those Who Are Listening Better Me. I'm Talking to the Man Who May Be Sitting There, Arms Folded and Saying You Know This Business of Church and God and Jesus Is Good for Women, Children. I like the Idea of Giving My Children Some Kind of a Moral Foundation. I Don't Need Redemption. I Had a Hard Life and I Done Well. I Worked Hard I Play by the Rules That I Can Imagine Somebody Who's in the Far Country, and Who Would Say to Me Pastor. If You Knew Even What I Did This past Week. No, God Could Never Accept Me so Mad at Me and I Say That If You Are Willing to Pray the Prayer of the Public.

God Be Propitiated to Me, the Sinner God No Matter How Higher Standard Is It Doesn't Matter As Long As You Meet It for Me.

You Set the Standard and Then in Jesus Asking Me to Sit on My Behalf so That I Can Freely Be Forgiven and to Be Received. That Is the Gospel.

Luther Put It Very Clearly and Simply, Oh Jesus, I Am by Sin, Thou Art My Righteousness Are Great Contribution to Salvation As We Bring Our Sin. His Contribution Is to Take It from There and Redeem Us and Forgive Us and Adopt Rebels into His Family Make Them Sons and Daughters of the Almighty. That's What Got Us and You'll Do That for You If You Believe, Would You Find a Child That You Can Pray for. I Forgot to Mention the Assignment for This Week, but It's in the Bulletin. If You Will Let Us Pray Father Is.

This Message Is Going out's Fallen into Many, Many Hearts, Some Open, Some Closed, Some Angry, Some Receptive Old Father. The Work of Salvation Is Your Work. At This Point We Just Back off and Say with Nothing More to Say You Have To Bring Conviction You Have To Grant Faith You Have To Do Everything from Here on out for a Close This Prayer No Matter Where You Are, Would You Cry up to the Lord Wherever You Are and Say Jesus I'm Nice Sin. Your My Righteousness I Receive You Now Receive Your Grace. Father, We Thank You That the Work You've Begun in Us Will Be Complete in Jesus Name Interesting Is Because This Morning and on Today's Church.

Our Dr. Erwin Lutes Are Spoke about Children.

God's Special Gift Number Six and a 10 Part Series on Fighting for Your Family, Video Games, Smart Phones and the Internet. A Mixed Blessing to Be Sure since They Opened a Pandora's Box of Destructive Influences on Your Kids Next Week.

Pastor Lutzer Takes Us to Nehemiah Chapter 4 As He Speaks on the Enemy inside Your Home. Our Current Series Can Be Yours on CD Is Our Thank You for a Gift of Any Amount to The Moody Church. Our Just Call Us at 1-800-215-5001.

Let Us Know You'd like to Support Dr. Luther's Ministry. When You Call Vince in the Series on Fighting for Your Family. Call 1-800-215-5001 or Write to Us at The Moody Church 1635 N. LaSalle Boulevard Chicago, IL 60614 Online Go to moodyoffer.com That's moodyoffer.com Join Us Next Week for Another Moody Church.

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