Raising Your Children To Take the Land
By Chap Bettis

June 15 will be a Father’s Day. I would like to take today’s sermon and the Father’s day sermon as a mini-series.

But the story we will read has application not only for fathers and mothers and children but for everyone who is a follower of Jesus Christ. Because the topic we will cover is an essential to following the Lord over the long haul.

Several weeks ago we looked at the exaltation of Jesus, noting that he is in heaven, putting his enemies underneath his feet. How is he doing that? through us, his spiritual body on earth.

Really this task of subduing the earth is not a new task. It was given to Adam. It was given to Israel and it has been given to you and me if we are disciples of Jesus.

Let’s look at one time that this task of subduing was given to Israel.

You know that Moses led the people out of Egypt toward the promised land. But when they refused to take the land, they were punished by wandering in the desert for 40 years.

After that time was up, Joshua led the nation of Israel to take the land. The book of Joshua records the major battles.

But what the book of Judges records at the beginning is that Israel did not complete the task. 1:27, 29, 30, 31, 33. In this story there are lessons for our church and our family. Passing our faith on.

Judges 2:1-3:5

First, The Command to the Older Generation: Pass the faith along. Passing the faith along is to be a high priority.

v.7 The people served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him and who had seen all the great things the Lord had done for Israel.

v10 After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel.

It has been said that the church is one generation from disobedience.

This is an overstatement. I am constantly amazed at those Christian leaders who have become Christians as adults. Jesus said he would build his church and the gates of hell would not prevail.

But what this does make clear is that we must never take for granted the salvation our physical children or our spiritual children.

Just because LCF is a believing church today does not guarantee that we will be a believing church tomorrow. Lincoln has many churches that once preached the true gospel that are only a shadow of themselves.

Just because we have believing parents does not guarantee that there will be believing children.

I know many of you are facing prodigal situations with your sons or daughters that cut to the heart.

I want to encourage you to keep banging on heaven’s gate for their obedience. ¾ return to the Lord. Due in part to a mother’s and father’s prayers.

The prodigal had his time of revelry.

But he also had his time of consequences. And it was in those hard consequences, that Scripture says he came to his senses and returned home.

But the statement that the church is one generation from extinction does highlight is that passing along our faith is to be a high priority.

Paul commanded Timothy, “And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable me who will also be qualified to teach others. (2 Tim 2:2)

Fathers, pray for four generations of believing children.

God’s command to every generation:“Drive out the inhabitants. Take possession of the land”

Moses’ purpose was to lead Israel out and record its laws.

Joshua’s purpose was to defeat the major enemies.

And the job of the next tier of leadership was to take all the smaller cities.

God’s command in every generation is to take the land and drive out the inhabitants. God has tasks for every generation.

You are made to live for God’s glory and his kingdom. That’s why, as much as you may enjoy your job, it does not satisfy you. You were made to live for something bigger.

That something bigger is living to put the enemies of Jesus underneath his feet. Even if what you are doing is mundane, you and I and your children still need the understanding of how what we are doing fits into the big picture.

Story of three bricklayers – What are you doing? Cutting a stone, making a living, building a cathedral to the glory of God.

For every generation, there are tasks that God has left undone.

Why?

to test us. 2:22 I will use these nations to test Israel and see whether they will keep the way of the Lord and walk in it as their forefathers did.

to teach us war. 3:1-2 These are the nations the Lord left to test all those Israelites who had not experienced any of the war in Canaan. He did this only to teach warfare to the descendants of the Israelites who had not had any previous battle experience.

It is as we live out our calling to drive out the inhabitants, to place the enemies of Jesus underneath his feet, to take the gospel to every creature that God tests us and teaches us war.

John Piper has said this, “Life is war. It may be more than that, but it is never less.”

There is a WW going on. You may not be in the front battle every day. But it affects your thinking every day. P

Where the church is established and feels like it is at peace, like in the Bible Belt, you find all sorts of weird manifestations of Christianity and all sorts of flabbiness.

When religion is in a state of quiet and prosperity ... the soldiers of the church militant will then tend to forget they are at war. Their ardor slackens and their zeal languishes. John Owen has made an apt comparison: religion in a state of prosperity is like a colony that is long settled in a strange country. It is gradually assimilated in features, demeanor and language to the native inhabitants until at length every vestige of its distinctiveness had died away. -- William Wilberforce in Real Christianity. Christianity Today, Vol. 33, no. 4.

Paradoxically, we need war for our spiritual health. Your children need war for their spiritual health.

The Postive Results of Obedience.

We will know the Lord. v.10. another generation grew up, who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel.

Why does God command us to drive out the inhabitants. It is because in that obedience we come to know and experience God in a fuller deeper way.

The Israelites had known God and his deliverance first hand through the crisis of the plagues, through the crises of at the Red Sea, through the crises of no food and no water.

A generation later, the Israelites had known God and his deliverance as the crossed the Jordan, as they destroyed Jericho supernaturally, as they defeated city after city with the presence of God. And those experiences built a reservoir of trust and knowledge of the Lord.

But a generation that does not seek to advance his kingdom will not have any crises but as a result will not have experienced the deep abiding presence of Christ.

Reasons? Fear of defeat, desire for ease, desire for material wealth, fatigue.

For our children to deeply know the Lord, they must drive out their own inhabitants.

For our church we cannot rest on our laurels. We must continue pressing on to determine what area God has called us to conquer.

Paradoxically, as we fight, we will have peace.

Because the Israelites did not drive out the inhabitants they were harassed for 400 years. When they tried to have peace by not having war they had no peace. But if they had continued in war, they would have peace.

The same is true for us today. If we seek to have peace and quiet and turn our back on the Lord’s call, then we will not have peace. If we seek to follow the Lord into battle, we will have peace.

Most importantly, we will be obeying our Savior and doing what he is doing in the world.

The Negative Results of Disobedience.

What are the result of not driving out the inhabitants?

Our children will serve the Baals

2:11 Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals. They forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the people around them.

They may or may not attend church. But their heart will not be after God.

Our children will forget God.

With no war experience to draw upon, there will be no deliverance. With no deliverance, it will be easy to walk away from God.

Our children will be harassed.

Because the Israelites did not drive out the inhabitants they were harassed. Rather than having peace, they had trouble, until the Lord raised up a judge.

With each judge, the land had peace for forty years. 3:11, 3:30, 5:31, 8:28, 13:1 A generation. Hmm isnt that interesting.

Positive applications:

From Christ’s exaltation flows a command to take dominion over the whole earth and place everything underneath his feet.

To the extent that we take seriously the call to drive out the inhabitants and take the land, we will have spiritual life, knowing God.

To the extent that we avoid this call to take the land, we will start to experience spiritual decline.

To the extent that we inculcate a warrior mentality in our physical or spiritual children, they will have spiritual life, knowing God.

To the extent that we inculcate a resort mentality in our children, they will start to experience spiritual decline.

In Elmer Bendiner's book, The Fall of Fortresses, he describes one bombing run over the German city of Kassel:

Our B-17 ("The Tondelayo") was barraged by flack from Nazi antiaircraft guns. That was not unusual, but on this particular occasion our gas tanks were hit. Later, as I reflected on the miracle of a twenty-millimeter shell piercing the fuel tank without touching off an explosion, our pilot, Bohn Fawkes, told me it was not quite that simple. On the morning following the raid, Bohn had gone down to ask our crew chief for that shell as a souvenir of unbelievable luck. The crew chief that not just one shell but eleven had been found in the gas tanks--eleven unexploded shells where only one was sufficient to blast us out of the sky. It was as if the sea had been parted for us.

Even after thirty-five years, so awesome an event leaves me shaken, especially after I heard the rest of the story from Bohn. He was told that the shells had been sent to the armorers to be defused. The armorers told him that Intelligence had picked them up. They could not say why at the time, but Bohn eventually sought out the answer. Apparently when the armorers opened each of those shells, they found no explosive charge. They were as clean as a whistle and just as harmless. Empty? Not all of them. One contained a carefully rolled piece of paper. On it was a scrawl in Czech. The Intelligence people scoured our base for a man who could read Czech. Eventually, they found one to decipher the note. It set us marveling. Translated, the note read: "This is all we can do for you now."

Some Czech men or women, were fighting the war also, they had mundane jobs, like working in a factory. But they were doing what they could – and it made the difference in the crew of one bomber.

You and I may only be a private in Christ’s army, but as you do what you can to take the land, God will bless.

As we go throughout our days and errands, let us not lose heart but let us breath a prayer for each child and grandchild that he or she too would take possession of the land that God has called them to take.

If you have any questions, comments or observations, please call Chapman Bettis at 401 727-2367 or John Riley at 401-453-5550 or email at johnr@cornerstoneri.com