How Should Parents/Church Regard/Treat Children?

The point: Make a positive biblical presentation with respect to how we should regard and treat our minor children.

Martin mentions his head cold and nasal voice, asking the congregation to bear with him, which serves as a lighthearted opening and personalizes the speaker.

Now, as some of you have no doubt already noticed, I can tell by your smiles that I have a head cold. And I'm going to try to speak over it loud enough. If you can't hear me...

0:56 - 1:10 Read in full sermon

The point: Do not take a laissez-faire, hands-off policy with your children's obedience to your directives.

The biblical account of Eli being rebuked by God for not restraining his sons, despite rebuking them, illustrates the necessity of enforcing obedience in parental training.

And this is why Eli was rebuked of God, because he rebuked his sons, but he did not restrain them. He spoke to them and said, my sons, why do you do this evil? But the Lord came to him and said, you did not restrain your children, and because you didn't restrain your children, because you didn't enforce that which you said by positive means of restraint, you have chosen them over me, God says, and I will punish you accordingly.

21:59 - 22:36 Read in full sermon

The point: Decide upon your children's religious practices, ensuring they are in church, in devotions, upright and moral, giving thanks, praying, and confessing sin.

Martin shares his personal experience with his young children listening to Bible story tapes constantly and repeating them verbatim, illustrating that encouraging religious activities doesn't necessarily require an adversarial relationship, even with the doctrine of total depravity.

I can here speak only from experience and I don't have anyone over five years old, so I can't speak about how this applies to teenagers and I'm not trying to. But I can simply say that I believe that everything I said before about my children, I believe that they're conceived and born in sin, et cetera, et cetera. And yet, I have not had to sustain an adversary relationship to them in order to get them to pray to the Lord and to have them be in devotions and to listen when the word of God is read. As a matter of fact, I've found that they've been quite open and receptive to the things that we'...

32:57 - 33:42 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin introduces three differing attitudes, starting with 'presumptive regeneration,' characteristic of most paedobaptists, which assumes children are saved until proven…

Martin quotes Marcel's 'The Biblical Doctrine of Infant Baptism' to illustrate the paedobaptist perspective of presumptive regeneration, specifically the idea that a different gospel message is preached to covenant children who are not considered 'proselytes' and have a different 'ability to respond.'

Now, the second point is that there is a different gospel to be preached then to our children as opposed to that gospel which we preach to proselytes or to the unconverted in general. Now, I'd like to quote from Marcel's book page 135 of Marcel The Biblical Doctrine of Infant Baptism. He says this. He says, For our young people, they should never, be considered as proselytes.

43:16 - 43:54 Read in full sermon

The point: Do not tell your children they have been given prevenient grace to enable them to repent and believe in their own strength.

Martin quotes Birkhoff's 'Systematic Theology' to further illustrate the presumptive regeneration view, stating that children are to be regarded as Christian and saved until proven otherwise by heresy or gross immorality.

That's nothing more or less than that. That's all it is. Now, that's one attitude. And Birkhoff, on page 288 of his Systematic Theology, says with regard to this attitude that we are to regard them as Christian children and we are to assume that they are saved until by heresy or gross immorality, they prove the other.

48:38 - 49:11 Read in full sermon

The point: Do not 'decision' your children at a very early age by having them say a sinner's prayer and then assume everything is taken care of.

Martin uses the example of children readily saying the sinner's prayer to illustrate the ease with which children can be 'decisioned' in the 'presumptive innocence and easy believism' approach, highlighting its potential cruelty.

And then, this is mixed to decisionism. So that just to make sure, at a very early age, the requirement is that the child says the sinner's prayer and simply repeats after, after you. And of course, as child evangelism can prove to you, most children will say the sinner's prayer. I mean, my children, of course, would give no resistance to that at this age.

50:56 - 51:23 Read in full sermon