Secular Education

Review After Nine-Week Digression

0:00 I would invite you to turn with me to the first psalm as we resume this evening after a nine-week digression our studies in this most basic of the psalms, Psalm 1.

0:30 Now just before we spend a few minutes reviewing, I did fail to mention the only special announcement, of course, is that we meet here Wednesday night. For any of you who have not heard that announcement over the past three weeks, two and a half weeks, we meet here Wednesday night at 7.30, regular prayer meeting time, but a different place for the election of our officers. If you do not have a set of the notes dealing with this subject, please collect a set.

0:55 They're on the table at the rear of the church, and seriously consider that material prior to coming on Wednesday night. Now, the theme of this first psalm as we have been studying it, at least the theme we have given to it, or the title to its theme, is the way of blessedness. This word blessed that meets us in the very outset of the psalm, blessed is the man that walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. This word blessed is a very difficult word to define.

1:33 It has bound up in it the whole matter of true happiness without giddiness, true fulfillment, satisfaction, all of those concepts. It's speaking of the man who's found the meaning of life and is reveling in that gracious find. And as the psalmist would unfold to us the subject of the way of blessedness, he does so in terms of a contrast, giving to us the blessed man in the first three verses, and then something of the unblessed man, the ungodly, in the fourth and fifth verses, and then a summary statement in the sixth stanza. Our Lord Jesus Christ, of course, is the great picture of the blessed man,

2:20 the one who without any exception always walked in the light of the Word of God, the one who could say in a way that even David could not say, I delight to do thy will, O my God, yea, thy law is within my heart. I do always the things that please my Father. And yet he is set before us not only as our substitute and our Savior, but as our example. For he that saith he abideth in him ought himself so to walk even as he walked.

2:50 And so the way of blessedness is marked out for us, not only in terms of a description of our Lord, but in terms of the pattern of God for our lives. We have been spending some time on this first verse and making some reference as well to the second verse. For the way of blessedness is set before us here, first in the negative and then the positive. Blessed is the man that walks not, and then he describes the way or the areas in which he does not walk.

3:21 And by contrast he says, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And we have seen in our studies that if we would be blessed men and women, we must know both the negative and the positive of the way of blessedness. By nature and temperament, we will all gravitate either to too much positive or too much negative. And it's only as we cling tenaciously to the balance of Scripture that we will be able to know the way of blessedness both in the negative and in the positive.

3:52 Now the first statement is, the blessed man is one who walks not in the counsel, that is the advice of the ungodly. But in contrast to this, his mind is so marinated and steeped in the concepts of Holy Scripture that his life is ordered not by the counsel of ungodliness, but by the counsel of God. With that principle before us, I have stated and have built several messages upon this statement that we must know the sources from which this counsel comes. If we would be blessed people, we must resolutely reject the counsel of ungodliness.

4:33 Well, how can I reject an enemy whom I do not recognize? If my enemy comes to me with a smile upon his face and in the guise of a friend, I will embrace the bosom of the one who may slay me. And so the child of God must have discernment to recognize the counsel of ungodliness and the channels through which it comes in order that recognizing it, he might refuse it whenever it presents itself to him. In our study thus far, we have seen that the counsel of ungodliness comes to us not only in the crass, overt, obvious ways, but in subtle ways.

5:09 And we spent several weeks considering how this counsel comes to us through the mass media of communication. The radio, the television, the TV, the newspaper, the advertisement that screams out at us from the billboards. And that media or those media are continually saying that the way of blessedness is the way of materialism, the accumulation of things, or the way of sensualism, the way of enjoying things. But the man who meditates in the word of God knows that blessedness cannot be found in things, nor can blessedness be found in the gratification of sensual appetite without respect to the law and the will of God.

5:51 Now tonight I want us to begin at least a consideration of the second great source of this counsel of ungodliness which has deeply affected almost all of us tonight without exception and one of which many of us are painfully unaware that it has influenced us to that degree. If the blessed man is the man who walks not in the counsel of ungodliness, I must know in what form that counsel comes to us. I trust we've been made aware as never before that we must, as it were, ask God to immunize us against the counsel of the mass media. We must not read the newspaper without praying that God will give us discernment and immunize our minds against its subtle influences.

6:39 If you don't prayerfully select and expose yourself to your television, I have no doubt but what you are being counseled continually by its ungodly counsel and advice. Now the second area, great area, channel through which this counsel comes to us is what I am calling secular education. Now let me define my terms. By secular I mean that which is separated from the religious or the spiritual.

Secular Education as a Channel of Ungodly Counsel

7:06 Well, by education I am speaking of the process of imparting information and developing skills to which most of us were exposed for 13 whole years of our life. 30 hours a week, 40 weeks a year, a total of 15,600 hours. You were under the influence of the secular education system as expressed in our public schools. Now, what I want to do tonight, God helping me and your minds employed deeply in thought, is to demonstrate how the counsel of ungodliness comes with tremendous weight and authority through this vehicle of secular education.

7:53 And in order to come to that conviction and see it in perspective, I want to establish first of all the fact that secular education is based upon a secular philosophy of life. Now, by that I do not mean that every teacher you had back in the, some of you back in the, well, I won't go back any farther than the 20s, some of you back in the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, with but few exceptions of a true Christian here or there, every teacher at whose feet you sat was a philosopher. Now, that teacher may not have worked out his philosophy clearly so that if you came up to that person now in a rest home or an old folks home somewhere and said, Miss so-and-so, Mr. so-and-so,

8:39 when I sat in your third grade class back there in local school number such and such and such and such a time, what was your philosophy of life? What was your worldview? Now, they might look at you and scratch the head and say, you've gotten much smarter than I am. I never had one.

8:55 I just tried to put a few facts in your head and help you learn a few skills that would help you get through life. But you see, that person had a philosophy of life. Whether or not they ever thought it out and articulated it, every person to whom you've been exposed in a teaching situation has or had a philosophy of life, and the whole educational process was based upon and derived from that philosophy of life. Now, what are some of the major tenets of that philosophy of life, which undergirds secular education.

Five Pillars of Secular Educational Philosophy

9:27 The philosophy which is holding together this public school and its teaching day after day. May I suggest four or five things that are the basic framework of that system of education. And this is the vehicle by which the counsel of ungodliness comes to us so subtly. Principle number one.

9:48 The mind of man is supreme. If you're to ask the person involved in secular education in the public educational system, what is the final court of appeal in the answering of the most deep problems in the observations of life, in trying to sort out the raw materials and teach young people something about the world, about them, about society, about life, its purpose, its goals, its standards, morality, the home, marriage, sex, war, all the rest. They would say, why, of course, the mind of man. We have minds that are there.

10:28 We don't know how they got there. They won't say they're given to us by God, but we find ourselves with minds that can think, and so they assume that the mind of man is the supreme court of appeal. They will not admit that there is a need for illumination to come from without, that there needs to be revelation from without. The common assumption is the mind of man is supreme.

10:55 Second assumption that undergirds the philosophy of secular education is that man, including his mind, is in a normal state. He may have some problems. Now they can't deny that. He may have some growing pains. All of the problems in the world are looked upon as the growing pains of man. But man is basically in a normal state. He is not under the curse of God. His mind is not darkened by sin. His affections and appetites have not been perverted by sin and the biblical doctrine of human depravity.

11:31 You know, man is basically in a normal state, and we must simply adjust the expressions of this normalcy so that we can get along better with each other and make a little bit better way through the world in which we live. This, you see, is what underlies the whole permissive philosophy. If man is in a normal state, then it seems to be normal that all children reject authority and say no and want to express their ego. And if they don't like something you do, they kick you in the shins.

12:06 Well, you see, if this is a normal state of affairs, you dare not impinge upon that normal expression. You must let the child, if he feels like in the middle of the class he wants to shout and holler and scribble on the blackboard, you dare not restrain him. You see, this may be some budding seed of an artistic temperament And you might frustrate him from finding his calling in life You see the whole concept of the permissive philosophy that took away the biblical concept of the rod of discipline, keeping in check the depraved, the expressions of the depraved tartars, the scripture says, foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction driveth it far from him. it's all based upon this assumed thing that man is normal.

12:53 The mind of man is supreme. Man is normal. Thirdly, we live in a world of chance. This undergirds all of the teaching in the natural sciences in secular education.

13:03 The young person is brought to look at the world as it is, and when he asks the teacher, he lifts his little lily white hand and says, Teacher, why are the mountains where they are and the seas where they are? And the teacher says, why, things are the way they are because they are.

13:23 That's all. Well, teacher, why is it that the vapors ascend and become clouds and the clouds let down water? Well, because that's the way it is. Now, they may go on to say, well, those are the laws of nature.

13:35 And then the little child is not satisfied and he lifts his little lily white again and says, but teacher, how come the laws of nature work that way? And the answer is, they work that way because they work that way. A chance. It's the way it happens to be.

13:50 That it is so, we cannot deny. But why it is so? It's that way. Now that undergirds the whole teaching environment in secular education.

14:01 The mind of man is supreme. Whatever is contrary to man's standard of what's right and wrong and what's believable or unbelievable, Everything must stand beneath the bar of man's almighty judgment. Man is in a state of normalcy. He's got some problems, but they're just growing pains.

14:20 Thirdly, it's all a world of chance. The fourth thing that undergirds that philosophy is this. Man's good and man's development is the gold of education. Oh, how I can remember those little pep talks when I graduated out of junior high school and then when I graduated from high school.

14:37 something about, well, we trust from what you have learned in our school, you will go out and make the world a better place in which to live. Did you get that same little pep talk? That was the whole end of it all. Go out and make the world a better place in which to live.

14:55 Well, how do you make it a better place? Well, a few more jobs, a little less poverty, a little more peace, a little less war. You see, the whole philosophy that undergirds secular education is that man's good and man's development is the entire goal. It's the sum and substance of the goal of education.

15:17 And then the fifth factor that undergirds or is a part of the structure, the philosophy of secular education is that time and this world is the exclusive sphere of our concern.

15:33 You see, secular education may say, oh yes, religion has its place. If it does, it's not here. The whole concern of the educational process is this world right here that we can see and touch. Values that are before our eyes that we can put in the test tube that we can bring to scientific investigation and observation.

15:54 Since we can't see any other world, if there is one, the world of spiritual reality, the realm of eternity, and since if there is such a thing, that's the sphere of religion, that's taboo for us, we leave our hands off, our concern is the world of now. Now, with these basic assumptions, a whole pattern of thought and a whole system of education has been fostered upon all of us. Thirty hours a week, forty weeks a year, over fifteen thousand hours in a period of 13 years. Now let me ask you a very simple question.

The Subtle Absorption of Secular Thinking

16:35 Do you think you had reached such high attainments in grace and such deep development in knowledge that you were able at age five to be immunized to the approach of this philosophy upon your tender, young, pliable mind?

16:59 I think your answer is obvious, isn't it? Of course not. Of course not.

17:10 One of the things that's impressed me in the pastoral ministry is that much of what you learn, you learn not so much, or I shouldn't say not so much, but not only by specific precepts that are spoken and articulated, but by a very mood and climate in which those things are being communicated. I've had some of you come to me and say, Pastor, you know after six years it's beginning to get across to me. That if God says it, that's the end of all controversy. See?

17:40 You have been learning truth in a climate based upon the absolute finality of the authority of God. And after a while, without even sitting there thinking, saying, I am now believing this principle. What God says is final. No, you've been learning many things in that context so that the very educational context and climate has begun to put its stamp upon your soul and upon your mind.

18:07 Now for thirteen years, you were in the vice-like grip as a tender young person with a pliable mind of this system girded, held together by these five basic principles. The mind of man is supreme. Man is in a state of normalcy. All is a world of chance.

18:28 Man's good and man's development is the goal of education, and time and this world is the sphere of our concern. So what's happened? We have subtly imbibed the counsel of the ungodly. We have learned to think unconsciously that God is really not necessary for the understanding of many parts of life.

18:55 Oh yes, if we want to know about heaven and hell, we'd better go to God because nobody here on earth has been there. But if we want to know about the world about us, we go to the scientist. If we want to know about the home and about interpersonal relationships, we go to the psychologist. Oh no, wait a minute.

19:10 Who says that God is merely relegated to the realm of what we call the purely spiritual and the world to come? but we have been led to think that way by the constant pressure of this educational philosophy upon us God is not really necessary for the understanding of all of life and then something that grows out of that we have subtly imbibed the attitude that God is really not necessary for establishing true values in life and standards of right and wrong and marriage and the home and all of these other areas.

Christian Education: Five Contrasting Biblical Principles

19:53 Now, by contrast, Christian education is viewing man and life through the eyes of Scripture, and that, according to the psalmist, is the way of blessedness. Now, let's put this into this framework. Blessed is the man that walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, That is, who does not walk in that council based upon the philosophy of secular education, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law doth he meditate day and night, not in some general way, but with specific reference to the whole realm of thinking about life, about the world, about history, about time, about eternity.

20:43 Now notice the tremendous contrast between the secular philosophy of education, which is the counsel of ungodliness, and the biblical perspective, which is rooted in the law of the Lord. Secular education says the mind is supreme. Christian education says, no, God is supreme. God as revealed in Holy Scripture.

21:07 The mind is to be the receptor of the revelation that God gives. The mind is to be a receiver of revelation, never the creator of truth.

21:25 So that when I look out at the world, what is my mind to do? Is my mind warranted to look at the world and then make whatever conclusions it's forced to make by its rational processes about the world? No. My mind is to look to the world to see what God is saying about the world He made. Psalm 19. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth forth His handiwork.

21:55 Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth forth knowledge. So when I look at the world, and I see anything less than the glory of God, and I hear anything less than the voice of God telling me something, I haven't really looked at the world. Now what was my mind given for? Not that my mind might impose upon the world about me what I think it is, but that my mind might take the place of a disciple to know what God is saying about himself and about me in relationship to that world.

22:34 Romans chapter 1 affirms this, that certain things are very obviously stamped in the very creative handiwork of God, but man through his perverseness turns aside from this. No, God never gave the mind of man to be the originator of truth, but to be a receptor of truth, of revelation. Secondly, the assumption of secular education is man is normal. Oh no, Christian education is based upon the hard, sobering fact that man is in a state of abnormality.

23:13 Sin has permeated his entire being. so that his will is enslaved to his lusts. His mind is darkened to truth. His affections are perverse and turned away from that which is pleasing to God.

23:33 The terrible indictment upon the mind, Ephesians 4.18 and 1 Corinthians 2.14. The affections, Romans 3.10 and 11, There is none righteous, no, not one.

23:45 there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. And he looks upon this world under that deep conviction that man is in a state of abnormality. So when he sees wars and famines, he doesn't throw up his hands in horror and say, as I have heard said to me on a number of occasions, How can you believe in a God with all this war? Well, if you are assuming man is in a state of normalcy and innocency, that would be a real problem, wouldn't it?

24:12 to believe that a good and a gracious God would allow this if man is in a state of normalcy. But when you believe the biblical doctrine that man is under the judgment of God, that man is a sinful creature, he is by nature a child of wrath, then you begin to understand wars, calamities, famines, pestilence. You see, your whole view of history, your whole view of life, is affected by your view of man. Secular education is based upon the conviction that all is chance Christian education is based upon the undergirding principle foundational to all understanding of life and the world that all is ordered of God and controlled by God brought into being by God in creation

25:01 sustained and ruled by God in providence. Creation and providence are the cohesive factors to a Christian's view of life. Colossians 1.17 says of our Lord Jesus Christ that He is before all things, and in him all things literally hold together. Hebrews chapter 1 speaks of our Lord Jesus Christ as the one who upholds all things by the word of his power. In Ephesians 1.11, it is stated that God worketh all things after the counsel of his own will. By contrast, secular education is based upon the principle that man's good and man's development is the gold of education. Christian education is based upon the principle that the glory of God is the

25:51 goal of all the educational process. I have not rightly learned until I've learned to take my place at the feet of my Creator in worship and praise and submission. And I've never found my role in society until I stand there as a mother, a father, a nurse, a student, a soldier, living to the glory of God so that even in the minute details of life, when I'm most like the beast, when I eat and I drink, Scripture says I'm to do all to the glory of God. 1 Corinthians 10, 31.

26:30 And then the fifth principle by contrast. Time and this world is the sphere of concern with secular education. Eternity and the world to come is the basic sphere of Christian education. For again and again the people of God are described as sojourners and pilgrims.

26:50 And the Apostle Paul summarized this so beautifully when he said in 2 Corinthians 4.18, While we look not on the things that are seen, but the things that are not seen, for the things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are not seen are eternal. Now do you see the contrast? You see that this is not a matter, you see, of everything was all right until a few years ago when Madeleine Murray, that wicked woman, put some pressures to bear upon the courts to get Bible reading and prayer out of the public school.

27:22 And suddenly, public school education became pagan. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. You could stick prayer and Bible reading back in the public school and it's still secular education. Because the whole philosophy that undergirts that educational process is based upon these five principles that I have enumerated to you.

Practical Effects of Secularism on How We View Nature and History

27:41 And Christian education is exactly the opposite in those five basic areas. Now, because we've absorbed this counsel of ungodliness, it's hard for us to think, theistically that is, to think God-centered thoughts. How often have I heard Christians use the word nature? What is nature?

28:02 nature is that innocuous substitute for my God. In nature we see, and then they state it. The Bible never talks that way. Listen to how the Bible talks about a very practical thing, such as what we would call the cycle of nature in our books.

28:22 Why animals feed when they do, and how they are fed. Listen as I read from the 104th Psalm. verses 20, 21, 22. Psalm 104.

28:46 The young lions, sorry, Thou makest darkness, and it is night, wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth. The young lions roar after their prey. They seek their meat from God. The sun ariseth, and they gather themselves together, and lay them down in their dens.

29:08 Man goeth forth unto his work, and to his labor in the evening. O Lord, how wonderful are the laws of nature! No, O Lord, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom thou hast made them all.

29:23 The earth is full of thy riches. As he watched the lions going into their caves in the day and going out to seek their meat at night, he didn't say, well, isn't that interesting how the laws of nature and the cycle of nature operates? He said, oh God, how marvelous are thy works! And he saw the lion going out, as it were, seeking his food from the hand of God.

29:52 when we see a beautiful piece of natural scenery, beautiful hills, valleys, streams, what do we think? What is the reflex action of our minds? Oh, what a beautiful natural setting. Listen to the reaction of the psalmist earlier in this psalm.

30:11 Notice Psalm 104.

30:18 Maybe we could break in at verse 8. They go up by the mountains, they go down by the valleys unto the place that thou hast founded for them. Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over, and they turn not again to cover the earth, that is, the seas. He sendeth the springs into the valleys which run among the hills.

30:35 They give drink to every beast of the field. The wild asses quench their thirst. By them shall the fowls of heaven have their habitation, which sing among the branches. He, God, watereth the hills from his chambers.

30:48 The earth is satisfied with the fruit of thy works. He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle. Not some, as I mentioned earlier, innocuous, some kind of vague nature, principle of nature. And yet that's been so steeped in us when we saw the grass spring up this spring.

31:09 Did we really in our hearts say, Lord, thou art causing the grass to spring up from the earth? you see because we are smart enough to discover the laws that govern germination and the rest we have somehow forgotten to think God centered thoughts when we see the very process before our eyes that's been the fruit beloved of the counsel of ungodliness that has pushed God out of his world and locked him up in some little realm called the religious life and that's the concern of your family and of your church But the concern of education is here with the world of things and light and all the rest. And really, you don't need God to understand that. Oh no, said the psalmist, I don't really understand it until I see God right at the center.

31:58 You don't understand a blade of grass until you see God at the center of that blade of grass. I'm not talking about pantheism, that God somehow intertwined or permeated into the blade of grass. But no, you look upon that blade of grass as the result of the working of your God. He causes the grass to grow.

32:18 This is not only true in the realm of what we call nature, but in the realm of history. When you learned history, American history, ancient history in school, how did you learn history? Well, here were men, here were nations, here were battles, here were treaties, here were facts. all just laid out as they, quote, happened.

32:40 Why did they happen that way? Did anyone even suggest the biblical truth mentioned so clearly in Daniel 4 and elsewhere in Daniel, the lesson that Nebuchadnezzar had to learn? Had to be like a beast for seven years to learn it? That God ruleth in the armies of heaven and earth and giveth the kingdom to whomever he wills?

33:03 So it's difficult for us, as I sense the frustration that comes with some of you dear people right here, and I say as a pastor, Lord, what's the problem? Why should your people be upset and, as it were, be waiting with bated breath at the latest pronouncement of some great head of state as to what's going to happen? Do we really believe that God is on his throne, ordering the events and circumstances of men and nations in the mid-1960s? You see, the counsel of ungodliness that has caused us to look at the unfolding of the events of history as simply the unfolding of events based upon chance,

33:51 that counsel has gotten through to us that it's difficult for us to see the hand of God in the affairs of history even as it's being unfolded before our very eyes. When we read in the book of Revelation chapter 17 and I guess my mind is turned to this because I've just listened to those chapters over several times in recent days on my tape recorder doesn't this sound rather strange to our non-theistic ears, to ears that have not been taught to think and listen, or to listen for the voice of God in the activity even of wicked nations. Notice in the 17th chapter of the Revelation, whatever he's talking about

34:39 as far as this coming together of certain nations under the figure of horns and beasts and the rest, verse 16 of Revelation 17, 17, 16, The ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh and burn her with fire. For God hath put it in their hearts to fulfill his will, and to agree, and to give their kingdom unto the beast until the words of God shall be fulfilled. Even in the activities of these godless alliances and these nations and movements of men and heads of state, he says all of this is coming to pass because God has put it into their hearts to fulfill his will

35:29 in order to bring to pass the pronouncements of his word.

35:34 And so, in the realm of history, we have been conditioned to think in a non-God-centered way. In the realm of math and the sciences, we talk about the natural laws. Is it no wonder that it's difficult to build biblical patterns into the hearts of our young people? When this secularism has become more and more bold and science has been made God so that whatever it pronounces upon is to be received as the final pronouncement of some deity.

Practical Steps: Purge the Mind and Saturate with Scripture

36:05 Now in the light of this, and this has only been suggestive, The Lord willing, this fall I want to bring a series of messages on the subject of Christian education proper. What are some of the practical implications of this? If this is a valid application of the principle of Psalm 1, that the blessed man does not walk in the counsel of ungodliness, whether it comes through the mass media with its message of sensualism and materialism, or whether it comes through secular education based upon this five-pronged philosophy, what are the implications to me if I would be the blessed man who refusing that counsel meditates in the law of God? May I suggest two very practical implications.

36:48 Number one, we must pray to God for a purgation of our minds of secularism.

36:59 Sometimes when you've got a sick tummy and the only thing that will cure you is a good purgative. It's interesting in Pilgrim's progress how this is dealt with very bluntly with one of the children of Christianity. And he been eating some apples he shouldn eat and he got a domiator And so the advice is given that he got to have a strong purging And so he goes into some detail as to the administration of this purgative, which of course is made up of the blood of Christ and I believe the tears of repentance, and I forgot what's in there, but it's all full of good gospel truth. But beloved, this is what we need to do, and this is simply stating in other terms what we read in biblical language,

37:47 Romans 12, verses 1 and 2. I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service, and be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the what? By the renewing of your mind. You see, the mind has been in this vice-like grip of secular education at least for 13 years, and it's twisted out of shape.

38:16 Now God says there must be a renewing of that mind to what end? That we may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. As long as the mind is in the mold in which secular education is pressed it, we can't know the will of God. We can't think God's thoughts after Him.

38:37 Oh, dear young people, how my heart was out to you. If you pray any prayer daily, this ought to be one of them. God purge my mind of all the garbage it's collected over the past 10, 12, 13 years.

38:54 But you not only need to pray, you need to then do the second thing. you must take every step necessary to saturate your mind with the biblical perspective of education in ourselves. We must force ourselves the next time we look at a beautiful sunset not just to say, isn't that nice? We must say, bless God for this token of his handiwork Force the mind to acknowledge what it ought to acknowledge by reflex action.

39:36 That's a declaration of God's glory, not just of a pretty sunset.

39:42 We see the snow come. It says he brings the snow out of his treasure. Something to that effect in the Psalms.

39:50 Let's acknowledge it to be such. Seek to saturate our minds with the biblical framework in ourselves. And then I speak this word of exhortation to us as parents, also in our children. We have a responsibility not only to seek to guard them from the counsel of ungodliness that comes through secular educational forms and processes, but to provide for them that biblical framework of education so that they are educated within a framework that says in every discipline the mind of man is not supreme.

40:29 God in His Word is supreme, and we know nothing except as we know it in the light of that revelation. Man is not in a state of normalcy. He's a sinner. He's abnormal.

40:40 Therefore, the whole educational process will be marked by law and by discipline, not permissiveness and relativism. will have young people who realize you can't understand marriage and the home and sex if you rule out God. He established the thing in the first place, didn't he? And now the secular education system says we'll teach the young people about the family and home and marriage and sex.

41:04 They've got no right. They don't know anything about it. Oh, sure, they're good biologists. Sex is not biology.

41:12 marriage is something more than what they understand it to be. So there must be an educational framework within which the young person growing up and beginning to think about these matters realizes I can't approach them unless I approach them through the eyes of Scripture. We must provide that framework. We must provide a framework in which they recognize the biblical principle that the glory of God is the goal of everything.

41:42 not making a buck or just doing some people good and making the world of it a better place to live in, so that the whole educational process puts upon them this stamp and haunts them with this blessed haunting that my goal in life is never realized till I stand in that niche prepared from eternity by my God and in that place bring glory and praise to Him. If I make a lot of money, that doesn't matter. If I don't make any money, it doesn't matter. Is that the place God's ordained for me?

42:11 You see, you hear the cry going out from our mission boards and all the rest. Why don't we have missionary candidates? Why can't we get young men to give themselves to the ministry? Well, how, humanly speaking, what do you expect?

42:22 They've had 13 years of brainwashing, that materialistic values are what count. And your own good is the end of your educational process. What can you expect? and so I send out a plea tonight to every parent and prospective parent and every one who is a has-been parent maybe the children are out of the nest as it were that we take seriously the admonition of Scripture and with this I shall close tonight in Deuteronomy chapter 6 that if we really believe the way of blessedness for our children is to be found not in the counsel of ungodliness but as they are led to think in terms of biblical concepts,

43:09 to meditate in the law of God day and night, then we shall seek to implement the command of the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy, God's word to his people Israel, beginning with verse 3, Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it, that it may be well with thee, and that ye may increase mightily as the Lord God of thy fathers hath promised thee in the land that floweth with milk and honey. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might. And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart, see, meditating in the law of God day and night. And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house,

43:55 and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up, And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the post of thy house and on thy gates. What is he saying? I believe this is what he's saying.

44:17 He's saying you must do all within your power to saturate your own mind and heart with the precepts of God, so that in every area of life you look at that area of life through the eyes of God. His will, His pronouncement about that area of life. But not only that for yourself. You must bring your children up in a context where they do not look out any window for truth.

44:43 But what that window is painted by the precepts of God. So that when they look out into the discipline of the natural sciences, the world, biology, and all the related disciplines, they look at that aspect of God's will through God's eyes.

45:05 And when they look out the window of sociology and they try to understand society and human relationships and marriage and the home, they look at it through the eyes of Scripture.

45:16 They try to understand themselves and their purpose in life and their goals in life and what they should do and shouldn't do, ethics and morals, value standards. They look at all of it through the eyes of Scripture. Oh, you say, but isn't that terrible mental bondage? No, it's the way to blessedness.

45:33 It's the way to blessedness. Because the God who made me is the God who alone knows how best I can operate in the world He's made. And so in grace and in mercy He's given His statutes so that we might know the way of blessedness.

A Plea for Christian Education of Children

45:55 And I submit to you as parents and issue the mandate to us as a church that we are not fulfilling our God-given responsibility unless in the days ahead we begin to seriously pray and sacrifice and plan for the establishment of the kind of framework within which we can train our children according to Scripture. It will be costly in time, in money, in sweat.

46:21 But, beloved, what a price some of us have already paid. for the failure to pay that price.

46:32 You get me? What a price has been paid. Because the stamp of secularism is upon our own rising generation. Thank God that a true Christian home can do much to bleed off some of that influence.

46:49 Thank God for that. And to immunize, as it were, the mind against much of that influence. But I think it's downright true to put a young, pliable mind beneath that pressure. Five, six hours a day, five days a week, forty weeks a year.

47:08 And God knows I have to fight tooth and nail to keep my own head above water as a supposed mature adult Christian.

47:16 From the rather indirect influences of secular education, I wonder if I could stand up if I were to go back and enroll in the local high school. Honestly, brother, I think it's well nigh to cruel. You would think me a cruel parent, a tyrant, to set my little bet down in the middle of 8th Avenue and 44th Street and say, now fend for yourself. You'd think that something had snapped in my mind.

47:42 And yet that's precisely what we do when we place those pliable youngsters beneath the counsel of ungodliness and allow the great juggernauts of secular education and secular thought to run over them and to leave them scarred and broken and maimed for life. Oh, may God speak to us and may God help us that as we long for the way of blessedness for ourselves and for our children that we will realize that it comes in walking not in that counsel of ungodliness, funneling through secular education, But as we meditate in the law of God day and night, and by God's grace view every area of life through the eyes of God, through the eyes of divine revelation, and seek to lead our children into that way of blessedness

48:29 as we provide for them that same context of true biblical Christian education.

Gospel Appeal to the Unconverted

48:38 I'm confident that in the group this size there are some of you, perhaps too much of this has been rather strange talk and maybe much of it has been hard to understand because you're a stranger to the grace of God and to saving faith in Christ. Let me urge you, remember this as you leave. The way of blessedness will never be found walking in the course you now walk until you're joined to Christ who said, I have come that they might have life and have it more abundantly. You'll never know the meaning of life now.

49:10 in death and eternity will be a horrible, horrible experience. May God grant that just that little word will be an arrow of encouragement from God to fix itself in your heart, to send you away from here to seek Him, to cry to Him for mercy, to cry that He'd reveal His Son to you. Let us unite in closing prayer.

49:40 Thank you.