Schedule for Teaching Children about God Through Bible Study

Posted on April 30, 2012 by PS

To further expand upon previous posts What to Teach Children about the Bible and Practicals Way to Teach Children, here’s one suggested cadence to implement in order to maintain a consistent teaching schedule.  If you feel too overwhelmed, start with regular Bible study and then add other parts over time.

  • Bible study
    • Monday through Saturday read and explain a Bible passage.  Each day briefly review what you read the previous day before moving to the new passage
    • This can be followed by memory work of a Bible passage or catechism question (see below) and then family prayer time
    • On Sunday, review what you learned the previous six days asking kids to retell the stories and filling in gaps in their memory.  On the first Sunday of each new month, quickly review all of the passages from the previous month
  • Theology study
    • Pick one day a week (usually on the weekend) to do a study of a specific subject.  For example, what the Bible says about God’s knowledge.  If you use a catechism to guide you in this, review the question and answer and support texts.
    • Incorporate the catechism Q&A into your daily bedtime ritual so that children frequently revisit it and memorize it
  • Practical application to the situations of life
    • This is the stuff of day-to-day life, so there’s no place better to teach on this topic than conversationally over a meal.  When the family conversation reverts back to the tired loop of, Parent: “What did you do today?” Child, “Nothing” then describe a challenging situation and ethical dilemma and work through it Biblically with them.
    • Flag the scenarios that are most relevant to your kids lives and follow-up with those every couple of weeks, so that they’re well-trained in a Scriptural response
    • As appropriate, have them memorize a Bible passage that they can be prepared with then they face a temptation that’s particularly challenging
    • When they do face it, make sure that you aren’t judgmental if they fail, but be supportive to gently review what went wrong and why.  Praise and celebrate successes no differently than you would for a good test result or well-played athletic or musical performance
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Practical Ways to Teach the Bible to Kids

Posted on April 28, 2012 by PS

YePractical Bible Teaching for Childrensterday’s post, Teaching the Bible to Children, presented a balanced framework for teaching kids a comprehensive understanding of Christianity based on three legs of a stool  1) the Biblical storyline 2) systematic study of topic and 3) common life challenges guided by Scripture.  This article takes that framework and gets more practical with how to implement the teaching.

For teaching the Biblical storyline there are innumerable resources to help you teach the narrative at an age appropriate level.  One of the best is the Storybook Bible, which centers the entire message of Scripture on the meaning of the coming of Jesus.  Two other Bibles that are useful are the Golden Book Bible and the ESV Story Bible.  In order to teach the Bible stories, consistently (i.e., daily) read a passage from the text and explain its meaning.  The teaching doesn’t need to be anything profound, but clarify the meaning of difficult words and draw parallels from the Biblical culture to the present day (e.g., a synagogue is like a church).  Focus on emphasizing the main point of the passage (e.g., for the parable of the lost sheep that God rejoices when a sinner repents) and how the relates to the overarching message of the Bible (e.g., in the sheep example, God is seeking His own people to humble themselves and turn to Him).  As you’re reading and explaining, ask your children questions to ensure that they’re not distracted and that the message is understood.  When you finish the text, ask them to retell a summary of the story with particular attention to the main point of the passage.  For example, learning that David trusted God to help him fight Goliath is more important than knowing how he killed the giant.  This approach begins to build a spiritual discipline of daily Bible study and imbeds the basic Biblical truths in their heart.

When you explain the text, don’t worry that you don’t understand it as well as your pastor.  Do your best, and if you feel unprepared, use a short commentary that provides a brief explanation about what you’re reading.  When using a children’s Bible that selects key passages, start at the beginning and work straight through rather than jumping around or letting the kids chose the story.  This ensures that they get an understanding of the flow of Biblical history and God’s progressive revelation of Himself along with ensuring that no major messages are excluded.  As your family matures to the full Bible text, this approach may become more difficult due to the size of the Bible and the difficulty of some passages such as the prophets and the dryness of some sections of Jewish history.  In this circumstance, find the most critical sections and read those.  For example, you would read all of Genesis, but skip large portions of Leviticus.  You may also want to sprinkle in Psalms or Proverb for variety rather than tackling those books from beginning to end.  The goal is to teach how God is working in the world to save His people as they anticipate the coming of the Messiah.  Visit the How to Study the Bible page for a list of key themes across Scripture.

For the next area – systematic study of doctrines – consider using a catechism like the Westminster Shorter or the Children’s Catechism as a guide to the topics.  Note that on some topics you may disagree with the catechism (e.g., baptism), so review the questions before you teach them and adjust as necessary.  A catechism’s question and answer format is designed not only to be memorized, but also understood.  The child should be able to repeat the answer and then explain what it means.  Ideally a Bible verse or two is paired with each question to further reinforce the message and provide its grounding in Scripture.  The major topics that should be covered are God, the nature of sin and salvation, Jesus and so forth.  For ideas about activities you can do with your kids to reinforce the topics, check out Praise Factory.  It’s designed to be a church children’s curriculum, but you could take some of the activity ideas to make lessons more interactive at home.  The Family Night Tool Chest series of books also provides activities to reinforce some doctrinal topics.  For older children, a book like Big Truths for Young Hearts provides guidance on how to conversationally discuss major Bible doctrines.  You could also select a teaching series from RC Sproul and work through it with your high school student.  Sproul addresses the major doctrines, but does it at a popular, understandable level.

The last area is the common life challenges that children will face.  Think of Jesus when He experienced the wilderness temptation.  For each of the three, temptations Satan dangled in front of Him, He had a Biblical response.  He knew where the authority came from (the Scriptures) and obeyed that authority.  While it takes both knowledge and obedience to follow the right path, we must start with the first to be grounded and guided, so that we might know what to obey when tests arise.  This is not as difficult as it sounds.  Consider what experiences you faced growing up and the temptations that ensued such as the temptation to lie to an authority, cheat to get ahead, steal something during a dare, spread rumors, follow the wrong crowd, sleep with someone, pornography and many others.  There is rarely anything new under the sun, so anticipating what your kids face based on their stage in life and preparing them is part of your parenting responsibility.  Kids need to know that this isn’t easy.  There will be costs for following Jesus, so prepare them ostracism and rejection.  Reading them stories about people who stood for their faith can help them work through this (but that’s a topic for another day).

Given this need, how should they be prepared?  You can work through some of the Proverbs since they provide wisdom for many life situations.  Proverbs to Teach Children offers an example of some verses to start with and What Wise Parents Teach Children provides other ideas.  There are also a couple of books titled Sticky Situations: 365 Devotionals for Kids that are helpful.  They provide a short story that ends with a dilemma that you can discuss along with a Bible verse that guides an answer.  One of the books is targeted at elementary kids and the other at older children.

No one ever said that parenting was easy.  Teaching your children to have a complete understanding of the Bible and integrating it into life is no different.  Seek God’s guidance for how you can best implement teaching from each of the three legs of the stool, so that they deeply know God and grow up to glorify Him.

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What to Teach Children about the Bible

Posted on April 27, 2012 by PS

There are three legs of a stool that you need to teach for children for them to understand the Bible and apply it to what they face in their life.  If one of these legs is missing, the stool is unbalanced.  The three provide a complete picture of Scriptural meaning and its application to give kids the foundation to follow Jesus for the rest of their lives. They are:

  1. The history of God’s redemption plan through Jesus
  2. A systematic understanding of God and His world by topic
  3. An understanding of when and how to apply God’s commandments and guidance revealed through Scripture

The first leg covers God’s redemptive plan is the easiest of the three because it is the one most commonly taught.  We use this approach when we read Bible stories to our kids at bed time and most churches follow this method in Sunday School.  Through these stories, kids learn about Moses and the Exodus, Samson and Delila and David and Goliath in the Old Testament and then about Jesus’ birth and ministry in the New Testament.  Narratives are vivid and memorable because children can relate to people and events of courage, conflict and heroism.  As kids mature, additional stories are added in and more details of existing stories conveyed as the actual Biblical text is read rather than summaries of the events.  The message here is to keep doing what we’re doing with one change – the thread of redemptive history that point to Christ needs to be the central, integrative point of all of the message rather than the all too often use of the text as moralised message.  The events of the Old Testament are not primarily to teach little ones to be like Elijah or to not be like Eli’s sons, but to build the story of man’s sin and anticipation the Messiah to provide redemption.  Consider major OT topics such as the tabernacle, temple and sacrificial system along with offices of prophet, priest and king which convey the redemptive message, but are often excluded from the storyline because they don’t involve a Bible ‘character’ that children can relate to. Skipping objects and events of this nature mute the message the Hebrew Scriptures carry.

Moving from the first leg of the stool, storyline of the Bible, to the second, systematic thinking about God and other subjects like salvation and the church, is a big jump for many, but there are ‘tools’ available to help make this transition.  The topical approach gives children an understanding of key subjects in a manner that they’re normally discussed in conversation, since we are more likely to talk about the nature of God or the requirements for forgiveness than we are to talk about the life of Abraham or Josiah.  Children need to be prepared with a solid grounding in Biblical responses as they approach the high school and college years where they will encounter more challenges to their faith.  100+ years ago, systematic teaching was incorporated into lessons though catechisms that expounded the doctrines of the faith from A to Z in a question and answer format.  Pastors would often hold parents accountable for ensuring their family could provide memorized responses to the questions along with explaining what the responses meant.  This approach provided a framework from which to understand the most common questions of life including basic definitions in response to questions such as ‘what is repentance’ and ‘what is sin’.

The third leg needed to train children is to consider the situations that they’ll face and guide them to Scriptures that provide direction for how to respond.  While the first two above approaches focus (though not exclusively) on what happened in history and what we believe, this last element focuses on how we behave.  For example, when a friend spreads rumors about a classmate, children need Biblical answers for how to deal with the situation.  There are scores of common situations that kids will likely face from pressure to conform to the crowd in morally compromising issues to cheating to get ahead.  Since these situations can be anticipated with a high likelihood, children should practice these scenarios like an athlete practices the plays that occur during a game.  You can also glean examples to teach from based on the news, situations that you face at work or examples from movies as a way of making the challenges more tangible and realistic to young minds.  This is not a full proof method, after all athletes still make errors after thousands of hours of practice, but it significantly increases the likelihood of success when kids face temptation because a game plan is in place for responding.

Let’s recap.  The first leg follows the storyline of the Bible leading to the culmination of history in the birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus the Messiah.  Children learn about God’s plan, our failure and our need for a Savior.  It also shows them what God has done through time in the nation of Israel and the early church.  The stool’s second leg captures what the Bible teaches on particular topics and is often applied in a Q&A format.  The answers cross different sections of the Bible to capture the full counsel of God on a topic.  The last leg takes a challenging life scenario and provides answers for how to respond Christianly to it.  The combination of the three legs provides balance and a complete framework for training children to develop and apply a Christian worldview.

See the next article for ideas about how to teach the Bible to kids

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Who Is Jesus Anyway? – John MacArthur on Larry King

Posted on April 25, 2012 by PS

Larry King interviews John MacArthur, Deepak Chopra and others about who Jesus was and why He matters.  Note that the video edits out some of the comments by others to focus on King and MacArthur’s interactions.

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What Happens After We Die? – John MacArthur on Larry King

Posted on April 24, 2012 by PS

John MacArthur discusses what happens after we die and how we get to heaven on Larry King along with a Catholic, Jew, Muslim, an Atheist and a New Age religious leader.  MacArthur states that after we die we go to one of two places based on whether or not someone trust in Jesus to save them from their sins.

In the second part, MacArthur answers caller questions 1) what happens to people who died before Jesus came and 2) what happens to babies who die

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What the Wise Parent Teaches Their Children from Proverbs

Posted on April 23, 2012 by PS

A wise parent teaches his/her children many things.  John MacArthur highlight ten critical lessons about wisdom from Proverbs in What the Bible Teaches about Parenting.  We should teach our kids to:

  1. Fear God (Proverbs 1:7, 9:10) by:
    1. Revering His holiness with a sacred awe of His absolute majesty
    2. Fearing His displeasure – In the presence of God, true wisdom trembles with a holy, healthy sense of terror and apprehension. Children need to understand that God is angry with the wicked and will punish evil doers (Psalm 7:11-13).  They need to understand that when they disobey they set themselves against a holy God who deals out consequences for those who violate His righteous principles. The proper goal of Biblical parenting is to teach a child to fear violating God’s standards not your own.  The goal is to have them fear being chastened by God.  Genuine faith acknowledges God’s right to chasten, His right to punish and His right to judge.  This fear will prolong their life (14:27), give them a full life (14:27, 19:23), spare them grief by keeping them from evil (16:6), give them profit in God (15:16) and give them confidence (14:26)
  2. Guard their minds (4:23, Psalm 101:3).  The truest test of our character is our thought life (Proverbs 23:7).  Out of our thoughts come our conduct (Mark 7:20-22).  You have the responsibility to steer children towards what edifies and away from what does not.  You cannot isolate them so you must train them to be discerning and cultivate wholesome thoughts (Philippians 4:8)
  3. Obey their parents (1, 8; 4:1-4; 6:20-23; Exodus 20:12).  This involves discipline, chastening and correction (3:11-12; 13:24).  Chastening helps conform their minds to wisdom and removes foolishness from their hearts (22:15; 23:13-14). The love that leads to proper disciple is a strong and robust love that demands obedience and punishes disobedience because that is what’s best for the child. The parent should be grieved about the need to administer punishment and can therefore grieve with the child over the consequence of sin.    Chastening must be firm and consistent.  If parents are inconsistent children will begin to regard the discipline as arbitrary and capricious.
  4. Select their friends carefully (1:10-18, 13:20; 1 Corinthians 15:33) –  Your kids moral standards – their language, activities, media consumption – will likely not rise above the lowest common denominator of their friends.  They need to learn how to discern who will lift them up and who will tear them down and draw them away from God
  5. Control their lusts (2:16-19, 5:3-5; 6:23-33, 7:6-27; 2 Timothy 2:22) – This temptation is strong and kids need to be aware of how easy it is to slip down the slope.  This involves ensuring that they know how to protect their eyes and their minds and avoiding willfully exposing themselves to temptation to avoid reproach that can last a lifetime
  6. Enjoy their spouses (5:15-20) – Prepare them to save themselves for marriage and channel their passion to their spouse.  Show them the satisfaction you’ve found in marriage by what you say about your wife/husband
  7. Watch their words (4:24, 10:11, 10:19, 12:18, 12:22, 15:7, 16:23, 20:15) – Explain to them when it is better not to talk, never to use obscene words and the importance of truthfulness.  If a person can train his conscience to live with a lie, his/her conscience will become useless to keep him/her from any sin
  8. Pursue their work (6:6-11, 10:4-5, 22:29) – Children need to learn to work hard when they’re being  watched and when they’re not.  They need to learn discipline and not be lazy.
  9. Manage their money but not to seek riches (3:9-10, 11:24-28, 15:27, 19:17, 23:4) – All we receive is to be used for God’s glory, so our resources must be used to honor God and help others.  Scripture often links moral truth and financial principles, so how money is used is a spiritual issue
  10. Love their neighbors (3:27-29, 25:21-22) – This is the second greatest commandment according to Jesus (Matthew 22:39).  We are to love those lovable and unlovable

On the flip side, if you fail to teach your children to:

  • fear God, the devil will teach them to hate God
  • guard their minds, the devil will teach them to have a corrupt mind
  • obey their parents, the devil will teach them to rebel and break parents’ hearts
  • select friends carefully, the devil will choose their companions for them
  • control their lusts, the devil will teach them to fulfill their lusts
  • enjoy their spouses, the devil will teach them to destroy their marriages
  • watch their words, the devil will fill their mouths with filth
  • pursue their work, the devil will make their laziness a tool of hell
  • manager their money, the devil will teach them to squander it on riotous living
  • love their neighbors, the devil will teach them to love only themselves

 

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Characteristics of the Wise from Proverbs

Posted on April 22, 2012 by PS

Real wisdom for life is the most valuable gift parents can pass on to their children – certainly superior to any material legacy.  Wisdom encompasses not only what we know, but also what we do and sometimes what we don’t do.  Proverbs is a fitting textbook for parents to teach wisdom.  Solomon often makes reference to teaching his son in the passages in Proverbs.

The characteristics of the wise outlined in Proverbs can be summarized in seven categories.  A wise man:

  • Puts himself in the company of those wiser
    • Obtains guidance (Proverbs 1:5)
    • Hears father’s instruction (13:1)
    • Walk with the wise to become wise (13:20)
  • Listens and learns even if the teaching is painful (e.g., reproof)
    • Hears and increases in learning (1:5)
    • Loves reproof (9:8)
    • Becomes wiser with instruction (9:9)
    • Gains knowledge through instruction (21:11)
    • Receives commandments (10:8)
    • Lays up knowledge (10:14)
    • Listens to advice (12:15)
    • Seeks knowledge (18:15)
  • Changes based on the learning
    • Hears instruction and doesn’t neglect it (8:33)
  • Uses wisdom to influence others verbally
    • Restrains his lips (10:19)
    • Captures/wins souls (11:30)
    • Brings healing with words (12:18)
    • Commends knowledge with his words (15:2)
    • Spreads knowledge (15:7)
    • Makes judicious speech and adds persuasiveness to his lips (16:23)
    • Brings great value to a listener (25:12)
  • Acts upon wisdom to better society
    • Is cautious and turns away evil (14:16)
    • Removes the wicked (20:26)
    • Turns away wrath (16:14, 29:8)
  • Makes good choices
    • Is not wise in his own eyes (3:5)
    • Is discerning (16:21)
    • Stores wealth for the future (21:20)
    • Holds his anger back (29:11)
  • Obtains good results
    • Will inherit honor (3:35)
    • Makes a father glad (10:1, 15:20)

Based on Chapter 5 of What the Bible Teaches about Parenting by John MacArthur

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Vanderbilt University Religious Intolerance

Posted on April 21, 2012 by PS

Vanderbilt University administration recently made a decision to require campus based student groups to open their leadership positions to any student.  While this mandate may sound reasonable, it prohibits groups from requiring that leaders adhere to the group’s policies and beliefs.  This requirement of the university to have no leadership requirements could result in men leading Sororities, Democrats leading the Young Republicans and Muslims leading the Jewish Student Union.  The decision is particularly impactful to religious organizations because it prohibits them from using a faith-based belief statement as a standard for their leaders.  In essence the school is implementing a policy of intolerance against religious groups such as InterVarsity, Campus Crusade, the Navigators and others.  Several groups banded together to make the following video:

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Chuck Colson Biography and Video

Posted on April 18, 2012 by PS

Chuck Colson died on April 21st leaving behind a mixed legacy.  For better or worse, his death leaves a hole in the leadership of the Christian community.  Colson has had a significant impact on the evangelical Church during the past thirty plus years primarily in the areas of worldview formation, political engagement and prison reform advocacy.  He has also created confusion about the Gospel due to his work with Catholic church leaders.

After serving time for his involvement in the Watergate scandal, he founded Prison Fellowship, Break Point and the Colson Center and wrote several influential books including Born Again, The Body and How Now Shall We Live.  Colson signed the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, which affirmed his high view of Scripture  In 1993, he won the Templeton Prize for his work in religion.  Colson also was in the center of controversy with JI Packer in 1994 when he worked to formulate Evangelicals and Catholics Together.  His official biography can be found on the Prison Fellowship Leadership page.

Christianity Today maintains a list of Colson articles.  This Fox biography and interview by Brit Hume provides a quick synopsis of his life, conversion and work for God

Justin Taylor has posted Colson’s testimony and Tim Challies writes more about the impact of ECT.

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The Fuel of Death Defying Missions – David Platt Sermon

Posted on April 13, 2012 by PS

David Platt’s sermon at the 2012 Together for the Gospel (T4G) conference was one of the most popular from the event receiving accolades from John Piper and others.  Platt’s basic premise is, “A high view of God’s sovereignty fuels death-defying devotion to global missions” or said another way “pastors who believe that God is sovereign over all things will lead Christians to die for the sake of all peoples.”  He preached from Revelation 5 and provided these additional premises as background:

1. local ministry and mission in the community are totally necessary and should not be neglected
2. global missions is tragically neglected because they are unreached (i.e., 2 B people don’t have access to the Gospel)
3. pastors have the privilege and responsibility to lead the way in global missions

Platt had four sermon points:

  1. Our sovereign God holds the destiny of the world in His right hand (10:00)
  2. The state of man, before God, without Christ, is utterly hopeless (20:00)
  3. The greatest news in all the world is that the slaughtered man of God reigns forever more (25:00)
  4. The atonement of Christ is graciously, globally, gloriously particular (32:00)

And four implications for pastors:

  1. Let us lead our churches to pray confidently for the spread of the Gospel to all peoples (40:00)
  2. Lead our churches to give sacrificially (44:00)
  3. Lead our churches to go intentionally to all peoples (45:45)
  4. Lead our churches to die willingly (50:30)
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