Love Worth Finding

Guest (Male): Who are the most influential people in the world? Listen closely to Adrian Rogers.

Adrian Rogers: Beyond the shadow of any doubt, the most powerful and influential people on earth do not occupy the houses of elected office or run the machinery of industry or handle the business of Wall Street. The most powerful and influential people on earth are parents of faith. And that's why we're speaking today about Amram and Jochebed.

Their claim to fame is that they raised a child whose name was Moses, who literally changed the world. I cannot overestimate the importance of family.

Guest (Male): Welcome to Love Worth Finding, featuring the convicting truth of scripture presented in the practical messages of Adrian Rogers. It takes a family to raise a child, and it takes faith to make a family. The most powerful and influential people on the earth are mothers and fathers of faith.

Hebrews chapter 11 details the divine design behind the story of Moses, which would not have existed if not for his parents, Amram and Jochebed. There are three principles to learn from their indispensable faith. If you have your Bible, turn now to Hebrews chapter 11, we'll begin in verse 23 as Adrian Rogers shares part one of Faith for the Family.

Adrian Rogers: Hebrews chapter 11, let's begin looking, if we can, in verse 23. We're talking today about two champions. Perhaps you've never even heard their names before, Amram and Jochebed. Their claim to fame was that they were the parents of a boy named Moses.

By faith, Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents because they saw that he was a proper child, and they were not afraid of the king's commandment. By faith, Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt, for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward.

By faith, he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible. Beyond the shadow of any doubt, the most powerful and influential people on earth do not occupy the houses of elected office or run the machinery of industry or handle the business of Wall Street. The most powerful and influential people on earth are parents of faith.

And that's why we're speaking today about Amram and Jochebed. Their claim to fame is that they raised a child whose name was Moses, who literally changed the world. I cannot overestimate the importance of family. The Bible says in Psalm 68 and verse six that God sets the solitary in families.

And you can understand why the devil has unleashed all of the artillery of hell against the family. But going against the tide were Amram and Jochebed, and I want us to learn four things about faith for the family today. The title: Faith for the Family. And the very first thing I want you to see is what I'm going to call faith's vision.

Look if you will now in verse 23: By faith, Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents because they saw that he was a proper child, and they were not afraid of the king's commandment. Now the phrase in this verse that I'm picking out is, "they saw." They saw something. They saw that Moses was a proper child.

Now what does that mean, a proper child? Some translations give it "a beautiful child." Taylor translates it: they saw that he was an unusual child. Now I believe that Amram and Jochebed were people of great faith. Obviously they were because the Bible says that they were. They were people of great faith.

But you see, they were students of the word of God. They were both born of the tribe of Levi. They both were raised, as we could say, PKs, preacher's kids almost. And they had been studying the scriptures and they knew that God had prophesied that the children of Israel were going to come out of Egypt after 400 years.

The clock had been ticking, the pages torn from the calendar, and now 400 years had transpired. It was time to come out. A leader was needed, and they looked and here's a child, an unusual child. I believe that what engendered and inculcated the faith in the lives of Amram and Jochebed was twofold.

Number one, they had the written word, and number two, the spirit of God had spoken to their heart and said, "This child is the proper child. This is the unusual child." Well you say, "Pastor Rogers, how about my child? Is my child special?" Absolutely. You better believe that your child is special. Every child is special, and parents need to see every child as a special child.

I remember when our first son was born. His name is Steve, named after that preaching deacon in the New Testament, Stephen. And I remember looking at that face, that little red face of that baby, and I thought to myself, "I am a daddy. I am a daddy." Joyce and I were working our way through college. We were living in a little house trailer, 25 feet long. It had running water but didn't have any restroom facilities, no bath or anything.

We had a path, not a bath. That was a place over there, the community hall or something. And that's where we bathed and so forth. But I went home, Joyce was still at the Fish Memorial Hospital, I went home to that little house trailer where we were living, got down on my knees by that flowered couch and I prayed.

And I said, "Oh God, if I never have any other kind of achievement, if I never have any material goods, never get to pastor a worthy church, never preach a good sermon, Oh God, I want you to make of me a good daddy." And I believe that the greatest joy and the greatest privilege and the greatest responsibility is to be a parent.

I've taken as one of my life's verses, if you want to know what it is, it's Psalm 112, verses one and two: "Praise ye the Lord. Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord, that delighteth greatly in his commandments. His seed," that means his children, "shall be mighty upon the earth. The generation of the upright shall be blessed."

Now you say, "Pastor Rogers, do you think that you can control the destiny of your children?" No, but I can certainly influence the destiny of my children. Can we believe God on behalf of our children? Not only can we, but must we. There was a boy that needed help. The father came to Jesus and said, "Master, if you can do something for my son."

Jesus said to the father, "If you can believe, all things are possible to him that believeth." The man said, "Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief." I think we've all prayed a prayer like that. "Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief." And the Lord saw that germ of faith, and God did for this boy what his father believed for.

And so we can, we must, we ought to believe for our children. Now the Bible says in Proverbs 22 and verse six, "Train up a child in the way that he should go, and when he is old he'll not depart from it." One of the keys to understanding that verse is the word "way." It's a Hebrew word that means something like a bend in a bow, that every child has a particular bent.

They're not warped, but they're bent to a particular thing. And what it is our duty and joy to do is to discover that bent. Don't see your child like a block of unsculpted granite and you have a hammer and a chisel going to make out of him what you will. Try to determine, if you will, what gifts God has put in that individual unique person.

You see, children don't come in standard packages. You have to read the label. You have to see what God has put into them. I was reading about Thomas Alva Edison, the great inventor who's given us so many things. We sit under these incandescent lights invented by Edison. When Edison was a little boy in school, his teacher said he is a dunce. He cannot learn.

And she suggested to the mother that the boy be taken out of school because he was too stupid to learn anything. Edison's mother said, "My boy is not stupid. You don't understand my boy. I will teach him myself." She homeschooled him. She said, "My son is brilliant. He's not stupid. You just don't understand him."

She was able to see a bent in her son that no school teacher could see. And friend, there are things that no pastor, no Sunday school teacher, no coach, no school teacher can see that moms and dads can see if they pray over that child and see that that child is special. Joyce and I have a son who's a missionary.

I can remember when little David, just as a child, just in the five and six, would get down maps of the world and pore over those maps, study the states in the United States, even memorizing for whatever reason I'll never know the zip codes. But here was a boy who had the world on his heart. And now that dear boy is serving Jesus as a missionary.

I remember our son Steve. I sat down to teach him music on the piano. I can play a piano, you won't believe this, but it is true, by ear a little bit. I can hear the intervals and so forth. And I sat him down as a four-year-old child and to teach him a few finger melodies. And I noticed immediately his heart began to reverberate toward music.

And today he is an accomplished musician and a songwriter and arranger with a degree in commercial music because he had that particular bent. You may say, "Pastor, I didn't know you had a gift in music." I don't have a gift. I had a gift; somebody got it. And Steve, Steve has that gift. But we have to see every child as special.

Now listen, precious parents who have children who are Down syndrome, are those children special? You better believe it. You would be surprised how many lives have been transformed, how many people have been encouraged by these precious children. You just take that child and say, "My child is a gift from God," and say, "Oh God, give me the faith that Amram and Jochebed had to see a destiny for my child."

This is faith's vision. But now let's move on and think not only of faith's vision, but to get more serious, faith's valor. Look again, if you will, in verse 23: By faith, Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents because they saw he was a proper child and they were not afraid. Underscore that phrase in your own Bible. They were not afraid of the king's commandment.

Now they had every reason to be afraid because the king, old Pharaoh, and you can read about it in Exodus 1:22, had commanded that all the little boy babies be drowned in the Nile. But they were not afraid. Now it was a dangerous time for them, but the reason they were not afraid is they realized that their battle was not primarily with Pharaoh.

Their battle was a spiritual battle. That's what the Apostle Paul teaches us in Ephesians chapter six and verse 12: "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." Now you may think that the enemy is the pornographer or the drug pusher.

You may think that the enemy is the rapist or you may think that the enemy is the warmonger. No friend, the enemy is the devil. He always has been, always will be. And when we understand that our battle is not with flesh and blood, that ought to in a sense encourage us because we know that it is a spiritual battle, and the battle can be fought and won by faith.

Now they were dark days for Amram and Jochebed, but the Bible says they were not afraid. Now I want to say to all of you parents who are here today, put the fear out of your life and say by faith we're going to raise this child in these dangerous days for Jesus. The Bible says in Second Timothy chapter three verse one, "This know also that in the last days perilous times shall come."

And these are perilous times. You think about what dangerous days these are. There's liberalism in churches. There's nothing more deadening, more stultifying, more devil-pleasing than a liberal church that does not accept the true lordship of Jesus Christ and the true inerrancy and infallibility of the word of God. And if you're a member of a church like that, get out of it. Get out of it.

You say, "Well, that's our family church." Get out of it. Say, "Grandma's buried in the backyard." She'd leave if she could. Get out of it. I'm amazed that people will send their children across the United States to get a college education and will not drive across town to get in a Bible-believing church. There's liberalism in churches. It's dangerous.

There is humanism in education. Now I'm not here to pick on the educators. My son-in-law is a public school teacher, and I thank God for the public schools who are doing the best they can under the circumstances. I thank God for our private schools, and I'm the first to confess that everything is not perfect in the private schools.

But overall, the education in America has been given over to humanism. And humanism is just a polite way of saying atheism. The names have been changed to protect the guilty. Humanism is something that takes God from his throne, enthrones man in all of his nuclear glory, and makes man the sum and the substance, the center and the circumference of everything.

And we begin to sing "Our brothers who art on earth, hallowed be our name, our kingdom come, our will be done on earth," because there is no heaven. The chief building block of humanism is evolution, which is religion. They say we can't teach creation because that's teaching religion in the public schools. Humanism is religion. Evolution is religion.

It's an attempt to explain everything apart from God. It is a negative religion. It in itself is a faith because evolution has never been proven. It is monkey mythology. But yet our kids in these dangerous days are going to have that coming through the pores of their skin. And take not only the liberalism in the churches and take not only the humanism in the schools, but compound that by the hedonism in society.

We have a society that is given over completely, almost totally, to sensualism. I tried to watch some basketball, but I was so put off by the advertisements, the beer advertisements for college sports. The beer barons have gone about to seduce your young people, and they've done a good job. The last statistic that I read said that 95 percent of college students drink beer.

That's frightening to me, 95 percent drink beer. You say, "Well, a little beer never hurt anybody." Out of every 15 people who begin to drink beverage alcohol of any kind, be it beer, wine, or liquor, out of every 15, one will become an alcoholic. One out of 15. Some say two out of 15. Listen, if you are wise, parents, if you're wise, you'll have no alcohol in your home.

None. None. None. Set the example. Number two, you will establish a no-drinking tradition in your home. Don't drink it, and just don't make it a tradition. When I go out to a restaurant, especially if my grandchildren are there, and the waitress or waiter comes up and says, "Would you like an alcohol drink of some kind?"

I don't just say, "No thank you." I say, "No thank you. We don't drink alcohol." And just to say it clearly and plainly, not boastfully, not like a Pharisee, but let your children hear you say, "We don't drink alcohol." Let them hear you say that. And when they go out at night and come in, you be up when they get in so you can give them a big hug and smell their breath.

It'd be better for you to lose some sleep than to lose a child. But alcohol is served on television ten to one over any other beverage. It's hedonism in society. And speaking of television, 88 percent of all sexual encounters on television are illicit. They deal with adultery or fornication. I said 88 percent. Because you see, Satan is systematically seducing your children.

It's a dangerous situation. We've got hedonism in society, and MTV is nothing but pornography set to music, and kids are feasting on that. Well, these are dangerous days. And in these dangerous days, you have got to raise your children. But the Bible says they were not afraid of the king's commandment. You know why they were not afraid?

Because they knew the King of kings. They were not afraid because of faith. Now today, you're not going to be successful raising your children as you ought unless you have the kind of faith that Amram and Jochebed had: faith's vision and faith's valor. They were not afraid. Don't you throw up your hands. Don't throw in the towel. Don't say there's no hope.

Don't give up the battle, but have the vision and the valor to be the parents that God wants you to be. Now number three, I want you to see also faith's venture. Faith's venture. Look again in verse 23: By faith, Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents because they saw that he was a proper child, and they were not afraid of the king's commandment.

They did something. They hid their child from Pharaoh's henchmen. And later on, we're going to see that they built an ark that was used to deliver this little baby boy. The point is that they did not just sit around and say, "Well, we're going to trust God." Faith without works is dead. When you have the vision and you have the valor, then you've got to have the venture.

James says in James 2:17, "Faith without works is dead." True faith is belief with legs on it. It does something. Now these parents did not have fatalism. They didn't say whatever will be, will be, just let it happen. You take a garden and leave it alone, it's going to turn into weeds. It wasn't fatalism. It wasn't fanaticism.

They didn't say, "Well, we'll just throw him in the Nile and let God take care of him." They didn't do that. They did something. If you believe God for a house, say amen with a hammer and saw. Sir, if you're believing God for a wife, use a little cologne. Say amen with work. The Bible says if a man won't work, neither should he eat.

You do your part, and God is going to do his part. Remember our scripture that says, "Train up a child in the way that he should go, and when he's old he'll not depart from it." Well then, that is your duty to train him up. Now political correctness is against that today. They think that you're interfering with a little child's life. Political correctness says don't spank the child; that's child abuse.

God's word says in Proverbs 22:15, "Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction will drive it far from him." Political correctness today says, "Well, give your daughters birth control pills." The word of God says in Hebrews 13:4, "Marriage is honorable and the bed undefiled, but adulterers and whoremongers God will judge."

Political correctness says that the government is to be partners with the parents. But the Bible says in Psalm 127:3, "Lo, children are the heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is his reward." Political correctness says let your schools teach sex education. The Bible says, "Train up a child in the way that he should go, and when he's old he'll not depart from it." Listen, when you do what God would have you to do, then God will move in and do his part. Are you training your children?

Guest (Male): And with that, we'll end this portion of the message. Don't miss part two coming up tomorrow. At Love Worth Finding, we love hearing how the ministry and messages of Adrian Rogers have inspired you in your faith journey. If you can, go to our website where you can submit your own testimony or read others who have shared their stories.

We often select stories to be shared throughout our Love Worth Finding community, and we'll always protect your privacy if that's what you desire. Let us hear from you. Go to LWF.org/myLWFstory today.

Carrie Vaughn: Hi, this is Carrie Vaughn. This program has been brought to you by Love Worth Finding, a nonprofit ministry showcasing the powerful preaching and teaching of Pastor Adrian Rogers. We operate solely through the generous gifts of individual supporters just like you. To give a gift today, call 1-877-LOVEGOD. That's 1-877-LOVEGOD.

Or write to us at Love Worth Finding, Box 38-600, Memphis, Tennessee 38183. You can also connect with us online by going to LWF.org/radio. There we offer helpful resources inspired by the timeless teachings of Pastor Adrian Rogers. Additionally, you can sign up for daily emails, donate to the ministry, and learn more about how to become an ambassador of the word.

Thank you so much for listening today. Be sure to join us next time for more profound truth simply stated, right here on Love Worth Finding.

Guest (Male): As America approaches 250 years, a lot of people are asking the same question: what does it really mean to live as a Christian here today? Not just in theory, but in everyday life, at home, at work, in a culture constantly shifting. That's why we want to invite you to join us for the Faith and Freedom journey for this defining moment in our nation.

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