Sound of Faith

Sharon Hardy Knotts: Greetings friends and new listeners and welcome to this R. G. Hardy Ministries program. I’m Sharon Knotts and I’m happy you’re listening today because we know faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. If you are a lover of God’s Word, then you know how important it is to not only hide it in our own hearts but to get the Word into the hearts of our children and our grandchildren.

Today’s message is just what we need to succeed: 5 Ways to Teach the Word of God. I love to teach and have a natural propensity for teaching, but God has given five specific tools in Deuteronomy 6 for His people to use to get His Word into the hearts of our children. I have subtitled them Teach, Talk, Walk, Write, and Recite. They are five ways to teach the Word of God.

R. G. Hardy: How many have your Bibles this morning? If you would turn with me to Proverbs the 30th chapter, it’s just a few verses that I just thought about before I came out that I want to read. I’m not going to really discuss them, but I do want to read them. Before I really get into the message this morning, I want to preface what I’m going to be ministering on by talking for a moment or two about the law of iniquity.

I think that these verses here in Proverbs the 30th chapter, beginning with verse 11, will help us to understand what I mean by the law of iniquity because the law of iniquity is a law that means that iniquity is increasing. And we can see that in verse 11 of chapter 30 of Proverbs. "There is a generation that curseth their father and doth not bless their mother." Sounds familiar already, doesn't it?

"There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes and yet is not washed from their filthiness. There is a generation, oh how lofty are their eyes, and their eyelids are lifted up. There is a generation whose teeth are as swords and their jaw teeth as knives, to devour the poor from off of the earth and the needy from among men." Now this was written thousands of years ago, but it sounds like today.

Amen. I think he saw today’s generation, don’t you? We have a generation that has no love, no respect, no regard for their mother, their father, or anyone in authority. Teachers, anyone that’s in authority, they curse them. Amen. We live in a day when people curse their parents and those who have rule and authority over them. We live in a generation when they are pure in their own eyes. They just know they’re right.

We’re in a generation today they don't want anything to do with the Word of God. They don't want anything to do with, and I use this word only because it's the word that they would understand in the world, they don’t want anything to do with religion. Now technically, I don’t want anything to do with religion either, but you know what I’m talking about. They don’t want anything that has anything to do with the Word of God, but they claim they’re spiritual.

All you’ve got to do is click on a few talk shows. You know the one talk show, the goddess that everyone worships at her altar every day. You say, well how would you say that? You know, Goddess O. Because when her show came up for renewal of its syndication about a year ago and it came up for renewal, it was written in the newspaper now everyone can continue to bow down to their goddess at the altar of worship because everybody that comes on there claims to be spiritual.

They’ve got all the answers about everything in life but nothing comes from the Word of God. People scorn the Word of God. How lofty are their eyes and their eyelids, they’re lifted up. And yet they are so filthy, but they think "I’m okay, you’re okay, we’re all okay." You do what you feel, I do what I feel, and we’re all going to get to heaven somehow. It doesn't matter which way you go, we’re all traveling the same road we just got different ways of getting there.

Isn’t that what you hear today? Yes it is. And the Bible says they’re not washed from their own filthiness. They’ve got teeth that are like swords. They devour the poor and the needy off of the earth. People today are out for themselves. Even when many people, even when they appear to lift a hand to help someone, they want to make sure it gets on the news. They want to make sure the camera’s there and clicking away.

A lot of people went down, a lot of celebrities went down to help out with the people when Katrina hit, but they were there for the cameras. They weren’t there ten weeks later or a couple months later, they weren't there then. There’s a lot of people that they don't care, they have no compassion. Everything is about themselves. It's the day that we’re living in.

And this is what Jesus said in Matthew the 24th chapter. And you know it's just chock full of all kinds of signs. And we always, the ones that get our attention are the earthquakes and the famines and the wars and all the signs. And so many things that Jesus said this is what it would be like leading up to the time of my coming. And so these are all of these things that have to do with the elements and the weather and the earth and things like that.

But one thing that Jesus said that we need to really let it sink into our ears, He said in Matthew 24:12, "And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many, somebody say many, many shall wax cold." What does that mean? Because iniquity shall abound, He’s talking about the people of God, people that have the love of God, their love is going to wax cold. They’re going to begin to draw away from the Lord.

They’re going to become carnal and they’re going to get away from their devotion and their consecration to God. Church is going to be when it's convenient. Church is going to be when I can fit it in. Their prayer life is five minutes here and five minutes on the run or fall asleep in the middle of it. They don’t ever crack the Bible open. They try to live off of the few minutes they get in church and the Bible says the love of many shall wax cold because iniquity shall abound.

So we've got to find out what is iniquity. It's a law that was set in the earth the moment that Adam and Eve sinned against God and they broke the Word of God. They set up the law of iniquity. And the thing about the law of iniquity, it increases with every generation. That's why we live in a generation like I just described, we read here in Proverbs the 30th chapter. Because iniquity abounds.

Now what does that mean? It’s not just talking about sin per se, because when we disobey the Word of God, when we do not do what God's Word says, disobedience, it is sin, which means to miss the mark. Or it’s transgression, which means to break the law. When you transgress the law, you break the law. But what is it? There is a nature, there is a force, there is something that's pushing and driving men to do these things.

It's the law of iniquity because iniquity means you’ve got this propensity in you. It's your bent in a certain way. You’re leaning a certain way and that's the way you’re going, the way you’re leaning. And that is because you have that law of iniquity that's working not only in individuals, the sinner, but it's out there in the kingdom of darkness. The Bible says the whole world lieth in darkness.

So why do I want to be out there? Why do I want to spend my time in the world when the whole world is in darkness? And they are the children of iniquity and the law of iniquity is in them. It's to be twisted. If you go to the very root of the word, it's to take something and twist it so as to warp it and bend it out of shape. And that's what the word iniquity does.

It comes into a person's very nature and twists and warps your nature to the good you want to do you can't do. Until after a while they call good evil and evil good. Does that sound like today? That's what the Bible says. And Jesus said because iniquity shall abound. Now what I just told you describing the word iniquity basically comes from the Hebrew root of iniquity.

Now let's look at the basic meaning of the Greek for iniquity. It could be a synonym in our English would be lawlessness. Do we live in a day of lawlessness? I mean just remove the policemen for a few hours and see what happens. You won’t have a store with a window in it. There won’t be one gallon of milk on the shelf. Just remove, just let the policemen all go on vacation for 24 hours and you’ll come back to a city in shambles.

Because people are bent to breaking the law. The only thing that keeps them from doing it is because the fear of the police, and when they don't have that fear anymore they'll still break it. Isn't that right? It is a lawlessness that drives people. And Jesus said it is a disregard for the law. Now let's bring that spiritually. When people no longer have a regard for the Word of God, which is the law of God, then you have iniquity.

The reason why they want to take the Ten Commandments down from our schoolhouses and our courthouses and our public places is because they no longer have a love or respect for the law of God. They don’t want anybody to tell them "Thou shalt not steal" because they’ve got something in them saying "If I get a chance to steal, I'll steal." They don’t want a law to tell them "Thou shalt not commit adultery" because their hearts are full of lust and Peter says they have eyes full of adultery that cannot cease from sin.

So when we come to a time when there is a general disregard for the Word of God, that is a time of lawlessness. When people no longer respect this as God's Word, they don't want to hear it, they don't want to be reminded of it, then we have iniquity abounding. And when iniquity abounds, the love of many will wax cold. So what we've got to do is be aware of this because Jesus said this is going to be one of the major signs of the day that we live in before the coming of the Lord.

Now you would think that as we realize that Jesus' coming is sooner, you would think that we would become more in love with the Word of God and we would want to live even closer to the Lord. We’d want to be prepared 24/7 for His coming. But it's just the opposite Jesus said. That there will be an abounding of lawlessness and a disregard for the Word of God because as I said a moment ago, it began in the garden and with every generation it increases.

Now I’m just going to refer to these quickly. In Jeremiah he said in three different places, he says since the day that your fathers came forth out of the land of Egypt unto this day, I sent my prophets. He says yet they hearkened not unto me nor inclined their ear unto me, but hardened their neck and listen to this, and they did worse than their fathers. But they are not for the truth. Because when I sense the truth they are not for it, for they proceed from evil to evil. That means in ever-increasing evil.

And he says and they have not known me, saith the Lord. He says I've even chastened them because of the multitude of their iniquities, because their sins were increased. We go into the New Testament and we read that Paul said in Romans the sixth chapter, he says now when you were in sin, you yielded your members unto uncleanness and from iniquity to iniquity. How many can look back when you were in a sinner just a minute, and you don't like to look back there I know that, but just think about it for a moment.

The road that you were going, the direction that you were heading in, you were becoming more and more and more a child of the devil. You were getting deeper in sin. You were getting more bound by whatever you were indulging in. Your addictions were getting greater and even if you weren't in addictions, but you know that you had an unclean heart. You were filled with more uncleanness, more hatred, more prejudice, more pride, more all of that stuff.

And you were yielding your members more and more. Because once you walk over a certain threshold, once you let down your guard, the first time it gets to you. Man, you feel really, that sin it's really putting guilt on you and you’re really feeling guilty about it and you say "I’m never going to do that again." But you do it the next time and you don't feel quite as guilty.

And the next time and the next time until you begin to yield and yield until iniquity takes over, until you go ahead and do that and don't feel any guilt. It's the law of iniquity. Paul wrote to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:13, "But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived." Now here's the law of iniquity. They’re deceiving, playing their little sin games, trying to get it over on this one and get it over on that one and probably after a while thinking they’re getting it over on God.

But the problem is as when you begin to walk in sin and you begin to deceive, you get deceived. See, after a while iniquity deceives a person to they do not realize that they’re operating under the law of iniquity. That's how they go from one thing to another. You and I could go down to the city jail or to the pen and we could go through there and we could interview people in there and they would tell you that there was once upon a time they never had the slightest idea they’d be sitting in that jail today.

They never knew they’d end up there. They never knew that first time they broke the law that this is where it was going to lead to. You could go to some sitting on death row and they cannot believe that's where they are. How did I get here? Because the law of iniquity, they began to go into that. So what we have to do is realize that this is the day that we’re living in and our own children are at stake and our own grandchildren.

I mean there are people that have gone to jail from this pew. There are people from the pew that have gone out into the world and the devil has just jumped on them. How many say amen? So we have got to realize that we have got this Word of God, we've got to get back a love and a respect. This Word of God has got to be part of our life day and night and night and day. It's not enough just to get your little sermon on Sunday.

And some people don't even get that and some kids don't even get that because they don't go to Sunday school. But we've got to have the Word of God in and be imparting it from our hearts to our children. So let's go to Deuteronomy the sixth chapter and I want to show you how that first of all, the Word of God has got to be our first priority personally for ourselves and then God is holding us responsible that we’re to impart that Word of God to our children, our grandchildren or any children, minors, whatever that may be in your sphere of influence.

God is going to hold us responsible. And this is what God commands of us. In Deuteronomy the sixth chapter beginning with verse 4: "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart." Let's stop for a moment.

Now here is what Jesus said that was the greatest of all commandments. Remember the scribes came and said to Jesus what's the greatest commandment? Because they had 613 commandments. Somebody say 613. How many know that's a lot of stuff to remember? But they had to remember it. The young men by the time they turned 13 and had their bar mitzvah, they had to know all those 613 commandments by heart.

So they had to know all 613, but Jesus made it easy for us. He said instead of learning all 613, if you learn this: Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And then He went on, He said that's the greatest commandment, and then He went on and He said and the second greatest commandment is love thy neighbor as thyself. If you keep those two, Jesus said, you’ll keep all 613.

Okay, so here He said we’re to love Him with all of our heart. Now, the word heart can also be translated spirit. So as you go into other scriptures and as you go into the New Testament, whenever we talk about our spirit or whether we talk about our heart, they’re synonymous. Heart and spirit. So where Jesus said love the Lord with all thy heart, He meant with thy spirit. He said with all thy soul, He meant with all thy soul.

And when He said with all thy strength, He meant with thy body. Because we’re a three-part being: we are spirit, soul, and body. And we’re to love the Lord our God with all of our being. And if we will love the Lord our God with all of our being, guess what He said He would do for us in 1 Thessalonians 5:23. He said "And the very God of peace," and that word the very God of shalom, that means the God of holiness, the God who can supply all your need whatever it is, "shall sanctify you and preserve you."

He’ll not only do it initially when He saves you, but thank God He can keep you. He will preserve you holy, completely and entirely, spirit, soul, and body. That one day He can present you to God as His child. You’ll be sanctified, you’ll be spotless and blameless without any wrinkle or spot or any such thing. The Bible says we’ll be irreproachable in His sight. So when you love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your body, He’s going to keep and preserve you.

And we’re to love him this way. And He said, "And these words I command thee." Somebody say command. It's not an option. It's not a suggestion. It's not a good idea. It's not "I wish you will" and "I hope you will," but it's "I command thee" this day to keep these in your heart. And you know what? You’re going to spend the rest of your time on this earth keeping them in your heart.

Because there’s a thief out there who's trying to steal the Word of God. Jesus said in the parable of the sower, and you can read this later in the Gospels: Matthew 4, Luke 4, it's in the Gospels. That He said that when the sower goes out to sow the seed, the first thing that happens is the birds, the devil, tries to steal the Word.

And so after the Word of God comes in and saves you, cleanses you and makes you whole, heals you, delivers you, whatever you need, the rest of your life you’re going to spend keeping that Word in your heart. Because the devil’s going to try to steal it every chance that he can. But He said, "I command you that you keep this in your heart." Another word, you’ve got to make it a priority of your life.

Now what else did He tell us to do? Verse 7: "And thou shalt teach them diligently." Somebody say diligently. I mean this is not hit-and-miss when you’ve got time, when you can squeeze it in your schedule, when you’re not too tired, when your favorite television show’s not on. No, that's not what it says. It says diligently. You’re going to make it a priority, you’re going to give it all of your attention.

You’re going to do whatever you can because as you teach your children you know, it's the same way when they do their homework. Johnny’s good at math and Susie’s good at reading. And you’ve got to help Johnny with his reading, you’ve got to help Susie with her math because they all learn differently. And you can teach Johnny one way and teach Susie another way and it's just you’ve got to figure out which way works.

And it's going to be the same way with getting the Word of God into your children, grandchildren, and whoever. How many say amen? You’ve got to learn how to get it in them. And if you’ve got the Holy Spirit, He’ll teach you that you will teach them diligently. Now how are we going to do this? How am I going to get this Word? Now let's see what He told them to do then.

"Thou shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house." Okay, I can do that. "And when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up." I’m getting the idea that this is something I need to pay attention to pretty much all the time. I mean 24/7 when I’m walking, when I’m sitting, when I’m laying down, when I’m rising up, I’ve got to be teaching them the Word.

"And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they should be frontlets between thine eyes, and thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house and on the gates." Now before I discuss that let's flip over to chapter 10, verse 12. We’re still in Deuteronomy. In the mouths of two or three witnesses let every word be established. If God said this three times in the matter of a few chapters, I think He’s serious about it.

Verse 12: "And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee?" Somebody say require. That means it's not an option, right? It's not a suggestion. He requires it of us. "But to fear the Lord thy God." Oh, that's what a lot of people don't have. They don't have the fear of God because they have iniquity, because they have lawlessness, because they don't fear the authority, because they don't fear the Word of God. Their love’s waxed cold. They’re not caring about teaching anybody.

But if you first have the fear of the Lord thy God to what? To walk in all His ways, to love Him and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul. Now flip over to 11th chapter, verse 18. We’re still in Deuteronomy. In the mouths of two or three witnesses let every word be established. If God said this three times in the matter of a few chapters, I think He’s serious about it.

Verse 18: "Therefore shall ye lay up these words in your heart." Lay it up like treasure. Because it is treasure. "Therefore shall ye lay up these words in your heart and in your soul and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes. And ye shall teach them your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, when thou risest."

I think I read this before, didn’t I? Seemed like I heard this before. Okay. "And thou shalt write them upon the doorpost of thine house and upon thy gates." Now why? "That your days may be multiplied and the days of your children in the land which the Lord sware unto your fathers to give them, as the days of heaven upon the earth." Now we live in a bad, wicked, ugly world. We already discussed how bad it is in this generation, we already talked about that.

But He’s saying that for us we can live as though it's heaven on earth. How is that going to happen in this wicked, evil time we live in? Because when I lie down and when I get up and when I sit down and when I walk, I’m talking about and rehearsing the Word of God. How many say amen? And so this is how it's going to happen because I’m taking my energy, I’m focusing it on the Word of God.

And I’m keeping God's Word. In fact, when I was over there in verse 12 of chapter 10, if I would have went on to verse 13, which I’m going to go ahead and skip back and go to that, He said, "To keep the commandments of the Lord and His statutes, which I command thee this day," and everybody that's already there with me in verse 13, read the last three words with me: "for thy good."

Oh, so all of this that He’s telling us to do and we've heard it now at least three times, it all boils down to this: It's for your good that you might have a life of heaven on earth. Now I tell you what, I want anything, I want to do anything that's going to turn out good for me. I mean there's enough bad stuff that happens, you know, it just happens. We live in a fallen world and we live in a world where trouble comes. But I want to do whatever’s going to bring good my way. I want to obey the Word of God.

Sharon Hardy Knotts: Amen. What a helpful and insightful message: 5 Ways to Teach the Word of God, which are Teach, Talk, Walk, Write, and Recite. God is going to hold us responsible for getting His Word into our children's hearts to train them in the way they should go, the way of the Lord. It is amazing to me that when God chose one man on the face of the earth to bless and entrust His plan of redemption to, He chose Abraham and said because I know he will command his children and they shall keep the ways of the Lord.

The Jewish people exist today in spite of satanic attacks to destroy them because they are the people of the Book, the Bible. And the Bible teaches that since the time of Noah, iniquity has increased in the earth and with every generation, iniquity gets worse. This is an evil law that compels unsaved people to do worse than their parents and is why we have come to our day when men call good evil and evil good, when sin and deceivers and evil workers shall wax worse and worse.

And Jesus said of these last days, "And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold." This is why it is imperative that we teach our children the wisdom and precepts that scriptures teach and plant the seeds of God's Word in their hearts while they are young. They are not going to get it in public schools and by the time they get to college and universities, they are bombarded with humanism and atheism, evolution, and a blatant disdain for the Bible.

We have to teach and preach to them, but then we have to walk the talk and let them see the reality of God's truth in our lives and not just when we go to church. I hope you will order this CD, 5 Ways to Teach the Word of God, for a love gift of $10 or more for the radio ministry. Request offer SK128. That's S as in Sharon, K as in Knotts, 128.

Our mailing address is Brother Hardy, P. O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland 21203, or go online at RGHardy.org. That’s RGHardy.org. Again, to order 5 Ways to Teach the Word of God, request offer SK128, send a love gift of at least $10 to P. O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland 21203. Until next time, this is Sharon Knotts saying Maranatha.