Command These Children!

We consider Ezra 2 (Sources: Bible, White, E. G., Meyers, R.)

One congregation discovered that where both parents were faithful to the Lord, including showing active interest in the local congregation’s programs, 93 per cent of the kids remained faithful as adults. On the other hand, if only one of the parents was authentic, that figure dropped to 73 per cent. Watch this; I will finish it later…

Do you remember that the children of Israel were chained and had to walk from Israel to Babylon? That is where we got the song in Psalm 137 – By the rivers of Babylon. They suffered a great deal on the way. Many died before their time. Not a few were maltreated and taunted. Of course, all this was very painful for them to bear. Their disobedience and lousy treatment of prophets God sent to warn them had brought them where they were.

God had planned that this should happen for 70 years, after which He would bring them back to their country to rebuild their lives. As soon as the time was up, God set about getting the kings to send them back to their country. Cyrus was first to issue a decree for them to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple. Zerubabel and Joshua led the first group of exiles back home. The bible chronicles the number of people from the various families that returned.

In Genesis 18:19, God speaks about Abraham in this way, “For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD, to do justice and judgment; that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him”. And Abraham achieved this. Kindly check Genesis 24:12-14; 25:19-21.

God trusted in Abraham’s parenting enough to know that he would encourage his children to seek the Lord and obey His commandments to secure God’s blessings for his family. If all the Israelite parents were like Abraham, then you would expect many if not all of them to return home to rebuild their country. Indeed some parents seemed to have done well.

From some families, those who returned were in their thousands, but others counted just 42… Ezr 2:24 The children of Azmaveth, forty-two. Scroll down to verse 35 and there … children of Senaah, three thousand, six hundred and thirty. Just imagine that!

In our survey above, where the parents were reasonably faithful, only 53 per cent of the young people maintained their faith. Now here comes the shocker: In those cases where both parents attended only once in a while, the percentage of their children who remained faithful to the Lord dropped to 6 per cent. Do you want your children too to go to heaven? Then be sure to model the way. I remember the words of a song I heard recently, “Show them how a Christian lives on Monday” (https://jrkbrothers.wordpress.com/2016/12/17/monday-the-williamsons/ ).

Can you be raptured when Jesus comes? Will you be lonely or with family?

Tags: Parental responsibility, family values, Christian role models