That's the authority in their life. That's the spiritual authority in their life.

The spiritual authority in my child's life is me. The spiritual authority in your child's life is you, which means anything that the church does had better not rob spiritual authority from mom and dad. I don't write the mail; I just deliver it. Secondly, look at the centrality in the home in his use of the fifth commandment. Look at what he says here, the next verse, "Honor your father and mother" - which is the first commandment with a promise - "that it may be well with you and that you may live long on the earth."

Now, as Americans, we're rugged individualists, so the first thing we wanna do with this verse is we wanna say, "That's talking to the individual child. Child, you obey me, you'll have a long, prosperous life." No, no. Understand the significance of the fifth commandment. First of all, the fifth commandment is the first of the horizontal commandments.

There's ten commandments - first four vertical, last six horizontal. No. 1 on the hit parade of the horizontal commandments, the man-to-man commandments, No. 1 is honor your father and your mother, which means there is nothing that the church can teach a child that is more important than honoring their father and their mother. Now, not only do we see it because of the position, secondly we see it because of a promise. That's the first one with a promise. Folks, that's huge.

Do you know what the first four commandments are? Commandment No. 1, I'm God. You don't get another one. Lord, can we get a promise with that one? Uh-uh, no promise. Just do it.

Commandment No. 2, don't even make nothin' that look like me. Okay, God, can we get a promise with that one? Uh-uh, just do it. Commandment No. 3, don't even mess with my name. Okay, God, that's kinda serious right there. You don't give - you gotta give us a promise on that one. Uh-uh.

Commandment No. 4, don't even mess with my day. Now, wait a minute now. You know, I want my boy to be a baseball player. Most of the teams, you know, he have to go and he has to play on Sunday sometime, and God, I'm sure you'll - don't mess with my day. Get a promise with that one, Lord? No promise.

Commandment No. 5, honor your father and your mother. I get a promise with that one, God? You better believe you can. On that one I give you a promise. Do you see the importance of the fifth commandment? It's huge.

Its order screams about its importance. The fact that it's the first one with a promise screams of its importance. Now, listen to this. The first commandment was not - the fifth commandment was not for the individual child. It was for the community of faith.

Here's what the fifth commandment is about. Remember, we get 'em in Deuteronomy 5, and Deuteronomy Chapter 6, what does he teach us? He teaches us how to disciple our children in our homes. He teaches us, "Listen, Israel, hear oh Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your might.

These words which I'm commanding you today shall be on your hearts, and you shall teach them diligently to your sons when you lie down, when you rise up and when you walk along the way." Disciple your children. Can I give it to somebody else to do? No. It is your job as parents.

Listen to me. You're clapping, but almost every one of you has a youth ministry in your church that is operating unbiblically, and don't clap if you're not gonna change it. And I'm not talking about including more parents in what we do. I'm talking about changing the entire paradigm. Why? 'Cause here's the purpose of the fifth commandment.

God says, "You are my people, but you're about to go into a pagan land where they worship pagan gods. If you wanna continue to be my people, here's what you must do. No. 1, you must have a boatload of kids." That's what it means to multiply greatly. By the way, when he sends them into the Promised Land, what does he say to them in Deuteronomy?

That they are to multiply greatly so that when he sends 'em into the Promised Land they won't disappear as God's people. When he sends 'em into exile in Jeremiah 29, what does he say? Multiply greatly.

Tell you something, there's some of us in the room who need to repent because of our attitude toward children and because of what we've said to people, communicating our attitude and not the biblical attitude toward children. Some of us need to get on our faces before a holy God because we have mocked being fruitful. I have heard pastors from pulpit - from the pulpit - talk about their children like they despise the number of children that God has given 'em. I heard a pastor from the pulpit talk about their third child being named "miny" - "Yeah, eeny, meeny and miny, 'cause we ain't having no more." That is a mockery before Almighty God.

Children are a gift of the Lord. The fruit of the womb is a reward. Our attitude from here is why a lot of people out there aren't having enough kids. Starts with us, and it all goes back to prosperity. Poorest nations in the world see children as a blessing.

The riches nation in the world, we talk about children in terms of how many we can afford. God help us. We're dying one generation at a time because we refuse to receive the gift that God wants to bring through the womb - our attitudes. God says, "You wanna continue to be my people, you do two things: No. 1, you gladly receive these blessings that I give you called children, and No. 2, you disciple them in your homes so that they don't look like the culture around them."

The minute you stop receiving the gift of God through the womb and the minute you stop discipling them in your home, they begin to look like the culture, and the community of God begins to vanish before your eyes. Two Christians in this generation - two Christian families in this generation to get one generation into the next. I believe that's a plague on us. It's amazing, we always talk about how we want more souls in the kingdom. If we were honest, here's what we'd say: We want more souls in the kingdom as long as we don't have to birth 'em, raise 'em and feed 'em.

Finally, in case you don't understand what he said by the context of this passage, and in case you don't understand what he said by him pointing to the fifth commandment, how about a plain, black-and-white, straightforward word? Verse 4, "And fathers, and fathers, and fathers" - everybody's trying to figure out how to make men excited about church again. Everybody's figuring out how do we challenge our men, how do we get our men involved. God's got an answer: "Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord."

Doesn't get clearer than that, folks. The context of this passage says the home is central in the evangelism and discipleship of the next generation. The fact that he points to the fifth commandment screams that the home is central in the evangelism and discipleship of the next generation. And men, in case we didn't get those two hints, he says it in black and white, "Fathers, disciple your children" - fathers. If we believe this, then why is it that we've done everything in our power not to allow that to happen, we don't expect that from our men?

And I hear ya. We go back to this whole thing. I understand that, but they're just not equipped. They just don't know. Here's what's interesting.

If the people in your church are not tithing, you don't start a ministry to tithe for 'em, do you? No. You simply teach them and expect them to do what the Bible says is their job. If it works for tithing, why don't we think it'll work for the discipleship of the next generation? So, what do we do with this?

I'm not telling you all to go fire your youth pastors tomorrow. That's not what I'm saying here, but we have to completely revamp our philosophies. In the last couple of minutes that I have left, let me give you a few things that we must do, because currently, all of our evangelistic efforts amount to no more than filling up a bucket with a hole in the bottom. We are not growing. I want you to hear that today.

And by the way, some of you out there, you're going, "Yeah, there's 16 million. We're not gonna - " Of course not, we won't go down to 4 million in just one generation. No, listen to me. Our churches will continue to be filled, but here's what we do know.

No 1, we know because of Thom Rainer's research that was published in the spring edition of the Southern Baptist Theological Journal. According to their research, if their estimations are correct, somewhere around half of all Southern Baptist members are unregenerate. By the way, according to the Nehemiah Institute, the Barna Research Group and the National Study of Youth and Religion, less than 10 percent of professing Christian teenagers operate from a biblical worldview. Less than 5 percent are theologically born again. By that, I mean they say they're born again and they trust Christ as Savior and Lord of their life, but they're wrong on the deity of Christ.

They're wrong on substitutionary atonement. They're wrong on just about every important theological issue related to salvation. Only 5 percent of 'em theologically have the information that they need to be saved, so our churches will continue to look big, but the overwhelming majority of the people inside will not be Christ followers. So, what do we do? No. 1, I beseech you, if you don't have a biblical view of children, get on your face before Almighty God and repent, and if you have been mocking children from your pulpit and if you, like one pastor - one pastor that I talked to recently, said, "Brother, when you said that, here's what I thought.

"The first thought that came to my mind was last week I talked to my people, and I told 'em that we thought my wife was pregnant, and when I said that, I told 'em that after we found out that she wasn't, I said, 'Whew, we had a close call.'" He said, "I need to go get on my face right now, because I communicated to my people that children are a curse and a scourge and not a blessing." Do not make a mockery of children. You encourage people to welcome children into their homes. You throw a banquet when that woman walks into your church with six or seven kids behind her.

You honor her and let everybody see you do it, 'cause if it wasn't for women like her, we'd have no future. Secondly, if you have a youth ministry in your church and you have a mission statement, you line it up against what we looked at tonight in Scripture, and if it's wrong on its biblical and theological merit, you crumble it up, put it in the trash and start over, because it will not change until we change our entire mentality about what it means to disciple the next generation. As long as you think it's your idea or it's your responsibility, as long as you think that our job in discipling the next generation means hiring some guy who's 25 years old and got spiked hair and has never raised a teenager himself, Lord help us. Our entire mentality has to change. Thirdly, and this is the toughest one to talk about, we have to adopt a biblical view of church leadership. I wanna tell you something.

There is two skills required of a pastor, and only two skills. There are a lot of character qualities that are required, but only two skills. No. 1, he must be able to teach. No. 2, he must manage his household well. Our churches are filled with biblically disqualified pastors.

Titus Chapter 1 makes it clear. If you do not have faithful children, and if your children are accused of rebellion or dissipation, you are disqualified biblically, and you hear that - and I know we hear that and we go, "Oh, brother, that's harsh. Nobody's perfect." Listen to me. The same passage says - and here's what boggles my mind, same passage, same paragraph - must not be addicted to wine.

That says he must not be a drunkard. He must not drink in excess. We say he can't drink at all. Listen to me. I'm not a drinker.

I'm not promoting drinking. I've never had a drink, but this is what I want you to hear tonight. Not drinking is easy for me, and it's easy for most of you, 'cause most of you never drink, and you stick your chest out and pop your collar 'cause you don't drink. It means nothing to you unless you've been an alcoholic. It is not hard for you to do.

Discipling your family is a different story, and it amazes me that in the same paragraph we take one of those requirements and raise it and the other one and lower it. You wanna know why our families are in turmoil? 'Cause most of you, when you got hired at the church that you're at right now, they never even met your family. They heard you preach and voted on you, when the Bible says if you're not discipling your children in an exemplary fashion, you're not worthy of being called a pastor. From the top down, we are wrong on the family, and we are losing the culture war one family at a time, and we have gotten so pathetic that now there's a euphemism in our culture called a PK.

Why do we use that term as a euphemism? Because pastors' kids who live like they were raised by the devil has almost become the norm. If the church is a corporation, that's completely acceptable, because all you have to do is stand at the top of a machine and make sure that people go in one side of it and out the other and that there's more of 'em going through the machine next year than this year. But, if the church is a family of families and if God is serious about families being expected and equipped to disciple their children, then the people who stand at the helm had better be exemplary husbands and exemplary fathers. Until we believe that, we'll continue to lose the culture war one family at a time.

Listen to this from Richard Baxter in The Reformed Pastor: "If you are ungodly and teach not your families the fear of God, nor contradict the sins of the company you are in, nor turn the stream of their vain talking, nor deal with them plainly about their salvation, they will take it as if you preached to them that such things are needless and that they may boldly do so as well as you" - mist in the pulpit, fog in the pew. We will never be able to tell our children to raise and disciple a houseful of warriors for Christ if we don't begin to do it from the top.