Sermon: Blessings of Catechesis

So my task tonight was supposed to be to talk about catechesis, uh, or about catechizing. Uh, catechism is just question and answer, right? There's a question that is asked, and then there is an answer that is given. And where does that come from, biblically? Well, it comes primarily from two places. The one is from Deuteronomy six, A passage that you would be very familiar with. Deuteronomy chapter six, where Moses is giving this instruction to the nation of Israel.

And he speaks of the fact in the beginning of Deuteronomy six, after giving that great Shama that we covered the very first week, uh, of January, hero Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one. He then says in verse seven, he, he says, and these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children shall talk of them when you sit in your house. And when you walk by the way. And when you lie down.

And when you rise, shall bind them as a sign on your hand. And they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. And if you skip forward a little bit in chapter six, at the end of it, he's speaking about as they observe the Passover, and he says this, when your son asks you in time to come, what is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rules

that the Lord our God has commanded you? So question then you shall say to your son, we were Pharaoh slaves in Egypt, and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. And the Lord showed signs and wonders, great and grievous against Egypt and against Pharaoh and all his household before our eyes. And he brought us out from there that he might bring us in and give us the land that he swore to give to our fathers.

And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes to fear the Lord our God, for our God always, that he might preserve us alive as we are this day, and it'll be righteousness for us if we are careful. Do all the commandment before the Lord our God as he's commanded us. See two things happening there. You see one that there is a requirement of parents to train their children in the things of the Lord. And this is one of the great duties of being

a Christian parent, is that you will, as you are laying down, as you're rising, as you're walking by the way, that you will speak and talk about the things of the Lord. And then you see at the end there that there's the expectation that as children are in the midst of the covenant community, that they will have questions that as they participate in the covenant community life, that they will ask questions. And we are to be ready to have an answer, an answer

that we can give to them in the New Testament. The great an the great, uh, kind of principle of question answer of being ready for question answer comes from the Lord Jesus Christ himself. And we touched on that as well the first week in January, Caesarea Philippi, that great scene, the dividing line in the book of Matthew, where, uh, Jesus will stand there at Esea of Philippi and he will ask of the disciples, who do you say that I am?

That's the question you're to have an answer. And Peter of course, responds and he responds with great doctrine, great theology. You are the Christ, the Son of the living God, right? And Jesus says on this rock, I shall build my church that is on this confession of faith. I shall build my church. It has been true throughout the centuries that there has been, uh, different catechisms that have been written for this very reason, just instruct

to provide education as we spoke about this morning, also to make it clear what it is that we're confessing and especially to help children, to help children be able to articulate what the scriptures teach. Children love to memorize. So it's one of the great blessings is to have children memorize these things when they're young. And then as they grow in the faith, then you begin to understand, you begin to explain these things.

And then by God's grace, they begin to own these things. There was, um, the great enemy of, well, during the Reformation, so the Protestant Reformation, uh, the Roman Church launched in response what is often called the Counter Reformation, where as a result of the Council of Trent that followed where they said that all these things that Protestants believe are anathema. And so they launched was called the the Counter Reformation,

where they sought to undo all that the Protestant Reformation has started to achieve in Germany and Switzerland and France and the Netherlands and Spain and on we could go. And that the great kind of, um, the great protagonist, I guess you could say for the Roman Church was a man by the name of Alto and Alto led the Counter Reformation in many ways. And he has a quote where he says this about France. He says, if they had not catechized,

we would've turned it all back.

Why? Because they were teaching their children the, the things of Christ. They were teaching them sound theology and doctrine. So when they encountered that which was false, they could stand against it. There was depth there. Uh, this has been a tried and true method through, uh, the years. If you don't like Westminster, Heidelberg, et cetera, that's fine. Uh, there are all kinds of catechisms out there. Make sure that they're solid, that

they're orthodox or that they're good. You could even try to write your own. It's fascinating how many puritans, I mean, I could probably name 20 Puritans that I know that they wrote their own shorter catechisms for their churches and for their families. It's a great exercise. You could try to write your own. Someone was telling me the other day that they were in Bible college and their professor had them write their own catechism.

That's a great exercise to figure out what is it that you believe? What, what are the essentials of the faith? What? And to try and articulate it, it's one of the great gifts I think that, uh, we have is all these wonderful catechisms that have been passed on through the days and that we can use, uh, for, uh, our own education, for the education of our children. Uh, let me give

one story, if you'll rightly understand. I shared it with the high school the other night. I've shared it once. I think here at URC before, don't misunderstand me. Uh, Lee and I fail as parents all over the place. We are failures in many ways, uh, even as we seek to try and honor the Lord. Uh, but when the kids were young, I worked a lot with them on the shorter catechism in memorizing the shorter catechism. And there was a day that Jehovah's Witnesses showed up at

our door, uh, and two women. And there was clearly an older woman and there was a younger woman. And I love when they show up at the door. Um, to me it's, it's exciting. I get to share the gospel and we're gonna, let's get after it together. And so when they come, I always have a rule at the very beginning. I open the door, uh, if Leah's home, she says, go get your dad. And I come to the door and, uh, and they say, could we spend a few minutes talking to you?

I said, I would love that. I just have one requirement. Uh, I'm willing to answer any question that you want for as long as you want, but then I get to ask you three questions at the end. Can we do that? And they always agree. Um, and these two women were at the door, uh, Grayson, I don't know, is probably six or seven years old at the time. And, uh, these two women were leading through, uh, Jehovah's Witness Arianism.

Uh, much like what we heard this morning, the teaching of Aria. Jehovah's Witnesses have grabbed a hold of that old heresy that Jesus is less, the son is less than God the Father. And, um, you know, as they talked, I would answer all the questions and we got to the end. I said, okay, I get my three questions right? And they said, yes, yes, of course. I said, do you, uh, do you believe that we believe in the same God? He said, of course, yes.

I said, do you believe That Jesus Christ is the son of God? Oh, yes, yes. This is what we believe. And I said, and and third, do you believe that the Son has always been? And the younger one went silent. And the older one said, no, we, we don't believe that. We believe that he came to be. And Grayson was in sitting on the living room floor, putting together a puzzle or playing or something. She was just kind of listening in the background.

And as soon as she heard that, she popped up in her six or 7-year-old little body and she ran to the front door where we're at 10 feet away. And she said, that is not true. God is a spirit. He's infinite and eternal and unchangeable and his being wisdom, holiness justice, goodness and truth. What happened? She knew he was eternal and she knew the son was God. So he must be eternal. And as soon as she heard air, he's not eternal.

He came to be it fired in her brain. That is untrue.

That was the golden moment for me as a father that, ah, maybe some of these people that have come before us knew what they were doing when they encouraged us to catechize our children. Uh, there is great benefit and.