Rev. Bob Wood

Here is a transcript of the Podcast if you prefer reading to listening.

00:01 Rev. Bob Wood: Hello, everyone, I’m beginning our new season of podcasts. This series of podcasting season two is really gonna be focused on youth ministry, children’s ministry, families, those kinds of subjects that interest me.  Occasionally, I’ll talk to you about what’s going on in Honduras and in my life. But today, I really wanna lay down the groundwork for a theology of belief and understanding, at least that I have, of family ministry, children and youth ministry, and how important it is.

00:34 Rev. Bob Wood: When we look at the Old Testament, everything kind of starts, as far as the people coming into the new land, with a lecture, a sermon that Moses gives in Deuteronomy. And I wanna focus especially in chapter 11, the first part of chapter 11, where he lays out an outline for what the people must do to have a good life.

01:06 Rev. Bob Wood: Starting in chapter 11, Deuteronomy, Moses says, “Therefore, thou shall love the Lord thy God, and keep His charge, and His statutes, and His judgments, and His commandments always. You know ye this day, for I speak not with your children, which have not known, and which have not seen the chastisement of the Lord your God, His greatness, His mighty hand, and His stretched-out arm, and His miracles, and His acts, which He did in the midst of Egypt unto Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, and unto all His land. And what He did unto the army of Egypt, unto their horses and their chariots; how He made the water of the Red Sea to overflow them as they pursued after you, and how the Lord hath destroyed them unto this day. And what He did unto you in the wilderness, until ye came into this place. And what He did unto Dathan and Abiram, and the sons of Eliab, and the son of Reuben, how the earth opened her mouth and swallowed them up, and their households, and their tents, and all the substance that was in their possession in the midst of all Israel.”

02:27 Rev. Bob Wood: “But your eyes have seen all the great acts of the Lord which He did. Therefore shall ye keep all the commandments which I command you this day, that ye may be strong and go in and possess the land, whither you go to possess it. And that ye may prolong your days in the land, which the Lord swore unto your father to give unto you, and to their seeds, a land that floweth with milk and honey. For the land, whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt from whence ye came out, where thou sowest thy seed and waterest it with thy foot as a garden of herbs. But the land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven, a land which the Lord thy God careth for, the eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year. And it shall come to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently unto my commandments, which I command you this day, to love the Lord your God and to serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul, that I will give you the rain of your land in His due season, the first rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil. And I will send grass in thy fields for thy cattle, that thou mayest eat and be full.”

04:05 Rev. Bob Wood: “Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside and serve other gods and worship them. And then the Lord’s wrath be kindled against you, and He shut up the heaven, that there be no rain. And that the land yield not her fruit, and lest ye perish quickly from off the good land which the Lord giveth thee. Therefore shall ye lay up these my 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, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou riseth up. And thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thine house, and upon thy gates, that your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children in the land which the Lord swear unto your father to give them, as the days of heaven upon the earth.”

05:14 Rev. Bob Wood: Rather long passage there, 21 verses, but what it’s talking about is as the people have seen the miracles of God through the course of what happened in the Book of Exodus as they were led out of captivity, as slaves into Egypt, into the wilderness, how God protected them and taken care of them. And now God is going to send them into the inheritance, the promised land. But He gives this warning that if they want everything to go well, they need to obey His commands, follow His judgments. In fact, during the course of much of Deuteronomy, there’s a description that talks about how spiritual life needs to be maintained in the community, ’cause if it’s not, the community will have problems.

06:06 Rev. Bob Wood: I can see that here in my own country of Honduras, where we are not always keeping things the way they’re supposed to be, we’re not being the parents we’re supposed to be, we’re not teaching our children to follow God. What happens in the Bible? Well, we have a series from Deuteronomy all the way through Kings and into the prophets where the people forget about following the Lord. They don’t teach their children about Him, they start following other gods, then some disaster comes on them, they return to the Lord, and things are made right. And things go good for a while, but then after a while, they forget about the Lord.

06:50 Rev. Bob Wood: What I’m gonna be talking about through the rest of the season is we’re gonna be really focusing on how to bring the Bible into the life of your family and into the life of your children. This is something that we just can’t send the kids to Sunday school and hope everything works out, which is unfortunately what we’ve done for several generations. And I would suggest to you the main reason that around the world where Christianity has declined, it is partially due, or may be entirely due, to our lack of maintaining a Christian education in the home. I’m gonna hopefully share with us not only the importance of it, but also some fun things you can do with your children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, children that are in your life to help reinforce following the Lord.

07:42 Rev. Bob Wood: We have so little time to get this right. Statistics that I’ve looked at a for decades have shown if a kid does not have a firm foundation in his faith in Jesus Christ by the time he’s 20, there’s a difficulty in seeing them as participating in a Christian community as they get older. I hope you’ll join me in this season and communicate with me some ideas as I share with you the ideas that we have, some of which we are implementing here at our El Pino bilingual school. Others are very obviously things I’m gonna tell you stories about what’s going on in the family. In fact, next week, if you’ll listen to the podcast, it’s going to be how to deal with zombies. Well, have a good week, and keep the faith in your home.