WHY IS VACATION BIBLE SCHOOL IMPORTANT?
Text:
II TIMOTHY 3:14-17
INTRODUCTION:
1. My message this morning is entitled, “Why is VBS Important?”
2. Obviously I am preaching on this subject because we kick off our annual VBS tomorrow morning.
3. Before I begin my message, I would like to emphasize that while VBS is very important, Sunday School is even more important. I say that because VBS is only one week out of the year, whereas Sunday School is every week.
4. Isaiah 28:10 says, “For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little.”
5. In my opinion, the great value of VBS is the opportunity to reach children with the Gospel. Many of the children who come out to VBS do not attend Sunday School.
6. Many of them do not even attend church.
7. Many of them attend churches where the Gospel is not preached.
8. Many of them have never heard the Gospel.
9. Many of them have never even seen a Bible before.
10. Just the other day, a 14-year-old boy in Staten Island killed his three sisters, killed his mother, and killed himself before burning down his house. He was a firebug (arsonist; pyromaniac) and had a history of setting fires.
11. Every time some kid kills someone, we hear the same old thing: “We have to get these guns off of the streets!” What are they going to say now, “We have to get these matches off of the street”?
12. There is an old saying – “None is so blind as he that will not see.”
13. Things would have turned out differently if this family had attended Sunday School and VBS, but you won’t read that in the newspaper.
14. I have chosen for my text II Timothy 3:14-17, but we will consider some other Scriptures as well.
15. Psalm 34:11 says, “Come, ye children, hearken unto me: I will teach you the fear of the LORD.”
16. Our Lord said in Mark 10:14, “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.”
I. CHILDREN SHOULD START LEARNING SCRIPTURE AT A YOUNG AGE (II TIM. 3:14, 15).
1. Unfortunately they start learning the things of the world at an early age. The American Academy of Pediatrics reports that by age 18, the average American child will have viewed about 200,000 acts of violence on television alone.
2. This does not include violent movies and video games. One of the top-selling video games in the world, Grand Theft Auto, is programmed so players can beat prostitutes to death with baseball bats after having sex with them.
3. Players in Grand Theft Auto 3 (the best-selling game ever for PlayStation 2) earn points by carjacking, and stealing drugs from street people and drug pushers. In Carmageddon, players are rewarded for mowing down pedestrians. Sounds of cracking bones add to the realistic effect. The first-person shooter in Duke Nukem hones his skills by using pornographic posters of women for target practice, and earns bonus points for shooting naked and bound prostitutes and strippers who beg, “Kill me.”
4. In the game Postal, players act out the part of the Postal Dude, who earns points by randomly shooting everyone who appears – including people walking out of a church.
5. I could go on and on. And yet many parents will not bring their children to VBS or Sunday School, but they will allow them to play with these horrible video games!
6. I firmly believe that many children who are inundated with these violent images of shootings, bombings, rapes, and murders will become desensitized to such violent acts and consider them acceptable behaviour.
7. People foolishly say that television does not affect behaviour. I can easily refute that. First of all, if watching television does not affect behaviour, why do advertisers spend billions of dollars running commercials every day and night?
8. Second of all, if you read the newspapers or watch the news on TV, you have heard of so-called “copy-cat crimes” where criminals commit a crime they saw on television. Natural Born Killers is a sick violent movie about serial killers that inspired a maniac named Nathan Martinez to shoot and kill his stepmother and half sister after seeing the film at least six times. Later, Martinez, who had shaved his head and wore granny glasses like a character in the movie, reportedly told a friend, “It’s nothing like the movies.”
9. A Clockwork Orange (1971) shows young hoodlums raping and beating a woman while one of them sings “I’m Singing in the Rain.” Later on, some young delinquents in England raped a young woman while singing “I’m Singing in the Rain,” leading the director Stanley Kubrick to ban the film from being shown in Great Britain.
10. It is better to teach children the Word of God than let them watch all of this garbage on TV. Many children have a television set in their bedroom. That is a big mistake!
11. Children should start learning Scripture at a young age, because they start learning the things of the world at an early age. And not just by the “devil-vision.” Many parents allow their children to associate with children who use filthy language, dress immodestly, who are disrespectful, vulgar, and rude.
12. First Corinthians 15:33 says, “Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners.”
13. Many parents allow their children to listen to filthy rock and rap music.
14. Recently I looked at some of the young people’s Facebook pages. Here is what I found from young people that attend our church: favorite music – sleazy and immoral singers such as Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Eminem, Usher, Chris Brown, etc.
15. I preached against rock music a few years ago, and most of the teens at that meeting admitted they listened to this garbage.
16. I told one of the workers that I was shocked that Christian young people could listen to such trash, and he said that’s because of the public school influence.
17. “Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners” (I Cor. 15:33).
18. Paul told Timothy, “And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures” (3:15).
II. CHILDREN NEED TO BE CONVERTED AT AN EARLY AGE.
1. “And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus” (3:15).
2. “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17).
3. The Bible is “able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus” (3:15).
4. Too many children are not wise unto salvation. Too many are wise to do evil!
5. Jeremiah 4:22 says, “For my people is foolish, they have not known me; they are sottish (silly) children, and they have none understanding: they are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge.”
6. Romans 16:19 says, “I would have you wise unto that which is good, and simple concerning evil,” but too many children are wise concerning evil.
7. Today, thanks to television, young people are wise concerning evil. They know all the sordid details about Bill Clinton, OJ Simpson, Tiger Woods, Madonna, and so on.
8. They know about homosexuals and other perverts. They know all about dope and cigarettes And alcohol, etc.
9. This is why children need to be converted at any early age so these devilish things will not get a hold on them. They need to “continue” in the things they have learned from God’s Word (3:14).
III. CHILDREN NEED TO BE DISCIPLED AND TRAINED AT AN EARLY AGE (II TIM. 3:16, 17).
1. “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God…” (3:16). This means literally, “God-breathed.”
2. The Latin word meaning “to breathe out” is inspiro, and this is where we get our English word “inspiration.”
3. All Scripture is “profitable for doctrine (teaching)…” (3:16).
· DOCTRINE – What is right.
· REPROOF – What is not right.
· CORRECTION – How to get right.
· INSTRUCTION IN RIGHTEOUSNESS – How to stay right
4. One of the greatest preachers of all time was Charles Haddon Spurgeon. He said, “It would not be easy for some of us to recall the hour when we first heard the name of Jesus. In very infancy that sweet sound was as familiar to our ear as the hush of lullaby. Our earliest recollections are associated with the house of God, the family altar, the Holy Bible, the sacred song, and the fervent prayer.”
5. Spurgeon wrote an excellent book on the importance
of teaching Scripture to youngsters.
It is entitled, Come Ye Children, A Book
for
Parents and Teachers on the Christian Training of
Children, and can be downloaded for free on
line.
6. Abraham Lincoln grew up very poor and had little formal education. But he loved to read and his favorite book was the Bible. For a while, he attended a small log schoolhouse in Indiana where they had no reading books or grammars. All their reading was done from the Bible. The students stood in a long line and read in turn from it.
7. Bishop Matthew Simpson gave President Lincoln’s funeral oration at Springfield, Illinois. The preacher said, “He read few books, but mastered all he read. It was these few, of which the Bible was chief, which gave the bias to his character, and which partly moulded his style.”
8. In other words, the Bible influenced Lincoln’s speaking style, both spoken and written. Lincoln’s speeches were saturated with Biblical references because he started studying the Bible at an early age.
9. In the Fisk University Library, Nashville, Tennessee, is a copy of the Bible inscribed as follows: “To Abraham Lincoln, President of the United Sates, the Friend of Universal Freedom, from the Loyal Colored People of Baltimore, as a token of respect and Gratitude. Baltimore, 4th July 1864.”
10. The actual presentation of the Bible was made in Washington DC on September 7, 1864. When presenting the Bible to President Lincoln, the donors said, “Since our incorporation into the American family, we have been true and loyal.”
11. President Lincoln responded to their thoughtful present by saying, “In regard to this Great book, I have but to say, it is the best gift God has given to man. All the good Savior gave to the world was communicated through this book. But for it we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man’s welfare, here and hereafter, are to be found portrayed in it. To you I return my most sincere thanks for the elegant copy of the great Book of God, which you present.”
12. George Washington Carver was a great scientist, botanist, educator, and inventor. On January 21, 1921, Carver addressed the United States House Ways and Means Committee on behalf of the United Peanut Growers Association on the use of peanuts to improve Southern economy. Initially given ten minutes to speak, the committee was so captivated by him that his time was extended to over two hours.
13. Explaining the many products derived from the peanut, George Washington Carver stated: “If you go to the first chapter of Genesis, we can interpret very clearly, I think, what God intended when he said ‘Behold, I have given you every herb that bears seed. To you it shall be meat.’ This is what He means about it. It shall be meat. There is everything there to strengthen and nourish and keep the body alive and healthy.”
14. After nearly two hours, the chairman asked: “Dr. Carver, how did you learn all of these things?”
· Carver answered: “From the Bible.”
· The Chairman inquired, “Does the Bible tell about peanuts?”
· “No, Sir” Dr. Carver replied, “It tells about God who made the peanut. I asked God to show me what to do with the peanut and He did.”
15. What about William Shakespeare, the greatest writer of all time? Atheists claim that Shakespeare was not a Christian, but listen to these words, taken from his last will and testament, written shortly before he died: “In the name of God, Amen, I William Shakespeare, of Stratford upon Avon, in perfect health and memory, God be praised, do make and ordain this my last will and testament in manner and form following, that first, I commend my soul into the hands of God my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing, through the only merits, of Jesus Christ my Saviour, to be made partaker of life everlasting.”
16. Shakespeare’s plays are saturated with Bible references. In fact, many people have been introduced to Scripture by way of Shakespeare.
17. Thomas Carter, in his book Shakespeare and Holy Scripture argues that “no writer has assimilated the thoughts and reproduced the words of Holy Scripture more copiously than Shakespeare.”
18. Carter says that Shakespeare’s plays demonstrate a mind “richly stored with the thoughts and words of the English Bible.”
19. He then infers that Shakespeare probably gained this knowledge in childhood as that is the time we most easily become grounded in memorizing Scripture.
20. There we see the importance of Vacation Bible School!
21. Some of these youngsters who attend VBS (and Sunday School, etc.) could become great preachers like Charles Haddon Spurgeon, great statesmen like Abraham Lincoln, or great writers like William Shakespeare, or great scientists like George Washington Carver – if we introduce them to the precious Word of God.
CONCLUSION:
1. The other day I heard on the radio that Huntington’s school board decided to close an intermediate school because of nearby crime. For almost a year, police have confronted a rising tide of violence near Huntington Station’s Jack Abrams Intermediate School. Much of it has been attributed to gangs.
2. As more and more parents threatened to take their kids out of the school, administrators resisted calls to close it altogether.
3. Then last week a teenager was shot in the leg right behind the school.
4. That prompted the school board president to call an emergency meeting, where they decided to turn the school into an administrative building only.
5. Listening to people call in to the radio station, it soon became apparent no one knew what he was talking about. There was no mention of God, the Bible, Sunday School, or church, etc.
6. Many studies have been done to try and explain why certain youngsters gravitate towards gangs and drugs and criminal behaviour.
7. So-called experts focus on childhood anxiety, attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity, antisocial personality disorder, biological and environmental influences, and many other disorders – both real and imagined.
8. Some blame the neighborhood, but as far as I know Huntington and Staten Island (where that 14-year-old boy killed his family) are nice neighborhoods.