Sermon Central
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The Starting Point Of All
Contributed by Johnny Creasong on Apr 17, 2008 (message contributor)
Summary: When you give your child back to God, you are openly declaring that this child is a gift from God and only on loan to you. We’d better be careful how we treat and care for God’s property! God trusted you enough to place those children in your care to ra
The Starting Point of All
The Bible says that children are a blessing from God.
3 Sons are a heritage from the LORD, children a reward from him.
(NIV)
The Bossier City First Church of God is thrilled to partner with your family in raising your children in a Godly home. The joy of Jesus’ birth was shared with the people of God in the house of God. Like most Jewish parents in that day, Joseph and Mary brought Jesus to the temple to be presented to God. Long before this time godly parents presented their children to God. And to this day, parents bring their children to God, asking for his blessing.
When you decide to dedicate your son or daughter, you are acknowledging the awesome responsibility God has given you in raising your child. A baby dedication is a ceremony that expresses your desire as parents to raise your son or daughter in the ways of the Bible and to ask God to use your son or daughter for his purposes. You submit your will for your child to God’s will. Parents should ask themselves if they really want to see their child serve God. Would they like to see their child become a preacher, a Christian businessman, a missionary, or a common laborer for Christ? When Hannah, the mother of Samuel the prophet dedicated him to the Lord, she promised to give him up to serve God in the temple.
Have you given your child back to God?
(Some of you are thinking, “I’d like to give them back—but I didn’t think God would take them back. I thought He had a ‘no return’ policy on kids! Besides, I lost the receipt!”) The truth is, there is not a parent here who hasn’t had a few moments or days when they wouldn’t have liked to package up that kid and take him/her back to God’s customer service counter and demand, “I want my money back!”
I’m not suggesting you return your kids to God and try to get your money back. What I am asking is,
Have you ever…
Recognized your children are precious gifts from the Lord?
Released ownership of your children to Him?
—understanding God is responsible for the way in which they were designed and already knows the plan and purpose for their future
Realized God has left it up to you to show them His way?
The Dedication of children to God means handing them over to Him to do with as He pleases. Christian parents who dedicate a child are making a promise to the Lord to do everything within their power to raise the child in a godly way, prayerfully until he or she can make a decision on his or her own to follow God.
As followers of Christ, we want to also make this public declaration to your family, and your church. It is invaluable to be able to tell a child as they are growing up that they belong to Jesus and that you have asked God to use them in a formal declaration as in a Baby Dedication.
What if my child is older and I have not dedicated them as an infant? It is still a good thing for Christian parents to dedicate themselves to raise their children for the Lord and to dedicate those children to the Lord as an act of worship.
Today I want to highlight a man in the Scripture who committed his child to God and what that meant. When God called Abram to start out on his own, away from the daddy and the comforts of home, God made a promise to Abram that was unbelievable.
1 The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.
2 "I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."
(NIV)
God punctuated the promise after Abram obeyed.
6 Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land.
7 The LORD appeared to Abram and said, "To your offspring I will give this land." So he built an altar there to the LORD, who had appeared to him.
(NIV)
What made this promise unbelievable?
1) Abram’s wife, Sarai, was barren
2) Abram is 75 years old
The first thing Abram does:
He commits himself!
Genesis 12:7 – “So he built an altar there to the LORD, who had appeared to him.”
