Age of Accountability

and so tonight we're going to talk about the age of accountability but what i like to look at is the grace that christ shows us each and every day in the mercy that he has so blessed us with by not giving us what we deserve so let's stand together tonight and let's sing i stand amazed in the presence i stand amazed in the presence of jesus the nazarene and wonder how he could love me a sinner condemned unclean how marvelous a wonderful and my song shall ever be how marvelous how wonderful is my savior's love for he took my sins and my sorrows he made them his very own he bore the burden to calvary and suffered and died alone how marvelous how wonderful and my song shall ever be how marvelous how wonderful is my savior's love for me when with the ransomed in glory his face i at last shall see thy joy through the ages to sing of his love for me how marvelous how wonderful and my song shall ever be how marvelous how wonderful is my savior's love for me let's go to the lord in prayer father thank you so much for this day we thank you so much for the opportunity that you've given us to come into your house and to sing praises to your name and also to open up your word and to study and father i pray that we would not take that for granted for many in this world don't have that opportunity and unfortunately many in this country now no longer have that opportunity so father we thank you for the opportunity that you've given us to gather together i pray father in doing so that you would keep us safe and keep us healthy so that we can continually seek to serve you with all that we have we ask this in your holy and precious name amen well good evening to you and welcome to the evening service this year wednesday evening services at north lake baptist church for those of you who are present and for those who are joining us online welcome so good to see you if you have your bibles please open to mark chapter 10 and we'll be there after a while this is one of those sermons where i'm going to have to skip around a little bit so you may even want to jot a few notes as you go instead of trying to flip and keep up with me but as derek just mentioned we'll be talking about the salvation of children tonight i've had several questions about this while we've been studying through the revelation on sunday morning about what will happen to children during the rapture what will happen to children during the great tribulation and even beyond the questions about children in the future the salvation of children is a very important topic for it separates christian denominations based on how what they believe about this topic many christians believe that children are born with the guilt of original sin that they inherit from our original parents adam and eve and if they should die before they wake they would not wake up in heaven unless they have been baptized as infants in order to remove their original sin of course baptist southern baptists see this differently baptists believe that through the temptation of satan man transgressed the command of god and fell from his original innocence whereby his posterity or descendants inherit a nature and an environment inclined toward sin therefore as soon as they are capable of moral action they become actual transgressors and are under condemnation and that comes from our statement of faith the baptist faith in message 2000. therefore baptists believe that infants are covered by the grace of god until they reach an age at which they are capable of moral action an age which in which they are responsible for their own right and wrong decisions and actions and this is known as the age of accountability but the problem of this is there is no explicit teaching on an age of accountability in the bible and so that's what we're going to be talking about tonight that's our question of the evening and of course the question that we had out on the blog is how old were you when you made your profession of faith and we asked uh some general categories what it is i kind of uh compared it to a barna survey that was taken not too long ago by christians from across the country and they asked if you were say before you were 13 between 13 and 18 between 18 and 21 and then after 21 and uh the results of this pretty remarkable according to barna 43 of people were converted before the age 13. in our nearly famous north lake pole it was actually higher than that 52 percent of people that registered on our poll uh were saved before they were 13 years old uh according to barna 21 uh we're say between in the teen years between 13 and 18 um but in uh in the north lake pole 17 uh 13 were say between 18 and 21 and in our poll only 2 percent and then 23 after age 21 and in our poll 28 were saved after age 21. so um that's what we're going to be looking at tonight the age of accountability and for uh starters we probably need to begin with a definition it's the age at which a person is mature enough to be held responsible or accountable for their sins and so that's where we're going to go with this age of accountability you again you can't find that phrase in the bible however you also can't find the word trinity or georgia lottery or jack daniels in the bible however the bible does speak to all those issues not explicitly but through implicit principles and so again a lot of people say well you can't find that in the bible well there's very few things that we run into that the bible doesn't handle with implicit commands even if there's not something explicit in there well anyway i couldn't find the age of accountability in the bible so i went to the internet you know it's always a great place to go find stuff i'm i'm being a little facetious there actually be very careful uh because there's all kind of opinions out there and three quarters of them are wrong so be careful as you go out to try to find for example on this subject we're talking about age of accountability one website was sent to me several years ago i remember reading it and i jotted down some notes and i wish i'd put down where it came from anyhow i tried to find it this week and fortunately it was removed but anyway there was this online pastor who told the story of two sisters i hope this was hypothetical but anyway one was 17 years old the other was seven years old and they were on their way to school and both were killed in an automobile accident the seven-year-old had went to church but never joined and never talked about it the 17 year old had told her parents previously that she didn't believe in jesus or heaven she thought that when you die you're just dead so this online pastor advised web surfers to go to the bible and we would find the answers so he said the bible teaches that children are not fully capable of distinguishing between good and evil therefore they are considered innocent and god will not hold children responsible when he judges and he quoted deuteronomy chapter 1 verse 39 which says moreover your little ones and your children who you say will be victims who today have no knowledge of good and evil there's the phrase they will go to the promised land to them i will give it and they will possess it but as for you you will die in the wilderness remember that the children of israel rebelled against god and it was time for them to go into promised land but they were afraid to go into promised land because of the giants so he said i'll tell you what uh your children will be able to go in the promised land but all of you are going to die in this wilderness if you remember that's the context but and it talks about children here who don't have the knowledge of good and evil yet but the question then comes is what is a child what's considered a child what is the age of the child so not to worry this pastor he said god sets a precedent in numbers chapter 14 verse 29 concerning the same scenario that i just described the carcasses of you who have complained against me will fall in this wilderness all of you who are numbered according to your entire number from 20 years old and above so he said therefore a child is anyone 19 years old or younger so the age of accountability is 20. therefore both girls age 7 and 17 are safe in heaven so what do you think is the age of accountability 20 of course there's a problem with that age 20 rule it won't hold water as a precedent because we have an earlier president if you remember sodom and gomorrah when god judged only lot and his two daughters were spared and so we have to assume that there are men women and children under 20 years old that were destroyed all together when the fire fell on sodom and gomorrah also if you remember another old testament story a little earlier than this cora's rebellion cora rebelled against moses if you remember and they were having this big uh get together and if you remember there was an earthquake and earth opened and korah and all his family and all the people who were part of that rebellion fell down in inside and disappeared into the earth and listen to what it says numbers 16 verse 27 about that in this earthquake they went down with their wives their sons and their little children they and all who went with them down live into the pit the earth closed over them and they perished from among the assembly so as you can see there's problems with saying that 20 years old is the age of accountability i went to another website and this website was from a jewish perspective and they were talking about bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah which is literally when a a son is considered old enough to be an adult they consider him 13 years old to be son of the commandment is what bar mitzvah means our daughter of the commandment is bat mitzvah and so 13 years old is uh is the magic number there and you're considered to be an adult and accountable before god uh for keeping the commandments and if you remember in luke 2 42 jesus went to the temple at age 12 which would have been before bar mitzvah for him but as i understand after doing some reading on this is they didn't really practice all the bar mitzvah stuff and the jewish people during jesus time as they do during modern times i think what they do now started mostly in the middle ages but nevertheless there was something considered that you were reached to manhood or whatever age 12 13 somewhere in that area so is the age of accountability 12 or 13 and of course there's a problem with saying that that's the age of accountability because it's really an ancient jewish tradition it's not biblical it's more of a rite of passage for jewish young men and women and it's really not so much about salvation then i went to another website and this one was best i could tell primitive baptist hyper calvinist and their spin on this is to even use the term age of accountability is heresy it assumes that you are saved by age by intellect by decision or by choice they said god foreknows and predestines everyone's future in eternity past and they quote ephesians 1 3 blessed be the god and father of our lord jesus christ who chose us in christ before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blame before him in love having predestined us to adoption as sons by jesus christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will and so the way they interpret that is if the baby dies and it happens to be one of the elect or chosen ones it goes to heaven and if it's not part of the elect or chosen ones then it does not go to heaven so what about that yeah a problem with a primitive baptist or predestinarian view is it is true that god is sovereign and he knows everything the end from the beginning but the problem is we as the church don't know and so the only way for the church to be able to operate down here is for the elect or the chosen ones to identify themselves through obedience to christ as it says in romans 1 17 and a number of other places the just shall live by faith or the elect shall live by faith or the chosen shall live by faith so you have to start your faith journey with some kind of decision with some kind of commitment a public profession of faith a baptism joining the church living a life worthy of the calling of christ even jesus matthew 7 20 says therefore by their fruits you shall know them so when is a child old enough to start producing fruit well see we're now back around to the age of accountability thing again so when does that happen i looked at some other websites you're noticing how much fun you can have when you get out on the internet went to others and if you go to catholics methodists presbyterian episcopalians lutherans they skip the whole age of accountability question because they practice infant baptism that is you christen or baptize your baby as soon as possible and then you have blessed assurance that everything's okay of course the problem with infant baptism is it's unbiblical i remember i had a church history professor when i was in seminary said infant baptism is unbiblical but it's very practical he went on to show us that in ancient times in biblical times infant baptism was not practiced but what it became is a solution for high infant mortality rate in the ancient world for example in the 14th century when the black death struck 50 percent of some cities in europe uh 50 of people died now in america you know we're freaking out over a less than one percent death rate with cobit but could you imagine a 50 death rate or it means for every two in here one of you wouldn't make it can you imagine trying to be a parent during a time like that so what happens to my baby who died in the plague and so that's how the christening or sprinkling of the baby got started it was soothing to the hearts of grieving mothers and fathers and gave them hope there's no biblical justification for it and it's really unnecessary but nevertheless that tradition has continued down through the years but brothers and sisters our hope during the death of an infant is the same hope that we have for our own salvation and as we prepare for our own death who is our hope in yeah the hope is in the lord jesus christ even in the old testament time psalm 42 verse 5 and plenty of other places it's put your hope in god that's where your hope lies whether you're talking about your own salvation are we talking about the salvation of your children put your hope in god in genesis 18 25 abraham father abraham basically said the judge of all the earth will do right he asks it as a rhetorical question shall not the judge of all the earth do right and of course the rhetorical answer is yes the lord is going to do right by these things so put your trust in him second samuel 12 23 if you remember when king david suffered the loss of a baby a son and you remember he said i shall go to him but he shall not return to me in other words he anticipated being able to see him whenever he went to paradise that that baby went on ahead of him we also have some further hope from the word of god children belong to the lord long time before they ever belong to us and i think as parents we lose that we call my children my children i'm gonna do all this for my children remember they're his children first he is the originator we are laborers together with god in this thing called childbearing because they're his first psalm 127 3 behold children are a heritage from the lord and the fruit of the womb is his reward and if you go on to talk about this guilt or innocence of the children the lord speaks through two prophets jeremiah and ezekiel and basically says the same thing the lord speaks through jeremiah and says in those days they shall no more say the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge what happens when you eat sour grapes yeah you get puckered up your lips pucker that's what he's saying he's saying the people are using a proverb they're saying our parents did a sin and we're being charged with the guilt of the sin in other words our parents bit the sire of grape we're the ones that are puckered in other words we're having to pay for what our parents did ezekiel uh but the lord goes on under jeremiah and says but everyone shall die for his own iniquity every man who eats the sour grape his teeth will be set on edge in other words god's saying i don't charge your children for something that you did and you're not paying for your parent's sin everybody ends up having to pay for their own sin he says the same thing in ezekiel chapter 18. the word of the lord came to me saying what do you mean when you use this proverb concerning the land of israel that the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge as i live says the lord you shall no longer use that proverb behold all souls are mine the souls of the father as well as the souls of the son the soul who sins shall die the son shall not bear the guilt of his father nor the fathers bear the guilt of their son the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself but if a wicked man turns from all his sins which he has committed and keeps my statutes and does what is lawful and right he will surely live he shall not die so we know from stating scripture that all of us are born with a sin nature from our fathers dating all the way back to adam we have a bent or an inclination towards sin but god does not charge us with the guilt of our fathers we receive guilt from our own decision and so children who are too young to discern good from evil are not guilty of sin they are in a state of innocence apparently there is an age or a stage of life when children become responsible and become accountable and capable of moral action we read about that in isaiah chapter 7 verse 16 for before the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good the land that you dread will be forsaken by both of her kings so apparently there is a phase in life where a child doesn't yet know to refuse evil and choose the good and while a child is still in that stage before they know to refuse the evil and choose the good they are covered by the grace of god the apostle paul writes in first corinthians 7 and some verses that i struggle to understand so if any of you have complete understanding be sure and let me know after be sure and let me know after this but they seem to imply that children of godly parents are in a special holy or sanctified place in the will of god which is why it is so important to try to keep our children our christian families together listen to what paul writes first corinthians 7 12 if any brother talking about a believer talking about a christian in the early church there at corinth if any brother has a wife who does not believe but she's willing to live with him let him not divorce her and a woman who has a husband who does not believe if he is willing to live with her let her not divorce him for the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband otherwise your children would be unclean but now they are holy so apparently there is a special place in god's grace for the children of godly parents godly families so again that's why it's so important to try to preserve these families further the bible tells us very clearly jesus loves the little children all the children of the world remember where i told you to start with mark chapter 10 mark chapter 10 beginning in verse 13 says then they the crowd brought little children to him that he might touch them but the disciples rebuked those who brought them but when jesus saw it he was greatly displeased and said to them let the little children come to me and do not forbid them for of such is the kingdom of god but surely i say to you whoever does not receive the kingdom of god as the little child will by no means enter it and he took the children up in his arms laid his hands on them and there he blessed them so little children can respond to god but the question still remains is how little and how old are they when they can begin to respond to god and i gotta tell you i believe it varies from person to person based on their maturity their maturity level or their developmental stage if you've ever raised more than one child you probably know what i'm talking about but children learn to walk and talk and think and read at different stages how many of you know that and some of them are remarkably young when they begin to become aware of what's going on and how quickly they learn some of them are a little bit slower and picking up on these things and i think spiritual maturity follows a similar pattern i believe children become accountable to god when god begins to reveal himself to them and begin speaking to their heart speaking to their inner being and it's based then upon their response to him uh one of the terrific little examples that we do find in the bible of this is the calling of samuel as a small boy first samuel chapter three well i'll start in chapter one if you remember when it says when hannah had weaned sam remember she was barren she wasn't able to have any children and she said if you let me have a son i'll give him to you his whole life long and so she's fixing to make good on her vow now even with this boy being as young as he is and it says and when hannah had weaned samuel she took him up with her and brought him to the house of the lord in shiloh and the child was young bible scholars believe maybe as young as four or five years old because in those days sometimes they didn't call them wean until they were three years old and so he was probably taken to the house of the lord to be a little priest when he was four or five years old first samuel chapter 3 we pick up the action there now the boy still calling him a boy not calling him a young man young adult or anything like that now the boy samuel ministered to the lord before eli who was the priest at that time and it came to pass that time when eli was lying down in his place and while samuel was lying down that the lord called samuel and he answered here i am so he ran to eli and said here i am for you call me and eli said i did not call you go lie down again and so he went and lied down then the lord called yet again samuel so samuel arose and went to eli and said here i am for you call me eli said i did not call you go and lie down and then we have a parenthesis here now samuel did not yet know the lord nor was the word of the lord yet revealed to him but it was happening even as he spoke and the lord called samuel a third time so he arose and went to eli and said here i am for you did call me and eli perceived you know eli's a little slow on the uptake here okay it took three times for him to realize this and he said i think the lord is talking here therefore eli said to samuel go lie down and if it be he calls you that you must say speak lord for your servant hears so samuel went back to bed laid down this place now the lord came and stood and called him at us at other times samuel samuel and this time samuel says speak lord for your servant years the question is how do you know how do you know when the lord is speaking to your little samuel well all i know to you about that is listen to your child listen to what they're saying listen to what they're talking about when they begin to ask you about why their brother or their sister or their friend got baptized or when they began to ask why can't i have the lord's supper it passed down the aisle you and mom y'all partook you wouldn't let me partake what's up with this you know that's the reason we do that it's so the children ask and what are you supposed to do if the children ask call a preacher no no it's supposed to be mom and dad are supposed to share their faith with jesus christ or maybe they're going to ask where did grandpa or grandma go when they died i wanted to have a conversation or when can i join the church or when can i get baptized but when you hear those questions don't automatically assume it's time let's go call the preacher you know just answer their questions if you answer the question and that's good enough and they go away and continue to play and well you pray for them it means something's going on there so just pray don't pick the apples green just pray and say lord we're we're working on this but if they're persistent and they begin to have questions on a frequent basis what do you do then lead them to the lord lead your child the lord there's nothing more beautiful than being able to lead your child to faith in jesus christ and again what will i say what will i do well start off with something simple share the gospel the simplest presentation of the gospel i know of john 3 16. for god so loved the world god so loved you he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish in a place called hell but have everlasting life in a place called heaven and that believed word there is same greek word is faith it's a faith word and what does faith mean junior it means to believe trust and obey god it means you believe that there is a god even though you can't see him and you believe he had a son named jesus who lived 2000 years ago you can't see him now either but you believe what the bible says about him and all that you trust him he says if you'll believe in him that he'll let you live forever with him in a place called heaven and do you trust him to do that do you believe that god can do that and finally obey do you believe him to the point and you trust him to the point that you're willing to do what he says in his word even if it's not popular even if everybody in the united states says it's wrong to follow that old-fashioned way of doing things that's what it means to be obedient everybody can be obedient when it's easy but can you be obedient when it's hard go ahead and believe god so much that you trust his word and you're going to live this way because that's that's what god has told us to do of course another set of verses that's easy for children to understand is the roman road romans chapter 10 verse 9 and 10 that if you'll confess with your mouth jesus is lord that's what it means to confess your mouth to lord jesus jesus's lord is a phrase that's dated all the way back to the first century and believe in your heart that god raised him from the dead then you shall be saved not you hope you'll be saved or you may be saved said you will be saved for with the heart one believes into righteousness and with the mouth confession is made in salvation and whosoever shall call upon the name of the lord shall be saved now junior to call upon the name of the lord means you pray you pray to this god that you can't see and you ask him to forgive your sins and to come in your heart and save you simple as that of course there's an easier way too a simple a simple approach that we use with vacation bible school and if y'all worked in vacation bible school here you've probably used this before and it's called the abc's i admit be believe and see confess they admit that you're a sinner that you're selfish now again when you've got children that are very young they probably don't have a criminal record yet so what do you call sin and that is selfishness you rather do things your own way than do things the way mom and daddy says you ought to you'd rather do things your own way than do things the way you don't want to share your toys with your brothers and sisters that's what we call selfishness and when you don't want to obey your mom and dad guess what that's a violation of god's law as well because he gave you your mother and daddy to help you get started in life and you're supposed to honor them and obey them and so that's really what sin is all about it's selfishness saying i'm going to do things my own way instead of doing things the way that god wants me to and you got to be willing to repent and change from that to live a different way be is believe that jesus christ is god's son and he came down from heaven in order to live and teach us how to live and then he went to the cross and died for our sins so that we could have forgiveness of sin and then he rose the third day offering eternal life to all who would believe on him and call him their lord let him be lord let him be boss of your life and tell you how to live and start doing things his way instead of doing it your own way well how do we know how to do things god's way well junior there's something called a bible and this is where we find out how god wants things done how to do things god's way and you believe in him to the point that you're willing to do things his way then finally confess confess that jesus christ your savior and lord you're not ashamed of this gospel and you're willing to tell everybody you see tell everywhere you go so much so that you'll actually walk down the aisle in the church service with a couple of hundred people in there but you're not ashamed to say jesus is my lord and savior and make that public profession of faith and also to be baptized which is also an external profession of faith where you show by what we do in the water that you're dying to yourself and you're white rising to walk in a new life and so uh can you do that you can do that with your children you can do that with your grandchildren sure that's how it's done you know some people object to baptizing little children because they say well what's the difference between if baptizing baptism and baptizing their six or seven year old and the answer is belief we believe the bible teaches baptism of believers or believers baptism and that's that's why we do what we do is sometimes a six or seven year old kid sometimes it may be a little longer before they grasp that before they get a hold of it but we believe in believers baptism now all this i believe jesus made it abundantly clear that the faith of children is very important so much so that he writes in mark 9 42 whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea does that sound like gentle jesus making well it sounds like jesus has a bone to pick with you if you end up offending one of these little ones who's trying their best to reach out to the lord to believe in him and so again we need to encourage the little children to come to the lord and put their faith and trust in him and also those earlier stats that we saw is the sooner you can get a child of faith in jesus christ it happens earlier the harder it is as they get older why because you get hardened by sin and you get the devil starts to take over your life the older you get so it's so important to lead children to faith in jesus christ while they're still young and even if you wait till you're 90 years old to come to faith in christ you still what got to come as a little child with simple childlike faith is what jesus said by the way you know it is possible for a seven-year-old to believe because i'm living proof i put my faith and trust in jesus christ when i was seven years old i still remember it to this day some people they say i got saved so young and i don't remember anything about it well i still remember mine and matter of fact on certain 10-year anniversaries i still go to that church down in south hall county friendship baptist church off of friendship road and go out there and just sit in the parking lot and think back to the day that i heard the lord speak to me the first time and i knew it was the lord because i was a typical seven-year-old little boy and you know what seven-year-old boys think of in a worship service when will this end i got to get out of here i got things to do i got to play you know i got to see if joe will go home with me for lunch you know i had all this going on but on that particular day something happened to me and i heard the preacher preach even though i'd heard him holler many times for the first time i heard him preach and i knew he was preaching to me and i could feel the lord speaking to my heart and it wasn't an audible voice no it was louder than that and i responded to it by faith i was sitting on the second row right there and walked down and told the the preacher i was repenting of my sins and i was asking jesus christ to be my savior and lord so can a young child do that i think so so whenever the children start reaching out to the lord and you can tell the lord is speaking to their heart seize that moment in order to lead them to faith in jesus christ let's go the lord in prayer father i thank you for your word and i thank you lord that you didn't make it complicated sometimes we get too wrapped around the wheel with theology trying to make everything so complex with big words to try to figure it all out but you said no you want us to come to you as a little child comes in faith comes believing believing in mom and dad believing in a heavenly father lord help us not to mix that up and make it too complicated but to lead our children to faith in jesus christ and lord let us leave it up to you about this accountability business help us just to have ears to hear and realize when people around us regardless of their age when they're reaching out and trying to make a connection with you let us help them let us encourage them to put their faith and trust in christ we pray right now if there's someone here in the building or somebody watching online that's never yet trusted jesus christ their savior and they can feel that still small voice of the holy spirit speaking in their spirit calling them to yourself that today will be the day that they'll make their profession of faith in you and we pray this in jesus name amen

Channel: Northlake Baptist Church

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Length: 36min 41sec (2201 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 23 2020