"Should little children sit through big church?" That was a question we addressed in episode 919, and it is now the second most listened to episode in the history of our podcast, presently at over 300,000 plays. Amazing. It raised a number of follow-up questions in the inbox, like this one from Ryan.

"Pastor John, I'm a teaching elder at our church, and another pastor and my wife and myself have been wrestling with the idea of sermon content when children are present. We share the value of having children in church with their family, but we cringe at the thought of dealing with homosexuality or abortion or bestiality with children present.

How should one striving to rightly divide the word consider a child's innocence as they prepare and present a sermon? Should there be any deference shown to a family trying to be mindful of what those little ears hear, and would it be prudent to provide an alternative for families when those topics are covered?

What would you do as a pastor?" My bottom line answer, and I'll give the bottom line, then I'll back up to why. My bottom line answer is that sometimes a church needs to hear a sermon that deals with such graphic and explicit detail concerning a kind of human depravity that arrangements should be made for the parents to be notified that such a sermon is coming so that they can decide whether they want their children present, and I think the leaders of the ministry to children probably will want to discern whether special alternatives that morning should be made for the children or not.

So that's my bottom line answer. Now let me explain the principle behind it. That's as important, more important. I've argued in another podcast why I prefer and think it's good to have little children, say from age 4, on in the worship service with the parents or some responsible adult, and so I'm not gonna argue for that here, just point people to those resources.

So that means I do expect children are going to be constantly hearing words and concepts and experiences they do not understand. I think that is good, good, good, good. I think that's what it means to be a child. The aim is that little by little parents are clarifying for the children what they've been hearing so that the children grow into things that were once above them.

But things are more complicated than just whether a concept is hard to understand. The issue is also whether the issue is morally hurtful to the child. So here's here's an example. Take the sin of greed and the sin of homosexual practice. Both of them, the reason I choose them is because they're both listed together in 1st Corinthians 6 as keeping a person out of the kingdom if they are pursued without repentance.

So greed and homosexual practice have the same horrific outcome when they are embraced in a lifelong lifestyle. Now should a child hear an extended explanation of greed? And should a child hear an extended explanation of homosexual practice? And by child I mean something like five, six, seven years old.

And my answer is that there is a way that an extended description of greed can be good for a child, but an extended description of homosexual practice can be bad for a child. And one of the differences is this. This child is already greedy and there is a child form of greed.

The child can be shown by the pastor in his preaching or by the parents in application, can be shown this in a simple way by the parents that he's greedy, he's sinful, he wants more than he should have or things that would be hurtful to him to have. And he can be then be given gospel instructions for how he can begin to overcome his greed.

But in the vast majority of children, I'm gonna say 98 plus percent, just the vast majority, there are no homosexual desires at that age that need stopping because the child is normally developing unselfconsciously into a typical heterosexual young person as it should be. An extended and detailed explanation in a sermon of the evils of homosexual practice would require a child to be exposed at a very tender and formative age to possibilities of sexual experience he should not have to bear.

He shouldn't have to carry the burden of even contemplating or going to bed at night wondering, "What was that? Am I that? Should I consider that?" He shouldn't even have to face those questions at five, six, seven, eight years old. I wish he didn't ever have to face them, but terribly difficult if a child is dropped into that cesspool at a very, very early age.

But I don't think any five-year-old boy, for example, should ever pose the question to himself whether he will engage in or someday grow into homosexual activity. That is too heavy and can create uncertainties and worries that he should not have to deal with at that age. God's design for him is not to face multiple choices of sexuality.

Our culture thinks that's the way it should be because choice is God, but it's not God. Rather, he should grow naturally with God's help and parents' guidance into a heterosexual, godly young man. Hence, there's a difference between the vigilance we need to take over what children hear concerning sins as opposed to some other sins, even when both sins are deadly.

Some are more destructive for a child to hear about than others. But I don't think this means—this is an important, I think, qualification of what I just said—I don't think this means that in the normal course of preaching, a pastor must avoid all references to kinds of sins that might create problems for children.

That would be too constraining on the normal course of preaching. But he can be aware that any extended treatment of those sins, rather than a general reference to them, could wait for that other special sermon. And the reason I don't think he needs to avoid every reference is that for young children, it is possible for parents to give age-appropriate explanations of things like adultery.

A little five-year-old doesn't have a clue what adultery is, and if you tried to explain it to him, it wouldn't make any sense. It would sound funny. Or fornication, or homosexual practice, or transgender issues, or abortion. Children are often satisfied by being told graciously by their parents, "Let's wait and talk about that when you're a little older, because you're gonna be able to understand that, and I'm gonna explain it to you." And they're happy to run outside and play after you say that.

So the parents are able to decide and be discerning what level of exposure or awareness they think their children need. So I would suggest that pastors talk with the parents and the children's workers, and try to lay out an agreed-upon philosophy of parenting and education and preaching that would enable them to give appropriate protection and appropriate education to their children.

Yeah, that's very good. Thank you, Pastor John. And once again, the episode that's over 300,000 plays now is titled, "Should Children Sit Through Big Church?" It's episode number 919 in the archive. For more details about this podcast, or to catch up on those past episodes that we've released, or to subscribe to the audio feed, or send us a question of your own, go to our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

Well, why did it take centuries, even millennia, for Jesus to incarnate into human history? Why the wait? What took so long? It's a great question, and it's on the table Monday. I'm your host, Tony Rehnke. Have a great weekend. We'll see you then.