Instructing Children
Proverbs

I’ll pray and we’ll get going. Father God, thank you for a chance to get together and to study your Word. God, as always, it’s our prayer that, by grace, w would be imitators of you. Lord God, that we would come to the Scriptures, not merely to study, but to be studied. Not merely to examine, but to be examined. And not merely to be informed, but to also be transformed. Lord God, we love you and we thank you, Lord Jesus that you have died for our sins, that you’ve saved us from sin, and death, and folly. That you have given us life, and life that is to be full, and abundant, and joyful.

God, we do pray as well this morning for Tim and Beth and their daughter Trinity. Pray for healing for mom and baby, and pray for wisdom for the doctors, and pray, Lord God, that they would be home soon, and that Tim will be back here with us in the very short, short, near future.

God, we love you, and we thank you, and we give our time to you and ourselves to you in Christ’s good name. Amen.

Continuing our series out of Proverbs on children, I’ve got some questions on this. Here’s why we’re doing this. A couple of different reasons. One, statistically, about 90 percent of you are going to be married at some point in your life, okay? Some of you are working on that. Many of you are single. Many of you, most of you, statistically, are going to be parents. And a lot of what you are learning now and what you are doing now is preparing you for that future, either in wisdom or folly. And so, for a lot of you whom are single, this is preventative instruction. And as we get into the issue of children and the training of children, know this. That it may not pertain to you directly now, but it does pertain to us as a church. We have, in an average year, maybe 50 plus weddings and at least 40 children being born that we can sort of count on this year, is what we’re anticipating. And you start to do the math, over a few years, we’re looking at hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of children.

Someone told me recently, they were reading the Old Testament and studying and they ran across this concept of fertility cults and they didn’t know what that meant until they came here. And now, it starts to make a little more sense –

Laughter)

− what an Old Testament fertility cult looks like. And this is important, I think, for two reasons. One, for the overall health of the church. That as the children are brought up in this church, we want to love, and encourage, and instruct them. And secondarily, it has a reverse effect for adults. Many of you, as we’re studying the issues of instruction and discipline of children, will find that a lot of who you are and the way you are has been shaped for good or ill by your parents and by your upbringing. And that if you have been poorly parented, you still assume that the way you were instructed is normal and good and you’ll have the propensity to continue that unless you get some information that informs you otherwise. And so, you’ll learn a lot about yourself in the process as well.

I’ll start off with a story this week. Did you guys see The Seattle Weekly this last week? The cover story recently? It’s the most frightening story. I’ll tell you the story. A guy name Jerry, he’s 69 years old, lives up the road in Everett. He has an 89 year old mother named Eva. Jerry was busy and getting older. His mom is very elderly. She has Alzheimer’s. She’s in ill health. And so, Jerry decided that he would need to hire someone to live with him, and to take care of his mother, and to help him with the caretaking responsibilities. So, he hired a 38 year old woman named Barbara. And she has three children from two men. She’s unmarried. She has had a difficult life, to say the least. She has lived in 22 places in the last 7 years, and she’s been evicted from 10 different apartments. She needed some help and he was kind enough to give her some help. He hired her, gave her a car, enabled her to live with him and took care of her and her three children. She discovered that he had about $40,000.00 in his bank account. And since she was a co-signator to do some shopping and some household bill paying, she decided that she would devise a scheme whereby she would murder him and rob him of his $40,000.00.

To do that, she elicited the help of her 14 year old daughter, Heather, her 11 year old son, and her 7 year old daughter. And what she did is she went seeking for a way to hire teenagers, her daughter’s friends, to murder this gentleman, Jerry. She initially hired some teenagers and they got scared and backed out. And so, then she found another young boy who was 17 years of age. His name is Jeff. And she hired him and the deal she worked with him is that, apparently, he was very attractive. He was 17, her daughter was 14. He was very attracted to her daughter, Heather, who had still yet to graduate from the sixth grade. And so, what she did is she worked out a relationship where she gave this young boy permission to move into their home and to share a room and sleep with her 14 year old daughter. She basically prostituted out her 14 year old daughter to a 17 year old young man so that he would murder for the mom. That was the deal that was worked.

He went out, then, and recruited five other young friends, 14, 15, 16, 17 years of age, and they were going to be paid for this. The biggest payoff was going to be her daughter, Heather. If Heather helped in the murder, her mother would buy her a new dirt bike. It went all the way down in decreasing scale to the – some children were only paid $5.00 or $10.00. What they wanted is they wanted to go skating and they couldn’t afford it, so she said if they would murder this man, she would pay for them to go skating.

And so, they devised a plan and mom was hold, this woman, Barbara was home, in the basement, with her seven and eleven year old while she had the teenagers hide upstairs. Jerry comes home, 69 years of age, and immediately, Jeff, the 17 year old, takes an aluminum baseball bat to the back of his head and cracks his head open. The other boys jump out with the Mariner’s souvenir wooden baseball bats, and attack him and bludgeon him in his own home. What happens then is the mom’s downstairs yelling out orders with the seven year old and the eleven year old with her, and she tells her fourteen year old daughter, then, to go upstairs with the kitchen knives and to finish him off. And so, she sends her 14 year old daughter upstairs, stabs the man to death in his home. She then has the children pick up the brains, and the blood, and the body, put it in this guy’s wheelbarrow, cart if off to a truck that she rented with his money, dumped his body in the truck, and took it and left it on the side of a road in Everett, exposed.

She then had the children pick up all of the blood and brains and clean the house, and then took them all out to dinner and bought them a nice family dinner, and then paid off the kids, as she had promised. She’d already spent thousands of his dollars by that point.

Where we find ourselves is a few weeks ago, it came up for trial. Barbara will possibly be the first woman executed in the history of this state. Her 14 year old daughter, Heather, it has been determined, will not be tried as a juvenile. She will be tried as an adult. She is looking at up to 20 years in adult penitentiary, prison, as a 14 year old girl. And her case will be coming up beginning in April, I believe it is. Around the middle of April.

The eleven year old boy has spent the last 100 days in custody of the state because he continually molests and rapes small children. And I’m not sure what happened to the seven year old. It is very, very, very sad, but the point I wanna stress is the propensity toward evil in the human heart, and the depths to which that evil can descend, and the influence of parents over their children. This 14 year old girl, by all accounts, is a very nice, sweet, loving, fairly bright, tender-hearted girl. She, in every way, behaves as a young girl. Even in her journal, her diary, she has an entry back to back. One is about her friends, and school, and what she had for lunch. And then, there’s another one talking about how excited she is to get the dirt bike ‘cause she’s gonna murder this guy.

And so, there is now an upswell of opinions as to what to do with this young girl, this 14 year old girl, Heather. She’s cute as a button and, apparently, very sweet. It tells you something about the influence of parents, even with seemingly normal children. Some are calling for a reeducation and a behavior modification for her, a traditional psychological opinion that what she needs is moral instruction. We need to make her more moral, okay? The other is believing that she was raised in – the other system of thought is believing that she was raised in poverty, and abuse, and neglect, and so she has a low self esteem. And so, there is another, you know, sort of cry in the community, saying, “No, we need to pour into this young girl and increase her self esteem. If she had good self esteem, she wouldn’t do things like this.” The others say, “No, if she had moral instruction, she wouldn’t do things like this.”

Both of them are very popular. If you go to a bookstore, two things you’ll see about parenting of children, is you won’t see parenting books on boys and girls. You’ll see things on children. We parent in an androgynous fashion in this culture, much to our demise. And the second thing you will find is that most of the instruction is either working toward elevating the self esteem of the child or addressing the issues of moral conduct and character to make them well behaved.

Biblically, the goal is completely antithetical to those. The goal is completely different in the Scriptures. In Proverbs, a book written to and for children, we see in Proverbs 4:23, to “Guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of your life.” I did a sermon on this months ago. You’re welcome to take it off the website, but the issue of the heart is this. It’s the essence and the sum total, and the center of a human being. And the Bible talks about not just increasing the pride or self esteem of a child, or of changing their moral behavior. That it must go much deeper than that, down to the root cause, which is the heart. Otherwise, we’re dealing with effects and not causes.

And so, the Bible says that we have to guard the heart. We have to address the heart. Jeremiah, we’re told the heart is deceitful and wicked. Jesus says, “That out of the heart come the actions of life and out of the heart comes the words of the mouth.” And so we can’t deal with morality or esteem, we have to deal with issues of heart that are far more pernicious, far more complicated, and far more difficult to assess than just morality or self esteem.

Here are some reasons, though, that the Bible gives why this is so hard. In Psalm 51:5, David says that he is “Wicked from his mother’s womb.” That “Because we are descendants of Adam”, Romans 5:12-21, “we all are born in sin.” We have a natural disposition in our mother’s womb toward rebellion. There is a seed of rebellion in each of us. And so, when we come out, we do not have a natural disposition toward love, and fear, and service of God. In fact, it is just the opposite. We are prone to idolatry, the most common of which is self idolatry. That we love ourselves and worship ourselves and we live according to our own values, and we become like God, determining good and evil, and deciding how we will govern our life.

What happens then – one of you guys did not leave your phone on did you?

(Laughter)

I’m really tempted to answer it.

(Laughter)

Response: Do it. Do it.

(Laughter)

Where’s it at? Okay.

(Laughter)

Where’s it at? I’m gonna get it.

(Laughter)

It’s in a bag somewhere. Okay. Better luck next time. (Growling).

(Laughter)

You know we live in a fallen world when that happens.

(Laughter)

The human heart, though, we’re told in Psalm 51:5 – see, I’m right back at it. Right back on. You’re not getting off the hook –

(Laughter)

− is that we’re born in sin and we have a predisposition toward rebellion. And so, a parent who’s just dealing with morality misses all of the causes of good conduct. They’re wanting the children to be moral, not to be redeemed. And unless there’s a new heart, there will not be a different course of action. In addition, in Romans 1, we’re told that the natural tendency of the unregenerate heart is to suppress the truth of God. So, a lot of parents think, “Well, if I read the Bible to my child, and throw them in Sunday School, and give them a youth pastor, then they’ll just be moral kids ‘cause they have all this good information.” Good information without a receptive heart is worthless. It just increases condemnation in this way. If I take water and throw it in a bucket that has leaks, I am gaining nothing. In the same way, I could take Scripture and throw it into an unredeemed heart of a rebellious child, and again nothing. It just – it does not stick. It pours out freely.

And so, the Bible talks about this issue, for the heart to be redeemed. Otherwise, “We suppress the truth of God and we exchange the truth of God”, Romans 1, “for a lie.” So, the truth comes in and we’ll contort that and trade that for a lie. And it tells us in Romans 1, “Because our deeds are wicked.” We wanna keep sinning. We have an appetite and a propensity from our heart. Our pallet is predisposed toward sin. Unless our palette is changed and our heart is changed, then we have no desire for the truth and we get it. And the truth seems peculiar and distasteful and righteousness, and holiness, and love of God seems foreign and odd, unless there’s a redeemed heart. And then, the redeemed heart welcomes the truth of God. It welcomes the Word of God. And it desires obedience and holiness. It’s a cause effect relationship.

And so, as a parent, you’re going to need, and we’re all going to need, as we deal with children – nieces, nephews, kids in Sunday school, friends, neighbors – to get down to the issues of the heart. I’ll give you a couple of examples. Yesterday, in the recent past, my son, Zack, he’s two and a half. He has found the candy drawer.

(Laughter)

Okay? He’s found the candy drawer. I’ll give you an example of what I’m talking about. What he does is he will wait ‘til none of us are looking. He is suppressing the truth and unrighteousness because his candy deeds are evil, according to Romans 1.

(Laughter)

He sneaks into the candy drawer when he anticipates that none are looking and then, he will fill his hands and his pockets with candy, and run for his life, okay?

(Laughter)

And he will seek to hide somewhere and then consume his candy. I can hear the wrappers flying in the other room.

(Laughter)

So, I walk into my office. I know how this works. I hear the drawer open. I hear the, you know, the Jolly Ranchers banging together. I hear the wrappers flying. And I hear him run down the hallway.

(Laughter)

And then, I walk in on him, and I catch him completely in the act. And he has blue candy all over his face. I look at him. I said, “Zack, have you been eating the candy?” “No, daddy.”

(Laughter)

I said, “Are you lying to me?” He raises his hands. “I promise I’m not lying.” What is all over his hands?

(Laughter)

Blue candy, okay? I said, “Zack, you are a liar and a thief.”

(Laughter)

“You have lied to your daddy and you have stolen. Those are two of the Ten Commandments.”

(Laughter)

“You stole first, and then you lied. You suppressed the truth in unrighteousness because your deeds are wicked.”

(Laughter)

I didn’t use exactly that language, but that was, essentially, my point.

(Laughter)

And I ask him, I said, “Zackie, are you allowed to steal?” “No, daddy, that’s one of the Ten.” “Are you allowed to lie?” “No, daddy, that’s one of the Ten Commandments.” I asked him, “Zack, why did you kype the candy? Why are you a candy kyper?”

(Laughter)

He says – what does he blame it on? The candy.

(Laughter)

The candy.

Response: (Inaudible comment).

He – yeah, absolutely. My son is a victim. He has been victimized –

(Laughter)

− by the candy.

(Laughter)

He says, “Daddy, the candy’s down in the drawer. It’s too easy to get to.”

(Laughter)

Now, it is the fault of myself and his mother, and it’s the fault of the candy. He is a victim. Does this smell like Genesis 3 to anyone?

(Laughter)

God, creates Adam and Eve, puts them in the garden, and he puts in the garden the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Where does he put it? The middle of the garden, okay? Doesn’t put it up on a shelf where the kids can’t get into it. He puts it in the middle of the garden so that they have to learn discipline and self control. He tells them not to eat of it. They eat of it. He shows up. Spanking time from God, the Father, and what does Adam say? Whose fault is it?

Response: Eve’s.

“It’s your fault, God”, he infers. “The woman you gave me” – my son’s doing the same thing. “I didn’t buy the candy.”

(Laughter)

“You put the woman here, God.” “Dad, you put the candy here.” “She gave it to me. I’m a victim.” You see, there is this predisposition in all of us to sin. To exchange the truth for a lie when we are caught. And the rebellious nature of our hearts exposes itself, and this is evidenced in children. You don’t need to teach a child to lie, or steal, or cheat. They will whack each other with firewood for no reason.

(Laughter)

And it’s an issue of the heart. So, I looked at my son and said, “Zack, why did you do that? Tell me the truth.” What’s the true answer according to the Scriptures? His heart. His heart is the true answer. See, if I’m a parent that is worried about self esteem, I will say, “Son, you must have taken the candy because you have a low self image, so what we need to do is we need to increase your pride. Then you won’t eat more candy.” What he will do, then, is he will eat candy. He will not change his candy eating habits. He will be an arrogant, rebellious son, which is worse than a rebellious son. If I work on his moral conduct, I will say, “Zackie, you need to be good and obedient.” And what I will do, then, is I will put the candy up on the shelf, thinking, “Oh, the environment has caused it.” Okay, there are environmental factors, but out of the psychology of a gentleman named B. F. Skinner, we have overly attributed behavior to cause and effect relationship, and we have overly attributed conduct to environmental conditioning.

In Genesis 1, and 2, and 3, is the problem the neighborhood that Adam and Eve were living in? Is the problem the friends that they had? Is the problem that they didn’t get sound theological information? They are perfect. They are in a perfect place. They are in a perfect relationship. They are connected to a perfect God and they do an imperfect thing. Environment alone does not account for human conduct. We like to attribute everything to environment and then claim ourselves, like Adam, to all be victims. That’s the big deal with this 14 year old girl. Is she a victim? Yes. Is she a criminal? Yes. She’s still a criminal. She still took a knife and ran it into a 69 year old man. That’s a crime. That’s a sin. It was her hand holding the knife. She cannot blame someone else. We live in a culture that loves that and we entice it in our own children.

And we entice it in very interesting ways. Children will be fighting over a toy. We come up and we ask what? “Who had it first?” Is that the issue? What’s the issue? The issue is the heart. Why are you both not sharing? The issue is always the heart and if you are not able to understand causes and not effects, you will continually, as a parent, address effects and not causes. My daughter did it last night. The heart. I tuck my daughter in. I pray with her. I sing with her. I read Scripture to her. We go through this whole routine. I tell her, “Okay, daddy has two rules. What are they? No getting out of bed. No yelling.” ‘Cause I told her no getting out of bed and then she’d lay in bed, when her brother’s asleep, “Daddy!” –

(Laughter)

− which, you know, wake up the whole neighborhood and ruin the whole point of going to bed. So, I had to make a second rule, no yelling. Okay, no getting up. No yelling. She gets up last night, walks into my room. I say, “Ashley, what are you doing, sweetheart? You’re supposed to be in bed.” She says, “My lips are chapped.”

(Laughter)

Okay? “My lips are chapped.” I said, “Well, daddy bought you, you know, a couple of kinds of lip gloss and Chapstick and you have it in your room. Can you put some on your lips?” “Yes.” “Okay, well go do that.”

(Laughter)

“Okay, daddy.” Boom, boom, boom, back she goes. About five minutes later, she comes back in my room. I said, “Ashley, what now?” She says – what was the latest one – oh, “I went to put the cap on the Chapstick, and I pinched my finger.”

(Laughter)

“And it really hurts.” I said, “Well, can daddy do anything about that?” “No.” “Okay, well, goodnight.”

(Laughter)

She comes in a few minutes later. “Ashley, look at me. Honey, I want the truth. Do you really have a problem or do you just want to watch ice skating on the Olympics?” She says –

(Laughter)

She does this. She doesn’t say a word. I said, “Honey, truthfully. I want your heart. Don’t lie to daddy.” It says in Proverbs, you know, “My son, give me your heart.” I’m asking for her heart. “Give me your heart. Heart motive.” I said, “Heart motive, what are you doing up?” She says, “I wanna cuddle with you and watch the Olympics.”

(Laughter)

Response: Ohhh.

See, you guys are gonna be terrible parents!

(Laughter)

You’re gonna be terrible parents!

(Laughter)

Don’t breed. Just don’t breed.

(Laughter)

You’re gonna ruin the whole world.

(Laughter)

See, your kids are gonna play you like an instrument.

(Laughter)

This – my daughter knows that if she sins, she gets disciplined. But, if she can find a sort of pouty, cute, creative excuse, then she’s trying to work – she’s suppressing the truth. See, my son, he suppresses the truth in hiddenness. My daughter suppresses the truth out in the open, but she does it very cutely.

(Laughter)

Now, some of you women have mastered this art, okay?

(Laughter)

You began young and then it’s gotten you into your current job and, potentially, your marriage. You have worked this tactic. You’re doing evil and you sort of have a pouty lower lip and batting eyebrows and you’re very cute about it. Okay, that is demonic. You cannot do that.

(Laughter)

That is evil, okay? So, I tell my daughter, I said, “Honey, here’s the truth. The truth is you’re sinning.” And I said, “If you would have come in and said, ‘Daddy, I want to watch the Olympics’, I may have let you watch the Olympics. But, you’re sinning to get your way and we can’t accept that. That’s unacceptable.” That’s a heart issue. Is the issue the Olympics? No. Is the issue if she wants to cuddle? No. The issue is always the heart. Always the heart. You gotta get down to the issues of the heart if you’re gonna parent kids.

How do you do that? You do that through the authority that God has given you as a parent. Ephesians 6. God has all authority. He’s delegated that to parents. It is the duty of the parents. Ephesians 6. “Children obey your parents in the Lord.” It is important. Parents’ authority is only in the Lord. If your parents just tell you what to do and boss you around, are mean, are rude, and violating Scripture, they’re not practicing their discipline in the Lord. Obey your parents. Now, obedience is not a word that we like to birth in this culture. We don’t like that word – obey. It just has negative connotations. But, it’s a good word Biblically. Jesus says, “If you love me, you’ll” what? Obey. Okay? Love should precede obedience. If a parent loves their children, the child should obey their parents. That’s the way God works with us. Children are to obey their parents. What this means is that they should do what the parents say, when the parents say it, without whining. And whining isn’t just for little kids, is it, college students?

(Laughter)

Some of you still whine. You whine incessantly. You should obey first time. We worked on this the other day with my kids because if you don’t tell children specifically, they will automatically categorize things in the future. The other night, I say, “Zack, Ashley, brush your teeth.” And then, I had to add, “right now.” Otherwise, they will apply that to April.

(Laughter)

They will say, “Yes, we will brush our teeth in April. Not now, we’re playing and eating candy. We’ll get to that later.” You need to be very specific with the instruction of the children and then you need to inform them of the consequences of disobedience. We’ll get into that with discipline next week. Okay? And this issue of obedience has to be immediate. It’s cute when you have one kid. When you have four or five and they each do whatever they want, whenever they want, it’s like herding cats. They just – it never comes together, okay?

(Laughter)

And so, this issue of immediacy is significant. Part of it is it can save a child from death. Certain things they do are dangerous. It builds in them self discipline. I dealt with this with my kids the other night. We laid in bed, and we’re reading the Bible, and I said, “It says in the Bible that you need to obey your mommy and daddy. That you do what they say, when they say.” I said, “I love you, but you kids are not obeying and we’re trying to get you in bed and we’re gonna have breakfast together before we get you in bed. You guys have gotta pick up the pace.” And Ashley looks at me, my daughter, she says, “Where does it say that in the Bible?”

(Laughter)

Okay, she’s four. Now, I could lie to her and she wouldn’t know the difference, but she’s got a good memory, so I’m afraid to do that.

(Laughter)

‘Cause she’ll get me later, so if you’re gonna have kids, you gotta know your Bible. I said, “It says it in Ephesians 6. It’s a letter that Paul wrote to a church and it was read to the mommies, and the daddies, and the children, and they were all supposed to understand how this works.” She says, “Show me.” I said, “Okay, Ephesians. It’s right here. It says right here.” She’s four, she says, “Is that really what it says?” ‘cause she can’t read yet. She has to take my word.

(Laughter)

I said, “Honey, I promise you. I know the Greek text. That’s exactly what it says.”

(Laughter)

“You need to obey your daddy.” She says, “Okay, if that’s what the Bible says, then, Zackie, that’s what we need to do.” Tells her two year old brother. Zackie’s like, “Yeah, we’re jacked. We have to do this.”

(Laughter)

But, it’s good because she’s recognizing, “Where does my parental authority come from?” It comes from the Scriptures and it comes from the Lord. I don’t have authority apart from the Lord and I don’t have authority apart from the Scriptures. And so, it is the parents’ duty, through Scripture, “Children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right.” This is right. “Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise that it may go well with you. You may enjoy long life on the earth.” Part of the reason is this. You’re building discipline and obedience in your children so that they live a long time. If your children’s natural disposition is toward hating truth, loving sin, rebelling against authority and disobeying, they will live a short life. Proverbs says to discipline your child while they are young, while there is still hope. There is a point where hope is gone and so is life. And folly leads to death, as wisdom leads to life. It’s the cause and effect relationship that God has sewn in the world.

And so, building discipline in the child when they are young will help them with discipline when they are old, and that will prolong their fruitfulness and their days. It’s the whole point of Genesis 1. “Be fruitful, multiply. Increase in number. Fill the earth. Subdue it.” The issue is fruitful children. To do that, they must learn to respect, and love, and honor God, and obey his commands so that they can live long and fruitfully on the earth. Here’s the key, though, for the dad. “Fathers, do not exasperate your children. Instead, bring them up in the training and the instruction of the Lord.” Dads need to be very careful with how they use their authority. Some fathers do not enforce their authority through the Scriptures and love. They do it through volume or terror or abuse. That they can anger and cause bitterness in their children. What we’re not talking about is child abuse. What we’re talking about is God given authority that is given with love, with the intention of correcting, not just punishing, children.

And this issue here of bringing up your children, instructing them, in the Greek text there, it’s this concept of what is called the paideia and there’s been a lot of good work done on this by a number of theologians, but in the Roman society, and in their understanding, the paideia was the shaping of the entire human being and the totality of their life. This is your ethics, and your literacy, and your spirituality, and your physical health, and your vocation, and your generational heritage. And all of the issues relating to life, that is the paideia. And what he’s talking about here is the duty of the parents, particularly the father to oversee the paideia of the child. That is an all encompassing, moral, spiritual, mental, physical development of the child. That is under the jurisdiction of the father. It is his responsibility. And a father may delegate some of that responsibility to a school, or a coach, or a teacher, or an instructor, but it’s still the responsibility of the father and that’s important to stress because in our society, 40 percent of children tonight will go to bed without a father. Their fathers don’t even believe they have any responsibility for feeding their children, let alone the paideia.

And among God’s people, it should be that way. And we should not view it at as the duty of other institutions to pick up the paideia. It is not the church’s job to teach your children about Jesus. It is not the school’s job to insure that they can read and write. It is not the state’s duty to make sure that there are free and reduced breakfast and lunches so that they eat. It is not the duty of the daycare to insure, or the nanny to insure that your children understand right and wrong and walk in wisdom and not folly. That is the duty of the mother and father. Those other things may be supplemental, but primary responsibility lies with the parents. And so, if you’re going to be a parent, you must begin by honoring the Lord, serving the Lord, knowing the Lord, knowing your Bible and being imitatable. Hebrews 13:7, “A leader is one who is worthy of imitation.” You need to live in such a way that you, like Paul, can say to your children, “Follow me as I follow Christ.” Do what we do. Ladies, be like your mom. Boys, be like your dad. And if you’re not in a position to do that, and you’re still single or you don’t have children, that is first priority for you because your issues are matters of your own what? Your heart. You have heart issues that you need to contend with.

And the Word of God is the place to deal with that. The church of God. The people of God. The Spirit of God. Or the resources that God uses to address the issues of our own heart. In addition to your heart, and your marriage, and your homebuilding, and the things we’ve been talking about, there will be an extended environment of shaping that will be around your child. Proverbs talks about the parents and the friends. The larger community. The other people that are involved in the child’s life. This is significant for you. How many of you, really, if you are single, are thinking through, “Where will we live when we have our children? What church will we go to? Who will we be in community with? What extended relationships do we want to have for our family?”

A lot of people take a job, move, have a hard time finding community to connect with, people who love and fear God, and when they have children, they end up moving, you know, back to a church that they were familiar with or something of that nature because it’s vital. Some of you should think about moving closer to your parents so that the grandparents and the aunts and uncles can be involved in the children’s life. Some of you should think about moving very, very far away from those people.

(Laughter)

Because those are shaping influences. Grace and I are blessed. My parents, happily married 30 some years. Her parents, happily married 30 some years. They both live in the area. They all love the Lord. All the aunts and uncles are here. The cousins will all be here. And the kids are treated phenomenally well by the grandparents and the aunts and the uncles. And they agree with us on the Biblical nature of discipline and the role of the parents. And so, they don’t undermine any of our values or instruction. They just enforce it. So, we can drop the kids off at grandma and grandpa’s and when we pick ‘em up, they’re the same kids. They have not been poisoned against the instruction of the Scriptures and their mom and dad. So, Friday night, we drop the kids off at grandma and grandpa’s house. They have a wonderful time and they’re loved, but they are also instructed and disciplined.

And for some of you, you need to get far away from your parents. You know, you don’t want your kids to be hanging out at grandma and grandpa’s where dad is – where grandpa’s drunk and beating up grandma. You just – you don’t’ want the kids there. It’d be better for you to have the church be first family and for your children to be in that shaping environment of good relationships in the church instead. One of the beautiful things about a church, when you become a family, is that there are like-minded people who reinforce your beliefs with your children, okay?

Where are you going to live? Who will be involved in your child’s life? And who will they be imitating?

The other thing, in addition to the shaping environment, the condition of the home, is also the Scriptures. There is some absolutely stupid thinking that creeps into Christian theology. How many of you heard of this concept of the age of accountability among children, right? Okay, there’s no verse in the Bible that says a lick about this. This is just something we pulled out. Not we – they wanted to pull this out. This age of accountability nonsense says that children, basically, do not have the ability to discern truth and error, to know the Scriptures, or to walk faithfully with God until they are at a certain mental capacity, as if rational cognitive ability was all that was participating in the worship of God. So, they will say, for example, until a child is 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, they can’t know God, they can’t understand theology. They can’t learn the Bible. So, what you should do is just try and love them and build their self esteem, and then, when they hit junior high, give ‘em some Scripture, which is a little late. Right? In the Bible, by age 13, technically, you could be married in the Old Testament.

That’s not a good time to pick up the Bible for the first time. It’s a little late. Instruction of Scripture for children must begin very early and it’s the Word of God that penetrates the issues of the child’s heart. It says that, “Scripture is living and active, sharper than a double edged sword, able to pierce down to the joints and the marrow.” It cuts through all the naivety, and the nonsense, and the folly of a child, and it gets down to the issues of their heart. And so, Scripture has to be part of the child’s life immediately. Immediately, and continuously. And here’s some things that the Scripture says about that. Deuteronomy 4:9 says, “Only be careful and watch yourselves closely so you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them.

As you experience life with God, you’re supposed to take all of that and instruct that to your children and also make sure that it is given to your grandchildren as well. It’s a parent’s duty. Deuteronomy 6 tells us how this is to happen. “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home. When you walk along the road. When you lie down. And when you get up.” And there’s a few inferences that are made here. One, that parents are with their children. Now, dad may need to go to work. At least mom is with the children. And what the parents are doing, then, they’re taking the teachable opportunities that come through the natural course of life. One of the things that frustrates me most about Christian discipleship is we have tended to extricate that from practical life. So, a discipleship is a class you go to for two hours rather than a series of relationships that, with God, flood the totality of your life.

Children are supposed to be taught in the course of daily events. Isn’t that how Jesus taught? He’s living with his men. They’re walking along. Something happens and he uses it as a teaching opportunity. “The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. The Kingdom of God is like a woman making bread. The Kingdom of God” – and he talks about sheep and goats, and sewing and reaping, and harvesting. And what is that? They’re walking through fields. They’re seeing animals. He’s teaching in the course of life. A good mother will know her Bible and will be looking for opportunities to do Bible College and seminary with her four year old, as they’re in the grocery store. And walking down the street. And playing at the park. And swimming in the pool. And driving in the car. And if a child is not being engaged by their parent in daily life, teachable moments are lost. And if mom or dad doesn’t know their Bible, then they don’t speak because they don’t know what to say.

I’ll give you guys another example. This last week, we were sitting at a light. I had my son, Zack, and my daughter, Ashley. And standing next to us was a guy peering in the window with one of those big well-worn signs that said, “Need beer money.” One of those guys who doesn’t wanna work, but he wants money for alcohol. And he’s looking in the window at my kids, giving me a sad look. And my daughter asks me, she says, “What is that guy doing?” Teachable moment, right? I say to her, “Honey, he has a sign that says he wants me to give him the money that I work hard for and get from the church, and he wants me to give it to him so he can go buy beer and get drunk.” Is that the truth? See, I’m not going to suppress the truth. I’m gonna tell her the truth. “He wants your money to drink. That’s what he wants. And he wants me to be the conduit by which this transaction is taken care of. And she says, “Why doesn’t he go get a job?”

(Laughter)

I said, “Honey, because he doesn’t wanna work. He just wants to be drunk all the time.” She says, “Well, if he wants to be drunk all the time, then he’s gonna be hungry and that’s just tough.”

(Laughter)

Yes. Yes, the Bible says, “If a man doesn’t work, he doesn’t” what? Eat. “Hunger”, Proverbs says, “drives the worker on.” Hungry people get motivated. You know what I’m saying?

(Laughter)

And so, I’m talking to my daughter about this and my son, Zack, is in the back seat and he starts asking me questions. One of them, I can’t remember which, says, they said, “Well, roll down the window and tell him to get a job.”

(Laughter)

Biblical, right? So then, my son asks me, he says, “Daddy, do you like to work?” I ___ ___, I said, “Zackie, God created me to work. I love to work. I like to make money and take care of my family. And, yes, it’s an honor. I’m glad to do that. I’m explaining work to my son. Then, I look at my daughter, I said, “Honey, someday a man’s gonna wanna marry you and he won’t like to work.” Okay, I know that ‘cause I know a lot of men and they’re all the same. They buy the lotto and hope for the providence of God. They don’t wanna go to work.

(Laughter)

I tell my daughter, I said, “What are you going to do if a man wants to marry you and he doesn’t wanna work? She says, “Well, then he won’t make money and he won’t be a good daddy, and he won’t feed his children so I won’t marry him.” “Yes, tuck that away. Remember that.”

(Laughter)

“You’re four. Stick that somewhere at the front of the pile of information that daddy is giving to you. Keep that. Keep that handy.” Teachable opportunities. Teachable moments. Things happen. And the whole world is preaching and children are learning and we need to be giving Scripture and wisdom at every juncture in an effort to bring wisdom into the folly that they are receiving. That’s what Deuteronomy says. As you’re walking. As you’re talking. As you’re lying down. As you’re getting up. As you’re living your life. Opportunities to instruct.

And I love how Paul says this to Timothy about what his grandma and his mama did. He says, “How from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures” – since when? Infancy. Since you were a little kid, you’ve been learning the Bible – “which are able to make you wise for salvation, through faith in Christ Jesus.” Go to Proverbs Chapter 1 too. This’ll be helpful. Proverbs 1:1-8 are sort of the prologue, the introduction to the Book of Proverbs, and it talks about how this relates back to children. We’ve been in Proverbs for some months now. We’ll go back to the introduction that we’ve looked at a few times. Proverbs 1:1, the Proverbs of Solomon, son of David, King of Israel. Here are the purposes of Proverbs in Scripture, in general, for attaining wisdom, right? We said that there’s a difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is knowing what is true. Wisdom is living it practically. Where James says, “Don’t merely listen to the Word and so deceive yourselves, do what it says.” Knowledge is great, but the purpose is practical living, and that’s wisdom. For attaining wisdom and discipline, okay? You can know the truth. You can know what to do, but unless you have the discipline to keep doing it, it will fail you. It is of no profit. “For understanding words of insight”, and that’s learning. “For acquiring a discipline and prudent life”, practical living, “doing”, very simple, “doing what is right, and just, and fair.”

In Proverbs, your theology is not only what you know. It is what you do. What you do is your theology. Your life is your doctrinal statement. For giving prudence to the simple, the good news is you don’t need to be a genius. You can be just a regular common person who loves the Lord and have wisdom, knowledge and discretion to the whom? Young. You can be little and have wisdom, knowledge, discipline, prudent life. If you’re little, you can have that, the Bible says. Okay? This issue of discretion. I wanna camp on this for a second. A lot of Christian parenting is working toward naivety and not innocence. Some of you are raised in homes where you parents tried to shelter and shield you and you grew up very naïve, or at least they thought you were naïve. Maybe you knew a lot more than they anticipated. The difference between naivety and innocence is this issue of discernment. Discretion. Distinguishing between wisdom and folly. Righteousness and sin. Light and darkness. A child needs to learn discretion and distinguishment. And it starts early. When a child is little.

I’ve got a six week old son. He doesn’t make many decisions. He doesn’t pick his friends. He doesn’t pick his church. He doesn’t pick, you know, which books are going to shape his thinking. He doesn’t select much of anything. We’ve got him, at this point, in large part, he’s under our control. He doesn’t get to pick his clothes. As he grows, he will get more and more freedom and he will begin making more and more decisions. That process is supposed to escalate. Wisdom goes in early. Instruction continues through life, and as he grows in wisdom and age, he should gain more freedom so that he’s at the place of becoming a peer and not a child to where we’re friends and he has wisdom and he’s an adult.

But, if you don’t train your children with wisdom and discernment, what you will do is you will always treat them like a six week old. Sheltering, controlling, making all their decisions. And then, when they get older, what happens? There are a couple of things that happen to a child that’s been reared in a very secluded, shelter, naïve environment. One, these kids become weird.

(Laughter)

Okay? Weird. Not weird, like holy, different, other. Just weird. They’re peculiar kids. These are kids that walk around speaking in King James English because that’s the only thing they’ve ever read. And it works great, you know, in the home schooling coop, but when they go to 7-11, they get beaten.

(Laughter)

Because they’re weird. All the other kids jump them and they wanna hear the children cry out, you know, “I beseech you.” They just wanna hear that.

(Laughter)

Other kids come out and they are so naïve that when they hit high school, college, sometimes junior high or younger, they’re so naïve that they get into trouble and they didn’t even see it coming. They’re too naïve to even discern. They don’t know what they’re doing, so they walk into it blindly. Other children rebel forthrightly. They just say, “I’ve never gotten to do anything. I’m going to rebel against authority. I want my freedom.” And rather than getting it incrementally, they take it all at once, but without discretion and discernment. They’re foolish and they’re gonna get in serious trouble or potentially die. You wanna build discretion in your child young. And what this means is you don’t shelter them from the realities of life.

Proverbs talks about, I think it’s Proverbs 29:21, that if you pamper a child from youth, a servant from youth, when they grow old, they’ll be disgraceful. If you pamper them. If you shelter them. If you baby them. If you avoid hardship, and truth, and harsh realities, your children will be very naïve and not innocent. Is it possible to know how the world is and still be innocent, not participating in it? Sure. That’s your goal. That’s your goal. And this’ll happen through the course of life to where you’re with your kids. It’s amazing to me. You guys watched a children’s movie recently? It is amazing to me. Who is usually the hero in the children’s movie?

Response: (Inaudible comment).

The child and the family pet.

(Laughter)

It’s a common theme. The adults, the parents are what. They’re absolute imbeciles. And if it wasn’t for the dog and the child, the whole world would come to an end and the parents didn’t even know it ‘cause they were clueless. So, thank God for the four year old and Airbud. Praise God.

(Laughter)

Start watching kids – it’s amazing the sermons they’re being preached. It’s just crazy. And the issue is, “Well, what do you do?” Do you say, “Well, the world is filled with folly"? We’re gonna not let our kids get that, so what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna unplug the computer. We’re gonna get rid of the TV. We’re not gonna watch anything. We’re not gonna leave the house. We’re not gonna look at billboards. We’re gonna get rid of the mailbox. Any external information, we’re gonna eliminate that.”?

(Laughter)

“Anybody comes over, we’re gonna shoot ‘em and bury ‘em in the yard.”

(Laughter)

“No external contact with my kids. We’re gonna protect them.” They’re not learning discretion. They’re not learning distinguishing. They’re not looking at wisdom and folly and having to discern between the two. You get it? You understand what I’m saying? So, you’ve gotta teach your kids in the course of life. Folly, wickedness, sin, rebellion, will come and you take those opportunities to instruct.

The other day, I’m watching Blues Clues with my kids, right?

(Laughter)

Wow. Steve is the most asexual, freaky guy I’ve ever seen in my life. If you’ve not seen Blues Clues, he’s this guy who wears a striped shirt and is like perpetually Prozac happy.

(Laughter)

He’s just over the top and he’s singing and dancing with the kids. There’s something seriously wrong with this guy. I’m fully convinced. And we’re watching Blues Clues. It seems innocent enough, and then right in the middle of Blues Clues, they take a break and they bring out the Native American shaman to explain dream catchers.

(Laughter)

I’m like, “What in the world does this have to do with anything?” We were learning how to count and go potty and now we’re learning about witchcraft. Like, this is a major inter – you know, we have a major intermission here in the middle of Blues Clues. My daughter looks at me and she says, “That was pretty cool, huh?” “No, that was evil. That was wicked. That’s Godless. That’s idolatry. Okay, we gotta talk now honey. Remember the Ten Commandments?” “Yeah.” “What’s the first one?” “You should love God and you shouldn’t have any other gods.” “Okay, good, let’s go with that. They don’t believe in one God, as we do. They believe that nature is God and they worship nature.” And we get into all these issues of Eastern thinking in regards to Native American shamanism, and all of these issues of creation. And she’s sitting there. She’s saying, “Well, why would they put that on a kid’s show?” I said, “Honey, the world is filled with things that aren’t true and you need to distinguish between them”, right?

In my study at my office, if any of you have been there, I have a doorstop. What is it?

Response: The Book of Mormon.

The Book of Mormon. It’s my doorstop in my study, in my home.

(Laughter)

My son picks it up recently. He’s looking through it and it has pictures of Jesus. He comes up and he says, “Daddy, don’t put the Bible on the ground.” I said, “Zackie, that’s not the Bible.” He says, “Well, they have Jesus.” I said, “There’s lots of books that have Jesus and they’re all liars.” “Really?” “Yeah, go put it back on the ground.” “Okay.”

(Laughter)

Discernment is very important. Just ‘cause there’s a picture of Jesus doesn’t mean it’s the Bible. Just because, you know, they sing and dance doesn’t mean that dream catchers are also true, just because counting is true. Discernment. Distinguishing. Learning. Discretion. And if you don’t do that, your kids’ll be either very naïve or just very peculiar, neither of which is very helpful for God’s purposes.

Proverbs 1 goes on. Verse 5, knowledge and discretion of the young. “Let the wise listen, add to their learning. Let the discerning get guidance.” This is ongoing. “For understanding Proverbs and parables, the sayings and riddles of the wise.” Where does all this come from? Prudent living, understanding, discipline, wisdom, knowledge, right conduct? It comes out of one place. I preached on this at the beginning of Proverbs. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and fools despise wisdom and discipline.” The fear of the Lord is what causes the heart to continually be softened toward the things of the Lord. Awe. Reverence. Respect. Revere. Love for God. That’s what cultivates a receptive heart so that wisdom can dwell in that heart and then begin to bear much fruit. Fruit that will last. But, it begins with a fear of the Lord. If your children don’t respect God, there is nothing that you can do besides addressing that issue of disrespect for God. That is first principle.

And then, it tells us where this fear of the Lord comes from. It says, “Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction. Do not forsake your mother’s teaching.” Fear of the Lord – wisdom, knowledge, discipline, prudent living comes where? The instruction of mom and dad. Comes from mom and dad. That assumes that mom and dad possess what?

Response: Knowledge of the Bible.

Fear of the Lord. Knowledge of the Bible. Wisdom. Prudence. Good living that comes out of not legalism and morality, but comes out of a love for God that transforms them. See, the Gospel is that God’s grace saves you from your sin. It also transforms you so you become a new creation in Christ and you live differently. Foolish people call that morality. Christians call that redemption. It’s out of God and his grace. It’s Christ in you to will and to do according to his good pleasure. If you love the Lord and you serve the Lord and you walk with the Lord, then you’ll have something to give to your children. Some of you need to start right now by fearing the Lord. You have your own heart issues.

Some of you are thinking, “Well, if I get married, that’ll fix me.” No, that’ll just plug your life into an amplifier and increase the volume. It does not change the tone. Some of you think, “Well, when I get kids, then I’ll clean up my mouth, and I’ll clean up my life, and I’ll clean up” – no you won’t. If you don’t fear the Lord, then doing it for your children is an idolatry. You do it for the Lord and then, if God gives you children, they are part of your household. They worship the Lord with you. But, it comes from mom and dad.

If you’re single, let me ask you this then. How important is it that mom and dad agree? How vital is that? Some of you grew up in homes where mom and dad just did not agree theologically on things, or they would deal differently. So, you would know, “Yeah, if I wanna do this sin, I go ask mom. If I wanna do this sin, I go ask dad, and I can play ‘em against each other and they’ll battle it out. And then, I’m off the hook. I get to do whatever I want because this is a lawless home.” It’s important that mom and dad agree. The assumption is if you go to mom or dad, you’re gonna get the same answer.

I did this to my children recently. My children walk in. “Daddy, can we” whatever. I said, “Did you talk to your mother?” “Yes.” “What did she say?” “No.” “What?” “You’re trying to get me to sin against your mother.” No, no, no. No, no, no.

(Laughter)

“Whoa, there’s a unified front here. Note to self.”

(Laughter)

You know?

Response: If mom says no, do not go to dad.

Yeah, “If mom says no, it’s no. And if you go to dad, it’s no.”

(Laughter)

Mom and Dad have to agree on these things. Theologically, you have to marry someone you agree with. I had this conversation with single guys. I always have the most interesting conversation with single guys.

(Laughter)

We’re out jet skiing at Lake Chelan last year. My kids and I go jet skiing together. We love it. It’s just, you know, creation bears glory to God and we’re out there ruining it on a jet ski.

(Laughter)

And we come in and my kids are playing and my wife’s sitting there, and we’re all visiting with some single guys and they ask me, they say – well, they ask my wife. They say, “What do you do?” She says, “I’m a wife and I’m a mother.” They say, “Really? Well, how many kids you gonna have?” We said, “I don’t know. We like kids. Whatever. You know, whatever God gives, we’ll love those kids. You know, whatever.” And they say, “Well, how did you get her to do that?” I said, “Do what?” They said, “Stay home and be a wife and a mother.” I said, “What do you mean, ‘get her’?” Like we arm wrestled and she lost.

(Laughter)

“Like, ‘get her’. I didn’t get her to do anything.” They said, “Well, how did you – no, you know, you’re making her stay home, right?” And I said, “I don’t make her do jack. I married a woman who agreed with me. It’s easier that way. It’s less painful.”

(Laughter)

I don’t wanna spend all my time fighting to determine what the Bible says with my wife. I wanna have convictions. I want my wife to say, “Hey, I share those convictions.” Great. Now, we can use our energy to build this life together in Christ, rather than arguing over whether or not it should look a particular way. If you’re single, you should be doing a lot of work on children, marriage, parenting, wife, so that you know what your convictions are, so that you marry someone who agrees with you. I tell my son that all the time. I say, “You have a wonderful mommy because I would not marry a woman who would not be wonderful mommy. And someday, when you go to get married, you look for a woman who loves children.” He’s two and a half. Right? But, if it sticks, praise be to God. I want him to see his mother in a certain light and I want him to look for a woman who is like her. If he does, he’ll be blessed as his dad is. It comes from mom and dad.

A couple of things, too, I’ll hit with ‘ya. In Proverbs, mom and dad then take this instruction and they’re talking practically. Here’s what I don’t understand. I don’t understand why so much of theology is highbrowed, disconnected, impractical, right? Theology that is good should be practical in nature. If your understanding of God does not come down and affect your life, then of what use is it to you? That’s the whole point of Proverbs. We could sit around all day and argue charismatic/non-charismatic, but most kids are struggling with practical issues.

Let me ask you this. In Proverbs, what are the practical things that mom and dad talk about with the kids?

Response: Including marriage.

Marriage. How to get married. How to save yourself for marriage. What else did they talk about?

Response: Money.

Money. They talk a lot about money in Proverbs. They talk about foolish people who blow their money. They talk about how to save your money. The father says to his son, “Give your first fruits to the Lord and then your vats and your barns will be overflowing. Tithe. Save. You see the ants son? He stores up. Make sure you have a pile somewhere where you’re saving.” They’re talking a lot about money. Practically, what does this mean? Should you go shopping and have your children with you? Yes. Should you let them win? No, you cannot let them win. Some parents won’t take their children to the store because the children have no concept of money and they’re just like, “Hey, that looks good.” Put that in the cart. Put that in the cart. Put that in the cart. You use it as a teachable opportunity. “Things costs money. This is a sale. This is the Safeway club card”, right?

(Laughter)

“This is the Book of Proverbs. Connect the dots. Do you see the dots? Connect ‘em, kids. Things cost money.” Otherwise, children think, “Things go in the cart, you know, this guy touches a piece of plastic and it’s like the magic bean, and then we get to take it all home.” They have no idea that things cost money. So, it’s teaching children practically about money. What that means is if a child gets money, what should you do? “Okay, that’s your first dollar. Ten cents goes to the Lord. If you wanna buy something, fine. You need to have a piggy bank and start saving.” A two year old begins with wisdom. It’s finances. What else is it? Friends. It says, “He who walks with a wise girl is wise, but he who is a companion of fools suffers harm. Disgrace is his dad.” Friends. How important is it that your children learn how to pick friends? How important would it have been if you would have known how to pick friends? Especially, ladies, boyfriends. Especially, gentlemen, girlfriends. If you don’t know how to pick friends, you get yourself in an enormous amount of trouble.

Sometimes, just – I’ll give you one. When I was a kid, I didn’t pick my friends very well with this one. I went into a new school. Here’s my story. I went into a new school, starting hanging out with these kids ‘cause they were all athletes and I was an athlete and we were playing ball together. The next thing I know, we’re driving in a car with his older sister and they all start smoking pot in the car. And I’m like, “What in the world? This is a problem.” If my dad – if I come home smelling like weed, I mean, my dad is – he will extend (slapping) the right hand of fellowship to his son.

(Laughter)

And I’m about 14 or 15, something like that. And the next thing I know, we’re driving by this guy’s house. I’m sitting next to the window. A guy pulls a gun out, pulls it right across my face and I’m like, “Note to self.”

(Laughter)

“Get some new friends.” Right? I mean, if you don’t pick your friends, you can find – children can find themselves, even unintentionally, in devastating circumstances. These kids together, as well, one of the guys, he had no dad. His mom worked a lot of hours and was sleeping with a married guy who lived next door. She was committing adultery. And so, she was never home. She would wait, and as soon as his wife left, she would go over and sleep with him. And so, this was their routine. And then, she would be gone on the weekends a lot. His wife would go out of town for work. As soon as the guy’s – neighbor’s wife went out of town, then the mom of my buddy would go sleep with him all weekend, and then she would just leave money in the house and tell him he could do whatever he wanted. And so, all the guys in the school would come over and get drunk, and watch porno, and eat Gino’s pizza rolls for the whole weekend at his house on his mom’s tab. And when we’d run out, we were 12, 13, 14, of Gino’s pizza rolls, we would then steal her car and go get some more. Okay?

I’m over there one time. Went once. The guys are like, “Hey, come stay the weekend at my house.” “Okay, cool.” I show up. Like, there’s bongs. There’s beer. There’s Gino’s pizza rolls. There’s the keys to the car and a bunch of pornos. It’s like an 11 year old frat party.

(Laughter)

And I called my mom and I said, “Mom, I’m coming home now.” I said, “This is crazy here.” And I knew that this just – God, through my parents, instilled in me this value for wise friends. Proverbs talks a lot about how you should pick your friends and how the kids should pick their friends. What else does Proverbs talk about practically, mom and dad with the kids? Does it talk about beer? It talks about alcohol, doesn’t it? Proverbs, I think it’s 30, King Lemuel, mama says, “It’s not good for boys to run around drinking beer, chasing girls, blowing money on loose women.” You say, “Well, I thought that was the point of high school.” No.

(Laughter)

No. Sex? Does it talk about sex? It talks about sex a lot, Proverbs 5, Proverbs 7. “Son, don’t go around having strange women”, Proverbs 5. “You’re gonna get a venereal disease and die.” Really. Really. Because, see, is sin attractive up close? It’s not. Is sin attractive from a distance? It is. From a distance, sin looks amazing. You get close and it gets uglier. That’s why guys who are 21, 22 and they think, “Oh, strip clubs are wonderful, beautiful, exotic, glorious places”, they get there and they realize that it’s filled with young girls who were molested by their father and then the guys that are sitting there are old enough to be their father, and they’re perverted old men still hitting on their daughter, essentially. And they get sick. They realize there’s nothing beautiful about this. This is sick. This is sad. Sin is only beautiful from a distance.

And so, the mother and father start teaching vicariously. See, one of the stupid things that we do is we tell children that they need to go experience something in order to learn it. Is that true? Does my son need to go get a venereal disease to experience it? Can he not learn it vicariously through someone else? That’s what Proverbs does, right? “Son, look at that guys field. The weeds are grown up. The cows are dead. The kids are skinny. The wife is bitter. Do you see that?” “Yeah.” “Cause and effect. You reap what you sew. Don’t be like that guy. Have a good work ethic. Fear the Lord.” “See that guy? He’s a glutton. He just sits there and eats all day and he’s dying from ill health. You see that guy, son? He’s lazy. He’s so lazy that’ll he’ll have food on his table and he’s too lazy to pick it up and eat it. He’s so lazy that he’ll go hunting and kill something and then, he won’t even cook it ‘cause he’s too lazy to cook his own food.” Right, gentlemen? Any single men? Yeah. Vicarious learning experiences. Okay, I do this with my kids and I encourage ‘ya, when you get kids, do it with your kids. Vicarious learning.

You see, some of you had friends or parents who, they would say, “Oh, well, you know, unless the kids drink, or have sex, or smoke weed, they’ll not – you know, they need to learn it for themselves. They need to figure it out.” No, not according to Proverbs. We had this conversation recently with my daughter. I’m flipping through the television, looking for sports or something, and boom, one of the commercials is on. There’s a man and a woman in bed. My daughter looks at me and she says, “Are they married?” I was like, “Mmmm, no they’re not married, sweetheart. I don’t think they’re married.” She says, “Is it okay if married people and not married people, if they’re not married, is it okay if they’re in bed together?” And I said, “Huh-uh.” She says, “You and mommy are in bed together all the time.” I said, “Yeah, it’s Biblical. We’re married. We’re married.” I said, “If you’re married, you can go to bed together, but you shouldn’t go to bed together unless you’re married.” She asked this question. “Why?” Okay? Now, that’s a long answer, isn’t it? “The Lord says it’s a sin and, practically, cause and effect, here’s what happens.” That’s Proverbs. “Practically, here’s what happens. So, my wife and I are sitting there talking to my daughter about sex and going to bed with people you’re not married with. She’s four. Vicarious. Vicarious. We want our children to learn from the experiences of others. That’s the point of Proverbs.

And Proverbs talks about these practical things. Most of you are messing up your life because of sex, food, drink, money, work ethic, friends. Most of our life is shipwrecked on very practical things. And Proverbs says that it’s the duty of mom and dad through the course of life to build wisdom on practical thing into the kids vicariously through the experiences of others. And this means, as well, for the parents, an honesty with their children.

My daughter asked me recently, she says, “How come some people don’t love God?” I said, “Like whom?” She named somebody. She says, “Well, we know so and so and he doesn’t love God. Why doesn’t he love God?” I said, “Honey, not all people love God.” She says, “Well, then they’re bad people, right?” I said, “Honey, we’re all bad people.” I said, “Did you know that there was a day when your daddy wasn’t a Christian?” Her eyes get real big. “Daddy, you were not a Christian?” “No, until I was 19 years of age, sweetheart, I was not a Christian. I didn’t love the Lord.” She says, “Well, you love the Lord now.” I said, “I do love the Lord.” She says, “What happened?” I said, “Well, I didn’t read my Bible. I didn’t pray to the Lord. I didn’t love the Lord.” And I said, “Honey, that was wrong.” She says, “Oh.” See, I want the children to even learn from my experience so they don’t repeat my folly. Vicarious learning. That’s one of the themes of Proverbs. It’s one of the ways that mom and dads teach. Practical, practical issues. In addition, language, respecting of elders, all of these things.

A couple of last things. Children learn through repetition, right? Do you guys really think that Proverbs needs to be as long as it is? Do you think we could condense it? Could we take out the parts that are repeated multiple times? We can’t, can we? Why? They’re necessary. We teach through repetition. There are certain things in Proverbs that are said eight, ten, twelve times. You’re like, “Why does it keep saying the same thing?” Because we keep forgetting.

Response: You don’t teach your kids things just once.

Can you teach a child something once and expect it to stick?

Response: Hmmm Mmmm.

No.

(Laughter)

No. I do this at least once a week with my kids. I look at ‘em. “How many Gods are there?”

(Laughter)

“One God.” “Yayyy, good. Good. Good. Good.”

(Laughter)

I mean, I don’t wanna miss the big E on the eye chart. I wanna get first things first. “One God.” “Okay, yeah. Where does God speak to us?” “In the Bible.” “Yayyy.” First things first. Just grill ‘em on the basics, okay? “What are we?” “Sinful.” “Who saves us?” “Jesus.” “Yes, good.” First things first. “Let’s – before we get into vicarious substitutionary atonement, one God. Let’s start there. One God.”

(Laughter)

Okay? And first things, repetition. Repetition. How many of you babysitting or working with kids have realized they can read the same story 50 bajillion times?

(Laughter)

They don’t get tired of it. I have played David and Goliath a thousand times. I have been slayed more times than Jason in the Friday the 13th series.

(Laughter)

I have – my son just always wants to do David and Goliath, right? But, repetition. Repetition. Repetition. Repetition. It’s one of the ways we learn, especially children.

Okay, here’s the last thing I’ll say. I wanna give you an illustration. If you raise your children to be naïve and soft, you don’t let them endure hardship, difficulty or trial, they will not develop perseverance, character or hope, according to Romans. One of the most important things is that a child can endure hardship. It doesn’t mean you make their life hard, but hardship comes. Their friends aren’t nice to them. They start flunking a class. They can’t hit a curve ball. You know, whatever. They have a cowlick in their hair and it looks like they’ve been electrocuted. Something traumatic happens, okay?

(Laughter)

And through that hardship, it builds perseverance, character, and hope. Your goal is to see them through that with wisdom so that they can be good missionaries. The point of all parenting is mission work. Glorify God practically in this world so that others will see that the Lord is good. That’s the goal. I’ll give you an example. A guy named Daniel in the Old Testament. Love the story of Daniel. Where does Daniel grow up? What city?

Response: Jerusalem.

Jerusalem. Okay, now in Jerusalem, if you walk outside and say, “I love the Lord”, does everyone know who you’re talking about?

Response: Mmmm Hmmm.

They agree on who God is. If Daniel walks to his neighbor’s house, do they have a knowledge of Scripture? Yeah, probably. Do most of the people there involve themselves in religious observances, go to meetings, pray? Sure. What happens to Daniel when he is a teenager, maybe a junior high kid? Babylon comes in, steals him, takes him into exile back to Babylon. He’s just been completely ripped from his life. He’s away from his mom, and his dad, and his school, and his church. He’s away from his friends. He’s away from everything. His whole life is gutted. And he ends up in Babylon. Is Babylon like Jerusalem? In no way. If you walk outside in Babylon and say, “Who’s God?”, how many answers are you likely to receive? An infinite number of answers. It is just like Seattle. Wicked. Pagan. Spiritual. Doesn’t know the one true God. Very confused. He’s then hired to work for whom? A couple of kings. Darius, Nebuchadnezzar. How are these guys? Do these guys love the Lord? They think they are God. I mean, you have a seriously difficult employer when he thinks he’s God.

(Laughter)

And Daniel is told, “You’re going to serve me and you’re going – you’re gonna serve me, the man who thinks he’s God, and you’re gonna serve Babylon. You’re gonna live in Babylon.” Junior high kid. How does Daniel do? He does amazingly well, doesn’t he? He had discernment, wisdom, knowledge, fear of God. Is he able to walk through all the really complicated ethical issues in Babylon? “Should I pray to that God, should I not pray to my God? Should I eat the food, not the food? Should I bow down to the king, not bow down to the king? Should I work for Babylon? If I do, how far can I go serving the king and the kingdom where it becomes a sin?” These are enormous issues for a junior high kid. How does Daniel do? Amazingly well, doesn’t he? Does he sin against the Lord? Doesn’t seem to. Seems to do very well. Seems to do very well and you ask yourself, “How did Daniel get to the place where as a junior high kid, he could make these sort of decisions apart from his parents?” What does he have for resources? He has a knowledge of Scripture and a few friends who love the Lord. That’s what he’s got. Daniel knows the Bible and how to pick friends to seek for counsel and wisdom.

They send Daniel to school. What does he learn in school? Witchcraft. Sorcery. Divination. Consulting with dead spirits. Being a medium. What the Old Testament calls necromancy. Does any of that – how does Daniel do in school? A student. Top of his class in witchcraft, divination and sorcery. But, does Daniel take any of that and synchronize it with his belief in the one true God or the Scriptures, and get confused in the truth? He doesn’t, does he? Why? Because Daniel has this proverbial ability to discern, to distinguish. He can say, “Okay, no, there’s truth and error, wisdom and folly, light and darkness. This goes in this pile. This goes in this pile. And he’s able to wade through this as a junior high kid. Your kids are – they’re gonna be continually instructed. You can’t avoid information coming to them because where do we live? Do we live in Jerusalem or Babylon?

Response: In Babylon.

We live in Babylon, guys. This is Babylon. Don’t fool yourselves. This is not Jerusalem. Some of the reasons that you may be struggling as an adult is because you are not parented to live in Babylon and now you wake up in exile. So, you do one of two things. You disengage from the world. You don’t do evangelism. You don’t love lost people. You don’t involve yourself in the wider culture because you’re scared of it because you lack discernment. You’re naïve. Some of you lack discernment and you wanna be involved in Babylon and you’re way too deep into it. You not only understand the things of Babylon. You’re doing them. You’re starting to smell and look like a Babylonian rather than a Christian. And God must give you, through his Scriptures, wisdom.

It says that, “In Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” It says the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of wisdom.” You’re gonna need God for wisdom. And Scripture for wisdom. And friends for wisdom. And you wanna walk with wisdom in Babylon and have your children in Babylon, but you want your kids, and you want yourself to come out looking like Daniel. Read Daniel. And look at what this young man – you think about the average junior high kid. The issue is how does Daniel get to that place? It starts with a fear of the Lord. A redeemed heart. A knowledge of Scripture. Practical wisdom. The ability to discern. The ability to select good friends and to walk with wisdom. That’s what you want for you kids. That’s what I want for my kids. Out of this church, I would submit to you that it is possible before you and I die, how many children do you think could be born in this church? Do you think possibly thousands? I would say at least. At least thousands of children. If we’re gonna have 40 or 50 this year, how many of you are single and haven’t even gotten married yet. Raise your hand. When you guys join us –

(Laughter)

− we’re gonna have thousands of children. Thousands of children. And you think about it. Thousands of children like Daniel in Seattle. Do you see the possibility? Thousands of naïve, rebellious children with morality and unredeemed hearts in Babylon. Frightening. It begins with you loving and fearing the Lord, and having wisdom that then you can disseminate to your kids. And if you’re single, you start with your own heart. And if you never get married or be a parent, you still are to treat children a certain way and be involved in their life as part of that shaping community. We all have an obligation. Some things to think about.

At this point, we always respond. Okay, I’ll tell you how we do this. We respond with an offering. If you’re not a Christian or you’re a first time visitor, don’t give. For the rest, the giving information is on the back. It’s part of your act of worship. It’s on your notes. We respond with communion, which is remembering that we have sinned and we are separated from God, and that God has come to us as Jesus Christ. He has died for our sins and risen from death and our sins were placed on him. He was punished in our place. This is the key to everything. The fear of the Lord, the redeemed heart. It’s all about Jesus. That Jesus pays the penalty for our sins. He forgives us of our sins. He frees us from the penalties of sin and death, and then he transforms us by his grace so that we are new creations. New people. New lives. New vision. New hope. New future. It’s practical. And I encourage you to take communion if you’re a Christian when you’re ready. And you may have some sin to confess. And this morning, I’ve got a dear brother Greg here with me. And so, Greg, if you’d come and serve communion with me as well.

Father God, thank you for a chance to get together and study the Scriptures. Thank you, Lord God, for an opportunity to talk about this issue of future generations and raising children who would love you, and serve you like Daniel in Babylon. God, we know that we are continually instructing by our lives, and by our actions, and by our words, and our deeds, and our misdeeds. God, I pray for the potentially thousands of children that’ll come out of this church in the future. That they, Lord God, would love you and serve you. That their parents and the rest of us in the shaping community would do diligence to address matters of the heart, not just morality and esteem, but redemption and grace.

Lord God, we love you and we thank you. We pray for much wisdom and we pray for hearts that are consecrated to you and a loving fear of you in our own hearts, that we would begin there. For those whom are single, Lord God, I pray that they would come to deep convictions on these things and that they would marry people who agree with them, and that their homes would be filled with sweetness and unity, rather than division and destruction. We love you. We thank you in Christ’s name. Amen.