God's Pattern for Children, Part 1

Teach your children to obey. As you raise your children and you're consistently doing that, there will be times when they fight against it more aggressively than other times. It's not going to be 10 years of battle. It'll be 10 years of teaching with here and there a few weeks of real warfare. They must be taught to obey. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Outsourcing, it's a common practice in today's business world, but it can show up in your home as well. For example, thousands of American parents, instead of hiring a local tutor to help their kids with their schoolwork, outsource the job to companies outside the U.S. that boast high-caliber, more affordable instructors.

The tutoring is done over the internet. But while long-distance education may help your child grow academically, you can't afford to outsource your child's spiritual training. God intends for that to happen in the home. Here today, John MacArthur looks at biblical and quite practical ways Christian parents can teach godliness to their kids.

He's continuing his series, The Fulfilled Family. And now here's John with a look at God's pattern for children. It's not an easy world for children by any means. The home is not an easy place. The society is not an easy place. A letter from a teenager came to U.S. News and World Report.

Here's the letter. This is what this young teenager wrote. The economy is shot. The family unit is in trouble.

Respect for authority is a joke. For the right price, you can buy yourself a senator or a judge, or he is out buying himself a 16-year-old to use for a couple of hours. Money is worthless, and you're worthless without it. Stop worrying about why your son needs a drink before he can face his morning classes or why your daughter went out and got pregnant. Just help them cope with the reality of life. Before throwing us into categories, just remember that we have to run this joint in 30 years when you die off or retire or starve on your social security.

I leave it up to you. Either give us a little help in understanding or put the world out of its misery and send up the missiles and hope mother nature has better luck with the next thing that crawls up out of the slime. How sad that somebody's little baby came to that so soon. But it does reflect something of the fear and something of the distrust and something of the chaos and confusion and disorientation and lostness of a generation of children and young people. An old Chinese proverb says, one generation plants the trees and another gets the shade. We in this generation are still living in a little bit of shade.

Our grandparents and perhaps even our parents, if we're old enough, planted some trees in the past, and we are still enjoying some of the shade. But this generation is not planting any trees for the next, and they're going to find themselves in a blistering world with nowhere to hide. The young person who wrote that letter feels no shade, no place of comfort, no place to hide, no place of security, just a fearsome reality both in the present and in the future. Our society realizes where it's going to some degree, realizes the chaos of its children.

Certainly the children realize it. They realize that there has to be some provision for hope and security, but at the same time they vociferously reject the Bible. They don't want, as we've been noting, its moral impingement on their lifestyle.

They're not willing to submit themselves to the standards that it establishes for their own behavior, and so they throw out the only hope for the children. Scripture is very clear, by the way, on what the Bible has to say, revealing the will of God with regard to the family. And just reminding you, way back in the Pentateuch, for example, in Deuteronomy chapter 6 and verses 6 and 7, we read, And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart, and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children.

Our part is very simple. Teach the Word of God to your children. Teach them the Scripture. That's our part, Deuteronomy 6, 6, and 7.

God's part is given a little earlier in Deuteronomy 5, 29. Oh, that there were such a heart in them that they would hear Me and keep all My commandments always, that it might be well for them and their children forever. I can't give them that kind of heart. You can't give them that kind of heart, but God can, and God longs to do that. God has to give them a heart for His commandments, a heart for His Word. God has to call them to Himself, and we must teach them. That teaching of God's Word is part of the process by which they are called to God, and once called, that teaching becomes the pattern in which they live. God is calling then for families to teach His Word, to present His Word to their children. Parents are really forced to do that.

That is the only alternative if they desire to raise their children to love the Lord and to know the blessing that comes to those who obey. That's the crux of the issue facing the family. There's really no hope for the family politically. Politics cannot bring back righteousness in the home. That is a spiritual issue. It can't be done through politics.

It can't be done through education. Educators are working very, very hard to try to achieve that apart from the spiritual dynamic of a transforming revolution in the heart wrought by the Spirit of God through faith in Christ. They are endeavoring to educate children somehow back to some level of morality, the standard for which they can't agree on.

So you have those who are aggressively politically attempting to do that, some doing it educationally and neither succeeding. Now our text in Ephesians 5 and 6 sums up what Scripture says about God's plan for the family, God's plan for the fulfilled family. We have already studied what God designed for the wife who is called to humbly subject herself in love to her own husband and make him and her children and her home the center and really circumference of her life.

We have also studied the divine pattern for the husband who is called to loving headship in which he cares for, provides for, sacrifices for, protects, purifies, and loses himself in giving everything for his wife. And now we come to the children's responsibility and what must be inculcated in them. And it says that they are to obey their parents, verse 1. Verse 2, they are to honor their parents.

Obedience and honor, obedience and respect is their responsibility. May I begin by affirming the fact that children are a welcome addition to the family. I need to say that in this day and age. They are a welcome addition to the family in a time when some people are saying they prefer not to have children as if somehow that was a negative in their lives. Psalm 127 and 128 says children are a blessing from the Lord.

The Holy Spirit said in 1 Timothy 5, 14, I will that younger women marry, bear children, and care for the home. Again, children are a blessing, a heritage from the Lord. Now in bringing God's special gifts to maturity and to godliness and to virtue and usefulness and effectiveness for the kingdom of Christ, there are two things that we must teach them. We must teach them to obey their parents, and we must teach them to honor their parents.

That is simple but very comprehensive. And largely, I think, whether they do that effectively depends on us and our commitment to the Word of God and to what it affirms. Proverbs 22, 6 sort of sums it up in very familiar words. Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is mature, he will not depart from it. That is a simple general statement that the way you train a child will show up in his adulthood. That's all it's saying. It's not a promise.

It's not a gilded edge guaranteed pledge. It is simply axiomatic, self-evident that the way you train a child is going to affect what they become. And that is the general truth of that Scripture. And when you train them in the things of God, that will have an impact on what they become.

If we follow God's plan, we will see that plan bearing fruit. That just makes common sense. Now admittedly, teaching children to obey and honor their parents is not easy, and it's not simple. At least it didn't prove to be so with my children, and it's not proving to be so with my grandchildren. Let me tell you why it's difficult. For the very same reasons that it's difficult for a wife to submit and it's difficult for a husband to express loving leadership. The very same reasons apply to the difficulty of children obeying and honoring their parents.

The same basic reasons. Number one, the curse inside them. They are cursed when they arrive. They are little, selfish, self-centered, rebellious reprobates.

Cute, cuddly, but reprobate. That is apparent when they arrive. They scream and they don't share anybody else's pain. They scream only for their own. They have no sympathy. They share no interest in anything going on in the family. They are not at all attentive to the conversation. They make no effort to assist in anything. They just are preoccupied with themselves. They think that no one exists but them. They're great when they get a little beyond that very infant stage. They're great at disobedience.

It is built-in stuff. You don't spend the early childhood saying to them, yes. Why, yes.

Well, yes, yes, yes. You continually say to them, no, no, no, no. Because all the bent is toward what is counterproductive and disobedient. They're good at disobedience. You don't have to teach them how to disobey. Nobody ever had to teach a child how to disobey. Nobody ever had a child that they went to at some point and said, now, I just want to show you what disobedience is so you'll know it when somebody else does it. It kind of works like this and you do a little role-playing.

No, you don't have to do that. They have to be taught to obey. They have disobedience down very well. They are utterly selfish, utterly self-consumed. They want their will whenever they want it. They don't want to wait for anything. They're utterly impatient.

They have no regard for anything that you're concerned about. The whole world revolves around them and that is an initial expression of their depravity, which can be simply defined as being self-consumed. So they have to be taught to obey through very painful lessons and they rebel against that to varying degrees, don't they? Some children have to have a myriad of spankings and disciplining while others seem to have a requirement for less.

They come with a little bit different personality package, but the training is nonetheless the same. And I suppose David summed it up from the very outset when in Psalm 51, 5, David said, thinking of the time that he was in the womb, I was shaped in iniquity and sinned and my mother conceived me. It doesn't mean that he was an illegitimate child. He simply means that from the very time of my conception, I was sinful.

And there's no training that occurs in the womb. So when the little life bursts out, it is ready to express its sin. So you have that inside curse and that inside curse is apparent as children manifest their early behavior. And you know what terrible depravity manifests itself in an undisciplined child, don't you?

Secondly, you not only have the curse in them, you have the system outside of them. The world continually keeps the pressure on. That's why Romans 12, 2 says don't be conformed to this world. Don't let your children be conformed to the world. Consumptive materialism teaches them self indulgence.

That's a terrible thing to learn. In America alone, we spend more money on toys than the gross national product of 60 plus nations indulging our children. Children are sold a steady diet of self-centeredness. Two hundred hours of ads per year they see on television, 22,000 commercials, endeavoring to make them discontent or to learn the general discontent of not liking what you have and having the desire for something that you see on television. Society teaches them rebellion against authority.

It teaches them that the most important thing in their life is self-esteem and self-fulfillment and getting their own will in their own way when they want it and how they want it. They watch an average of 30 hours of television per week while they're growing up until graduation from high school. They have seen 20,000 hours of the tube more than any other activity except sleeping. They're overexposed to everything on television. Children see more sin in a month than their grandparents or their great-grandparents probably saw in their entire lifetime. And all of that media is pumping out an anti-God lifestyle. Is it any wonder that 10 million children have V.D., 5,000 more contracted every day? Is it any surprise that one in five uses drugs twice a week, that over a million engage in prostitution before they reach the age of 16? And between 7 and 14 million children are alcoholics. Millions need help in psychiatric clinics, somewhere around 2 million according to the Children's Bureau of the Health, Education and Welfare Group.

Nearly 2 million of them receive help annually from public agencies because of what is classified as psychological or psychiatric problems and so it goes. The curse inside, the corruption outside. The third area of debilitating destruction aimed at children is that not only which comes from within them and from around them, but what comes upon them, what comes upon them. Turn to 2 Timothy 3. In 2 Timothy chapter 3, we go back to this, we commented on it earlier, we read about the difficulty of the last days.

2 Timothy 3, 1, the last days difficult times will come. And coming upon the children in our generation is all of the last days uniqueness in terms of corruption when men are lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful arrogant revilers, disobedient to parents. One of the characteristics of the last days is a defiance toward parents. And society tolerates it, society teaches them to rebel against authority. It teaches them that.

It wants to pass out condoms and require that no parent have the right to know that so that they cannot push off on that child their own religious convictions. Rebellious, undisciplined, selfish, sexually stimulated, angry, bitter, frustrated, destructive children are the products of a society that is disobedient to its parents and that is without natural affection...without natural affection. They don't have the normal love of family.

Verse 3, the first word, unloving, astorgoi, without natural family love. We have obviously an abused and an unloved generation of children. Children are seen by many as a burden so that one-third of all childbearing age couples are permanently sterilized. Fathers have forsaken their love for children. Six million children in our country, more than that now, I think the figure is quite more than that, many millions we should say have no father in the home at all. Mothers have gone also in self-indulgent abandonment and the pursuit of their career or whatever it is they want and there are millions of lonesome latch key children who sit behind their locked doors with the shades pulled, overexposed to television. Three-quarter million and upwards live in foster homes, residential facilities, institutions, mental hospitals, mental...mental hospitals and are otherwise incarcerated in juvenile facilities for criminal behavior or even in prisons. It is even possible now since 1979 to divorce your parents, a precedent set by a Milwaukee court.

This is the chaos in the lives of children. The philosophy of the last days is anti-family. We all know that.

We've talked about that. The feminist agenda is anti-family. The homosexual lobby is anti-family. The abortion thrust is anti-family.

One of the authors and lecturers, F.M. Standieri on humanist philosophy said, to free the child we must do away with parenthood. We must settle for nothing less than the total elimination of the family.

One of our U.S. Senators wrote me a letter to say that the anti-family forces are bent on fulfilling the following goals. These are the goals he listed. Abortion for the happiness of the mother and father if there is one in the home. They want to fulfill these goals. Abortion, government controlled family planning, legalization of homosexual marriage, equal rights for children, government training for children and minimum wage for children for housework. Can this really happen?

Can it really happen? We face a serious situation. Dr. Michael Novak wrote in Harper's Magazine, I quote, clearly the family is the critical center of social force. It is the seedbed of economic skills and attitudes toward work. It is a stronger agency of educational success than the school and a stronger teacher of the religious imagination than the church. Political and social planning in a wise social order begins with the axiom, what strengthens the family strengthens society. Even when poverty and disorientation strike, as over the generations they often do, it is family strength that most defends individuals against alienation, lassitude, or despair. The world around the family is fundamentally unjust.

The state and its agents and the economic system and its agencies are never fully to be trusted. One unforgettable law has been learned through all the disasters and injustices of the last thousand years. If things go well with the family, life is worth living when the family falters, life falls apart. And Michael Novak is exactly right. From the standpoint of just somebody observing the family, from the human wisdom viewpoint, it's obvious that all is well when the family is healthy and when it's not, there's no hope for a society.

The only hope then to shade the generation to come is to submit ourselves to what the Word of God teaches about the family and about raising children. And frankly, folks, it's not that difficult to figure it out. It doesn't take years and years and years.

It doesn't take a whole lot of techniques to figure it out. It always amazes me the amazing economy of words with which the Lord says everything. And what He says is this, teach your children to obey you and to respect you.

That's the sum of it all. Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment, with promise that it may be well with you and that you may live long on the earth. By the way, these are the only verses in the Bible that command children. Children should be taught these. They should specifically be taught these things.

They should be taught to obey. Children, by the way, the word children is tatechna. It's the general word for offspring. It doesn't necessarily identify an infant. There's another word for an infant. It's just talking about children in general.

No age is in view from the birth all the way to being young people. As long as they are under parental control and parental care, as soon as they are old enough to know what is right, they are to be taught to obey their parents. That strong self-centered depravity has to be harnessed and obedience is the key to that. They must be taught to obey. The word obey is hupa kuo.

A kuo has to do with hearing, hupa under, to get under and listen. Obedience is the issue. Teach your children to obey. And really, that's the issue.

And I'll tell you something. As you raise your children and you're consistently doing that, there will be times when they fight against it more aggressively than other times. And those are the battle times when you have to consistently force the issue of their obedience and make the consequence severe enough so that they get the message. It's not going to be ten years of battle.

It'll be ten years of teaching with here and there a few weeks of real warfare as they endeavor to fight to maintain the freedoms of their own evil nature. That's John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, with a look at God's pattern for children. It's part of his current series on Grace to You, titled The Fulfilled Family. Well, the Bible certainly does get practical when it comes to raising children, but John, would you say the steps you're outlining are fail-proof? In other words, if parents follow these biblical principles to a T, are they guaranteed to bring up a child who fears God and follows Him? Well, there are no guarantees. I know people like to lean on, you know, bring up a child in the way he should go, and when he's old he will not depart from it. That is the truism that kids will grow up to be the adults that you train them to be.

That's a truism. That's not a promise of salvation. God saves, but I'm convinced that God's saving work predominantly occurs in Christian families, and I think statistics prove that. If you were to ask the congregation at Grace Church, for example, what percentage of you, you know, stand up if you were raised in a Christian home and you came to Christ in the home, it would be the most common place where people come to know the Lord. So I do believe that if we raise our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, the Lord honors that faithful passing righteousness and gospel truth on from generation to generation. I think another way to say it, it seems to me, is that God puts His elect most often in a Christian family so that that impact is critical in fulfilling His purpose. The guarantees are that if you raise your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, God will bless you because you have been faithful, and all you can do is that and pray for the salvation of your children. I know many people have questions about the family, and we have a booklet that we've put together called Answering the Key Questions About the Family, how you can know the right way to bring up your children, things about the wife's submission, the husband's responsibility in leadership, and what do you do when he doesn't lead like he should, responses to an abusive spouse.

These questions all of us face. We will give you some answers from the Word of God in the booklet Answering the Key Questions About the Family, free to anyone who requests a copy. Just let us know you want one. We'll get it to you.

Yes, we will. Friend, all you have to do is call us or go to our website and request Answering the Key Questions About the Family. We'll send you a free copy. Get in touch today. Our website address? gty.org. The phone number here, 800-554-7223.

That number is easy to remember as 855-GRACE. Answering the Key Questions About the Family is a quick read, but it answers foundational questions like, How can I keep my marriage strong? And, What's the proper way to parent? Again, we'll send this booklet free of charge if you just go to our website gty.org or call us at 800-55-GRACE. The title of the booklet again? Answering the Key Questions About the Family. Also, know that we would love to hear how John's verse-by-verse teaching has encouraged you. Maybe today's lesson helped you apply biblical truth about the family that you never really understood. If God has used these broadcasts in your life, let us know when you write to us at Grace To You, Box 4000, Panorama City, California, 91412. Or you can send an email to letters at gty.org. That's our email inbox letters at gty.org. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson, encouraging you to be here tomorrow when John considers two vital truths that Christian parents need to teach their children. Join us for another half hour of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.