Teach Your Children Well (Part 3 of 4)

The Bible tells us there is a broad road that leads to destruction and a narrow path that leads to eternal life.

How can parents guide their children toward the narrow path without frustrating them? We'll take a closer look at the challenge of Christian parenting today on Truth for Life Weekend. Alistair Begg is continuing a study in the book of Proverbs that he's titled, Wise Words. We're going to turn to Proverbs 22 and also put our finger in Ephesians chapter 6. And as you do that, we'll pray, and then we'll study the Bible. And now, Father, we pray that as we study the Bible together, as we come to this most crucial part of our worship, we have spoken to you, we have prayed, we have sung, and now we believe that you speak to us through the Bible by your Spirit. Grant to us, then, listening ears, we pray, for Jesus' sake.

Amen. Well, we return to the book of Proverbs, although leaning fairly heavily as a cross-reference this morning, as you will discover on Ephesians chapter 6. A little while ago, we began to look at these proverbial statements, which of course come with a striking impact to us. I think one of the reasons that the book of Proverbs is so desirable and so accessible lies in the fact that these proverbial statements are ones that call to us, as Kidner says, from across the street.

They're not particularly churchy. They address the issues of our life—laziness, friendship, the use and abuse of words and language, the place of sex, the privileges of learning what it means to be done with a jealous heart, and then, as we saw last time, the responsibilities, the peculiar challenges, of raising children. And in the course of my reading, I was handed these great truths about life that children have learned, that adults have learned, and great truths about growing old, which are sort of proverbial statements with which I think Solomon would have been able to identify. For example, great truths about life that children know. When your mom is mad at your dad, don't let her brush your hair. You should never ask your three-year-old brother to hold a tomato or a tomato. You can't hide a piece of broccoli and a glass of milk. Those of us who have grown to adulthood now realize that raising teenagers is like nailing jello to a tree, begun to discover that wrinkles don't hurt, that laughing is good exercise is like jogging on the inside, and that middle age is when you choose your cereal for the fiber and not for the toy. For myself, I've given up on the health food completely.

I need all the preservatives that I can get. It's frustrating to have reached an age when now I know all the answers, but no one's asking me any questions at all. When you fall down, you wonder what else you can do while you're down there.

And you know you're getting old when you get the same sensation from a rocking chair that you used to get from a rollercoaster. Preverbal statements that immediately make a point of contact. That's what Solomon is doing. He's taking these statements that are God-given, admittedly, but he is addressing the issues which are issues of great importance. Not least of all, this matter of raising children. Is there any more daunting challenge in all of the earth than being entrusted with little children and being asked to look after them and raise them? We saw last time that wisdom begins at home, that children are ours for a limited time only, that we can begin too late but never too soon, for we recognize that much that is represented in later life of both good and bad has actually been formed in the minds of our children in infancy. The responsibility that is identified in the sixth verse here, which is before you, is that of training our children in the way that they should go, recognizing the fact that there is a way that they would go. And the challenge of Christian parenting is to recognize that the direction in which our children would naturally go is not the direction in which they need to go.

And therefore, we're immediately given the responsibility of a corrective challenge. We are to dedicate them to the Lord, whether in a public way but certainly in private, in the way that was done in the life of Samuel. Hannah brought her son and said, Here, I give him to you. I asked for him. You gave him to me.

I want him returned to you. We want to do that with our children. We want then, having dedicated them to the Lord, to bring them instruction in the Lord. When Paul writes of Timothy in 2 Timothy 3.15, you remember he says to them, I want to encourage you and remind you of the Scriptures which you have known from infancy.

And the reason that he had known them from infancy was because his parents had been encouraging them, he and the rest of the family, in that way. Now, to think in these terms is to put ourselves immediately cross-grained to the world in which we live. When we listen to society today, we recognize that it largely leaves young people without principles at all. The notion is that we're setting young people free, but in actual fact, we're making them helpless. And the mass of humanity deals with their children as if they were born for only this world.

If you observe, if you listen to people speak, all of the emphasis, all of the energy is completely earthbound. And, of course, that is understandable, because it begins with a worldview which says, We are only here for the moment. Carpe diem. Seize the day. Yesterday's gone.

Tomorrow's not coming. There is only now, and there is no eternity. And so, what do you find? You find that they educate their children consistently for time but not for eternity. They leave out the most fundamental question of any action, any activity, any involvement, which is this. How does this education, how does this trip, how does this relationship, how does this opportunity, how does this family affect their souls? Affect their souls. Because the Christian understands that encased within this shell, which will one day be laid into the ground, is a soul which will live forever in eternity, either in the presence of Christ and his followers, the redeemed, which is called heaven, or absent from the presence of Christ and those who are in Christ, which is called hell.

And the Bible says that we are moving in a linear progression towards that destiny. Any parents who seek to provide for, educate their children, stir within them principles that leave out the question of their souls, educates them in a way that is ultimately futile. So all of their accomplishments—and we want them to be accomplished—all of their scholarships—and we're delighted if they get them—all of their refinement—and we would love them to have it—all of their manners—and we hope that we instill them in them—all of those things roll together in this great, wonderful, well-bred young girl or young man—if at the expense of godliness and faith is an education without God, without his promise, without hope, without rest, and without peace. Now, if you doubt that education leaves people high and dry, simply go to the highest forms of learning in this country. I have in my files—I didn't bring it here—but I have in my files the stories of suicide at the Ivy League schools. Now, why would people with so much brainpower to be able to be included in the most rarified intellectual group in the country? Why would they do this? Because they are so clever that they've seen to the end of the chess game, and they have bought their package, and they believe that there is no hope and there is no future.

Therefore, they might as well punch out now while they have the chance. Now, I speak this morning, I recognize, to a gathered group of people from different backgrounds. Some of you have come today for a variety of reasons, and you've walked right into the midst of this. You may be investigating who Jesus is. You may not have read a Bible in a while.

You may be wondering, is there really any validity to the Bible story at all? And what we've been discovering and reading Proverbs together is that it is full of wisdom which comes down from heaven, which is, first of all, pure and peaceable and gentle and open to reason. And it is this wisdom which is founded in the fear of the Lord, the recognition that he made us, and that we sinned and that he came to redeem, and that in redemption we are made new, and we look forward to the day when one day it will all be made perfect in heaven. And living in the middle of that, we recognize that to reject biblical principles of child rearing is absolutely ruinous. Because our minds abhor vacuums. And if we do not fill our minds with truth, then they won't have nothing in them. They will be found to have error in them. And therefore, it is not that we can simply say, This doesn't really matter, because after all, I leave my child with a blank slate. No, we don't leave them with a blank slate. The fact is that they're going to be filled up with something. Now, that's what makes this verse all the more compelling, doesn't it?

It's not difficult to understand. Train a child. We know what a child is. We're going to discover what it means to train. Train them in the way he should go. So there is a way that seems right to a man that ends in death. There is a road that is a broad road that leads to destruction, and by natural bend, our children would go on that road. The narrow road that leads to life is not a road that they will find themselves on by heritage or by nature or by inclination. Only by grace can we enter, and only by grace can we stand. God's grace operates through all kinds of influences. And one of the significant influences in terms of seeing children come to faith is the parental structure in which they are found, and particularly the role of the father, who is given the responsibility as the head of the home to make sure that he's doing what needs to be done. Now, it's for that reason that I asked you to put your finger into Ephesians 6, because when you turn forward to Ephesians 6, you find that Paul, who of course had been reared in a Jewish home, who had been brought up saying the Shema, that he is driving home the same principle. And he says, I don't want you fathers to end up exasperating your children. But instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. It's almost a commentary, isn't it, on Proverbs 22.6?

Yesterday I was driven to the airport by a policeman—an off-duty policeman, I should say—and as we drove there, I found out that he'd been born in Massachusetts, that he was now living in Kansas City, and that he was the husband of one wife, and he had a little three-and-a-half-year-old daughter. And as I inquired about his daughter and how she was doing and his hopes and dreams for her, it very quickly became apparent that he felt tyrannized by the environment in which he was living. So much crime, he said, so many pressures, all of the influences that are upon us, and we see them already feeding into our homes, and we need to learn to resist them in our hearts. So we spoke a little bit about that.

And that, of course, is the common thought of any sensible person. The world around us is antagonistic to biblical truth and biblical conviction. Therefore, unless we are prepared to stand against the tide, then we will drift with the tide. And every day that passes, it seems to be a greater challenge. Some years ago, a father wrote to his son, and part of the letter read as follows, Your daughter is growing up in the wickedest section of a world much farther gone into moral decline than the world into which you were brought. I have observed that the greatest delusion is to suppose that our children will be devout Christians simply because their parents have been, or that any of them will enter into the Christian faith in any other way than through their parents' deep travail of prayer and faith. But this prayer demands time, time that cannot be given, if it is all signed and conscripted and laid on the altar of career ambition.

Failure for you, son, at this point, would make mere success in your occupation a very pale and washed-out affair indeed. He had Ecclesiastes 5 in the description of the man who goes around the house, and he sees in the bedrooms of his children all these things that he's bought for his children. But there are no children there. He's a man who is all alone.

He's a lonely man. And at his funeral, none of his children will stand up and say, I wish my dad had gone to the office more often than he did. Now, my purpose this morning is to try and work through with you this exhortation which, both in Proverbs and in Ephesians, comes negatively and positively. First of all, what are we not to do? Well, we have to make sure that in doing the positive things, we also do the negative, which is, do not exasperate your children. Do not exasperate your children.

In other words, don't embitter them and don't provoke them. Now, of course, we have to say that some of us exasperate our children just by our mere existence. We just say, good morning, and say, oh, get out of here, dad. Why do you have to shout so loud? I only said good morning.

Yeah, but you don't have to say it so loud. Okay, sorry, good morning. Pardon? Oh, forget it. We run the gauntlet. We get dressed. It used to be you could get dressed and just go out. Now you have to try and find a way to get out before they see you, because you exasperate them just because of your clothes. You're not going out like that, are you, for goodness' sake? Sometimes we exasperate our children because we do the right thing, because we say to them, we're going to church, and it's a family event, and they're exasperated. Aha, says the listening child, you're not allowed to do that. Ephesians 6, 4, do not exasperate your children. You're exasperating me, and you're not allowed to exasperate me.

We're out of here. Okay, now we've got to get out of that one, don't we? Obviously, the Bible's not talking about adjusting our behavior in the light of their silly response. The Bible is talking about adjusting our behavior in the light of biblical principles.

And biblical principles take precedence over anything else. Therefore, I have to talk about this when we walk along the road, and when we lie down, and when we get up. Why do we have to keep talking about this, Dad?

Because the Bible said we must. Can you turn it off? Well, maybe in a while, but for now, I think it's a good time to talk. That's why I like to lie on your bed at night. Well, I don't want you on my bed at night. Well, I don't care. It's my bed.

I bought it. I'm lying on it. Do you have anything you want to talk about? No, I told you I have nothing to talk about. Okay, that's okay.

We'll just lie in silence. Now, we could spend the whole morning delineating the way in which we can exasperate our children. I'm gonna give you a number of them, both from personal experience, sadly, and from biblical principle.

I'm gonna go through them very quickly, because this is not the crux of what I want to drive home this morning. We exasperate our children by failing to allow them to be what they are—namely, children. And we illustrate that when we make irritating or unreasonable demands upon them. When we fail to take into account their inexperience, their immaturity, the fact that they say silly things, they have silly ideas, that they're not particularly mature, their brains are not fully developed, and yet you listen to these silly parents talking to their children.

The only thing that's worse, as I pointed out to you last time, is the way they talk to their dogs, but it's along the same lines. Now, Jonathan, the premise is this. Of course, the sub-premise is this.

Here is my thesis, and speaking antithetically, of course, the synthesis is, and all they're trying to say is, tie your shoelaces! Do you realize how irritating that is? I'm sure there was more reason than one that my mother never let me wear long pants until I was thirteen years old. Part of the reason was she wanted me never to forget that I was just a little boy. And when a little boy starts to dress like a man and walk like a man and be conversed with as if he were a man, we do that boy a great disservice. As we do our girls, when we allow them maturing, to assume the role of significant young lady before they have gone through the stage of little girl.

Your parents, you have to make your own decisions. But you can exasperate them by doing that. Secondly, by treating them with harshness and cruelty. They have fragile lives. We don't push our weight around. We're not to be guilty of physical battering. We're not to be guilty of verbal brutality.

The danger of a kind of criticism which leaves them always guessing themselves, failing to take responsibility, unable to find where they're really going, because on the basis of misguided love, we have felt that it is important for us to constantly point this out, to point that out, to point that out. That's not right. That's wrong. Change that. Fix this. Do this.

Do that. Now, it's not because we want to make them feel bad. It's because we want them to become the best they can be. But it is misguided love. And it's exasperating.

Can I ever do enough? The child says. John Newton said, I know that my father loved me, but he didn't seem to wish me to see it. Thirdly, and obviously by ridiculing them in front of others, especially their peers. Fourthly, by portraying favoritism, displaying favoritism, entertaining unhelpful comparisons. Why can't you be like your brother? Why can't you be like your sister? She's so sensible.

You're so stupid. Fifthly, by our failure to express approval, even at their apparently small accomplishments. And sometimes we're gonna have to give them great approval for small accomplishments, because small accomplishments is all that they have. Not everybody's mother is driving around town with a minivan with fifteen stickers on the back about how brilliant her kid is. Let others praise you. Let others praise your kids.

Let it be said by someone else, you don't need to have it in neon lights on the back of a van. We exasperate our children by being arbitrary in the exercise of discipline, so that they never know where they stand. They don't know whether they're gonna get it or they're not going to get it.

They don't know if this is the day when they get it or they don't get it. And often that emerges from the fact that we ourselves are arbitrary in our own self-discipline. So you will never learn—I will never learn to discipline my children properly unless I have learned to discipline myself. And if I am arbitrary in the way I deal with sin in my own life, then it will be inevitable that I'm arbitrary in the way I deal with it in my children's lives. When my children hear godliness from my mouth and they see wickedness in my life, then I point them to heaven, but I lead them to hell.

When they hear godliness out of my mouth and they see wickedness in my life, then I point them to heaven and I lead them to hell. In this respect, neglect is far better than inconsistency. Far better to do nothing than to make this hodgepodge of it. For at least the children will know I'm dealing now with absolutely nothing.

But when they're dealing with a parent who is one day here and the next day there, whose words and his life are parted by a great and significant divide, the children are completely bamboozled. You're listening to Truth for Life Weekend. That's our Bible teacher, Alistair Begg, with a message he's titled, Teach Your Children Well.

We'll hear more next weekend. We hope the teaching you hear on Truth for Life challenges you to reflect on God's Word, to think about his promises, to rest in his care. This study in the book of Proverbs is a great way to reassess your priorities in light of God's perfect wisdom and his unfolding plan.

I hope you're finding it helpful. If you're benefiting from these practical lessons from the book of Proverbs and would like to re-listen or share these messages with a friend, you can stream or download any single sermon or the entire series for free. All of Alistair's teaching can be heard or watched through our mobile app or on our website at truthforlife.org.

The current series is titled, Wise Words. It's our prayer at Truth for Life that as you study with us each day, you'll come to know Jesus in a life-saving way. We proclaim the gospel here because it has the power to transform lives. We know that God uses his word to convert unbelievers, to establish believers more firmly in their faith, and to strengthen local churches.

And that's our mission. So with that mission in mind, along with Alistair's messages, we look for books that we can recommend to you with great care. And today we want to recommend a book written by Rebecca McLaughlin titled, Confronting Jesus, Nine Encounters with the Hero of the Gospel. If you're going to tell your children about Jesus, it's important you have a clear picture of who he is. And this is a book that will not only help you to understand what the gospel tells us about Jesus, it will help you clarify who Jesus is to you. You can learn more about the book, Confronting Jesus on the Truth for Life mobile app or on our website at truthforlife.org.

I'm Bob Lapine. Thanks for studying with us this weekend. Next weekend, the conclusion of this series, we'll learn how to train our children in godliness and what to do if it doesn't seem like it's sinking in. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.