As we’ve discussed for the last four weeks, raising G-Rated Kids in an X-Rated World is not easy. And perhaps, even in the church, we’ve made it even more difficult because of the expectations that we place on parents. Often, it seems like what I call the “Christian parenting industry” feeds these fears by promoting the idea that if we don’t do everything just right as a parent, we’ll ruin our kids forever.
So all these so called “Christian parenting experts” write books and hold conferences that promise to provide parents with a method or program that will ensure that their kids will turn out OK. But while some of the advice they offer can often be helpful, what I find is that in general these “experts” make parenting much more complicated than it needs to be on one hand and much more superficial than it should be on the other hand.
If you doubt that, then just Google “Christian potty training” and click on a few of the nearly 500,000 items that come up. Really? I guess I missed all those places in the Bible that give us detailed instructions about how to potty train our kids. So we needlessly make parents feel guilty because they didn’t use just the right method to teach their children how to use a toilet. But even worse, we put so much emphasis on doing that just right that we miss out on the much more important aspects of raising our kids that we actually do find in the Bible.
This morning, we’re going to take a look at a verse that has probably caused more parents to needlessly feel guilty about their parenting than any other verse in the Bible. But what I will attempt to do this morning is to show all of us that a proper understanding of that verse not only frees us up from that needless guilt, but that it also reveals to us the most important thing we can do for our kids.
But before I do that, I want to ask you all to write down your answer to the question that I have posed in your sermon outline”
What is a child’s greatest need?
Just write down the first thing that comes to mind. Don’t try to give the answer you think I’m looking for or the “spiritual” answer.
[Wait for people to answer]
Would anyone like to share what you wrote down? [Let them share answers]. I agree that all those are important. Our kids need security, a sense of self-worth, good behavior [and the other things people mention]. But this morning, we’re going to see what the Bible says about the one thing that they need above all else. And the way that we make sure that we meet that need is by employing the fifth of the 5 D’s of Raising G-Rated Kids:
• Delight
• Devote
• Discipline
• Direct
• Disciple
In preparing this week’s message, I began to wonder if perhaps this shouldn’t have been the first message in the series because we’re going to focus on our end goal that we are to pursue when it comes to raising our children. But as I thought about it some more, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is appropriate to end the series with this message because it will hopefully leave us with a good reminder of what we’re trying to accomplish when we apply everything else we’ve learned over the last five weeks.
Let’s begin this morning with the verse that I referred to earlier – the one that has probably caused parents more grief than any other verse in the entire Bible:
Train up a child in the way he should go;
even when he is old he will not depart from it.
(Proverbs 22:6 ESV)
How many of you are familiar with that verse? And how many of you have ever felt guilty because of that verse? A lot of you, right? And the reason is that when we read this verse in almost any English translation, it reads like a promise that basically says that if we raise our kids the right way, then when they get older, they won’t turn away from the things that we taught them.
The problem is that if we understand the verse like that and our children choose to take a path that is different than the one we taught them, then we have to conclude that one of two things must be true:
• Either we really messed up as parents and that is why our children rebelled and followed their own way, or
• God did not keep His promise.
And frankly either of those conclusions just don’t sit well with us, do they? So let’s deal with both ideas for a moment. We need to remember the nature of the Proverbs. A Biblical proverb is not an absolute promise, but rather a description of something that is generally true in a given situation. But because of man’s volition and self-determination and because we live in a world marred by sin, that truth won’t necessarily hold true in every situation.
For instance, there is this Proverb:
In all toil there is profit,
but mere talk tends only to poverty.
(Proverbs 14:23 ESV)
The general truth here is that hard work leads to profit and that laziness leads to poverty. And that is how things generally work out in life but we could all come up with exceptions to the general rule.
So even if we take the common understanding of Proverbs 22:6 to be correct, that wouldn’t necessarily mean that if our children rebel later in life that we were bad parents or that God’s promise did not hold true. We just might be one of the exceptions to that general truth.
But I’m going to suggest to you this morning that there is another way to look at this verse that not only helps us to deal with our guilt or the possibility that God didn’t keep His promise, but one that actually helps us to answer the question I posed earlier - What is a child’s greatest need?
It was not until this week, that I was exposed to this approach to this verse, but the more research and study I did, the more I became convinced that this is probably what Solomon meant when he wrote those words under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Train up a child in the way he should go;
even when he is old he will not depart from it.
(Proverbs 22:6 ESV)
Although almost every English translation of this verse includes the word “should”, that word just doesn’t appear in the underlying Hebrew nor is it even implied in any way by the grammar or the context. This seems to be one of those places where the translators of the KJV added in that word for some reason and it just kind of carried over into all of our other English translations.
Also the verb translated “train” here means something different than how we would normally think of it or even how we’ve used that term earlier in this series when we talked about discipline and instruction. The word that is use there is only found three other places in the Old Testament, and in all three places it is translated “dedicate”. That is because the word’s main meaning is “to dedicate, introduce, or inaugurate”.
So a more literal translation of this verse would be something like this:
Start out a child according to his own way; even when he is old, he will not depart from it.
In his commentary on this verse, Old Testament professor Richard Clifford paraphrased it like this:
Let a boy do what he wants and he’ll grow up to be a self-willed adult incapable of change!
Or we could go back even further and look at how a Medieval Jewish philosopher known as Ralbag interpreted this verse:
Train a child according to his evil inclinations and he will continue in his evil way throughout life.
When we translate this verse like that it becomes a warning against letting a child develop according to his or her own way. And that is actually very consistent with the nature of the Proverbs in general, as well as with some other passages that we’ll look at this morning.
The Book of Proverbs is based on the idea that there are possible paths in life – the way of life taken by the wise and the just and the way of death taken by the wicked, foolish, and lazy. And because man’s natural tendency is to follow the path that leads to death, much of the book consists of warnings against taking that path and describing the consequences of taking that path. The Proverbs also encourage diligence in developing godly wisdom and discipline, which is the way to avoid that fate. In Proverbs, the way one becomes foolish is often to simply do nothing. And that seems to be the point that Solomon is making here. If we do nothing and lust allow a child to follow his own way, the result is that he’ll reject the way of life and hang on to the way of death even after he leaves home.
We already saw this idea that children are naturally inclined toward folly and the way of death last week when we looked at this verse, which is found later in this same chapter:
Folly is bound up in the heart of a child,
but the rod of discipline drives it far from him.
(Proverbs 22:15 ESV)
Before we move on to some other verses that confirm this same idea of folly being bound up in the heart of a child, let me direct your attention to the last part of this verse, which gives us hope because it makes it clear that there is something that parents can do to combat this tendency toward folly. If parents are diligent to develop godly wisdom and discipline in their children through appropriate discipline, then it is possible to drive the folly from the heart of the child.
Most of us tend to think of children, especially little babies, as being so innocent and pure. But let me ask you a question. How many of you parents out there had to teach your children to be selfish, or to lie, or to say hurtful things to others? I don’t see any hands.
That is because, as much as we hate to admit it, children come into this world with an insatiable capacity for evil. And where do they get that tendency toward depravity? From you! It’s not a learned behavior. It is an inherited disposition that they get from their parents, who got it from their parents, who got it from their parents all the way back to Adam. Hopefully you’ll remember that last fall we talked about the fact that we are all born with that sin nature when we studied Romans 5.
Even David, a man that the Bible calls a “man after God’s own heart”, recognized his own wicked heart that he had from birth when he wrote:
Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
and in sin did my mother conceive me.
(Psalm 51:5 ESV)
And he confirmed that same idea in another of his Psalms:
The wicked are estranged from the womb;
they go astray from birth, speaking lies.
(Psalm 58:3 ESV)
I am convinced that Solomon understood that idea when he wrote Proverbs 22:16, which is why he was warning parents that if they do nothing and a child is left to follow his or her own path, they will inevitably end up on the way that leads to death because their sin nature that they have from birth will rule their lives.
So I think we’re now ready to answer the question that I posed earlier:
What is a child’s greatest need?
Not surprisingly, it is also your greatest need as an adult, too:
• Regeneration
The Bible teaches us from cover to cover that we are “dead in trespasses and sin” and that therefore we must be born again spiritually through faith in Jesus in order to restore our relationship with God and get on the path to life.
Regeneration is not something that we can do for our kids or even something that we can force them to do. Regeneration is a work of the Holy Spirit. So we can’t force, coerce or manipulate our children into making a decision to place their faith in Jesus.
But what we can do in our homes is to do what Jesus commands all His disciples to do – make more disciples. And in many ways that process will not be a whole lot different than the way we engage in discipleship with anyone else. We just have to figure out how to do that in a manner that is appropriate for our children at different stages in their lives.
I wish that I could provide you with a detailed outline of exactly how to do that, but frankly every one of your children is different and so that process is going to look a bit different for each home and for each child. But since I do want to make this as practical as possible, let me approach this kind of like Paul did in Ephesians 6 - from both a negative and a positive angle. Let’s begin with…
Some common approaches that do NOT work:
• Self-esteem
This is a very popular approach in our culture and sometimes even in the church. It is clearly portrayed in Whitney Houston’s hit song “Greatest Love of All” that contains these lyrics:
I believe the children are our future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier
Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be
I found the greatest love of all Inside of me
The greatest love of all Is easy to achieve
Learning to love yourself It is the greatest love of all
Now, as we have seen in the videos we have been watching during “Connections”, there is an appropriate kind of self-love that stems from God’s love for me. But this idea of developing a child’s self-esteem has been taken to such an extreme that it actually hinders the child’s ability to see his or her need for regeneration.
Parents are told that they need to do everything that they can to bolster their children’s self-esteem. So they teach their kids to love themselves “just as they are” and “feel good about themselves”. They are told not to ever tell a child that they have done something wrong or try to correct them when they misbehave.
We see this a lot in our youth sports where “everybody wins” and gets the same ribbon or trophy. We see it in our schools which have adopted grading systems where nobody ever fails and where only “positive discipline” is to be used by teachers and staff. When our kids were younger they were even encouraged to use “inventive spelling” because it was thought that if their spelling was corrected it would stifle their creativity.
I will admit that I also used inventive spelling in elementary school, but instead of encouraging me to do that, my teachers just marked it wrong. And guess what, because of that I had to learn how to spell correctly. And my self-esteem was not so permanently damaged that it ruined my creativity for the rest of my life.
So hard work, discipline, excellence, self-control and good behavior have all been sacrificed at the altar of self-esteem. This completely unbiblical approach may seem harmless, but the problem is that it hinders the ability of our kids to understand their depravity and the associated need for regeneration because they are taught that they are OK just the way they are without the need for humility, godly sorrow and repentance.
• Behaviorism
We spent a lot of time the last two weeks talking about discipline and instruction. But what I hope I’ve made really clear in those messages is that our goal is not merely to get our kids to engage in good behavior. That’s why we spent so much time emphasizing the need to help our children understand the heart attitude that is the root problem that causes the wrong behavior.
The fact is that parents who employ an authoritative parenting style are often quite successful in getting their kids to exhibit good external behavior and conform to standards of decorum and be polite because they are afraid of punishment, But the problem is that they never help their kids to understand the true nature of their hearts. So, once again, it’s really hard for them to understand their need for regeneration. And, as we talked about a couple weeks ago these kids usually rebel in adolescence and have higher rates of substance abuse and suicide.
• Isolation
Paul wrote this command to the churches in Rome:
… I want you to be wise as to what is good and innocent as to what is evil.
(Romans 16:19 ESV)
And in a sincere effort to help their children develop that mindset, a lot of well-meaning parents, especially Christian parents, have “cocooned” their children in an attempt to isolate them from “bad influences”. Obviously there is much in our culture – TV, movies, music and the internet – which promote unbiblical values. So I am not suggesting in any way that we simply allow our kids unsupervised access to that media. But total isolation is not the answer either.
When it comes to evil, we need to help our children to become prudent but not prudish. Prudishness and naiveté actually set our children up to be easy targets for the seductive temptations of this world. I think that is exactly the situation that the Proverbs address when it frequently speaks of “the simple” who are easily drawn into sin.
I think one of the reasons that so many parents resort to isolation is because in many ways it is much easier. It takes a lot more time and effort to sit through a TV show or movie with our kids and talk about how the actions of the characters either lined up with biblical principles or violated those principles than to just prohibit our kids from watching TV or movies altogether. It is much more time consuming to listen to some secular music with our kids and talk about the values that music is promoting than to just tell our kids they can’t listen to that music at all.
I can tell you from my own personal observation that the children who are raised in isolation are the ones that are most vulnerable to being sucked into horrible sin when they finally leave the home because they have never been taught that such evil exists and they have never been equipped to deal with it when they come face to face with it.
Now let’s approach this idea of discipling our children from a positive angle…
What our children need to understand:
All I have time to do this morning is to list these things, which I’ve adapted from John MacArthur’s book, What the Bible Says About Parenting. I would suggest that any of you who want to get some additional guidance in this area consider reading at least this section of his book.
• The holiness of God
Your children need to understand that God is 100% holy. There is no evil or bad in Him whatsoever. And because He is holy, He doesn’t allow sin and evil into His presence.
• Their sinfulness
We’ve already talked about this in some detail this morning, so I won’t belabor the point. But you do need to help your children to understand their sinfulness and how that separates them from a holy God.
• The person and work of Jesus
Your child needs to understand that Jesus is God in the flesh and that because of God’s love for us He came to earth and took on the body of a man. He lived a sinless life on earth and died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sin. He rose from the grave to prove His victory over death and sin.
• The need for faith in Jesus
Children need to understand that they can’t do anything to take care of their sin by their own efforts. The only way to do that is through faith in Jesus. They need to know that when they place their faith in Jesus, God sees in them only the righteousness of Jesus.
• The cost of discipleship
It is important for our children to know that there is a cost to becoming a disciple of Jesus. They have to understand that it means giving up control of their own life to follow Jesus and they need to know that following Jesus won’t take away all their problems.
The main thing to remember here is that this is a long-term, full time assignment by God and the most important responsibility you have as a parent. So, as we’ve pointed out throughout this series, this requires both formal and informal teaching. Some of these concepts will be taught as you and your children read and discuss the Bible. But much of it is going to be passed on to them as you live life together as a family. And that means that you actually have to make spending time together as a family a priority in your life.
It’s also important here that you be thorough. Certainly teach these things in an appropriate way that your children can grasp, but avoid the tendency to abridge the gospel or to leave out key parts just because your child is having a hard time understanding them. Be patient and ask God to help you develop ways of teaching these ideas in a way that your child can understand. It took time for you to become a disciple of Jesus and becoming a mature disciple is a lifetime process and that won’t be any different for your kids either.
Nothing that we do as parents or as a church can guarantee that our children will become mature disciples of Jesus Christ. We can’t believe for them or coerce or manipulate them into the kingdom of God. But as we’ve seen this morning, we have an indispensable role to play in discipling our children in order to help them address their greatest need – regeneration – through faith in Jesus.
What we do know for sure, however, is that if we abdicate our responsibility to disciple our children and just leave them to follow their own way, the chances of them ever becoming followers of Jesus is pretty slim. So as we apply the things we’ve learned over the past five weeks, we must keep in mind that our goal as we delight, devote, discipline, direct our children is wrapped up in the fifth and final D – to disciple them.
As we’ve seen over the last five weeks, Raising G-Rated Kids in an X-Rated World is essential, but it is not easy. So we’re going to close this morning with a time of prayer. You may pray silently right where you are or as God leads you, feel free to pray out loud as well.
