One teenager was talking to his friend: “I'm worried to death about my parents. My dad slaves at his job, pays all the bills & sees to it that I never have need of anything. He is putting away money for my college education. My mom just works day and night washing my clothes and preparing my meals and picking up after me and taking care of me while I'm sick.” And then his friend said, “So… what are you so worried about?” And the boy replied, “I'm afraid they might try to escape.”
This morning we’re going to talk about healthy parents. By definition, a healthy parent wants what is best for their child. They try to keep their kids fed, clothed and educated. They wash clothes, prepare meals, do “bus service”, nurse them back to health. and encourage their children to reach their full potential. They understand their children depend on them
But before we get into how that all plays out, we need to address a couple issues.
1st – a healthy parent isn’t always a successful parent. I know Proverbs says “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6) But from experience… and from Scripture, we know that this doesn’t always happen.
One commentator (John Gill) explained that many scholars believe this verse means that: A child will “not easily, nor ordinarily (depart from how he’s been trained to go, but) there are exceptions to this observation. Generally, where there is a good education, the impressions of it do not easily wear off, nor do men ordinarily forsake a good way they have been brought up in.”
In other words, Solomon’s advice was generally true, but there are exceptions.
ILLUS: Ezekiel 18 (for example) proposes that very idea. “Suppose there is a righteous man who does what just and right… And suppose he has a violent son, who sheds blood, etc.” (Ezekiel 18:5 & 10) What that implies is that there are exceptions to Proverbs 22:6.
ILLUS: And one of the most prominent exceptions to Proverbs principle is Jesus’ story of the Prodigal son. The Father in that parable was God, but He had 2 sons who were disappointments. The youngest son (the prodigal) runs off and squanders his inheritance a selfish lifestyle. And (in Jesus parable) the youngest “prodigal son” was intended by Jesus to represent all the folks who had damaged their lives by how they lived.
But when the prodigal son repents and come homes, the OLDEST boy pitches a fit, because he doesn’t think that his younger brother should have been forgiven. In Jesus’ parable, the oldest boy represented the Pharisees who were sinful in their hatred towards sinners whom they felt never deserved forgiveness. Unlike the crowds of “sinners” gathered at Jesus feet… the Pharisees didn’t repent of their sin!
Both sons had sinned in the parable, and that echoes what Romans says about all of us: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23) The thing is (as in the parable) some folks are wise enough to repent.
Now, here’s the problem: If God was the father of that story… why did His children behave so badly? Why weren’t ALL of His creation good and obedient children?
Well, it comes down to free will. All children (when they grow up) have choices they’ve got to make. If a child of GOOD PARENTS make bad choices… that’s on them, not the parents. But God expects healthy parents to do everything they can to help their children make good choices.
So, the first issue that we have to understand about Healthy parenting is this: Even HEALTHY parents can end up with unhealthy kids.
The 2nd issue we need to understand is: What the WORLD thinks of as a healthy parent isn’t always healthy. The world has different standards/ different priorities for what they think GOOD parents should be like. And those standards/priorities will often be different than God’s. Jesus, for example said: “What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?” Matthew 16:26
You see, the problem for too many parents (even Christian parents) is that they want what the WORLD thinks is best for their child. They want their children to have the WHOLE WORLD and sometimes they pursue that at the risk of forfeiting God. They want the “best education”, the “best entertainment”, the “best activities” (at school and otherwise)… often at the cost of missing out on church.
Does the child have an outside activity on Sunday morning? Well, we’ll just have to miss church. Does the child have an activity on Wednesday night? Forget youth group.
ILLUS: We have a family who attends here who strongly believes that’s not a good idea. They even go so far as to homeschool their kids because they believe its better for their children to focus on Scriptural teachings rather than secular ideas. They are regular in church and at youth group… and always will.
ILLUS: I was impressed with a mother and daughter who showed up here at our congregation a couple of times in the past. The daughter was part of a “traveling softball league” that was playing in at Logansport that Sunday (they were from a city 1 ½ hours away). The mother found out that we had an 8 am service… and they came every time the softball team was in town. Why would they do that? Because that mother didn’t want her daughter to think that there was ANYTHING more important than God for her life. She wanted her daughter to have the best athletics (playing softball)… but not at the risk of forfeiting/undermining her relationship with God.
ILLUS: I know of another family in Ohio that determined to make sure their kids were at youth group every Wednesday night. The problem? The basketball coach demanded that their boy had to at Wednesday night games. To skip those games would have gotten the boy kicked off the team. But the family stuck to their guns…
and the coach allowed the boy to be absent.
My point is: the WORLD often has different priorities than Christian parents do. And a parent has got to decide who is more important: the WORLD… or GOD?
1 John 2:15 tells us “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”
So, what is God’s standard? What are HIS priorities? Well, let’s look at our text this morning:
“I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings from of old, things that we have heard and known, that our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the LORD, and his might, and the wonders that he has done… that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments.” Psalm 78:2-4 & 6-7
God’s priorities are that we drill down into minds and the lives of our children/ grandchildren/ nephews and nieces, and tell them all about what God wants them to know. Now notice – God isn’t asking folks to yell these things at our kids, OR that we handcuff our kids to God.
But He IS asking us to tell your family the truth about God. Don’t hide God’s power and wisdom from your kids. Tell them about God’s glorious deeds/ His might/ and His wonder. What does He mean to you?
ILLUS: (APRIL 2006) John Bartkowski, a sociologist with Mississippi State University had his team question the parents and teachers of more than 16,000 children, asking the adults to rate the children—most of the them age six—on self-control, frequency of poor or unhappy behavior, and their ability to respect and work with peers. The results were compared to the parents’ rate of attendance at church services, how frequently they talked about faith with their child, and whether or not there was arguing over religion in the home. The children of parents who regularly attended church services and talked with their child about their faith were rated by both parents and teachers as showing better behavior, self-control skills, and social skills than children from non-religious families. And children whose - both parents - attended church regularly were rated as having the best behavior and being the most well adjusted. (http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/apr/ O6040508.html)
ILLUS: That’s what my mom did for me. She read Bible stories to me every night. She read them so often I could even pronounce the really tough names out of the Old Testament. And I loved it. I learned of God’s faithfulness to the people in the Bible.
And she told me about God’s faithfulness in my life. She told me how God healed me when I was a baby. Apparently I was filled with stuff that wasn’t “coming out” and I was a miserable baby suffering from something neither she nor the doctors of the time could fix (this was during the 1950s). So she had a woman she knew, who was known for her dedication to prayer, come in and pray for me. She said it was almost immediate – stuff came out of my body from every opening. And from that day on, I was OK.
Well, I was OK until the day I broke my leg in sledding accident when I was 5. They took me to the hospital and the Doctor wasn’t confident about whether my leg would heal. So mom had that same woman come in and pray for me. What happened? I began to want milk… and I drank milk, and I drank milk, and I drank milk. In fact I was drinking so much milk the Doctor restricted how much I could have. But I was up and out of the hospital faster than the Doctor believed possible.
What did I learn from that? I learned that my God was a powerful God capable of doing things in answer to prayer.
So… TELL your children about the power and faithfulness of your God. Tell them about what God did in the Bible, and what He’s done in your life, and what’s He’s done in THEIR lives. Make God real to them.
Finally - tell them that God is GREAT… but you aren’t. Acknowledge that you have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
ILLUS: Adam Sandler has been a famous actor and “comedian. In an interview with Plugged-In magazine about his CD, “SHHH… DON’T TELL” in 2004 said “I think I curse more on this record than ever before. Yeah, the album’s not too tame. In real life, though, I’m a little tamer at home. (My wife) yells at me for that ‘cause we’re gonna have a kid and I guess I can’t curse. I’m in trouble when my kids grow up and one of his friends goes, ‘Hey, listen to your dad’s album.’ I’m dead. There’s no way I could win a fight with that kid. ‘You did this! And you did that!’ And I’d be like, ‘eh… eh… you win.’”
What Adam Sandler was saying was this: the vulgar content in his CD would one day undermine his authority as a parent.
Now, Paul faced a similar situation with the churches he wrote to. He had done terrible things in his life. He had been present at the stoning of the 1st Christian martyr – Stephen. And at one point he confessed that “I persecuted the followers of this Way to their death, arresting both men and women and throwing them into prison, as also the high priest and all the Council can testify. I even obtained letters from them to their brothers in Damascus, and went there to bring these people as prisoners to Jerusalem to be punished.” Acts 22:4-5
Paul knew that past was going to come up - again and again and in his ministry. People would remember the things that he’d done, the people He’d hurt. And so, Paul wrote this to Timothy “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life.” I Timothy 1:15-16
Now, why am I telling you this? I’m you this because we all have sin in our lives, and we need to tell our kids that we have sinned. We need to tell them we DON’T deserve to go to heaven but, because God loved us… He forgave us. We need to tell our children that one of God’s GREATEST wonders and of one of His most glorious deeds, and one of the wondrous things He ever did … was when He saved US!
I talked earlier of the story of the Prodigal Son (PAUSE). And one of the most powerful parts of that story is this: The Prodigal Son had so messed up his life that he decided “I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.’ So he got up and went to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; HE RAN TO HIS SON (REPEAT), threw his arms around him and kissed him. “The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.”
That’s the story of God’s mercy and grace. That’s what our families (children/grandchildren, etc) need to hear from us, because that is what makes the home of a healthy parent: the knowledge that God heals our sins and shortcomings and makes our lives new again.
John Newton once said: “I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be in another world; but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am”
INVITATION
