Our sermon takes today's selections from the proverbs all having to do with the family and parenting
Honestly, I kind of feel like I messed this up. I should have preached this sermon two weeks ago when nothing everybody here Was parents and all the college students weren't here yet and then this week. I should have been preaching on friendship but I didn't and you know the the handy thing about we in Presbyteria is you could blame everything on God and so that was God's fault that I messed it up and Because he wanted you to hear this so even if you don't have any children on the way even if you don't think you're gonna Have any children on the way for a long time for some reason God calls me to mess that up and preach this this week So he wants you to hear it. So this is what God wants you to hear From proverbs first begin with chapter three and you're looking your bolts and our own screen above me my son Do not despise the Lord's discipline or be weary of his reproof For the Lord reproves him whom he loves as a father of the son in whom he delights Train up a child in the way that he should go and even when he is old he will not depart from it Folly is bound up in the heart of a child But the rod of discipline drives it far from him Whoever spares is the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him Listen to your father who gave you life and do not despise your mother when she is old by truth and do not sell it by wisdom and Instruction and understanding the father of the righteous will greatly rejoice He who fathers a wise son will be glad in him Let your father and your mother be glad let her who bore you rejoice
There are a lot of things on television that I hate There are enough things on television that I like that I can't turn it off right it's like the train wreck You can't stop watching but one of the things I hate the most is a lifetime kind of hallmark movies And I hate them because they're all full and because they make me cry and I just you know I really wish I had a parent a parental control search that would just keep me from ever seeing one And one day when I was kind of searching through the channels all The sudden this movie comes up as a lifetime movie the only thing I remember about it was that it was starring Sicily Tyson and Brandy Brandy a star so big that she only needed one name, and I'm not sure what she's been doing for the last 15 years, but The final scene is what I saw Brandy is receiving some kind of award and She's giving her acceptance speech and her mother who has raised her as a single parent who's given her life to her Who's pushed her who's encouraged her who sacrificed for her is there kind of in the background? You know, soaking up the glow Excuse me soaking up the glow as we parents are want to do and Brandy starts talking about how she never wanted an award She never had really dreamed of achieving great greatness and then she said this schmaltzy line She said all I ever wanted to do all I've ever wanted in my life Was for my mother to wake me up in the middle of the night and Hug me and Say I'm so glad you're my little girl and I thought that is awful and I'm crying Why There's just why what why would a Hollywood screenwriter who gets paid to write write a line that bad and Why would I cry when I hear it and I think it is because there is something deep within us telling us that our parentage Our parents who they are and how they treated us There's something deep within us telling us that that is irreplaceably important And I don't have to tell you that I Know I don't have to tell you that because you're interested in it Because according to George Barna This is an un and unbelievable statistic, but according to George Barna 75,000 books have been written On the subject of parenting at some point you have to go I guess we're not getting it right If it's taken 75,000 of you to figure out what's the way to do it what chance do I have I read one book a year And we spend millions of adopted children spend millions researching out every year the who their biological parents are we see People spending billions of dollars in count counseling Unraveling the knots of how their parents raised them every year And with every and with all our generation is spent and with all our generation has studied we seem just as lost as ever And what I want to do in this brief time that we're going to be together Is answer every question you have about parenting so that you're all just as perfect as I am Yeah, if that were the case you'd all take off running for the door right now What I want to do in this time is explain this one principle to you that I think is very important and That is this Jesus Christ in the gospel and what he has come to do and in the message that he has proclaimed and in the work of his Soul Holy Spirit which is alive in you right now Jesus Christ has given you everything you need To heal from what your parents did to you To love your parents And to raise your children He's given everything you need you need he's given it to you Why do you need that why do you need him to give you anything is the first question though? Why is it so hard and I want us to look at three things we're gonna look at the difficulty of parenting We're gonna look at what Christ is giving us and then we're gonna look at the message of Proverbs to parents and to children Three things so let's look at the first thing the difficulty of parenting. Why is it so hard and? I think one of the reasons why it's so hard is because We're Americans and so we are the recipients of so many different cultures There's not one kind of dominant. This is the way we do it right and so we have all these different kind of conflicting messages We've got you know the tiger moms out there who are pushing their children and pushing and pushing and that works And we see glorious success stories like Andre Agassi becoming the greatest tennis player in the world because his father pushed him and Then he writes his autobiography and talks about how he hates his father and he hates tennis and really the subtext is and he hates himself And we go well, maybe that wasn't the best plan and we think but look at the other success stories like Tiger Woods and Then we go well that clearly wasn't the best plan So we want to swing to the other side of the pendulum and be the self-esteem parents and always be telling kids how great they are and how they can do anything and And they're wonderful and they never fail and and they just want to be they're great And we're building up their self-esteem and then we find out that these kids believe that jump and They get to college and they fail at something and they can't handle it and we go well Then what are we supposed to do? Am I supposed to let my children be free range and just walk around with no direction for me whatsoever or should I be a helicopter parent Hovering over my children texting them every 10 minutes while they're in school making sure that nothing touches them. I don't know I don't know There's different cultural models and then most of us are a lot of us Have this conflict not only with our culture but with ourselves seem a lot of us This is my heart for some of you to believe but a lot of us look at our parenting and we go they didn't do it exactly right and I'm gonna be different And we call this big pendulum to be swinging right? I mean on the most present my dad ever was my dad may have been in the house that I was growing up in At the most six days in a month And I was gonna be better than that and everything I failed at everything that I wasn't successful at it was his fault And my children were gonna be successful because I was gonna be with them and so I was with them And I was hovering over them and I'm gonna make that pendulum swing back the other way and it has swung And my kids go dad when you leave them and so I don't I don't know what regularity looks like there's I've got different cultural voices Tell me what I should look like I've got my personal history saying I don't know what you should look like But I can tell you what you better not look like and so we're swinging and then well That pendulum and that culture mixes in with my heart and I want you to know something God wants me up here doing this And I don't know why I think I know Some of you could come up here and you could say this is what parenting looks like and we would all go yeah That's what I should do Because you're really good people And when we scratch you we see underneath the surface that you're good in there too But God wants me up here Because he wants you to know that anybody can do this
And it might shock you to find out that if you scratch me you don't find somebody who's really good down to the core You find somebody who's a math So how does that work? Well, I mean it looked like this I was passionate about parenting
And I'm an intense person not me shocking
But I can be very intense Very And if I take it seriously not I can get
No birthday party in my house ever ended up without one of my children getting spank
One day I'll be able to laugh with that with you about that difficult culture And I've got a difficult history and I've got a difficult personality
And I've got difficult children Because you see the purpose of parenting is not to get them to act right If it was just to get them to act right I could do that I really could It wouldn't be because their hearts were changed. It wouldn't be because they loved me or loved the Lord They wouldn't share their toys because they loved each other. They would just be afraid of me Just self-preservation would make them act right And I don't want that or I could have rewarded them and I could have bribed them and pure Marketplace decisions would have gotten them to act right But we don't want that. We want our children's hearts to be changed We want the Holy Spirit to take up residence within them I want them to treat their mother and their another adults with respect because they love the neighbor as they love themselves I want them to love the Lord and as a result of that love overflowing out of their souls. They love each other And I can't scare them or bribe them and it's doing that One of my kids made that abundantly clear to me one day when he announced to me in his two-year-old wisdom He announced to me that your spankings don't work and I know I did where he was going with this And I said what do you mean they don't work? And he said I don't know they're not working and I said Should I spank you harder? And he said I guess and I said why do you say my spankings don't work? And he said I just can't stop being ugly
I said I know I know I can't stop being ugly either And Jesus took the spanking for that one Jesus took the spanking for that and because of that we have this great and glorious expectation for our children And the good news for you today is this God has not given you a blueprint to follow to produce perfect children He's not he's giving you something much better than that He's giving you a son he has given you his son And he's giving you this overwhelming message that he loves you dearly and he picks up all of our broken and best intentions And he says I'll take it from here I can fix this I'll take it from here So what does he say to us? He tells us first of all that he loves our children the gospel tells us that we love our God loves our children God tells us this throughout the Bible it is one of the most overwhelming messages in the Bible so get used to it Okay, he doesn't just tell Noah Noah go build an art for you A small art just for you and your wife He says include your children. I want them in it. He don't he goes to Abraham. He says Abraham You are my chosen you're my elect you're through you. I'm gonna save the world through you and your children Put this mark of the covenant on your children. I want them to know that they are mine. I love them I love them so much Abraham that if you forget to put this mark on the cut of the covenant on them. I'm gonna cut you off for it He tells Moses I'm gonna bring out the children of Israel And I want you to know that I love their children and so every year when they celebrate the salvation I want their children at the table and they can't eat the food until the children ask them about it and he sends us Jesus And Jesus is worn out and he is tired and there are dirty Snotty little children everywhere and the disciples were going give him a break He doesn't need this right now and Jesus rebukes his disciples and said I want those children
And he sends his Peter He stands up on his very first Christian sermon and he says this is the promise To you And to your children. I want you to get this
Because I didn't God loves your children He is not looking for an excuse to cast your kids in hell You're not going to break them If they I fathered my first I don't know go around at this I fathered out of fear that if I didn't do something right If I ever missed a chance to discipline if I ever missed a chance to reward if I ever did anything wrong Then my children were gonna reject the gospel it was gonna be my fault
Stupid I know Stupid I know But I believed it I didn't believe that the Lord loved my children And I want you to believe it I want you to relax And love them the way he loves them I want you to know that God loves your kids and I want you to know that God is it work healing your scars
He's gonna heal us you see our kids what we It's very easy to look up on parenting with a lot of regrets to look upon all the things we didn't do right And the part of the reason for that is we tend to glorify this thing called childhood and think if it was good Then everything's perfect and if it was bad then everything's ruined and they'll never get their childhood back Praise the Lord you never get your childhood back Your best days are in front of you The message of the gospel is that your life never ends Your life the life of your children the life of you the life of all of God's people goes on forever childhood is such a small blip on that screen you can't even see it God is gonna heal us He is going to heal us Your Your daughters and sons will live on for eternity And when they see Jesus he is going to wipe every tear from their eyes and he will be their shepherd And they're not going to remember when you spank them too much and they're not going to remember when you Made them feel guilty over that 98
They're going to be with Jesus And every tear will be wiped from their eyes And they're heal he's healing them right now And that is what you've got to embrace and that's what I've got to embrace We have to get it down into the very core of our being that the Lord of the universe wants us to call him Father
And he wants to wrap his arms around us And he wants you to know that he is so glad you are his little girl And he is so glad that you are his little boy And it was not an accidental pregnancy It was not a mistake He loves you and it cost him everything And he knew exactly what he was getting
And he wants you to know that he knows how much you cost And he wants you to know that you will never understand how much you cost But he thinks you're worth it And he loves you that much
Let that heal you and you will stop trying to overcome your shortcomings with how you parent Because you have no shortcomings Because God is delighted in you Parent from his delight in you not from a desire to get things right Let God heal you let his love heal you
And then you'll understand that your performance is not your only hope
Why did God want me to preach this sermon to you because you're looking at me you know you're not looking at a perfect parent Why did God give you the children to give you Because you're how he is loving his your children He didn't want them to have perfect parents. He wanted them to have you God likes weakness for 2nd Corinthians 12 9 But God said to me my grace is sufficient for you For my power is made perfect in weakness Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weakness So that the power of Christ may rest upon me
Your children's destiny does not rest upon whether or not you follow the road map perfectly Your children's destiny rest in the hands of the Lord who loves them. God didn't want perfection. He wanted you
It would be awful to have perfect parents Just think about what that would be like Every time you failed you'd be like I'm talking because I did disappointment And you would think oh but my kids my parents could be never disappointed with me and that's even more guilt Because I'm disappointed, but they're never disappointed. Why can't it be more like them But as it is your kids are gonna go man. I'm better than they are And that's good That's good Because your discipline isn't gonna change your your kids' hearts But your repentance mind Your repentance mind back in the 19th century. There's a famous preacher named DL Moody He's a big guy very jovial very happy very sweet with his son And One day he was going to a meeting is very stressed by the meeting and his sons outside He'd already called him in once and he's leaving the house and he saw his boy out in the yard playing with the neighbors And he yelled at his son, which was very rare since then I remembered it because my dad never yelled at me Any him bear he humiliated his son in front of all his friends They made him get inside and And he left and went to this meeting he got back late and And his son was writing his father's biography he said that night My father woke me up with tears falling on my face
begging my forgiveness He said I heard my dad preach over a thousand sermons and I remember almost none of them
But I will never forget when he apologized
That's the gospel That's the gospel real When your kids hear that you know that you're not doing it right And that you need Jesus That's what points them to Jesus And that's what enables them to believe That is what you need to parent You don't need instructions. That's why I'm about to give them to you You need the gospel You need the gospel, but you got to do something, right? So let me take just a few minutes to finish up and tell you How what how the gospel affects your parenting from the book of Proverbs and the first thing is this parents Don't idolize your children Proverbs 22 15 says this Folly is bound up in the heart of the child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him What does that mean your kids came into the world broken Their hearts have sin in there And if you don't believe that if you try to make this child your destiny If you want to wrap your identity up into how they perform then you're going to break yourself and them in the process If you make an idol out of what your child becomes you will over discipline them Everything they do wrong you're going to jump on because you want them to be perfect Because they're your idol Or you are under under discipline them because you can't stand the thought of them disapproving of you And so whatever they want if they ask for enough they're going to get it because all they have to do is look at you like You're not a very good mommy and it will crush your spirit If you're if your children have to succeed to fulfill your dreams Well what happens to them when they come home and they go I don't want to play piano anymore
I mean is it going to crush you? What if they don't succeed? What worse what if they do succeed? What if they go through life and they never fail and they never know that it's going to be okay if they do They never know that That your dreams aren't wrapped up in them. They never know that they're not carrying the weight of your dreams on their back And if they do fail It's crushing because now not only have they not done what they wanted to do But they haven't done what you dreamed that they would do and then what you sacrificed for them to do and what you've pushed them to do So they kind of want to quit trying Because they're never going to succeed at anything
Don't idolize your children. They have folly bound up in their hearts You'd be a fool to put your trust in that Just love them Don't don't idolize your children shepherd your children I guess it's the most famous text in the Bible about parenting so I had to stick it in here But it didn't really as famous for a good reason listen to it Train up a child in the way he should go and even when he is old he will not depart from it Train up a child in the way he should go long-term walk with them work with them Train them up in the way they should go. It's a very interesting text. It's teaching us that that each child is individualized It's not saying we all know the way there's one way follow that way, but in the way he should go In his way That means train him in his way as you know some of you Some kids all they need is a of the disapproving look Some kids need a little more than that Yeah, some children are cock or spannules and if you kind of go that they're crushed for a week Some children are labored or travers and you have to treat them different Train them up in the way they should go And find out where they're going What does that mean it means we have to do with our children what good shepherds do with their sheep a shepherd knows his sheep A shepherd knows his sheep he knows each of them by name He knows what they're like he knows what they need he knows how to get them there a shepherd guides his sheep A friend of mine Sorry praying for his son a last year Last fall praying that his son would be a godly leader He knows his son His son was shocked to get an award for being a great leader last summer But he wasn't surprised He knows his son he's trying to guide him to get him to where He should go because he knows him a shepherd feeds his sheep You don't I mean You know, I feel like I beat this drum too much and so much that you are confused No having a personal quiet time every day is not the end all be all of life It is not thank Jesus because I've never pulled that off seven days in a row But you do have to teach your children the Bible They've got to get it somewhere they need to get it from you You need to be feeding them and teaching them and training them Tim Keller talks about You know the The testimony that we hear a lot so much so that I've started Bet praying to the Lord that my children will never give it this old testimony of you know I grew up in the church going to the church every week, but never heard the gospel Great. That's good. It's always preachers kids to say that and They talks about that testimony and these kids who grow up in the church They reject the church they get converted later and he says, but they do great Once they're converted they're equipped for life They have wisdom. They don't make destructive choices. They they know how to live in community. They know how to thrive He says it's as if the parents were putting wood in the fireplace their whole life And finally the Lord has come and given the spark to start the fire and there's plenty of fuel there for the fire Parents you cannot regenerate your children you can't but you can stack wood in the fireplace You can have the fuel there for when the Lord brings the spark You have to feel fill the fireplace and you have to protect your children You have to protect your children from the world Yes, there is a lot of evil out there You have to be careful you have to be wise you have to be listening you have to be aware of what is going on You have to protect them from themselves because they have evil bound up in their hearts And you can't just let them be whatever they want to be It's like my neighbor's backyard. I've agreed to mode is front yard When his backyard he's just decided he's gonna let his backyard be whatever it wants to be And what it wants to be is a jungle of a mess If you decide you're gonna let your children be what they want to be what they want to be is a jungle Don't do that And you have to protect your children from you You have to point them to Jesus and not to your own approval
parents have to train their children and they'd have to uh Know their children and children let me talk to you
There's three there's three things I want you to know The first is this and this one may sound hard. I don't know what your weeks been like, but this one is true Parents are on your side Proverbs 3-11 my son do not despise Lord's discipline or be wary of his reproof For the Lord reprudes whom he loves As a father of the son and whom he delights
Parents Children we are on your side. We want what for you what you want We want what you want You want a happy fulfilled Life with great and meaningful relationships and with accomplishment and purpose and important You want to do something that matters. Guess what We want all those things for you We really do But we've been around this block about 30 times more than you have And we know the roads you need to take to get there and more importantly We know the roads that absolutely will not get you there We know the roads that will not get you there And that's what our discipline is about. It is about Getting you to where you want to go We're on your side We're on your side and we love you and because we love you we hate to send this inside of you We hate to send this inside of you whoever spares the sun hate whoever spares the rod hates his son But he who loves him is diligent to discipline him
I know you don't trust our discipline. I know you don't but you have to remember Well, let me remind you of something that you can't remember There was a day when you really thought happiness was found in pooping in your diapers And we had to train you not to do that anymore We were right weren't we You need to trust us now The more we love you the more we hate the laziness we see inside of you The more we love you the more we hate the pride we see inside of you The more we hate the selfishness we see inside of you the more we hate
The arrogance we see inside of you The more we hate the liar that we see inside of you And we don't want that person inside of you to dominate you and we know him I know him Because he looks like me I recognize that smirk I know what's going on inside there I can't let him win I can't let him win So I want you on my side to pray and to work to Drive those people away So you can be what you want to be so you can be what God wants you to be We're on your side the more we love you the more we hate to send this inside of you And most importantly children all you children out here everyone who's ever been the children of parents Listen up do not idolize your parents Do not live for their approval and do not live to overwhelm their disapproval
You have got to make God your father You've got to receive his loving gracious well done You've got to believe that in Christ when God looks at you He says well done my good and faithful servant This is my beloved son and whom I'm well pleased If you don't then you will live enslaved to your perception of your parents Some of us wake up every morning looking at our watches to see what time we're getting out of bed Because we need to know whether we're getting out of bed at a time that my dad would approve of that slavery And Some of us live our lives Trying to show our dads that he was wrong and that slavery
We've got to find who we are We've got to believe who we are In Christ and let that allow us to love our parents To see them as friends on the same path to glory one day and let that heal us When when my boy when one of my sons was really young he had terrible trouble sleeping and he would have nightmares all the time And I remember very distinctly one night in our first house together Waking up and going it was kind of my turn to go hold him and I was holding my baby And he was crying and finally coming back to sleep and I was looking out the window And I remember thinking to myself how I wish the only thing in life you had to fear were dreams I wish the only thing you had to fear were nightmares, but there are very real things to fear And there are things that are going to hurt more worse than this And I started talking to the Lord about it because I didn't really understand why he was doing what he was doing That's the Lord What do you want me to do am I supposed to protect them from all that and he said no You're supposed to give him the gospel To equip him for that To show him that I love him and that will heal him from that You cannot protect your children from everything that's going to hurt them But you can give them the gospel to heal them from everything that does hurt them And that's more than enough It is more than enough