Training the Next Generation

Choir and thank you, Frank, for leading us this morning in Bruce's absence. If you have a copy of God's Word, I invite you this morning to turn with me to Proverbs chapter 22. We'll be in Proverbs 22 this morning, and while you're turning there, I just want to remind you that we are continuing our sermon series in the Proverbs Summer. In the Proverbs, we are looking at Federal Key sayings from this book. Proverbs is a book of wisdom literature.

God has given us books like this one, and Ecclesiastes and Job and Song of Solomon to give us a vision of the good life, to know how to live the good life. If you hear and take to heart the words of Proverbs, it does not necessarily mean that life will go exceptionally well, but it does mean you can flourish in whatever situation in life that God has placed you in. These words of wisdom provide helpful frameworks for ordering each aspect of our lives, from marital relationships to business dealings, to neighbor and friends, even the parent and child relationship that we'll be looking at this morning. Proverbs gives biblical insight to how we can chart a course for the good life which pleases God and works for our good. As Pastor Tim mentioned last week in his introduction to this series, these Proverbs are not necessarily promises, they're more like patterns.

It doesn't promise that everything will go as you follow it 100% of the time, but rather over the course of your life. If you take to heed the wisdom of Proverbs, you can expect to see fruit. And the same is true of our passage this morning in Proverbs 22:6. So with that in mind, I hope you found our passage for this morning. It's just one verse, so let's all read it along together.

It says, train up a child in the way he should go. Even when he is old, he will not depart from it. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we come to you this morning in the name of Jesus, thankful that you hear us. We ask that you would help us this morning as we seek to glean from your word.

Lord, your word is perfect. Your word is without error. It's perfectly able to make us wise unto salvation. So, Lord, as we gather for these brief moments this morning, I pray that you would work in the heart of every person here, including myself, that we would see you, God, for your goodness and the wisdom that you've provided for our lives. It's in Christ's name we pray.

Amen. All right. If I Got up here this morning and the first words out of my mouth were, indoctrination is good. I'd probably get a few raised eyebrows, right? The word indoctrination is not usually a word.

We have a positive connotation associated with it. We often have very negative interpretations of that word, indoctrination, and usually for good reason. We've all heard of horror stories of kids going off to college and they have a professor who's in an atheistic worldview, a very Darwinian worldview, progressive, very much a man of the age, who tries to indoctrinate his students with his or her values. That's often a very negative association we have with that word. Right.

But I'm going to submit to y' all this morning that you can see it as a neutral term because indoctrination really is everywhere. If you have the eyes to see if you've ever served our country, you've gone on a bus to some location to basic training. And, and what were those first few weeks like? You were being indoctrinated into the military's way of doing things, their way of giving orders, their way of carrying about their duties. If you've ever onboarded with a new company, you've been indoctrinated.

You've been through countless seminars which tell you all about the key values of that company you're working for, the things they seek to accomplish with their business. And the same is true in our lives. There's nowhere we can look where indoctrination isn't happening. So the question we have to ask is, are we going to do the right kind of indoctrination? And that's how this passage this morning speaks to us.

It tells us that we should train up a child, in a way he should go, and when that child is old, he will not depart from it. So our passage this morning tells us two essential elements to raising children as Christians. And that main truth this morning that we're looking at is Christian parents are to raise up their children by passing down the truth of the gospel. We want to be parents and families who are steeped in the truth of God's word and steeped in the wisdom of the Bible to pass down to our children. So our passage this morning tells us two ways to do that.

And the first one is this. Take the God given responsibility to instruct your child in the faith. Take your God given responsibility to instruct your child in the faith. This command here at the beginning of verse six is clear. Train up a child.

It's Clear in its meaning, children should be brought up with biblical instruction. We almost intuitively know this to be true. But there's an element of this command that's been looked over in the context of many churches and families. It is primarily the parents responsibility to train up the children. God has given us as parents the divine and noble task of caring not only for the physical needs of our children, but but also the spiritual ones.

From the earliest pages of the Bible, God has clearly communicated this responsibility that parents have in raising their children. Turn with me for a few minutes over to Deuteronomy chapter 6 and we'll see how this command has been given to the people of God. Ever since the very earliest of ages in the history of God's people, God has always designed this to be the case. It's not just something novel that some ministry experts or leaders cooked up in a think tank one day, but rather it's the way that God has always planned it to be. So look with me In Deuteronomy chapter 6, in verses 4 through 7, it says, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. These well known verses come from the book of Deuteronomy where Moses is giving a speech to the congregation of Israel before they enter into the promised land. He is reminding of them that they must stay faithful to God's covenant and that they must follow God's ways if they are to be fruitful and flourish in the land.

According to these verses, how are God's people going to be instructed so that they can know how to stay faithful, how to be fruitful in the land, how they can obey God as God desires? It is through parents consistently teaching what God has revealed through His Word. There is a consistent element of that. Look there in verse seven, it says, you shall teach them diligently. When you think of the word diligence, what comes to mind?

Do you think of a man in his tray just diligently working day after day to get that project done? Or maybe ladies, if you're into sewing, you have a project and you work diligently day after day to bring that blanket or whatever you're doing to completion. It's something continual and ongoing so it is with our children. It's a consistent and diligent thing that must be done. So to take responsibility, we as parents should be consistent in teaching our children about God.

Just to think about how this goes to play in the life of the church. It's not primarily the responsibility of the trained experts. Want to put that in air quotes? If you want to train the children, you know, we have staff members here, like Pastor Tim and myself and Katherine, who spend time with our young people, and we love it and we want to pour into them. But we also view that as a partnership with you, the parent, that we want to partner with you, the parent, to see your child walking with the Lord.

So rather, it's the parent's job to consistently do that day in and day out. You know, on a good week, I may spend four hours with your students, but y' all are with them every day under the same roof. Don't neglect that awesome privilege to pour into the lives of your kids. So to train up our children. This passage from Deuteronomy also speaks not only to the need for consistency, it also tells us about what the content should be.

At this point in Israel's history, they were on the cusp of entering the promised Land. After the original generation of Israelites who were freed from Egypt had died due to their rebellion in the wilderness, a new generation had come along. And for them to remain faithful and flourish in the land. What did Moses tell them to do? He wants them to transmit, to pass along what God has revealed to them from one generation to.

For this young generation of Israelites, everything that God had passed on to them, that he had revealed to them can be summed up in basically two the promises that God made to people like Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Those promises that the nations would be blessed through Abraham's offspring, and also the Ten Commandments that God gave them at Sinai. It was a perfect revelation of God's law and what God expects of his people if they're going to remain faithful to their end of the covenant. So if they were faithful to the covenant, it says in Deuteronomy that God would prosper them in the land, that they would enjoy the vineyards and the fruit of the land and all the good that it has to offer. But if they were faithless to God, if they failed to keep his covenant, what would happen?

Says that they would be driven from the land, that they would go into exile, and that they would be ruled by foreign nations. And that is exactly what happened. Fast forward to the end of Joshua and listen to how it describes the people of God. It says in Joshua. Sorry, Judges 2:10, it says, and all that generation also were gathered to their fathers, and there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or.

Or the work that he had done for them, for Israel. They had failed collectively as parents to do the very thing that Moses had commanded them to do. They went into the promised land, they took conquest of it. They drove out most of the enemies. But this verse describes the very thing that they were supposed to do.

They didn't. They didn't pass down the faith. There arose a generation who did not know the Lord or for the work that he had done. They didn't know that it was ultimately God who redeemed them from slavery in Egypt. They didn't know it was God who called Abraham to himself when Abraham was a pagan living in the land of Mesopotamia.

They didn't know that God is ultimately the one who is faithful and saves his people. Had they done that, there could have been another generation to remain faithful in the land. But Israel falls into apostasy time and time again. In the Book of Judges. They're judged by different groups that come into the promised land under God's providential discipline.

So what does that mean for us today? Well, I want to submit to you based off of what we've read this morning from God's word. What God required of Israel then is not much different of what God requires of parents today. We take responsibility as parents when we teach our children the full scope of God's word. Unlike ancient Israel, we have the full revelation of God, the 66 books of the Bible, 39 of the old, the 27 of the new.

And it's all a glorious declaration of what God has done for us in Christ. We must tell our children about God, who he is as creator, how we are accountable to him because of that, how we rebelled against him and went our own way. And ultimately, we must communicate to them what God has done about that to send Jesus to die in our place and to be raised for our justification. To sum it up, we must tell our children the gospel. So practically, how can we, you and I, as parents and also grandparents, do that?

Well, if you're not already in a consistent pattern of talking about the things of God in your home, there's no better time to start than today. Read a verse and talk about it. Talk about it in its meaning. Talk about what God desires for you to believe from that verse, how we as Christians can obey that verse and just start today. It doesn't have to be something complex or drawn out.

It can just be as simple as reading a verse around the lunch table or the dinner table to.

And that's where we as a staff also want to partner with you. We want to partner with you in this great endeavor. We want to teach things that your children can come home and be excited about and tell you about, and your students tell you about what God is telling them through His Word. We also want to resource y'. All.

I ordered a few copies of these on behalf of the church. This is a really good family devotional, and there's a few copies here at the front. If you as a parent would like to grab a copy of your family. It's just simply your promises give me life. A family devotional guide about knowing and trusting God's promises.

We've been going through that in our own home, and it's just been incredibly rich. Just each day for 40 days, just reading one promise of God and reflecting on that as a family. If you have younger kids in the household, there's also a section in there each day for younger kids. So we just want to resource y' all to know God's Word in your home as a family. So we need to take responsibility.

It's not one we can just shrug off and leave for somebody else to do. Because as I mentioned at the beginning, there's nowhere in our culture where we can run from indoctrination. It's everywhere. So the question is, what kind of indoctrination are our kids going to receive? Is it going to be faithful and biblical, or is it going to be an alternative that this world has to offer so we can take responsibility?

But also we must trust God to change the heart of our children. And that's number two. We must trust God to change the heart of our children.

As mentioned earlier, these verses in Proverbs are more like patterns and promises. So consider that second half of the verse. It says, train up a child in the way he should go. Second half, even when he is old, he will not depart from it in a room this size. I'm sure there are parents who raised a child to know the Lord, parents who did everything right.

And yet that child is a prodigal and far from God. So the question is, if you have two children, one's faithful and good, the other is a prodigal child on a wayward path. The question is, why is that? If I did everything right, Lord, why is this child that I love so far and away from the past that I would have this child to go. At the end of the day, we are not in control of another person's heart, and that's why we ought to trust the Lord.

But the good news is that the Lord is just flip a page over back in the book of Proverbs and look at chapter 21, verse 1. It says, the king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord, and he turns it wherever he will. The same is true of children of believers. As believers, we must entrust them to God because God is the one who is in control. We can set before them the right path, trusting that if they go down it, it is ultimately because of the Lord.

So faithful parenting is a means that God uses to bring about his desired end, salvation and spiritual maturity in the life of a child. Let's look at an example of this from the Scriptures by considering the life of Timothy. When Paul begins his second letter to Timothy, the Apostle Paul points out the legacy of faith that shaped Timothy. Listen to the APostle Paul from 2 Timothy 1:5. He says, I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well.

For Timothy, previous generations played a crucial role in the faith he now possessed, and it was evident to others around him. These previous generations worked to see the faith passed down. But notice when Timothy's salvation is brought up again At a latter point in the book, notice what we could describe as the ultimate cause of his salvation. Paul again instructs Timothy in verses 14 through 15 of chapter 3. The apostle Paul writes, but as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

According to Paul, what created faith in Timothy's life? It was the sacred writings which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. So God works through faithful parenting? Yes, but it's ultimately the scriptures that contain the power to transform and change hearts. We see here both the means and the end in the lives of his people.

God ordains both the means and the ends. God ordains the things in your life that ultimately bring you to faith and the end in itself. Bait. Who is the person who led you to Christ? The Lord, in His providence and in his sovereignty, placed that person in your life so you could hear the gospel, so you could hear the good news of Salvation and repent and believe that person was the means to your salvation.

And for a vast majority of Christians, that person is the parent. That's a glorious and good thing. If you were to interview nine out of 10 Christians, or a group of 10 Christians, nine out of 10 would say, it was my parent who led me to the Lord. So parents, don't miss the value that you can play in shaping the faith in your child's heart. So living faith comes through one's belief in the gospel, and that gospel can be communicated by parents.

Here it's important that we make the distinction between a living and active faith and an implied faith. You know, we want our children to grow up to know the Lord. And if we're not careful, we can be too hasty in stamping a seal of approval on the legitimacy of their faith.

We could see that prodigal child and say, well, you know, they walked an aisle 20 years ago, they signed the card, got baptized, and did all the things. But the reality is, if that person hasn't made that faith their own, it's not their own. We can't say just because a person grew up in a Christian household that they will certainly be a Christian. That person has to have a living faith wrought by God in their own heart. We can't make that error if we're going to raise our children to know the Lord.

So what does it look like to trust God with the results? We can raise our children entrusting them to God and not our performance as parents. If you're hearing the sermon as a parent and realize that you're not faithful in raising your children in the Lord, don't hear this message as a word of condemnation.

Don't hear it as a scolding, but rather entrust them to God, because God can use whatever you bring to him today. So rather, our passage this morning is calling you first and foremost to embrace the Lord in all of his grace, for yourself to begin with, but also for your children, so God can use whatever amount of time you have left with your children to nurture them in the faith. Let's say you have an older child or a teenager and you realize, hey, I've really jacked things up as a parent, you know, I really haven't been raising them to know the Lord. That hasn't been on my top priority list. Don't hang your head with a sense of dread and guilt, but rather look to the Lord.

He can forgive you for all of your inconsistencies and all your failures. And the Lord by His Grace can use you for your child's good. The Gospel isn't a message of condemnation. It's one of freedom. Christ has set us free.

And if you're a parent, that applies to your parent parenting, just as it does any area, any other area of your life. So the same God who called you to himself is the same God who can call your children to himself. He is faithful and strong to save. And the way Christians have proclaimed that truth for centuries now, ever since the Lord Jesus instituted it is the Lord's Supper. The Lord's Supper is a reminder of what God has done for us in Christ Jesus.

An author I read recently put it this way. The Lord's Supper is less like visiting a cemetery and it's more like gathering at a feast. Because it's here at the Lord's table, where we are reminded that Christ shed his blood for us in our place and he broke his body for us. So after I pray to conclude this sermon, I would like to invite the deacons down and we'll observe the Lord's Supper. But just to sum up our message, we can train up our child and we can take responsibility, and we need to take responsibility.

But it's ultimately the Lord who turns hearts to himself, and we can trust the Lord with our children. So with that said, would you join me in prayer? Heavenly Father, thank you for your word. Lord, because of your word, we are reminded this morning that you have designed the family, Lord. It's an institution that you've made for the nurturing and the good of children.

So, Lord, we ask that you would use everyone here who's a parent or grandparent to raise their children in the faith. And Lord, we entrust our children to you. Lord, you are a faithful and good God. Lord, we ask that you would save any of our kids who are not yet believers in Christ. Lord, thank you for your word and for this reminder that we now get to see in the Lord's Supper.

It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen.