9-4-16 Sermon

These things are like two sides of a coin, being a tyrant or being a soft man. What's the dad do who's inclined to yell at his children and holler at them and just be hard on his children? If he's going to fight that sin, how does he fight it? Well, he just becomes a jolly dad who jokes around and laughs and never has any expectations of his kid because it's all about his relationship with them. So he becomes soft. Both of these things are dangerous. But you need to realize that soft men are more acceptable nowadays. And so you're going to feel, you have this sort of unspoken understanding inside of you that if you're going to fail in one direction, you fail in the direction of being a softy. But I want you to see that that's not compassion. And that's not godly parenting. That's not godly fatherhood. Earthly fathers are to communicate our heavenly father's compassion to their children. Just as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him.

So how is a man, how is a father to communicate godly compassion to his children? What does he have to know if that's ever to be possible? Well, the first thing he has to know is he has to know our Heavenly Father's compassion himself. So what does it mean to know? What attends knowing God's compassion for you? Well, it requires that you know who you are. It requires that you know what kind of a sinner you are. It requires that you know what kind of weaknesses you have and that you don't make excuse about them. You don't make, we don't joke about them. We see them as real failures in our fatherhood, real failures in our manhood. And we don't laugh them off. We don't laugh off when we yell, well, you know I didn't mean it. Our Heavenly Father doesn't laugh off our failures, does he? Does he laugh them off and go, oh, it's okay that you struggled and you sinned. That's okay. Don't worry about it. No.

That's not how he deals with our sin. And yet he's compassionate toward us. So what's his compassion look like if it's not overlooking our sin? It's acknowledging our sin. For everything that it is. Describing it in words that make us uncomfortable. He doesn't make light of it. He sees it for exactly what it is. And if you have any hope of raising godly children, if you want to do this work, the first thing that you have to do is you have to know yourself as a parent. You have to know yourself, especially as a father. And you have to know what kind of man you are. And then you have to be humble enough to accept that reality. You can't just acknowledge it. Yeah, I'm a real failure. Yeah, I really stink at this. Yeah, I'm weak. There's sort of this way men will double down on their failure. If you show them their failure, they'll either fight and they'll deny it, or they'll double down and say, yeah, and it's twice as bad.

I'm just so useless and so worthless and so bad, you just don't even know how awful it is. And that's not humility. When a man does that, when you do that, you're not being humble. You're not confessing your sins. You're not going to grow out of your failures if that's how you process them. You have to see them as our Father sees them. No more and no less. Don't make more out of your sin than God does. Certainly don't make less out of it than He does. See it for what it is. And then admit that you need help. Now you can't fix this on your own. You can't straighten out what you screwed up. A father has to know the compassion of God in his own life. If he has any hope of communicating it to his children, that's the first thing that must happen. He has to know who he is. And he has to know who God is. That's very difficult today. And one of the reasons it's difficult is because of who our fathers are. You think of your own dad and you think, well, he didn't communicate that to me. I didn't learn that from him.

And I want to tell you men, especially you men, you can't make an excuse of your past. You can't make an excuse of your past. Your fathers were sinners, and they failed in lots of ways, very real ways that had very real consequences in your life. And it doesn't make you incapable of being a godly father. It does make it hard. Those who have godly fathers who've taught them something that's appropriate, they do have a leg up. But it's not impossible for you. And if you'll humble yourself and if you'll do the work, then your children will have a leg up. And isn't that what you want for them? Don't you want them to know the compassion of our Heavenly Father? If you do, then you can't use your past as an excuse. You can't feel sorry for yourself. And that doesn't mean you didn't have difficulties and hardships that were very real and very painful and very awful. But you can't use your past as an excuse for your shortcomings.

Our Heavenly Father is perfectly compassionate toward us. And he's able to restore the years that the locusts have eaten. And he's able to be a father and to give you fathers in this world here to fill in where your dad failed. Particularly where he failed. And so our Heavenly Father is merciful to us. He doesn't just leave us to wallow and squirm in our weakness. He helps us. He gives us other men. To be fathers to us. And you say, well, I'm a grown man. And I say, you're a grown man and you still need fathers. I'm 34 and I still need dads. I still miss that I don't have one. And so our Heavenly Father is compassionate to us. And one of the ways he's compassionate to us is he gives us earthly fathers who aren't necessarily related to us by blood. He gives us other men to love us and to care for us. Just as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear them. Fathers, it's your work.

This is your work to communicate the compassion of God to your children. And you have to know his compassion if you're going to communicate it to your children. So how do fathers go about this work? How are they to be compassionate to their children? Well, the psalm tells us that he himself, speaking of the Lord, he knows our frame. He's mindful that we're but dust. So we need to open that up a little bit. What's it mean that we are but dust? Well, first, it's a reference to creation, right? We're his creation. What did he make Adam out of? He made him out of dust. And so the Lord remembers, he knows that we're but dust. What else do you know about dust? Is it a very good building material? No, it's not a very good building material, right? And the reason is that dust doesn't have any integrity to it. If you want to make something out of dust, what do kids do when they want to make something out of dust? Well, they add water, right? And they make mud. What happens when the water dries out?

Back to dust. What if you build a mud hut? Mud house out of it. What happens to it when all the water dries out of it? Cracks and crumbles and breaks. Right? You remember the Israelites when they were in Egypt. One of their jobs was to make bricks. And what did they have to add to the bricks? They had to put straw in the bricks. Now why did they have to put straw in the bricks? To provide integrity to the dust. You understand? So if you think, you go, well, people in poor countries, they build houses out of dirt, Pastor, and so you're wrong. And I say, that's right, they do. Go look at them. They have straw and sticks and all kinds of other stuff added into it because if they only made it out of dirt, it would fail. This is dust. So dust is easily broken. That's the nature of dust. What else do you know about dust? Do you ever try to sweep up dust? Wouldn't you rather vacuum it up?

Why? Because when you sweep dust, what happens with dust? You start sweeping. You had to sweep this whole room, you know, and it was just covered in this really thin layer of dust, and it didn't have carpet. You could spend a week sweeping this floor and still have dust on the floor. And the reason is as soon as you start sweeping the dust, you start kicking it up, right? And so you sweep, and at the end you've got a pile over near the door, and you turn around and you look back, and there's all the dust that got kicked up. So when you sweep up dust, what do you have to do? Well, you put down sweeping compound, which is basically like damp kitty litter or something. The dust sticks to it. So what do we learn regarding dust in this manner? What do you learn about it? Well, you learn that it has to be handled gently. Even if you get in there with sweeping compound, you just start sweeping, sweeping, sweeping, you're still going to kick up a bunch of dust and make a mess, right? And so when you sweep up dust, do you sweep it up quickly or slowly? Slowly. Sweep it up slowly. Because dust has to be handled gently.

And if you try to handle it too quickly and too roughly, you'll just make a mess of it. You won't clean it up. You think, when people had dirt floors, how did they sweep their floors? Do you think they came in and swept them real fast? No, they had to carefully sweep them because they were just going to kick up a bunch of dust on all their stuff. They were careful about how they swept their floors because this is what dust is like. So if this is what dust is like, this is what we're like. Because the Lord says he knows our frame, he knows that we are but dust. So this is how fragile.

and how gently we have to be handled. And I don't mean our kids first. I mean you and me. I mean this is how the Lord handles us. He handles us like we're dust. And the funny thing is when he handles us like we're dust, what does it feel like to you? Do you feel like you're being handled with kid gloves by the Lord? No. No, you don't. And yet he handles us. He's mindful of our frame. He knows that we're but dust and he handles us. And so here's this funny thing. He handles us like dust, but it doesn't feel like we're being handled like dust. So God must be a tyrant, because he's being mean to us and hard on us. And that he calls it compassion. When you try to mesh together the fact that you're dust, and you're weak, and you're frail, and you're easily broken, and you have to be handled gently, and then you compare it to how God's dealt with you in your life, and you go, these things don't seem to fit together. And I say, no, in those things we find the beginning.

of compassion. You find the beginning of compassion in knowing that the Lord could be so much more hard on you than he is. So much more hard on you. And I don't know how to explain it to you that the Lord could push you, he could break you, he could destroy you. In the blink of an eye, he could. And yet you have life and breath in every good thing that you have because he's mindful of your frame. Things could be so much more difficult and harder for you. And rightfully so. It wouldn't be an exaggeration of the Lord to burden you more, way, way more than you are. And yet he's compassionate to you and he doesn't deal with you that way. So if we're to raise our children, the first thing we have to know is you as a parent could easily be way, way, way harder on your kids.

Than you are. And so when you're tempted to be way, way, way harder on them. I've told them no. I told them to stop. I told them to be quiet. And they're not listening when I'm being nice. And so I'm not going to be nice. I'm going to double up the intensity. You don't know their frame. You're not acknowledging their frame. Now does that mean that they should never feel any expectation from their father? No. Kids should know what their fathers expect of them. A good father does tell his children what they expect of him. Does God not tell us what he expects of us? Oh yeah, he tells us, and he reminds us, and he shows us that when we do foolish things, it doesn't go well. We know what our father expects of us, and we feel some responsibility, some pressure. And yet, just think about a father in relationship to his son, just in terms of size. Let's say a man, He's 150 pounds, okay? And he has a six-month-old. How much do six-month-olds weigh on average? Yeah, 15 pounds, okay? So dad is 10 times as big as this little baby that's crying, screaming, fussing, whatever he's doing, okay? Dad's hand goes from the top of the diaper to the nape of the neck, okay, in terms of comparison. This is how much bigger dad is.

How should dad handle this child teaching them to stop screaming, for instance? He's going to have to be really tender, isn't he? Really, really compassionate because he's so much bigger and more powerful than the child, right? But that's not what fathers are inclined to do. They're inclined to take their strength and be oppressive to their children and to force their will on them. And that works for a while. Well, it kind of works for a while. until the ratio of size starts to even out a little bit more, you can force your will on your children. Even a small man can force his will on his little children. He can make them do things. Moms, you do it too. You're bigger than them. You're stronger than them. You can physically move them, stop them, prevent them from doing whatever they're doing for a while. For moms, that stops usually, what, six, seven, eight years old, depending on the child.

It gets awful hard. A kid starts running away. A kid starts kicking their feet. A kid starts pushing mom. Mom's not quite strong enough to hold on anymore. A dad might make it until 12 or 13, until puberty. Canaan, would you go see where Mike is at? Thank you. And so what's a father to do? Is he supposed to hope that he can put enough pressure on the child when he's young so that by the time he's older, the kid is so scared they won't ever cross him? I can tell you a lot of guys do it. A lot of men do it because that's what being a man is. It's leadership. It's having expectation. It's pushing. I can tell you that fathers are warned against exasperating their children. They're warned against pushing them until they break. Repeatedly in Scripture, fathers are told to be tender with their children, to be kind with them, to discipline them, but to be kind toward them because they're so much stronger. It's just one consideration. Dads are so much bigger than their kids.

So take an example. What am I supposed to do with Karis who's crying? Now, I'm not 150 pounds, right? I'm more than that. And she's 16 or 17 pounds. So let's say I'm 20 times her size and she's screaming. What's compassion look like? Does compassion look like yelling at her? No, that's not it. Okay. Does compassion look like ignoring the fact that she's screaming? You sure? You sure? What if I ignore it until I can't handle it anymore and then I yell? No. Am I the only one who does this, though? Well, I'm so much bigger and stronger, I wouldn't want to overwhelm my daughter, and so I'm just going to let my wife handle it. Honey, make the baby stop crying. Is that the way I should do? Where have I been compassionate to my daughter? Have I been compassionate to her at all?

In yelling at her? No. In ignoring it? No. In telling my wife to take care of it? No. Nowhere have I been compassionate to my child. Nowhere have I communicated anything to my child about the true nature of God's kindness. All I've done is withdrawn myself. Right? Until I can't take it anymore and it's 3 a.m. Then I engage. Then I'm there. And compassionate, don't you know? Except not. Now, I will tell you that that's been the temptation all week, and by God's grace, I haven't lost my temper with my daughter. But she cries in a way that my boys don't have. I don't ever remember them crying. The sound of her voice is just different. It took me three or four kids to be able to handle boy crying, and now we've got girl crying, and it's very different to my ears. And by God's grace, I've fought against it, and I haven't lost my temper. And I was angry. And who was I angry at? I was angry at Karis. I was angry at Vanessa.

Why don't you teach that, you know, I'm thinking, why don't you teach that girl not to scream? This is my thoughts yesterday. And so what I said to Vanessa last night, I knew better than to say, I knew that I needed to fight and to deal with my sin. And I went to my wife last night and I said, honey, we need to teach Karis not to scream. I know that she's sick and I know that she's teething, but I want us to teach her, us to teach her, not you to teach her, I want us to teach her not to scream. And then we had a conversation about it and we talked about it. And it was the beginning of me having compassion on my daughter, which was joining with my wife and saying, I'm having a real hard time. When I tell her, you know, I've really been struggling to be compassionate all week with the kids. They're just more irritating to me than they normally are. And the screaming. And it's like, you know, I've got two kids here. The rest of them are sick. And so they're sick, so they're not sleeping at night. And they've got sore throats and they're cranky and they're crying. And this is my house last week.

And I'm to be compassionate. And it's hard. And so the first thing I did was go to my wife and say, Honey, I'm really struggling. And I know they're little people. And I need your help. But we need to teach them to stop crying. We can't wait until they get better to teach them to stop screaming. They've got to stop. We've got to teach them now. And we're going to do it tenderly. I'm not going to yell at the baby. You're not going to ignore the baby. We have to work on it. So what's all that motivated by? Well, it's motivated by me knowing my child's frame, knowing that she's just a little baby, and that she's worthy of my love and my care and my attention, not just when she's smiling at me, but when she's screaming at 2 a.m. You start to see some of what compassion looks like. Compassion doesn't look like, go put her in her room and close the door and turn on the fan so I can get some sleep. Compassion is bearing with her weakness.

In the time I've got left, I want to talk about general weaknesses of children and specific weaknesses of children. What does it mean? What I'm doing is describing their frame to you. This is what you have to know about kids, start of what you have to know about kids, if you're going to be compassionate with them. The first thing is your children aren't little adults. Even your 16-year-olds, not a little adult. They do not think the way you do. They do not process the world the way you do. And it's only more punctuated and accentuated the younger they are. They don't talk or communicate like you. They see the world differently. You know, I was this last week at my house, we had a pipe burst. So I had to fix it. And so my Joseph, who's nine, and who's pretty handy and likes tools, has his own tools. I sent him to the garage and I said, honey, I need you to get me my crescent wrench. And I've shown him what a crescent wrench is before.

Some of you know what a crescent wrench is, some of you don't, that's fine. But I sent him to the garage and he came back with a pair of pliers, a pair of slip joint pliers. No, honey, those are not, that's not what I want. I said, I want the thing that's got the little, it's got the little rolly thing in it to open and close. And he goes, well, I thought that was a pipe wrench. And I said, well, no, it's a crescent wrench. So he goes back to the garage and what's he come back with? He comes back with a pipe wrench. He knows what a pipe wrench is.

No, honey, that's not the right thing. Come with me. I'm going to show you what a crescent wrench is. I've told you already what a crescent wrench is. This is not it. This is not it. This is what it is. Do you see the difference? You wouldn't like that, would you, Jody? That's very close to how I talked to him because I was irritated. She's sitting here going, she's being overwhelmed. Okay? But he's nine. You're grown. You're overwhelmed. So he's overwhelmed, right? He's going, oh, okay, I will never forget what a crescent wrench is again. Now, I did that on purpose, right? Because I thought that's how to communicate to him what a crescent wrench was. And as I was doing it, I knew it was a failure. You know, it's just that little rolly thing on it. Well, pipe wrenches have a little rolly thing on them too. Kids' brains work differently than yours are. He doesn't distinguish in his mind the different kinds of little rolly things on the different types of wrenches.

And so my ability to explain to him what a crescent wrench is, you know, I didn't do that work. Think of it this way. Try to, you know, what is a noun? What's the definition of a noun? A noun is what? Person, place, or thing. That's right. Right. Okay. So what's a pronoun? Huh? A pronoun. What's a pronoun? Abram? Yeah, it's a specific type of noun, right, that generally has to do with what? People. Generally, it's a title or a name. Okay, that's a pronoun. We capitalize them most of the time, right? Huh? I'm sorry. You're right. He, she, I. Okay, I'm sorry. You're right. I'm sorry. See, here we go. Now, here I am getting an English lesson in the middle of the sermon, right? Now consider trying to explain what a noun is to a seven-year-old.

What point of reference does a seven-year-old have for what a noun is? None. How good do you think they are at spelling the word noun? They have no idea. You say, it's a person, place, or thing. And they go, okay. Can you give me an example of a noun? No. No, that didn't work. No is not a noun. And so consider trying to explain to a kid what a noun is. If you've ever had to teach a child something like that, they have no point of reference for it. You realize how much work it is. To teach them just some little thing. And what you're doing is teaching them one little piece of what the world is like. Here's what a noun is. Here's what a pronoun, a proper noun, an adverb, a verb, right? There's all this, you know, my son's learning prepositions right now, one of them. And they're having to learn all this stuff. So when you come to them and you go, honey, this and this and this and that and the other thing, they're overwhelmed. And they don't know what in the world you're talking about. Because you're not dealing with them according to their frame.

Is it my nine-year-old's fault that he doesn't know what a crescent wrench is? No, not really. I've shown him what one is before. I've said, honey, this is a crescent wrench. But it's not his fault. I've never sat down and said, here's a crescent wrench. Here are the three specific characteristics of a crescent wrench. Here's a pipe wrench. Here's what's different about a pipe wrench. Here's what it's for. Here's what this is for. I've never done any of that. I've just expected him to pick up along the way when there's, you know, here's a crescent wrench. Okay, here's a crescent wrench. And I expect him to just...

Keep it forever. So we get frustrated with our kids when they don't get it. And the reason we get frustrated is because we're not mindful of their frame. Have you ever thought about how simple... If you had to write a summary, here's the gospel. Could you do it in a paragraph? Just a summary. Just the pure nectar of it. Could you explain it in a couple of sentences? You could. You could. Have you ever wondered why the Bible is so long? Why there are so many examples? Why there are so many illustrations and so many pictures and so many people and so much reiteration? To explain something that really could be said very simply. The reason is that God gives us multitudes of examples to teach us, to get to us, to give us some point of reference for who he is and what we're to be like.

He could have just said, if you sin, you're going to die. And then he could have come back later and said, well, actually, my son's going to die in your place so that you can come to heaven and be with me. But he gives us all kinds of examples and all kinds of things, and they mean different things to us. Some of them, we connect with some of the stuff. Some of you, I talk about a crescent wrench, and you're like, I don't know what a crescent wrench is. Then I talk about a pronoun, and it's obvious that I don't know anything about pronouns, but some of you do.

And so I use different examples to try to communicate the point to you. And God does the same thing in the scripture. He gives us all kinds of examples. All with the purpose of helping us to understand that thing that we struggle to grasp. And this is the work of a father. This is the work of a parent. They're to give their kids help. They're to accommodate their kids' weakness in learning to understand things that they don't get naturally. They didn't come out knowing this stuff. You know, their brains aren't like little time-release capsules that just over time they just kind of grow in their knowledge. We have to put things into them, and we have to put things into them according to their frame. And so your children aren't little adults. They don't think like you, talk like you, communicate like you. They don't see the world like you do. They don't have the experiences that you do. Their frame is much smaller. Those are the general weaknesses of children. Specific weaknesses.

A child is a category, and it has lots of things in it. Children are different. Consider, for a second, the autism spectrum. So on one end of the autism spectrum, you've got Asperger's. And people who have Asperger's, depending on how bad it is, you may not even notice that they have it. But they're on the autism spectrum. Well, you go all the way to the other end of the autism spectrum and you've got people who are nonverbal, who can't communicate in any way, and they can't take care of themselves. And they're never going to be able to. And this is the spectrum. And it's all titled, they're all on the autism spectrum. Well, children are similar. Children are different. It's not just, I have a child. No, you have a specific child. Or you have two specific children. And they have similarities and they have differences.

God doesn't make our children alike. We shouldn't expect them to all be alike. Boys and girls are different. Younger children are different than older children. Firstborns are different than thirdborns, generally. There are ways that we have of processing. Well, kids are different. But then when you come to your children and you think about raising them and training them up, you have to learn their frame, not just a child's frame, generic, but your child's frame. Just like if you had a... If you had a child with a disability, you wouldn't just have to know generally about autism. You'd have to know about your child's autism. What is your child like? What is he capable of? What is he incapable of? What can he grow into? How can we grow them into it? Another way to think about children is the thing, when you want your children, what do you want your children to become? You want them to become godly, right? This is what you want. And what you have to realize is this is not a,

This is not a one path to the pot of gold sort of thing with children. There's a goal that everyone should be working toward. And what you have to realize is that all of your children are going to come toward that goal from different directions. They're not even starting in the same place. They're not starting in the same place and taking different paths and getting there. They may well start, you know, this is the place and some of them are coming from here and some of them are coming from there. Some of them are boys and some of them are girls and some are type A and some are type B and some are...

and some have tempers and some of them won't talk and they have all kinds of stuff. They come from all over the map and they come toward this one thing that they would be godly. That's what we're raising them toward. And it's your job as parents to learn where they're at. And you can't just pick them up and say, you're not there, you're here. That doesn't work. For a while, they'll try. You think of kids in sports. Some kids are good at sports. And some kids aren't, right? Some kids are coordinated and some aren't. You go, okay, well, I see aptitude. I say, okay, have you ever met a kid that's good at sports but doesn't really like sports? I have. He's different than the kid that's good at sports and likes sports. And what do you do with a kid that doesn't like sports but is good at them? Should he play sports? Maybe. But is he going to be like your other child that's naturally good at them and also enjoys them?

No. The kid who's similarly good, they're both good at sports, but the one that doesn't like sports, maybe you should realize he doesn't like them. And maybe you should figure out what he does like, because sooner or later he's going to pursue what he does like. Maybe he's into art. Maybe he likes music. Maybe he likes to read and write. So every child is different. It's the job of a father to understand the uniqueness of the children that God's given to them. You have to know their specific frames. That's your job as parents. Everyone will have their drive-by opinion of your children. It's your job to know them. And as you grow in knowing them, you'll do a much better job of bringing them up because you'll understand, okay, I see where we're at. We're all trying to make it to the top of the mountain, and I've learned about where you're at and what your path is going to look like up to that mountain, up to the top, up to godliness. So what do I want you to do this week? Well, I want you to consider your children's weakness.

I want you to learn the difference between childishness and sinfulness. And what childishness looks like in all of your children. Because it looks different in different children, of different ages, with different giftings and different weaknesses. You need to learn the difference between childishness and foolishness. And what you should do this week, if you're actually going to do this work, what I want you to do is I want you to just write on a piece of paper, child's name, strengths, Just list three of them and talk about them with your spouse. Weaknesses. Write them down and list them. For each child, what are they? And then I want you to write down one difference. How is Louisa different than Genevieve? They have different strengths and they have different weaknesses. And how is she different? What makes her giggle? You say, I don't have any kids. I say, well, then use mine. Use Abram's.

Just pick a family that you know and decide. What are those kids' strengths and what are those kids' weaknesses? And if you realize that you've got a blank sheet of paper sitting in front of you, you realize you've got work to do. I'm not here to say, you're a big failure. You're going to be an awful parent. You are an awful parent and there's no hope. I say no. Start learning what you should put on that paper. Learn about your child. Learn their frame. Know their weakness. And then you'll understand how to be compassionate. You'll understand when you need to push and when you need to back off.

And you'll be a better parent. You'll be a better babysitter. You'll be a better aunt. You'll be a better cousin. You'll be a better brother and sister. These are the things that we want to do. We have to know their frame. What are they like? Next week we're going to move into teaching them. But it's very important. It's not a one size fits all. We've got to know who they are so we know how to teach each one of them. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for giving us children and not just populating the earth by yourself. We thank you for the the gift that they are. We thank you for the growth that they bring into our lives. And we pray, Father, that you would give us insight and knowledge into each of our children and help us to know them intimately, as you know us, and help us to care for them and to bring them up in the Lord with compassion, with true godly compassion. Father, we pray that you give us self-control and keep us from despising their weakness.

For you don't despise us, Father, and so help us not to despise them. And we are weak in your sight just as they are in ours. Father, help us to love them and to care for them and to train them. And we pray, Father, that you'd pour the water of your Spirit on our efforts and that you would cause them to grow in faith and in love and in holiness. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.