Train Up a Child

we are in the middle of a sermon series on parenting. We're right in the middle of it. This is week five. And we're sort of in transition. The first four weeks were meant to, I was dealing with your will quite a bit, trying to get you to see the things that God requires of parents in the raising of their children. And that it's not something that we make up or we do on our own. It's not something that, We're not reinventing the wheel here, especially as Christians. We have God's word, and we're to look to his word to give us instruction about how we're to raise our children. And so far I've been talking about how that's a difficult thing, that's a scary thing, it's hard. Because oftentimes what happens when you have kids is the needs of a child come into conflict with your desires. And they don't have to be here for very long for that to happen. A crying baby can do it.

As soon as you want to go to sleep and the baby's crying and you don't know why, we have a conflict. We have a problem. We have something that's not going as we thought it would. And so far I've been dealing with our will and trying to get us to see that the fears that we have about parenting or about our children and their souls and where they're going to be or how they're going to end up is not something that we're to bear alone. It's something that we're supposed to share with one another. both our burdens and the work. And it's something that we have to give ourselves to. Godly children don't just come out of nowhere. It takes real work on behalf of parents to produce godly children. It's not a flip of the coin. And so I've been trying to deal with you and getting you to see that you have real work to do. And it's a really tenuous thing for me to do because if you're a parent, you already feel a lot of pressure to do a good job and to raise good or godly children.

And so for me to say, you really need to do this work, is sort of like salt in the wound. I'm sort of taking something that you're uncomfortable about and saying, it really is important and you can't ignore it. And you can't assume that you're good at it. And you can't be defensive when people say, if someone says your child is selfish or whiny or lazy or what have you. It's sort of like the last couple of weeks, for me, it's felt like I've just been whacking a hornet's nest and just kind of been discouraging. And remember, what have I said about this sermon series every week when I tell you, okay, this is the fifth week in the sermon series, then what do I tell you you have to do? You have to listen to the whole thing, okay? And so I want you to know that that tension and even temptation to discouragement that you may have felt over the last couple of weeks, I knew you were feeling that.

I knew I was creating it. And it hasn't been my intention ever to just leave you feeling, well, that's nice, you just told me everything I do wrong and how bad I am at it. That's not been my intention to leave you there. But my intention has been to expose that so that now we can talk about how to, and what does godly parenting look like? Because telling you what we do wrong isn't the same as telling us what we should do instead. And so this week we're going to be moving into how to process those failures in our parenting that we've been talking about. Simply seeing our failures is useless to us if we don't bring those failures and those sins to the cross of Jesus Christ and submit them to his blood to be forgiven. And so being a parent is not something that you do apart from the blood of Jesus Christ. It's something that has to be covered in the blood of Jesus Christ. And so the goal of this morning's sermon is for you to find encouragement and strength to do your work as parents. Would you please stand?

for the reading of God's word from Proverbs 22, verse 6. This is the word of the Lord, and it's eternally true. Train up a child in the way he should go, and even when he is old, he will not depart from it. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. So this is a short text, right? It's just sort of one of these one-line Proverbs, and it's pretty straightforward. It's not hard to understand. If you had to summarize this, in your own words, you'd say, well, this passage tells us that the things we teach our children will be with them their whole lives. It doesn't say, if you teach your children, those things will be with them. It says, the things you teach your children, the things you give them, they'll be with them their whole life. So the question is, at the very beginning, as a parent, having children, how does that sit with you? Is that encouraging, or does that create peace and joy and a breath of fresh air, or does it create pressure?

It creates pressure in the Hess household. Does it create pressure in anyone else's household? It does in my house. It does in the Lee house, okay? Carrillo's house, at least with Marianne. You're smiling about it, and she's going, yeah, yeah, pressure. And so how in the world, I say, well, I want you to be encouraged, and I want you to be strengthened, and this is the text. Train up a child in the way in which you should go, and all of a sudden you're going, but I just feel more pressure. I want to address that tension. without denying the reality of the pressure that parents feel. It's unavoidable, guys. You just can't get away from it. God's given you these little people to take care of, and you can't get away from that responsibility. It's real. But it's not hopeless. And so I want to start by talking about the first half of the verse. Train up a child in the way in which you should go. The first thing to say about it is that you will train up your child. You will train them. You're always training them. It's not something that you decide to do.

The fact that you live and the fact that you talk to them, the fact that they exist means they're learning from you. Children learn from their fathers that leave the home. They learn from them. You understand? They learn from them. They're being trained by their father's absence. And so the reality of training is unavoidable. And you say, yeah, I know. That's what makes me feel so much tension. I can't get away from it. If I could just decide and write on my calendar from 2 to 4 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I'm going to train my child in the way in which he would go. You'd say, that'd be great, because I could prepare for it, and I could have a curriculum set up for it, and I could anticipate their questions, and I could give them this really good training. But that's not how training works. Training happens because they exist, whether you're here or whether you're not. It happens all the time.

And so we have to realize that and not try to avoid it. We can't believe a lie that, well, we only train them intentionally. We don't. They watch everything you do. They learn from everything you do, good, bad, or otherwise. They learn sin. They learn righteousness. They learn how to sit in a chair from watching you. You're training them. And so the first thing I want you to realize about training is that it's proactive. It's active. It's not responsive. It's not like, oh, I see a problem here. I'm going to come train you on how to not do that again. No, training is proactive. You're ahead of the failure. It's like practice. What sorts of things do you practice? You practice sports. You practice playing an instrument. Homework is practice. If you want to learn how to do any of these things, You have to be trained in it. And the same is true of our parenting. The goal of training is to move from incompetence to competence and then on to proficiency. So some of you guys work for Dan, and I've talked to Dan about the training program that he has at his company. And Dan, how long does it take for a man to move from incompetence to competence generally?

Competence, not proficiency, just like you're not losing money by having them there. I thought you meant said six months. That's what you've always told me before. Oh, that's right. Welcome to Dan George. His expectation is six months. The reality is three years. And all of his employees are sitting here thinking, well, I've only worked here for two years. Well, Dan thinks you're incompetent. Okay, so three years. How much longer does it take for them to become proficient? Okay. And so that's a long time, isn't it? Have you guys ever worked a job where it just, like Dan's frustrated because, well, I don't know if frustrated is the right word, but it's hard for him to realize that it takes that much investment into an employee before he starts to see a real return on it. Do you think his employees feel that tension? Oh yeah, they feel that tension. They feel their failures. They feel that they're not doing what's expected of them, what's required of them.

And so in that context, Dan teaches them. He trains them. He sends them to school. He works with them. He's always trying to get ahead of them. He doesn't just say, oh, here are your tools. Go wire a house. He says, no, this is how we wire houses, and this is why we do this, and this is why we do that. And he knows. You know you're talking over their heads at the beginning, right? He knows that it's just information overload. And that's sort of the goal. It's just to get them to realize they don't know how to do the job. And then he works with them, and he works with them, and he works with them, and he teaches them, and he's training them. And he doesn't start filling out disciplinary forms two weeks into it when they're screwing stuff up and he's getting callbacks. He's training them. He's proactive in doing this work. The same thing is true, you think of a football team. When I was in high school, we had weeks of practice before our first game. We had weeks of practice. You have to learn the schemes, you have to learn the positions, you have to learn all of this stuff.

And the coaches are there every day teaching you proactively, this is what you need to do, this is where you need to go, this is how we do this. It's proactive. They don't just field the team and say, here's your uniforms, go ahead and try, and then everyone gets out there and just falls all over the place, and then they come back and go, what's wrong with you? Why didn't you do it like this? That's not training. Throwing someone in, you know, sink or swim has its place, but it's not common. It should not be how we view our children. It shouldn't be, oh, well, Hope you make it in life. You'll have to figure everything out the hard way. You shouldn't want your children to figure things out the hard way. That shouldn't be your parenting method. Instead, you should train them proactively. You should be in there. You should be explaining to them the stuff that's coming. If you think of going on a road trip and you're telling, we're going from here, we're going to San Francisco. How long is that drive going to take? It's going to take a long time.

And what would you do with little kids? Well, you'd tell them about why Kansas, what's in Missouri, and what's in Kansas, and how cool Colorado is. You're getting ahead of them in the trip, and you're preparing them, right? There's going to be these small, round mountains with trees all over them. And then there's going to be about 10 hours of just pancake flat. And then there's going to be these really cool mountains that look different than those other mountains. And then there's going to be these plateaus, and there's not going to be anything green. It's going to be hot. And everything's going to be red. And you're preparing them. You're teaching them. And by doing all this, you're saying it's going to be a long trip. You're getting ahead of them and you're saying this is what's coming up. This is what life's going to be like. And if you'll prep your kids for a trip or if an employer will prep his employees for work, then we ought to do the same thing with our children. We get in front of what's coming in their life and we prepare them for it. We don't wait until they're right in the middle of it.

to start talking to them about it. We prepare them ahead of time. And that's the burden of training a child. We say, that's why it's so overwhelming. Because what you're telling me is that what God requires of me is that I teach my children everything. And I say, well, you can't teach them everything, but you should be teaching them always. Always, always teaching them. You are always, always teaching them. So you should think, what am I teaching them? What does it teach them? Consider a dad that works a lot. He works 60 hours a week. He works 70 hours a week. What does he hope he's teaching his children? He hopes he's teaching them hard work and sacrifice, right? Because he's doing that. But what is he really teaching his children if he comes home and just wants to sit in front of the TV? Is he teaching them hard work and sacrifice? No. He's not teaching them that. He's teaching them selfishness and laziness.

He's teaching them that whatever's on the television is more important than they are. You're not significant. You're not what life's about. So what are you teaching your kids when they want to show you their creation and you're on your phone on Facebook? You're teaching them the important stuff's on your phone, right? Can it wait? Does it wait? You're training your children. What are you training them in? Another difficult thought. When someone becomes a parent, one of the first things they think about is they think about their parents. When you get married, you think about your point of reference as your parents' marriage or lack of marriage. Or you think about, with regard to children, you think about your own childhood. And what does almost every child say? I'm not going to do it like my parents did it. I'm not going to do what they did. Because here's all the failures that they did. And I'm not going to repeat those things. And yet, aren't you like your parents?

If we're just honest for a minute and we try to remove the pressure, can we all admit that we're like our parents? Okay, so did they train you? Yeah, they did. Whether it was good things or bad things is another question, but the fact that you learned most of what you know from them is undeniable. And we say, well, I'm not going to do what my parents did. I'm not going to be like them. And the first thing you have to realize is you're similar to them. And simply saying, despising them and saying, well, I'm not going to be like them, is not sufficient. It's also dishonoring to your parents. Why is it dishonoring to your parents? Well, because when you think of your parents, children are always inclined to think of their parents' failures. And parents all have them. There's no perfect parents. None of us had perfect parents. None of us are perfect parents. But I'll tell you that your parents, in addition to teaching you those bad things,

also taught you some good things. They actually did. They didn't have to be Christians for that to be true either. And so when you say, I'm not going to be like my parents, you're dishonoring your own parents and you're setting yourself up for failure because you're refusing to see the good things that they gave you that you ought to give to your children. After all, this verse is true. Think of this verse in terms of your parents. Your parents trained you up in the way in which you should go and lo and behold, you haven't departed from it. You're similar to them, right? So this is true of you when you were a child. It will be true of your children. And so we are like our parents. And it causes a lot of anxiety for us, for both men and for women. Moms and dads, this is universal. We feel this. I'd say generally that women are more inclined to talk about it than men, about their fears with their parenting. Men, we just kind of clam up and just kind of, everything will be fine and it's all right.

Every once in a while, women are more vulnerable and their true feelings come out. But within our culture and sort of the leveling between men and women, where there's really no difference other than biology, what's happening is women don't talk about it either anymore. And they lose the support of other women in their mothering. And it's something that we as a church want to see recovered. And so as we talk about parenting and we work through it, having kids, one of the expectations is that we talk about it. amongst ourselves, that you don't raise your kids and figure it out by yourself. And you shouldn't be offended if someone else helps you train up your child by talking to you about what is good and what's bad in your home. And there's both in every home. And so don't dismiss it when people say you're doing a good job. And don't dismiss it when they say there's a weakness here and you need to address it. So when you think of your own parents, you think they trained you proactively by being there and existing.

And whether they're Christian or not, that's the case. And so what's the difference between Christian and non-Christian parenting then? If this is sort of a universal truth that we're trained by our parents, what's the difference then between Christian and non-Christian? You say, well, what they teach them. Christian parents teach their kids different things than non-Christian parents do. And I say, you're right. I mean, there's truth to that. But it's sort of a glancing blow. It's near the truth, but it's not right on the truth. on the truth. What's the difference between Christian and non-Christian parenting? The nugget, like the center of the truth, the nucleus of the truth, the difference, is how they process sin. That's the difference. It's not that Christian parents don't sin and non-Christian parents do. And that's what we're, we don't say it, but that's what we think, is Christian parents don't screw things up. And non-Christian parents do screw things up. And I say, no, parents screw things up.

Screw things up. The difference is how they handle it. Christian parents go to their children and they say, what I did was wrong. And it's not okay for me to do it. And it's not okay for you to do it. Because it doesn't honor Jesus. And so you can't, you may not repeat this. And I'm going to work not to repeat this. But that's very difficult. It seems like a simple thing to say. It's easy for me to say. But if you have kids, it's a really hard thing to say to them. We watch a lot of movies and we see the tension between children and parents. There's no expectation that children will like their parents in adulthood, in our society. They're just expected to just go off and just be by themselves and do their own thing. And then if you watch enough movies, you'll see that what's supposed to happen is there's supposed to be this big emotional release where in just 30 seconds, all of...

All of life's failures are supposed to be communicated in a look and in a glance and in a hug. I'm sorry, I failed you in all these ways. And the child says, it's okay, and I forgive you. But for one, that doesn't happen very often. And that in and of itself is a failure. Why would you leave 30 years, 40 years, 50 years of sins unaddressed as a parent? This is not what Christian parents do. They ought to make a habit of going to their children and saying, I sinned. This is how I sinned. This is what was wrong. I sinned against mommy. I sinned against you. I sinned against my employer. I sinned against my neighbor. Whoever you sinned against, it should be normal in your home that you go to them as a parent and you say, this is what I did. And it was wrong. And that's training them. That's training them. You can tell your children until you're blue in the face that they have to say they're sorry for their sins. When Billy hits Tommy, you tell Billy, you need to apologize to Tommy.

But if he never sees you say you're sorry when you sin, he will not say he's sorry when no one's telling him to. Because you've demonstrated that that's not what we do. And so your words have to match your actions, Mom and Dad. So what else about training? I said training's proactive. I want you to see that training is something that we do before the problem hits, before something goes wrong. And if we're honest as parents, we see that we fail in that. We aren't proactive in getting ahead of the curve, as it were. And yet our work is to get ahead of the curve. Our work is to anticipate what's coming. An example would be moms and dads. How are Mondays for you? What are Mondays like for those of you who have children? Sarah, what are Mondays like? She says, that's how Mondays are.

Why are Mondays like that? Well, they're that way because Sunday's long. You come to Sunday school and it's 9.30. And then you stay for church and then it's 10.30. And then church is over and it's 12, 12.30. You get home at 1. And how does that all sit with kids that take naps and eat lunch? They have an early breakfast. They have a late lunch. They miss their morning nap. They're made to sit still all day. Then they're... Some of your kids go to small group right after church. And so we're not even getting an afternoon of normal. We're getting more out of the normal. And then everyone's tired by the end of the day, and then Monday morning comes. And Mondays are hard. Now, who's more aware of that, mom or dad? Mom's more aware of that than dad is. Because mom's with those kids. And she's getting them all, you know, she's...

got them home or she's getting them off to school or whatever, she's the one getting snipped at in the evening by the child. Because dad gets up and he gets to go to work. And he doesn't know the goings on on Mondays. So what should you do? This is a tension that many of us feel if you have young kids. What are you supposed to do? Is Monday just supposed to be a miserable day? Bad kid, lost day, no expectations. No. You have to train your children. Mom and dad have to work together. They have to train them. They have to see that on Saturday, Sunday's coming and then Monday's coming. And you have to prepare for it. Dads, what do you expect Monday to be like in your house? What do you want it to be like? How will you accommodate it being like that on Sunday and on Saturday? How will you help your wife to keep herself sane?

on Monday mornings, you know, when the kids are crawling up the walls. Because that's what they do. You have to train them. You have to train them. And you have to anticipate that training. That it needs to come. You have to be in front of it. So you have to train up a child in the way in which you should go. And that's just one little example. You should teach your kids what you want them to do on Sundays. You should teach them, you know, in my house, we go to an evening small group. And so there's this, like, crunch time. where the kids have to relax but it's like by the time lunch is over at my house on a on a sunday it's two o'clock or so and we leave for small group at 4 30 so there's this two and a half hour window but it's past bedtime normal bed you know nap time and it's like and the kids fell asleep in the car on the way home and so they don't want to go back to sleep they want to play and then the older kids get to stay up but the younger kids don't and there's like all this tension

and pressure, and I'm saying, kids, you've got to sleep. You've got to relax. And we have to prepare in our house for our kids to take those naps because they'll have a hard time at small group, and Monday's going to be even worse. The Sundays they don't nap, Monday's even worse. And so we train our kids what we want them to do. We have expectations for them. We're in front of it. We have a quick lunch on Sunday. We do these things to accommodate our children, and we're training them what we expect of them. And you as parents should train them in what you expect of them. You should train them and say, I want you to think about this situation that way. They're on the playground. Some little kid pushes them. Some kid hits them. Brother takes their toy. How do you want them to process that? You don't have to wait until it happens to tell them how you want them to process it. Do you? Do you have to wait until the brother tears the head off the doll to tell him about tearing the heads off the dolls? No.

And so training your children is proactive all the time. Your kids talk like you. Do you notice that? They talk like you. We all kind of go, yeah, I noticed. So train them on how you want them to talk, how you want them to speak. It really is a sweet thing, actually, to see your kids being like you. When you see it, you think, well, they did just copy all the bad stuff. I see myself. When I look at my kids, I see myself. And that's true. Do you see anything good in them? Have you trained them to do anything good? I mean, no one wants to answer, no one wants to say, yes, I have. But you have. You have trained your children to do good things. You've also trained them to do bad things. But you have trained them to do good things. And it ought to be an encouragement to you to see that the good things that they've learned from you, or from your spouse. You ought to take encouragement from that.

But you have to open your eyes to see it. I love seeing in my kids, especially in Joseph, who's the oldest, I love seeing my wife in him. I see her sins. I see mine too. But I see her gifts in him. And it's the sweetest thing in the world. And you've got to see it. Because if all you see is the bad stuff, you'll just be discouraged and depressed. And I don't want you to be. God is faithful to us. And he gives us children. And he helps us with them. He doesn't just give us children to watch us fail miserably with them. He gives us children and then he helps us train them and raise them. Through his word, through the church, through our parents, through other parents, he helps us. Through his son, primarily through his son. He gives us help in raising our children. And so we're not left alone to do this work by ourselves. And so I can't...

nor do I want to change the text that says train up a child in the way in which he should go. I want you to recognize the responsibility of it, but I want you to see the privilege of it, not the burden of it. It's a privilege to be given apprentices, to learn from you. That's a privilege. So training is proactive. Training is a privilege. You're doing it all the time, Mom and Dad. So take every opportunity you've got. And when you fail, that's the best opportunity you've got. To teach them what it means to be a Christian. That's a gift given to you from God. To train them in that moment. What do they do when they sin? They're going to do what you do when you sin. More quickly than they're going to do what you tell them to do. And so as you invest in your children and as you pour into them, you realize that this is a... The things that you give to them are not just for them. Those things are for...

Their children, your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren, these things that we do bear fruit for generations. We're like our parents. You wouldn't be surprised to think that our parents are similar to their parents. And so if it works that way backwards, it works that way forwards. And we're in the middle of it. And I don't want that to be a depressing thought to you because as God changes you, you know, some of you guys are, third, fourth, fifth generation Christians. You can look back in your lineage and you can see Christian faith, godliness coming down through. Some of you are like me, first generation Christians. You don't have any of that behind you. And yet, you have the opportunity over time, as God has been at work in you, to see that changing. That's my hope as a parent with my kids. I don't have the heritage of five generations of godliness behind me.

Does that mean that I can't be a Christian father? No. But I do expect that my kids would be better fathers than I am, better husbands than I am. That's what I want. And then I want my grandkids to be even better than they were. And so I'm going to do my work with my kids now for the sake of my grandchildren. So training our children is generational. You have to take a long view. In 2 Timothy 2, 1 and 2, Paul writes to Timothy, who's a young pastor, He says, you therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. And one of the things that we see in this passage is we see that there's four generations of men. There's Paul giving to Timothy. And he's telling Timothy, you find other men, faithful men, to give the message of the gospel to that will be able to teach others. So four generations.

This is what progress is going to look like. This is what growth is going to look like. And the same is true of our parenting. The things that we do, the seeds that we plant, the things that we teach our children will bear fruit in generations to come. Even when he's old, he will not depart from it. The training of our children is generational. Another thing that should be said about it is parents don't ever stop training their children. They don't ever stop, not until they die. Even in death, children are learning from their parents. Children learn from their parents how to die and everything that comes before it. How do children learn to be faithful to their spouse? One of the biggest contributing factors is having a mom and dad that are faithful to one another. Do you know what age children are affected most negatively when their parents divorce? Anyone want to guess? Teenagers?

Yeah? Say again? Yeah. It's strangely high school into their early 20s. They're the ones who are the most negatively affected when parents divorce. Now, why would their parents be divorcing after 20-some years of marriage? Well, the parents reason to themselves, well, we've raised the kids. They're out of the house now. And we really don't like each other anyway, and we stayed together for the kids. And so parents that get divorced then actually do the most damage to their children. Why? Because, well, practically speaking, the children are left going, was my whole childhood a lie? What was true? Because when I left, my parents, you know, they're not together anymore. And so did those parents at that age, having finished raising their kids, were they still teaching their kids? Oh, absolutely they were. Absolutely they're still teaching their kids. So parents are always training their children. Do you adults not learn still from your parents?

by watching the choices they make, you still learn from them. You learn good, and you learn bad from them. Still. And so training is generational. And it's like, there's more and more pressure. So, not only is it about your kids, it's about your grandkids, and it's about your great-grandkids. And you're going, I don't want to do this. This is too much for me. This is how I feel. But I want us to see that that reaction, that I think is common, is based on an assumption that's caustic. And that assumption is that God's not going to help you. That you're alone in this work. And if you are alone in this work, then all of your fears are appropriate. But you're not alone in the work. And so your fears are not appropriate. Our parenting matters. It really does matter what we do. We have more influence, parents have more influence on their children than anyone else in the world.

Anyone else? This is what I tell people when they ask about children's ministry at our church. What do you have for kids? What do you do for kids? I say, we train parents. That's what we do. Do we do fun things for the kids? Yeah, the kids have fun outings and they do stuff like that. And I'm not saying we'll never have a youth group or anything like that. I'm not saying any of that. But I'm saying we're not incapable as a small young church of ministering to the children in our midst. Because what we do is we train the parents who have the most influence over those children. We teach them to have a good influence on their children. To teach them to be Christians. That's what we do. And that's the most valuable thing. And whatever else we add to our ministry to the children of the church, we won't ever forsake that. Because you as parents have more influence in shaping capacity with your children than anybody else does. The first sermon that I preached was on the blessing of children.

that God gives us children that are a gift from the Lord. And I want us to see the parallel between that and the parable of the talents. In the parable of the talents, what's the master do? Well, he gives money to his slaves, and then he leaves. And he expects them to turn a profit with the money he's given them. Couldn't he have required for them to use their own money? and turn a profit with their own money and then just tax them on that money. He could have, right? He could have said, I'm going to tax you on what you have already. And it's your job to use what you have to make me more money. But he didn't. The master gave them something and he said, I want you to work towards an increase with the seed money that I've given to you. And that's how children are. God gives us children and he wants us to see a, He wants us to see us turn a profit with them. He wants us to build them up, to give back to him something better than what he gave to us. So how is it that those slaves that turned a profit in the parable of the talents did it? Was there no risk involved? There was risk involved, right? This is investment, right? Whenever you put your money in the market, you're risking it. You might lose it. And so who actually in this parable

Who caused the increase with that money? The slaves or the master? The master did. The Lord controlled the market. He brought about an increase. And the same is true with our kids. He gives us kids and tells us to train them up in the way in which they should go. And when they're old, they won't depart from it. And then he meets with us in the work and he blesses the effort. He doesn't give us kids to watch us squalor around and fail and struggle and screw everything up. And then at the end of it say, You worthless slave. He gives us children and then he helps us with them. And so the responsibility really is a privilege. We ought to be encouraged by it. That God doesn't just give us kids to train and then just withdraw and say, and I'll be back. And I want what's mine. He gives us kids and he helps us raise them. Remember that I said the difference between a Christian parent and a non-Christian parent is how they process their own failures?

That that's really the center of the difference? The reason that that's the case is because Christians are the only people in the world, the only people in the world, who have a way to handle sin, to reconcile sin, to process. What happens when things go wrong? No one else in the world has a way of handling it. No other religion has a right way of handling what do you do when things go wrong. But Christians do. Christian parents know what to do with their sins. And they teach that to their children. There's a lot of things that pass for training your kids. It's natural that parents want to give good things to their children. They want to provide good education and good clothing and all of these good things. But really, when we think of training our kids, we always think about education. This is the thing. If my kids are going to be godly Christians, the thing that we have to give them is education. We have to give them the best education possible.

I'm not opposed at all to kids being educated. And well. I'm very glad for them to be educated well. But that is not the most important thing that you will give them as a parent. A pagan can give their kid, their child, a top-notch education. They can teach them to be smart as anybody else. And so that doesn't define your work as a parent to train them up and to make them successful in this world. That's not your primary job. It's perfectly fine for you to raise blue-collar children that make $50,000 a year at the high point if you teach them to love Jesus. And the way that you teach them to love Jesus is by showing them that you love Jesus. Children who grow up seeing their parents confessing their sins and asking God to forgive them for Jesus' sake are teaching their children the most important thing that they can. It's far more important for you to teach your child that than for you to teach them, to put them in all honors classes. Have them have their first year of college done by the time they get done with high school.

Because they were taking classes at the local university or online or whatever you have. I'm fine if you do that stuff. I'm not opposed to any of that. But if you neglect this other work, you're failing. And I don't want you to fail. I want you to know Jesus Christ, you parents, and I want you to communicate him to your kids. That's what I want you to train them to do. That's what it means to train up your child. If your parents won't ever admit they're wrong, ever admit they're sorry, ever admit they're failures, Don't learn that from them. Plenty of us grew up in homes like that. Mom and Dad never said they were sorry. Mom and Dad never said they were wrong, to each other or to you. I'm here to tell you that's not biblical. That's not Christian, and you may not do that with your children. You teach them to repent. You teach them to look to Jesus Christ. You show them what that looks like. There are three quick final things I want to say about training children. It's very easy to confuse training children.

to think that you're training your children if they're doing what you say. And I want you to know that that's not sufficient. It's not sufficient for your kids to simply do what you say. Should they do what you say? Yes. But more than that, when we think of children doing what we say, we of necessity think of little children. Because we don't expect older children to do what their parents say. And so we expect little children. You're going to do what they say. And I say, even when you have little children, you have to teach them to, Not just to do what they're told, but to trust you and to love you and to love what they're being told to do. And that's much harder to teach a child. So if you as a parent, when you get frustrated at work and you just look at your boss and you just go, what do you want me to do? Just tell me what you want me to do and I'll do it. You're teaching your child an awful lesson. Because you wouldn't want them to speak to you that. You wouldn't be satisfied as a parent if that's how you're... Dad, what do you want me to do? Listen, I want to go out tonight. What do I have to do so I can go out?

What parent's glad with that response from their child? At that point, the dad, he says, son, I want you to clean your room or not. I want you to not speak to me that way. I want you to love what I'm telling you to do. I want you to see the benefit in what I'm telling you to do. I want you to know that I love you and I'm not telling you to do this thing or that or the other to be miserable to you. I'm doing it because I'm training you to be a godly man. And I need you to do it. I don't simply want your conformity. I want your heart.

And so from a very young age, your goal as parents is not simply to train them in rules. Your goal is to train their hearts. There is not a rule for every situation. You have to train your children to think, what would honor Jesus Christ? And the answer is different for each of your child in different situations. You have to teach them to love Jesus. You can't simply teach them to do what they were told. The second thing about training your children, your children will sin during the process. And it seems like a really... duh thing to say. Your children will sin as you are training them. And the reason I say it is because parents get so embarrassed when their kids sin. And you may not sacrifice your children's souls for the sake of your reputation. You may not do it. You have to love your children. And when they sin, you have to love them. If you withdraw from them when they sin, you're teaching them a very awful lesson. And so when you're in the restaurant and they

let out a scream, and you shoot them that look like death's around the corner if you do that again, and then they do it, what do you care about? Do you care about the people in the booth next to you who are looking at you and thinking, boy, they don't know how to deal with their kids. Why did they bring that bad kid out here in public? Or do you care more about your child's soul? And are you going to engage with them in the restaurant, and everyone who's watching can just go away? Or they can watch or they can think whatever they want. That doesn't matter. Do you care more about what the strangers in the booth next to you think or do you care more about your child's soul? Your children will sin as you're training them and you may not be embarrassed of them. You need to love them when they sin. Don't only love them when they're doing what they should. Love them when they sin. The last thing I'll say to you parents, and this really is the truth, godly children are thankful for the effort that you invest in them. They're thankful for it.

They may not be immediately thankful for it, but raising children isn't a six-month or six-year process. It's the work of a lifetime. And if you think of your parents and you were to have a right view of what they did, the good things that they taught you, wouldn't you say you're thankful for what they taught you? Godly parents' children are thankful for the good things that their parents taught them. And I didn't grow up in a Christian home, and I've told my mom, on more than one occasion, that I'm thankful for the way that she raised me. And remember, I couldn't have told you the difference between the Old and New Testament when I was 21. And there are things I'm thankful for from my mom. And I've told her so. And I'm not strange. You think, well, my dad was this, or my mom was like that. And I say, yeah, but is that the whole story? Is that the whole story? Is that all they ever were? Did they teach you anything good? Are you thankful for them? You ought to be. You ought not despise your parents.

Because what are you going to teach your children if you despise your parents? You're going to teach them to despise you. If you don't want that, well then honor your own parents. Be thankful for them. And trust that your children will be thankful for you in time. And it's God's kindness that they come to you and they say thank you. Thank you for when they get married and you've fought them tooth and nail about dating and about purity and about curfews and all these things. But then they finally get to their wedding day and they made it their pure. Because you fought with, pushed them. Do you think on that day they'll be thankful? They'll be thankful to you for the rest of your life. They may not be thankful in the moment, but they will be thankful for you in the long haul. And you've got to be willing to wait for it as parents. You know, if you want to go to the orchard in May and pick apples, you're going to get some pretty nasty things in your mouth.

They're not ripe yet. They're not there. Raising kids is generational. It takes a long time, and you have to be willing to wait. And you have to trust God with them. You adult parents that don't even have kids in the home anymore, you have to trust God with them. When God works in our children, they do become thankful for our discipline and for our training. They gain eyes that see, and they see that you're not perfect, and they see that you tried. But the most important thing they see is that you love Jesus. And so if you haven't shown your kids that, if you haven't trained them in that, then that's your work. Take a break from school this week and train them in that. Tell them, here's who I am and here's what I'm like. I've never told you before, I need to tell you. Make that the thing you do. And it will be of eternal benefit to your children and to your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren. And so I want you to do that work. And I want you to trust God that he'll bless you in it. He's a good father and he doesn't give us work to do just to watch us fail at it.

He gives us work to do and then he gives us his Son and the Holy Spirit to help us do it. Because that's how he receives the most glory. He doesn't receive as much glory when he's disciplining people and casting them into hell as he does when he's saving people and giving them new life in Jesus. That's when he receives the most glory. And so he works in this world to that end. And he works through parents and their children to that end. And so have hope and have faith as you do this work. It's never too late. You never stop being a parent. So go ahead and be one. Be one that honors Christ. Teach your children to do the same. Father, you have given us a good gift in children. And it's overwhelming to us when we think of our own weaknesses and failures. But it's not hopeless when we think of you. You're helping us. You're blessing us. You're coming alongside of us and bearing with us in our weakness, forgiving our sins and teaching us as parents to obey. We thank you for giving us kids that see.

and that are not able to be lied to forever and have our sins hidden. We thank you that they do see us and they do know us. And we pray, Father, that they would know you as a result of knowing us. We pray that you would use us as parents to be the conduits of grace that bring them to the cross of your Son, Jesus Christ. It's in his name that we pray. Amen.