That They May Love Their Children

So today is Mother's Day. It's a time when we thank God for our mothers, for their love, and for the sacrifices that they've made in the past and that they continue to make for us, even as adults or young children. We honor our mothers as well as our wives because God honors them. Most of the work that mothers do is only seen by God, or only fully seen by God. Though they're husbands and children, Ought to work to see more and more of the work and the love and the sacrifice that they've made on our behalves. Our church, if you're regular here, is full of mothers. Many, many mothers. And the majority of them are new mothers. Young mothers. And so this morning I'm going to be focusing on the responsibility of you young mothers to learn how to mother from older mothers.

It's like a garnish to your life. You can do it if you want and you can do it however you want. But this is not God's disposition toward motherhood. He doesn't think so lightly of it. He doesn't consider it so insignificant. And so we shouldn't either. And so my hope is that God will strengthen those of us who are older to teach those of you who are younger and that he would help you who are younger to learn from those who are older. That you would trust them as you trust God to guide you and to teach you the things that you need to know.

so that you can raise your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and so that you'll give glory to God. And have occasion for it to be said of you later that your children sit around the table like olive branches and that you've been a fruitful vine. That's the goal, that's the aim. And it's a lifetime of mostly hidden work to the world, but not to God. Our text this morning is Titus 2, verses 3-5. Would you stand as we read the word of the Lord? This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. Older women, likewise, are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips, nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good, that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored. This is the word of the Lord.

You may be seated. So remember that as we work our way through our sermon this morning, that the goal is simply that older women would teach the younger women and that the younger women would be willing to learn from those older women. There's a lot going on in this passage. I don't intend to go through the whole thing word by word, but to focus on the phrase in verse 4 that says that the younger women would learn from the older women to love their children. I want to start by dealing with this word encourage. I think that this word might get us off on the wrong foot if we're not careful. This word here, encourage, is a word that doesn't show up anywhere else in the New Testament. Now, the word encourage does, but the Greek word behind it doesn't. It's an interesting word, and it doesn't mean what I think we would typically think of as encouragement. When we think of encouragement, we would think of...

A cheerleader, perhaps. Someone who's singing your praises, someone that's cheering you on, someone saying you can do it and you've done great and keep going. And there's a place for that. But that's not what this word means. Not exactly. What this word means is to admonish or more strictly to bring one to their senses or to help them balance out their perspective. And so the older women, it would not be out of line for us to say that the older women are to bring the younger women to their senses so that they might love their children, their husbands. That they might help bring into focus their work and their calling and their responsibilities. And so this word here, encourage, is not benign like cheerleading. It's not always happy. I remember when I was in high school and I played sports, we'd have cheerleaders and they would cheer. And I played on a bad football team.

And so usually by halftime, it wasn't a competitive game anymore, and there would be our cheerleaders cheering for their team that's down 35 points and has no hope. And you kind of wish they'd just be quiet. Like, it's okay, you can sit down. Because what was needed was not, you can do it. There was something else needed, and the cheerleaders weren't fit to do it. Perhaps our coaches were, but not our cheerleaders. So that's not what is in view here. This word encouragement means to instruct, to correct, to bring, to train, to bring clarity to. It's instructive. It's hierarchical. It's not an older woman saying, well, hey, you might think about, you know, you're doing a great job, but there's this one, like, it's not this very overly sensitive concern. It has in view the necessity of the younger women.

Being faithful. At the very end of this passage, it says that we're to do all of this. The older women are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips and all of this, so that they can teach the younger women, so that at the end, the word of God will not be dishonored. Both the women in this passage and the men in the passages surrounding it, this is the goal. That we would not dishonor the word of God. And it is possible to dishonor the word of God without setting out to dishonor the word of God. You can mean well and do poorly. You can try and fail. And the goal is not that you would try and be left without instruction and that that be the thing that causes your failure. And so this encouragement can be uncomfortable at times. And I think that reality that we're going to open up a little bit more is what makes this passage kind of difficult for us.

is that you know that when you're supposed to teach somebody something or you're responsible for their growth in some way, both sides can kind of bristle at it. That's what we're going to talk about this morning. I just want you to know that this word encouragement is not turning down the temperature on that sense that you have of this work. It is the older women that are supposed to do this work. Paul's writing this letter to Titus, a young pastor or elder perhaps, whom he's left behind at Crete. And he says in the beginning of the letter, I'm leaving you behind so that you can set things in order. And so what you have is Paul on a missionary journey, going through Crete, gathering a group of people, and then leaving to go somewhere else, but saying, hey Titus, stay behind and help them organize themselves. They're very young. They're untaught. There are false teachers there. Your job is to set things in order. Appoint elders.

silence those false teachers, preach the truth, and then we come to this passage about older women teaching younger women. And so we should understand this instruction here as a very foundational sort of thing in church life. That this is not a superfluous, take it if you want, leave it if you don't sort of requirement, but that this is something that's foundational, that should be in the DNA of churches. That the older women of the churches would be teaching the younger women to do their work of loving their husbands, their children, and the rest. And so this is our context. And so first, Paul starts off by talking about the older women. What are they supposed to be like? One of the things we learn here is that simply being old is not good enough. And by old, I don't mean to be derogatory or mean or rude or anything like that. I just mean to say that simply having gray hair is not enough.

kids that have gotten out of your house and reached the age of majority, doesn't qualify you to teach that younger women ought to be mindful of the type of older women they listen to. Those older women have a bar to meet, and that bar is that they be reverent in their behavior, that they not be malicious gossips or enslaved to wine, and that they teach what is good. That's the bar for the older women. And so it's older women who are... those things are true of who are to do the teaching. Sadly, there are many women who don't reach that bar who have no trouble talking. And that's one of the things that's warned against here, that they're not malicious gossips and that they teach what is good as opposed to what is bad. And so older women are the ones who do this work. They're prerequisite to teaching the younger women. And the reason is so that the younger women won't be led astray and they won't be scandalized. It's a vulnerable thing being taught motherhood.

You younger women, isn't it a hard thing? When you found out you were pregnant, did you go, yes, I am ready. I know what I'm going to do. Most of you probably cried and then confirmed a handful of times that you were actually expecting a baby. And then you just were nervous for months. But then when the baby was born, that all went away. Or it didn't. And it's not uncommon for women in these days, because of a lack of training, to feel as though, They've not been prepared for the work. And my goal this morning is simply to hold up to you what the Bible says about the preparation for this work, that older women would teach the younger women how to do it. The older women need to be good teachers so that the younger women aren't led astray, aren't scandalized. These responsibilities for the older women and the relationships with the younger women are essential. They're not negotiable. The first thing in this text that we see for this issue of motherhood is that older women...

will teach the younger women that they can't say, I don't feel like it or I don't want to. Whether you're old or whether you're young, whether you're a man or whether you're a woman, we have insecurities. We have fears. And only a few of us probably are willing to be in the limelight, the spotlight, to have people listening to us where we're willing to talk. And so it's difficult for older women sometimes to say what they know or to address. the needs that they perceive. But to the older women, I would say, this is your responsibility to God that you teach the younger women. It's not sufficient for you to see their lack and to do nothing. You need to speak to them. You need to help them. Younger women need instruction. They need guidance. And there's no question about that. The older women see it. The older fathers see it.

And the young mothers feel it. They go, I don't know what I'm doing. I know I'm failing. That's what she knows. She knows she's failing. Mom guilt, right? I'm never doing it right. I'm never doing it good enough. That was the case in Crete. That's why Paul told them, you need to tell the older women to do these things. And it's still the case today. The problems that we have today of mothers needing to be taught are not new. And so you younger women, the first thing I want to tell you is the insecurities and the troubles that you're having and the lack of knowledge that you feel in your bones is not new. You're not special.

And what I mean by saying that is two things. One, it's not insurmountable. And also, it's not an excuse. This need of training has existed since Paul wrote these words. And so this apprenticeship model of the older teaching the younger is God's way. And it's good. And it's meant to hand down faithful mothering. Now, it's easy for me to say that. For one, I'm not a mother. This isn't my work directly. I don't spend my time going to young mothers and telling them how to love their children primarily. I might go to young fathers, but I don't have to go to young mothers. And so it's easy for me to say, older women, this is your job. Younger women, this is your job. And there you are, and here we go. We're done. But it's not as easy for this to happen in real life as it is to say it or to read it on paper. Why is it so difficult for older women to teach younger women? Fear? I'm afraid of them knowing.

What I don't know. It would be embarrassing. Perhaps lack of interest in learning those things. It's not uncommon for young women to not have the interest in their children that they should in our society. That they see their children sort of as, as I said earlier, a garnish to their life. A side, if you will. But that the important things that they're about take precedence. Perhaps it's their pride. I know what I'm doing. I don't need anybody to tell me. Perhaps it's laziness. I know what I should do, but I don't want to because I'm tired. Perhaps it's guilt. I've already messed it up so bad. There's no hope. There's no point in asking. There's no point in talking about it because I've already ruined it. Ruined my child. It's already beyond repair. These things and other things like them are sins. And they're not the sort of thing that you want to mark your motherhood. You don't want your fear to be the ordering principle of,

Your motherhood. You don't want your laziness or your pride or your guilt to be the thing that when your children are out of the house, you said, you know what, I was guilty the whole time I raised my kids. And that was what drove all of my interactions with my children, with my husband, and now I'm reaping the fruit of it. I can assure you it won't bear the good fruit that you want. And so we don't want our sins or our temptations to be the things that direct our motherhood. And so we've got this problem, not a new problem, and we've got to figure out how to resolve it. Now, I think that mothers today know that they need instruction. And if they didn't know it before their baby was born, they found out pretty quickly when their baby started missing the milestones at the doctor. Usually it'll be your doctor that will be the first person to tell you you might be failing.

Or you'll understand or interpret from your doctor's appointment that you're failing. Your baby's not doing this thing, whatever this thing is, at three months or six months or 12 months. And all of a sudden you go, oh, no. Reality sets in and you go, I've screwed up. And so you set out to say, well, how can I fix this problem? How can I get it straightened around? And the answer is unsurprising, at least to me, that the answer is always that there is a lack of education. Education is the answer. Whenever there's a problem in society, our society says that problem is the result of a lack of education. What we need is education. And so we have all kinds of educational resources available. You can find a class or a mentor for anything in the world that you want to learn. And for four easy payments of fill in the blank, you can subscribe to their whatever and you can have their special.

They're special instructions. Here's the problem. That sort of instruction has a fatal flaw in its diagnosing. And this is the fatal flaw. The counselor doesn't know the counselee, meaning they rely, all of the marketing about motherhood that's online, that's on Instagram or TikTok or... Snapchat or wherever. Maybe Snapchat's not the place for it. But all of that sort of stuff relies on this thing, your assessment of the problem. Here's the question. How much do you trust your assessment of the problem? My baby needs to learn to go to bed at night. Okay? Every parent, every mother, every father has to learn how they're going to put their baby to sleep at night. But no sleep training.

curriculum is going to come to you and say you know what mom your kids fussing because you're making them sleep all day long because you don't you want it because you're you're being lazy like your kid's not tired they'll tell you oh you want to make sure your kid's tired when you put them to bed but they won't say mom you're being selfish during the day and that's why your kid's not tired when you're putting the bed at night that's one possible thing I'm not here giving you my version of the multi-step program. I'm just saying you need somebody who knows your life. It would be helpful if they knew your marriage. It would be helpful if they knew you. Because not every problem has the same cause. And that's what's missing from an online course. You say, what I need to learn is how to train my child. It's very similar. I think we might be able to see the failures a little better if we moved it out of motherhood.

And we moved it into diets, fad diets. Do this and you'll lose weight. Do this and you'll add energy. Do this and you'll gain muscle. And you see this, and they're advertised differently for men and women, right? And they say, we can fix your problems. You can lose all this weight. You can gain all this strength or your energy, whatever it is, the thing you want, whatever they're selling you. And they make it sound like it's a one-size-fits-all. What do they require as soon as you get involved? Some sort of a meeting, some sort of like, we need to get to know you. What if you went to the doctor and said, doctor, I have no energy? I'm sure you've gone online and figured out why you have no energy. You've probably gone online and figured it out and then tried something and it didn't work and you went back and you tried it again and you've worn yourself out and now you might go to a physician. Why is it that the things that you're trying aren't working? Because you've diagnosed it yourself and there's a high likelihood that you have missed something important that a trained professional, someone with experience, would catch.

And so if you go to the doctor, what do they say? They say, okay, here, go get some blood work. And you're like, well, I know what's wrong. And they say, well, that's good. Let's just confirm that. I would like to confirm it. I want proof, not just your sense of it. Because your guilt and your laziness and the things that you're blind to or whatever else there is cloud your judgment. And this is true of all of us, not just mothers, but we're talking about motherhood today. So why do we prefer, and by prefer I simply mean this is what I think we pursue.

I think it's much more common for young mothers when they have questions to go online than to go to an older woman. Why do we prefer that method? I think it's because we prefer the anonymity, the lack of accountability, and yet I don't think we know what we're trading off. I want to tell you, young mothers, I'm not telling you you have to do everything the way the older women do, down to the T. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is simply, women who've done the work of what you're doing, and yet who aren't in the throes of it every day, can provide you much more helpful counsel than a stranger. And they're more willing to provide you that counsel because they love you. And they're not after your money. They're not selling you something. I remember saying to someone in counseling one time, a married couple, they'd gone off to a marriage retreat. They were having marriage problems. They went off to a marriage retreat, paid good money for it, had been in counseling with me and my wife.

And we weren't helpful. So they went off to that and I said, you know, would you listen and actually do the things we say if we charged you money to hear it? Would that help? You can pay us if you want to. Because I couldn't figure out why are you willing to go spend money to have a stranger tell you something when you won't listen to the people who know and love you? Makes me think that you want a cheerleader and not a mother or a father. That really what you want is someone to tell you you're doing a great job and it's going to be okay and it's not your fault and you're just wonderful. When maybe that is not the only thing that needs to be said. When we move from women that we know teaching us to women that we don't know online teaching us, we move from the personal to the impersonal. We move from someone who knows and loves us to someone who is selling us something, who wants our money. And so personalized instruction from older women is the cream of the crop.

And it's why God tells us that's how we're supposed to learn these things. It's the best help you can get. Now, the difficulty is, what if you don't like it the way she does it? What if she makes you uncomfortable and tells you this thing that's really, really, really important to you actually isn't all that important? That could be offensive, right? Do you know how easy it is for women to get upset about sickness at church? You ever been upset about someone bringing their sick kid to church? Of course we have. usually a young mother problem. And the young mothers tend to look at the older mothers and they say, they're so inconsiderate. They're so rude. And they just don't understand all of the problems they're making for me. And when I hear it, I go, I know. And there is a line, like if you have sick kids, some people's kids are not here today because they're sick, good. But sickness, the thing that the older mother knows that the younger mother doesn't is that sickness is inevitable.

It's inevitable. And to think that the older mother, who has kids that are more demanding, and there may be more of them, so she's busier, the fact that she's making a careless decision, if you were to ask her, I think she would probably tell you it's not a careless decision. She's simply telling you, this is just part of our life. Sickness is just a part of it. We don't need to get upset about it, but mom, have them wash their hands, but... you're not going to avoid this. Or you're going to avoid it at too great a cost, meaning you're never going to be around. Your kids are going to live in a bubble, and at some point, they're going to get out of the bubble. At some point, school is going to happen, or sports is going to happen, or gymnastics, or pool passes, or somewhere they're going to go out and get the germs. We can't avoid them. And so the older mother says, we'll do the best we can. We'll wash our hands.

We'll get enough sleep. But we're not going to organize our life around colds because we wouldn't have a life then. Now you can understand how upsetting that would be to a young mom to say that to her because her kid's throwing up in the middle of the night and sick and crying and she hasn't slept in three days. What that older mother knows that that younger mother doesn't know is that's motherhood. That's fatherhood. This is what it means to have children. And in five or 10 or 15 years, you're not going to remember. Those sleepless nights. Now that's a helpful thing for an older woman to say to a younger woman. It's also the sort of thing that only will be said in a relationship where there's actual intimacy and love. And this is why younger women need older women. The older women know the younger women. They know their children. Did you know that not all of your children are the same? That you will have some children that are more ornery than others? And some that are more compliant?

And some that have a temper. And some that like to throw things and hit people. And some that won't. That not all of your children are the same. And I can't express to you how important it is that the person talking to you, who is at your wits end with whatever you're dealing with, how helpful it will be to have someone counseling you who knows you and your child. Personally. And can say, yep, that's teething, that's okay, it'll be alright. No, I'm telling you, I've had one or two kids that did that when they were that age and I'm just telling you, you need to bring an end to that right now because that doesn't scale well. You can't get that from someone that doesn't know you. They're incapable of giving you that advice other than asking you that question. But if you ask a mom, why is your child so ornery? All you can think is, it's my fault my kid's so ornery. When it may not be your fault that your kid's ornery. If you have more than one child

your children have gotten old enough for you to start to see the real differences between them, that's not because you parented them so differently. They're just different kids. And so online resources and classes are deficient at the most important points. They can't diagnose well what is going on. And because they can't diagnose well what is going on, their ability to help is greatly diminished. So the pastor said that we should never look online and get any resources or have any help. No, that's not what I said. If I was saying that, then I would say, you don't need to read any good books and you don't need to listen to any good podcasts. There's no resources except the older women. All I'm saying is, here's an idea. Talk to the older women and ask them what they think would be helpful. And it's likely that they will give you an article or a podcast or a book and say, read this, listen to that. This is what will be helpful. Not every parenting book is the same because not every child, not every mother, and not every marriage is the same. And so ask them, say, this is the problem that we're having. And she can say, why don't you go talk to someone else who has more experience with that? Or why don't you read this book? Because it's helpful in addressing the problems that you're having. All I'm saying is those resources

Why don't we just talk about them with the older women? I'm not arguing that the older women in our church, for one, there's few of them. And two, they don't know everything. But they do have more experience and access to resources because they're further down the road than you do. And it'd be helpful to know the things they know. Here's another way of showing the difference in relationships between a person online and a person in real life. How do you thank the people? How do you thank a woman who's been helpful to you, who gave her time and her energy to helping encourage and train and support you as a mother? You can do all kinds of things, right? For one, you're going to give her a hug. You're going to be kind to her. You might buy her some flowers. You might give her a gift card. You might take her out to lunch. There's all kinds of things you can do. How do you show gratitude to the online resource? You share their content. It's very impersonal. There's no relationship there.

And all I'm trying to get across through all of this is to say the relationship between the older woman and the younger woman is an essential part of the training. It's an essential part of the training. Sometimes the fact that you haven't slept in three days, the solution is you just need to cry with them for a little bit and you need to pray. And that's it. You don't really need to change anything you're doing. It's just been a rough week. And you just need someone to come alongside of you and say, it's going to be all right. You'll get through it. Maybe the older woman will bring you dinner or do something sweet for you to encourage you. These are things that a stranger cannot do and will not do, but are very meaningful. So all of this is aimed at the necessity of learning to love your children and that you ought to learn it from the older women, that the older women ought to be doing this work. I would say to you who are older, if you see something, if you see a weakness, speak to it. Speak to it. Have you tried? I noticed.

Because I can tell you that if you notice a problem with a child and a mother's interactions, I can almost guarantee you that that mother is aware of that problem as well. She's probably embarrassed by that problem. She's probably unsure of what to do about that problem. And so her temptation is going to be to recoil. So if you just say, hey, can we get together and talk about why your kid screams all the time? Or whatever the problem is, she will both be embarrassed and, by God's grace, thankful. Okay, somebody I can talk to about this problem I don't know how to solve. So all of this is aimed at you learning to love your children. Now, do any of you think it's strange that Paul says that women have to learn to love their children? Paul says to the older women, you're supposed to teach the young women to love their children. If I was a young woman, I'd be offended. What do you mean I have to learn to love my children? I love my children. Paul doesn't have in view here the sort of love that, the affection.

The natural affection of a mother for his child. Though some women do have to learn that, that's not what he's talking about here. What he's talking about here is that young mothers would learn how to do what's best for their children. How to be brought to their senses about what's appropriate with their children. How to balance out or sort out what's important, what's worth the energy, and what's not worth the time. These are the things that they have to be taught to do. And it's worth noting that your natural affection will not teach you to do what is right for your children. Do unbelievers love their children? Yes. And you're aware of all of the crazy things they come up with. Gentle parenting. All gentle parenting is is attachment parenting. It's like been sitting in the back of the refrigerator. They got it out, threw it in the microwave, put a little new sauce on it. That's all it is. Attachment parenting was the thing when we were first having children. People were like, oh, this is what you need to do. Child-led parenting. All this kind of stuff. It's not new.

It's new to you because you're a young mother, but it is not a new concept. Let the child, loving your child, being sensitive to their needs, giving them what they want, not upsetting them, that's the way to do it. Why? Because you love your children and you want the best for them. Well, it turns out that that approach to parenting doesn't produce well-adjusted, faithful, godly, productive even, children. What it produces is... No self-control, entitled, lazy, arrogant consumers. And that's bad for everybody, not just the child. And so your natural affection for your child doesn't get you down the road toward loving them the way that Paul is saying older women are to teach the younger women to love their children. In fact, when older women are teaching younger women to love their children, they're going to be telling you that you have to discipline your own sins. That for you to love your child, this thing about you has to change. Not this thing about your child. Or maybe what they'll mean is that this thing about your child that's really irritating to you will change when you stop planting those seeds. Have you ever seen a little kid that's scared? Just a fearful little child? They're afraid to touch this. They're afraid to go there. They're like, where'd that come from? I can almost guarantee you it's because they have a fearful mother. And maybe they have a fearful father. But one of the parents is fearful.

And they are outspoken about their fear and their child has received the message. And then you take that fearful child out into public and they have to interact with someone else and all of a sudden they're scared and they're screaming and they're whining and they're crying and you're embarrassed. Where did it come from? Many times it's come from their parents. And so if mom, if you're fearful, I can pretty well assure you you're going to produce fear in your child if you don't get help about how not to be fearful. Mom, if you're a control freak, you know what your kids are going to be like in just a short time? Very, very demanding. Very discontent. Very high maintenance. Why? Because you got one of the bad ones? No. Because that's how you are. Now, is it offensive for me as your pastor who loves you to say that some of you are very high maintenance and are producing children that are very high maintenance? That some of you are not disciplined and that's why your children are undisciplined? That some of you have lazy kids because...

You're lazy. Some of you have angry kids because you're angry. I see my sins in my kids. Vanessa sees her sins in our kids. We've been taught by older people where they came from, and they came from us. And it was God's kindness for older parents to come to us and say, that is not good. That thing you're doing is not good. It was not pleasant. We didn't go, oh, thank you so much. But we were thankful. Women are... desperate for relationships, I've found, and have a very hard time cultivating or feeling comfortable in relationships. They can be very catty. They can be very fearful. They can be very judgmental, even amongst peers. It's one thing for an older woman to look at a younger woman and say, that's not going to be a good thing. But you young women do it to each other.

You judge each other's parenting. You judge how your children are doing. Is my kid ahead or behind of the milestones? Can they do the thing that the other kid can't do yet? Oh, I must be doing better than her. You know that older women can help put some of that to death. You need the older women to do that. So young mothers, if you need training, to the extent that you're aware you need training, seek it out from women who know you and love you. Seek it out from what we call, or what is described here as, a Titus II woman. A Titus 2 woman is the woman who does this work, that teaches, that guides, that instructs, that calls you back to your senses, that prays with you, that cries with you, that disciplines you, that tells you no, that builds you up, that remembers your children's lives and what they were like when they were little. The ladies online can't do this for you. They're not interested in doing it for you. They're interested in your money. They do want to help you, but there's a price attached to it, and they will not stay in your life.

You want to build your relationships and learn from those who have a vested interest in you and your family and your children. That's who you want to learn from. You don't have to do everything exactly the way that they're told, and the older women know that. In fact, if you were to think of the older women that you know, you'd realize there's a diversity of practice even among them. That if you went to this woman and said, hey, I need help with this, she'd say, this is how we've done it, or this is what I think you should do. And if you went to another older woman, she'd say, well, this is how we've done it, and this is how we do.

But the one thing that would be true of both of them is that they love you and that they love your children. And so you want to learn from godly older women how to love your children. And godly older women of your church that meet the bar of being reverent in their behavior, who are not malicious gossips or drunkards, or who have no discernment about what's good, right, and true. If an older woman comes to you and says, have you read the new book about gentle parenting? Don't learn from her. I'm being serious. That is destructive to your children. It is harmful to your children.

If you have a woman who tells you that it's never time to spank your child, don't learn from her. She is not teaching what is good. Now, if all she ever says is spank the child, just need to spank, that's the only tool in your toolbox, then she's probably not as helpful either. But as we go on in our society, and as our society becomes more and more post-Christian, more and more pagan, the fact that we have children and then the way we raise children is going to continue to diverge from how the world does things. Gentle parenting is not a Christian idea. I'm sure you can baptize it and act like certain parts of it are based in love, but I'm telling you it's not loving. It's not loving. This idea that kids shouldn't have consequences, that kids shouldn't have disappointments, that kids shouldn't have hardships is really harmful to them. We went to a thing for Micah last week. He wrote a paper, and he placed his competition. He got a place. They wouldn't tell us what place, but he got a place.

Somewhere between first and sixth place. And so we go to the thing and we get the brochure. And of course, what's everyone in the room want to know? What place did I get, right? And I can't tell you how thankful I was that somebody got first and somebody got sixth. And that the kid who got sixth didn't do as well as the kid that got first. And that someone made that judgment. And that the reward was commensurate with the quality of the work they produced. I was thankful. Micah didn't get first. And I was thankful. Not that he didn't get first, but that there was still a place. There's still a VFW. There's still old army guys who are like, nope, that one's not as good as the other. Because it's good for us to have people say that kind of stuff to us. Try a little harder. Do a little better. Here's how you could improve. That's helpful. So I'm going to sum up with a few points of application to each group of people here today. Older women.

It's your responsibility to God to take interest in the young women and their mothering and all the other things that are listed here. It is a failure for you to see their weaknesses, their ignorance, their sins, and to remain silent. I'm not saying you have to go to them every single day and call out every little failure and wear them out. You can exasperate your own children. You can exasperate the young mothers of the church. But... If you are building and growing a list of all of their failures and sins and you don't speak to them, you are not loving them. It will be uncomfortable at times. It will require you to be proactive. And your ways aren't the only way to do it. And yet it is your job to be helpful to the young women. And if you think you're not an older woman, what's an older woman? Is there an age to it? No, I don't know. What I'd say is that if you've got kids old enough,

older than their kids, and you can see something that they could improve or that they would be helped by, then that's time for you to go talk to them, to encourage them, to build them up, to strengthen them for their work. You have to be proactive. If you expect that they're just going to all flock to you and ask you questions, it won't happen because they're all scared. They're all insecure. They don't want the people that they live around knowing what their failures and insecurities are. But if I, a man, can know what some of the insecurities are, and I have to stand up and tell all of you, about them for a whole sermon, then surely you older women can help me in this work and help your husbands and the elders. We would appreciate it. We do appreciate the work that you are doing. But this work is more, like with all of the young people and the young children that we've got, that God's given us in our church, this is our life. This is what we're going to do. The same applies to the older men with the younger men. You're going to spend the next 10 years talking to them about early marriage and little kids. This is the season we're in.

So that's older women. Younger women, humble yourselves. Humble yourselves and ask for help. I just told the older women not to sit there and wait for you to ask them and now I'm going to tell it to you. Go to them and ask them. They are a resource to you. Go and ask them. Cry with them. Tell them about your fears and your frustrations. Let them have the stuff that you only let your husband see. You hear me? Let them see what you only let your husband see because I guarantee you they've done it too. They've been just as discouraged, just as out of their minds, just as fearful, just as worried. They're not going to look at you and say, what in the world is wrong with you? That is not going to be what happens. So go to them and give them the uncut, the unfiltered, the real stuff that only your husband gets to see and probably you wish even he didn't see. They'll be helpful to you. Then listen to them. Don't squander the resource that you have of older mothers. Don't squander it.

The fifth commandment tells us that we should honor our fathers and mothers and younger women going and asking older women about mothering is one of the ways that we honor and obey the fifth commandment. Go to them. Single women, do not wait until you have a baby to start learning these things. Many of you have not been trained growing up in the domestic arts and being a wife, being a homemaker, being a mother. Don't wait until these life circumstances are your reality to start learning about them. You will be behind and you will struggle to keep up. Go learn now. How? Serve in the nursery. Be the proactive one in the nursery. Talk to the older women. I know what the nursery schedule is because my wife helps make it. And we usually put a more experienced with a less experienced. And you can all figure out which one you are now. But it's probably not a surprise to you that that's what they do. Guess what? If you're the younger one, pick the older woman's brain.

Listen to her. You get to take care of a handful of children and you get to talk to her for an hour and a half. Undivided attention other than taking care of the kids. This is a huge blessing to you. You're serving and being served. Make good use of it. Help the older women and the women with children. Observe what they do as parents with their children and ask them about it. These are great ways for you to get ahead of the curve. Husbands and fathers, facilitate and encourage this work with your wife. Encourage her to seek out older women of the church. I will tell you, husbands and fathers, you don't know any more about raising children than your wife does. And you're a fool if you think that you have all the answers and that because you're the head of your house, the thing she's supposed to do is come and ask you to figure everything out. You will do harm to your family, husbands and fathers, if you let your insecurity and your authority complex get in the way of what's good for your children.

There are times when we were young on, I didn't know anything about kids. I'd never hold a kid. Vanessa babysat. She loves kids. She knows about them. She came to our marriage with way more experience with children than I did. I'd never changed a diaper. And yet, as we were learning and as we were training, she would talk to women and women would talk to her and they'd say, well, you need to think about this or you need to implement that. And guess what? Some of the things they said had to do with me. Things I needed to do or not do. And I would have been a fool.

if I had undercut those women's advice and support. Because what happens when you do that is you ostracize your wife from those women. You tell her by your behavior that she can't speak to them about your life. And you will reap what you sow. And you don't want to reap from that tree. Let the older women speak into your wife's life. Let them speak into your home and listen to them. You have work to do in honoring your fathers and mothers as well. Just because you're an adult married and pay your own bills doesn't mean you don't have mothers to honor. Single men, love motherhood. You don't have any context for it. You don't know what it is. It's a mystery. It's an enigma to you other than your own relationship with your mother. But your job is to love motherhood and honor women. If you despise the work of motherhood, you will make your home a miserable place when you get married. Love motherhood. Learn about children.

Honor the women around you that God has blessed with this calling. Carry their things in for them. Ask them how you can help. Step in and be an uncle. Step in and be an uncle. Pay attention to the children of the church. The little ones, pay attention to them. You should know their names. You should know who they belong to. You should know which ones of them have tempers. You should go in the gym when they're playing and being crazy and all the mothers are like, ah. Guess what, young men? This is a great training ground for you to go and learn about children and to be able to come to the mom and say, hey, you know, I noticed that Johnny was completely out of sorts today and hitting everybody with baseball bats. That'd be a good thing. Mom would say, thank you. Or maybe you'll go to Johnny's dad and say, hey, Mr. Johnny's dad, your son. This is what it means to be a part of a family. And every one of us has a place in it. And so it's Mother's Day. And so what do we say to those who...

who aren't mothers, who haven't been able to become mothers, who don't have wives or children of their own yet, who are men. You're a part of a family and we all have mothers. We all have mothers. Many of you are mothers. And our job is to honor and to grow in our knowledge and our understanding and our exercise of it. This is the work of the church. This is our work, generally and specifically because of the way God's blessed us. We love children. They're a lot of work. They change your life. They require you to die, both mother and father. To die to yourself. And those who've gone before you are an invaluable resource in helping you walk this high calling and this difficult road. What you want when you're older is you want children that you enjoy. But more importantly, you want children who love God. And you will not produce that by yourself. And you will not produce that as well with...

what you find online. So get yourself help. Be honest. Let people love you. Let's pray.