Training Courageous Sons

I guess I don't have to turn this on. Mine at our church, you have to hit a button. Good morning, everybody. My name is Kyle Fitzgerald, and I bring greetings from Bethany Baptist Church in Stockton, and it has been a pleasure.

Conley has become a good friend over the last year especially, and it's been a pleasure to have him a few times in our pulpit, and I very much appreciate the reciprocation of the invitation to come and open God's Word with you.

And so with that, let's turn to a couple of passages. The first would be John 10, and I want us to read verses 11 -18. John 10, verses 11 -18. Let's hear the Word of God. The Lord Jesus says to His church, I am the Good Shepherd.

The Good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees. And the wolf snatches them and scatters them.

He flees because He is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. I am the Good Shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me. Just as the Father knows me and I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep.

And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again.

No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.

Amen.

And now if you would please turn to Proverbs chapter 22. Proverbs chapter 22, verse 6. Train up a child in the way he should go. Even when he is old, he will not depart from it.

Amen.

Please be seated. Let's unite our hearts and pray together that the Lord would bless our time in His Word.

Let's pray.

Our gracious Father, we come to You now this morning as we've sung, asking that You would send Your Spirit to break open the bread of life for us in Your Word. Feed Your sheep, Father. Father, we pray that Christ would be in our midst.

By His Holy Spirit, He would instruct and shepherd His flock as He promised He would.

Do.

Father, thank You for giving us Christ, the Good Shepherd, the greatest shepherd, the one who has redeemed our souls, the one who will bring us safely to glory, the one who is our prophet and who leads us and teaches us in the way that we should go.

Father, bless us, we pray. We ask that You would give us humble hearts to receive Your Word, to be open to the instruction of Your Word, that we would all, by Your grace, endeavor to follow Christ, to live for Your glory.

We pray that You would be our help in this. Father, we are a sinful people. We are a weak people in and of ourselves, and so we pray, give us strength. Give us resolve. Conform us after the image of Your perfect Son.

Draw near to us now as we give our attention and our hearts to Your Word. We ask in Jesus' name, Amen. John chapter 10 is a chapter of contrasts. It is a contrast between the cowardly and selfish shepherds of Israel, the religious leaders, contrasted on the other hand with the courageous, sacrificial character of the singular Good Shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ.

And I want to make that plain at the beginning that the primary point and the primary application of John 10 is the unsurpassed perfection of the Lord Jesus Christ, our Redeemer. And how He alone possesses the fullness of all virtue, and how He then redeems and saves and shepherds His church according to that virtue.

That's the primary point. However, there is also a secondary application of what kind of people we ought to be and can be as we are transformed by the grace of the gospel into the likeness of our Lord.

Just as surely as the Lord Jesus forgives our iniquities and forgives all of our failures and our shortcomings, He also in His gospel commits Himself graciously to His people to transform us into His image.

And therefore, this passage also holds out to us an example, a goal, something that should be aimed for, for what we should desire to be by the grace of God. And particularly what we as men should desire to be by the grace of God.

For example, I believe this passage, it's certainly not the only one, but I believe that this passage ought to be given considerable weight when the church is considering men for the pastoral office. Are the men being considered like the hired hand that our Lord talks about, who flees from danger and who puts himself before the well-being of the flock?

Or is He a courageous man, brave, sacrificial, caring about the sheep even to His own harm? Brothers and sisters, it's important for us as Christians that we understand what mature Christian masculinity looks like.

And men, in particular, it's important for us that we understand what it is we should be striving after by the Lord's help. However, this morning, I want to consider an even more fundamental question, namely, after we've arrived at a conclusion of what kind of men we want to be and what kind of men we would like to see in the church, we must also ask this more fundamental question.

Where do those kinds of men come from? That's an incredibly important question to be asked and answered. And trust me, men, especially those of you who have young daughters, there is coming a day in which a young man will show an interest in one of those young daughters, and you are going to be glad that that young man's father asked this question.

Because if we don't ask where do these kinds of men come from, and if we don't then answer that question biblically, and if we don't then live in light of the answer to that question, we will one day find ourselves looking around and asking ourselves the question, where are all the men?

And we will be saying to ourselves, I see many grown boys, but no men. And part of the reason for that is because we didn't train our boys to be men. Now, don't get me…. Please understand me, I believe completely and I understand that it is God ultimately who makes a man what he is.

Deacons in Acts chapter 6 are said to be full of wisdom and the Holy Spirit. Elders in Acts chapter 20, overseers, are said to be made overseers by the Holy Spirit. And therefore, because we believe that, we need to pray earnestly that God would bless our sons to make them mighty men for the kingdom.

However, that doesn't mean that we just sit passively back and hope that the Lord drops these kinds of men into our lap. God is a God of means. One of the primary means is that God uses parents, fathers and mothers to train and to instruct, to warn, to be an example.

That is my primary burden this morning that I want to open up together. Training mighty men, men who look like the Good Shepherd in John chapter 10. And my brother and my sister, men who are like that usually are the fruit of parents who intentionally, consistently, prayerfully shaped their boys into men.

Now, just a note before we jump into the content. This is going to be a practical sermon, but I don't want it to be disconnected in our minds from the gospel and from our union with Christ. Christ became man for us, and He became the perfect man so that He might be qualified to accomplish our redemption and that we might then be transformed into the likeness of His virtue and His perfection.

And so, if you're here and you're a young man, even though my focus is going to be on raising sons and parenting, and I realize that may not be your lot yet in life, though it may be, this is still a vital subject for you in terms of what it means to live as a man in Christ.

What it means to be a godly young man in service to the Savior. Older men, this is something for you to encourage the young men in the church in, also even encouraging your grown sons and as you now have opportunity for your grandsons, women, mothers or not.

There are things in this passage for your emulation as well, according to your femininity, as well as there are things in these passages that we'll consider that are things that you as a woman need to know.

These are things I need to look for as I consider a spouse. Or if you're already married, these are things that I as a woman need to applaud and encourage in my husband. The Word of God speaks to all of us in our varying capacities, but what I want to just make clear at the beginning as we move in here is that when we talk about the practical application of Christian obedience, we don't do so leaving Christ behind, nor do we do so divorcing our obedience from the Savior who is the author of our obedience.

But rather, what we are considering is Christ in us now, presently by His Spirit, fulfilling His role as the Good Shepherd as He leads and empowers His people to live for the glory of God as they follow in His footsteps.

That's the end of my introduction. I want to get into the content this morning, and in terms of it, if it's helpful if you take notes. I have one introductory point that I'm going to open up that speaks to parenting in general, and then in the remainder of our time, I want to open up the subject of courage and how we can train our young sons and our young men to be courageous.

So let's begin. Point number one, I've simply entitled this, don't be passive. Don't be passive. And I want to begin here by orienting us with Proverbs 22, 6. If you're not still there, if you would turn there.

And as I say, this first point applies to parenting in general, specifically this morning it applies to raising sons. Proverbs 22, verse 6 warns us about a passive approach to son rearing. Now, let me introduce this by giving you an example.

Parents in the world today, non-Christians and sadly even professing Christians in the church, do not give the amount of attention they ought to to Proverbs 22, 6. And what I mean by that is they plunge into parenthood without direction.

They have a baby. They manage to somehow make it through the infant stage. They then manage to endure the terrible twos. Then they get a little bit of relief when their children are off to school and they're learning to read.

Then the children are old enough and they get into sports or music. Then the rebellious teenage years hit and the parents try to give them space and hope that the child doesn't make too foolish of decisions.

And then finally it's like, where has the time gone? My son is 17 or 18 and all of the sudden the parent starts thinking about the real world that is coming. And oftentimes they are panicking. My son is not ready.

And sadly they're right, because they didn't think about what they wanted their son to be until it was almost time for him to be that. And therefore often what parents will try to do is they try to cram the way you would the night before an exam and you pull an all-nighter just trying to cram all the answers into your.

Head.

But just like when you cram for an exam, the lessons don't stick, because the child has already been trained in the way he should go. He's been trained passively, and sadly unless something changes, he will repeat the same pattern with his children.

Now let's consider Proverbs 22 verse 6, train up a child in the way that he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it. I want to briefly observe a few things to orient us. Number one, I want to ask a few questions of the text.

When are we to begin training sons? The text says train up a child, right? Now that word for child covers a range of ages in the Old Testament. It's used to describe Samuel before he's even weaned, and it also is used elsewhere to describe a young man who's old enough to carry a sword.

So there's a range there. In Proverbs, the book of Proverbs, this word is often used in verses that speak of the use of the rod of discipline, such as verse 15 of chapter 22, which tells us what the author had in mind is he's referring to young boys in their formative years, as is made clear by the contrast, when he is old or grown, he will not depart from it.

So when do we start training men? We start training them when that future man is still a child, before he is old, before.

He is grown.

Second question, train them for what?

What?

Train up a child in the way he should go. Notice that. Not in the way he wants to go, right? Proverbs speaks of how folly is bound up in the heart of a child. Not in the way he would naturally go, but in the way he should go.

Now I want to say another thing. This is another thing I think is sadly too often overlooked in Christian parenting and son rearing. Think about it. What other massive projects in life do we take on without having any idea what we want the finished product to look like?

If there's any assignment the Lord gives to Christians that we could say are a big assignment, it's parenting and raising children. But in every other area of life, when we take on something important, we know the goal we are aiming for.

And so that means, mom, dad, you need to have a finished product in mind. You need to ask yourself, what do I want my sons to be like? What do I want to be able on judgment day to present to my Father in heaven and say to Him, these are the sons that you loaned to me and this is what I have made of them.

Fathers and mothers, I want to encourage you to think about that. Don't think about that 15 years from now. Think about that today. I want to say if you're here and this is new to you, maybe you were saved later in life and you realize I raised my children as an unbeliever.

I didn't do what I should have done. I didn't do well according to God's Word. I want to say to you saint this morning, thankfully, thanks be to God, there is grace in the Lord Jesus Christ for all of our failures.

And it's in His wisdom that He saves us when He saves us. And the point of a sermon like this is not to put salt on all the wounds that are already very raw, but rather to encourage you there is grace for forgiveness in Christ and there is power according to the grace of Christ to start living for Christ's glory today in this arena in accordance with the different relationships the Lord has put in your life.

So what is the product that we're after? We could say many things. This morning I want to simply put it this way. We want to say to our sons, son, I want you to be a man who is a man like John 10 describes.

I want you to be a Proverbs man who fears the Lord, who is diligent in his work, who is just and honest in his dealings, who is honest and forthright in his words, who is courageous with his convictions, who is ferocious in his protection of the innocent and sacrificial in his care for the poor and weak.

We could go on and on, but brothers and sisters, isn't that what we all want our sons to.

Be?

Then God says to us, if that's what you want them to be in the future, train them in that.

Now.

Set that goal before your eyes and if you aim at nothing, you will certainly hit nothing. And so we need to think now, what do I want my son to be when he's 15, when he's 20, when he's 25, when he's a single man, when he's a married man, when he's a father, when he's a grandfather, when he's a church member or a deacon or a pastor, what kind of man do I want him to be?

And we need to train him in those things now. Let me put it this way. One little anecdote before we move in, I think, to considering courage, yes. Let me put it this way. This is something that has been helpful for me in my parenting and I have two sons so far, but I think this is the right way to think about it and it's helpful.

Parents, as long as you have your sons in the home, you need to relate to them as men in training, not children in training. They already know how to be children. Not boys in training, but men in training.

And what I mean by that is we need to train them to act like men as much as a five-year-old can act like a man. Proverbs is written to children, to a son. And when Solomon instructs his son, he doesn't say, son, make sure you practice these things when you get older and when you're grown.

Rather, he says, son, I want you to bind my instructions around your neck now. I want you to make my instruction your delight now. Let my instruction now, my son, be fixed upon your lips. And so we take our five-year-old or our seven-year-old and say, for instance, we're teaching them about equal weights and measures and justice.

We don't say to them, son, someday, far off in the future, you'll realize how important this principle of justice is if you're ever a judge or a juror, but rather we teach them, son, God's standard of justice applies to you right now as a young man.

It applies to you in your words that you speak, as you deal with your siblings and your friends, as you make bargains and deals with your cousins, when you bear witness for the truth. We teach them these things now.

In other words, we're not just teaching them about what we want them to one day be. We are actually training them to be young men right now according to their capacity. And the promise that God gives here is when they are old, they will not depart from it.

That is, as a general rule, as our sons grow and these convictions and principles that we are putting into them are cemented and hardened more and more, our sons, when they are grown, will not easily depart from those paths.

Now, that's the first point, general observations about parenting from Proverbs 22. And now, with the remainder of our time, I want to talk specifically about the characteristic of courage, okay? Training our sons to be courageous men.

There are many virtues that we could talk about. I've chosen courage because I think it's a vital one and because it is front and center in John chapter 10. Courage, courage is a godly, particularly masculine virtue.

For instance, you might have run across this before. In 1 Corinthians 16 verse 13, Paul uses a Greek word that is sometimes translated, depending on which English translation you're using, sometimes it's translated, act like men.

But, in other translations, it will be translated, be courageous. It's literally just the verb form of the word for being a man. It means be a man, act like a man, and the reason those translations exist is because those are synonyms essentially.

That is a primary part of what it means to act like a man, is to be courageous. Now, how do we define courage? Turn back to John 10 if you're not there already. John 10 at least gives us some pointers of how we should define and think about courage.

As I said, this is a chapter of contrast. The hired hand, or the hireling, is the opposite of courage. He is a coward. Now, what marks the hired hand? What marks the hired hand is self-love. Notice, the hired hand sees the wolf coming, right, he's been put in charge of protecting this group of people, the sheep, and he sees danger coming, and what does he do?

Because he cares about himself and he loves himself, he flees the danger at the expense of the sheep. So dads, mark that. Selfishness will produce cowardly sons. If we let our sons go after their innate selfishness, they will bring shame to their fathers.

I'll give examples of all this in just a moment. We're about to get into the very practical nature of all this. So there's the hired hand, coward, loves himself, therefore flees danger instead of protecting those he's put in charge.

The contrast to that is the good shepherd. What does he do? The good shepherd moves towards danger to get in between his sheep and the wolf, and even sacrifices his own very life for the benefit and protection of his sheep.

That is very much at the core of what courage is, willing to face danger and sacrifice self because they love others. That's something that needs to be drilled into our young men from a young age. And so what I want to do now is I want to open up three sub-points of what that means, how it looks practically to train our sons to be courageous men.

Number one, that means we train our young sons to be protectors, okay? And as I said, if you're here and you're a young man, even though you're not the child that Proverbs 22 is talking about anymore, these are things for you to be thinking about of what kind of a man should I be?

We need to train our young sons to be protectors. I want to say first off, they need to be physical protectors because that is God's design for.

Men.

And brothers and sisters, I know we live in a culture that absolutely is just turning upside down, God's design of male and female and the differences between the two, but let me say this is something that we should not be embarrassed about, no matter how unpopular.

It is.

Both the Old and the New Testament, it is men who go out to war to protect and fight and protect their homes and their wives and their children. Jeremiah chapter 50, it is a shame when women become a nation's soldiers.

Ephesians 5, we were going over Ephesians 5 in Sunday school this morning. Husbands are told to give themselves for their wives and not vice versa. Matthew chapter 2, Joseph, the man, is told by God in a vision to go to Egypt in order to protect his wife and baby Jesus.

Christian, brothers and sisters, our boys need to be practicing protecting right now, especially protecting women and girls.

Why?

Why?

Because it is their God-given role to protect those who are more vulnerable than them, right? God gives boys and men strength and muscles and courage in order for them to be a shield to the vulnerable and a terror to enemies.

To give you an analogy, and there might be a better one than this, young men, boys and grown men are like good pit bulls. They are the safest and most trustworthy thing to their family, and yet they are the most dangerous and vicious threat towards anyone who threatens that family.

Our boys should be trained that it is their role to protect other boys who are younger than them, to protect boys who are smaller than them, weaker than them. They should be trained that it is their role to protect the physically and mentally handicapped who may even be older than them.

We should train them to have a leading awareness that they know from a young age, I as a man am responsible for the safety of those around me. It's different from girls. Girls have different priorities, different tasks.

So I'll give you an example. If my family, if we're at a park or in a busy crowd somewhere, even though I as dad, obviously, I am watching over my flock, my kids, it's my responsibility first and foremost, I also want my sons in particular to be looking and be aware, where's little sister?

Where's little brother? I want them from a young age to develop a sense of responsibility and leadership. And as I said, especially they ought to have that sense of a duty to protect women and girls who are the weaker vessel, 1 Peter 3.

Let me say something about that. Moms and dads, for a hundred reasons and many more, teach your sons to honor and protect women and girls. The first reason for that is that one day he is probably going to have a wife of his own and how you taught him to regard his mother and his sisters is how he will treat that.

Woman.

And so you teach him respect for women, that a woman is sacred and valuable, that her body is sacred, that her soul is to be handled delicately. Here's a second reason to teach your sons to honor women.

The second reason is because that relationship, as he relates to his sisters and his mother, that is the primary training ground for your son where he will learn how strength and authority are to relate to weakness and submission.

So for example, I think all of us would answer yes to this question, do you want your son to be the kind of pastor one day like John 10 who willingly gets between Christ's sheep and wolves? Do you want him to be the kind of man who can simultaneously deal gently with the weak and the doubting, but to be ferocious with heresy and those who would fleece the sheep?

I want sons like that. Where do they come from? A good start is that they are taught when they are young to use their muscles and their words and their moral convictions to stick up for mom and sisters, not to harm them.

Dads, just a note to dads. This very thing I'm talking about is why it's one thing if your son as he grows up gets into scuffles with boys. Not saying that that's always necessarily right or a good thing, but it happens.

But dads, if your son hits a girl or talks in a derogatory way about her or makes comments and makes fun of her features, dads, you need to have very, very serious words with your son, just as serious as if you were to walk in a room on him and he's putting on lipstick and you need to talk with him.

Son, that is not what men do. Men protect women. They value women. They don't harm them. Young boys, listen to me. Young men as well. You guys, your primary job as a man is to protect women, to treat them as precious.

Now let me give you another, something that I found helpful in terms of how I think we should think about this. Sorry, my water bottle won't fit on the little shelf down here, so I'm reaching all the way down to the floor.

Think about it this way, okay? And this, again, this is one of those things that I don't know where I learned this from or picked it up from, but I think it's helpful. When you, and this is moms or dads, when you are evaluating your son's behavior, your young sons, ask the question, what would I think about this behavior if my son were 25 years.

Old?

Okay?

So, for instance, remember the Titanic? Remember the grown men who were so cowardly that they stole seats in the lifeboats while they left women and children to drown? What do we all say about such men?

Shame, right?

Right?

Or men who flee burning buildings to save their own skin while they leave young children and women inside to burn? What do we say? Coward. And that's the right thing to say. It is shameful, and it is cowardice.

Okay, so we've got that agreement. If we agree that that's shameful and cowardly for a grown man, how ought we to think about it when our 8-year-old son is afraid of a black widow or whatever it might be, and he just instinctively pushes his younger sister or brother out in front of himself to deal with the problem?

Do we laugh at that? Do we think that's cute? Do we just say, ah, that's just what kids do? Or maybe your son is running around after church one day with a group of boys and girls, and the whole group comes across something dangerous, maybe a wild animal, and out of all of that group, your son is the only one who runs away and tucks tail, arms flailing, away from danger, leaving the girls behind.

Parents, shouldn't we shepherd that? Here's the thing. Some of those examples, I don't know, you might hear that and think, that's just…I really believe this. Those natural, innate inclinations that our sons have by nature, apart from the grace of God, are the beginnings of a grown, hired hand.

Where do pastors and other men come from who flee danger and leave the vulnerable to be attacked? Where do they come from? They come from boys who did the same thing in smaller ways and were never corrected or.

Trained.

Proverbs 22, train up a child in the way he should go. So let me say this, last thing on this first point about protectors. Our sons are made by God to be protectors, okay? Spiritual protectors, verbal protectors, I want to say this as a caveat.

Protection doesn't always involve a weapon, but I will say this, physical protection is a good training ground that our young boys will understand that will carry over into a thousand other kinds of protection as they grow older.

So for instance, I think it's good and healthy to encourage our boys to take an interest in weapons and self-defense, and to not encourage them to play with dolls and put on makeup.

Why?

Because women are made to be nurturers and beautifiers, right? And so our young sons, if they want to practice fighting, if they want to save the damsel in distress in their games, I say, parent, you let them.

If they want to sleep closest to the door with their pocket knife so that in the event that an intruder comes in, the intruder will have to go through them before they get to their other siblings, I say as a Christian parent, amen, son.

Now obviously, Lord willing, dad ought to be there first, okay? That's another story, dad, if you're cowering in a corner while your five-year-old is holding a pocket knife against an intruder. But son, in the event that dad is not there for some reason, it absolutely should be you before it's your sister.

Girls are trained in their own unique ways. I think dolls are good for girls because they're nurturers, they're beautifiers. But boys, young men, it's your job to protect the nurturers and the beautifiers.

So that's that first subheading. Let's move on to the second one. The first one was we train our sons to be protectors. Secondly, we train our sons to take initiative in serving others, okay? We train our sons to take initiative in serving others.

So if you think about it in kind of a two-pronged way, the one prong I just spoke about, when there is danger, our sons ought to see it as their responsibility to get in between that danger and the vulnerable.

But there's a second prong to being courageous, and that's this. He needs to show his strength by tenderly caring for his people. That's what shepherds do. They serve the sheep. So Mark 10, 45, the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give His life a ransom for many.

Young men, boys, I don't mean boys in any derogatory way, listen to me. That is a true man. Jesus Christ is the greatest man to ever live, and He is the strongest man to ever live. And you know what He didn't do?

He didn't demand out of weakness and neediness that He be served. But rather, He served others out of His strength. That's true manliness. That's true courage. Christ lays down His life for His sheep.

He uses His strength to serve others, not using our strength to make others serve us. That's actually cowardice and weakness. That's why bullies think that they're strong. They're not strong. They're weak men who want to appear strong.

Let me say this. We need to make chivalry great again. You might not... I wrote down a definition of chivalry. The combination of qualities expected of an ideal knight, especially courage, honor, courtesy, justice, and a readiness to help the weak.

So boys, listen to me. A readiness to help the weak. Let me give you another example. You're on a walk. I'm talking to young boys here, okay? Five-year-olds. Four, three, eight. You're on a walk with your family, maybe a Sunday afternoon in between services you walk.

It's winter.

Your little sister falls. She stumbles and she falls right into a puddle. She's crying. She's soaked. She's cold. She does the only thing she can. She takes off her jacket to at least not be as wet. Young man, listen to me.

What do you do? You take off your jacket, even though you're going to be cold, and you put it on your little.

Sister.

Why?

Not just because some outdated cultural norm says that's what you're supposed to do, but because that's biblical, that the man should initiate sacrificing his comfort so that she can be comfortable. And again, if your dad beats you to the punch, which I hope he does, then that's great.

But you should have been going for it. That's that initiative idea. That's how it should be in marriage. It's how leaders in the church should lay down their lives for the sheep. I'll give you another example, and this one I think, boys, this one should hit home.

Let's say there's a heavy box of girls' clothes sitting in the hallway, or Christmas decorations, or dolls. It's your sister's dolls, big heavy crate of them. The point is it's not your stuff. And mom says to you, boys, can you help me move this?

Should you say and respond, that's not mine, and then just run away and play your video games or your Legos or whatever? The longer I've been a parent and the longer I've parented, the more I don't like that phrase, it's not mine, especially from boys.

Because you know what that is? That is the beginnings of evasion of responsibility. Again, think about it. Think about those same words coming from the lips of a 25-year-old. What if dad just walked in one day, looked at his wife and his three kids, and said to them, your problems aren't my problems.

My money is my money. You solve your problems. Boys who are allowed to run away from sacrificial service to others when they are young grow into big boys who do the same thing to their wife, their children, and their church.

That's not my problem. You did this, and therefore you fix it. That's selfishness. That is every man for himself. Which every man for himself sounds fair to the cowardly man, but the truth, the fact is God didn't make every man for himself.