Keep sharing good news without ads.
Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/john-slabaugh/child-rearing/
Turn please to 2nd Kings and chapter 20. I want to read just one verse here. 2nd Kings chapter 20 verse 15. I'm not going to spend time on the context, although that could be helpful. And the prophets said unto King Hezekiah, what have they seen in thine house?
And Hezekiah answered, all the things that are in thine house have I seen. There is nothing among my treasures that I have not showed them. Turn to Psalm 127. Psalm 127, except the Lord build the house.
Now stop long enough just to refer to what we heard already this morning. This is not referring to the construction of a home. This is except the Lord build the household. They labor in vain that build it.
Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows. For so he giveth his beloved sleep. Lo, children are in heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is his reward.
As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man, so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them. They shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.
Back in 1982, my father was living in a nursing home. He spent the last three years and three months of his life unable to walk. I don't take your time to tell the details of why. He made a statement to me that I've never forgotten.
He said, I so very much regret that I've been unable to accumulate an estate to leave a legacy to my children. I said to him, Dad, you've left us a priceless legacy. My parents were saved before I was born.
They prayed that the child God would give them. They would give him back to the Lord. I owe a lot to them, and I'm thinking to myself this afternoon of another conversation that I had with him, and it involved Psalm 127.
I don't think I knew this text was in the Bible till I heard my father quote it. We read it, lo, children are in heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man, so are children of the youth.
Happy is a man that hath his quiver full of them. Now it's my purpose this afternoon to take up a very controversial subject. Trust the Lord will give grace. That subject is the subject of child rearing.
I remember hearing a man say on one occasion that he had a sermon he wasn't going to preach for 20 years, and I asked him afterwards, I said what did you mean, and he said I've got a child that's only a couple of years old and I can't give this sermon till that child's raised.
Now he had several others too. What was he saying? He was saying that it is very difficult for any individual who is raising children to give ministry on the subject, and I said to myself at the time what a pity, because I'm persuaded that in any given audience like this there's a good few here who would like to get all the help that they can get on the subject.
Now why did my beloved brother say he wasn't going to give that ministry? Because he hadn't seen his family raised yet. I could have told him, when your family has been raised you won't feel like giving that ministry either.
You know why? We make so many mistakes, parents do, that we hardly feel like we're in a position to give any ministry on the subject, even there are young believers beginning their families who want all the help that they can give.
You do know that the real experts in the field are the ones that have never raised any. Then of course I've already said those who have, have made so many blunders that they can scarcely take the subject up.
By the way, I'll give you another example of the real experts. My wife and I weren't married too very long until we knew we were going to have a child and we were going to raise that child right. I've said enough on that score.
Tell you what, you speak about bringing up children, what I'm seeing is children bringing up their parents. But however, all that just by way of starting, the Christian home and the Christian family are scarce today.
I don't know, I don't see too many young children in the audience right now. When I say young, I'm talking about tweeners and then teeners. I remember when I wasn't too happy with my parents, but I've often said since, I'm very glad that I chose the family to be born into that I was born into.
A Christian home is a very scarce commodity in the country in which we live. Heard one time about a boy and his friend and they came storming into the house because they were going to, he was going to ask permission to do something and he put on the brakes and he said, hold it.
He said, my mother and father are in there and they're hugging and kissing one another. The other boy said, well let's watch, he said, there's a different fella kissing my mother every day. I don't want to go further with that side of things, but folks, what constitutes a home?
Now, it's not just a house and the material things in it, but it's mutual care, it's loved ones, it's sharing, it's security, and the age in which you and I live. I haven't looked up the statistics, but am I right that nearly half of the children in the United States do not grow up with both their parents?
Sad. Is it any wonder that we have all kinds of social problems? You know, I mentioned about my father's desire to leave a legacy. Brother, do you know the best legacy that you can leave your son? You leave him the legacy of a husband that loves and cares for his wife, of a father that loves him and seeks to bring him up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
I don't know a greater legacy that a father can leave than that. And you can say the same thing about mothers and their daughters. It is so vital that we do leave to our families a legacy. You know what?
Every parent would like to be able to take the child by the hand and just walk with them through life. You can do it in those early years when you go shopping, when you go different places, you do take the child by the hand.
But eventually, you have to leave the child to make their own way. Would you understand what I mean if I tell you, maybe I should have waited to make this statement until later, would you understand what I mean if I tell you that you need to have your children raised by the time they are teenagers, by the age of 13.
Now they're still in your home. You still have the opportunity to guide them. You still have the opportunity, if their decisions aren't what they ought to be, to override them. Be careful how you do that.
What I'm saying is this, if we have properly instilled values into them, those values are what's going to guide them as they make their way onward through life. I should make another statement here. That last statement may be true of 80 or 90 percent of the children.
What about the 10 or 20 percent that throw over the traces? I've got only one word for you, brethren, sisters. That happens. Pray. God still lives. Our mistakes don't have to be permanent. God can override, and God does.
Now, my wife always told me I build too big a front porch. I miss her criticisms. Enough of that. I have four points. I want to speak, first of all, about opportunities in child rearing. I want to speak, secondly, about obstacles in child rearing.
I want to speak about objectives in child rearing, and I want to speak, then, that's three points, about children in the home and their responsibilities. First of all, opportunities. We read, children are an heritage of the Lord, and I hope you look at it that way, brethren and sisters.
Blessings, not burdens. Now, sometimes they are burdens, but I hope you look at them. God has entrusted you with them, and the impact of the parents in the home is going to have a large bearing on whether that child will be saved, on whether that child will go on for God after they do profess salvation.
We can't guarantee their salvation. I'll never forget a beloved sister, I know her well. Gospel meetings were going on. There were a number of families in that assembly, and they had four to six children apiece, and God began to move, and here and there among those families, six or eight had professed to be saved.
That was a real move of God, but she made the comment. She said, I don't understand why God's saving other folks' children, but he isn't saving mine. We tried to bring them up right. Mr. McBain was having the meetings.
I highly esteem Mr. McBain and his wisdom. He got wind of that. He went and visited her, and he said to her, Sister, I heard you said, went over that with her. She acknowledged she'd made that statement.
He said, God doesn't have to save your children. You say you've brought them up right? God doesn't have to save them. In fact, if he puts them in hell, that's all they deserve. Whoa, pretty hard, isn't he?
He balanced it. He said, God wants to save your children, but he said, you and I cannot put God under obligation to do it. That was a lesson when I heard it. Our family wasn't raised. When I heard it, I needed that lesson.
We were trying to bring them up in the fear and admonition of the Lord. We weren't succeeding as well as we wished we were. Opportunities in childrearing, the environment in the home is a large element in the whether or not a child will be saved.
Scriptural values must be taught both by precept and by example. Never put yourself in the position, brother, sister, where you have to say to the child, do as I say, not as I do. Both instruction in keeping with the Word of God, an example in keeping with the Word of God in your own life.
These are very important. I want to go to the second one, obstacles in childrearing, and they are manifold in the world in which we live. Brethren, we are in the world, they are in the world. We are not of the world, and we don't want them to be of the world either.
And we must not take our values from the world. Secular obstacles, there are movements in society, the woman's live movement, the so-called new morality. You know what new morality is, don't you? It's just the old immorality clothed with a new name.
The schools are no help in bringing up children in the fear of the Lord. They are not even allowed to read from the Bible, and they are absolutely opposed to any mention of Jesus Christ. What have we come to?
I'm not going to lecture on that, but brethren and sisters, bear in mind that that's not going to help you. The prevailing educational philosophy today is relativism. When I went to school, and I don't have to tell you that that was a couple years ago, when I went to school, the prevailing educational philosophy was, if a certain thing was right, the opposite was always wrong.
I remember when this was first pointed out to me, we had 12-year-old David, 10-year-old Becky, 7-year-old Miriam, and I posed a question at the supper table. I said to them, if a certain thing is right, is the opposite always wrong?
And I was shocked. I got a chorus. That depends. No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't. If a certain thing is right, the opposite is always wrong. But that new philosophy has permeated our society, so we cannot call anything sin any longer.
Well, that's a real hindrance. They're exposed to that, and we need to be aware of that. There's another one. As far as I'm concerned, that's a terrible hindrance in bringing up children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
And that's the entertainment industry, that's the sports environment that we have all around us. The fast pace of life is also an obstacle, and that comes down on parents. We're too busy to give the time to the children that we should have.
I'll never forget on one occasion, visiting my son out in Chico, California, and he had a switch go bad on the wall. And so I was sitting watching him while he went over, took the plate off. Well, I could hardly stand to watch what he was doing, because he hadn't thrown the switch, taken the electricity off.
I went over to him and I apologized to him. I said to him, Jonathan, I'm sorry that I never spent the time with you to show you how to do something like that. Why didn't I? I was too busy. Mind you, I was busy having gospel meetings.
I was busy taking tracts to communities around. We were out to all the meetings of the assembly. I had to prepare to participate in those meetings, and so on, and so on, and so on. What got slighted? Time with that boy.
Father, you have only one chance to relate to that son of yours, mother's, likewise for that daughter of yours. And that may be one of the highest priorities. Too busy then is one of the obstacles. We read there in second Kings chapter 20 and verse 15.
What have they seen in thine house? Now, I could spend a long time on that. Have they seen TV? That's not a help. Have they seen your temper? That's no good. Have they seen tolerance of things that are wrong?
Obstacles in child rearing. But I want to come to objectives in child rearing. What have they seen in thine house? There's one thing that was seen in virtually every home in the village where I grew up as a boy that we almost never see anywhere today, including the homes of Christians.
Now, I'm not saying we never see it, but in the village of Greentown, and I judged that there were very few Christians living there when I was growing up. There was always that time of the day when the family gathered round and they got the Bible out and they read and father prayed.
That's part of the legacy that my father left me. It's what we sought to do with our family too, but it's not something that is practiced as it ought to be in the homes of God's people today. Can I encourage you to get back to that practice?
What have they seen in thy house? The Bible? Prayer meetings or prayer? Have they seen the love that you have for them? Have they seen peace in the home? Have they seen order in the home? Have they seen discipline in the home?
Have they seen Christlikeness? All of those things I've mentioned belong in the home. There are things that should be instilled and fostered in the home. One of them is moral standards. One of the things that I think we fail at at times is there are subjects that come up that really deal with impure subjects.
Do we smirk and laugh about them? Young people that get in trouble with immorality? We should mourn. It should make us pray for individuals who have gotten in difficulty. We should impress upon our children.
Those are subjects not to be laughed at. What about guidance? It's so important that we set before them the right ways of conduct. I didn't have to be instructed in how to sin. I had to be corrected and likewise with our children.
We need to instill responsibility. I remember one time my wife was working on getting the children to do the dishes after supper and she got frustrated. Between you and me and the fence post, I think the children had worked on her to get her that way.
And so I saw her and she was doing the dishes alone. I said to her, I thought you wanted the children to do that. Well, she said, it takes them so long and I can do it better than they. I said to them, how are you going to teach them responsibility?
It's important that we do that. Now, we need to establish standards for them in school with their peers and toward extracurricular activities. We withheld our children from those extracurricular activities.
One of the things that happened was we got the argument, well so-and-so, talking about other Christians, they allow their children. Of course, the answer we gave them was their parents are responsible for them, but your mother and I are responsible for you.
Don't be intimidated by a conversation like that. My wife made a statement to me one time. She said, our children will do just what we allow them to do. And she gave me a real demonstration of that, which I'll pass on to you.
She was expecting our first one. We were visiting a cousin and she had a little fellow that might have been about a year old and wanted to feed himself, sitting in the high chair, his food in front of him there, and he was feeding himself.
Pretty soon he was playing. He had food all over his hair, and I don't have to describe the area around, a disaster area. And my wife said to me afterwards, she said, we're never going to have one like that.
And I thought to myself, yeah, but she was right. You know why? She would accept mistakes, but she wouldn't accept playing in the food like that boy had been doing. As long as the child was making a diligent effort to feed themselves and learning how to do it, she was tolerant of that.
But when it was playtime, he was done feeding himself. And I think the principle that she announced there, our children will do just what we allow them to do, is true. Well, that brings up something else.
One of the things that is vital is we should establish standards, mother and father together, establish standards that we're going to enforce in our home, and it shouldn't make any difference if Johnny asks dad or if he asks mother.
He should get the same answer. Never differ in front of your children. I remember one time, I tended to be a little quick, and I was being pretty hard on one of the children. They were very dismayed at my sternness.
And I glanced at my wife, and I saw a look of extreme disapproval of what was going on. But she didn't say a word. As soon as that incident was over, I nodded at her, and we headed for the bedroom. And I said, you didn't agree with that.
She said, no. I said, why not? And she gave me a couple of things that I hadn't considered. You know what I did? We talked it over. I agreed with her. I was wrong. She was right. I went back out into the living room, called the child to me, and said, daddy made a mistake.
I apologized. I fostered something else with them, which I believe is vital. Our children always had the opportunity to disagree with decisions that we made. We would talk about it. I remember one occasion in particular where one girl had something she wanted to do at school.
And I said to her, let's talk about it. Can you think of any reasons why you should do that? She said, I want to. I said, I took that for granted. Can you think of any reasons why you shouldn't? She had three before you knew what was coming.
Oh, I said, I think you have enough information to make up your own mind. Oh, all right. And she stalked out. She wasn't happy. But she came back to me about 10 days later. She said, dad, you made it hard.
I couldn't go back and say my dad wouldn't let me. I had to go back and tell them that I didn't think it was the thing to do. I believe, brethren and sisters, we do need to treat them as adults as soon as we could.
Just a couple of principles here. Mean what you say? Help a child to obey. Johnny, pick up that ball and put it in the box over there. He's defiant. Just go over, take his little hand, put it on the ball, pick up the ball, walk it over to the box.
Help him to obey. You know what? It's natural for a child to have a mind of his own. Some have a very strong will. Others are altogether different. There's no two of them alike. I always said to my wife, we have to treat all our children the same.
Wasn't exactly possible, but we tried to the best of our ability to do it. One of the things I learned, too, was some of the younger ones learned from the blunders that their older siblings made, and they didn't want to go through what their older siblings had gone through.
Here's one that I think's important, and I didn't do very well. Praise what you can as often as you can see something to praise. If all you ever do is criticize them for things they've done that are not what they ought to be, all you do is make them upset at you.
I won't take your time because my time's gone. Take your time to look at homes. We had this this morning. We had David's home. Not a good example, but we can learn from David's home not to make the mistakes he did.
Jacob's home, same thing. But I'm thinking of Abraham's home. I'm thinking of Joseph and Mary's home. I'm thinking of the home in Bethany. Become familiar with those homes in the Word of God and seek to learn the principles.
What about the child's responsibility? I finish with this. I'm thinking of Exodus chapter 20 and verse 12. One of the Ten Commands. And I practice still. That's honoring to their memory. I hope, brethren and sisters, that we'll know what it is to instill obedience into our children and have the joy.
There's no joy like it when there are gospel meetings and one of the children comes to you and says, Daddy, I was just saved.