The Power of a Godly Mom

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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May 9, 2016

00:00: I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to the book of 2 Timothy.
00:11: Go to chapter 1 and hold your place at verse 3.
00:31: In 1996, a book was authored by the then First Lady of the United States, Hillary Clinton, and it was entitled, It Takes a Village.
00:45: That was the title of the book.
00:48: And the book advocated increasing societal roles in the raising of children, and it focused mainly on the impact of individuals and groups that are outside of the family and how they have an impact on the children.
01:09: And in the end, it essentially stated, sort of in a nutshell, and I may be oversimplifying, but it essentially stated that family alone is not enough, but that the village, i.e.
01:24: the society, the community, is essential for raising a child.
01:31: Well, the problem is not that advocating that there are people in the lives of our children and that help in the raising of our children is wrong.
01:46: There's really nothing wrong with that.
01:49: Wherever they be grandparents or teachers or people in my children's life, you all are in my children's life, and in some way, you are helping in the mentoring of my children.
01:59: Some of you are mentors to them.
02:01: Some of you have been teachers to them in various capacities.
02:05: Many of you have aided in their maturity in several ways, and we have sweet fellowship in this church.
02:10: And my children have grandparents, but they also have adoptive grandparents, many of you adoptive aunts and uncles, and some of you even go by the title of aunt or uncle, this or that.
02:22: But the problem with the mindset from it takes a village lies in the reality that many have become accustomed to making the village the replacement for the family.
02:36: It's not that the community doesn't have its place, but the problem is that we have begun to rely so much on the community that the family has lost its place.
02:49: Dr.
02:50: Nicoli, a psychiatrist from Harvard, noted current studies that reveal that American parents spend less time with their children than do parents in almost any other country or culture in the world.
03:07: American parents spend less time with their children than almost any other country or culture in the world.
03:15: And nothing can replace that, the time that we spend with our children.
03:21: In 2013, a television host named Melissa Perry recorded a commercial for MSNBC, and she was quoted as saying the following, and this is scary, I want you to hear this, this is from a noted television personality.
03:40: She says, we've never invested as much in public education as we should have because we've always had kind of a private notion of children.
03:47: Your kid is yours and totally your responsibility.
03:50: We haven't had a very collective notion of these as our children.
03:54: So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids actually belong to the whole community.
04:03: Isn't that scary? That's scary thinking.
04:07: But you see, that's the idea that's really made its way into society is that your kids aren't yours, they're ours.
04:15: That's scary.
04:17: And that's expanding the idea that it takes a village.
04:20: Now it doesn't just take a village to raise a child, the village is primary and the family is not important.
04:27: The family needs to be put away.
04:30: The child doesn't belong to the family, it belongs to the village.
04:34: Well, that kind of thinking is bad enough, but it's compounded when we begin to consider what kind of village we now live in.
04:44: Because just for a moment, I want you to think, if you take the, it takes a village mindset that really society is responsible for raising our children.
04:52: Think about the society that we live in now.
04:56: We live in a society that is overrun by three primary ideals.
05:01: One is relativism and morality.
05:03: Two is humanism and education, and three is heathenism and behavior.
05:09: And this is still the introduction to the message, we haven't gotten to the text yet, but let me just explain what those three things are because you all know and you've seen this before.
05:17: We've got relativism in our morality.
05:19: What is relativism? Relativism is the idea that there are no absolute rights and wrongs.
05:23: There are no absolute truths.
05:26: There are no absolute demands upon the morality of any individual.
05:29: It's only what you think is right, and what you think is right may be different than what I think is right, and because your right is different than my right, and we're both not able to be wrong, because nobody can be wrong anymore, we all have to be right.
05:43: This is why we can't decide who gets to go to which restroom, because everybody has to be right.
05:49: It's nonsense, but that's relativism in morality.
05:53: It leads to all kinds of nonsense.
05:55: I used to be a security guard at a high school.
06:01: I did that while I was going to seminary.
06:04: Now I'm a substitute teacher at a middle school.
06:06: I don't know which is more dangerous, but I actually do.
06:11: When I was a security guard at a high school, I used to catch kids, they'd have drugs, they'd be fighting, and no one fought like girls, just so you know, ladies really, because you don't know how to break that up.
06:24: They hold each other, anyway, hair and everything else, it's crazy, but you go in, you break them up, and you say, don't you know it's wrong to smash someone's head into a tree? It's not wrong for me, Mr.
06:37: Foskey.
06:43: It's not wrong for me to do drugs.
06:46: It's not wrong for me to talk back to the teacher.
06:49: It's not wrong for me to skip, and you say, what do you mean it's not wrong for me? Because I say it's right.
06:55: I am the captain of my destiny.
06:57: I am the demander of all that is around me.
07:00: I am king.
07:01: Right? That's the attitude we teach.
07:03: That's morality.
07:04: Relativism is it's all up to you.
07:07: You get to decide.
07:16: Humanism and education, what's that? Well, we have relativism in our morality, we have humanism in our education.
07:23: Humanism, secular humanism, teaches that man is really no special creation of God, he's not made in the image of God, he's simply a complex form of matter.
07:34: He came from nothing and he's going nowhere, so this life really means nothing.
07:39: We've been telling people for a hundred years that they came from monkeys, and now we're surprised that they act like it.
07:53: But that's secular humanism.
07:55: Every time I go to the site, you know, my wife is wonderful.
07:58: She takes our kids on all these little day trips, and we're homeschoolers, so she has a little bit more time to take them places, and so she can take them to different places, and she takes them to the science museum sometimes.
08:12: And I tell you, it really is not a lot of fun to go to the science museum, because we're constantly having to say, no, that's not right.
08:22: You see the little scale, it starts out like a fish, and then it becomes like a man-shaped blob, and then the man-shaped blob becomes a little bit more man-shaped, and then it gets a little bit more man-shaped, and then it looks like your cellular signal on your cell phone.
08:36: All right? The good signal is the man.
08:37: All right? It just gets bigger.
08:42: But that's it.
08:42: That's humanism.
08:44: We came from nothing.
08:45: We're going nowhere, and this life is ultimately meaningless.
08:48: It was like Nietzsche said, you know, that ultimately this is all nothing, and nothing matters.
08:54: We've been talking about it in our Sunday school class, existentialism, that teaches that man is a useless passion.
08:59: We're passionate about all these things, passionate about life, passionate about health, passionate about our hopes, passionate about our dreams, passionate about our children, passionate about our careers and everything else, but it all doesn't matter because you're not going anywhere.
09:10: You're just going to die and go into the ground.
09:11: Nothing matters.
09:12: So man is a useless passion.
09:14: That's what the existentialists will say.
09:17: And that's what we see so many people.
09:19: What do they say? YOLO, right? What does YOLO mean, Chris? You only...
09:26: Sorry.
09:28: It means you only live once.
09:30: I want to start one that's YOLF, you only live forever in heaven or hell.
09:39: Maybe it should be YWLF, you will live forever.
09:44: There is no YOLO.
09:46: But that's existential nonsense, and that's humanism, and that's what we get our children taught.
09:53: And don't think you're immune if you're homeschooled.
09:56: You're not.
09:56: Because even if your kids don't go to school and have other people teach them stuff, because you know what? It's taught through television, education.
10:05: It's taught through radio and songs.
10:09: Think about music.
10:11: How does music come in? Music tells us to do what feels good.
10:15: That's humanism.
10:16: Do what satisfies, you know, follow your heart.
10:19: Listen to your heart.
10:20: I realize that's a 30-year-old song, so it's probably not going to get any kid today.
10:24: But listen to your heart, says what? You're the arbiter of truth.
10:30: Your heart tells you what's right and wrong.
10:32: That's what the Bible says.
10:33: Your heart is desperately wicked above all things, who can know it? Means your heart confuses you and lies to you.
10:43: Every time I've ever talked to any man who cheated on his wife and I'm trying to counsel him, he said, well, that's why I did what my heart wanted to do.
10:48: I know, because your heart is desperately wicked and you need to repent.
10:51: I don't doubt that that's what your heart told you to do.
10:54: Your heart was wrong.
10:55: You can't tell somebody they're wrong.
10:57: Giddy up.
10:58: We sure will.
11:01: If the Bible says it's wrong, we'll say it's wrong.
11:04: What are you, nuts? Absolutely.
11:08: And we're taught heathenism and behavior.
11:10: Relativism and morality, humanism and education, heathenism and behavior, sexual sin, perversion, abortion, greed, lust.
11:20: All these are so much more common in what we see in our society, in the media, demonstrated without apology in television and movies.
11:27: And I've mentioned this before, but you all know like when some of you were younger, you would watch Ricky and Lucy, right? And the kids, you don't know who Ricky and Lucy is.
11:36: It wasn't a cartoon.
11:37: It was two actual people and they had a bedroom on the show that had two beds.
11:44: You know that was never normal in American culture to have two beds? You know why it became part of the cultural mindset? Because on television they could not show two unmarried people, actors, in the same bed.
12:04: So you would see honeymooners or whoever else, these two people aren't married, they can't have a single bed.
12:09: It was never normal.
12:10: It was normal on television because at least there was a standard of morality that at least somebody understood that two unmarried people ought not be sharing the same bed, right? That was part of what was on the TV.
12:23: And at least there was a cultural mindset that there are certain things that are right and wrong and we're not going to promote that, which is wrong.
12:29: Well, that's gone.
12:32: Any semblance of cultural morality has been pushed out the window and we have become a society like Jeremiah promised.
12:39: Jeremiah said in Jeremiah 6, 15, they have become a people who do not know how to blush.
12:43: You know why you blush? You blush because you're embarrassed.
12:50: You blush because you're ashamed of yourself.
12:51: You blush because you did something wrong.
12:53: And when you forget how to blush, it means you forget your conscience.
12:59: And we have become a society that has forgotten how to blush.
13:04: I say all this because I think too much emphasis is placed on society and not enough emphasis is placed on the family.
13:13: And because today is Mother's Day and it is my custom, not that I do a hallmark liturgy, but I will do as my hallmark liturgy.
13:20: I do have a custom to giving a special Mother's Day message and a special Father's Day message.
13:27: We are a family church.
13:28: We are very committed to seeing the family grow.
13:32: We're committed to the father, understanding his role as the pastor, the protector, and the provider for his home, and that's what I'm going to preach on Father's Day.
13:40: We are committed to the mother, understanding her role as nurturer, teacher of the children, submissive to her husband, loving him and him loving her.
13:48: We're committed to children, understanding how to honor their parents, not just until they turn 18, but honor them throughout their life.
13:56: You know one of the greatest times you can honor your parents is when they're seniors.
14:02: Because that's the time that they need you the most.
14:05: That's the time when they may need you to do some of the things they did for you when you were a child.
14:14: So that honor, your father and mother, there's a certain kind of obedience shift once you become an adult and the woman leaves her family, joins another husband to become one flesh.
14:25: There is a change in obedience because now there's a new family.
14:30: But there's no change in honor.
14:34: So like I said, we're a family church.
14:35: We're focused on the family.
14:36: I want us to understand how the family is supposed to work.
14:38: I want us to understand how the family is supposed to function.
14:41: And I want you to understand that there's power in being a godly mother and more important than the village is a godly family.
14:50: More important than anything in the rearing of a child is a godly mom and dad.
14:57: But today, because it is Mother's Day, we're going to focus on a godly mom.
15:03: So let's begin.
15:04: We're going to read.
15:05: I'm going to ask you to stand.
15:06: That was a rather lengthy introduction.
15:09: I promise it'll end soon.
15:12: Come stand.
15:13: We're going to read 2 Timothy 1, 3-5.
15:21: This is the Apostle Paul talking to Timothy, his son in the faith.
15:25: One he's been mentoring now for quite some time.
15:28: And he says, I thank God whom I serve, as did my ancestors with a clear conscience, as I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day.
15:36: And I remember your tears.
15:38: I long to see you that I may be filled with joy.
15:42: I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well.
16:00: Father in heaven, I thank you for your Word.
16:02: I thank you for the truth.
16:03: I pray that you would keep me from error as I seek to preach your truth.
16:07: I pray that you'd open the hearts of your people to believe.
16:09: I hope that this message, I pray, oh God, that this message would be used to draw believers closer to you, that it would be a time that we honor, show honor where it's due.
16:18: Your Word tells us to show honor where honor is due, where we will honor godly motherhood, and that we will properly understand its purpose and its role in the world.
16:27: And also, Lord, I pray, for the men and women here, there be one, I'm sure there are many, who do not know you, that you would draw them to yourself through repentance of sin and faith in Jesus Christ.
16:40: I pray the gospel would be clearly presented as we go through this text.
16:43: In Jesus' name, Amen.
16:53: I realize that we have quite a few guests this morning, as it is Mother's Day, and we tend to have a few more guests on Mother's Day, but for those of you who haven't been here, I have been preaching through Acts, and we've been in Acts chapter 16, and that is the point at which the Apostle Paul meets Timothy and sort of adopts him as his protege and his ministry partner and disciple to take on to go into the second missionary journey.
17:24: So we learn a lot about Timothy in that text, in Acts 16.
17:29: We learn that Timothy was the son of a Jewish mother and a Greek father.
17:34: We know that when Paul met Timothy, he had not yet been circumcised, which tells us that his father was not submitting to Jewish customs and Jewish laws, which means his father was not himself a convert to Judaism.
17:49: He had married a Jewish woman, but he himself was not a Jewish man, either by birth or by conversion, because had he been, he certainly would have circumcised his son in accordance with that faith.
18:01: His mother, however, was a believer.
18:04: Father was not, as far as we know, a believer in Christ, neither was he a believer in the Jewish customs.
18:13: We don't know anything about him, but we know the mother was.
18:16: We know the mother was a believer, and we know the grandmother was a believer, and these women had a profound influence on Timothy as a young man.
18:31: Often I think we misunderstand and underestimate the influence that a godly mother can be in a home.
18:42: John Bunyan, the writer of Pilgrim's Progress, wrote this.
18:47: He says, in these days, this being in his time, in the 1600s, he said, in these days, the mother who trains her children for Christ is as truly working for God as is the minister in the pulpit.
19:03: He said, the woman who trains her children for Christ is doing just as much work for God as the man in the pulpit.
19:10: That's a powerful statement.
19:13: Tony Miano, who is a minister friend of mine, an open air evangelist, he said this.
19:18: He says, the greatest and probably the most unappreciated evangelists in the world are moms.
19:28: The greatest and most unappreciated evangelists in the world are moms.
19:34: How many of us know, beyond doubt, that our coming to Christ was due in part, in large part, to the influence and prayers of a godly mother? Now certainly not all of us came from Christian homes, so not all of us can claim such a blessing, but those of us who did must realize the value of having a godly mom brought to your life.
20:00: It brought a sanctifying influence over the home, just as the Scripture says that it would.
20:09: We know God is sovereign and God saves according to His will, but He uses means, and one of the great means that God uses to draw His people to Himself is a godly influence from a mother.
20:24: So what do we learn from the motherhood of these two women in this story, in this section of Scripture rather? Well first we learn that Timothy actually saw the godly influence of his mother and his grandmother's life.
20:43: He actually witnessed it.
20:44: Look again at verse 5.
20:46: He says, I call to remembrance the genuine faith that is in you.
20:50: This is Paul talking to Timothy.
20:51: He says, I call to remembrance the faith that is in you, which dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice.
20:59: It's obvious that Paul had seen these women and he had seen their faith in action.
21:06: It could have been that he and Barnabas had led them both to faith in Christ during their first missionary journey because the time that Paul meets Timothy is on the second missionary journey.
21:17: It could have been that they were led to Christ a few years before that.
21:20: So now, not only were they Jewish by their religion, now they had come to Christ through the preaching of Paul and now Paul's ministry had gone from them to Timothy.
21:31: They had understood the Scriptures well enough to see that Paul was a true man of God.
21:35: They trusted the Gospel that resulted in their salvation.
21:40: And godly parents train their children and so this woman trained her son to know the Scripture.
21:48: You know what's funny is oftentimes churches spend so much time focused on the young people that they miss the parents of those young people.
22:04: I heard it years ago say, church buses are full but church parking lots are empty because we become so focused on youth groups and youth evangelism and youth ministry that we forget the greatest evangelism that you can do for a young person is through their parents.
22:31: The greatest way to minister to children is to teach their mom and their dad how to be their ministers.
22:44: Because your children, let's just say, and I know that we don't do this a lot here, but let's just say you send your children to church once a week.
22:52: You stay home.
22:54: They go to church, they get influenced by that person at church for an hour a week.
22:59: But the other six days a week they're with you and there's no godly interaction at all and then you're not even participating.
23:11: What is the primary influence in that child's life? The parent.
23:18: And what is the parent showing them? That Christ and the gospel don't matter enough for them to make a change, to do anything.
23:27: I'll send you to church because it's important for you, but it's not important once you become adults.
23:33: You know, I listen to guys who make these great claims about statistics and a lot of ministers really are into statistics.
23:40: They're into numbers and they want to know how big their churches are.
23:43: And it's funny because every time you meet a new minister from associations or whatever, they'll come and they'll say, well, how many are you running on Sunday? I say, I'm running them all off.
23:55: How many are you running on Sunday? It's always about that.
23:59: And you ask them, you say, well, what do you think it takes to grow a church? Because that's always the idea of big church.
24:05: What do you think it takes? Well, you've got to get the kids, because once they turn 18, you can't get them anymore.
24:12: I've heard that before.
24:13: I've heard that many times.
24:14: Once they turn 18, the statistics show they just don't come to Christ anymore.
24:18: You've got to get them before they turn 18, especially before they leave college.
24:21: If you don't get them before they leave college, you've lost them forever.
24:25: Number one, that denies the sovereignty of God.
24:29: But number two, it tells us where we've been focusing.
24:32: And you can see it in the churches.
24:33: The churches look like playgrounds.
24:35: They don't look like churches anymore.
24:38: They look like amusement parks.
24:40: You know what the word amuse means? It means to stop thinking.
24:45: No, it really does.
24:46: Muse means to think.
24:48: It means to think on something.
24:50: To put an A, that's an alpha negative, at the beginning of something, like an atheist, means to take that away.
24:55: So amuse means to stop thinking.
24:58: And that's what churches have become.
25:01: Amusement parks.
25:03: We bring people in.
25:04: We shut their minds off.
25:06: We feed them a bunch of gravy music.
25:09: And a lot of times, it's just secular music.
25:12: They don't care anymore.
25:13: They don't care what's said.
25:14: Play Crazy Train.
25:16: Play Stairway to Heaven.
25:17: It doesn't matter.
25:18: If you think I'm lying, I am not.
25:23: And it becomes this nonsense.
25:25: And what we've stopped doing, and I'm talking about the church in total, the church in general, has stopped trying to reach parents because they're so focused on reaching the kids.
25:40: You know what we want to do here? We want to reach parents because in reaching parents, you reach the kids.
25:46: We want to minister to parents and grandparents because from this text, parents and grandparents will have more of a godly influence on a child than a youth minister ever could.
25:59: A godly mom and dad will have more influence on a child than me as a pastor could.
26:06: You've got them all week.
26:07: I get them for an hour.
26:09: It's not enough.
26:10: The ratio is too small.
26:16: So we focus on you.
26:19: And I say you.
26:21: Moms, dads, grandmas, grandpas, aunts, uncles, adoptive relationships.
26:28: Maybe you're somebody's aunt, but you're not really their aunt, but they call you aunt.
26:31: I'm talking to you.
26:33: You have an opportunity to influence a young person for the gospel, and that is yours.
26:40: Don't blow it.
26:41: Don't waste it.
26:41: Don't throw it away.
26:42: Don't misplace it.
26:44: Use it.
26:47: Grab it.
26:48: Appreciate what God has given you.
26:51: And do it.
26:53: Think about a little girl.
26:55: I see this a lot as Hope gets older.
26:59: Hope loves clothes, and she loves to change clothes.
27:04: And she also knows that Daddy has a hard time saying no to things that don't matter.
27:09: So when she brings me clothes to change, I'll tend to change her three or four times a day.
27:13: And Jeff says, why are you doing that? Because she likes clothes.
27:18: And because that's my baby, and I know she likes clothes.
27:23: But almost every day at some point, Hope will go over to Jennifer's shoes.
27:29: It would sit right next to her chair.
27:31: And she'll take those little feet, and she'll slide those little feet into those shoes that are Jennifer's size.
27:41: And obviously for her, much larger.
27:44: And then she'll scoot across the floor.
27:47: She'll drag her feet across the floor because she can't walk.
27:50: If she lifted up her feet, it'd fall right off.
27:52: So she has to sort of drag.
27:54: And you sort of hear them sliding across the ground.
27:57: You know what she says? You know what she's doing? She's being like Mama.
28:03: Kids want to be like us more than we think.
28:08: Sometimes to our detriment, because sometimes we're not the best examples.
28:12: And we'll hear our kids say something to somebody else that we've said to them, and we're like, ooh, better not do that again.
28:21: But my point in the illustration is simply this.
28:24: What should we be giving our children? We should be giving our children the Word of God.
28:29: We are the example that they need, and we are the most important example in their life.
28:35: It's not the village that's the thing that's going to change for them.
28:41: It's the parents.
28:44: Lois and Eunice were examples of Christian living to Timothy.
28:51: They were examples which were more important than societal influences.
28:57: And it doesn't say this in the text, but there is a little bit of an assumption that can be made.
29:02: Timothy lived in a world where not everybody was a Christian.
29:05: You understand that, right? He lived in Galatia, where there were people who were false teachers, and there were bad religious systems there.
29:13: There were Judaizers.
29:15: There were Jewish people.
29:15: There was a lot of people in his life that could have influenced him in a lot of negative ways.
29:19: But you know who had the most profound impact on him? According to the Apostle Paul, I see the faith in you that dwelt first in your grandmother and then in your mother, and now I am certain is in you.
29:42: Do your children and do your grandchildren see you as a godly guide in their lives? Someone who is steadfast in your faith? Someone that when the temptations of this world come calling, they look to you as an example of godliness.
29:59: They come to you to ask you what to do in times of trial and difficulty and know that you are in Christ.
30:12: You're never going to shield your children from all that is within the world, but you can be a light in the darkness to them.
30:20: You can be the example of godliness to them.
30:23: That's what Lois and Eunice were to Timothy, and that's what we're called to be to them.
30:31: Timothy was also taught the Word of God, and this is the second part that I wanted to point out, but this actually isn't in this text.
30:38: I want you to go back, or rather forward, to chapter 3, just for a second.
30:45: Chapter 3 and verse 15.
30:52: Actually, start at verse 14.
30:54: It begins the sentence, But as for you, this again Paul talking to Timothy, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.
31:18: Beloved, it wasn't just that Lois and Eunice were godly examples.
31:24: They were.
31:24: They were godly examples to Timothy, but it wasn't just their example.
31:29: And I've heard people say this.
31:30: They'll say, you know what? I'm going to be an example to my kids, but I'm not going to push Christ on them.
31:34: I'm going to be an example to my kids, but I'm not going to teach them about Jesus.
31:38: I'll let them make that decision themselves.
31:42: I've heard a lot of people say, you know what? I don't want to push religion on my children.
31:47: Those same people, though, will demand that their kids go to certain colleges.
31:51: They will demand that their kids play certain sports because those things matter.
31:59: But I'm not going to force Jesus on my children.
32:03: That's silliness.
32:04: That's foolish.
32:05: But it happens.
32:07: You see, Lois and Eunice, they taught Timothy the Word of God.
32:12: Godly parents begin teaching their children about the things of God at a young age.
32:17: The Scripture says in Proverbs 22.6, and most of you probably can finish it if I start it, train up a child in the way he should go and what? When he's old, he will not depart from it.
32:29: Right? Train up a child in the way he should go.
32:32: It's interesting that that word train does mean different than teach.
32:41: Teaching something is the relaying of information.
32:46: Training something is the reinforcement of a behavior.
32:51: You go to the military, they don't have to train you how to walk.
32:54: They don't have to teach you how to walk, but they're going to train you how to march.
32:58: Right? They're going to train you in a behavior.
33:02: Right? Do we train our children? Do we train them with the Word of God? Parents have the responsibility to prepare their children for the satanic influences of this world.
33:14: You have a responsibility to teach your children to discriminate.
33:21: Do you know that? You say, wait a minute, pastor, that's a bad word.
33:26: You can't teach people to discriminate.
33:28: You better.
33:30: You have to teach your children to be able to discriminate between right and wrong.
33:35: And how do you teach somebody to discriminate between right and wrong? This is how you determine what's right and wrong.
33:42: This is how you discriminate between what's right and what's wrong.
33:50: Moral relativism is foolish.
33:53: When the Word of God tells us what is true, we must teach our children as godly parents the Word of God so that they might be able to understand the difference between right and wrong.
34:14: Now I want to say a third thing.
34:16: I want to draw a third point from this text.
34:20: And we can go back to chapter 1.
34:24: He says in verse 5, he says, I'm reminded of the sincere faith that dwelt in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice.
34:31: Notice that the text says nothing about the father.
34:37: But as we said in Acts 16, the father is mentioned only as a Greek man who was unwilling to have his son circumcised.
34:49: When we look at the life of Timothy and what Paul comments about it, it is clear that Lois and Eunice had a great deal of influence on the man that he turned out to be.
34:59: But it's interesting also to consider this, that Timothy's situation was not one that we would say was perfect nor even exemplary as far as family is concerned.
35:14: We know nothing of Timothy's father except for that he didn't hold the Jewish faith.
35:21: He could have been a worshiper of Greek gods.
35:23: He could be dead at this point.
35:25: We do not know.
35:28: But what we do know is this, even in an imperfect situation, a situation which was not ideal, the power of a mother's commitment to teaching her child the Word of God shined through the imperfection.
35:46: Why am I bringing this up? Because I think some people think that because we call ourselves a family church that we only understand mother, father, and children and that's the only way that it can be perfect.
35:58: Let me tell you something, that's God's design that there be a mommy and a daddy and children.
36:02: But you know what? Sometimes life makes things where it's not that way.
36:08: Sometimes people die.
36:11: Sometimes people abandon other people and ungodliness.
36:17: Sometimes it is a single parent situation.
36:19: And I just want to say this, if you look at Lois and Eunice, they're teaching Timothy without the dad.
36:27: That's not the way it should be, but that doesn't mean it can't be done.
36:34: Now here's my point.
36:35: Be careful.
36:36: I'm not saying dads aren't important in any way.
36:38: What I'm saying is this, if you're in a situation where you're living with a man or a woman who is not a believer, you still bring a sanctifying presence into that home.
36:49: And you can still bring godliness into that home even if you're alone.
36:56: You say, why am I talking about this? Because people are in this situation.
37:00: You might say, well, I'm not.
37:01: Well, then I ain't talking to you.
37:05: But what if your spouse died tomorrow? No one is promised another day.
37:15: God gives us the grace.
37:19: He gives us His Word.
37:20: I want to read to you from 1 Corinthians 7.
37:23: Because sometimes people are married to unbelievers.
37:25: And this is what it says.
37:26: It says, the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife.
37:29: The unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband.
37:32: Otherwise, your children will be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.
37:35: See, if there's a situation where you are married to an unbeliever, guess what? You bring sanctity into the home by being a believer.
37:41: And you bless your children through that sanctification.
37:43: This text in 1 Corinthians 7 is about the Lois and Eunice situation.
37:47: It's not directly related, but it's about that situation because that's the situation she was in.
37:54: She brought sanctity into the home even though the father wasn't a believer.
38:02: Again, while it's not ideal, it is true that it takes and can be used of one godly parent to open the door for the Word of God to be a sanctifying influence on a child.
38:16: So if you're in a bad situation today, I want you to know God can still use you.
38:22: I don't want you to feel abandoned.
38:23: I don't want you to feel unloved.
38:25: And I certainly don't want you to feel like you can't do it because God can do it through you.
38:32: God honors the faithful parent who makes it his or her mission to teach his or her child the Word of God.
38:40: Never let an imperfect situation make you feel like you cannot make an impact on your child.
38:45: You can.
38:48: God can do it through you.
38:51: Mothers, as I draw to a close, I want to speak to you directly.
38:56: Never lose sight of the power that God has invested in you.
39:00: Theologians down through the ages from Augustine to Edwards, from Wesley to Spurgeon, have all held their mother's prayers as influences and means of grace in their lives.
39:13: So I want to end today with the words of Spurgeon about his mother.
39:20: Spurgeon writes, I am sure that in my early youth no teaching ever made such an impression upon my mind as the instruction of my mother.
39:34: Neither can I conceive that to any child there can be one who will have such influence over the heart as the mother who has so tenderly cared for her offspring.
39:45: Never could it be possible for any man to estimate what he owes to a godly mother.
39:53: Certainly I have not the powers of speech with which to set forth my valuation of the choice blessing which the Lord bestowed on me in making me the son of one who prayed for me and prayed with me.
40:10: That was Spurgeon's words on his mom and he just said, you know what? I can't count the blessing it is.
40:18: I can't put a number on how great a blessing it is to have had a mom who prayed for me and prayed with me.
40:29: Mothers, never forget the investment that God has made in you by making you a mom.
40:37: Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church.
40:41: Invest in your wife as she invests in the family.
40:45: And children, honor your fathers and mothers and love them today.
40:53: Amen.
40:54: Let's pray.
40:55: Father, I thank you for the opportunity to again go to your word and learn a valuable truth.
41:02: I pray that we would understand our roles as parents and that the ministry to the child begins not with society, not with the village, not even with the church, but with the parents.
41:17: And I pray that the parents in this church today would understand the enormity of the calling that we have.
41:26: Help us to love you.
41:28: Help us to love our children.
41:32: Help us to seek after you in all things.
41:36: In Jesus' name we pray.
41:39: Amen.