Proverbs 4:1-3 (The Home As The Epicenter Of Education)

The Home as the Primary Place of Education

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day Sermon. We pray that as we declare the Word of God that you would be encouraged Strengthened in your faith and that you would catch a greater vision of who Christ is.

May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word and may the Lord be with you. According to the Bible the primary place where education happens is in the home. Education does not primarily happen in schools or colleges or in postdoc research trips to Scotland.

She sounds really wonderful by the way. But it happens in the home. If you think about it language is learned in the home children learn to speak in the home. They learn to love in the home. They learn to love their God in the home.

There's so much behaviorally socially relationally theologically Personally that children learn in the home. That to say that it's the primary vehicle for God's Teaching of his people is an understatement.

It is God's preferred preferred vehicle for teaching. It is the epicenter of education. It's where parents mold their children with the Word of God molding minds and souls and hearts. According to the truths of Scripture now with that.

I'm not speaking against Things like Christian academies or homeschool co-ops or programs that the church might endeavor to participate in or other church participate in like Iwana or VBS my children participate in Iwana.

We're praying diligently for a Christian Academy at this church. So I'm not speaking against those things. All I'm trying to acknowledge is that the home is where Education begins and if you were to take a taxonomy of your child's Understanding if you were to actually do that, you would see that the majority of what they learn is in the home.

Whether that's morality intellectual concepts theological concepts relational spiritual Rational practical all of these things are taught in the home. Which means that the home and its office of teaching cannot be outsourced.

It cannot be replaced. Let me say it a different way. Your home is going to teach something. The question is what is it going to teach? You can't avoid the fact that your home is going to teach. It will either teach the things of God or it will teach the things of man.

It will either teach righteousness or it will teach compromise. It will either teach holiness or it will teach evil. It will either teach faithfulness or it will teach fruitlessness. But you cannot avoid that it will teach something.

The question is not if my home will teach it is what? My home will teach the scriptures have plenty to say about what our homes ought to teach. For instance, look at Deuteronomy chapter 6. Here Oh Israel The Lord is our God.

The Lord is one and you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all of your soul and with all of your might. These words which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart and you shall teach them diligently to your sons and you shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up and you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand and They shall be as frontals on your forehead.

You shall write them on the doorpost of your house and On your gates. So immediately we've got how teaching in the home is to permeate everything for instance. You teach while you're lying down or you teach while you're standing up.

There's not a whole lot left after the lying down parts in the standing up parts. So that your home is always teaching one of the things that I think is.

Is.

So needed is The home to revive this vision of it being the epicenter of teaching because it is the love of God That is transferred to one generation to another in the home. It says love the Lord your God with all your heart so your mind but teach that diligently to the next generation.

Why. Because we can't take for granted that one generations love for God is going to transfer to the next generation. It must be diligently taught. Diligently spoken about diligently covered. Which means that We need to bring God into our meals into our laundry days Into our cleaning up of the playroom into our family time and let it permeate every aspect of our existence.

There's no such thing as a sacred and secular divide. There's not the family time and then the spiritual time everything is under the banner of Spiritual because it's all under the banner of his sovereignty.

Now I do want to make a qualification here. God is not talking in his word only about theology. God did not envision that we would all raise up a bundle of Christian nerds. Theology is good. I love theology.

I talk about theology a lot, but that is not that's the minimum that God is talking about here. That's the minimum. What he's talking about is all of Christ for all of life making Everything bringing everything under the lordship of our Savior, which means that we bring biblical orthodoxy onto our plates and into our brooms and Into the way that we do everything.

Because there is a Christian way to do everything. Proverbs 22 6 says train up a child in the way that he shall go even when he is old. He will not depart from it.

If you're.

Reading that and you say that sounds like a promise. It sounds like that because it is. That when you train up a child in the way that he shall go when he's old He will not depart from it. Now. This is not just training them up in theology.

This is not just I'm gonna train up my child to understand penal substitution area atonement and to make sure that he understands the difference between cessation ism and continuation ism. And Sunday school this morning, by the way, if you're wondering why I brought that up Shameless plug.

Dan you did a good job. But just because you can say all the terms just because you've memorized Catechism questions that's minimum standard. What? What Proverbs is talking about is train up a child in the way that he should go.

It doesn't say train up a child in the way that he should think. Because that's included in the way he should go. Train up a child in the way that he should think in the way that he should act in the way Should he feel in the way that he should do everything?

It's all inclusive and if you do that the promise for you is that your child will not Depart from it when he or she is older. Genesis 18 17 through 19 Says the Lord said I love this passage, but it was so good.

Shall I hide from Abraham what I'm about to do and Since Abraham will surely become a great and a mighty nation and him and in him all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. For I have chosen him So that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing Righteousness and justice so that the Lord may bring upon Abraham all that he has spoken about him.

There is so much. There's a sermon right here in this passage that we could talk about. Let me summarize. What is it from the princess bride? There's too much. Let me sum up.

Okay.

God promises to Abraham that through his seed every family on earth will come under the blessings of God. That has not happened yet, which means that we're still waiting for that to happen. Which means that if you have a view of eschatology that ends Short of all the families on earth coming under the blessing of God through the seed of Abraham.

Which Paul tells us is Christ your eschatology is too small. That's the first thing but sin, but but salient to our message today is How does God bring the blessings to every family on earth? The answer to how is that God says for I have chosen him and what was the purpose of him choosing him so that he would command his children and his household and How is he supposed to command his children as household to obey the way of the Lord?

So all the blessings that God wants to give to families are downstream of obedience if you don't obey the Lord. How can you have any expectation that you will have blessings from the Lord. So what he's saying is that the job of the parent in the tradition of Abraham is To command your house righteously and in your commanding of your house.

You were to teach obedience and in teaching obedience and in as your children come to learn to joyfully obey not dutifully obey joyfully obey the Lord then the result is that your family your house your Legacy will have great blessings.

Parenting then is the most difficult. The most all-consuming and yet the most joyful job in all the world because You get the privilege and the opportunity to sow Blessings into generations by focusing on just a few things help them see all of Christ and all their life and Help them see that it affects all their family and your children's children and your children's children's children.

And if you can sow into your family that kind of spiritual DNA. When you are old and you're on your rocking chair, and you're sitting on your porch, and you're smoking your pipe. I'm maybe I'm just talking about me here.

You will look at all of that. The Lord has done in blessing your family, and you will rejoice. Your bones may ache your back may hurt your hip may be out of socket from time to time, but you will rejoice.

Because you will see the blessings of the Lord over generations. And that's what the Lord is promising. The Lord is promising that we don't have to shipwreck our families in Regenerational sins that we can be faithful and in our faithfulness the Lord will bring blessings.

Now I'm again not saying that church and Academy are unimportant those things can help, but they're supplements and Academy is a supplement to the Christian home. The church is a is Playing an advisory role to the Christian home.

Abraham Kuyper. This is a little bit of a tangent, but you'll see what I mean. Abraham Kuyper talked about what's called sphere sovereignty. What what he meant by that was that God has established three governments and those three governments.

Don't infringe upon the other there's the government of the church. There's the government of the state, and there's the government of the home. The church's role is to advise the state to stop sinning and rule righteously and The church's job is to advise the home on how to lead their families and obedience.

That's the church's role. The home's role is to actually carry that out and to bring the blessings of God Into the house into the living room into the bedroom into the community and beyond. So that the church the Academy the school the homeschool curriculum the co-op.

They're all supplements. Let me put it to you this way. It would be a miserable existence if you went on Amazon and you bought a bunch of supplements and thought that that's all that you had to consume.

I've had my vitamin D for the day. I've had my vitamin C. I've I've had my protein powder. I don't need to eat. Can you can you imagine how miserable that would be? Because it's a supplement. It's not meant to be the main course.

The main course is the home. The church and the Academy are to supplement Christian education not to supplant it. Now we've all grown up in a time period where this has not been the case for instance.

My dad who's a wonderful man had no vision whatsoever of how to teach the family. I Remember at Christmas every year. My mom had to lead family devotions. Which was one of the two devotions that we did in the year there was the Christmas devotion and there was the Easter devotion and that was about it and Because my dad was a quiet man.

He didn't lead it. He sat there and kind of listened and.

Yeah.

When my mom made a good point and that was that was the view of leadership that I had transferred to me. And that's what I've been working against my entire adult life. Because I saw male passivity. I've had to work against it and actually try really hard to not be passive, but my tendency is Towards that because I saw it.

That's what I learned. That was that's what was transferred to me. Also, we grew up in an era where the outsourcing is of Christian education was at its highest at its heights. For instance, I also grew up in an era where my mom thought That in order to make me Christian in order to make sure That she didn't have to stand before Jesus and explain why her son went to hell in order for that to happen.

She needed to sign me up for VBS and she also needed to make sure that I was in Sunday school every week and.

And.

Because we didn't actually talk about any of these things at home, but she shipped me off to a program. She outsourced her education and my dad outsourced his education and I'm not. I'm not critiquing.

I'm saying a whole generation did that. It's not just my mom and dad that is what we did and look at the state of the church and look at the state Of the country after we have outsourced education of in the home.

We have a very loose and a very shallow and a very surface level faith in American Christianity and is there any wonder a generation became adults under the leadership of Parents who were not involved in their development spiritually.

So therefore they grew up and they were not involved spiritually. Parents are irreplaceable and the home as the center of education is Irreplaceable. So with that I Want us to very briefly look at our passage today Proverbs chapter 4 verses 1 through 3 and I want to look at what God says to parents about what we are to teach and what we are to Communicate and I'm gonna call it a body of instruction.

There's a body. There's a corpus if you're if you like nerdy terms there's a canon of Teaching that we are to hand off to our children and Proverbs 4 1 through 3 talks about it. So with that, let us read and then we will dive right in.

This is what it says. Here old sons the instruction of a father and give attention that you may gain understanding. For I give you sound teaching. Do not abandon my instruction. When I was a son to my father tender and the only son in the sight of my father.

This is the Word of the Lord. Now today we're going to talk about three things. We're going to talk about what is our responsibility? With homes to teach and then we're going to talk about two reasons why this is so important.

The two reasons are that we have to help our homes. Which is both wives. Husbands and children we have to help our homes. Understand the things of God that's first and then the second is so that we can have legacies of faithfulness.

The Body of Instruction in the Home

So with that, let us pray Lord Jesus, it's clear that the home is the center of teaching it's where all of your word comes to bear most fully and Lord, I pray that we would be people of the word Lord whether the home is a single person.

Whether the home is a married couple or whether the home is a family with small children. Or whether the home is a family with children who've grown and moved out. Lord I pray that Somewhere in the midst of these things that we can see what you're speaking about in your word.

That is relevant to each and every one of our situations. Lord, I pray that we would be people of the word. That the word would so inform us that it would permeate our homes that the aroma of our houses would be the scriptures.

And Lord, I pray in the midst of that that it would be transferable To the next generation Lord. It's in Jesus name. We pray. Amen. Solomon tells us that we are commanded to give a body of Teaching. He says here all sons the instruction of a father.

What I think is so interesting here is he doesn't say here all sons a Instruction from a father or here all sons some instruction from the father. He uses the definite article the Instruction which he's pointing to a body of work.

He's labeling every single thing that you teach.

Under the.

Under the canopy of the teaching the instruction. Which means that? Every interaction and every moment that you have in your home is a part of The instruction that you were delivering. And as we said in the beginning the question is whether it is good instruction or whether it is bad.

This means every conversation. Every dinner table family worship every curse word that slips out of your mouth.

All.

Comes collectively into this thing called the teaching that you hand off to your children so that if the sum total of that teaching is Crass humor being absent workaholism or watching TV and trying to zone out.

When everybody else is around then that will be the the teaching that you give to the next generation then that will be the legacy that they carry forward and Obviously that is not what we want, but here's the problem.

We are very very myopic as people. We live in a microwave generation where we expect things to happen quickly so if we Fail in this moment. That's okay. And before we know it we've spent 20 years doing the same things from one millisecond to the next without ever repenting.

And the sum total of what we give to our children and to the next generation is that? But it's okay because in the moment, that's not who we are. We just will move on quickly from that but before we know it that becomes actually the story of who we were.

Right. We have to I think Have a much larger view. I think we have to stop living. For what I'm going to do today, and I think we need to start actually thinking about what's the next five years. What's the next 10 years?

What's the next 20 years look like for my family and then and then sort of working backwards to try to figure out how am I? Going to get there so that every day now falls in alignment with a grand vision.

I Think about it. Like I said earlier, I thought you meant on it a little bit the porch grandchildren running around Us having a big family worship Thanksgiving at my house is gonna be epic in my mind.

There's gonna be like 40 or 50 grandkids. Addison's already told me she wants a hundred to two hundred children. Bring it on. We have to have a vision for what the Lord's gonna do in our families. And then we have to live every day in alignment with that vision.

The vision is set in Scripture. That our families would have a legacy of faithfulness. So now we have to work today. For that legacy that's gonna happen generations from now. When Solomon says here all sons the instruction of a father.

He's using a Hebrew word Musar. Which reflects not just mere teaching or theological equipping which is what we talked about a second ago. This mean this word means instruction. It means discipline. It's not just the Theological terms that are inside of our heads that are jangling around that we can impress people in conversations that we have but it's.

It informs what books you read. It informs what side of the plate you put your salad fork on. It informs everything Fathers. The Scriptures do not call you to improvise. Like whose line is it? Anyway, it tells you that you are downstream of your father and That you receive what your father gave you and your children your sons.

Your daughters are gonna receive what you give them and This leads to a little bit of a problem, doesn't it? Because like I said, I didn't receive a consistent example of biblical teaching from my father.

Many of us have not. Many of us didn't grow up in Christian homes. So how could we have had a consistent vision of what a Christian father looks like? Many of us grew in home grew up in homes where our education was outsourced.

If you grew up in a Christian home and You didn't have any meaningful conversations about God except the few times where you were shipped off to Sunday school. Many of us have fathers who didn't give it.

Many of us grew up in homes that didn't even have fathers. So, how could you have a vision that points to what Christ says in the word your vision is my father wasn't there and If you're not careful, that's the vision that you will begin enacting in your home as well.

See the question is Are we going to give what we received? It's important that we understand what we've received. It's incredibly important. But are we going to give what we've received because it's not enough to just make the excuse that I didn't have a father who did This it's not enough to say I didn't have a mother who did this.

It's not enough For us to give ourselves these excuses because what we're doing is we're giving the same thing We received to the next generation. We have to at some point break the cycle and I would encourage you That it's never too late to begin.

I don't care where you're sitting at right now in the circumstance that you're in right now. It is never too late to begin. If your children have not come yet begin preparing. For what you're going to teach them.

What is the body of instruction that you're going to give them that Solomon appeals to? If your children are here and you're disappointed not because they're here. But you're disappointed because you don't think that you've done well you're disappointed because you look at all of the failures that you can see in your mind and it hurts you and You think about to yourself.

I wish I would have done better. That is an enemy. That's the enemy's tool to make you feel shame and to make you feel guilt and to keep you Exactly where you are. So I'm not sharing this with you to shame you.

I'm sharing this with you to tell you there's good news if you repent today is a wonderful day for new beginnings and you can have a different story and your family can have a different story by you being invested in their development and not being passive and Giving to them what you didn't receive.

One of the things I told my wife a long time ago is that if I could give my children anything. It's what I did not receive. And I feel in a lot of ways like an imposter because I've never seen it modeled.

And this is true in a lot of areas of my life. I don't feel like that in ministry I was prepared well for this church. I never saw what I hoped to see here in any leadership that I was in and Derek and I both have felt like we've had to guess we've had to.

Like blind men feeling around in the dark on how to get here and how to actually be pastors because we didn't see it modeled. I've said the same thing in my fathering and my parenting because I didn't see it model.

It's more difficult for me. But by the Lord's grace, it won't be more difficult for my children. By the Lord's grace, they won't deal with the same things I dealt with by the Lord's grace. They will look back on my life and on their mother's life and they will say thank God for them.

That what was the story of my family is no longer the story and now they're building upon what we gave them. At some point we have to break the cycle we have to do better than what we've received and Again I say it's it's it's a whole generation that's given this to us.

I don't want to use the word boomer because that's offensive. I just used it by the way. But there's there's a generation that Made a lot of wealth and then is concerned with spending a lot of wealth.

There's an attitude of I pulled myself up by the bootstraps, so shouldn't my children have to do that too and I made the money. I'm gonna spend it all and my children they can do their thing and they there's this attitude of selfishness in an older generation.

That we have to break that cycle, too because We actually have to as parents live in such a way that we're giving our children more than what we received. Not trying to give them less. It's been pervasive in our society and it's crippled the American Church.

We have to repent of it as a as a church. Us who are younger than that have to give more than we received it. Maybe you're like I didn't do this. It's too late for me. No, it's not if your children are adults and they have children now.

It's not too late. Start by praying for them start by spending time with them start by taking them out on dates. Invite them into your home show them try to influence them so that they can give to your grandchildren what you didn't give to them.

That's repentance. Repentance is not sitting in our shame and allowing something to fester because we don't want to deal with it. Repentance is saying I didn't do this. Well, maybe it's a conversation that you have with your adult child and say I did not raise you in the way that the scriptures Tell me to raise you and I'm sorry.

But I want to help you be the parent to my grandchildren that I should have been to you. Think about what God would do with that think about the glory of that again. Education comes in the home and we have to transfer this to the next generation.

An example of this a beautiful example of this. There's a great book by George Marsden. It's the biography of Jonathan Edwards. So if you want to read about one of New England's great pastors and what happened in his life, it's a great book.

But in the preface of that book, it has a list of his legacy. Which is my favorite part of the book that's the part that I remember the most so Jonathan Edwards faithful man loved the Lord and Jonathan Edwards was not a stuffy theologian.

Even though when you read his books you're like this man is way more intelligent than I am and I can't understand a word that he's saying he's wicked smart, but Jonathan Edwards. Jonathan Edwards was a warm man when his wife needed him.

He had an open-door policy. He would he would work for 13 hours a day in his study. But anytime a child came in he would pick them up and hold them and receive them into his arms. He would talk with his wife anytime.

She needed to talk and I think to myself as I'm reading about this man I'm like I am NOT as interruptible as Jonathan Edwards says and I'm certainly not as pleasant and as warm when I'm interrupted. But his warmth his love his the way that he taught his family.

It became generational. Listen to this this is just a summary. Jonathan Edwards family produced one US vice president. 13 college presidents. I can tire college presidents. Timothy Dwight was the president of Yale.

Jonathan Edwards jr. Was the president of Union College 65 professors. Many of them who contributed to academic fields in ways that hadn't been contributed before numerous clergymen Judges lawyers physicians and I could keep going.

The list is impressive. But Jonathan Edwards was just a just a guy. Who loved his family and who loved the Lord and who brought teaching into his home? There is a dynamic Powerful impact that a present father and a present mother who are presently showing their children who God is can have.

It's like a tiny mustard seed that can grow up into something big. It's like a little.

Atom of.

Leaven they can live in an entire lump. Small acts of faithfulness every day can produce incredible things over time. Times change. Wrinkles get added but the Word of the Lord is what we give to our children and it remains forever.

Isaiah 48 verse 8 says the grass withers the flower fades, but the Word of the Lord will stand forever. That's the legacy that we give. We don't give a legacy of of. You know, whatever it is that that that we give a legacy of that.

We're the family that's loud or we're the family that's responsible or we're the family that whatever. We're the family that that produces engineers, whatever whatever your thing is. That's not your legacy because that will fade moth and rust will destroy that.

What won't fade and what is forever is the Word of the Lord. That's the legacy that we give. So the question to ask you is are you giving that to your children? Consistently are you bringing that to bear in your home?

How often are you talking about the things of God and giving a totalizing Christian vision memorize that phrase? Because I think that phrase actually gets at the point of it a totalizing Christian vision.

What is that that God? Bringing God to bear in everything. Not just family worship not just prayer. But everything first Corinthians 1031 says which is a totalizing Christian vision. Whatever you do whether you eat whether you drink do it all to the glory of God.

So now let's take stock. Okay, give glory to God in your eating. Give glory to God in your drinking and then there's this other category of whatever you do. So, where are you supposed to give glory to God in?

Everything.

Everything. So as you mother and as you father are learning how to live and do everything you do in a Christian way You're actually modeling for your children how to do everything in a Christian way and there's a Christian way to do everything.

There's a Christian way to eat. There's a Christian way to drink. There's a Christian way to smoke a pipe That sounds funny to you. But if everything is under the Lordship of Christ and there's a Christian way to do that, too There's a Christian way to wash our clothing.

It's a Christian way to have to do things with excellence. There's a Christian way to start businesses. There's a Christian way to do everything under the Sun. That's my point, is that we have to give a grand vision to our children that Christianity is not Sunday mornings in the pews alone, and that it's not just our twice-a-year Bible studies that we do alone, that Christianity informs everything that we do so that every aspect of our family is informed by the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

We must give our children a Christian vision of everything. How do we do that? Well, you start. You start. Because if you want your children to have a Christian vision of everything, then you need to have a Christian vision of how you do everything.

So it starts with you. Next, weave it into everything that you say. Have conversations with your children. You're watching a TV show and a commercial comes on that challenges a masculine or a vision of what true masculinity is.

Talk about it. Have a conversation. What is that commercial saying about that man's identity, and what's true from the Word of God? Now you're bringing a Christian vision into everything. And we can go into a myriad of examples, but it is our mission and it's our privilege to bring all of Christ into all of our life so that our children replicate that for our grandchildren and beyond.

That's the first thing, that we need to have a body of teaching. Whether our children are in our home, whether our children are grown-up, or whether our children have not yet arrived, there's a place for us to work this out, no matter where we stand.

Understanding the Things of God

That's the first thing. The reason that we do that, we're gonna give two reasons for this, is number one to build understanding. Solomon says, hear, O sons, the instruction of a father and give attention that you may gain understanding.

Now we're not gonna spend a lot of time on this, but I'm gonna just very quickly say, understanding in a Hebrew world, in a Hebrew mindset, is not just teaching what the thing is. It's also teaching why the thing is, and how the thing is.

Or to say it a different way, you're not just teaching concepts, you're teaching behavior. There is a progression of knowledge. For instance, I don't know if you've ever had this moment where you're trying to learn a topic, and you learn about it, and you're listening to the presenter who's talking about that topic, and you understand every word that they're saying.

Then you go home and you try to communicate it with someone else, and you're like, I have no idea what they were saying, I can't yet speak it. Cognitively, I can receive it, but I can't yet speak it. The next level of knowledge is when you learn how to not only think it, but how to say it.

And then the next level of knowledge, most people don't actually get to this level, is when you see the value of it, you can speak about it, and it informs your behavior. For instance, eschatology. You might have heard that I enjoy this topic, but it's important.

So I've thought about post-millennialism, and I understand the topic. Maybe not fully, but I understand it well. Now I'm able to start communicating it, and I do that weekly. But more than that, it's actually informing the way that I think.

Because everything that I do now, I'm not thinking about what it means for me, I'm thinking about what it means for my children and my grandchildren. Because if Christ is going to bring His blessings into all the world, and into every family on earth, then I have to think about my family with everything that I do.

So now my vision of my life is not minute to minute anymore, it's decade to decade. So the thought has now worked itself out into my fingertips. That's why Doug Wilson says that theology was meant to work itself out of our fingertips.

It's not enough to just know a thought, good for you. You have a good vocabulary, impressive. But so do the Pharisees. And Jesus had very few nice things to say of them. Why? Because their theology did not inform their fingers.

We have to have a Christian vision of everything. A vision so deep, so robust, that we can speak about it with our children, and so that we can help them learn how to obey it. And they will not learn how to obey it if you're not.

This is why Jesus, in the Great Commission, He did not say, therefore go into all the world and teach them concepts. He said, go into all the world and make disciples of all the nations. How? Baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them everything.

Teaching them to what? Obey everything that I've commanded. He did not say, go in all the world and teach them every theological term. He said, teach them how to obey. He's talking about that third level of knowledge that hits our head, hits our heart, and now works itself out of our fingers.