FBC Daily Devotional – February 22, 2022

Well, a good Tuesday morning to you. I hope your week got off to a good start yesterday and things are progressing well on this second day of your work week.

Well today, let me ask this. Let me ask this. Do you know of any parents who have adult children who have kind of abandoned the faith, you know, kind of walked away from the path that they were brought up on?

Let's see, I've been a pastor now for about 42 years. Been in the ministry for 42 years.

And in those years I have talked to, I don't know, dozens of parents who were distraught because of adult children who grew up in their

Christian home and some in cases, some cases the children went to Christian schools and, you know, the parents tried to do everything they could to bring their children up in the nurture and admonition of the

Lord, to train up their children in the paths of the Lord. And yet when the the children got out on their own, eventually, they just kind of walked away from it all.

Walked away from the church, chose a course of action, a course of life, a path of life that was clearly unmistakably not

God's will. And the parents are often distraught not only because of the direction of life that their children have taken, but they're distraught about the the feelings of guilt, the this inexplicable sense that I must,

I must have done something wrong. We must have blown it somewhere along the way that our child or our children have abandoned what we've taught them and we tried to teach them and stuff.

We, we must be at fault for this. At the same time,

I've known some pretty judgmental believers, fellow

Christians, who've seen this, observed this happen in the lives of other people, other families, and have come to that same conclusion.

They, they don't have anything specific. They can't put their finger on anything. They can't see any evidence that the parents did anything terribly wrong to send their kids down the wrong path when they got out of the house.

But nevertheless, they drove their children away. They drew the conclusion that if you would have done what you should have done as a parent, then your child wouldn't go this right.

They wouldn't go this way. They wouldn't do this kind of thing. They'd be faithful. They'd be true. So it's your fault.

And they misapply, you know, Proverbs 22, 5, that train up a child in the way he goes.

He should go and when he's old, he'll not depart from it. And they, they take that verse, a proverb, a maxim, and they, they make it an absolute and make it very formulaic and they figure out what the formula is.

Well, a passage of scripture in our scripture reading for today should put that whole line of reasoning to rest.

And specifically what we're talking about is King Jehoram, who came to the throne following his father

Jehoshaphat, who followed his father Asa. And we see the general character and direction of life of Jehoram's grandfather and father in, in 2

Chronicles 20 and verse 31. It says,

Jehoshaphat was king over Judah. He was 35 years old when he began to, when he became king, he reigned 25 years in Jerusalem.

So this is his death. And verse 32 says, and he walked in the way of his father

Asa and he did not turn aside from it. Well, what, what was the way of, of life of Asa?

What was his direction of life? Verse tells us. He says, doing what was right in the sight of the

Lord. So you see the, the, the scriptures testify that the general quality of the, the life and reign of Asa as well as his son

Jehoshaphat was right in the sight of the Lord. They wanted to do right and they endeavored to do right.

And that's their testimony. Jehoshaphat dies, but before he dies, he has several sons and he distributes his inheritance to the different sons, but he declares, he names that his oldest son, his firstborn son,

Jehoram is going to become the next king. He's going to take over the throne. That was pretty typical, standard process, standard way of doing things.

His firstborn son would ascend the throne as an inheritance. So Jehoram gets to the throne and what we read in chapter 21 is, in verse four, is that when

Jehoram was established over the kingdom of his father, he strengthened himself and he killed all of his brothers with the sword and also the other princes of Israel.

All right. That one statement tells you he has completely departed from the ways of his father, walking in the ways of the

Lord. And if you didn't, if that wasn't enough, the next verse makes it even clearer.

It says he was 32 years old when he became king. He reigned eight years in Jerusalem. In verse six, he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel, the idolatrous,

God -departing kings of Israel. Just as the house of Ahab had done. The end of the verse says he did evil in the sight of the

Lord. All right. So is that Jehoshaphat's fault? Is that Asa's fault?

That Jehoram did evil in the sight of the Lord? That Jehoram abandoned the ways of the

Lord? Did Jehoshaphat fail and condemn him to this life of evil and sin and misery because of Jehoshaphat's failure?

Well, that is patently not true. The Bible tells us

Jehoshaphat, just as Asa, his father before him, did what was right in the sight of the

Lord. They established a positive, God -fearing direction of life for Jehoram to follow.

And if he would just have followed in his father's footsteps when Jehoram got to the end of his life, the summary of his life would have been he did what was right in the eyes of the

Lord. But he didn't. Why not? Because he thought he knew better.

He thought he'd appreciate this other direction more. He thought he could find more success if he did things his way.

He thought if I don't do what I want to do and take this course of action, my throne would be vulnerable.

My brothers might take over the throne and I got to get rid of them. I got to kill them. I got to murder them. And off he goes down this path, sending his life in a trajectory completely the opposite direction of his father and his grandfather.

It's Jehoram's fault, not his dad's, not his grandfather's.

So if I'm speaking to some parents today whose hearts are heavy because of a child or children that have walked away from the course of life, the general direction of life that you established in your home, don't jump to the conclusion that you must have failed them in some way.

Now having said that, if you know that your life has been one of hypocrisy and you've been one of these

Christians that you take your kids to church on Sunday, but you're a devil Monday through Saturday, then yeah, you've got a lot to answer for and you have some reason to be self -critical.

But if the general quality and character and trajectory of your life has been doing what is right in the eyes of the

Lord and seeking to bring up your children and nurture and admonition of the Lord, if they don't follow in that path, that's on them.

Don't take that monkey on your back and don't let anybody else put it there either.

So our Father and our God, we thank you for this passage from the lives of Asa, Jehoshaphat, and Jehoram that can give us some insight even into modern day family dynamics.

I pray those who need encouragement from this today, I pray that you would encourage them, bless them we pray in Jesus name.

Amen. All right, well you have a good rest of your Tuesday. I trust the