SERMON | The Telos of Christian Education

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day Sermon. And we pray that as we declare the Word of God, that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and 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. Six weeks ago, we began this series on Christian education. We've been cutting the foundation stone and we found that the ground underneath all knowledge, under all education, under all intellectual pursuits, is actually not facts that have been given by some centralized expert with three letters behind their name, not the one who is at the top of the education orc chart and not even the wrinkles on gray matter.

The bedrock of all knowledge, the foundation of all learning, the cornerstone of all education is the fear of the Lord. There's nothing more properly basic than that. And that is what we and our children will be known by.

And we as parents will be held accountable to. Did we treat every academic endeavor, every learning environment, every opportunity for conveying knowledge to our children as a practicing in and a cherishing of the fear of Almighty God?

That's what we learned in the first week and everything else was built on top of that. Now, the next thing we learn in week two is the authority behind all education. Every fact is His fact, as Augustine said, or you take the Van Til version, every truth is God's truth.

Every teacher is responsible to Him. Third week, we talked about how special revelation is found in Scripture. And it's the most important curriculum that we could ever give to our children beyond just basics of math and arithmetic or advanced calculus or whatever else that's in between.

Giving our children knowledge of the Word of God and love for the Word of God and Scripture is the greatest curriculum that we can pass along. And the reason that that is true is because our children are not just brains on a stick, but their hearts filled with affections that ought to be aimed at Him, inflamed towards Him, which is what we learned in week four.

Then in week five, we talked about how do we do that? How do we actually inflame our children's hearts? How do we aim them at Christ? How do we show them what it looks like? And we talked about how wisdom is often caught before it's taught and that we have to model what we want to see in them.

And then last week, as if this series has been following some kind of structure, last week we talked about discipline and how it plays a role in curbing sinful behavior so that our children would not follow after the things of the world, that they wouldn't quench their affections for God, but they would be reproved and disciplined so that their hearts would not be encumbered by sin, so that they would be free to pour out their affections on Him.

Now, this week, we're looking at the final lesson in this seven week series on education. And that is what is the end of all education? Or to say it in a more philosophically way, what is the telos of all education?

And by that, what I mean is, what does education ultimately exist for? After it's been grounded in the fear of the Lord, after the authority is Christ, after the scriptures are made known, hearts are inflamed, discipline is given, what is all of it for?

Today, we're going to talk about that if we do this faithfully and if we do this for a lifetime and if our children pick up the mantle and they do it faithfully for their lifetime, then what should we expect that would be produced?

And the question we're asking is, if we do this faithfully across generations, then what will a Christian education actually bring to the world? That's the question that we're going to answer this morning.

When the last lesson is taught, when the final catechism lesson is learned and the last family worship happens around your table before your child walks out into the world to bring families into their own, the question we have to ask ourselves is what did God use us to build and what will be the result of our tutelage?

The state looks at your son and counts him as a future taxpayer. That's the telos of your children for the state. The university looks at your daughter and counts on her becoming a future leftist. The corporation looks at both of them and sees nothing but dollar signs and production.

But God looks at things differently. God looks at education not merely as individual persons, but He looks at it through the lens of legacy and generations. He looks at education as a tool by which He will actually conquer the world.

And I'm going to hope to prove that to you this morning. So if you will, we're going to look at five things this morning and then we will turn to the scriptures. We're going to look at first that God begins His world conquering project with education.

Second, that a father and a mother are the builders of that education. Third, we're going to see how wisdom builds up people and not just resumes. And then fourth, we're going to look at all of this leads to a faithful inheritance by which God will fill the world with His worshipers so that the glory of God fills the earth as the water covers the sea.

And with that, if you will, allow me to read from several passages in the book of Proverbs as we end this series on education. I'll begin with Proverbs 1 .8. Hear, my son, your father's instruction and forsake not your mother's teaching.

Proverbs 4, 1 through 4. Hear, O sons, a father's instruction and be attentive that you may gain insight, for I give you good precepts. Do not forsake my teaching when I was a son with my father. Tender the only one in the sight of my mother.

He taught me and said to me, let your heart hold fast my words, keep my commandments and live. Proverbs 24, verses 3 through 4. By wisdom a house is built and by understanding it is established and by knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches.

Proverbs 20, verse 7. The righteous who walks in his integrity, blessed are his children after him. Proverbs 13, 22. A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children, but the sinner's wealth is laid up for the righteous.

Proverbs 17, 6. Grandchildren are the crown of the aged and the glory of children is their father's. And then Proverbs 31, 25 through 28. Strength and dignity are her clothing. She laughs at the time to come.

She opens her mouth with wisdom and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue. She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed and her husband also.

He praises her. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you that this series has taught us so much about education, where it's grounded, who's the authority and what's the curriculum. What is the purpose that our hearts would be inflamed?

What is the corrective and the discipline? And now, Lord, what is the end goal of all of it? Lord, I continue to marvel at the depth and the breadth and the comprehensiveness of your scriptures that cover each of these topics so wonderfully and richly, especially in the book of Proverbs, which covers so many topics that we're not used to hearing about.

Lord, I thank you for your word. I thank you for this time that you've given us to set it apart, to hear your word. Lord, I pray that you would write your word on our hearts, that we would love your word and that we would go, as James says, and be doers of the word and not just hearers only, but that we would go and do and obey and imitate that word to our children so that our children would grow up seeing the word in action in our lives, in our homes and word for the generations.

It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. The first thing we have to understand when it comes to the goal of education is that God will shape the world all the way to the end by beginning that work in the home.

Notice where Solomon starts. The greatest book that's ever written on education starts in a house at what sounds like a dinner table, not in an academy, not in a university, not in a textbook. He begins his book, the greatest book ever written on education with a stated purpose that Solomon would educate his son.

That book begins at a table in a home with a father talking and a mother teaching and a child told to listen. Proverbs 1 .8 says, Hear my son your father's instruction and forsake not your mother's teaching.

That's how the book begins. And in that way, that is the purpose of all education, that it would be downstream of a father and mother inside a covenant home. When you have father, mother and child, you have home.

And when you have father and mother, you have Christian education. Now, this is, of course, a monumental truth that applies to everyone who has ever had children, anyone who has children and anyone who will one day have children.

This applies whether you raise your children in homeschool, Christian school or public school or any other type of school that there is. Because here's the truth that we all need to consider. The very first faculty member, the very first educator that God hires to teach your children is not a pair of strangers with degrees from some secular university.

It's you. It's the man and the woman who conceived the child, birthed the child, named, baptized, fed, raised and graduated that child into adulthood. You have primary responsibility over the education of your children.

The state believes that they own your child. The Academy thinks that it is the most reasonable option for your child to be educated. But the Word of the Lord says that those children belong to you, father and mother, and it's your job, your responsibility to raise them and teach them so that they will grow up in the faith and you will be held accountable to this action.

God in His kindness and in His providence has knit that child to you, only you, so that you are the primary influence on your child so that he and she would be raised by you, taught by you and discipled into the fear of God by you.

Now, that doesn't mean that your child cannot grow up and be a strong Christian if you fail in your job. But here's the thing, we don't plan on God's grace while we do failure in the present. We don't lean on God to rescue us from our lack of or from our negligence of what He commands in Scripture.

Many people have wonderful marriages today where they didn't begin well, but again, you don't plan a marriage with a bunch of dysfunction praying that God would be gracious. The same way you don't hand your children nothing and pray that God would be gracious.

We have to be faithful. This also doesn't mean that you need to do everything by yourself and that you have no options for help. When I say that a child belongs to a father and mother, I'm not saying that you must do all of the educating.

I'm saying you must do the most primary parts of it, which is teaching the fear of God. Christ is the authority, the Scriptures, the Word of God, inflaming the heart's discipline. All of that's yours.

This whole series has been about yours. I'm not saying that you can't hire a Latin tutor or join the co-op or as we said last week, teach them how to play jazz flute. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that you can't have them sit under good and faithful teaching in a church.

That's good. I'm not saying that you can't have them learn from their grandparents. That's good. Or to surround them with people more wise than you. That's good. The father and the mother who employs the help of others is often being wise.

But, and this is the big but in this sentence, while it is permissible for you to outsource aspects of your children's education, you cannot outsource your child. In the same way that a general contractor can hire experts to do the plumbing and to do the electrical and to do the tile work while he oversees the project, he actually, when he does that, he's not surrendering the project over to the contractors.

He's still accountable for the entire project and he's still the one who is overseeing all of it. Which is why he is actively and intimately involved in every aspect of the construction project, overseeing every brick, every permit pulled, every application for a company that wants to come in and hang the drywall, every nail hammered into the home.

He is overseeing it all in the same way. Father and mother, if you do not take an active role like a, like a general contractor in the education of your children, you're wrong. You're wrong. Even while the contractor will sub out things to expert, all of the work is under his supervision.

And in the same way, all of the education of your children is under the watch of you. You're responsible whether the children understand and know the fear of the Lord, if they look to Christ, if they love Christ and all things, if they obey Christ and all things, conform to Christ and all things, that is a work you cannot sub out and a work that you alone are qualified to do.

You can hire and appoint others to teach your children Catalan chess openings. That's good. You can teach them advanced physics or Attic Greek, but you can't outsource the development of their soul. That is for you and you alone.

To rephrase this in a Matthew 1626 kind of way, which was a verse that was originally intended to talk about the individual, but I also think that it applies to Christian education. We may rightly say, for what will it profit a parent if their children gain the whole world and yet they forfeit his soul?

Again, I'm rephrasing that, but I think it's true. Brothers and sisters, the buck stops with you. Your home is the training ground for eternity. And you must give them everything that we've spoken about over the last six weeks.

And if you give them that, well, then feel free to outsource the things you're not good at. That's sort of the point. The home is where you do the greatest work on Earth. I think it was G .K. Chesterton who said the greatest job on Earth, the most powerful position on Earth, is the hand that rocks the cradle.

And I think he's right. Fathers and mothers, this is your duty. And that's why God has given you such complimentary giftings because he cares for your children. He cares for your offspring. He cares for your legacy.

He cares for the world. That's why he gives father and mother who are supposed to build this thing together, because if the home is the first school and the parents are the one who are cultivating it, well, the essential body of education from the fear of God all the way down to godly discipline are going to be coming by two people who are, who are equal in value and distinct in role who are going to give that child two different ways of viewing the same thing.

Proverb answers this point in the Bible. And he's going to make this point very clearly when he talks about father and mother and he says, here, my son, your father's instruction and do not forsake your mother's teaching.

Solomon is telling us that the most important education will be administered by two uniquely gifted parents to accomplish this glorious mission. In God's economy, the father and the mother are not rivals in their children's education.

They are not interchangeable parts that are performing identical tasks. They are distinctly gifted beings working together to form a whole human being. Remember in the Garden of Eden, it was male and female that he said is very good that represent the image of God.

The image of God is not man isolated from woman or woman isolated from man. It's man and woman are the image of God. So in that way, man and woman transfer the education. Of a Christian education to their children.

According to Solomon, the father is the one who gives instruction and that word sort of means the blueprints. We know that the father in the ancient world and today is leaving and going out to work because a man who doesn't provide for his family is worse than an unbeliever.

So if you stay home, twiddle your thumbs and and hope that somehow a paycheck is going to arrive on your door miraculously, congratulations, you're worse than an unbeliever. But if you go out into the world and work and labor and provide for your family, then you're providing the household by which your wife can take that and bring life.

But one of your responsibilities, even on top of your laboring, even on top of your going into the world, is that you would provide the blueprints to your wife that she would then implement. You are the one who are giving almost like the general's orders that the mother as a dutiful sergeant is going to bring to fruition on the ground.

By giving the family the instruction, the father is actually tasked with deciding what the education will be, where the education is going to be going, where it's headed, where it's pointing, what will this family actually worship?

What is it going to call true and good and beautiful? What are the sins that this family is going to fight and repent of? What are the kinds of sons and daughters that my home is going to produce? I set that direction as the father and fathers, you set that direction in your home.

Now, this doesn't mean, fathers, that you're going to be personally responsible to teach every lesson and to explain every equation and to know every Latin noun declension. But what it does mean is that you set the direction for the education of your home and your wife comes along and implements that direction to the glory of God.

The father is the one who is intimately involved in the education of his children, but also the one who is setting the direction for it, its aims, its goals, its wins, because he will stand before the Lord uniquely as head of the household for the education of his children.

So he must lead his home, he must protect his home, he must answer to God for it. And the mother will come alongside of him with equally wonderful and glorious work and in some way even more glorious work than he.

It's funny how the man and woman are talked about in the scriptures. The man gives the woman. Money, and she turns it into an economy. The man gives the woman raw resources and she turns it into a meal.

The man gives the woman cells and she turns it into an eternal soul. The man gives her raw material and she makes it living. That's why I think the Bible calls the woman the glory of the glory, because she takes the raw materials and she makes them alive.

You think about holy of holies is the most precious of the rooms. The glory of the glory is the most precious of the human creatures. You and I, brothers, are wrought iron. She's porcelain. She has very important work to do herself.

The scripture here calls her that her Torah is what she gives to the children. That's the instruction that a woman gives. It's her Torah. If you remember, the Torah is actually the word for the law of God.

It's the word for Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The first five books of the Bible, the Torah. That's the word that's used to describe what a woman gives to her children. It's an incredibly weighty word, actually.

Placed right on the lips of a mother who speaks God's law, God's character, God's love, God's care, God's instruction to children, bringing them up in godly wisdom. Her primary and most essential teaching that she will ever give after a faithful husband has established a biblical and faithful direction for their education is to take it to the She teaches them to take it and implement it, making sure that the things of God work themselves into the bones of her children, that they're not just etched on tables of stone, but they actually get written onto hearts.

That's the mother's job. The mother ordinarily takes the direction of the household and works it down into the belly of her children. She teaches wisdom through rhythms, relationships, habits, language, hospitality, songs, correction, affection.

She sets the atmosphere for the home. By the way of example, this is a silly example, so forgive me. I think as the head of my home, I get to decide the temperature that the house is on. Now, there's debate about this in almost every house, but I think it's my right before God to say 68 degrees is the temperature of our house.

My wife is the thermostat who actually makes that house 68 degrees. My children are the thermometer that let me know whether or not we're doing a good job. They respond to what we're doing. My wife sets the temperature and I, I declare 68 degrees.

The father gets to say this house will fear the Lord. The mother ensures that that's worked out on the ground and the children rise up and call her blessed. Every conversation, every meal, every correction that our children behold over a thousand interactions with their mother and father are leading them to understand the things of God.

A son will learn his manhood by watching a father bear responsibility. Repent of sin. Keep his word, love his wife and stand firm under pressure and not be a quitter when things are hard. A daughter is going to learn womanhood and not be a quitter but by watching her mother clothe herself with strength and dignity, open her mouth with wisdom, care for the household and laugh at the days to come, as Proverbs 31 says.

A son is going to learn what kind of wife to marry from his mother. He's going to learn how to treat his wife from his father. A daughter is going to learn what kind of husband to look for in you men.

And she's going to learn how to treat her husband by the way you wives treat yours. A son needs their mother's wisdom. Daughters need their father's strength. Every child needs both voices in perfect harmony blended together in glorious union rather than the unholy dissonance that we often see in families today.

A father and mother united in the same faith with distinct and yet equal gifts, teaching the same faith, same Lord, same Christ, are building a kind of people that the enemy cannot snatch away. That's the second thing.

The third thing is that wisdom actually builds people. It builds people. When you're thinking about what is education doing in your home, what is wisdom doing in your home, you are not building your castle.

You are not building your empire, not building your 401. You're not building it. You're building people. The most important question that a, that a contractor can ask when he's building a house is what is the house made of?

And that's the same question that we can ask ourselves in the enterprise of building people, building future men and future women is what is the substance for which they are being built up in? What is the metal that you're giving your children as you're building them up in the things of God?

Proverbs 20, verse 7 says this, the righteous who walk in his integrity, blessed are his children after him. He doesn't say that the man with the framed degree that's growing yellow on his wall over the years, that's the man who has blessed child.

He doesn't say the man with a big salary, with a corner office and a diversified, diversified portfolio is the man who has blessed children. I don't know if you know this, rich people have angry children too, just money doesn't fix it.

He says the man who walks in his integrity will have blessed children who come after him. It's a promise. It's an if then, if he walks in integrity, then he will have children who are blessed after him.

The one who wears the same face, the man who wears the same face in the parking lot is the one that he wears on Sunday morning. You know, when that guy cuts you off, screeching into that place that you had your turn signal on, you named it and you claimed it like a good Pentecostal and he stole it.

The same face you wear there is that the same face you wear here where your children see consistency. Your children are going to hear what you say and they're not going to pay attention to any one particular thing that you said, but they're going to pay attention to the in total canon of the things that you say.

Is your words building up faithful children or is it giving them excuses for which they are not to believe God, trust God, love God. A mom and dad who open up their mouth with wisdom are moms and dads who are building real people, fortifying real people, strengthening, putting metal in real people.

And here's some questions that we ought to ask ourselves. Do my children fear God when the lights have been turned off? Do you? Do they govern their own tongue? Do you? Do they keep God's word even when it costs them?

Do I? Do they work hard when no one is applauding them? Do you? Do they fear God and submit to Christ? Do you? Will they be saturated in this home in God's word? Are you? Do their affections yearn for Christ and God's word like the air that they're breathing?

Do you? Can they say the word sorry and actually mean it when they're wrong? Can you? Can they take a hard blow and not fall apart at the seams? Can they deal with a horrible circumstance and not lose it?

Can you? Can they raise my grandchildren who will fervently worship Christ? What are they looking at? It's you. You will be the reason for their success or their failure. Obviously we're depending upon the Lord here but we're talking about children in a Christian home who are watching Christian parents and it is not automatic.

So many people in the Bible had really, really interesting children. David, two of his children tried to completely dethrone him. Samuel, his children were drunks and they were doing all sorts of depravity in the temple.

You just go on and on and on. If we're not intentional in the raising up of our children, just because you're Christian doesn't guarantee that they will act like it when you are gone. We must discipline them and love them enough to show them Christ on us.

Why would they believe that Christ is powerful if they don't see it on us? Why would they believe that he's a savior if they don't see it on us? Why would they believe that he's beautiful and glorious and good and worth chasing after if they don't see us run and chase?

You know, we often have this sort of view where I want something good for others before I ever want it for myself. You ever listen to a sermon and said, I know somebody really needs to hear this. Right.

I'm going to send it to him as soon as it's uploaded. How often do we ask the question? Yeah, I really need this. It's so easy to think about other people and not think about ourself. I remember Johnny Carson once said that I hate the person who cuts me off in traffic, but when I do it, I have a good reason.

We have to ask ourself, if we're going to ask the question about our children, we have to ask the question first about ourselves. Are we doing these things? They're the most important questions we can ask.

They're the blueprints for the kind of people that we're going to build. The test of education is the test of wisdom, is not the school that you send someone to, the textbooks you make them read. Do they read Homer?

I don't really care. Do they read Virgil? I don't really care. Do they read you? And do they see Christ on you? That is going to put more metal in their bones than anything they could read from the classics.

The fourth thing I want to talk about is that wisdom builds a legacy. Solomon shows us this in Proverbs 24, three through four. By wisdom, a house is built by understanding it is established and by knowledge, the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches.

Now here, this verse is so fascinating. Here, the word house means more than just a house. Because sometimes in the book of Proverbs, and it's certainly true here, a house is more than beams and shingles and nails and mortgages.

A house in Proverbs can often mean an entire household with all the people involved in it, not confined to a single time even, but standing as a living entity between generations. Kind of like when you say in Lord of the Rings, the house of Elrond, it includes his generations.

The house in Proverbs is often it's worship, it's doctrine, it's marriage, it's children, it's habits, it's table, it's work, it's land, it's songs, it's stories, it's names, it's memories, it's legacy that are going to outlive you.

It's the whole slow work of building people over generations. It's not just a present work in the book of Proverbs, but it's often a timeless work that keeps going so that your offspring will inherit something, that they will contribute to something, and that they will build on the foundation of something that you first built.

That's why Proverbs 13, 22 can say, a good man, a good man. Leaves an inheritance to his children's children. In your home, you're not merely educating a child, but you're building up a kind of person that will bless your great grandchildren, who will become the foundation underneath your grandchildren's feet.

You're building an inheritance of faith, an inheritance of wisdom, of worship, of character, of memories, of truth, so that the next generation can actually receive something and strengthen that and actually build upon it.

Christian education, therefore, is not merely the work you do on Monday, it's the work you do over a lifetime that you hand off to your children as the baton that they will carry to the next. Have you talked to your children and said, I'm raising you so that you can raise my grandchildren, I'm teaching you how to do this so that you'll know how to teach your children?

Have you actually taught them how to teach, taught them how to do it? Have you actually informed them that everything that you're doing is not just for them as an end unto itself, like a river that bumps up against the dam, but as a raging, roaring river that's flowing to generations.

Have you had those intentional deliberate conversations with them? Because if you don't, they're going to wake up as an adult one day and know how to do nothing on their own. And you'll say, but I taught you all of these things.

You taught them about God and teach them how to walk with God. You taught them about scripture, but did you teach them how to read scripture? You taught them about prayer, but did you teach them how to pray?

If you're not teaching things that are deliverable, that are transferable, they end with you. By wisdom, you are building a house that will pray when your body is decaying in the ground. Which means that every single catechism that you teach is a beam dropped into the household of your future legacy.

Every family prayer is a little nail sunk into that head. Every time you correct a child in love, you're squaring up a joist in your generation's future. Every meal at the table is adding another room onto the structure.

Every confession of sin is teaching them how to avoid ruin and rot and decay in the future. Every psalm that you sing is cutting out a window in that house that's pointed towards heaven that will give them joy all their days.

Every single hour that you spend teaching your child to work hard, to tell the truth, to master his temper, to honor his mother, to love the church and mean it, to never give up, to not be lazy, is one more length of timber that's shoring up your child so that they can teach your grandchildren.

Solomon tells us in this passage, this is why this passage is so fascinating. Excuse me. He gives three tools, parents, for us to use in the building up of generations. What are those three tools? He says, by wisdom a house is built, by understanding that house is established, and by knowledge the rooms are filled.

The three tools you have is wisdom, understanding, and knowledge. And that is so utterly glorious because you could say those all sound like the same thing. Wisdom, knowledge, understanding, synonyms.

No, they're not. They're actually the very same tools that God uses when he designed the world. Have you noticed that? Look at what it says in Proverbs chapter three, the Lord by wisdom founded the earth, by understanding he established the heavens, by knowledge the deep broke open.

So God is commanding you to use the exact same tools that he used when he constructed reality. Wisdom, understanding, and knowledge. In chapter three, those tools, wisdom, which is knowing God and obeying him, understanding, which is comprehension of the word of God, knowledge, which is mastery of that understanding.

Those three tools are what God uses to build the universe out of nothing. When no atom existed, when no electron rotated around a nucleus, he used wisdom, understanding, and knowledge to build it all.

And then he says, parents, in a little world, in the same way that I did it in my big world, I want you to use wisdom, understanding, and knowledge to build up your house and all the citizens that live within it.

When God built the cosmos, he used these three tools. When you build your home, your little world, you pull out of the exact same toolbox, which means that your house is a little cosmos. Your house is a little world.

Your house is a little creation filled with little citizens, which means that the mother who rocks her screaming baby to sleep at two o 'clock in the morning, half asleep, her hair a mess, her eyes matted shut with an extreme lack of sleep, is actually doing something eternal.