Proverbs 6:20-23 (The Necessity Of Christian 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

The most important battlefield in the world today is not Ukraine It's not

Taiwan It's not Washington DC and it's not politics the most important battlefield that is going to determine the next 100 years is

Going to be decided in your living room The next generation is being formed the next generation of either kingdom builders or compromisers is going to come out of our living rooms

That's where tomorrow's elders and leaders and missionaries and mothers and teachers and tradesmen and fathers and magistrates and Benedict Arnold's will come out of And the question we have to wrestle with is will our home prepare them?

to serve Christ or Caesar Either by the fear of the

Lord or submitted to the fables of man Our home will prepare them to stand for something.

The question is what? Now I want to begin by debt today by stating what

I think is the most important aspect of education and Education is not neutral.

It can't be neutral and it never has been Every school is a seminary of something

Every classroom has a liturgy Every teacher is a theologian of some body of doctrine.

Every curriculum is a kind of catechism The question is not

What is being revered it's which God is on the throne of that education

Either it will be the flimsy fickle gods of the modern state The weak and pathetic demonic gods because Paul says behind every idol is a demon or it will be

Yahweh God The one true God the God who reveals himself to us in Scripture as the living and only true

God and In this brothers and sisters, we can't be silent We can't sit idly by and act as though these words are not there in the scriptures to diligently teach our children as we learn last week and by the way

This sermon won't cover much new ground this week. It will build upon what we talked about last week that it is our responsibility not

Caesar to train our children Because our children don't belong to the state when

Jesus said renter unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's he did not mean your little ones and Who has the stewardship to train your children but you and Only you and you are as we talked about last week irreplaceable

Now this week we're gonna get back to the Proverbs and we're going to get back to Proverbs chapter 6

Which is where we are but like I said last week we learned from Deuteronomy 6 that education is essential that it must be the parents who are teaching the children and it's and it's the

Inheritance that we give to our children that actually establishes legacies legacies unto covenant curses or legacies unto covenant blessings your home is an

Embassy of something and you have to reckon with what that embassy is

Not a day. Will you turn with me to Proverbs 6? We're gonna be a little all over Proverbs for a second because I was so encouraged this week looking at this

How central this theme is to Solomon Solomon is talking about it literally everywhere. So we're gonna survey a little

We're gonna dive into Proverbs 6 And we're gonna praise God for the awesome responsibility that he's given us for our children

So if you will turn with me to Proverbs 6 20 through 23, we'll pray and we will jump in This is what the

Word of God says my son Observe the commandment of your father and do not forsake the teaching of your mother bind them continually on your heart

Tie them around your neck When you walk about they will guide you

When you sleep, they will watch over you and when you awake they will talk to you for the commandment is a lamp and the teaching is a light and Reproofs for discipline are the way of life.

Let us pray Lord we thank you so much for your word and Lord we thank you that your word is a lamp to our feet and it is a light to our path and not ours only but our children

Lord I pray whatever the educational status is of our children that the education would be

Christ Whether it's homeschool whether it's

Christian Academy or whether it's co -ops or whether it's

Other forms of education Lord, I pray that us as parents would not shirk this most incredible and Necessary obligation to raise our children in the fear and admonition of the

Lord Lord would you help this church and For the sake of our legacy as a church to do this work.

Well, it's in Jesus name. We pray. Amen My aim in this sermon is just to reestablish the biblical necessity of parents educating their children

And there's a right way to educate your children according to the scriptures and there's a wrong way to educate your children

According to scripture and the wrong way is to outsource your educate or their education to someone else and to trust that Something other than you will prepare them for the life that God has called them to and today

I want us to recover that education is mandatory for believers to their children and That that work begins in the home

Governed by an open Bible Aimed at producing wise and godly and kingdom advancing children and brothers and sisters this matters now more than ever

Our job is not to raise nice children That's not our job

Our job is not to raise people who fit in with the sits in Lebanon or the situation of our current culture

We are not actually raising nice Children we are raising dangerous children

That will confront the status quo That will press forward and take the kingdom further than we did

Courageous not coward kind But not necessarily flimsy nice We're raising weapons not wimps

We're raising children who are gonna crush demonic strongholds in the next generation We are raising idol crushers and defenders of orthodoxy.

We are raising Christians who will topple idols Dismantle secular worldviews and defend

God's people with lion -hearted love We are raising future dragon slayers culture makers homemakers world changers dominion extenders holy faithful saints of the

Most High God We are raising future men and future women who will read their

Bible submit to its truth it with joy pray Continually commit to a local church get baptized take communion weekly

Love Jesus faithfully and know how to submit to their leaders as they also lead for Christ We're raising men and women who will guard their virginity

Who will date with purity who will protect their eyes from satanic perversions who will get married to a godly believer and have?

Faithful God honoring sex and lots of children to fill the world with his glory We are raising children to reject the hatred that our society has of life

We are raising children to reject the death cult That has pervaded our society.

We are raising children who will bring the gospel to this land We're raising reformers and not retreatist we're raising lion -hearted the next generation of Luther's and not

Benedict Arnold's and How do we do that it starts in our living room?

that kind of Character is cultivated in the forge of your dining room table and your sofa and your bedside and We must do it well

Now before we do that in Proverbs 6 I do want to review a little bit of what

Proverbs says I want to spend the most time in review on chapter 1 verse 7

So of seven verses in the beginning of the book the foundation of Christian education shows up in the first seven verses

It means it might be might be important to God and to his word

This is what the foundation of Christian education is. This is the telos of Christian education. This is the goal of education

Proverbs 1 7 the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge

Which means that education without the fear of God is futility

Any academic pursuit that goes into any kind of fear other than the fear of God is vanity in the same way that you cannot should not and ought not build a skyscraper on muddy soil and You cannot forge steel and a lukewarm fire

You cannot build a fitting education for your child on anything other than the bone -rattling reverence of the fear of God Solomon doesn't give us opinions here.

He doesn't give us suggestions here doesn't give us options here. It isn't Lewis with truisms He says fear is the cornerstone of intellectual knowledge

It's the cornerstone of all true knowledge without fear there is no real or actual knowledge

He's saying that your child at four can code in Python He's saying that that your child at six can write plays an iambic pentameter

He's saying that they can recite the periodic table in three languages, but if they do not fear the

Lord they have not been educated Because in that system they're prepared to equip

Babel and not the kingdom of God They're not equipped with the knowledge of God, which is

Calvin says is the most fundamental knowledge of all Without the fear of God.

We cannot know anything rightly We cannot know the space that God created

How can you know space without knowing its designer? You cannot know time

Because you don't know the maker of it You cannot know anything in the creaturely realm if you cut us if you cut yourself off from its creator

Education without the fear of God is mental embalming fluid that will keep you from decay, but will not give you life which means that We must fear the

Lord and if your children are going to fear the Lord it must begin in the home if Christ is not

Exalted in the home the curriculum will tickle their mental folds

But it will cause them to bumble into hell Because a school a home even a

Christian school without the fear of God is Not a purveyor of truth and knowledge, but it is a temple of bafflement dressed in khaki and cardigans

And many of us have this kind of impulse in the modern world that if we could just get our kids out of the public

Schools, then everything would be okay brothers and sisters a godless alternative is still godless a

Christless alternative is still Christless You're just trading one idol for another at that point and you've actually not gotten to the real issue underneath all of it

Which is the fear of God is the beginning of knowledge? That's why this kind of Christless conservatism that is captivating the hearts of young men in this society won't work

Because you've traded a liberal idol for a conservative one. Congratulations. You've done nothing a school a

Christian school a Christian Academy that does not have the fear of God at the center of it is

Worthless and a Christian home that does not have the fear of God at the center of it is rubbish

We produce a kind of environment where Jesus is mascot and not master and Jesus says that I will spew that kind of thing out of my mouth the mortar that holds our children's education together is the fear of God and Here's the challenging part of that If you do not impart to your children the fear of God The awe of God the love of God the worship of God, then you should also at the same time have no assurance

That they will not be consumed with other fears the heart is a

Place that cannot sit without someone on its throne If you do not give them the fear of God the fear of something else will take hold

Maybe it will be the fear of man Maybe it would be the fear of missing out. Maybe we'll be the fear of worldly failure.

Maybe it would be the fear of not experiencing Things and it will drive them to be unfazed by fornication unswerved by rebellion and In love with all the things that God hates

They won't fear drifting from the Lord because we didn't teach them to tremble and many will say but my parents didn't teach me that And I turned out okay.

Well brothers and sisters don't use your story as an excuse for godlessness That's kind of a

Christian version of Russian roulette. Well, I Slept with my girlfriend and my marriage turned out.

Okay, so I'm not gonna say anything to my children when he shacks up with his That kind of reasoning is

Foolish and it's saying that that I believe that God must show grace in My sin, what does

Paul say shall I send so that grace may abound no Absolutely not

God commands us to give our children this blessing To raise them up in this great means of grace to ensure that our children walk with him and fear him and love him and worship him

We can teach our children all kinds of things. You may teach your children how to say yes, ma 'am and how to look

Together in public and how to finish their homework and how to memorize Shakespeare and how to read

Beowulf and Milton and Dante And get into Harvard MIT and Yale and you could at the same time still be raising up a damned fool

Who is in route to hell our first and our most primary goal is not raising child prodigies, but raising fools for Christ That is our first and most necessary goal is not to raise worldly wise

But fools for Christ, and I believe that this should be at the forefront of education

Now, let me say this I'm post -millennial enough that you know this about me.

I Believe that our children should be industry leaders in every field. I Believe that our children should produce the greatest concertos

I believe that our children should push the medical industry further and farther because we actually have a worldview that can bring health and life to people instead of instead of a system of Paying money to keep you just sick enough to where you constantly need to be paying into the system

I think that that we the church and Christians can solve those things. I Think we should be excellent.

I think we should have rigorous education My point is we don't actually build on a flawed

Foundation if we get this wrong, none of that other stuff matters It either is gonna be built upon the foundation of the fear of the

Lord and of Christ or it's gonna be a Christless Idolatry until a child fears the

Lord they cannot know anything rightly. This is what Solomon says, which means that we must intentionally and all by the grace of God Work and build

And use our living rooms as sanctuaries for his glory to inculcate our children in The things of God and pray that the

Lord would use our very limited and our very broken and our very imperfect ways

And for that reason our homes are both classrooms and sanctuaries where children will learn the fear of God That's the first principle of education that Proverbs says and it really dictates

Everything that Solomon says in the book that very principle that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge the second is

Now if you think about a building now, we're building sort of the substructure Solomon says several things I'm not gonna go through them with great depth.

But here's a few of them Proverbs 1 8 Hear my son your father's instructions and do not forsake your mother's teaching

He's saying that mom and dad you are the professors the primary professors of your children

Which means education begins first and foremost with the family and not with institutions the institution support

The family the family is the foundation The family table is the first classroom by which our children learn and are shaped for the things of God That's Proverbs 1 8

Proverbs 2 1 through 5. I'm just gonna read a subset of that If you will receive my words, then you will discern the fear of the

Lord education must form the heart Prompt Solomon is saying if you receive my words, you will discern the fear of the

Lord He's saying that that we don't follow a checklist on what we're supposed to educate our children on the first and foremost primary foundation of it is that they would discern the fear of the

Lord their heart would be Enraptured by the fear of the Lord their heart would love and bleed for and if you poked them the fear of the

Lord would come Out of them and the third thing

Proverbs Teaches us is that not only do we? Conform hearts to the fear of the

Lord we chisel the soul Proverbs 3 3 Which we'll talk about in six.

It says very similar language Bind them. That's the precepts bind them.

That's the commands of God bind them That's the law of God bind them around your neck and write them on the tablet of your heart

Solomon is not saying casually Suggest hey, have you thought about this?

He's saying tattoo the law of God on your children He's saying chisel it engrave it cut it work it shape it mold it he's using stronger language than just a flippant approach

To discipleship if nothing else it's intentional and it is deep what he's saying

It's a central theme in Proverbs and that moves us to our text today Which says very similar things, but we're gonna talk about a few different aspects of this

Proverbs 6 20 begins this way my son Observe the commandment of your father and do not forsake the teaching of your mother

He's saying principle number one education starts in the home When he says my son observed the commandments of your father do not forsake the teaching of your mother

He's not suggesting it He's saying that father and mother are integral to the educational enterprise

So that if you want your child to know God love God, you must teach them at home

How to love and know God and by giving this command by saying my son observed the commandments of your father

He's assuming that the father's giving commandments He's assuming that the mother is actually giving teaching

We can't assume that anymore We must actually say what

Solomon is saying fathers Give your children the commands of God mothers

Give your children the teaching now. This is very interesting to me The Hebrew words here.

I'm not a Hebrew scholar, but I love saying Hebrew words It's it's really it makes me feel cultured

Almost like for a season of my life. I watched Downton Abbey and I just I felt really special about myself

The word here for teaching is Torah Father give them the

Torah If you know what that word means the word Torah is the law of God When we say the

Torah we're talking about Genesis Exodus Leviticus numbers and Deuteronomy We're not talking about a law we're talking about the law fathers are not permitted to give your commandments

You are not permitted like for instance we may have dad isms that we say that our children grow up saying on my dad always said that an

Emergency on your part. Isn't that I mean an emergency on mine like my dad would always say that Those things are good and fine

But the source of the root of and the foundation of your commands is not you

The the foundation of what you are speaking must not be you

Because if it's you it's too shallow to be worthy to be shared with your children the source of the foundation of the

Telos of what you communicate is the law of God It's the word of God.

It's the commands of God It's rooted in something bigger than you deeper than you mightier than you and more powerful than you

Fathers point your children to the truth of God found in the Word of God More so than you point to anecdotes and silly truisms

Those things are fun and those things are good But if that's all you're giving you're giving them a straw boat in the middle of the ocean that will not hold them up It's not optional.

It's a command the command here for mothers is mitzvah kind of like bar mitzvah

Mitzvah means covenant obligations that are given by God. These are listed as a duty to the mother

Which means that she's supposed to bring them under the life of the teaching of the word

Then the father gives them the word itself and the mother makes it living the father gives them the content and she makes it alive and in this sort of one -two sacred punch the mother and the father are

Bringing the Word of God into the heart of the child so what this is saying is that the

Word of God brothers and sisters is sufficient For you to teach your children

I Am a homeschool dad at this point in my life

Which means that my wife chooses the curriculum and I approve of it what

I have noticed is that there is a lot of tension and pressure on parents to pick the right curriculum and There they are legion

The amount of curriculum There are thousands of them and they all have various little nuances and various little things about them but what this verse encourages me is

In spite of all of the curriculums that you could choose What's foundational is the sufficiency of the

Word of God? It is the primary thing That we give as a legacy to our children and it will be the thing that Keeps our grandchildren and our great -grandchildren

Praising God the Word of God If you don't teach them these things the world will if you don't train them

Pharaoh will if You don't instruct their minds Netflix will seduce their hearts if you don't disciple their eyes tick -tock

Influencers will inflame their lust if you don't proclaim truth and the sodomites are going to perform it for them on Television and phones and every other device the church.

I want you to hear this. There is no substitute for you You must do these things to prepare them for the life that they are going to face when they are not with you you are

Irreplaceable a lack of diligence in your preparation will lead to Devastating consequences in their walk with Christ And let me just say this the church is not a substitute

You're here two hours a week if you come to Sunday school, you're here three hours a week and thankful for you

But But you could say to yourself I take them to church I take them to wanna

I take them to homeschool co -op I filled their life full of different events and different things. But if you have not opened your mouth and opened your

Bible and Taught them from the scriptures. You have failed them Because there is no replacement for you.

The church's job here for two hours each Sunday is to prepare you So that you will go home and prepare them.

I Was thinking about this men. How do we listen to sermons? I Think about and I don't get the opportunity much because I'm listening to myself right now

But when I get the opportunity to listen to a sermon with my family, this is the way that I think about it I Think about that There is no one on the row that I am sitting who is going to be more in tune to what that pastor is saying than me

I'm going to listen with a rapt attention like a man sitting in a tree stand looking for a deer and I am going to do everything in my power to apprehend that dear

So that I can take that teaching home and put it on my children's plate and feed them with what

I've gathered. I Listen differently than everyone else in my family because it's my job to take it home and give it to them

It's my job on the car ride home to answer any questions that they have It's my job around the table to speak with them and to pull up truths that we talked about in church that week

That that's why we produce a family worship guide. Not because not but not because we want Necessarily for a particular sermon to drive your conversations, but by God's providence

He has allowed us to be in a particular place of the scriptures together and these things can drive should drive in and hopefully the church

Can equip you to drive these conversations in your home? Because the home is the epicenter of the cosmos

What we do here is in support of what you do there We are we are slaves that are working to prepare you for a greater work of ministry

What Paul says in Ephesians is is that that we equip the Saints for the work of ministry?

He's saying ministry doesn't happen here He's saying that pastors don't do the ministry

Pastors equip the Saints For the ministry and what is the ministry if it's not to train up our children in the fear and admonition of the

Lord? so in that Brothers do not outsource your office

Do not surrender your dominion to someone else or any other institution if your children hear about God let them hear it in your accent and in your vocal tone if the word of God speaks in your home, let it be read on your lips and Mothers bring the teaching to life

Take the words and take the content and take the things that your husband brings and make them living

That's the first thing we see in this passage The second thing we see is that education is binding.

I love this word bind Almost feels like a noose Bind them continually on your heart and tie them around your neck

That sounds serious It's the same thing that he says in Deuteronomy 6 the same thing.

He says in Proverbs 3 There's this kind of you're not trustworthy. So tie yourself up with the word

And your children are not trustworthy so wrap them up in the word Handcuff them in the word shackle them in the word arrest their wayward thoughts with the word if a loose ship leads to a shipwrecked vessel then bind your heart to the things of God and Lovingly bind your children

To what God says in his word The worst possible thing you can do is let your children discover themselves

They need to discover their truth That is a marketing campaign in route to hell

The worst thing you can do is that if you allow your children to drift they will not drift into orthodoxy apart from the miraculous grace of God But again, we don't use

God's grace as a crutch for faithlessness If you allow your children to drift odds are they drift into faithlessness and They drift into heterodoxy not orthodoxy

I've loved ever since I've heard it the metaphor of a fish a fish is most vibrant when it is confined to the environment of water and If you allow a fish say you have a very open -minded progressive fish

This is I think I should live on the soil and how dare you confine me to this water

You legalist you moralist you Nazi and you let that fish

Flutter upon the land until it suffocates and dies Because freedom comes in submission to the right environment

There is no such thing as a submissive less life. We're all submitted to something It will either be something unto life or something unto death.

We are slaves of Christ. Remember? We've not been set free unto libertine driftless

Freedom we've been set free unto slavery to Jesus and that is where true freedom abounds is when we are in Slavery to him in the same way that true freedom is

Given to the fish when it's in slavery to the water The tragedy is is that so many children are unbound and untethered because parents feel that it is unloving to cultivate the disciplines of godfulness and their children and Because of that we have a generation of people who've been gratified by the world a drift from God And is it any wonder that we see so many children graduating ill -equipped unprepared go to public school or or public

University and then they apostasize and abandon their faith They've been untethered their whole life.

What do you expect? Just because the storm didn't hit the harbor and didn't blow the boat a

Drift doesn't mean that the storms not coming and if you've not anchored them Then you've been a fool

It's like letting a blind man walk by himself through a minefield Yeah, he might make it but odds are he's gonna step on something that's gonna blow up and that's what's happened

We've let our children walk blindly through the minefield of our current Societal moment and we've been curious and wondered why when things blow up that they abandon their faith

God's Word must be bound. It must be cinched. It must be intentionally

Delivered to our children not dangled loosely around the peripheries of our life And if over a lifetime you bind and you bind and you bind the

Word of God into your home The promise is that when they are old they will not depart from it so that if You are going to have hope in anything have hope in the promises of God That what you do with your life matters and how you teach your children matters and when they are old they will not depart

The goal we're not under is to raise more intelligent sinners but more sanctified

Saints That's why Deuteronomy 11 8 says that you shall therefore impress these words

Impress is such a funny word because we think of impress in this kind of wooing style No, it's shoving something down into something until it makes its mark like a wax candle seal

Impress the word on The hearts and on the soul and you shall bind them as a sign on your head and as on the frontals of your forehead

That's why Psalm 119 11 says your word I have treasured in my heart that I may not sin against you

If our children are not taught to treasure the Word of God, they will treasure something else They may be prepared well for a career they may grow up and even gain the entire world and yet forfeit their soul and What good would that be?

Brothers and sisters buying the Word of God early on to your children. That's the second thing. The third thing is that education is a protection

Education is a protection Proverbs 6 22 when you walk about they will guide you when you sleep

They will watch over you when you are awake. They will talk to you. I love the way that it personifies the

Word of God here When you're awake the Word will speak to you Have you ever had a moment where you're in a situation where you didn't know what to do?

And then all of a sudden God put a verse on your heart that brought instant clarity Where you're in the middle of some pity party where you're like,

I don't know if God loves me There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Jesus Christ. The Word was speaking

The Word was protecting the Word itself was talking See what you do

When you put the Word of God into your children is that you don't put it in a single time you put in an echo

Because how often does our flesh say the most vile and venomous things?

You're a loser. You're worthless. You don't matter. No one cares why they do that I'll do that better like the chatterbox inside of us is going a hundred miles an hour all the time

And if you don't put the Word in you have no counterpunch against the lies of your own flesh we put the

Word in to protect our children so that when we're not there and They can't hear their father or their mother's voice.

The Word still speaks So that when they walk they're guided

So that when they sleep they're watched over and so that when they're awake

God is speaking to them The Word of God never clocks out you do parents

You get tired and you go to sleep and there's times that things happen in your children's lives while you slumber

The Word of God never slumbers and guess what? I'm 41 pushing 42

I Know my body's gonna clock out at one point and I'm gonna leave my children on this earth without me in the vacuum of My presence have

I left them with the Word of God that never stops speaking Or if I left them with the emptiness of My presence that won't return

Not at least in this life The Word will guide them.

We must give it to them. The Word will watch over them We must equip them with that the Word will speak to them. We must

Train our children so that what they hear to combat their temptations their future

Issues their future struggles their future battles. It will not be the voice of man, but it will be the voice of God We must give that to them as a legacy of our faithfulness so that when they face whatever battles that they face they are equipped and prepared because they not only know

God, but they know his word and his word speaks and Isn't that the goal?

That we should all have as Christian parents That when they make decisions, they're not making it out of their flesh and when they're in the hour of despair, they're not crying out and with hopelessness and When they're faced with the most difficult decisions of their life and trust me, they will be

There will be moments that break your children. There will be moments that they weep. There will be moments where they're ready to give up What have you given them to face those battles?

Because if it's just you and it's just a fun home and it's just vacations

And it's just a good job where you paid the bills and you had every creaturely comfort if that's all you've given them

Then what you've done is you've put that as a noose around their neck that will pull them down and will not give them hope

You must give them Christ and you must give them his word. It is what will speak to them when you can't and when you won't and When you don't

That's the third thing. The next is that education is enlightening It says in Proverbs 6 23 for the commandment is a lamp and a and the teaching is a light brothers and sisters

If you don't realize that the world is a dark place at this point and that the only

Thing that we can give our children That will light their path is the Word of God Then what else can

I say? The commandment is a lamp The teaching is a light. I love that word lamp.

You've probably get tired of me saying this but I love it The word lamp there is like a jar think about like a ceramic jar with burning embers inside of it and they would carry it so that they didn't lose the fire because they didn't have lighters and torches and things like we have today that are more convenient and When things got really dark and if you've ever been to the

Middle East, you know how dark dark can get Because there's no neon lights. All you have is the sky

So when things get really dark and you can't see They would crack open this little jar and it would shine just enough light onto the soil to let them know where their next step should go

To avoid this hole or that trap or this pit or that? root It was enough light to give them for the next step and I think there's intentionality why

God describes his word that way because his word is not a Spotlight that will give you the next 57 steps

Because at that point you would turn it off and you would just go on autopilot and you would not trust him and The Word of God is not darkness.

It is light So that you actually can see it doesn't lead you it does guide you it doesn't lumen things for you

But only to the degree that you get your next step Because that's how God teaches us to trust him in daily communion and fellowship and walk

I have enough light For the next step for the next minute sometimes maybe for the next day but I don't have more than that because I don't need more than that because if I had more than that I would overlook it

And I wouldn't appreciate it So when we give our children the lamp we like to give our children the floodlights

We like to tell our children this is exactly what you should do X Y & Z This is how it's going to play out and we catastrophize situations and all of that brothers and sisters when we give our children the word

We give them Dependence on God We give them a reliance on him leading them

Which is the most important thing that we can actually give them because when you're gone and you can't give them all of your great

Opinions anymore. What is going to actually be what leads them and guides them? Is it going to be stale old truisms that you said or is it going to be the word of the

Living God in? That sense education is not optional.

It's ocular and It doesn't just form pupils. It gives light to eyes

Education unveils the things of God it lights our path of Psalm 119 105 says

Without the word our children have no dawn Isaiah 8 20 says if they do not speak according to this word it is because they have no dawn brothers and sisters

We do not want that for our children We want our children and lumined by the scriptures

Enlightened by the things of God so that they may see what is that they face and they may navigate it

Well, the final thing is that education is wounding It says in Proverbs 6 23 be the final part reproofs for discipline are the way of life now, there is a lot of opinions and views on how to discipline a child and The book of Proverbs will talk about that and we will talk about that But here for a moment as we close

I want to say that discipline Rescues that discipline wounds, but it also frees love requires

Confrontation if you love your child you confront them when they send with the word you correct them you discipline them

Because the rod of reproof doesn't just sting it saves the child from future wounds You trade the wound today for a lifetime of wounds tomorrow

Biblical discipline is diligent love Proverbs 13 24 he who withholds his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him diligently

Hebrews 12 6 for those whom the Lord loves he disciplines and he scourges every son whom he receives that word scourges

It's the same word that Jesus underwent in his scourging if your child is never corrected

It's not because you love them too much It's because you fear something else and trust me, we all know we've seen the child who gets everything they want

Baruka, sweetheart Willy Wonka reference and it poisons them and it ruins them and it makes them twice the children of hell

The Lord God and his kindness has trusted an imperfect vessel like you To cultivate the fear of God in them and you must not take it lightly and you must not shirk it

Even if it for a season hurts the ones that you love

Because at the end of the day wouldn't we rather cause a wound today that saves them from a life of pain

Than to band -aid and blanket them today and cause them to be in a world of ruin tomorrow

That's the heart behind discipline and it is not angry I remember when

I learned this How it really affected and empowered my discipline in my home

Because as a dad, I'm like my kids aren't doing what I want them to do My kids aren't doing and you get worked up you get frustrated

Then you start raising your voice and then they see you as angry So they see discipline as anger and I remember when my wife pointed this out to me and she said

She said you were teaching them that when you discipline them that that your love for them is being withheld and I remember that it that it it affected me

Because I'm a passionate person Because I'm like probably 1 3rd Italian and Irish and Indian Like the scalping of the head kind of Indian So like I'm pretty passionate

But I had to remember to slow myself down and say that this is love that I'm giving to my children they must know that I love them and yesterday

I told one of my children multiple times to go to bed and they didn't and I remember that I brought them up on my lap and I talked to them and I said

I love you But I can't allow you to live this way and rebellion to me and rebellion to your mother

Because I love you too much and I discipline them and at the end of it

I hugged them and said I love you and I did this because I love you and they said I love you too and thank you and To me it was such a beautiful picture of how the father disciplines his children

We get this idea that God is angry at us and mad at us and he's like Zeus throwing lightning bolts at us

Because you did it again. Oops. I Did it again? And yet that's not how

God disciplines us at all The Lord disciplines us with love and affection because he loves us and wants the best for us and what's good for us and I think

When I think of God the father discipline in scourging me I think of a father who is beaming with love for me

Who cares too much about me to let me continue going in the path that I'm going? That's the root of discipline and it comes out of a posture of fearing

God more than you fear your children so what we're talking about here is that the center of reality is

Your responsibility to raise your children in the fear of God and it will affect everything for them

You will equip them with a word that never stops speaking You will discipline them and you will wound them at times in ways that will actually bless them but at the epicenter of everything brothers and sisters you are irreplaceable and This work is for you.

Do not neglect it and do not shirk it Because Jesus did not shirk it for us

Because if there ever was a good son and a perfect son and a son who was true who followed What the father said it would be him

He said I don't even speak unless the father tells me I don't do anything unless the father tells me to do it if there's anyone whoever

Perfectly obeyed the will of the father. It was Jesus and Yet, what do we see? We see

Jesus for the joy set before him walking up the hill of Calvary which is a scandalous idea is it not

Because when I think about my children Being faithful and pleasing and doing the kinds of things that I want them to do

I don't think of them being crucified for it and yet in the father's goodness and kindness

Jesus's obedience Actually was the mechanism and means by which he wrought you into him

Jesus came and obeyed as a perfect son in ways our sons and daughters want and He followed a perfect father in the way that you and I won't ever be a perfect father or a perfect mother in order to change places with us to trade places with us so that in our ineptitude as parents and in our rebellious children that we might be called sons of God and The only reason now that you and I may actually strive towards faithfulness is because of the finished work of Christ If you heard today

That you must do do do do do do do in your own merits, then you've missed the heart of the message

What I'm saying is that this work has already been done Now you live in light of that.

Amen Let's pray Lord God we thank you for this word and we thank you for the scriptures and we thank you that at the center of human history

Christ came and died on a cross and It's through his obedience that we learn obedience through his faithfulness.

We learn faithfulness Lord Let us not use the grace that you have given us as a license for faithlessness and disobedience let us as grateful children be good parents and let our children grow up in a legacy of faithful teaching and Lord let this church graduate into adulthood

Every single child that we raised in their childhood Unto the things of God let the losing of children to the demonic gods of America stop here and Let us prepare well our children

For the world in which they will live when we are gone and let us do that by faithfully binding teaching presenting opening praying

Singing and reading the Word of God It's in Jesus name. We pray.

Amen If you will stand with me as we respond to the Word of God through song as we respond this morning.