Practical Proverbs

Bethlehem Bible Church iconBethlehem Bible Church

1 view

0 comments

00:01
We're going to move along into, I entitled this morning's lesson, Practical Proverbs.
00:06
It was a toss -up between that and practicing Proverbs, they both applied. Because Proverbs is, as we know, one of the wisdom books of the
00:16
Bible. There are several, but Proverbs is perhaps the one that springs to mind immediately when we talk about the wisdom books.
00:26
And of course, everything in the Bible is wisdom, but these books have been particularly named that because they encapsulate, in little short sayings, the things that Solomon said, the things that Solomon learned from his mother and from his father and other wise men of the time.
00:49
Because the book of Proverbs, even though Solomon is the author, it might be more accurate to say
00:54
Solomon is the editor of the book of Proverbs. Because the Bible tells us that Solomon himself wrote out 3 ,000
01:03
Proverbs, not all of which of course have been preserved.
01:09
But the book of Proverbs itself contains things that Solomon learned at his mother's knee and at his father's knee.
01:18
And also sayings from at least two other authors that are identified,
01:24
Agur and Lemuel. And they put it all together and it becomes the handbook, if you will, of practical living.
01:33
And the book of Proverbs, as we shall see this morning, is something that we can apply to our lives on a daily, daily basis.
01:42
Because Solomon paired another one of the wisdom books with Proverbs. Because if Proverbs is the book that says, here is how you should live, these are
01:53
God's principles for how you should live your life. Both positive and negative are collected there.
02:00
He then wrote another book that says, this is what happens if you don't follow what
02:06
God says is the way to do things. And that is the book of Ecclesiastes. And those two books taken together, if you want to know how to act, how to live your life, those two books will tell you.
02:21
On the one side, it says, this is what you should do. And on the other side, it says, this is what's going to happen if you don't do it
02:28
God's way. And there are four things that kind of get collected in the book of Ecclesiastes.
02:37
One is misdirected wisdom. What happens when wisdom is misdirected, misused wealth, multiplied women, young men.
02:49
And also mixed worship, all of those things, because Solomon was certainly guilty of all of that, and he paid the price.
02:57
And at the end of his days, he wrote down the book of Ecclesiastes as a warning to the rest of us.
03:04
And so Proverbs and Ecclesiastes go hand in hand. God's wisdom is collected in Proverbs. God's wisdom is collected in Proverbs.
03:12
And there's a central theme of the book, which is that the fear of the
03:17
Lord leads to divine wisdom and righteous living. I'll say that again.
03:23
The fear of the Lord leads to divine wisdom and righteous living. Charles Spurgeon put it this way, wisdom is the right use of knowledge.
03:33
To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal and are all the greater fools for it.
03:43
There is no fool so great as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.
03:51
And that's what the book of Proverbs is all about. It's what the book of Proverbs is all about.
03:57
And it teaches about, first of all, a right relationship to God. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
04:02
And if you don't have a right relationship to God, nothing else happens.
04:08
Nothing else matters. It doesn't matter what we know, what we think we know. It doesn't matter what we have achieved in life, how transient that is, is one of the lessons of Ecclesiastes.
04:22
It doesn't matter if we have achieved wealth or not. None of these things matter if we do not have a right relationship to God.
04:31
And conversely, if we do have a right relationship to God, whatever God has chosen to give us in his providence in our lives is exactly what we need and is exactly designed to give us happiness.
04:46
You want to be happy? Live God's way. Because right now, what?
04:51
Our society is made up of people frantically running around trying to find happiness.
04:57
And generally, they're trying to find happiness through stuff and things, right? And as we've said many, many times here, the problem, it's not that getting some new thing doesn't give you a little boost.
05:14
The trouble with that is that everything cycles back to zero. Everything cycles back to zero, and the zero point escalates.
05:25
So that if this year, that $1 ,500 bonus you got gives you a little charge and you're ready to go, next year, what?
05:36
You expect that $1 ,500, and it takes another $1 ,500 on top of that to give you the same little boost that you had before, and it's a never -ending spiral.
05:46
The zero point keeps going up, and everything cycles back. True happiness comes from a right relationship to Jesus Christ.
05:53
True happiness comes from a right relationship to God. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
06:00
And the next thing Proverbs teaches us about is how to manifest God's character, how to make godly decisions.
06:10
We certainly want to make our decisions to be godly decisions. We want to live as God meant for us to live, as he wants us to live.
06:19
And so this tells you how to do that. How do I make godly decisions? Proverbs is an intensely practical book, as we're going to see in a few minutes.
06:31
Practical godliness, how do we go about actually living the Christian life?
06:39
What kind of criteria do we use? Because it's true, the Bible, in some cases, says, thou shalt or thou shalt not.
06:46
That's pretty well cut and dry. If it says, thou shalt, then thou shalt. And if it says, thou shalt not, then don't do that, whatever it is.
06:56
But there's all kinds of stuff in between. And how do we evaluate the situations that God in his providence allows to come into our lives and puts us into?
07:08
How do we evaluate those situations? How do we make a godly decision based on where we find ourselves, our personal circumstances, all of those things?
07:20
How do we evaluate that? How do we properly orient ourselves to God in our lives?
07:28
And finally, the Proverbs teaches about true knowledge. What's real knowledge?
07:35
Because there's all kinds of knowledge, things that we know. But as was said many, many times,
07:44
I had a professor that used to quote this regularly, he said, the problem with knowledge is so much of what we know ain't so.
07:54
And he said, that's particularly true in the sciences. This was a professor of physics and a good, dear friend of mine and a very strong Christian.
08:03
But he would say that over and over again, so much of what we know ain't so. And a good deal of science and scientific exploration should be examining what we think we know to find out whether it's so or not and not to wall off certain areas where we say, we can't go there.
08:27
But anyway, none of that is what I want to talk about this morning yet, though, because perhaps the single most important thing that Proverbs is useful for in our lives is the training of children.
08:46
Proverbs 22 .6, train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
08:54
So that when a child is small, they're trainable, at least some of the time.
09:01
And by applying the various techniques and applying the board of education at the seat of learning when necessary and so forth and so on, you train up a child in the way he should go.
09:14
And because a child, what? By definition, a child has no discernment.
09:21
That's why they're children. They don't have any judgment. They don't have any discernment. They will try anything.
09:27
What's the first thing a baby does when he comes across something on the floor? Sticks it in his mouth, right?
09:33
See what this is. Because a child has no discernment. And that is why
09:39
God, in his mercy, in his infinite wisdom, has given a child parents.
09:45
How many times have you heard someone say, when a child is acting inappropriately, well, he's just a child, implying that, well, we can't hold him responsible for that.
09:56
Well, that's true as far as it goes. He is just a child, or she is just a child.
10:02
But that's why God has given that child parents who are to be held responsible for what that child is doing.
10:10
And they are to correct that child. And they are to show the child the way that they should go.
10:18
And that's why the proverb says, train up a child. It's not something that just happens as a child grows.
10:27
But training is necessary. Teaching is necessary. Correction is necessary.
10:35
And God, in his wisdom, and in his mercy, and in his providence, gives us the tools, as parents, gives us the tools to train our children.
10:46
Because as the child grows, one of the marks of maturity is that a child begins to take responsibility for their own actions.
10:54
They begin to be able to understand, number one, the consequences of what they're going to do and to deal with those consequences.
11:04
That's a mark of adulthood. If you wish, that's a definition of adulthood. But we can use proverbs to do what?
11:12
The things that we can teach our children. First of all, we can teach our children to fear the Lord. We can teach our children to fear the
11:20
Lord, because the most important thing in their lives is going to be their relationship to God. So how do we do that?
11:28
If a child is privileged to be born into a
11:33
Christian household, the Bible says that that's a blessing, in and of itself, that's a blessing.
11:40
Why? Because the child's parents will teach that child early about its relationship to God, that, number one,
11:49
God is there, that you didn't just, you know, spring up.
11:54
You're not simply the organism that managed to claw itself to the top of the food chain.
12:01
No, you are a definite creation of a Creator God who made you in His image.
12:09
You are not like the other animals. The other animals are fundamentally different from the way you are, because you are created in God's image, and you are a morally responsible being.
12:22
Now, you wouldn't use that term to a small child, but you begin to teach the child what it means to be morally responsible, that you're not just like the puppy dog who does what he does because that's what puppy dogs do.
12:41
You know, you're not strictly reflex. Instead, you are responsible.
12:48
God has given you a will, a measure of will that you can apply and that you are responsible.
12:55
You are responsible. You bear the consequences of your actions. You teach a child the fear of the
13:01
Lord. The second thing, you teach your child to guard the child's mind.
13:09
Not everything is of benefit. Not everything is to be taken in.
13:16
Now, when you hear a parent tell a child to keep an open mind, maybe you should tell him to shut it, because not everything is going to benefit the child.
13:26
There are many things that the child could be exposed to that will not be a benefit to him or her, now or later.
13:35
And so, you teach the child to guard their mind. And while the child is very small, you perform that role, don't you?
13:43
You guard your child's mind. And at the same time, you see that the child is exposed to the things that will benefit that child.
13:54
You read the Scripture to the child long before the child can read themselves.
14:01
I know because she told me, my mother read the Bible to me in the crib, in the cradle.
14:10
Just reading out loud with me laying there. And sure enough,
14:17
David says that we're supposed to do that, doesn't he? We're supposed to emphasize to our children, this is the
14:24
Word of God. This book is different from any other book. And it's special. And we are to take it in.
14:31
We are to obey it. And a child, what's the first thing a child...
14:39
The first word a child learns is what? No. And they have to be taught to obey their parents, don't they?
14:50
Because by nature, they don't. I mean, there's probably a child somewhere who just sort of inherently was obedient.
14:59
But if you ever find that one, let me know. Otherwise, children have to be taught to obey their parents.
15:09
Now, one of the questions that comes up is, child, do thus and such.
15:17
Why? The next answer is, because I'm your father and I said so. Or, because I'm your mother and I said so.
15:24
The next question that comes out is, why? Why does a child have to obey its parents?
15:32
Because the Bible says so. Because the Bible says so.
15:37
That's the bottom line answer. And here's just a hint. We're going to get into a little bit of child rearing here in a minute.
15:45
But just as a hint, those of you who are about to be parents, I'll give you a hint.
15:51
Never try to reason with a three -year -old. You will lose.
15:57
Count on it. You will lose. Because a three -year -old has no frame of reference.
16:05
It cannot understand your reasoned arguments. The only thing a child at that age needs to know is,
16:13
I am your parent and I said thus and such, and therefore the only acceptable answer is, yes, mom, or yes, dad.
16:21
You know, not only do you not need to know the reason, you can't understand the reason if I did tell it to you.
16:27
So at that age, you obey. That's what you teach. The next thing we teach our children is how to choose companions.
16:37
Not every companion that they come across is someone that will benefit them. And that is a principle that will go on through the rest of their lives.
16:47
You come across people in every walk of life. But not every person that you come across is going to be a benefit to you.
16:56
Some of them will actually be a drag upon you. And so you want to learn how to evaluate your companions.
17:05
And we teach the child to do that. Because none of these things are born into the child. The child doesn't know how to do any of this.
17:13
Just like throughout our lives, practically, we have to constantly keep being retaught and retaught and retaught.
17:19
And God deals with us. One of the things about the parent -child relationship is that's very illustrative of the relationship that God has to us.
17:28
He is our, what, heavenly father. And he deals with us as children.
17:36
He deals as a loving father to his children. But how to choose your companions.
17:43
There are certain individuals you should not let your children play with, simply because they will lead them in paths they should not travel.
17:57
They will take them down areas where they should not go. Another thing you teach your child is how to control their lust, how to control their desires, how to control those desires.
18:11
We have all kinds of desires. I want, gimme, gimme. Well, the child needs to be taught how to control that.
18:23
And again, one of the marks of adulthood is being able to control, self -control.
18:31
You see so many children that have no self -control. Well, that's expected.
18:38
A small child is not expected to have self -control. Again, that's why that child has been given parents.
18:45
The trouble is, these days, you run across too many adults that also have no self -control.
18:51
They never learn that. And those of you who have small children or are about to have small children, this is the thing, you know, again, back to the train -up -a -child aspect of things.
19:07
Do not expect your child to learn these things just because they exist and they get chronologically older.
19:17
Why do we expect that the fact that just because a child has been here for X number of years, that it will acquire a certain level of maturity if nobody teaches it?
19:28
And the trouble is, is that a child is being taught. Every day of its life, a child is being taught.
19:37
A child is learning lessons. And it is up to the parents to make sure that the right lessons are learned because not every lesson is worth learning.
19:49
Not every lesson is worth learning. That's another reason why, again, it is the mercy of God that children are given parents.
19:58
And it is the mercy of God that children are given one of each kind.
20:05
A child needs a mother. A child needs a father.
20:12
Pastor Tommy Nelson paid tribute to his own parents when he said, if it wasn't for my mother,
20:19
I would have been a bum. If it wasn't for my father, I would have been a neurotic. You know, you need both sides of the equation.
20:29
God knows what he's doing. Isn't that amazing? When he constructed the family, the family unit.
20:39
And please, if there are any single parents out there, you know, bless your heart for what you're trying to do and what you are attempting to do with God's help.
20:52
But it's not the way it's supposed to be. And I think a single parent would be the first one to testify to that and say amen.
21:02
Because God's intention is for a child to have two parents. One father, one mother.
21:11
Okay. Another thing that we can teach our child as the children begin to get older and begin to get into the area where they begin to think about their own family and choosing their own spouse.
21:25
One of those lessons we need to teach our children is to enjoy your spouse.
21:34
Enjoy the spouse that God provided you with. The message of Ecclesiastes, one of them is, guys, stick with the first girl.
21:46
Because Solomon in his writings, another one of his books is the Song of Solomon where he describes his courtship relationship with the
21:58
Shunammite, who was wife number one. Now, we all know that Solomon went on to acquire 700 wives and 300 concubines.
22:09
Or is it 300 wives and 700 concubines? But a whole bunch of women, multiplied women, right?
22:18
And what does he say at the end of his life? Stick with number one. Stick with the wife of your youth.
22:26
Enjoy the wife of your youth. And that is something we should teach our children, that marriage is to be a lifelong commitment.
22:37
In this day and age, all too often, particularly and including among so -called evangelical or so -called
22:44
Christian families, marriage is not regarded as a lifelong commitment. It is regarded as something that, well, if it works out, it works out.
22:54
And if it doesn't, well, that's okay, too. And, you know, if you're really cynical, it's, oh, well, she'll make a very fine first wife.
23:06
I mean, people actually say things like that. He'll make a very fine first husband. You know, where you're getting married planning to divorce?
23:15
Excuse me? Where do you find that in the Scripture? The answer is you don't.
23:23
Jesus' teaching is one man, one woman, a lifetime of commitment.
23:30
And you teach that to your children. You teach that to your children. And to, you know, look for the girl, look for the guy that God has for you.
23:42
Find that person. Make that your objective, to find that person. Because they're out there.
23:52
And God will, in fact, in his time, lead you to that individual. Sometimes when you don't even know you're being led.
24:00
Sometimes when you don't even know that you're looking, you find it anyway.
24:07
You know, because God is a merciful God. What's the next thing we can teach our child?
24:14
Teach the child to watch their words, control the mouth. That is one of the themes that goes through Proverbs beginning to end.
24:23
Watch your mouth. Be careful what you say. Let words of wisdom come out of your mouth.
24:32
Don't say anything in certain situations. It is better to remain silent.
24:41
Even a fool, when he keeps his mouth shut, is thought wise, says Proverbs.
24:47
Teach your child that. A child does not need to speak all the time and tell everything they know.
24:55
But that is a characteristic of children, isn't it? A child has no wisdom, has no discernment.
25:01
So they will blurt out anything. Never let your child know something you don't want the entire neighborhood to know.
25:10
You know that. Pursue your work. Do your work well.
25:15
Do your work as to the Lord. Do your work as to the
25:21
Lord. Regard your occupation, whatever that is, as being something you are doing to the
25:27
Lord. There is no such thing as a sacred occupation and a lay occupation.
25:36
It's whatever God has given you to do. If you are a bricklayer, lay those bricks to the glory of God.
25:45
If you are a lawyer, try your cases to the glory of God. If you are a minister, then minister to the glory of God.
25:58
Preach to the glory of God. But everything is done to the glory of God. And see yourself, child, as being part of something larger than you are.
26:09
You're part of something larger than you are. And what that is, is God has a plan. And the plan is evolving and going forward.
26:19
And we are part of that plan. The fact that we are here at Bethlehem Bible Church on this morning is part of God's plan.
26:30
The plan is unfolding, and we are part of it. We are part of something much, much larger than ourselves.
26:38
It's not just our little existence. If you want to look for something that gives life meaning, see yourselves, look on yourself as part of this big plan that God has.
26:54
Otherwise, consider this. What does modern society teach?
27:03
Is that, number one, we are the result of time and chance, right?
27:09
We're just the result of time and chance. We're here. There was nothing before us.
27:16
When we die, we die. There's nothing after us. There's really no purpose to anything.
27:22
But in the meantime, have a nice life. You know? Excuse me?
27:28
What? How am I supposed to do that if there's nothing outside of myself that I can hang to?
27:37
If there is no infinite personal God that I can hang my life on and see everything else in life and everything in the universe referenced to this infinite
27:51
God. Okay?
27:57
Other things we can teach our children. We teach them to manage their money. Early on, the world is full of adults as well that never learned that skill, did they?
28:08
And also how to love their neighbors. So we want to look at all of these things very briefly in the time left to us this morning.
28:19
Specifically, with the look at child rearing, train up a child in the way he should go, here's a quote for you.
28:28
The parent who studies to subdue self -will in his child works together with God in the renewing and saving a soul.
28:36
The parent who indulges it does the devil's work, makes religion impossible, salvation unattainable, and does all that in him lies to damn his child, body, and soul forever.
28:50
That's a quote from Susanna Wesley, mother of nine, including
28:56
Charles and John. And then the best definition
29:02
I've ever heard or ever seen of leadership, defining leadership, is this. It is the conscious sense of responsibility for the physical and spiritual well -being of others.
29:14
That's the mark of a leader. That's the mark of a true father. Now, we say we need to raise our child.
29:22
We need to raise our children. How do we do that? How do we do that? First of all, what obstacles get thrown in the way of us raising our children successfully?
29:35
Well, first of all, we get defensive, don't we? At the very suggestion that there's something wrong with the way we raise our child.
29:42
You know, we immediately begin to get defensive when that happens, and that's a big objection.
29:47
We don't like to be told that we're doing something wrong. We also confuse raising the child with training the child.
29:57
Raising the child refers to providing for the child's needs, providing for the child's welfare, making sure that the child eats, has clothes, roof over their head, all of those things that the child needs.
30:10
That's all part of raising the child. But training the child means teaching the child appropriate behavior and how to deal with life and how it should interact with its surroundings and the people around it.
30:31
Basically, it means turning a child into an adult. As we go.
30:38
Another thing is misunderstanding depravity. We have to understand that when we hold that little infant in our arms, what we have here is a little viper, as one said, or what we have here is a little sinner.
31:03
The child is born a sinner. It has a sin nature. And very shortly, as the child grows, you will begin to see that.
31:13
Because any mother out there knows, begins very quickly and early on to understand the cries that her baby makes.
31:22
Because a baby communicates by crying. And a baby has got a cry that says,
31:28
I'm hungry. A baby has got a cry that says, I'm scared. I'm afraid. A baby has got a cry that says,
31:35
I'm just making noise and exercising my lungs. A baby also very quickly develops a cry that says,
31:41
I'm what? Angry. Mad. We don't have to teach our children to be mad, do we?
31:51
They somehow just are born that way. They have that. And so you have to understand the nature of the child.
32:02
We don't like to use the term depraved or depravity. And we're not meaning that the child is absolutely as bad as it possibly is, but that it's a sinner.
32:13
It has a sin nature. And the child is not in and of itself inherently going to want to go in the right way.
32:21
It's going to want to go in the wrong way. And it's our job as parents to correct that way, to show the child the path in which it should walk and make sure that it does in fact walk in that path.
32:34
But if we think our child is fundamentally good, as one commentator said, he said anyone that does not believe in the doctrine of total depravity never had children.
32:48
It doesn't take you long around a child to begin to realize, hmm, what do you know?
32:54
And so we have to understand what the child is. And another way to look at this is the child is not as God intended him to be because he has fallen.
33:09
He is born fallen. There's also an ignorance of parental responsibility or a shunning of parental responsibility that gets in the way.
33:21
There's also a tendency to trust in experts. Well, the experts say this, the experts say that.
33:27
And there's also a fear of repeating one's own bad childhood if in fact one had a bad childhood.
33:35
You don't want to repeat the mistakes that your parents made. And that's certainly understandable, but neither do we want to allow that to interfere with the proper raising of our children.
33:48
And so the goal of parenting is what? It's maturity. We want to provide the child with self -control.
33:54
We want to provide the child with wisdom. We want to provide the child with the ability to discern.
34:03
And so give it the ability to say no to himself. Teach the child that being totally self -absorbed is not a good thing.
34:16
And our society, that's one of the hallmarks of our society today is it is self -absorbed, isn't it?
34:23
It's my needs. It's my wants. It's my rights. I'm not concerned with anyone else around me.
34:30
You know, I am going to turn left in front of this line of traffic before anybody else moves because I need to move.
34:38
You know, never mind. That's a violation of the right of way. That's okay.
34:45
A child lacks wisdom. We want to give a child wisdom. A child is irresponsible. We want to change that.
34:55
And notice also that nothing is said about chronological age. This does not necessarily come at a certain age automatically.
35:05
We expect the very young to display all of these characteristics. Part of raising and training the child is to change that.
35:14
We expect those characteristics to fade away and the characteristics that mark adulthood to come forward.
35:20
But it's not going to happen unless we work on it. So getting down to Proverbs.
35:26
You knew we'd get there sooner or later today. We would actually go to Proverbs because the thing about Proverbs, I found this great list.
35:35
You can find good stuff on the Internet. I found this great list, six pages from the
35:41
Banner of Truth, of things to say to your children out of Proverbs.
35:49
Things that you can say to your children out of Proverbs. And we're not going to cover them all. We don't have enough time. But it is a good skill to learn to correct your child from the
36:04
Bible. When we were living out in California the first time, the elder that was in charge of my group of deacons at Grace Community Church was a gentleman by the name of Mickey Thorpe.
36:23
And whenever we would go over to Mickey's house, there was this big Bible, big family Bible that was right in the front hallway.
36:31
And I could always go over and I could always tell what the last thing was that Mickey had been going over with his children.
36:39
Because I'd just go over and see where the Bible was opened. And oh, okay, that's what he's been talking about lately.
36:46
Because that's what he would do. He would bring the child over to the Bible, that particular Bible, and open it up and say, there you are.
36:54
So that's a good thing to do. And so we're going to look for the rest of our time this morning at some of the things that we say we can say to our children as we deal with them, as we train them in the way that they should go.
37:10
And so what do we say to our children when they show an unwillingness to receive good counsel?
37:18
They do not want to receive instruction. They do not want to accept a rebuke when they are acting foolishly.
37:29
Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child. They're going to do this. They're going to refuse godly counsel.
37:36
They're going to refuse instruction. They're going to reject what you try to teach them.
37:45
And so where would you go? Well, you could go to Proverbs 1, 7. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.
37:51
Fools despise wisdom and instruction. Now, you don't want to just quote these verses, rattle them off.
38:00
This is not a formulaic thing where, you know, you say the magic words and poof, the child is immediately mature.
38:07
That's not the way it works. But you start from the Bible. You explain to the child the fear of the
38:15
Lord is the beginning of knowledge. And when you can extend from there and say when you reject the teaching or the correction of your father or your mother, it's not just your father and your mother that you are resisting.
38:34
You are resisting God himself because God has charged the parents with the responsibility of raising that child.
38:47
And the parents, they don't get off free and easy, by the way, the parents are going to be held responsible.
38:56
Someday, someday Dallas and I are going to stand before God and answer for our two sons.
39:04
God will say, I gave you these two children to raise. How did you do? How did they turn out?
39:13
Now, I know some of you are thinking in the back of your head, yes, but the sins of the sons are not visited on the father and vice versa.
39:20
And that's true, but that's a different sermon. We would have to get to that in a different lesson sometime. But suffice it to say that for the purposes of this lesson this morning, the parents are going to be held responsible for their children because those children, what does the
39:38
Bible say about children in general? Children are what? A gift from the
39:44
Lord. It is God's gift to you, parents, that he gave you not just children in general, but the specific ones that you have with their specific personalities.
40:00
And it is amazing, you know, you've all heard the arguments between, you know, is it the nurture or the nature of the child?
40:10
Is it the environment in which the child is raised or is it the genetic makeup, if you will, of the child that determines which way it goes?
40:19
And as the old joke goes, the parents of one child are always environmentalists, right?
40:29
You know, I'm going to put this child, this is going to be a perfect child because we are going to make this environment. The parents of two children immediately become geneticists because you realize how did both of these individuals come out of the same gene pool?
40:50
They both have the same set of parents, they got the same set of grandparents, and yet they are so totally different.
40:57
You know, they're only X number of months apart or X number of years apart and yet they are so totally different.
41:05
How is that possible? It's possible because that's what
41:12
God has assembled in that particular child. And we deal with the child and that's why you can't get, also why you can't get formulaic about how you raise a child because what works with one child will not work with the other child.
41:30
I mean, one of our, you're not supposed to use your own kids for illustrations too much, but if you don't, what are you going to use?
41:39
One of our sons, whatever we said, you know, the night
41:47
I took him out of the crib, put him in a regular child's bed, you know, put him down, this is your bed now, this is where you sleep, don't get up until it's morning.
42:00
Right, Dad? It was the end of that. The other child, the other child was a guardhouse lawyer to the word go.
42:10
I mean, this kid could, number one, he could stonewall better than any politician you ever saw and, you know, he could split hairs, not just split hairs, he could divide it by about five or six, you know.
42:25
Did you take a bath? Yes. You're still dirty. Did you use the soap?
42:30
You didn't say to use the soap. Okay? You get the idea.
42:40
So, back to the lesson. How do we get off down that rabbit trail? My son, do not reject the discipline of the
42:48
Lord or loathe His reproof. For whom the Lord loves, He reproves, even as a father, the son in whom he delights.
42:56
An important lesson for the child to learn is where the authority comes from.
43:03
Where does the authority come from? Why should a child obey its parents?
43:08
Because it makes society better? It does. But that's not the reason why.
43:17
Authority, the way authority works is authority always comes from the level above you.
43:25
When I was in the military, when I gave orders, what gave me the right to give those orders?
43:33
It's because I had a commission. I was a commissioned officer, and there were officers above me that had given me orders, and eventually it went all the way back to the
43:44
President of the United States because the commission that you're granted says, The President of the
43:49
United States grants to such and such. Commission him, an officer in the
43:55
United States Army. And parents, where does your commission come from?
44:01
Your commission comes from God. It goes back to having a right relationship to God.
44:09
That is where your authority ultimately stems from, and that should scare you to death, fathers, because you are acting in God's place when you deal with your child.
44:24
And that should temper the way you deal with your child because God, like all good people who delegate authority down, you're going to be held responsible.
44:38
When I was given authority, I was held responsible by the one that gave me that authority.
44:44
And when God gives you authority to raise these children, he is going to hold you responsible for that.
44:50
And the other thing that should give you a little pause, dads, and those of you who might be dads one of these days, the first idea your child will have of what
45:02
Almighty God is comes from you. To a small child, what?
45:13
Dad knows everything. There is nothing he cannot do. He is omnipotent.
45:19
He is omniscient. Mother has eyes in the back of her head. Parents, this is the first idea that the child has of what
45:30
God is. It's not by chance that God is referred to as our heavenly father.
45:41
And so if that doesn't scare you a little bit, it should. But it goes on.
45:48
Now, as the child gets older, one of the problems that you're going to face is how does the child deal with peer pressure?
45:56
It's a very definite thing. And the child needs to be taught how to deal with that.
46:02
Shielding the child from peer pressure is not an all -inclusive solution because sooner or later that child is not going to be under your control anymore.
46:14
You have to teach the child to deal with these situations. And so Proverbs 1, 10, and 15,
46:22
My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent. If they say come with us, do not walk in the way with them.
46:30
Keep your feet from their path. Don't go with what they do because the outcome of it will not be good.
46:41
So we teach the child. Another one, and this is a big one for our society today, when a temptation to sexual perversion or licentiousness.
46:54
A harlot is a deep pit and an adulterous woman is a narrow well. Surely she lurks as a robber and increases the fatherless among men.
47:02
Now, that's not something you say to a very small child. You have to explain what those terms mean.
47:10
But to the older child, by definition, when a boy gets to be somewhere in the 14, 15 range, he has no brain, none.
47:23
Count on it. My grandfather used to refer to this as Fool's Hill, the time between 15 and 19.
47:36
Child has no, particularly male children have no brain at that point. So you have to take care of them.
47:44
And you have to come back to verses like this. This is not something, child, that you can play around with.
47:53
This is not something where you want to see how close to the edge of the cliff you can get because you don't know where the edge of the cliff is.
48:02
And once you're over it, you're over it. So you deal with your child.
48:09
Practical, it's getting close for us, time for us to wrap up. But my point here is that these are intensely practical things.
48:19
Sometimes we forget that the Bible is a very practical book. It is not something that is merely existing in a vacuum.
48:28
Every one of the things in Proverbs, in particular, come out of real life.
48:33
They are Solomon's observations on real life. They are
48:38
David's observations on real life. They are Bathsheba's observations on real life.
48:45
These are the things that Solomon learned in some cases the hard way and in some cases the very hard way, which is why, again, he wrote the book
48:55
Ecclesiastes. And he says, this is what you ought to do. This is what you ought to do.
49:02
These are the warnings, and here are the results if you don't, because Ecclesiastes was written at the end of Solomon's life.
49:13
When tempted to wickedness and ungodliness, where would you go there? Proverbs 2 .22, the wicked will be cut off from the land, and the treacherous will be uprooted from it.
49:27
Now, what's that mean, Dad? It means that sin has consequences.
49:34
Sin carries consequences. Your actions carry consequences. And a little bit later on, the child might ask the question, well, won't my sins be forgiven if I confess them?
49:51
And the answer to that is, you know, if you're saved, if you have placed your faith in Jesus Christ, if you are truly a child of God, we have that promise.
50:04
1 John 1 .9, confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins, cleanses from all unrighteousness.
50:10
But sin carries consequences, and the consequences remain.
50:21
When we confess our sins and those sins are forgiven, that removes from us the ultimate consequence of sin.
50:33
Those sins are taken away because the wages of sin, what, is death. But the temporal consequences of sin, those are born in time, and they're still there.
50:47
As an example, if your child commits a crime and is incarcerated for a period of time, and while that child is in prison, he comes under the witness of someone and has a genuine conversion, has genuinely been converted, genuinely repented, is now a child of God.
51:14
But guess what? Still in jail, right? Because the consequences of that crime go forward.
51:21
And that's what we teach our child, is that we can't sin.
51:28
The fact that we can be forgiven is not a get -out -of -jail -free card.
51:34
It's not a license to sin because the wicked will be cut off from the land.
51:41
There are consequences to sin. We teach that to our children. He who is steadfast in righteousness will attain to life.
51:47
He who pursues evil will bring about his own death. Again, the negative consequences of sin because in this day and age, it's so important to emphasize that to our children because so much of our society today is bent on trying to get around the consequences of sin.
52:13
We want to get around the consequences of sin. Bail me out. I don't want to lead a holy life.
52:21
I don't want to lead a holy life. What I want is for somebody to take away the consequences of the life that I want to lead.
52:29
And you have to teach your child he can't do that. That's not the way it works. He who walks in his uprightness fears the
52:38
Lord, but he who is crooked in his ways despises him. It's Proverbs 14, 2.
52:47
And just one more because this is so typical. The child wants to do his own thing.
52:54
After all, all my friends are doing their own thing. I want to do my own thing. What does
53:00
Proverbs have to say about that? Do not be wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and turn away from evil.
53:06
It will be healing to your body and refreshment to your bones. There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.
53:15
The prudent sees the evil and hides himself, but the naive go on and are punished for it.
53:23
These are the things that we can deal with our children as we raise them, straight out of Proverbs, the immensely practical handbook for life that God has given us.
53:41
Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we come before you this morning, Lord. We are thankful that you have not left us leaderless.
53:52
You have not left us without a guidebook. You have not left us to wander about on our own trying to find our way, and yet you have set things out very clearly, and that we are privileged, those of us here today, we are privileged to live in the time when the canon is complete.
54:11
We have all of this available to us in multiple copies. We can all read.
54:19
The lessons that Solomon learned very painfully are laid down for us,
54:25
Lord, and may we take those, may we apply them to our own lives, may we apply them to the lives of our children.
54:31
We ask your blessing upon each one here this morning, Lord. Open our hearts as Pastor Mike opens the word to us.
54:37
Prepare our hearts to receive the lesson that you have for us. We ask this in Jesus' name.