Raising Children Unto the Lord

9/16/12 “Things I Still Believe After 30 Years: Raising Children Unto the Lord” Ephesians 6:1-4
I. Introduction
A. Series: not throwing the baby out with the bath water
B. Our history
1. A combination of homeschooling, discipline, and Bible-learning
2. Realizations: isolation, superiority, high expectations, perhaps there was too much emphasis on strictness, discipline.
C. The Lash children certainly suffered damage from our mistakes, sins, and failures. But I think every one of them would agree that what they got was much greater than how they were hurt.
II. Eph.6:1-4 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), 3 “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.” 4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
A. “bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord”
1. Instruction, urging, cheering on, correction
2. Amplified Bible (which tries to catch all the nuances of the original language): “rear them [tenderly] in the training and discipline and the counsel and admonition of the Lord.”
3. Picks up on an OT theme: the truths of God are to be passed along from one generation to another. (See Psalm 78:1-7 and Joel 1:3)
a. Proverbs: listen to your parents, disciplining children for training
4. Eph.6:4 is the reason children are given to us! If all you do is feed them and clothe them and go to their soccer games, what advantage is there in growing up in a Christian home? The whole point is to bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Now feeding and clothing them is important, but not enough.
5. The goal of parenting is to prepare kids to be shot out into the world — “Children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.” (Ps.127:3-5)
6. They’re not here for us. We’re here for them.
7. And ultimately they and we are all here for the Lord, and for His service.
8. To quote myself, “Our children are not knick-knacks to decorate our lives with, they are arrows to shape and straighten in preparation to send them out into battle.”
9. The ultimate goal of raising children is not defense, it’s offense; it’s not protection, it’s attack.
a. There’s a time to be in the quiver. But the reason for being in the quiver is to be shot out — not to be hung on the wall as a decoration.
10. If all we aspire to is our own enjoyment and security, then we’ve missed the whole point.
11. The goal is not to live lives of safety and security. The goal is to live life in and for Christ.
B. There is something very important to do here, but there is also something NOT to do: provoke your children to anger.
1. Parenting not out of exasperation, but out of love.
2. Training your children is not for your benefit as the parent, but for their benefit, and the good of the kingdom.
3. Parents should not drive their children to Christ, but rather win them. Gentleness rather than forcefulness, and loving admonition rather than insults and humiliation are to characterize godly parenting.
C. First and foremost this is Dad’s job.
1. Generally moms don’t need to be told to take care of the kids.
2. Culturally it is often Mom’s job.
3. Kenya: dads who obey this are ridiculed by other men: “That’s women’s work!”
4. If there is no dad, or if dad fails to pick up the ball, the mom is the backup.
a. Timothy’s dad wasn’t a believer. He learned the Scriptures from his mom and his grandma.
(1) “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well.” (2Timothy 1:5)
(2) “Continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” (2Timothy 3:14-15)
III. Raising children unto the Lord
A. The fact is, Christian parents raising children in the Lord is still one of the greatest tools God uses to raise up and disciple new servants of Christ to go out into the world.
1. I don’t think anyone can disagree that this is the greatest tool of evangelism God has used to bring salvation to people.
2. It is also the greatest tool of discipleship.
3. The children of believers have a special place in the economy of God.
4. Acts 2:39 “For to you is the promise, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call unto him.”
a. Why mention the children? Would someone have said, “Oh no! He said it includes us and the people far off, but it must not include our children!”?
5. Without getting into the issue of infant baptism, these verses make it clear that God has a special interest in the children of believers.
6. It is God’s choice which ultimately determines who is saved, and He has planned a unique story of how each one will be brought to Him. And He has chosen to place many of His chosen ones into believing families to grow up. Why? Because He loves them so much, and in His goodness blesses them with a Christian upbringing.
B. There is no guarantee, of course, in spite of the questionable translation and interpretation of Proverbs 22:6 (which is a proverb not a promise, and which literally says in the Hebrew, “Raise up a child in his way” not “Raise up a child in the way he should go”).
1. To quote myself again, “If we had the children we deserve, they’d be monsters.”
2. If our grown children are godly, it is in spite of our failures and ultimately because of God’s grace.
3. Sometimes God’s purpose isn’t to save a sinful child, but to humble the parents, or to move them to flee to the Lord and cry out to Him.
4. The importance of humility: “God, we can’t do this. Raising this child, being godly examples to this child, loving this child with the love of Christ, training this child in the way of Christ, these things are WAY beyond us!”
5. “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it.” (Ps.127:1).
C. The single most important tool of raising children unto the Lord is the power of parental example.
1. It’s not all about what you tell your children.
2. You can’t make someone else interested in something you’re not interested in.
3. It really comes down to what you believe. If you really believe that knowing Jesus Christ is better than life itself, if we really believe His word is a Potomac Mills Mall of life and hope and victory and wisdom and strength, your enthusiasm will be obvious and, hopefully by God’s grace, contagious.
4. Deuteronomy 32:46-47 “Take to your heart all the words with which I am warning you today, which you shall command your sons to observe carefully, even all the words of this law. 47 For it is not an idle word for you; indeed it is your life.”
5. If the first thought you have when you think about this book is “work” then you will avoid it.
6. If the first thought you have when you think about this book is “life” then you will go to it.
7. Once we see this book as life, then we will be able to begin cultivating an appetite for it in our children.
8. How blessed is the child whose parents love Jesus Christ and His word!
D. Family is not everything. It is not the church, for instance. We need to uphold both.
1. In one sense, the church is even more important than the family.
a. Jesus said this in passages like Matthew 12:46-50.
b. The church is an eternal institution, the family is only for this life.
2. Part of raising you children up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord is leading them to be a part of a Biblical church.
a. We’re not in this alone. We can’t do by ourselves. It takes a congregation!
E. Parenting doesn’t end when the children are gone, of course, though it does change.
1. They need your encouragement. They need your advice. At crucial times in a person’s life, their need a mom or a dad to go to.
2. One of the hard but beautiful aspects of raising children goes like this:
a. You to pour love into your kids. You sort of want them to give the love back, but kids never love their parents as much as parents love their kids. Parental love is like grace, given unconditionally. It’s not about you, it’s about them.
b. But the beautiful part is to watch your kids then turn and pour that same love into their children, your grandchildren.
c. It’s like trickle-down economics in the family.
3. When your kids aren’t listening to you, your role in their lives sometimes becomes more like the instructions wives are given in 1Peter 3:1-2 “Be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct.”
4. And a lot of it is through prayer. Luke 1:13 “your prayers have been heard”