Humility is the face, the smiling face, the winsome grin of personal holiness. Holiness may not be attractive, but humility is. And that's because Humility focuses our thoughts, our emotions, our words away from ourselves. Humility focuses on things that are much more valuable than we are. Humility doesn't even focus on humility. because to do so would be to focus on self. Someone helpfully reminded me last week that the quote I gave attributed to C.S. Lewis was probably a paraphrase of C.S. Lewis by Rick Warren, in his very popular book, The Purpose Driven Life. The quote was, humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less. Now Lewis wrote something like that, but probably did not write those exact words. Whoever wrote it, it's a good statement. It's a good statement because it's biblical. In Philippians chapter 2, verses 5 and following, we are commanded to have the mind of Christ, to have the mental perspective and attitude that characterized and controlled the Lord Jesus while he was in this world. It was an attitude of humility. Now in no time did Jesus demean himself. He never denied that he was the son of God or the Lord of glory. but he veiled his glory in order that he might serve his father's will, in order that he might save his father's people. And that is humility. True humility is self-forgetfulness. How difficult is that? How difficult is that? Self-forgetfulness, self-sacrifice, self-denial in order to glorify God and to do good to His people. There is a kind of humility that strives to appear humble. There's a kind of humility that wants everyone to think that we are humble. That's not humility at all. It's simply another form of self-centeredness. Genuine spiritual humility is not concerned with our image or what people think of us. The burden of spiritual humility is what people think of Jesus. It's a burden to make him known, to elevate his glory, to manifest his goodness, to serve him, and by that service, hopefully to draw other people to want to know him and serve him. Well, we've been engaged in the study of humility now for some time. We're at that part of the study that is applicatory. We're seeking to give attention to how humility impacts personal relationships. We've talked a bit about marriage and how humility impacts the relationship of husband and wife. Last week, we took up the matter of parenting, how humility impacts the relationship between parent and child. We emphasized three thoughts last week. Number one, that humility, true humility, brings parents to two very difficult and self-deprecating conclusions. The first is I don't deserve to be a parent. Children, the fruit of the womb, are a reward from the Lord. I have never deserved any reward from the Lord. I don't deserve to be a parent. If I ever become a parent, it will be a gift of grace. Secondly, if I become a parent, I am simply not capable of rearing the child that God gives me the way God requires that that child be reared. If I have the pleasure, if I have the honor of having a child, I am not capable of doing what that child needs in order to meet God's standard. Next, we explored the fact that parenting is stewardship, not ownership. Every time I preach, I say a lot of words. I said a lot of words last week. That was perhaps the most important thing I said last week. Parenting is stewardship, it's not ownership. I hope you've given some fresh and serious thought to that. God gives us children temporarily. They are on loan. Hopefully we'll have a lifelong relationship, but they are not ours permanently. They are given to our care for an an amazingly brief amount of time that we might take them in their most tender form and bring them up in a certain way to achieve certain goals for the glory of God and then send them out from our homes to serve Jesus Christ. The last thing we talked about last week, we attempted to give a definition of what that goal is toward which we ought to send our children. The goal of Christian parenting is to rear a child into adulthood. We don't stop when they get 15, okay? It gets much more difficult when they turn 13, 14, 15, but you don't stop. You rear them all the way into adulthood so that they are adults who know and love Jesus Christ and are competent to serve Christ wherever and however he decides. The goal of parenting requires evangelism and discipling. The goal of parenting also requires rigorous education and training. Well, now the aim this morning is to complete this discussion on humility and Christian parenting. I pray that God will give me help, but most of all, he'll give you help. I know what I'm trying to say. I hope you will know what I'm trying to say. I have two points, but 99% of my time will be given to the first point. And that is this, humility, happily endeavors to follow God's directions for parenting. Humility, happily, don't miss that word. happily endeavors to follow God's directions for parenting. And this flows out of the fact that parents humbly accept their role as stewards, and they acknowledge that the goal toward which they must strive It is a goal that God designs, not their goal, His. Namely, to raise mature believers in Christ who are able, who are fit, who are competent to do whatever God wills for them to do. Parents who are faithful in that, have to be most anxious to know what they're supposed to do, how they are supposed to do it. If we accept that children are a wonderful stewardship, but they're not ours, they're God's, and they are to be raised unto the Lord, then we have a thousand questions. How am I supposed to do that? Lord, how do I go about this? How do you want me to exercise and fulfill my stewardship with these precious lives? Teach me, I want to know. And God does. God has given us a lot of information about child rearing. So the question before us now is this, what does God say? What does the Word of God teach us concerning how to rear children as good stewards before Him? Now please understand, you are gonna give an account to Him. Those children are His. He made them, He created them, He gave them to you. He is the one who preserves their lives. He has claim on them. And at a coming time, at a coming place, you will answer to him for your stewardship. So what is it that God wants us to do? And I have three answers. First, God's expectations for parenting can be gleaned generally from the statements that he makes about himself as a parent, and from the descriptions we are given of faithful pastoral ministry, because there is a similarity between faithful pastoral ministry and parenting. We read this text, or Pastor Andy read this text in the beginning, but I want you to look at it again. It's one of our favorite Psalms. We use it a lot in calls to worship, Psalm 103. So if you would please turn to the 103rd Psalm once again. And as I said, we've already read these words. But notice that God likens his treatment of his people to that of a father. Verse 13, as a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear him. He knows our frame, he remembers that we are dust. Now turn to Isaiah, the 66th chapter. Isaiah 66 in verse 13. Isaiah 66, 13. As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you. and you shall be comforted in Jerusalem. Now, what do these two passages teach us about God's design for parenting? Well, it teaches us, they teach us, that God expects the parents will be tender and patient toward their children. God expects that our expectations for our children will be tempered by sympathy for their weaknesses. Now this creates a tension. There must be a wise and delicate balance between high expectations for children and a genuine compassion for the difficulty that all of our children encounter in trying to reach those expectations. And the expectations for our children, the basic expectations, are the same for all our children. And it's a great mistake to think that because you're the parent, you have the liberty to decide what the bar will be for the behavior of your children. No, you don't. God decides that. The expectations for our children's behavior is fundamentally established by the Bible. And that standard and the details of it are not subject to our amendment. First, our children must reverence God, the God of the Bible. They must respect the fact that He alone is God. They must respect the fact that He is a spirit. They must reverence and treat his name as holy. That's a fundamental part of moral uprightness. We must teach that to our children. Our children must obey us. They must respect us. That's not machoism on our part. God requires that. They must honor us, they must respect us. They must respect and be considerate toward the well-being of others, particularly their physical well-being. They must not do anything deliberately to harm another person. They must submit to God's rules for sexual relations. Sex is not something that God gives us to play with as we choose, it's holy. Our sexuality is one of the sacred parts of our humanity and God has created us as sexual beings so we could perform the God-like function of reproduction. bringing about other beings in our own image as he has created man in his image. But God determines a context for that. It's marriage and marriage alone. Our children must know that. They must honor that. Our children must respect the property of others. That includes their brother and sister's toys, They must respect the property of others. They must honor the truth and never tell a lie. And they must be content and not covetous. Those are the moral absolutes that are binding upon all mankind. And we must teach those moral absolutes to our children. from their earliest years, we must expect that they will adhere to those commandments. Those are God's commandments. We do not have the liberty to dismiss any of them. Those are God's rules. And whatever additional rules that we add, and we do add additional rules, but whatever rules that we as parents add, they should be bound, tied to the Ten Commandments. Example, I hope you have rules concerning TV viewing, movie viewing, the use of the internet. Well, those rules that I certainly hope you have should be tied to the third commandment and the seventh commandment and the sixth commandment. Don't take the name of the Lord your God in vain. You shall not kill. You shall not commit adultery. Our rules must be extrapolations of God's rules. We don't have the liberty to change the rules. God has established the mores, the commandments, the absolutes. We must teach them, we must enforce them. But as we are enforcing them, it would be wise of us to remember how difficult It has been for us to keep those rules all the days of our lives. That doesn't negate the rules at all, but it does point into how we respond to the difficulty our children have in keeping those commandments. There are certain violations of God's commandments that we must punish. Willful, deliberate, knowing disobedience must be punished. But when we discover that a child really sincerely wants to obey God, but has violated a principle of God's law out of ignorance, or confusion, or a trap set by others, we do have the liberty to extend mercy to that child in the way we respond. But on those occasions in which mercy cannot be extended, and there are occasions more than many of us think in which mercy is not an appropriate response to a child's misbehavior. Even on those occasions, parents ought to be ready to comfort the child. who has been found out and sinned and must be punished. And yet the parent who administers the punishment should be ready and eager to administer the comfort. So that's one of the marvelous things about God's method of punishing. It doesn't take days or weeks. It doesn't create alienation. You do it. You do it, and then you comfort. And it's just like that. A man thinks he has come up with a better way. We alienate our children from us for minutes or hours. We cut them off, we don't speak to them, have anything to do with them, and then we come back and We try to reconcile. That is not God's method. It's not helpful. It's not right, but it's not helpful either. Another general indication of parenting occurs in the writings of the Apostle Paul. As he speaks about the diligence required of gospel ministers, taking care of the sheep of Christ, turn to 1 Thessalonians chapter two. 1 Thessalonians chapter two. This, I think, is a very important statement about parenting. And in the original language, The emphasis comes on parenting. Paul begins by saying, as fathers treat their own children, and then he identifies, so I have treated you. That's not the way it's translated in our English version, but look at verse 11, 1 Thessalonians 2. As you know how we exhorted and comforted and charged every one of you as a father does his own children. and we did it in order that you would walk worthy of God who calls you into his own kingdom and glory. You see, that's what we're after. That's what we're after as parents, that our children would walk worthy of God in the way they love and serve Jesus Christ. Now Paul said, I behaved like a godly father toward you. First Timothy chapter three lays out the qualifications of a man considered for the office of an overseer. And verse four says that such a man must be one who rules his own house well, having his children in submission with all reverence. For if a man doesn't know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the church of God? Now, put those two passages together. What did they teach us? Well, they teach us that parenting requires diligence. Paul said, we exhorted, we comforted, and we charged every one of you, just like a father. So here's something that fathers are supposed to do. They're supposed to exhort, the word means urge. They're supposed to urge their children. They're supposed to comfort, the word actually means encourage. Parents are to be encouragers. And they are supposed to charge or command their children in the behavior that honors God. It is the peculiar responsibility of fathers to be engaged with each one of his children, each of them. He's to be engaged with each of them, not just the lot of them, whether three or four or even two, each of them individually. He's to be engaged with each individual child, looking them in the eye, knowing who they are, knowing where they struggle, knowing where they fail. He's to urge them. He's to encourage them. and he's to command them according to their own unique individuality. And the first Timothy three passage indicates that fathers are to rule their families and the word translated rule means to exercise close oversight out front. As a leader, A father should be able to say to his children, kids, you know what I want out of you? You know the kind of person I want you to be? You know the attitude I want you to have toward God and toward others and toward the Bible and toward your mother? You know what it is? Watch me and I'll show you. I want you to be like me. Now the picture that these texts paint is a picture of close, full parental involvement. Tender engagement with each individual child. A knowledge of each child. A participation with each child in its own unique struggles. Wisely prodding each child. Children are different, right? Some need to be cajoled and smiled at a lot, and some need to be the opposite of that. And these expectations apply both to moms and dads, but let's face it, The Bible places a peculiar emphasis on dads, on dads. That's not the custom, sadly. I fear even among Christian dads, the custom is more to give the heavy lifting of parenting to moms. You decide what's right and wrong. You decide when the kids go to bed. You decide how much time they'll have on their phones. You decide, and if any of our darling children misbehave, will you take care of it? Well, what are you gonna do? Well, I'm gonna be there to say amen to what you do. I hope that isn't true of any man here, but if it is, shame on you. And that won't hold up in the last day when you stand before God. You are the head of your home. You are the father. And there is a difference between moms and dads. And those dear women who have to serve as both, God bless you and he'll give you grace. But where dad is present, he is to be dad. He's not to expect his wife to be dad, he is to be dad. It's utterly confusing to children to have a role reversal in the home. I implore you to be godly and tender, to be sweet, to be firm, to be decisive about right and wrong, to be engaged with each and every one of your children, to know them and to know how to help them, and to be the primary teacher and the primary disciplinarian in the realm of morals and spiritual reality. Well, that's just a general idea. Secondly, of course, we have more than general principles as to what God wants in training a child. Secondly, God places a heavy emphasis on teaching children about Him. teaching children both his words and his works. His words and his works. You can look these texts up later. Isaiah 38, 19. The living man, the living man, he shall praise you as I do this day. The father shall make known your truth to the children. teaching God's Word. Joel 1.3 is speaking about an act of God in judgment. Tell your children about it. Let your children tell their children and their children, another generation. Talk about the mighty deeds of the Lord. His works throughout the generations. Know and study God's works and talk about them. And then the very familiar passage, Ephesians 6, 4, and your fathers, don't provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord, and the word admonition is a reference to instruction, instruction, the instruction of the Lord. What is that? That's Bible doctrine. We are to teach our children the stories of the Bible, which are not myth, they're facts, they're historical happenings, great works of God, but we're also to teach our children the difficult ideas, the difficult truths of the Bible. I don't care how you insulate your kids, and I commend you, for trying to insulate your kids and protect them for as long as you can, but no matter how hard you try, your kids, sooner or later, are going to be confronted with alternative views of reality. They're gonna be presented with alternative views of the origin of the world. Alternative views of humanity. Today is a day that honors the sacredness of human life. Back in the 70s, abortionists denied that the baby in the womb was a baby in the womb. It was just a mass of cells. It was nothing more than a tumor. Most abortionists no longer deny that it is a human that was conceived. It became a human. It became truly alive at conception. Most abortionists have been forced to give up the idea that it's non-human. But now the argument is it's human, but it's a non-person. It's a non-person, it's a human, but it's not a person. It becomes a person at some undefined point in the process of development when it gains worth. And that same argument is used in the practice of euthanasia. end of the life with those who are crippled and infirm. We don't deny they're alive, but they don't have personal dignity. Well, you have to teach your kids how to deal with that. That's sophistry. It's a denial of what God has made you and them to be. We're image bearers of God. from beginning to end for all eternity. We will be the image bearers of God and there is dignity to that newly conceived baby in the womb and to that poor elderly person in the last days of life on earth. They have dignity. And you must teach your kids. how to walk through these traps of unbelief and ungodliness. The third thing that God requires, and this will be the last one that I emphasize, God requires, and more is said about this than anything else, And it's also the most controversial. And it's the one that makes people mad. And I'm tempted to just say amen and we'll go home, because I don't like having people mad at me. But if I tell you the truth, I'll be much happier when I stand before God, even if you get mad at me. The third thing that God requires is this. When children disobey the commands of God or the commands of their parents, it is required that they be corrected. And in the early and most formative years, this correction is to involve the application of non-injurious pain. They are to be corrected by the implementation of pain, non-injurious pain. And somebody scoffs. What do you mean non-injurious pain? All pain is injurious. Really? When I was a child, I had multiple ear infections. I still remember the excruciating pain of those ear infections when I was a little kid. And mom, good mom, she would take me to the doctor. And I knew what the doctor was going to say. He needs a shot of penicillin. Did that shot of penicillin hurt? Yeah, you better believe it hurt. Was mom being cruel? Was the doctor being cruel? Was he injuring me? No, he was saving me. He caused me pain. Don't scoff at the idea of non-injurious pain. I was watching the National Championship football game and sideline reporter had a camera focused on two Alabama players warming up. In case you don't know, football is a contact sport. And one of the ways you warm up, you need to get hit a little bit. And so these two Alabama players go, bam, bam, bam. And I'm looking and I was like, that hurt. Were they injuring each other? I don't think the coach would be very happy if they injured each other warming up. They weren't injuring each other, they were warming up for the competition. It was painful, but it was non-injurious. Let me be very clear, we're not talking about violence, either in words or tones that are used to correct misbehavior. And we're not talking about violence in the administration of pain. Everything is controlled and measured out by love. Just like my mom taking me to the doctor for that painful shot. Why did she do that? She loved me. She didn't want my illness to get worse. God says that your children have a disease that will destroy them. unless a remedy is applied. And part of that remedy is pain. Let me show you. Turn to the book of Proverbs. Now sometime people like to dismiss Proverbs. It's not really, it's not really, a principle that stands on its own. It's a truism. It's a truism, and you can take it, it's basically true, but it's not arbitrary, it's not binding. It's very interesting that this text is quoted in the New Testament and applied to God as it is in the original, Proverbs 3.12. Proverbs 3.12, for whom the Lord loves, he corrects. Just as a father, the son in whom he delights. Now let me read the use of that text in the New Testament. Hebrews chapter 12, verses five through seven. And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons. My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by him for whom the Lord loves, he chastens, and scourges every son whom he receives. If you endure chastening, God deals with you with sons. For what son is there whom the father doesn't chasten?" That's significant. God uses painful discipline with each and every one of his children. The children he loves so much that he sent his only begotten son to suffer and die for. Well, God loves those people so much that he won't let sin rule over them. He chastens them. Corporal punishment cannot be wrong because God does it. And he expects that parents will do it. Proverbs 13, 24. This is hard hitting, but I didn't write this, okay? Proverbs 13, 24. He who spares his rod, the instrument of non-injurious pain, hates his son. but he who loves him disciplines him promptly or diligently. Chapter 19, verse 18. Chasten your son while there is hope or chasten your son for there is hope through chastening and do not set your heart on his destruction. What's he saying? To withhold, to withhold the application of non-injurious pain from a disobedient child is to set him on a course of destruction. Now, why is that? Proverbs 22, verse 15, foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child. The rod of correction will drive it far from him. Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child. It can be your child, right? It can be your child. Here's a cute little two-year-old boy in the middle of a floor scattered with toys. And dad says, it's time to go to bed, honey, pick up your toys. He didn't undo a thing. Dad calls him by name and said, it's time to go to bed, pick up the toys. And the little boy picks up a toy and sits down and hurls it against the door and begins to scream. And everybody says, isn't that cute? He's got a will of his own. And what that is, that's foolishness. That's foolishness. That's a foolishness bound up in his heart and it's coming out. The same word is translated in Luke as rage. It's foolishness. It's pushing back against authority. It's saying in his, to your old world, I will not. I want to have you rule over me, I want. You treat that as cute and see how cute that same behavior is in 10 years when he's 12, in 10 more years when he's 22. and 10 more when he's 32 and he's abusing his children or leaving his wife. See how cute it is then. You see, the kind of sins that are shocking America are simply the mature manifestations of a child foolishness that was not corrected when he was a child. Proverbs 29, 15. The rod and rebuke give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother. Verse 17, correct your son, correct him, and he will give you rest. Yes, he will give delight to your soul. Parents who say they love their children too much to inflict pain through corporal punishment simply do not understand what is facing their children. The Bible teaches us very clearly that the soul that sins will surely die. and that the way of the transgressor is hard. The Bible teaches and displays over and over again that God makes sure that there are consequences to sin in this world. But then there's death. And why is there death? The wages of sin is death. And after death, there's judgment. And for those who have not repented of their sins and been forgiven through faith in Christ, there is an eternity of woe under the infinite justice of God. That's what sin does. Sin kills. Sin injures. Sin brings torment in this world. It brings destruction and misery in the world to come. And your children have sin bound up in their hearts. What can I do? Pray. Give them the gospel. Plead with them to come to Jesus. But also teach them that sin produces pain. Parents are to enforce the horrible nature of sin by means of unpleasant, painful, controlled, non-violent, non-injurious discipline. When a child disobeys a known rule, My child knows what the rule is, pick up the toys. And he does the exact opposite. That is to be met with corporal punishment. Talking to him, yelling at him is demeaning. You don't call him names, you don't yell at him, you don't scream at him, you pick him up and you take him to a quiet and private place, and you look him in the eye and you say, Johnny, you disobeyed me, didn't you? You knew what I was asking you to do. And God requires that I punish you. And you apply the rod in a non-violent, non-injurious way, but a way that he feels, a way he doesn't want, and he feels it. Then you take him and you say, I wish you hadn't made me do that, but as often as you disobey, I will have to do that. I don't want to do that. I love you. Don't do that. But I'm committed. to making sin as unpleasant as I can possibly make it. And you know what happens? Little Johnny begins to identify disobeying Dad with pain. Disobedience and pain. I don't like pain. Well, I guess I better not disobey. And that's a very helpful lesson. to grow up with because it is fact. Sin produces pain. And the object is to bring little Johnny to the place that he will hold himself back. He will discipline himself And when he's 15 or 16 and he's out from under your care and a bunch of friends suggest some foolishness, which he knows is sin, he will have learned through your help how to say no. And he may save himself from terrible pain, or a life of crime, or a life of regret, That's what you're teaching him. And ultimately the hope is that the pressure of trying not to do what his heart wants to do under the fear of pain will ultimately get the best of him. And he will say, I'm a bad person. I can't stop it. I need a savior. I need Jesus. That's the ultimate goal. You know, it's really not humility to jettison our own thoughts about parenting and surrender to God's. That's really not humility, that's wisdom. That's wisdom. Are you doing that? You look at your little children, three, four, five years old, Have they already developed patterns of foolishness? You say, well, you know, I think they're too young. Too young for what? Too young to sin? Too young to perish? Too young for what? Too young to be saved? Too young for what? When a child can understand the difference between daddy said and I want, he's old enough to be disciplined. Well, my time's gone. The last thing I wanted to say, I'll just say one or two sentences. Humility in parenting leads you to the realization that you must be the model that you want your children to emulate. Think of your little children as a TV camera live streaming everything you say and do to the whole world. When you talk to your wife this morning, would you want the whole world to see that? Your children saw it. They heard it. Those precious little eyes and ears are more valuable than a world of eyes and ears outside of your home. You plead with God to be what you're trying to rear them to be. Who's sufficient for these things? That's exactly why we need Jesus Christ. And my last word to you is don't throw this off because it's too hard. Throw it on Jesus. Go to him, beg with him for grace to help you, to make you strong, to make you consistent. Let's pray. Father, please forgive us for the haughtiness that has ever made us to think that your rules and your directives for rearing children are passe, antiquated, irrelevant to our modern world. Forgive us more if we have neglected to implement your word in the lives of our children. And now we're wondering why our children can't be controlled, why they're embarrassing to us, and why they're on a path that frightens us. Help us to repent and give us grace to confess our faults even to our children, and give us wisdom in some way trying to recoup the opportunities that we have lost. Have mercy on our children. Have mercy on us. We pray through Christ. Amen. you so so so