Good morning. We've had a good time. I use that kind of relatively good time. We've been looking in God's Word and we've been greatly encouraged, but we've also felt like maybe we should all wear bend-over signs and bend over and have someone give us a swift kick because we've all had a sense of, wow, missed that, blew that, didn't get that right, didn't even see that. But being a Christian is not about being a perfect person, it's about being a person who's forgiven by the grace of God in Christ, and who has a new life, a new start, and can do things differently. As I've said before in previous times with you, I didn't become a Christian until I was 20. So I lived on the other side of the street for 20 years and then became a Christian just before my 21st birthday. I was looking forward to being legal so I could buy liquor legally. And then I became a Christian and it wasn't a big deal. I didn't need it. And since then, as I shared beginning on Friday night, I knew as a young Christian I didn't know how to do marriage and family as a Christian. I grew up in a family. We had a happy loving family. I liked my parents. Loved my parents. Loved my home. But I knew it wasn't a Christian home. They had gone to church from time to time. But it didn't really change their life. Jesus Christ and then President Eisenhower and Mickey Mantle were all historical important people in different ways. But none of them really impacted or changed how we lived. And then when I was converted, when I heard the gospel, I saw that I was a helpless sinner. And by that I mean I was powerless to change myself. I was a sinaholic. I couldn't stop sinning. God had to be merciful to me. That there was really the power to change. No one wants to be a hypocrite. No one wants to start off and say, yeah, this is what I'm going to do, but fail like a New Year's resolution because there's not the inner power to change. When a person really becomes a Christian by the grace of God, God really does create a new birth. And this new birth creates new desires. You know, I wasn't one of those kind of rebels who shakes your fist at God. When I was growing up, I could have just cared less. And when I became a real Christian, I was like, I care! God's the most important thing to me. When I'd wake up in the morning, Jesus Christ and pleasing Him was the most important thing to me. Now, I had to grow. What does it mean to be a Christian? What does it mean to have a Christian marriage or family? Well, if you're in the building trades, you know that if something's out of plumb, plumb is totally vertical to the earth, if something's out of plumb, you know, if your window's kind of like this, you kind of go, well, that's unique, kind of a postmodern window, but I prefer the old-fashioned perpendicular windows that are, you know, straight up and down. How can I do marriage and family God's way? And so I would go to seminars like this and learn what does God's word have to say? Because as I said Friday night, I didn't think I could just take holy water or something and pour it on the home I grew up in. Poof! Christian marriage, poof, Christian family. How do you do parenting? How do you do this father thing or husband thing? How do you do this parent thing? And so I had to play catch-up. And there's nothing wrong with playing catch-up. In fact, tonight for the evening message we're going to look at raising teenagers and a little bit about adults who are gone from the home. But prayer is parenting 2.0. Meaning, you had your first chance at parenting them and now they're getting ready to leave high school. They're gone and they're still your kids. You know, the phone rings at 2 o'clock in the morning. I'm hoping it's not something wrong with my kids. But you can't parent them in the same way that you do when they're under your roof, under your authority. And now they're married to someone else. Now they're going off on their own and so it's a different thing. But we can learn throughout our lives. I've been a Christian since 1969. I heard of 1969, that was a long time ago. Well, as Ed and I were discussing, the earth's crust had just hardened so you could walk on it. And so, I was going to college and I was a Christian probably 25 years before I was able to see some real weaknesses and defects in my being a husband and father. As I shared the other night, I said I was 52 when I realized at the very zenith, at the very top of her spirituality, just before my wife steps into heaven, she's still going to be a woman. You kind of go, you're really stupid. However, so are you. I'm in good company. There are things that we just don't like. Spirituality doesn't blot out your humanity. It doesn't blot out your gender. You know, a really spiritual guy doesn't become a woman. A really spiritual woman doesn't become a guy. You go, no, deep truth. Well, no, that's just the way it is. And we need to learn these things. And we need to always be learning from the Lord, but he's very gracious. As the song of John Newton, hymn of John Newton goes, is there any such a friend as Jesus Christ that you could treat the way that you treat him and still have him love you? Could you get away with anybody else treating them like we treat the Lord? No. So I'm thankful that our God is very gracious. He is gracious to sinners and I qualify. This morning we'll be looking at basic principles of biblical parenting. In general, children, just smaller children, the basics. This evening will be teenagers and the worship service next. We're going to look at how in the world can anybody do this stuff? How in the world can anybody expect, I mean there's Where is the wherewithal going to come? Where is the power source? Where is the whatever I need to get this job done? It can seem overwhelming. So we are going to look at that in the worship service. God has not given you crummy resources. He has given you the best resources imaginable. But first of all, we'll look at basic principles of biblical parenting. And I hope you all have the green handout. Now, the reason why I use handouts is because some people like to use PowerPoint presentations, and that's fine, that's a good start. But you can't take the PowerPoint presentation and put it in your pocket and take it home. But, two days later, you go, what did that Steve Martin guy say about this? Voila, you have my notes. First of all, to be a faithful Christian parent, you need to be parenting with a biblical mind. What do I mean by that? Well, we've all learned if you've been a Christian more than a few days that the world you came out of doesn't think like God thinks. One of the ways it shows that it's a fallen sinful world, fallen away from what it once was in creation from God meant it to be, was that the world just thinks so differently than the way God thinks. In a world that's looking out for number one, push people down, get ahead, And Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, if you want to be number one, you will need to be servant of everybody else. Well, that's not going to get you anywhere. And you think of all the things in the Bible that are upside down from the way the world thinks. And the first thing we need to do is begin to reorient our mind to develop a biblical mind about what it means to be a Christian husband and father and parent. The first point is that Being a parent means that children are a stewardship, not an ownership. God has entrusted your children to you for a period of time. You don't own them. You go, well, why had them? I'm pretty sure you did. But how did you have them? God enabled you to have them. If God didn't want you to have a child, he could close your womb. Stewardship, that means to be entrusted with something, not ownership is how we should look at our children. Because if I think my children are mine, then I can use them selfishly. But if they belong to someone else who they've been entrusted to me to build into them, then I need to be careful that when I turn them over to the person who entrusted them to me, I did with them what I'm supposed to. Christian parents are to see themselves as stewards of their children, not their owners. A steward is someone who is entrusted with valuables and is accountable to the true owner when the day of reckoning comes. On Judgment Day, moms, dads, God is going to ask you, what did you do with your kids? I gave them to you, what did you do with them? God has entrusted our children to us for a season, but they are His creation. Psalm 127, which you just had read in your hearing, says that children are a gift of the Lord, and they are entrusted to adults, usually their parents, to be raised to maturity. They are a gift, and we shouldn't look at them as a curse. So the first thing, if I'm thinking about my children biblically, it's something that God has entrusted me, and that one day I'll have to give an account. The master will require of the steward, what did you do with what I gave you? And if you have a deer in a headlight look, that means that she didn't really know what you were doing and didn't really realize that you're going to have to give an account to God for what you did with your kids. Husbands are going to have to give an account for what they did with their wives and their family. Wives are going to have to give an account for what they did with their husband. and their children, and we have an accounting coming. So the first thing is, get it right, there is stewardship, not an ownership of yours. Second, training with eternity and time in view, and not just time. Training with eternity in view and time, not just time. We train our children to be effective adults in God's world, training body, soul, and mind for a life of service to God and man. We get this from Luke's Gospel, Chapter 2, where Dr. Luke, who wrote the Gospel of Luke, was reporting on Jesus' childhood. And it says that Jesus grew in wisdom and stature in favor with God and man. Wisdom means he grew intellectually. Jesus and his humanity, as the God-man, he was always God. But when he took upon humanity, he grew up like a normal kid. They kind of go, that's really hard to fathom. I didn't say it was easy, but that's what the Bible reveals. A biblical Christian takes what the Bible reveals and submits his mind to it. He doesn't expect the Bible to jump through his own mental hoops. If I understood everything about God, I would be God, and then one of us would be unnecessary. Jesus grew in wisdom. He grew in understanding. We want our kids to grow in wisdom. We put them in school. The Bible doesn't promise any blessings for being ignorant, let alone stupid. Second, he grew in stature. That means he grew up. Jesus had to eat. Jesus had to sleep. Jesus had to have exercise. He grew in wisdom and stature, favor with God, that would be the spiritual aspect of his life, and favor with man, the social aspect. We don't want our kids to be stupid. We don't want them to be physically disabled because of a poor diet. or lack of sleep or some other health issues. We want them to have a relationship with God. We want them to know that their sins are forgiven, that they're beloved of God, that they have entered into a whole new life, they're cherished for eternity. And finally, that they are able to relate to other people. They have a social side. But in the Bible it says it's biblical thinking to value eternity over time. OK, we're not just training our kids for eternity. That's part of it. We do train them in time to live in this planet. But this planet is not our final home. Paul says if we're just living in this planet was the only thing we had to live for, we're all men most to be pitied. But God didn't send his son out of eternity into time to save us simply to have a happier life now, to be homecoming queen, to be a millionaire, to have all the perks that people in the world want. He saved us. in order that we might spend eternity with him, and being in wonderment, pinching ourselves, that we could know this awesome three-in-one God for the rest of eternity. So in 1 Timothy 4, the Apostle Paul is writing to his young spiritual son Timothy, and he says that physical discipline is a good thing. But spiritual discipline is even better. Why? Because physical discipline only has a payback now. I mean, it's better to be in shape than be a blob, right? It's better to have your physical health than be able to do things. You can be more effective. But if you have spiritual discipline, it affects you spiritually, which not only sets you up well for this life, but also for the life to come. In other words, we want to live with long-term consequences in view. The difference between a mature person and a child is that a child only lives for immediate consequences and an immature person only lives for immediate consequences. You can do this now or you can have this huge payday five years from now. I'll take the quarter now and so a child will always take the immediate payoff rather than realize I can set aside immediate fulfillment for long term goals that are bigger and more wonderful. Christian parents know their children have a physical body and will not neglect training their children with habits of physical well-being. Unhealthy people are limited in their service to God. Christian parents know their children have a mind and want to see it trained and renewed according to the truth. Ignorance is not bliss. I had a friend in junior high named Barry Bliss, and we used to always say, ignorance is bliss. I want to point to Barry. It kind of sounds like Junior High Front, doesn't it? Okay. Children with warped or incorrect thinking will have a trouble filled adulthood. We want our children's minds to be renewed in the truth. If your mind is really off kilter from reality, life is going to be a struggle. And I know some adults who struggle all through their life because their thinking is really kind of warped. And as a result, they're just out of kilter. Christian parents' first priority is to see to it that their children are raised in the fear and instruction of the Lord. Meaning, God is God. There is a God, and it's not you. And it's not me. There is a God. And one day you will have to stand before Him and give an account of your life. I will too. I'll have to give an account for my wife, my children, my years of being a pastor, for the speaking this weekend. We have to give an account to Him. And the Bible says there's two kinds of fear. There's the fear of a slave that despises its master, but its master comes in the room and the slave kind of cringes. It's a craven fear that doesn't love the person, but is afraid of the person and despises the person. But there's also the love of a son who deeply loves and respects and reverences his father. Thankfully, my father didn't have a father. His dad died in the great influenza outbreak early in the 20th century. Ironically, my wife's father didn't have a father either. He died young. But I thought both of them did an amazingly good job with the grace that was given to them to be faithful fathers. My dad was not converted until he was 57. You're never too old to become a Christian. You're never too old to be right with God. You're never too old to enter into the most wonderful, amazing, life-giving relationship imaginable. But in parenting, the idea that... Excuse me, I just lost my train of thought. I was remarking about how both of our fathers lost their fathers, and yet they had a conscientiousness to be a biblical father. They learned about, they had picked up some things, what's called common grace. There are things that non-Christians can learn by the grace of God that aren't related to salvation, that can make their life happy, and make their life a good life. And God's gracious. In fact, the Bible says, He lets his sunshine and his rain fall in the fields of non-Christian farmers and Christian farmers. It's not that here's a Christian farmer, lush plants, perfect soil, perfect rain, perfect sun. Over here it's a desert. That's a non-Christian farmer. God says He's gracious to all kinds of people. People who curse Him breathe His air. People who hate Him think with brain cells that He gave them. And so our God is gracious and he gives gifts to non-Christians. And both of our dads had grace before they were Christians to do things right. We want to raise our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. I love my dad, but I also feared him. First of all, he was great big and I was really small back then. But because I loved him and because of who he was, I had a reverent fear of him. And that's not wrong. I didn't fear him like a slave would his master. I feared him like a loving son would fear his father whom he deeply respected. Didn't want to offend, didn't want to hurt. Christian parents First priority is to see that their children are raised in biblical things. A child who is prepared to live on this planet only is not prepared to live for eternity. My son went to Harvard. He was a superstar athlete. He did all these things, but he went to hell. Whoa! Very short-sighted parents. You're going to live for the rest of eternity. Either in the presence of God or away from the presence of God. And if we train our children only to live, For this life only. Man, we are so short sighted. Parents have not completed their jobs with only physical fitness and a great mental education. Children must be trained in the gospel and as Charles Spurgeon called it, the science of Jesus Christ and him crucified, meaning the gospel. Parents who raise their children to be great students and great athletes only, are fools. If I, as a parent, do not educate my child how to flee from the wrath to come, no matter what else I've done for that child, I have failed that child. They are unprepared for life and death. And that's true. There was a movie out years ago called Deep Impact. Have you ever seen the movie Deep Impact? It was about an asteroid that was supposed to hit. It was off course. It was going to plunge into the Atlantic, so many hundred miles off the coast of the United States. And they figured that the tidal wave would be somewhere like 600 feet to 1,000 feet. Gee, I guess I better go inland unless I want to take up swimming, deep water swimming. So the movie was about waiting for the asteroid and somehow trying to avoid the asteroid getting here. And how many of you believe the asteroid didn't come? Well, it came. And you got to see great special effects of what would happen if an asteroid hit and what a 1,000 foot wave would look like. You'd have to be in the foothills of the Appalachians to get far enough away from the coast to be spared. The sad part of the movie was, not that it wasn't a decent sci-fi movie, but the fact that there is something worse than an asteroid coming, and it's the wrath of God. God is patient, not wishing any to perish, but all to come to repentance. But his patience will one day be through, and one day, like any other day, we'll wake up, but we won't realize that is the day of the second coming of Christ. The judgment throne will be set up. People will be judged according to their lives. And those who cast themselves on the mercy of God and Christ, those who cast themselves on the mercy of God and Christ saying, I need to be saved from my sins, I have understood that Jesus came as a substitute. If you've ever watched football, watched soccer, played baseball, a substitute is someone who comes in and takes your place. God sent His Son to be the substitute so that on Judgment Day, Christ was damned on the cross for the sins of everyone who would ever put their trust in Him. And believe it or not, his perfect track record, his perfect life is counted to the life of those who lived a very unholy, very different life. 2 Corinthians 5.21, God made him who knew no sin. Who is that? Jesus. To be sin. When was that? On the cross. He was counted as sin. My sins were counted to Christ on the cross. That we, believing sinners, might become the righteousness of God in Him. The gospel is good news. The gospel is not try harder. The gospel is not clean up your act. The gospel is not telling your kids you need to be good kids. Well, they ought to be good kids. It makes for a happier home. But that isn't the whole story. You can't make yourself that good and besides you still are so far from being pleasing to God. You need the perfect righteousness of the perfect son who came to live a perfect life that he could substitute for you and he could give his righteousness to you. There is the wrath of God to come and God is incredibly patient. Incredibly patient. Think of the times that he's gone through. The biblical history is 6,000 years roughly, 7,000 years. And it's been 2,000 years since the coming of Christ. And the New Testament says, in these last days. In biblical chronology, the last days began with the coming of Christ. We're in the last days now. You don't have to, there's a, coming down to 75, there's billboards about some guy who can tell you all about the end times. Maybe. But the Bible says we're already living in the last days. We should be prepared to face eternity. So the second thing I need to do besides realizing my kids are stewardship and not an ownership is that I need to be preparing my kids not just to be successful on planet earth, but to be successful in the life to come. Okay, the second major point is parenting with biblical love. Parenting with biblical love. I thought about this and I'm going to go ahead and do it. I want you to know something. I love you. That is so lame. Love you, man. How about if I cry and tell you I love you? No. Don't do that. Why would saying I love you not seem to mean for much? Well, we're glad you came down here and we're glad you want to spend this time teaching us this stuff, but you don't really know me. And so what could it mean that you love me? Well, Jesus told a parable to illustrate the fact that biblical love is not like sentimental, emotionally based human love. He told a story that's very famous called the Good Samaritan. And let's put it in South Georgia context. Okay, you're on your way back from visiting a market in Fitzgerald, and you picked up a load of melons in the back of your pickup, and you're driving down from Fitzgerald, and your car gets a flat. So you pull over to the side of the road, and while you're working on your flat, some not-so-nice guys come by and beat you up. take most of your melons, leave you for dead by the side of the road, your wallet's gone, your keys are gone, you're there. So then some different people drive by and one person gets out of their car and sees you lying in the ditch and they can't tell if you're alive or dead and his friend stays in the car while he checks you out and he comes back in the car and his lips are trembling and he starts crying and he says, they're so badly hurt, they're just lying in the ditch. And he just went on crying, and his friends said, why are you crying? Oh, I loved him. And they get back in the car, they drive off, they go, it's a funny kind of love. They didn't do anything. They saw the guy was there hurting, but they didn't do a thing. And then three different people go by this way until finally Jesus says, a guy came by a different race, a different religion. He was a Samaritan. That's not Jewish. Okay, it's a half-breed, it's half pagan and half Jewish. So it'd be like someone from Atlanta who attends a Muslim worship center comes by and sees you lying in the ditch. And he goes, man, nobody should have to be in this kind of situation. He pulls you out of the ditch, and you've got bloody clothes on. He lays you in the back seat of his car. You get blood on the back seat of his car. He takes you into town, finds out, well, you know, for a few days, stay in the hospital, it's not going to be cheap. Forks out the money to cover that, and leaves you there in the care of the doctors. Jesus asked the crowd who was quizzing him, which of these people do you think was the one who loved the man in the ditch? Well, the one who had mercy on him, the one who tried to do him good. Jesus says, so it is with you. It's not watching a sad situation on TV and getting a tear in your eye. That doesn't mean love. It's when I'm motivated to actually do something and get involved in helping. And biblical love, as we're going to see, is more than just, aww. Who is feeling like that for two o'clock feeding? When you're having to change projectile diarrhea at five in the morning, who feels ooey gooey love? Nobody. Biblical love is based on the character of God and the law of God. God who is holy, holy, holy, that's holy to the infinite degree, has eternally been a loving God. The Father has always loved the Son, the Son has always loved the Father, the Spirit has loved the Father and the Son, etc. The Bible says that God is love. Let me give you one reason why you should be very thankful that you weren't left to your own devices and maybe became a Muslim. There's all these religions on planet earth and said, how can you tell which is true? Well, there's one unique religion on the whole planet. Every other religion on the planet except biblical Christianity. And I challenge you, take a class in comparative religion in college. Every other religion on the planet except Biblical Christianity is based upon your performance. Get on the treadmill of good works. Crank them out every day for the rest of your life and maybe God will be nice to you on Judgment Day. Your good works will save you and every religion except Biblical Christianity says you can't save yourself and so God sent his son to save you and he will save all those who put their trust in him. If you're a Muslim and I was sitting next to a Muslim lady in a flight from Atlanta to Newark and early on I picked up the vibes that she was religious and she was very well dressed, obviously wealthy and it came out that she was a Muslim, she and her husband had converted, they had raised their kids Muslims, their kids had all these degrees and doctorates and they were all rich Okay, so she's sitting there bragging on all her family. And I didn't say anything about who I was or what I did, but I just got my Bible out and started reading my Bible for part of the trip. And I was watching her out of the corner of my eye. She was watching me read my Bible. And I was also praying, Lord, what would you have me to say to her? You know, I'm not going to pull up a silver cross like to a vampire. There's a fist fight aisle five, fist fight aisle five. And I thought, how can I get her to think? And we were coming into the land and we had about 15-20 minutes and I closed my Bible and I said, Ma'am, I've been a Christian, when I had this discussion, I've been a Christian 35 years. Jesus Christ saved me by His grace. And by His grace I've come to know Him better and love Him more. Tell me, how was it with you and Ella? And that was really mean on my part because I knew I had her. Because in Islam, you don't know Allah. You don't sing sins, Allah came into my life. You don't sing that. You don't have hymnody like we do that talks about intimacy with God and knowing God and the forgiveness of sins and the love of God from before time and eternity past. And she put her head down and she said, well, we don't speak like that. I don't know him any better. I hope I serve him better. I don't know that I love him anymore. I hope I'm a better servant than I was at the beginning. See, Allah is a monad. A monad is a singular entity that relates to nothing and no one else. Islam doesn't promise a relationship with Allah. You serve him and if he's having a good day on Judgment Day, he'll let you into Paradise. But you don't know him personally. He doesn't really want to spend time with you and get to know you and vice versa. It's all about serving him as his Christianity is based upon the reality that there is a God, one God, but there's three persons in the Godhead. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Each are God, each are co-equal, but they're separate entities within the Godhead. There's not three Gods. The Bible makes very clear there's only one God, but there's three members of the Godhead. But this is the point. From eternity past, God the Father has always loved God the Son. Always. Perfectly. Intimately. And the son has always loved his father. And the father and son have both loved the Holy Spirit and vice versa. Love and relationships are at the center, at the core of Biblical Christianity. So when God saves you, He wants you to become a part of this forever loving, knowing one another intimately family. And so when we're talking about loving our family and loving our children, we're simply being what our Father in Heaven is like and we're being what a Biblical Christian is. Love is not primarily a feeling, but a disposition, a purpose of will. Remember, Jesus was teaching about the Good Samaritan, which I just went over with you. God's love does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth, which is the paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 13.6. What does that mean? That means that if I love you, I don't break God's command in how I treat you. If I say I love my wife and I'm going to commit adultery, that's not loving my wife. If I say that I love my neighbor but I steal his lawnmower, that's not loving my neighbor. If I say I love my fellow worker but I lie about him to the boss, that's not loving my fellow worker. The Bible gives us guidelines, it gives us the laws of God, and as it goes on to say here, It is not loving to do something which breaks or violates God's law and then claim it was done out of Christian love. The law of God is love's eyes. How can I tell when I'm being loving? When I'm doing what God's word says. It shows us what to do. Love is the law's power source. What makes me want to do these things? Because I have love in my heart. But how do I know what to do? It's written down for me. The law of God is love's eyes. It shows what to do. Love is the law's power source, empowering us to obey and conform to God's law. Now as you're loving your children and loving them according to biblical guidelines, one of the things you're going to struggle with is what to do about your kid's education. And there's different kinds of education. There's private schools, public schools, Christian schools, home schools, and reform schools. And our kids did all of those. Except the reform school. Anyway, that was a joke and nobody got it. You need another cup of coffee. Come on. Unless all of your kids are in a reform school, in which case they're wonderful kids. I'm sorry. The greatest single instructor of children is their parents. Regardless of where they go to school, you are their greatest single instructor. You will have a bigger impact on their life than all of their teachers put together. One of my professors at seminary was for a long time head of the education school at Michigan State University. As a long committed Christian, he left Michigan State to go to my seminary to teach Christian education because the Bible has some things to say that the secular understanding of education hasn't quite figured out yet. And in his book, he wrote a little cheap paperback, you can find it on the internet really cheaply, called Values Begin at Home. And I remember when he spoke for a conference at my church one years ago, he said, what is most determinative for the values your children will adopt is not where you send them to school. What? I spent all that money? I'm not saying they didn't get a good education, but what values will they ultimately adopt? But whether you, the parents, practice what the Bible teaches and your church preaches. That's common sense. You take your kids to church and your church, you know, the Bible says this and your church preaches this. And do you line up with that? Because if you line up with what the Bible teaches and your church preaches, that consistency can be seen and felt. But this is what the Word of God teaches and who knows what my church was preaching and my life was way over here. Kids have a hard time figuring that out, all the disconnect there. And so who knows where they're going to get their values. But if the three line up, that's not just a good way to do surveying, it's a good way for a child to figure out, okay, what's important to me? My parents were not hypocrites. A hypocrite is somebody, the word means an actor or an actress, someone who plays a role. And, you know, Remember that commercial from 20 years ago? Where did you learn to do that? Where did you learn to smoke drugs? I learned it from watching you, Dad. I saw where your stash was. I learned it from watching you. So, I can't tell my son not to do drugs and do drugs and have him not think I'm a hypocrite. I can't tell him things... I can't tell him, do what the preacher says. This is what the Bible says, but if I live a different way, don't expect your kids to live differently than how you live. How do I express biblical love? Well, here's a bunch of different ways you can do it. By personal self-sacrifice for the one loved. What is John 3.16? Everybody knows that. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. There's a typo here. The next verse should be 1 John 4.9-11. And that talks about God is love and what it means to give. The Bible says that The way that you show love is by giving. And so, some children are black holes of self-absorption, and you can give, give, give forever, and they still don't get it, but you still ought to be known as a loving parent. As I said yesterday, if I wanted to keep my kids on my page, I would develop a relationship with them where they knew that no matter what else went on in the universe, we love them. No matter what else went on in the universe, we love them. Even during tense times. Even during times when parents hope don't come, but they do come, and we still... Well, my parents are stupid, but they love me. Well, that's good. By persistent verbal expressions of tender affection. And there's a typo here, and I don't know how I did that, but it should be Zephaniah, not Zechariah, so it should be Z-E-P-H. It's easy to change the C into a P. Zephaniah 3.17. A man sent this to me in a card one time. I go, what in the damn hell is Zephaniah 3.17? And then I looked up the verse, and I was just fabricasted. It talks about how God loves his people, and it pictures God as a father carrying his child around, speaking sweetly to his child, and singing songs to his child, as only a father of a newborn can do when no one's around. You don't do it at the office. You don't do it in front of your buddies on the golf course. But when you're in the privacy of your home, You will sing to your children and tell them how much you love them. What would you think of if on the first page of the Bible God says he loves you and then never again in the whole word of God is it said or demonstrated that he loves you? You might have a hard time believing. Even now with all the times in the Bible it says that God loves us, God I don't know if he loves us. Well, it's important for us to tell our kids we love them. We'll say some more about that. By meeting the physical needs of our children. Physical needs, food, clothing, shelter. It says that there's an example of Howard Hendrick's son. One of my heroes was a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, very practical down to earth man, told a story about coming home from seminary one day and he was supposed to speak across town at some church's dinner. And he said, I was late, there was bad traffic on the freeway, I got home late, I was already pulling my tie off and I had to run inside and change my suit, change my clothes, you know. I pulled up and leaning against the garage door was a mangled bike. My son had run his bike into a tree and you know how you get the bike twisted and he was a little guy and couldn't figure out how to fix it and he was sitting on the front porch of his consulate, oh my bike! And so Hendricks made a snap decision, he took his tie off but left his tie and his coat in the hood of his car, got in there with his son, fixed his son's bike, got it where, okay, okay, it's great, okay. Jumped back in the car, raced across town. He got there late and missed the rubber chicken and the mashed potatoes and the green beans. But he got there in time to speak. And when he got there, the Master of Ceremonies was fit to be touted. He goes, Hendrix, where have you been? We're running late. He says, well, I'm sorry. I had to fix my son's bike. You what? He said the guy just exploded on him. And he said, frankly, he gave me a portion of his mind he couldn't afford to spare. Anyway, so. So he spoke as he was supposed to, did a great job. But the upshot came two weeks later. He had four kids and he'd take each of them out and do stuff with them. He took his son out fishing. And you're fishing with a six-year-old, so it's a different kind of fishing. And he says, Bill, do you love your dad? Do you love me? Yeah, sure, Dad. Why do you love me? Why do I love you? Well, you've got to have reasons for what you do. Five minutes later, I love you because you fixed my bike. Now to a six-year-old, a bike is your basic mode of transportation. You know, if your car breaks down, it's a loving thing if you're a klutz with your car to have someone who knows what they're doing to fix it. Amen, Ken? It's a loving thing to do. And his six-year-old son, it was a need to get the bikes fixed. He missed the rubber chicken, but he fixed his son's bike and showed his son that he was a priority, and still got the other thing done. So that's a way of meeting the physical needs of our children. By living with your children in a faithful, dependable way, Proverbs 20 talks about a person who, you know, you can never depend upon them to fill their word. They talk a mean game, but they never deliver. They never show up, they don't do what they say they're going to do, and life with them is very iffy. by constant acts of love and kindness. And that's just really, you know, you need to pray. Say, well, I didn't grow up in a very loving home and I don't know that I'm a very loving person. That's a fair statement. Does God change people? Yes. Can God rebuild people's lives? Yes. Have you ever asked God to make you a loving person? Well, I told my wife I loved her the day I married her and still enforce. Well, that's great, but you might get a bigger heart than that and learn how to be a little more loving than that. Some of us grew up in a crippled or diminished capacity home where you're kind of hoping they loved you, but it wasn't a very gushy place. And unless you have a really strong personality that will give you a lot of question marks, it's good to be reminded that you're loved because there are some days when the devil whispers in your ear that you're a total failure. And it's good to know that someone loves you and cares for you and wants you. And so we need to do that with our children. By persistent teaching and instruction in life and in godliness, We show our children we love them by teaching them the things of God and doing it faithfully, having family devotions, reading our Bible out loud with them and praying, saying, Dad's not a Bible scholar, but Dad can read and we're going to read the Bible and there will be a couple of things, probably gems lying there we can pick up on and we can pray about together and I want you to hear the Word of God read and I want to pray for you every day, so we're going to do this. And at the time, the other kid could be four years old and bored out of his mind. But little by little they're starting to get it and little by little the daily washing with the word will begin to have an impact in your children's hearts. Another way to show biblical love is by patient and persistent encouragement and exhortation. Being your children's biggest cheerleader. You know, to come home and say, you know, the world may think I'm a failure, but my mom and dad think I'm pretty special. You know, husbands will say, There were days when if I didn't have my wife to be on my side, life was pretty bleak because I was getting knocked down at work, or things were hard, and I'm so thankful my wife encouraged me. Well, if we need it, how much more do kids need it? By consistent and persevering discipline of disobedient, rebellious behavior. What? How does that communicate love? If I let my kid go to hell and screw up their life, that's not very loving. I was in youth work one time and I was at a conference in California and I was responsible for several hundred kids. I was in my early 20s and a bunch of kids came there. I think they thought it was a party away from home rather than a youth conference. And so after the evening message, they all went back to their rooms, got on their leather jackets, and said, we're going to head out to Southern California here and get some pizzas and joy rides. And I stood in the doorway and said, no you're not. And these guys were all bigger than me. No you're not. No you're not. OK. So what am I going to do? Well, I was going to call their bus. They probably, they were from Texas, they probably learned enough to know they shouldn't probably mess with adult authority figures. I was 24, they were, in their late teens, and I practiced tough love. I showed them that I loved them, and I wasn't going to let them do what they wanted to do, and if necessary, they're going to have to get through me, who their parents had entrusted them to us, to watch them, and I wouldn't let them drive around Southern California. So no, you're not leaving. So take your clothes off, put your pajamas on, and go to bed. And five minutes later, everybody's in bed, and I call their bluff, and they didn't process it then, but later in life, they'd say, you know, that guy loved us. He shot straight with us, and he made us do what we didn't want to do. By appropriate physical expressions of love and tenderness, by holding, kissing, hugging, if you have junior high boys, giving them a noogie. That's just a way of showing junior high boys that you love them, by giving them a firm noogie. But seriously, If you don't give affection to your kids, there are people in the world who will. There are other teenagers and there are adults who will defraud your children and offer them all kinds of physical attention. And if you're Mr. Frozen or Miss Frozen and don't give your kids affection, there are wicked sinners out there who will give it to your kid and your kid, before they know it, have been horribly manipulated by appropriate physical expressions of love and tenderness. And finally, biblical love is not the blind, naive sentimentalism of the enabler. The enabler says, oh, Reginald's a good kid. You know, he's just been robbing banks because he fell out with the wrong crowd. No. He's got problems and we need to deal with his problems, but it's not because he fell out with the wrong crowd. It's his own heart. Why was his heart attracted to this crowd in the first place? Finally, I'll hurry, we're done, practically. Parenting with biblical limits and biblical discipline. First of all, biblical authority. The word authority means the right to use force to compel obedience. The right to use force to compel obedience. When a policeman holds up his hand, you kind of go, he's a guy in a blue outfit. I've got a Ford F-250. I can blow right over him and he can't stop me. True, his body will not be much more than a speed bump. But he has authority. And by running over him, you've created a world of hurt for yourself. Authority is the right to use force to compel obedience. God set and explained his ways in the Garden of Eden and enforced these limits with discipline. So you went back and if you read Genesis 1 to 3, he communicated what the limits are. You can do all this but not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Got it? You're my vice regents, you're going to manage planet earth for me, but to show my authority over you, this is off limits. They break that. And so what he goes on to say, he shows the enforcement of the discipline by kicking them out of Eden, by announcing the curse upon the human race and making them leave. Parents' authority over their children is delegated to them by God himself. God gave you the authority to have, to use force with your children. The fifth commandment, you go, what's the fifth commandment? Honor your father and mother. The fifth commandment is the foundation of all earthly authority. Bible scholars will tell you that your submission to worldly authorities begins with home. If you don't respect your parents and rebel against them, you're not going to be any good in school, or at work, or sports, or whatever. Apostolic command, that means what the New Testament says, reinforces Old Testament foundational teaching. a couple places, Ephesians 6, 1 and Colossians 3, 20. A dad came to me one time and his teenage daughter wanted to do this outlandish thing. And she was part lawyer. She hadn't gone to law school yet, but you know, as sinners we're all pretty clever. She says, show me a verse in the Bible that says I can't do this. He goes, I couldn't find a verse in the Bible that would tell her not to do that. What should I do? I said, I've got the verse for you. He goes, you do? Yes, what is it? Children, obey your parents in the Lord. And I wasn't being a smarty. The Bible is not a giant rule book. It's a big enough book as it is, but it's not a rule book. It's not primarily a book of do's and don'ts. It has enough of the commands and laws of God to tell us what right and wrong is. But if it was an absolutely complete book of rules and rules, it would be up to the moon. Don't do this on Tuesdays with that person. I mean, you can't get that specific. So there's general rules like children obey your parents and parents are to set the guidelines. God's word and principles taken from it are the foundation of the principles which parents are to teach their children. What we call rules of our home are extrapolations of biblical law and love. Parents are to be very clear and consistent as to the rules of the family and their enforcement. Unwritten or constantly changing rules make for a confused and at times chaotic household. Man, I never know when I come home what's going to be on the table. What are the rules? What's going on? Rules of conduct that are not faithfully enforced are not truly expected to be obeyed. If you say, this is the standard, and then you don't back it up, they didn't mean it because there were no sanctions. They didn't make me do it when I chose not to. Children are to be disciplined for disobedience and rebellion, not ignorance or confusion. I used to play offensive tackle. I was fairly offensive. And I played a left tackle. And I can remember as a sophomore trying to learn these plays. And it's scary when you get up to the line and you're going, who am I supposed to block? Too late. And so anyway, and the coach would yell and scream at me. I wasn't being willfully disobedient and I wasn't being rebellious. I was confused. And then finally he took me out and said we'll just run the play with Al Martin and see how it goes. And it went for a touchdown. How scary is that? The point is that you should only discipline for rebellion. and disobedience. If a person's ignorant, they didn't get it, or they're confused, like I was coming up to the line, then you need to set them aside and re-teach. But once they get it, there's no excuse. Biblical parents are to faithfully exercise authority to compel obedience. When God first makes a covenant with Abraham, Genesis 17, he calls him to exercise authority over his children and his household. Quote, what's Abraham to do? That he may command his children, not make suggestions, not say, if you're feeling up to it today, I'd kind of like you to do this. No, he's to command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice. We do have authority as parents to tell our children what to do. Parental discipline is a critical part of raising our children in the Lord. To fail to discipline your children is likened to hate in the Bible. The man who doesn't discipline his son hates his son. To fail to discipline your children is to set them on a path of hardship, confusion, and misery. And there's all these verses in the book of Proverbs which says what's going to happen to your kids if you don't discipline them. Passive-aggressive behavior, that means withholding affection, withholding love, is used in the Bible sometimes, sparingly, by God. What do I mean by that? If you, you know, you talk to somebody who's a professing Christian and they've been on a path of hard-headed disobedience for some time, you say, how's it between you and the Lord? Well, I don't feel very close to Him these days. Why is that? Well, Could you go up to your dad or mom and spit in their face once a day every day and expect the relationship to be warm and cozy? Not any normal person. Can you spit in God's face a little bit every day and not expect ramifications? God doesn't disown you as a child. But he will pull back and you will not experience his intimacy if you're going to play willfully stupid. If you're going to play willfully, sinfully stupid, then you'd expect to be a little chilly in your relationship with God. And that's meant to break your heart. If you're a real Christian, say, Lord, I want you. I don't want my sin. Please forgive me. Help me to stop being rebellious and disobedient. I want you. I don't want my sin. Biblical parents have other forms of discipline. For example, restitution. They steal something. They break something. That was a Faberge egg you broke. That was my new truck you broke. You were acting irresponsibly. Oh, kids will be kids. That's okay. Five grand. Well, it might be a really life learning lesson to have to get a job to pay back the five grand. Isolation from the rest of the family for a short time. You know, a real hard-headed kid who's been spreading bad vibes to the whole family might need a little quarantine. Removal of privileges previously enjoyed. No cell phone. No TV. No computer. No... My life is over! How can I possibly go to my room without my toys? Well, sin has consequences. Removal from involvement in special family times. Removal from the Lord's table. If this person is a professing Christian, they've been examined, they're part of the church, then you would know better than the pastor what they're acting like at home. And if they've been a real hard-headed at home, say, you know, I think you shouldn't take communion this Sunday because you've been willfully rebellious now for a couple of weeks and you're not getting it. And if you want, I'll talk to the pastor to back me up, but I see how you're acting and I don't think you should take the Lord's Supper. That's a good way of getting their attention. Missing a meal. You know, if you didn't like supper, that's fine. It'll be here in the morning for breakfast. You want a bellyache about dinner? Fine. You can see it again for breakfast. I don't know how wealthy you are, but I didn't have the privilege of going up and saying, I would prefer some chardonnay and then some grilled salmon. It's like, wow, baked beans and biscuits. Wow, what a neat dinner. In other words, we should teach our kids to be thankful for whatever is put in front of them. And if they don't like it, fine. When they get to be adults, they can fix their own food. But this is what the family's eating. And you say, well, my kids, don't they have the right to choose what they like? Yeah. But they don't have the right to choose the menu every day of the year. They can learn. I didn't make my kids eat liver except once. And after the throwing up happened, we go, well, we'll probably have liver again soon. But you don't have to do liver. You can do all kinds of things. Kids have a way of doing payback, don't they? All discipline hurts in some way. And any so-called discipline that does not hurt in some way is not effective. I know a mother who said, I spanked my kids and it doesn't do any good. Her husband discovered she left the diapers on. Take the diapers down and then spank and then put the diapers back on and spanking works a lot better because it didn't hurt previously. For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Amen? Let's pray. Father, the only people you have to work with on the planet are sinners, and you are a God who graciously saves sinners and transforms them and makes them into sons and daughters of God, cleansed, forgiven, set on a new course for heaven. I pray that we would honor you in our child rearing. I pray that we would honor you in the kind of children that we are. May this church and its people be a lighthouse in South Georgia to what it means to know God, to have one's life transformed by God, to have one's family transformed by God. We thank you in Christ's name. Amen.