Well, good evening, everyone. Great to see you all, great to be back with you all. My wife and I, our family spent the last week up in Portland, Oregon. Got the joy to go see my brother, but let me tell you what, it's a lot different than it is down here. And flying solo with a 17-month-old is not for the faint of heart. But it's great to be back with you tonight, continuing our series in Proverbs. And tonight, we are going to be looking at the topic of the Proverbs and Parenting. I'm gonna speak a little bit on the irony of me teaching that class, but first, let's look at Proverbs chapter six. And we're gonna be reading verses one through five, and then verses 16 through 24. The writer writes, my son, if you have put up security for your neighbor, have given your pledge for a stranger, if you are snared in the words of your mouth, caught in the words of your mouth, then do this, my son, and save yourself. For you have come into the hand of your neighbor. Go, hasten, and plead urgently with your neighbor. Give your eyes no sleep, and your eyelids no slumber. Save yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, like a bird from the hand of the fowler. And jump to verse 16, there are six things the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him, haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers. My son, keep your father's commandments, and forsake not your mother's teaching. Bind them on your heart always, tie them around your neck. When you walk, they will lead you. When you lie down, they will watch over you. And when you awake, they will talk with you. For the commandment is a lamp, and the teaching a light. And the reproofs of discipline are the way of life, to preserve you from the evil woman, from the smooth tongue of the adulteress. Let's pray. Holy Father, thank you for tonight, and even as we look at this topic of parenting, Sort of having children, raising children as it is given us in the Proverbs where we first acknowledge you as our great and loving Father. Lord, and the joy it is to even just see a glimmer of that love that you have for us as we examine the love that we have for our own children. Father, I pray that you would encourage us as whether we have children at home, and currently raising children, we have children out of the house, Lord, or in fact, even as we'll talk a little bit about, Lord, even if we don't have children, how we can look at the principles of parenting and how it applies to all of discipleship of training up, The people of God, Lord, we thank you for your love for us, that you care for us day by day. Lord, and you care for us in very hard ways, not being unwilling to discipline us when we require discipline. Lord, I pray that you would bless our evening tonight and ask this in your son's mighty and matchless name, amen. All right, so as I mentioned, there is a slight irony of me teaching a class on Proverbs and Parenting. I recognize as a newly-minted parent with a 17-month-old, I am not nearly as battle-worn or as wise as many of you all are. I know that there are very big families here, and many of you all have raised godly children, and so I am under no illusion of what I have to offer, right? And because of that, I'm going to keep very far away from any talk of practicality in this. I'm not here to talk about the practical side of parenting so much as I'm looking at what does Proverbs say about the parental task, right? I may only have a 17-month-old, but I do feel like I know the Bible. I can examine what the Bible says about these things. And as we think about Proverbs and parenting, it's important to note from the get-go that these two things, the Proverbs and parenting, fit very closely together. They fit very closely, and you probably noticed in the passage we read how many times he addressed his teaching to someone, his son, my son, right? In fact, throughout the course of the Proverbs, the address to a son or sons happens 18 times. And even if you go back to the opening chapters of Proverbs, you'll remember that the first nine chapters are given as a sort of teaching from a father to a son. parent to a child. So really the entire book is sort of an example of teaching your children. But secondly, right, even in the parts that aren't explicitly about parenting, all of the Proverbs help with the task because ultimately parenting, like many other things, but parenting is chiefly often about wisdom. You have to be wise in order to parent well. We ourselves as parents have to be wise in order to parent well. Right now there are certainly right and wrong things to do in the parenting task, right? We don't chain our kids in the basement. Sorry if any of you did that once. We don't just, you know, we don't just totally shower them with everything their hearts desires. But in those in-betweens, it takes wisdom on knowing what to do and when to do. For example, we'll talk about this a little bit more, but one thing that the Proverbs are very clear on is the benefit and perhaps even the command to use corporal punishment when necessary. That corporal punishment is a part of raising children. However, it takes wisdom to know when it's effective. There is no proverb of "'Thou shalt spank thy child only when he lies to you.'" Right? You know, often it depends on the temperament of the child and the parents, the context, the age, all these things, right, of when corporal punishment is an appropriate use so we don't fall into abusing the things that God has given us for parenting. And then lastly, just as we think about parenting in Proverbs, we might say parenting in wisdom, Remember, Proverbs is addressed to a son, but it talks about helping the naive, the simple, aka the foolish. And every parent, in some regards, can claim to be a fool in what they have to do, because every day of being a parent is something totally new, right? Poppy's almost 18 months. I have no idea what it's like to have an 18-month-old. Many of you do. But even if you've got six kids, no one here has six. If the Pattersons, they've got a billion kids. But they still don't know what it's like to parent a two-year-old with a billion kids, right? So every moment, and even with adult children, right? Being grandparents, it's always a new thing. We don't have the exact answer for every moment. But even more importantly, and I mean no disrespect to your children, but children, particularly young children, are, by definition, fools, right? They are, Children are very smart, and I will brag about my child a lot, but they all lack a certain understanding of the world that definitionally makes them a fool, right? A wise person does not run with their finger pointed straight into an outlet, right? It's just the way of the world. It's just because they don't understand electricity, right? And that will kill you. I often joke, my poppy's in her fruit phase right now, right, which means that she would trade Courtney and I for just a single piece of fruit away forever. And that's, you know, God bless her, and it's easy to joke about, but that's foolishness, and we have to kind of recognize that, that our children are, by definition, foolish. And so that's, again, this tight connection that we see between Proverbs and parenting. But one aside before we get going, I mentioned in my prayer, right, I know not everyone here is a parent, at least some of y'all may have older children, some of y'all, it's been a while since our children have lived in the home. Some of y'all just don't have children at all, and what I hope to suggest here, and I'm realizing I don't know what happened to my wedding ring. What I want to stress here is that everything I say here, I believe, also applies to just general discipleship. So we might say that, I think this is because that parenting is essentially biologically derived discipleship. It is, you have a little disciple that you got through a biological process. You might say it's discipleship in its maximal sense. The picture of discipleship, the full picture of discipleship is given in a parent and a child. And we might say on the other side, That discipleship is ecclesiological parenting. That it is parenting in a minimal sense. That every time we disciple someone, we are acting at least in a certain mode as a parent to them. And that's why we can see across church history, people referring to their followers, the people they teach as my spiritual children. There's a very moving line that Calvin wrote about all of his children died when they were very young, and it was sort of the, well, they weren't even his children, they were his wife's children. He and his wife never actually had children of their own, but all of his wife's children died very young, and he's got this precious line in one of his letters where he said, the Lord never gave us physical children, but he's given us numerous spiritual children throughout his ministry. So I hope that that, causes those who even don't have kids or whose kids are long gone to not just tune out, right? Keep your ears perked because I think it's important to just all of life. So what I want to do tonight is I want to look at kind of three things that I believe the Proverbs paint a general picture of in the task of parenting. And that's first the privilege of parenting, and then we're going to look at the posture of parenting, and then lastly the prayer of parenting. So the privilege, the posture and the prayer of parenting. And the first for the privilege, right, there's no single verse that I can point to, but there's an interesting line. This is Proverbs 30, verses 18 and 19. And the words of Augur. And he has numerous, you know, five things are great, six things are awesome, but this one is, three things are too wonderful for me, four I do not understand, the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship on the high seas, and the way of a man with a virgin. And obviously that last clause there, he's talking about the marital act between a husband and a wife, but it's mysterious, not just because of the connection being given between man and wife, but because of the fruit of their union, right? That somehow, you know, when husband and wife consummate their marriage, they beget not just exact copies of themselves, but eternal beings with a soul. Right? Children who have a body but also have an eternal soul. And kind of the undercurrent of the entire book of Proverbs is that it is a tremendous privilege that God grants to men and women to bring forth eternal souls into this world, into this life. That every child we have is going to live on into eternity, either an eternity of death or an eternity of life with the Lord hereafter. And there's a couple parts though about this privilege, right? If you go back to Proverbs chapter one, the way it talks about it, Proverbs chapter one verses eight and nine, hear my son your father's instruction and forsake not your mother's teaching for they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck. Or another way to say it, the task of parenting, the task of discipleship to your child is a tremendous privilege that you get to adorn your child with wisdom and dare we say even glory. That by your discipleship, by your parenting, you are making your child a beautiful, part of God's creation, right? And if you even go on, right, in Proverbs 10.1 or Proverbs 15.20, it says that, hey, when you're blessing your child by parenting them, guess what, you're actually blessing yourself as well. So a godly child, a wise child is a blessing to his father. Or even in 17.6, a wise child is called a father's glory. That our glory is in our children. And it's this remarkable privilege that we are given this task of adorning God's children that he has lent us for a time being. But then secondly, in this privilege, it's a great privilege to lead the children that God has given you. So we adorn them with wisdom, but we also lead them. We lead them into piety. We lead them into wisdom. And there's a guy named David Brooks who wrote a book called The Road to Character many years ago. And he talks about how there's two different things we often search for in life. The first thing is what we call resume virtues. So those are trying to be CEO of my company or whatever, trying to retire by 38, whatever it is. And those are the things that we always spend so much time on that we think are so important. But he says the things that make people truly happy is what he calls eulogy virtues. So what are people gonna say at your funeral? And these are things, not just like, he was kind to me, he gave me money when I needed it, but as I think about what I would want my child to say at my funeral, can you imagine anything sweeter than they showed me what it was like to love Jesus? He loved Jesus and he showed me what it was like to love Jesus. What a precious privilege that would be to have your child say, you are the one who taught me to love Jesus. Or I think often of, you know, in books, you know, they always have the acknowledgement section where they're thanking their publisher and their friends who helped out, but then oftentimes they'll have a little devotion or something, and it'll say something sometimes like, to my father, who taught me what it meant to work hard. To my mother, who showed me what caretaking was. So not only leading them in piety and godliness, but it's a tremendous privilege just to see your child succeed as wise human beings. Wise human beings in this life. That's the privilege of parenting. And really, in some ways, everything I say from here on out is sort of, is said with that in mind. Everything that follows is all part of this tremendous privilege. Even, like last night, right, when Poppy was screaming for like three hours and I was up holding her in her room, that it's, or when she peed on me twice on the airplane to Portland. It's all a tremendous privilege. And so, okay, second, that's the privilege of parenting. Now let's think about the posture of parenting, the posture. And all throughout Proverbs, I wanna make this clear, Proverbs is not content with simply us making our children wise in like they just know how the world operates. The Proverbs are always after us raising up godly children. They want children who are followers of Christ, who love the Lord their God. And so the first thing we have to say about our posture as parents is that it always comes from a place of our own godliness. We can only parent as well as our own godliness allows for us. And you see this in Proverbs chapter 20 verse seven. He says, the righteous who walks in his integrity, blessed are his children after him. So as we walk in righteousness, as we walk in godliness, that's actually a part of God's blessing to our children. But second, we need a posture of godliness, but we also need a posture of what I call either receptivity or reliance. Receptivity or reliance. And we have to recognize, and I'm sure every parent in this room has come to that point, that we really have no idea what we're doing. Right? I mean, it's the cliche joke, right? But when you, it's a cliche because it's horrifyingly true that when you leave the hospital, you just suddenly have a baby. Nurses are gone, and you're just, it's just you and your wife and this screaming, hungry little thing, right? And you have no idea what's going on. But it's like that all along the way. Right? I mean, again, I only have a 17 month old, so I can only imagine what it's gonna be like to have Poppy as a teenager. But I'm sure teenagers come to you and either do things or have things happen to them, and you just think, I have no idea what to do right here. Right? And we need to constantly remember, hey, I am not in a place of mastery over this subject. Even if we've got a billion kids, like the Pattersons do. But instead, right, we have to recognize that God does not leave his servants without a roadmap, right? And that we have tools that God gives us here in the scriptures to parent the children he's given us, right? There's an Old Testament commentator named Bruce Walkie who wrote a huge Proverbs commentary, but he said this. By faith, the parents accept their values as given by God, making them absolute values, not the relative valuations of the secular city. What he's saying is, hey, when we lean on the Lord in this posture of receptivity, this posture of alliance, we are recognizing, first off, God is giving us guidance on how to do this. But also, God is giving us real, true guidance. It's not just, another opinion in the wave of a billion opinions on parenting. Does that make sense? You guys see what I'm saying there? That when we read God's word, especially on parenting, they're not just another opinion like all the other self-help or parenting books out there, right? But it's real values, real truths that God gives us. And so as we do that, we have to always remember There's a lot to glean from modern psychology. I don't want to pretend that they're just all a bunch of idiots out there with PhDs just doing nothing. We have to recognize there's probably good things that we could get from modern psychology. However, when it diverts from biblical teaching, that's when we need to draw the line. So just example again. Proverbs 13, 24, 23, 13, and 14, the use of the rod in discipline, right, of corporal punishment. Proverbs tells us it's an essential tool for discipline, for correction. Modern psychology tells you, hey, if you spank your kid, they're gonna turn up into like a drug addict or something, be scarred for life by it. And we have to recognize, hey, you know, I'm sure there's a way we could abuse this, but God wouldn't lie to his people and give us something that would end up being for the harm of our children. And it also means, as we think about this posture of receptivity and reliance, it means that we are all going to make mistakes, both as parents of littles, parents of teenagers, parents of adults, and even as grandparents, right? We will never stop making mistakes. And we need to constantly recognize that, walk with a humility, both towards our spouse and towards our children of our own sin, of recognizing where we fall short. So that's the posture of receptivity. And then lastly, we need to have, and I'm sure we could probably just run the gamut on what the posture of parent is, but the last one that I came up with looking through Proverbs is that we need a posture of my job as a parent is ultimately to protect my child. to protect my child, and it's gonna be a little bit, and when I, to you, that may seem a little simplistic, but let me go a little bit more in depth, right, that we are called as parents to protect our children from both physical death, but also spiritual death. Right? We are called to protect both of them. So this is Proverbs 19, 18. It says, Discipline your son, for there is hope. Do not set your heart on putting him to death. Kind of a strong way to phrase it. But notice first, just real quick, the tremendous encouragement that it gives on Discipline, right? It says you should do this, you need to be disciplining your children, because guess what? There is hope. God has promised that he will work through the lives of his saints to call his children to himself. And then it's got this little phrase, do not set your heart on putting him to death. And there's a bunch of different ideas on what this means. Some people think, hey, you need to discipline him, you know, use the rod when necessary, but don't just like lash out in anger and beat your child within an inch of his life, right? There's that, which is obviously very true. But then there's another part that says something like, hey, to not discipline your son is to just let him walk willy-nilly down the pathway to death, right? It would be like, if I don't discipline my son for the sins that he commits, it would be like me just saying, yeah, Papi, go ahead, stick your finger in that plug, I don't care. You'll just have to find your own way, I guess. And it's ridiculous when we say it in that mode, we need to recognize the ridiculous nature when it comes to spiritual things as well. And there are many others that we could probably think about, but what this proverb seems to be saying is discipline is ultimately with the goal of protecting your child from death. Again, physical death now, but also eternal death later on. And we see this, right, and I forgot to write the reference here, so I apologize, but if one curses his father or his mother, his lamp will be put out in utter darkness. So why do you correct your child when they talk back to you? When they walk in disrespect to you as a parent, well, it's because that leads to their lamp being put out in utter darkness, right? And again, thinking about this use of the rod that is, let's just turn, let's look at these two passages, right? So Proverbs 13, verse 24, kind of a famous one. Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him. And then Proverbs, Proverb, excuse me, 23, 13 and 14. If you strike your son with the rod, you will save his soul from Sheol. My son, sorry, do not withhold discipline from a child. If you strike him with a rod, he will not die. If you strike him with the rod, you will save his soul from Sheol. Both of those kind of, both the Proverbs 13 and the Proverbs 23, putting forth of hey, Again, corporal discipline is sometimes a very necessary measure in disciplining your child. And we have to recognize that in the task of protection, that it often means drastic steps are taken to ensure that they get the message, right? I love what, again, this is Bruce Waltke, he said this proverb, talking about 1324, he said, this proverb shows us that folly is bound up in the heart of the child, Right, that there's real folly that is just by our sin nature, kind of grown up with the child. But fourth, and he's quoting someone else here, that it will take more than just words to dislodge it, right? It's gonna take more than just reasoning with your child to dislodge the folly that's in their hearts. But here's the rub, right? Whether, you know, I know parents have Different philosophies about corporal punishment, and I know that it can be easily abused, right? It can be easily abused, but it can also be often neglected to the detriment of the child, because at the end of the day, again, each parent is called to protect their child from the foolishness that would lead them to physical harm, but also the foolishness that would lead them to spiritual harm. I often joke, not joke, this isn't actually a joke because it's true. I was talking to my father-in-law, and he asked me, what's the biggest change since I've had Poppy? And again, sort of joking, but also 100% true, that I never realized how quickly I could kill someone with my bare hands if they threatened my child, right? And I've kind of felt that. Last week, Poppy decided to be really fun to run back down the jetway after I had left the jetway. after departing the plane. And if you know TSA regulation, you are not allowed to go back in the jetway once you have exited, right? That is a big no-no. Well, I drop my stuff and obviously go to get my child when a TSA agent physically gets in front of me going to get my child in the jetway here. And I felt that. For the first time, I realized how quickly I could lose my cool when someone gets in the way of me protecting my child. I texted my wife that, hey, I almost got arrested at TSA. And then I put my foot on airplane mode because we were about to take off. So she had four and a half hours of having no idea what actually happened. But there's this natural instinct that we all have. Well, let me say this. It's a natural instinct to protect our child from physical harm. You know, like, I will do anything to keep Poppy physically safe. And yet, when it comes to spiritual rebellion, we so often fall into this laissez-faire of, they'll just work it out themselves. when we really need to constantly be on the proactive side of, I should be doing everything in my power to make sure that they recognize the consequence for this behavior. Because ultimately, we as parents, again, thinking about how we as parents model our Father in heaven, we as parents must not take sin lightly because God does not take sin lightly. We must not take sin lightly, because God does not take sin lightly, and we must not let our children believe that their sin is something that we are just paying no attention to, right? That it's okay, that it's actually funny to sin to your parents, because they're not gonna really do anything about it anyways. Now, as I said, though, right, there's wisdom. There's always gotta be wisdom in this, right? If you're spanking a 16-year-old for the same things that you spanked a six-year-old, I would wonder if that's really the wisest course of action there. You know, if every time your child does the smallest thing wrong, you just whip out your belt and chase him down the hall, well, that's probably not the way. Let me just say, that is not the way. However, if you also, if you show no major consequences for continued rebellion, then you yourself might be walking in rebellion, right? Not willing to actually discipline your child in the way the Lord has told us to. And let me say this, both, both the neglect and the abuse of proper discipline will lead your child to question if you actually love them. Right? It will lead them. We often think just abuse is going to do it. But children wanna know that we care enough for them that we're gonna do the hardest thing possible to make sure that they're safe. And both will leave them wondering if you really love them at all. Lastly, the prayer of parenting. So that's the privilege and the posture of parenting. But now lastly, let's just talk briefly about the prayer of parenting. And if you remember back when we first started this series, I said, and I tried to make the case a couple weeks in a row, that these proverbs are not Universal statements, right? They're not quite, they're not like the law of gravity. If I drop my, wherever I drop my ring, it hit the ground, right, just immediately. These are not the, you know, one plus one, a dash of the rod, two dashes of kind words and a hug gets you the perfect child, right? It's not the, it's not this magical universal formula. But instead, as I said, right, that sin and evil, have distorted the wise actions, even the wisest actions of men, right? And sin and evil often distort even the best attempts at parenting, too. I mean, you probably know people who, in your eyes, they were like the perfect parents. They went to church every Sunday, they loved their kids well, their kids had no lack, no need, and yet, somewhere along the line, the bottom fell out. Kids walked away from the faith, the kids just fell into whatever. So it's not a 100%, it's not magic, right? We're not manipulating God to make sure we get what we want. And so even as we discipline our children, as we follow in the wisdom of Proverbs in parenting, it's never removed from this full trust of the Lord. A prayerful trust in the Lord. Again, even thinking back to 1918 where it says, discipline your son for there is hope. That we should be leaning on the Lord for that hope every step of the way of our parenting task. Think about it this way, right? Every time that a proverb gives us some sort of instruction, and really this is just about for everything, not just for parenting, but that instruction should be fueled, or following that instruction, obedience to that instruction should be fueled by prayer that God would grant the blessing that follows it. Right, that God would grant what he said he would give. None of us parents, by our own strength, but it's always on the humble reliance of the Lord. I once heard a pastor say that young parents, especially when he was a young parent, that he read Proverbs 26 as this sort of command that he had to follow. So Proverbs 22, six, train up a child in the way that he should go and he will not depart from it. And I think his kids then were probably 16 to 20 or something like that. And he said, but now being an older parent, and having years of experience of parenting, that I suddenly realized Proverbs 22, six, while it is instruction, it's primarily a prayer. Lord, help me train up my child, and then you make sure that they do not depart from it. You make sure that they hold fast to the ways that you have given me to set before them. So even as we discipline the best we can, and again, when I say discipline, I don't just mean spanking or whatever, Whatever, we teach our children the way that they should go. If we have this posture of godliness, it should always be matched by this prayer that the Lord would give what he has promised he would give. The Lord would grant these things to us. And I'm sure, you know, then again, The fact that Proverbs aren't these magical formulas is, again, there's people who parent perfectly. Somehow their kids wind up less than perfect. And then you've also, you know, you meet people, you hear their childhood, and you think, how in the world did you wind up like you are now with that? Right, like, your parents were a mess, you were homeless, and yet you love the Lord, and you're being a good parent to your child, right? And I guess another way of framing this, just like we can't buy the psychological principle that everything is either genetically or contextually disposed, we don't have a genetic or contextual disposition that just requires us to act in certain ways, Right, that the Lord in his mercy uses all sorts of means to call his children unto himself. And that should give us hope, right, that if, you know. people who had drug addicts and people in prison for parents, that maybe he could even use you to parent these children well and to raise them up in the way that they should go. Any questions about that? I know, again, I want to place myself, and I know I'm not the expert here. 17-month-old, as I said, I can't just tell you to like, have you just tried picking her up and removing her from the situation for some of your parenting problems. But any questions or comments or thoughts on any of this?