A Practical Charge to Parents and Children, Part 1

You know, the Bible is such an integral part of all that we say and all that we do as believers. It's the truth. We believe the truth.

Years ago, a man wrote a letter to a pastor. In that letter, he expressed what he would do over again if he had the chance. That's what he said.

If I could start my parenting journey anew, here's what I would do. I would display more love toward my wife in front of our children. I would embrace laughter even in our mistakes.

I would listen attentively even to the youngest child. I would be honest about my own imperfections, never pretending to be flawless. I would pray differently for my family, focusing on my own growth instead of solely focusing on them.

I would engage in more activities together with my children. I would offer more encouragement and provide instruction from the word of God. I would pay greater attention to small acts and words.

Lastly, I would passionately share the gospel at every opportunity, every day that God grants me. The words that he says probably echo a lot of what we would say if we had to do it over again. The point is that you have one chance with your children, one opportunity with your children.

You have one marriage. Sometimes there's a death and you have another marriage. Sometimes there's a divorce and there's another marriage.

But for the most part, we had this life that we live, and we need to live it for the glory and honor of the Lord. But Paul says these words in 2 Timothy chapter 3, Realize this, that in the last days, grievous times, difficult times will come. We are in those days.

The last days are the days from the ascension of Christ into glory until he comes again. But as you move toward Christ coming again, those last days get increasingly worse, not better. He says, For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.

What happens in our families is that self-love and self-indulgence has enraptured us. And we no longer are lovers of God but lovers of pleasure. And the culture creates a climate in our homes that's contrary to what the Christ has said.

And so our responsibility as parents is to understand our responsibility before the Lord. When the writer of the letter I just read said that he would spend or display more love toward his wife in front of our children, how important is that? In fact, as he begins to speak, that's how he begins. If I would do it all over again, I would display more love for my wife in front of my children.

I wonder what kind of love you display toward your wife in front of your children. It's so important to understand that we are to love our wives as Christ loved the church. But if the end times are enrapturing us and we become lovers of self, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, then we become an unloving kind of people, unable to love our wives as Christ loved the church.

And that's unfortunate. But the Bible says that we are to acknowledge Christ as Lord. In fact, that was the first point we covered back in September.

We are to acknowledge Christ as Lord of our lives. And I wonder this morning if you know Christ as Lord and Savior, if you've acknowledged Him as the supreme creator of the universe who came to earth to die for your sins and rose again the third day to gain victory over sin, death and Satan, that you might embrace Him as your Lord and Savior. Because all marriages begin on a solid foundation of Christ as Lord.

Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain to build it. So therefore, Christ must be Lord of your life. He must be Lord of your family.

That is just so incredibly important. I came across some statistics this past week that I thought were rather profound. It says this, if a mother does not go to church but a father does, a minimum of two-thirds of their children will end up attending church.

In contrast, if a father does not go to church but the mother does, on average, two-thirds of their children will never attend church. That's quite remarkable. The impact of fathers upon their families.

A further study focused on Sunday school. It said when both parents attend Bible study, in addition to a Sunday service, in other words, you come to a Sunday service, you go to a Bible study, you go to an elective, you go to a Sunday school class, you're involved in some kind of service and some kind of ministry, 72% of their children attend Sunday school when they are grown. 72%.

When only the father attends Sunday school, 55% of the children attend when they are grown. When only the mother attends Sunday school, only 15% of their children attend when they are grown. When neither parent attends Sunday school, only 6% of the children attend Sunday school when they are grown.

Think about that. I don't come up with these statistics, I just read them to you. But somebody is doing some studies someplace.

It's important to realize that another survey found that if a child is the first person in the household to become a Christian, there is a 3.5% probability that everyone else in the household will follow. If the mother is the first to become a Christian, there is a 17% probability everyone else in the household will follow. However, when the father is first, there is a 93% probability everyone else in the household will follow.

The impact of fathers is incredible. We tend to minimize that. But you need to realize the importance of acknowledging Christ as Lord of your life and then be able to build intimacy through biblical love.

That is so important. The Bible says that we are to pursue love. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 13 that the love of God, 1 Corinthians 13 verse 4, the love, the definite article is before the word, the love is patient, the love is kind, because it's a particular kind of love, it's God's kind of love.

So the definite article is there, 1 Corinthians 13 verse 4, the love of God is patient, the love of God is kind. In other words, that's how God's love is defined. It's patient, it's long-suffering, and all the while it has a long fuse, it just bestows kindness toward those in which he demonstrates a long fuse.

That's the kind of love that builds intimacy in a marriage, the kind of love that's patient, the kind of love that's long-suffering, the kind of love that is kind in return. So many times we are the most unkind to our family members. You ever notice that? We speak so unkindly to our husband, or so unkindly to our wife, or so unkindly to our children, because we refuse to be long-suffering, we refuse to be patient with them.

But the love of God is patient, the love of God is kind, and therefore we must demonstrate a long fuse toward our spouse and toward our children. And by doing that, we just bestow acts of kindness upon them, because we want to demonstrate to them Christ's love. And so we need to understand that as we acknowledge Christ as Lord of our lives, then we need to build intimacy through biblical love.

The love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts, right? And the fruit of the Spirit is love, right? So therefore, we have the opportunity to demonstrate that love toward our husband, our wife, and our children. But it's important to note that this man says, I want to demonstrate that love toward my wife in front of my children. I want them to see love in action.

I want them to understand that when they grow older, they need to realize this is what love looks like in a family. How many of your children sitting with you today understand biblical love because of the love fathers, husbands you have for your wives and wives for your husbands? It's so important. You need to realize that.

You know, I read earlier or referred to Psalm 128 earlier where it says, How blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in His ways. When you shall eat of the fruit of your hands, you will be happy, and it will be well with you. Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine within your house.

That's just such a great statement. Remember, vines and olive plants are representative of abundance and blessing in the Jewish household. The vine would produce the wine, which is symbolic of joy in the household.

And the olive plants produce olive oil, which is a blessing from God used in all kinds of capacity in the Jewish home. And so when the psalmist writes about the blessing that comes to those who fear the Lord, your wife is like that fruitful vine. And you know that vines cling and vines climb.

And every man who fears the Lord has a wife who clings to him and climbs all over him because that's what vines do. And if your wife isn't clinging to you, she's going to end up clinging to someone else. Therefore, fear the Lord, honor the Lord, because she will be attracted to you.

She'll be attached to you. Every woman wants a man who fears God above anything else. And when you fear the Lord, that's what happens to your wife.

But your children are like olive plants around your table. This is very, very important. Why is this so important? Because you need to understand the olive plant.

You need to understand the olive tree. You need to understand why it's used as a symbol in Psalm 128 of great fruitfulness. Fruitfulness.

You must realize that vines, olive plants, grow best in hard, rocky soil. Go to the land of Israel. There are olive trees everywhere.

Well, the land of Israel is a hard, rocky soil. Why is that important? Because children grow best in hard, rocky soil. They grow best when there's discipline and when there's boundaries around them.

And if you don't enact discipline with your children and set boundaries for them, then they will not be like an olive plant around your table. So the symbolism is quite unique. Also know this, that the most important years of an olive tree are the first seven years.

If you cultivate that olive plant properly for the first seven years, it will begin to produce fruit. Not a lot, but it will begin to produce fruit. So that by the year 10, in year 10 to 15, that tree becomes extremely fruitful.

Now think about that in the life of your children. The first seven years you have your children, you need to be cultivating, not just discipline and nurture, but cultivating character in their lives. They are the most formative years, ages one to seven.

And that's why the olive plant is used as a symbol. And parents, you can't abdicate your responsibility those first seven years. Listen, you can have your mom raise your children.

She's not going to do it like you do, because they're your children. She's just the grandmom. He's just the grandfather.

And they can assist and they can help, but they can't raise them like you did. God gave the children to you to raise, not to you so your parents could raise them, or someone else raise them. You need to be intricately involved in those first seven years in an intimate, intense kind of way to raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, to provide the boundaries that they need to grow and the discipline by which they need to adhere to so that they can honor and glorify the name of the Lord.

This is so incredibly important. So that they begin after... Listen, those first seven years, that's what you get. At age seven, that's pretty much where your kid's going, because that's where the olive tree's going, see? And by year 10 to 15, they begin to produce all kinds of fruit because they've been cultivated all around, nurtured all around.

So important. Note this. Olive plants live to be over 2,000 years old.

How do we know that? Well, they've done all kinds of scientific study on the olive trees that are in the Garden of Gethsemane. Some of them are there 2,000 years. They were there during the time of Christ.

Why? The Bible says, if you honor your mother and father, you live long on the earth, right? Doesn't mean you're going to live to be 2,000 years old, okay? But there's some byproduct to honoring your mother and father. But note this, that there's something about an olive tree that after those first seven years, you can pretty much let it go, watch it work. It'll begin to produce on its own and begin to function on its own without the constant cultivation.

But an olive branch is an evergreen. That's important. Because an evergreen shows its beauty no matter what season it's in.

So no matter what season your child goes through, good seasons, bad seasons, hard seasons, difficult seasons, joyous seasons, it will always be attractive. Why? Because you invested God's Word in the life of your child and they were able to grow in a way that honors and glorifies the name of God. My friends, this is so important.

I can't stress it enough, the importance of this and how it relates to your life and mine. And so when you think about this in your life and you think about how do I raise a godly seed, you need to invest in the lives of your children, but you begin by investing to the life of your wife as a husband, fearing the Lord, honoring the Lord so she clings to you like glue. That's what it means when it talks about for this cause the man shall leave his father and mother and cling to his wife.

There's this clinging process that takes place both man and wife in the relationship because you become one flesh. You become united and you begin to be used by God to raise a godly seed. I love what Abishag says in the Song of Solomon.

You know what Abishag is, right? That's Solomon's first wife. He killed his brother in order to marry her. That's how much he loved her.

Adonijah wanted to marry Abishag. Abishag was the woman who took care of David when David was elderly. So Solomon watches this in the palace and realizes, wow, she's amazing.

I'm going to marry her. But Adonijah wanted her. So Solomon loved her so much he killed Adonijah so he couldn't have her.

That's how much he loved Abishag. And that's why the Song of Solomon is Solomon's love letter to Abishag. Now this is before he had, you know, a thousand other women in his life.

This is way before those things took place. And listen to what she says about the intensity, the intimacy, the indestructibility of her love for her husband. It says this, Song of Solomon, chapter eight, verse number six, put me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm.

Now when you possess the seal, you possess what the owner of the seal had. And Abishag is saying, I want to have all of your affection, your heart, a seal over your heart, over your arm, I want all of your heart, all of your strength, I want it all. It speaks to the intensity and the intimacy of her love for Solomon.

She wanted complete access to all of his affection. Now she would not get that later on because he would marry other wives and have other concubines, but this was her heart's desire from the very beginning. She wanted all of her husband's affection.

She wanted all of his strength devoted to her. Then she says this, for love is as strong as death. Jealousy is as severe as Sheol.

Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord. So she takes two emotions, one negative, one positive. The greatest negative emotion is the loss at death, right? When someone dies, the negativity of that emotion is huge.

The other side is the positive side, the jealousy side. And that is not a negative way, it's the jealousy that God has for you and me. That's a positive thing, right? And that jealousy is like flashes of fire, it's like the fire of Jehovah.

So she speaks of the intimacy and the intensity of her love by expressing it in ways that she says, this is what I want for my husband because love is as strong as death. And my jealousy for him is like the fire of the Lord. Then she says this, many waters cannot quench love, nor will rivers overflow it.

The indestructibility of love. True love is indestructible. It can't be washed out.

It can't be flooded. It can't be destroyed. Why? Because it's so intense and intimate, it's indestructible.

And then she says this, she says, if a man were to give all the riches of his house for love, it would be utterly despised. Her love was not just intense and intimate and indestructible, it was invaluable. Why? Because you can't buy love.

Love is that which grows from the Lord himself and comes from him. And it's invaluable. There's nothing more valuable toward one another than to love one another.

And my prayer for you and for me as we journey over the next couple of weeks together is that we would understand the intimacy, the intensity, the indestructibility and the invaluability of love, that we are to have one for another. That we as husbands would say, I want my children to see me love their mother all the more. Don't wait till the end to start that.

Start today. It's never too late to start, right? Can't change yesterday, but you sure can change the rest of today. And you can change tomorrow and the rest of this week and the rest of your life by saying, Lord, I want to demonstrate my love for my wife, my love for my husband, so my children see it.

Because you know what? That breeds stability and security in the life of your children more so than anything else. Knowing that mom and dad are inseparable. Mom and dad are together forever because they love one another intensely.

Let me pray with you. Father, we thank you for today, the brief time that we had together this morning. We just pray, Lord, that you'd instruct us and teach us in the way that we should go that we might honor you.

We thank you, Lord, that as we partake of the Lord's table, we are reminded of the great love of God toward us as sinful men. Nothing can compare to your love for us. And Lord, when we reflect upon it, it helps us see how far we must go to demonstrate love toward one another.

May that be seen right now today and for the rest of our lives. For the glory of your kingdom, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.