In this message, Dr. Joel Beeke discusses the blessings that God-fearing families receive. He explains that the blessings aren't necessarily automatic. Rather, parents have responsibilities. They need to train their children in accordance with what is prescribed in Scripture.

In this message, he covers three points: First, God's heart for the family, Second, His vision for the family, and then God's recipe for the family for them to have true happiness in Him. When parents fear God, obey His commandments, and train their children in the ways of God, He will richly bless them.

Proverbs 1:7 (NKJV) - "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction."

Well, good morning to you. This is my last chance to tell you about a couple books real quickly. We're going to shut down at 1.30. Our CEO, David Woullen, needs to leave at that time. So some of the books, we're from Systematic Theology.

Thank you very much for buying all the piles and We're taking back orders on that We'll send it to you without post free if you didn't get a chance to get that both volumes also the Puritan documentary Which you need for your your your children for a course on the Puritans. God blessing it will raise their level of holiness. I think it's a critical thing for you. That is down to two sets left, we'll back order that as well and Paul Washer's book, some of you haven't been picking that up, This is the gospel's power and message, as well as the gospel call and true conversion, and gospel assurance and warnings. There's a three-volume set that is very moving and powerful, and would greatly help you and your families.

And we're going to offer that for $25 for the three volumes. So it's gonna be a very special price. And also, the book Follow Me for young children, three to seven of those Bible stories. There's a number of those left and really every family should should have one of those as well. And I got good news for you.

We're coming out next week with volume one of a nine-volume set called Family Worship for Very Young Children. So we have the Family Worship Bible Guide, which is written at sort of an age level of 10 and up. But this is going to be for four to nine-year-olds, a page that fathers can read, and then Q and A, and the first volume's coming out next week, it's gonna go through the whole Bible, very much like this conference has done, kind of a biblical theology through scripture, And it's written by Nick Thompson, who's a newly ordained OPC pastor, and myself. And it will be, the first volume will be just on Genesis, 90 daily worships on Genesis. So look for that, sign up, give us your email on the sheet in the book room, and you'll get that email blast once a week of new books that are coming out, and I think you'll appreciate it.

Paul Washer was going to be here to recommend my wife's, he was gonna recommend my wife's book, Teach Them to Work, because he feels so strongly about it, but if you have any difficulties at all getting any of your children to work steadily and faithfully to see the gift of God in work You're going to want to get this brand new book hot off the press teach them to work building a positive work ethic in your children. So let's turn to Proverbs 23. Proverbs 23 verses 12 through 16. I'm sorry 12 through 26. Hear the word of God.

Apply thy heart unto instruction, and thy ears to the words of knowledge. Withhold not correction from the child, for if thou beatest him with a rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with a rod, and he shall deliver his soul from hell. My son, if thine heart be wise, my heart shall rejoice even mine. Yea, my reign shall rejoice when thy lips speak right things.

Let not thine heart envy sinners, but be thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long, for surely there is an end, and thy expectation shall not be cut off. Hear thou, my son, and be wise, and guide thy heart in the way. Be not among winebibbers, among riotous eaters of flesh, for the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty, and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags. Hearken unto thy father that begat thee, and despise not thy mother when she is old. Buy the truth and sell it not.

Also wisdom and instruction and understanding. The father of the righteous shall greatly rejoice. And he that begetteth a wise child shall have joy of him. Thy father and thy mother shall be glad, she that bare thee shall rejoice. My son, give me thy heart and let thine eyes observe my ways.

Let's pray. Great God of heaven, bless this address on the wisdom literature in conjunction with family training. Please, let it bless our marriages, let it bless our families, and let it bless our hearts in these moments. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen. Well, wisdom literature, particularly Proverbs, Song of Solomon, and Ecclesiastes, how does that relate to the family?

First of all, we need to understand the word wisdom. Wisdom, the Hebrew word for wisdom has the basic meaning of skill or ability that is applied to every sphere of life. For example, a wise soldier or a skillful craftsman. And when applied to the ethical or moral or spiritual sphere, It's the art or skill of performing the biblical ethic. So the book of Job, for example, teaches the skill of suffering well.

Ecclesiastes teaches the skill of enjoying and using life as a gift from God. Song of Solomon teaches the skill of maintaining and enjoying the God-given sanctity, beauty, and purity of marriage, particularly as a gospel sermon directing attention to the ideal marital bond between Christ and the church. Now wisdom literature falls into two categories. One's called didactic, that is teaching literature, and one is called reflective, that is reflecting on Bible truth. Proverbs is didactic, isn't it?

It's concerned with matters of practical morality, practical ethics, all these terse, right to the point maxims deal with proper conduct in virtually every context of life. Proverbs shows what sanctified living looks like on a daily basis. Other wisdom literature books do different things. Ecclesiastes and Job, for example, particularly deal with the tension between faith and experience, the big whys that so often test our faith. Now, wisdom literature is very personal, but it's also astonishingly domestic, related that is to the family, down to the common and mundane concerns of daily life.

Wisdom literature takes Christ-centered theology and it brings it down to the level of daily conduct. It is doctrine for life. And it's doctrine for life in the context of God's absolute sovereignty and God's astonishing providence. And so trusting in God and fearing God, as we heard last night, with Everything in life, interwoven with all the mundane, is what wisdom literature is all about. Looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.

So Wisdom literature gives us skills on how to walk by faith in Christ and not by sight. Old Princeton's John Davis defined wisdom this way, wisdom seeks by experience and reflection to know things in their essence and reality, essence and reality, as they stand related to both God and man. So that's the wisdom we want. To read your children a few verses from Proverbs every morning, as we were prone to do when our children were at home, and to go over and over that book, it's an amazing gift of God. That children will remember basic ways of living.

We need to fill the minds of our children with this beautiful, Christ-centered, God-honoring, wise, biblical ethic. So that's the goal. Goldsworthy says, Christ not only died to save us, but was also the perfectly wise man of God, living the absolutely responsible life. He is wisdom itself. He is really the central character in all the wisdom literature.

He lived this life in our place that we might glean of his wisdom and in and through and unto him be accounted wise before God. And so the Wisdom literature has everything to do with family life. It leads us to build convictions, convictions about truth, about the meaning of life, about marriage, about child-rearing, about relationships, about work. Family convictions. That's our topic this morning.

And I want to do that in three thoughts. First, we want to look at foundational convictions, foundational convictions for Christ-centered daily life. That's the book of Proverbs. Second, we want to look at marital convictions for Christ-centered intimacy. That's Song of Solomon, marital convictions.

And third, we want to look at realistic convictions for Christ-centered humility. For Christ-centered humility, that's Ecclesiastes. So first then, Proverbs. The biblical Proverbs are express insights on general truths. They contain condensed wisdom, extracted from day-to-day life experiences to lead the simple, to become wise, and to cultivate the fear of the Lord, chapter one, verses two through seven.

Now the way to misread the Proverbs is to say that these Proverbs are always true at all times in all situations, that they're absolutes. For example, train up a child in the way that he shall go. When he is old, he shall not depart from it. What if you have a wayward child who has departed from it, who dies in that condition? Have you been ungodly parents?

Well, perhaps, but also perhaps not. You see, these are general rules, general maxims that are true in right situations. These are maxims to guide your life, maxims to encourage you. That's the genre of the book of Proverbs. So to take a modern example, so a mother, for example, is busy preparing a meal in her kitchen, her children crowd around her, And she might tell them, too many cooks spoil the broth.

Well, that's a kind of proverb, isn't it? But after the meal is over, when she sees all the sink full of dirty dishes, she may then say to the children, many hands make light work. And she wants them all there. That's a kind of proverb. You see, proverbs inform the acquisition of wisdom, and wisdom then informs the application of Proverbs.

So Proverbs is kind of a handbook, if you will, for managing the family. It sets out a vision of the family that is strong and cohesive. It suggests that the family is a place of protection and provision that strain from it, 27, eight, is not wise. Other Proverbs harshly condemn the practice of sowing discord in the family, troubling one's own house, chapter six, chapter 11. So having a cohesive family of strong bonds, shared convictions, maxims in these proverbs that help us live day by day in our families as places of refuge, as places of flourishing for each family member, this is what we must strive to build.

Strong, proverbs-oriented, cohesive families. Now, some parents imagine that because they attend church, their families will be inevitably strong and cohesive. They have biblical teaching, and we might think we can outsource family convictions to others like the church, and then the church comes along to help us, but you see, these Proverbs are a guide for the home as well as for the church. And in the home you need to be personally, intentionally involved in building these family convictions. Church may help you and will help you, but you've got to be there daily, daily, teaching these proverbs, repeating these proverbs, living these proverbs in your family.

Proverbs 14 verse one gives us two contrasting pictures of a wise woman building her house and a fool tearing it down with her own hands. It does not give us a picture of a middle of the road parent who builds his family part of the time. Building family convictions through Proverbs is a full-time business. If we're not intentionally building family convictions, this Proverbs 14 one picture tells us then by default, we are tearing down the cohesiveness and the spiritual strength of our families. And so don't laugh at your children when they act against the Proverbs.

Don't laugh at their infirmities, at their faults, at their weaknesses. Build your family by these Proverbs, by these family convictions. Now don't build them, don't build them by simply negativism. Don't, don't, don't, don't, no, no, no. Don't build them by having more than half of your conversation to your children be corrective.

You've got to build it also with the positive, affirming them when they do right. And you've got to build it with affection, affection. The whole book of Proverbs is so incredibly affectionate, isn't it? The Father's always taking his, come, come my son, come, sit here my son. I'm going to teach you, I'm going to instruct you, I'm going to give you understanding, and with understanding, I'm going to give you wisdom.

Wisdom, how to live. Come my son, you can just see him putting his young son on his lap, talking to them about how to live, how to look to Christ, how to live out of the gospel, how to live in the mundane of everyday life. Building, building, building convictions in his children. I read to you from Proverbs 23 because There's a particularly good chapter of a conviction building all throughout this chapter. We don't have time to do it all, but let me quickly give you five or six principles.

Number one, we're told discipline with mercy, discipline with mercy. Little children, not older children, little children, will need spanking at times, he says in verses 13 and 14. Don't withhold the rod, the rod of chastening. Must be implied not to injure the body, certainly not, and certainly not to give the child what his sins deserve, we'd all be in the bottom of hell, if that were the case, but you do need to use spanking at times when Verbal instruction does not reap the result of humility and repentance so that you curb the natural tendency of that child to choose evil and to reject the good. So that's a principle.

That's a way of building convictions in that child about what is right and what is wrong. But the motive of your spanking is not anger. God forbid. The motive is love. The motive is, the manner is paternal, not judicial.

The aim is correction, not bold, naked punishment. You see, discipline can go wrong. If you don't keep in mind that you are acting in God's stead as God chastens every son whom he loves, you chasten every child you have out of love. If love doesn't rule your chastening, Don't use the rod of correction until you can do it in love. There may be times you have to say to your child, I'm going to think about the punishment I need to give you for this moral infraction, but right now, son, daughter, I need to think about what's proper, and you're giving yourself some distance because maybe your own little bit of anger's arising, and you never, you see, discipline your child in anger.

You discipline with mercy, with love, with instruction, with compassion, remembering your sinfulness. God is mindful of our human frailty. You are to act in God's stead when you train your children. You need to be mindful of their human frailty because it teaches you that it comes from you. You are the original version of your children.

And so the wise man says, yes, your child will need it. Your child will become spoiled is basically what he's saying in verse 13 and 14 if you don't have verbal correction and at times spanking of that young child to a degree that is commensurate with the moral infraction on the one part of the human anatomy that is so designed to receive such blows, which is called your rear end, but nowhere else on the body. God has not made the body to be slapped across the face or to be injured in some way. You don't have permission to do that, you see. So that's principle number one.

Corporal discipline, lovingly, justly used, helps to form moral and religious convictions. Principle number two, rejoice openly in the wise choices of your children. Verses 15 and 16. My son, if thy heart be wise, my heart shall rejoice, yea, even mine. My reins, that is the seat of my emotions in my inward parts, shall rejoice when thy lips speak right things.

Some children, some parents rather, don't want to praise their children. They think, well, I'm going to foster pride in them. What? Jesus said, well done, thou good and faithful servant, entered thou into the joy of thy Lord. You need to say to your children, when they do well, well done, well done, you need to commend a child for doing what is right to give positive affirmation.

They need to see your fatherly smile, your motherly warmth, your words of praise, and appropriate rewards when they do well. Principle number three, verses 22, 23. Instill truth in your children. Harken to thy father that begat thee, despise not thy mother when she's old. Buy the truth and sell it not.

Also wisdom and instruction and understanding. Solomon is borrowing here imagery from the marketplace. Parents are selling wares to their children. And he urges the parents to market precious commodities to their children. Words of truth, words of wisdom, words of instruction, words of understanding.

Now we're not all equally gifted in that. My dad was extraordinarily gifted in that. He'd always have little nuggets of wisdom. He'd come to us and I must have heard this a thousand times, son, I wish I could write this with an iron pen on your heart. Whenever he said that, I knew that something, some truth was coming.

And he'd usually do it in the form of a question, which was very effective. He'd say, do you know what the difference is between a believer and an unbeliever? And of course I always said no because I never got my dad's questions right. And he said, a believer always has a place to go. Don't ever forget that.

An open throne of grace. And the open throne of grace is worth more than all the money in the world. I never forgot that. That God's throne of grace is open 24-7. What a gift.

God never gets tired of hearing you cry. One time I thought, oh Lord, you must be so sick of my prayers, so much repetition. And as I was thinking that and confessing my poverty and prayer, my son walked up from the basement, good morning, Dad. I thought, hey, he said that for the last 2, 000 mornings in a row and I never get tired of it. You know, come to God, open throne of grace.

You see, that's what my dad was teaching me. You can't go to God too often. He's always there for you. Wow, what a lesson. Well, my dad would say, son, what do you think is greater?

A comfort from God or an instruction from God? I don't know, Dad. Well, let me write it with an iron pen on your heart. An instruction from God is greater because an instruction lasts a whole lifetime, a comfort only lasts a little while. Hmm, why didn't I think of that?

But you see, truth, truth, truth. Son, remember, everything centers on Jesus Christ. If you become a minister one day, you can't preach enough of Christ. Preach him in every sermon. Let him be the diamond of every sermon.

That's what my dad would say. When he was ready to die, as he underwent aneurysm, surgery, and he expected to die. All the children gathered around him, last words to each child. Oh, it was beautiful, it was beautiful. He came to me and His eyes filled with tears and he said, keep preaching Christ.

Don't ever stop preaching Christ. I hear that still while I'm in the act of preaching often. Get to Christ, get to Christ. Instill truth in your children. Buy, Have them buy the truth and sell it not.

Principle number four. You need to direct children, your children, to hope in the Lord, to fear Him and hope in Him. Verse 17 and 18, Let not thine heart, my son, envy sinners, but be thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long. For surely there's an end, that is an end to trials and riddles and disappointments and confusion. For thine expectation, thy hope shall not be cut off.

What a beautiful thing that is. Directing your children to fear God, but also to expect great things from a great God to hope in God. These are two aspects of saving faith. You can't give them saving faith, but you want to cultivate in their minds the beauty of saving faith, the beauty of fearing God, the beauty of hoping in God, so that they see their own inadequacy, and they see the beauty of these things in your life, in your words, so that they want to be consecrated to the glory of God themselves through this hope and through this fear so that they feel the reality that the chief and the man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. You want to put impressions of that in your child.

Every child. And the Holy Spirit can bless that, you see, to their true conversion. So that's what you want to do. You want to move them to see the value of the hope and fear of God. Then you want to, principle five, warn them against destructive lifestyles.

Warn them against destructive lifestyles. The self-indulgent lifestyle, verse 20, 21, talks about becoming an alcoholic and how it destroys everything. Today, there's all kinds of Holisms, isn't there? Or you can become a tele-holic or electronic-a-holic as you indulge in electronic communications and entertainment and waste your, fritter away your time, boys and girls, young people. And your parents need to set limits for you and guidelines and principles so that you don't just play your life away.

So there's a danger, you see, of living to please yourself, failing to discipline yourself, and the wise parent is going to talk to his child about not becoming addicted to anything other than God. To become addicted to God, to become obsessed with God, as the Puritans used to say. That is no addiction. But to become addicted to anything in this world is to be guilty of idolatry, to put something before God. Then verses 27, 28, he warns against sexually immoral lifestyles, becoming sexually addicted.

Wow, what need we have of that today with all the pornography around? And then he speaks about substance abuse lifestyle, verses 29 through 35, how it alters the mind, it destroys friendship, and promotes contention, and incites violence, and impairs the body, and causes us to lose control even of our thoughts and numbs our sense of pain and makes us willing slaves 29 through 35. See, you build these convictions in your children and direct them to Christ alone who can build in them the full scope of Christian character in a kind of glorious perfection. Now as you build these convictions, you need to remember four stages. Give them to you quickly.

First stage is regulation. That's when your kids are young, probably below 12. They need a black and white world at that point. They can't understand all the grays, at least the 10 and below, certainly. You need to tell them rights and wrongs.

You don't need to nuance everything. That's for when they get older. Regulation. You are their guide, you are their teacher. You Show them the way of truth and wisdom.

Second stage is participation. You see, that's what my dad was doing when I was like 10 to 15, saying, what do you think of this son? What do you think of that son? How would you do this? How would you respond in this situation?

Participation, you're guiding them, but they're participating. They're thinking their own thoughts through, analytically, coming to decisions based on the word of God, together with you, and you steer them. It's like their hands are on the wheel, but your hands are on top of their hands, and when they go the wrong way, you're steering them back. Participation. Dad, can I go to my friend's house and watch this movie?

Well, what kind of movie is it, son? Well, it's this and this. Do you think it would be good for your soul, son? See, my dad would say, go up into your bedroom and get on your knees and ask, ask the Lord, what I'm about to do, what I want to do, will it glorify thee or will it bring my soul into more sin? And if it doesn't, if you can't say with a free conscience, son, that it will glorify God, don't do it.

See, then I'd have to go myself. I'm no longer a seven year old. I'm now a 13 year old. I have to go into the bedroom myself. I have to wrestle with that question myself.

Is this glorifying to God? And then stage three, integration, integration. This is the time when your children are older, say 16 and older, and increasingly able to make their own decisions, which will help them later when they move out and begin to live independently. See, here, you may ask some questions still. They're still under your roof.

Of course you're still guiding them. But they're more in the driver's seat now. And you're more in the back seat, steering from behind. Guiding them when they go wrong, affirming them when they go right. But giving more leadership to them.

Giving out more slack, you see. More freedom to them to do what's right. And when they're trustworthy, you see, then you give out more freedom and more freedom. They prove themselves not to be trustworthy. They're lying to you.

You gotta pull that slack back in, don't you? But integration. And then the final stage is supplication. That's when they're 20 or more, and they're out of your home now, and they're married. So they're a new family unit.

Now you see, you're not even in the car. Now you're on your knees. Now you take one step back and you get down on your knees and you pray for your married children. You pray doubly because Now you've got a new child in the family called an in-law, but it becomes like a real child. And now, you see, they make their own decisions and you cry out to God for them that they may make right decisions.

But you trust that the convictions you've built in them by the grace of the Holy Spirit, that your role as a conviction planter will bear fruit 30, 60, and 100 full to the glory of Jesus Christ. So The book of Proverbs helps us plant those convictions. Now Song of Solomon refers more to your marriage. Ultimately, of course, it refers to the marriage of Christ and the church, but it also refers to earthly marriage as a faint shadow of that heavenly marriage. And this is so important also to build family convictions because when you and your wife get along very, very well and have this bond of love and intimacy, that sets the tone of the entire atmosphere of the family.

Song of Solomon gives us an eight chapter extended meditation on the wonder, the joy, the beauty, and the glory of a close, marital love. Where Proverbs points to the love in marriage as a bulwark against immorality, the Song of Solomon gives a close-up of the excitement and intensity of the love in a God-honoring marriage. And blessed are the children who can see and feel from their parents this incredible bond of love and teamwork that they have together that sets the tone for the family. Now of course, the intimacy in your marriage has limits in front of your children, but warm hugs and affectionate kisses when you greet each other, when you leave each other. Children need to see that, they need the reassurance of that hug.

They need to see, they need the security that mom and dad love each other like crazy. In the Lord, that's a beautiful thing. Our kids used to say when we would, they'd raid our hugs sometimes. GP, that was an R hug, and I don't know what they did, but it was, and they'd look the other way like they were embarrassed. But you know what?

They loved it. Because they had security. Mom and dad love each other. So the Song of Solomon pictures the development and maturation of that love that heads toward marriage and is consummated after marriage and then matures within marriage. Actually chapters one through three are about courtship, so-called, where we see the young woman's longing for the young man, her struggles with insecurity, even the pain of separation.

And then chapters three through five are the wedding, the procession, the marriage, consummation. And then we have The maturing process, chapters five through eight. Here we see the problem of apathy that can plague a marriage. The need for communication of affection, chapter seven. So the depiction of romantic love in these eight chapters are of value to long-standing marriages, the newly married and also unmarried young people, but indirectly it impacts the entire family because a good, God-fearing marriage is a huge blessing for the whole family.

But there's also warnings for the family here. The Song of Solomon teaches us, the daughters of Jerusalem teach us, I charge you that you awaken, do not arouse love before its proper time. It speaks about the beauty of love, but the danger of love as well. It says, set me as a seal upon thy heart, as a seal upon thine arm, for love is as strong as death, jealousy is as cruel as the grave. The coals thereof are coals of fire which have a most vehement flame.

Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it. If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contempt." Well, yes, it's good for young people, children, to witness healthy love relationships and to want the same thing when they grow older. But Song of Solomon is saying, wait for the right timing young people. Just as Love has a proper place, it has a proper time. The timing of love, the when of maturity is as important as the boundaries of love, the where of marriage.

Love must be kept within the fireplace, as it were, the warm hearth of proper, covenantal bond, God honoring bond, Christ centered bond of marriage. And so Song of Solomon is a warning Not to follow the world's hyper-sexualized, anti-covenantal, and commitment-spurning view of love. Sex outside of marriage is celebrated as love in our society. But ironically, Song of Solomon would teach us it's a sin against ourselves, against our own body, and against the person violated. It bloodies the conscience, it cheapens marriage, and it can produce unplanned pregnancies.

You see, often premarital intimacy sows future disappointment and sorrow and grief for the mutual dishonor the young couple has committed against each other which dampens the joy of any eventual wedding. So, Song of Solomon has powerful messages. For married couples, renew your love for the spouse of your youth. Don't take your wife or husband for granted. See your spouse as a unique individual who captured your affection at the beginning.

Love her more tomorrow than you did yesterday. Be happy and share your happiness with your spouse in the Lord. It has a message to parents. Teach your sons and daughters about the God-designed intent of biblical sexuality within the closed circle of a marital relationship. Tell your children that unlike worldly lust, masquerading as love, biblical Christ-centered marital love matures, deepens, sweetens with the passing of years and decades and is therefore beautifully unique.

And tell young people, wait for the right time. You young people, wait for the right time so that God will enable you to enjoy a happy, respectful, loving, God-honoring, Christ-centered marriage. And finally, very briefly now, What about Ecclesiastes? Well, Ecclesiastes teaches humility. It builds family convictions, that the only way to live is to live to the glory of God.

There's a shocking pessimism about the uncertainty and the emptiness of this earthly life, life under the sun, that is life without God, is meaningless because of death, because of injustice, chapters 12, chapter seven, because of people's inability to discern the proper timings in life, chapter three. But it's important, you see, to read Ecclesiastes the right way. These are convictions for the family when you live life only under the sun. That is, life lived with no perspective of a righteous God who would declare the final verdict at the end of history by his judgment and by his salvation. Life lived in a atheist, practically atheistic manner.

Life under the sun without God is empty. Every relationship in our life, every member of our family, every single day we have is a precious gift of God. If we live life as it were above the sun, above the sun perspective is the conclusion of Ecclesiastes. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man, for God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it be good or evil. This is the way to live.

Don't live like the world under the sun, empty, vanity, not knowing what they're doing, not knowing where they're going. Don't live without purpose, without intention. Live every day to the glory of God, live every day out of the fear of God. These are the convictions we must build in our children from the book of Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes is beautiful, boldly, boldly honest.

It brings a demolition hammer to the idea of a totally predictable God. It's a canonical corrective to a mechanical reading of wisdom literature. It helps us to see that even in our efforts to cultivate godly convictions in our families that do not seem to bear fruit in the way we expect it, it will still go right in the end for those who fear God and love Christ and hate sin. May go through ways of hardship, may go through ways of great trials, but it will go right in the end when you live not under the sun as if there is no God, but when you live with your eyes and the son of righteousness, the Lord Jesus Christ. So in Ecclesiastes, We're given another valuable aspect of walking in the fear of God that is a striking complement to Proverbs.

Namely, that there's nothing we humans can do to control God's favor in our lives or direct everything the way we want it to go. God is in charge. We enjoy the good gifts and seasons of joy God gives to us and our families. But as we do so, we adopt a posture of humble dependence on his sovereign grace and his daily help, especially in seasons of disappointment and failure as we work in our families with all our shortcomings to continue to build biblical convictions by walking humbly before God and humbly before each other. So in conclusion, from setting the foundation of the fear of the Lord and godly instructions in the book of Proverbs, to the celebration of marital love in the Song of Solomon that sets the tone for our families, to the conviction from Ecclesiastes that our ultimate motivation is not record-breaking success and a smooth, easy life, but Christ-centered, God-glorifying faithfulness and humility.

Biblical wisdom is clear, it's challenging, it's comforting, It embraces all of life, and it helps us to build family convictions in our precious children. May God help us, so to do. Let's pray. Great God of heaven, we thank thee so much, so very much, for the convictions, family convictions, that Proverbs, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, set before us from three different perspectives, but all to end in Jesus, who is wisdom par excellence, wisdom with a capital W, who will guide us in the way, all that we would then, with our children, buy the truth and sell it not, for thou, Lord Jesus, art the way, the truth, and the life. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.