Scott Brown's sermon, 'Trust in the Promises of God,' emphasizes the importance of standing on God's promises, particularly focusing on Proverbs 22:6, which advises parents to 'train up a child in the way he should go.' The sermon highlights the significance of trusting in God's promises and the role of parents in fulfilling their duties to ensure the spiritual development of their children. Brown discusses both universal and conditional promises, emphasizing that while God is in control, parental actions play a crucial role in a child's future. The sermon uses historical examples, such as the descendants of Jonathan Edwards and Max Jukes, to illustrate the lasting impact of parental diligence or negligence. Brown urges listeners to believe in God's promises wholeheartedly and to perform their parental duties with intention and consistency, highlighting the weight of responsibility that scripture places on parents.

Today's sermon is going to be based off Proverbs 22 verse 6, Proverbs 22, 6. Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this opportunity to be in your scripture today. Father we ask that you would penetrate our hearts Lord with your Holy Spirit, with your word and your truth, your truth that is unchanging, your truth that has stood the test of time Lord.

Father, we're grateful that you have left your holy word. We're grateful, Lord, that you have appointed elders to teach and to preach and to bring your word to us. Father, I ask that you give us each an understanding heart today. Father, I ask that you open our ears. And Father, I pray that much good would come from this sermon.

Thank you Jesus. Amen It really is a delight to come and bring these passages of scripture To us this morning These are great and precious promises Coming from the Word of God, you know, the people of God are the people of the book the people of the way and the way is described in so many places and and this is Another one of those great places What what is happening in the church of Jesus is that people are? Getting their lives rebuilt Really by standing on the promises of God by believing in God and following him, you know trusting in his ways and You know, we're a people who trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ Who have had the Holy Spirit enter our lives to begin a work of changing us all the way until it till the day we die and we're standing on the promises of God I was so delighted that we sang that song today it was in my mind all morning standing on the promises of Christ my King and that's really what we're doing to stand on the promise isn't just to believe it to have intellectual ascent but it's actually a stand on it to believe it to rest your whole weight on and that's that's really the whole proposition of Christianity.

It's not just a doctrine, it's actually a true life that expresses itself in following Jesus with your feet. And we have, in the church, we have no other rock to stand on you know all other ground is shifting sand the cultures of the world Are shifting like crazy it doesn't matter where you go The cultures of the world are always changing and that's true. That's definitely true in the United States of America things are happening that were unthinkable ten years ago five years ago three years ago and They're happening because of drifting away from the promises of God So but we're the people of the book who hang on the promises we stand on them and and and we love them We have no other rock to stand on So it really is a delight to Lay some of these things down. I have two things that I want to do this morning You have there's an outline in front of you It's a little bit more complex than what I'm gonna tell you I want to do I really I really just want to do two things this morning in my message. I want to praise God for his promises and explain one of them and Then I want to give an illustration of history And then I want to give an illustration of that promise of how a man fulfilled it in the Old Testament His name is Job.

I don't know if we're gonna get to Job. We'll just see if we get that far Now there are there are over there are over 3, 000 promises in the Bible they say some say either 8, 000 I don't know how many there are if you read the Bible. It's difficult because there's so many things that you can rest your life on and there are promises of everlasting life in the Bible in Acts chapter 16 31 believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved in John chapter 3 verses 14 through 16 Whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son That whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. What a promise that is their promises regarding forgiveness of sin that God that God will actually separate our sins as far as the east and as from the west in another place He promises to take your sins and put them in the bottom of the ocean in another place He promises to throw him behind his back. That's what he does when you repent of your sin.

These are promises of God To deal with sin, which is really our greatest problem. They're promises of God when you're in trouble But not just when you're in trouble There's a promise that you're gonna be in trouble all those who live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution God promises you're gonna be in trouble so don't worry about it because he also said in the world you shall you shall have tribulation but be of good cheer for I have overcome the world that's a promise how about that one their promises in times of trouble The Apostle Paul had a problem he could not get rid of. He prayed about it over and over again. And He realized that that thorn in the flesh wasn't coming out and God said to him my grace is sufficient all you need is my grace There are promises when you lack wisdom in James 1 5 if any of you lacks wisdom let him ask of God Who gives to all liberally and without reproach and it will be given to him, but there's a condition but let him ask in faith with no doubting for he who doubts is like the wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.

There are conditional promises in the Bible. There are promises for the atonement of your sin. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. That's Isaiah 53 verse 4. There are universal and unconditional promises like the one you find in in Genesis chapter 9 where God promises he'll never flood the earth again that's an unconditional absolute promise of God you're not going to see it You're not going to see a global flood again.

In Hebrews chapter 13, he says he'll never leave you or forsake you if you believe in him and love him. There are promises that he will finish the work that he began in you. He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. That's in Philippians 1 6. He promises that he'll come again.

And so there are there are promises of God. I don't know how many there are, but there's sure a lot of them. And it's really helpful to soak yourself in the promises of God. Well, let's go to one of the short promises of the Bible, and that is in Proverbs 22 verse 6. This is perhaps the most famous child-raising promise, promised to parents that exists in the Bible.

And it reads, train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, He will not depart from it. Now this is one of those promises that is easily dismissed. It often dies the death of a thousand qualifications. And why? Why?

Well there are theological nuances. There are, you know, there are disappointments that real people have. You know maybe those disappointments happen in my family or your family. You saw things you didn't want to see and you look at children who grew up in good homes you'll say, they grew up in good homes, but why did they go astray? What happened?

And not so fast, not so fast. Don't let Appearances distract you from the plain language of the inerrant wholly sufficient Absolutely pure and authoritative word of God. These are words of God. Don't dismiss them Don't try to throw them behind your back. These are the words of God.

Stand on the promises. Believe them. That's what I'm here to do this morning. I want you to believe this promise with all your heart. And I want you to embrace them.

The whole promise. Not just the blessing, but the condition of the blessing. Because actually they go together. A lot of people want to believe the blessing but they don't want to believe and follow and rest their whole weight on the condition This is a promise that has a condition Attached to it, but let's be very careful not to think that we're wiser than God that we've seen something in the world that contradicts this we don't know what God's doing with people we don't know what timing we don't know how he is working in people's lives we don't know that we're not fortune tellers So if you look and see somebody that some family and something happened, don't prejudge it. God's in control.

He has it all in His hand. But it shouldn't cause us to throw away a promise of God You know Jesus and Moses said man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Trust in the Lord with all your heart said Solomon, and lean not on your own understanding. Don't lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your path straight.

So don't dismiss the authoritative word of God because of the fallible observation and conclusion that you made about somebody's life and what's going to happen to them. You know that child that fell into sin after they were in their good home, who knows what's going to happen to them? They may be like Manasseh, who was one of the worst kings of Israel, who was burning his children to sacrifice them to Baal. His dad was Josiah, one of the greatest godliest kings Israel ever had, Judah ever had. What happened?

God had a plan. Don't prejudge. Manasseh turned to the Lord at the very, very end of his life. We're not God. We don't have the discernment of God.

Believe the promise. So rather than to qualify it to death, here's what I want us to do this morning, is to have an unwavering confidence in every single word that is in this verse. And we have been given, as the apostle Peter says, exceedingly great and precious promises. Proverbs 22, 6 is one of them. And we should not dismiss it because a child in a Christian family went astray.

Let's be careful with that. We'll talk about this in a little bit more detail later. If you see this outline you'll see I'm gonna try to tease this out. If you dismiss this one you might just as well dismiss if anyone lacks wisdom let him ask of God. If you dismiss this one you might just as well dismiss if anyone lacks wisdom let him ask of God If you dismiss this when you just might as well Dismiss the one honor your father and mother so that your days may be long and you'll find a child that was killed at 16 years old and you'll dismiss the promise because he didn't grow that old well you know God's promises are a little bit deeper than our understanding You might just as well dismiss John 14 13 Whatever you ask in my name that I will do that the father may be glorified in the son if you ask anything in my name I will do it.

If you want to dismiss Proverbs 22, 6 you're going to need to dismiss a lot in the Bible and distrust God's wisdom in his sovereign hand in the fulfilling of all of his promises. So I Want to praise God and I want us to be a people who praise God for his for every single word that's in his Holy testimony to us Okay, got that That's building block number one building block number two. What kind of promise is this? Is it even a promise? I've been calling it a promise.

Maybe you have a different word a better word. Well, I have actually probably ten or twelve words that also might describe this but notice first of all it's a conditional promise in other words the blessings of the promise are experienced by those who are diligent to obey the condition You know everybody likes the blessings of the promise. It's the conditions that are the the sticking point you know and The blessings in this promise are experienced by those who are diligent to obey the condition to train up a child in the way in which he should go so there's a responsibility to fulfill by the way that's really kind of going to be the emphasis of what I want to say to us is there's a responsibility to fulfill. Do not ignore the condition and the command. You could call this verse if you want a foreshadowing of an outcome.

You could call this verse a reasonable expectation. You could call this verse an expected probability or a forecast or a forewarning or a reasonable calculation but it's a condition it's a conditional calculation and reasonable expectation or promise whatever kind of language you want to use for parenting, actually for success, in a child's life actually. That's who's the winner. The child is the winner here. What the parent does makes the child win.

That's the idea. You got that? Don't miss that. It matters actually what you do. If you pay attention to what you're supposed to do.

Is there stuff you're supposed to do? And this conditional promise, it hinges on God's sovereign wisdom and how he fulfills it. But the whole thrust of this is what you do matters. Now, it's not a promise that your children will be converted. But it's a promise that what you do absolutely matters.

Stand on the promises, believe every word of God, embrace the whole promise, not just the blessing, but the condition. We like, we kind of like, you know, our natural inflection point is to be half promised believers. We just want to believe the blessing, but we don't want to do the duty that's associated with the blessing. This talks about a duty. It's a four-letter word in the Christian community today, duty.

Okay, what does it actually mean? Well, let's drill down a little bit deeper here. Of course, we've already said, I want to just say it again, there's a, this is conditional upon obedience and it really is a hard reality to grasp. And people don't want, we don't want to believe it because it puts too much on us Now One thing that I think we should conclude from this is the parents should not expect the results without the obedience That's how conditional promises work All the conditional promises in the Bible work that way. This is the same kind.

So now there is an interpretive Controversy on how to interpret this verse. I'm going to give you two options you choose. I'm not sure which one it is so It can mean first of all that if you train up a child in the way he should go by obeying all of God's commands and you do what you're supposed to do and you fill your home with the glory and the beauty of the kingdom of Jesus Christ and you teach them To deny their flesh and to walk in obedience to God if you do that when they get old They're gonna do the same thing. That's one way that this is can legitimately be interpreted And it'll be a blessing to your children, you know, until the day they die. They're going to experience the blessings of what you did positively for the rest of their life.

Well, the other way to interpret it, this is a second way. There's actually, I think, a sound exegetical case for interpreting this another way and That is that if you just let your child go his own way if you just let your child do his own thing If you just let your kid be his selfish little self and you just let your kid get whatever he wants And you just let your kid get whatever he wants and you just let your kid Feel whatever he wants and treat everybody he wants any way he wants when he grows up. That's what he's gonna do So If this is the correct interpretation then I mean parents are put on notice if you're negligent and Negligent with biblical commands your children are gonna reap your negligence So in this sense, you know, it's that if you're a bad parent, you're going to have rotten kids. That's basically how it's going to work. Expect it.

So Frankly, I'm not sure which is the right interpretation. But in a lot of ways it doesn't really matter. Whichever one you choose, one thing is really clear. The future of your children is profoundly affected by your behavior. The future of your children, whether for good or for evil, is profoundly affected by what you do what you do your duty oh there's that four letter word again duty what you train is what you get everybody who owns a company has ever owned a company knows this.

You create a culture by creating expectations in that company. If you don't have clear expect, everybody's going to have clear expectations, but if you have clear expectations for, you know, for a high level of professionalism and service, and you build that culture, you're going to get it. And you can go into businesses all around here. They actually believe this. They actually believe that what you do matters.

Because it does matter, and the Bible tells you so. You can have a crummy culture in your family if you want you can get it just by creating it and God puts parents in in the driver's seat to create culture in a family. You know, so that's your job as parents, create an amazing wonderful culture in your family. That's what God gave parents to do. Well unfortunately There's all this sin in a family.

You know, children sin. You have sin in your own heart. What are you going to do? Well, you have the Word of God to guide you to create the kind of culture that really is good. But the emphasis here is on what parents do.

Not what they intend, not what they hope for, not even what they pray for. Now I didn't say that to diminish the role of prayer in a family we need to be praying but that's not what this says I'm just saying This says it matters what you do And I think I think what Solomon is driving at is this and especially you you parents with young children, please Please recognize what's here early patterns determined later patterns you've got little kids in your house and they got patterns guess where they came from they came from their sin nature and you've got to get a hold on those patterns you got a shape and direct those patterns and cultivate new affections you know. Most children you know aren't born with great affections you know great affections. Well they just want whatever they want whenever they want it. And they're going to scream and cry and kick and fall down on the ground until they get it.

And you're their parents. And your job is to create culture in your family. So that you don't have a nasty culture. And that culture doesn't go into the church, and then it goes into that person's company, and then it goes into that person's government, because it all starts in the home The home is the most powerful leverage point in the in the world So it really matters if you so here's let me just go a little bit deeper on this You know you guys are raising children and also your children listen to me so if you let children just be selfish when they're little then don't be surprised that they're gonna be selfish when they get big If you allow laziness in your children when they're little I Think you ought to just chalk it up They're gonna be lazy when they get old unless you do something about it because it matters what you do If you're gonna If you're gonna let them use unprofitable speech, jabber on, yell at their siblings, backtalk you, they're gonna go backtalk their boss, they're gonna go backtalk their pastor. You know, a husband is going to back talk his wife.

A wife is going to back talk her husband. So don't let your children back talk, you know. I mean, if you let sibling rivalry roll hard in your family you don't confront it then you just you just ought to expect rivalry wherever that kid goes. The kid will probably become a reviler of some kind. Lack of prayer in your house, negligence in observing the Lord's Day when they're young, you set them on a course to do the same thing for the rest of their life.

You know, if you're a husband and you're always talking trash and harsh to your wife, don't it, I mean, you just need to expect that your son is going to do the same thing. If you're a rebellious wife and you don't respect your husband, your daughter is probably going to do the same thing. That's what's being taught here. Stand on the promises of God. Believe them.

Believe them with all your heart. Every word of God is pure. Every word of God is true. Believe every word in this sentence not just the half promise but the whole promise the duty and the delight because delight actually is an outgrowth of duty and that's true about about everything in life okay so Let's go to the importance of the duty. We've talked about what kind of promise it is.

We've talked about what it actually means. And thirdly, now we're going to talk about the duty and the guilt of neglecting it. And I want to bring out some commentators. I said that I've read theologians. I'm not sure how many.

I lost track. I had stacks of commentators trying to tell me what this means. Because in my heart, I wanted to do what everybody else does and that's just dismiss it and qualify it and let it die the death of a thousand qualifications so that really I don't really I'm not really obligated to do my duty Charles Bridges wrote a commentary wonderful commentary on the book of Proverbs. He says it, he explains it like this, if the promise is not fulfilled it's because the duty was not performed. Sometimes you have to read people from a different era to understand what something means he continues expect the fulfillment of the paternal promise as confidently as any other free promise of the gospel Well, that's what I'm trying.

I'm trying to encourage us to accept It's just like every other promise of the gospel every other conditional promise of the gospel Exercise faith in the full energy of Christian diligence and in the will. Don't just leave it up to your feelings do your duty exercise the full energy of your will Charles Spurgeon Speaks of a similar promise in Psalm 103 verses 17 and 18 he makes it clear that parental faithfulness in keeping God's commands causes his righteousness to fall on children that's what that's what Psalm 103 17 and 18 says Spurgeon interpreted this to mean children of the righteous are not, however, promised the Lord's mercy without stipulation. And this verse completes the statement of the last, adding, to such as keep his covenant, and to those that remember his commandments to do them." Spurgeon says, the parents must be obedient, and the children too. So all this to say, parents, what you do matters. And God blesses his own ways.

He blesses the ways that he commands. And don't expect godly children if you don't obey God's commands. And they're very specific things that God has commanded us to do as parents. And if you don't do them, don't expect to experience the blessing that's promised you know a Proverbs 10 5 makes it really clear that it's shameful to the parent to have a lazy child. It's like the parent is shamed because they have a lazy bum for a kid.

In Proverbs 19, 26, You have the same for dishonorable children in Proverbs 28 7 you you just read that a Parent is shamed for having a gluttonous child You have a gluttonous child, you know, Proverbs says you should look at yourself. And it's a shame, shame on you for having a gluttonous child, shame on you for having a dishonorable child, Shame on you for having a disobedient, disordered child who doesn't listen to adults when they tell them to stop doing something. Shame on you parents when you have that. That's the thrust of those verses I just cited. Proverbs 29.15 says, a child left to himself brings shame to his mother.

If you leave your child to yourself, you know, people are gonna point their finger at you, mother, because you didn't discipline that child. Parents reap what they sow, and when your children are disobedient, we should look at ourselves first. And let's don't be so quick to absolve ourselves of culpability. The overwhelming force of Biblical truth on parenting decidedly remarkably heavily places the weight on parents it's what it does read the Bible read it read it to your eyes bleed you're gonna find that thrust you'll you will find you will find some qualifying elements and some different things that happen There are there's some edge unusual situations There are things that happen in narratives in scripture that That gives you a different idea but the didactic texts on child raising put the weight on parents responsibility the Bible teaches that a child's future hangs on the teaching he receives when he's a child and Now there are situations in the Bible that are actually very clear like let's take Esau. I Mean Esau from his mother's womb Was wicked he didn't need his parents to make him wicked.

He was wicked in his mother's womb. Judas was the son of perdition. Before the foundation of the world he was determined to be a son who hated God and he was a thief and a liar and he walked with Jesus. So there are these other kinds of narratives. We all really do believe that what parents do matters.

What is the one thing that almost every person in prison has in common? What is that? Everybody knows fatherlessness or a totally messed up family Everybody knows who has read any statistical analysis of Sodomy of homosexuality knows that the common denominator is fatherlessness. The same thing with prostitution. The common denominator for prostitutes is fatherlessness.

They didn't have a tender hearted father and so they went everywhere else and they had no no one to restrain them and take take take them to the living water. A dad let that daughter do whatever she wanted and she got it. So you know everybody believes that it matters what you do you know the prison system tells you that you know demographics tell you that about various categories of sin patterns in the world you know they're they're tied to this thing you know you know every by the way, every youth pastor knows this too. Every youth pastor knows that overwhelmingly, not exclusively, but so overwhelmingly, it's not even funny, the only kids that really stay with the faith after they leave high school almost exclusively not absolutely exclusively those kids had parents who loved them and cared for them and they had happy homes. And they were real and they weren't hypocritical.

Every youth pastor knows that. I know hundreds of pastors today that abandoned youth ministry for that reason. Hundreds. It's obvious. So anyway, we often hope in the promises, but we forget the conditions of the promises we expect the blessings but we don't obey the conditions the problem is not with the promise the problem is with us So we should not expect the promises to be fulfilled unless we keep the conditions.

Okay, nuances and exceptions to consider. I'm going to give you four. Four other things here. First, God is in control. God is in control about how and when he fulfills his promises.

I think we have to recognize that God has ways that are not our ways. And we're not going to understand why everything happens. Parents should be very careful not to be caught up in too much grief just knowing that God's in control. It's not over yet. It's just not over.

So don't prejudge a disaster. It's right to weep over the disaster, but don't pre-judge it and don't over-exalt your understanding of what God is doing in that child's life. You don't know. Secondly, it's a proverb. It is a proverb.

It's a promise and it's a proverb. It's a promise in proverbs. But, you know, proverbs are very interesting and if you read proverbs, you see this in many of the Proverbs the Proverbs I think can be slightly distinguished from universal promises they a proverb is a general rule it's a normative principle there are exceptions to the rule but it's a norm It's it's it's a rule that you can count on most of the time That's why I said earlier it's an it's a reasonable expectation You can forecast this to a degree Yet not with perfection a lot of Proverbs are like that. We could go through some of them Charles Hodge is speaking of this gives an example. He's speaking of Proverbs 22 6, but he gives an example of the first command with promise that you might that your days may be long that you might live long you know on the earth he says some obedient children have are short-lived some of the diligent are poor because in Proverbs it speaks about if you're diligent you'll be rich.

What's true most of the time, The hand of the diligent makes rich. Diligence as a general rule does secure riches and obedient parents as a general rule have prosperous and happy children. That's how I think we should explain this as a proverb. The proverb is fulfilled, I'm quoting from Joel Beeke, in so far as it serves God's glory and for their good. And thirdly, there are exceptions, like Esau, like Judas, like others there is the doctrine of election as well One has to consider the doctrine of election But you don't dismiss one thing for another you carry them together Because you're not you're not the Controller of how these things work God is John Trapp says means should Neither be trusted nor neglected You cannot neglect them but God is in control of them.

So trust in the promises of God and do your duty. Do with all your heart. Examine yourself to see if you're falling short in any of the things God has commanded you to do. There are many promises like this in the Bible. The fourth nuance Is that this is not a guarantee of salvation the Bible doesn't guarantee your children will be saved if you obey them But he does promise that What you do in your home is going to go on in this world Now these nuances I don't believe should nullify the promise.

We should stand on the promise and let God do what he's going to do in the end with it. The whole promise, the duty and the delightful result of the promise okay here's some applications take this time now now In your family life and in the in the stream of history of your family Some of you have families with a lot of little kids and some have older kids and God has you in a particular moment in your family life Examine what you're doing examine your duties Give a thorough analysis of what you're doing with your children. And don't let this moment pass by. You know, are you keeping God's commands as a parent? Are you teaching them diligently when you sit in your house when you walk by the way when you lie down when you rise up?

When you teach them is it in your heart in other words is it real? Does it really come as an upwelling of the power of the Holy Spirit? Are you ministering to them in love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control are you doing your part in this by submitting to God and out of the overflow of your heart and the power of the Holy Spirit working, that you're working as well. Do you heed Psalm 78? Where Asaph, the writer of Psalm 78, you know, he speaks of a family life where you're declaring the great deeds of God to three generations And you're describing how great and marvelous God is.

Are you teaching your children who God is? Who is God? That's the most valuable thing That anyone can go out of a home with is who is God? The almighty sovereign omniscient omnipotent omnipresent God you know if you don't teach your daughter who God is she's always gonna be trying to figure out how to find herself. And she's going to end up roadkill on the desires of everybody else and all the desires of her heart.

Unless she knows that God is God. And God is in control. And she's not the controller of her little image God don't let your children leave home without the doctrine of God Do you discipline them promptly Proverbs 13 24 says He who spares his rod hates his son. Are you sparing the rod? And it says here, He who loves him disciplines him promptly.

In other words, Are you consistent and thorough and careful and comprehensive in dealing with sin? Are you doing it promptly or do you just let it go on? Well, here's what everybody knows what happens when you just let it go on The pressure builds that child does this and that and you get hotter and hotter and then you explode in anger and Then you discipline them in anger and you expect them to respond in in wisdom and they they can't do it Don't expect wisdom to come out of your lack of wisdom Are you doing it promptly Is the Word of God in your heart? Are you just going through the motions? Are you exasperating your children?

We talked about this a couple weeks ago where the apostle Paul says your fathers don't exasperate your children and To the Colossians he says, you know, don't don't treat your children to make them discouraged. Don't let don't let them get discouraged Don't say thanks to them. Don't live in a certain way. Don't break your promises whatever it is That discourages your children parents can discourage their children and A lot of times parents just give themselves a pass and say my kid is such a rotten kid But guess what You've been discouraging him. It's your fault.

Sin always begets sin. You know what that's like. You yell at your wife and she yells back at you. Now you have two sinners. So, you know, Are you exasperating your children?

Are you praying together as a family? Proverbs 22 makes it really clear. Don't expect to see the blessings of the promise unless you obey them. The Bible teaches you what to do and it makes a difference in your children and the weight of the biblical responsibility particularly in the didactic passages of scripture are heavily on the weight of parents Responsibility and culpability for what their children do There's very little in the Bible that says parents you did everything you could I know you did everything you could it's not your fault that isn't what we want to say that but that's not what the Bible says I want to close with an illustration from history. I won't get a chance to get to Job.

I'm gonna do that at the family camp I'm gonna preach about this the family camp They're very remarkable activity in Job Very surprising things in in Job's fatherhood He was a He was a living illustration of the father who did exactly what was here and he did it. He did it his whole life long and then he raised ten children and they died and he did it right up to the time they died. How about that? Well more on that later. It's an amazing story.

I want to quote from a book that I made all my daughters read when they were young Elizabeth Dodds biography of Sarah Edwards Sarah Edwards the wife of Jonathan Edwards the book is called marriage to a difficult man And she she compares two men in this book She compares Jonathan Edwards and another man who lived about the same time and their family life Now Jonathan Edwards died in 1758 By the time you get to 1800, there were 1400 of Jonathan Edwards documented descendants. 1400 of them. So that's what she speaks about. Of the 1400, by 1900, there were 13 college presidents, 65 professors, 100 lawyers, and a dean of an outstanding law school. 30 judges, 66 physicians.

Ahead of a medical school 80 holders of public office three US senators mayors of three large cities the vice president a vice president of the United States, a controller of the US Treasury. Then she talks about the women. The women were repeatedly described as, quote, great readers or, quote, highly intelligent, unquote, although the girls were not sent to college back then somebody was teaching them at home and they were teaching them a lot they edited 18 journals and periodicals These are the girls They entered the ministry in platoons this family sent 100 missionaries overseas as Well as stocking many mission boards with lay trustees many large banks banking houses and insurance companies have been directed by them. They have been owners or superintendents of large coal mines, large iron plants, and vast oil interests. And silver mines.

There are scarcely an American industry that has not had one of this family among its chief promoters. The family has no pauperism, no crime, none in an insane asylum. On the contrary, they represented the highest usefulness. On the other hand, there's another man. His name was Max Jukes.

He lived in New York City. In 1900 there were 1200 of his descendants. 310 were vagrants, 440 had their lives physically wrecked by debauchery and uncleanness, 130 were sent to prison for an average of 13 years each, 7 were murderers, 100 were alcoholics, 60 were habitual thieves, and there were 190 prostitutes. They collectively cost the state of New York over $1.2 million in that span that overlapped the 17 and 1800s. Well that's just an illustration from history.

We've heard the Bible. It really matters what you do with your family. It matters what you teach them. It matters how often you teach them. It matters the way you teach them.

In the power of the Holy Spirit, or the power of the flesh, or anger, or wrath, or whether it's for your own glory or whether it's out of your own pride or whether it's out of hip-hop, it matters. It matters how you do it and it matters what you do. Now, Some of you parents kind of have two families. You got the old kids and the young kids You know what often happens? You kind your zeal wanes with the little ones and they don't get they don't get the same training as the older ones Be aware of that.

It happens all the time. There are ways it happened with me. You teach your older children and you think you did it, but you didn't do it with the younger ones. You didn't stay with it. You didn't continue in the intensity that was really required to train them up.

And so you have a younger set of children who are way unclear about things that the older children absolutely know because you poured into them. It happens all the time. I'm just laying that out as a warning. You know, we have so many big families here. It's what happens to us.

So beware and Don't let it happen to you. It's really very interesting. The most impressive thing you can do in this world is the least impressive thing you can do. It happens in private, it happens in quietness, It happens in your home when you sit in your house When you walk by the way when you lie down and when you rise up And I just want us all to ask is there anything holding you back anything keeping you from this any Longing in your heart that's causing you to lose the intensity that your children need from you now? Any schedule thing, is there anything, anything barring you from having this kind of presence in your family?

It really matters. Every man works for a corporation that's trying to push him around. Men have to be really careful with that and deliberate. So stand on the promises. Believe them.

Embrace them with your whole heart. We have no other rock to stand on but the Word of God. Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22, 6. Believe every word.

Would you pray with me? Lord, your ways are not our ways. We thank you that you've given us ways that take us out of our own selfishness, out of our own patterns, out of our own idolatry, out of our own man-pleasing, out of our own pleasures, out of our own narcissism, to do what's good and right, to do what's a blessing, to see the great and precious exceeding promises and To take them with a whole heart not a half heart not a half promise but the whole promise With our whole heart Lord. I pray that you would do that with us that you would Help us with these things. Oh Lord, we thank you for the mercies of Jesus Christ.

His tender mercies in all of our sins, all of our failures. We've all failed as parents in so many ways, every one. So Lord we pray that you'd have mercy upon us and also incite us and excite us for the work that you have for us to do amen Thank you.