The sermon 'Trained Families' by Peter Allison, based on Proverbs 22:6-16, explores the elements that contribute to a prosperous society, particularly focusing on the role of family training, financial prudence, sexual morality, generosity, and discipline. It highlights the literary structure of chiasms in Proverbs, which emphasizes central themes by mirroring ideas before and after a main point. The sermon interprets 'train up a child in the way he should go' as a command to parents to tailor moral and religious instruction to counteract a child's innate foolishness, emphasizing that it is a promise rather than a mere maxim. It addresses the debate over the meaning of the phrase and emphasizes the responsibility of parents to train their children, while acknowledging the role of God's sovereignty in election. The sermon also comforts parents dealing with guilt when their children stray, by reminding them that salvation and moral upbringing are ultimately acts of divine grace.

Proverbs chapter 22, to read God's word beginning at verse 6. Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. The rich rules over the poor and the barber is a servant to the lender. He who sows iniquity will reap sorrow, and the rod of his anger will fail. He who has a generous eye will be blessed, for he gives of his bread to the poor.

Cast out the scoffer, and contention will leave, yet strife and reproach will cease. He who loves purity of heart and has grace on his lips, the King will be his friend. The eyes of the Lord preserve knowledge, but he overthrows the words of the faithless. The lazy man says, there is a lion outside, I will be slain in the streets. The mouth of an immoral woman is a deep pit.

He who is abhorred by Jehovah will fall there. Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child. The rod of correction will drive it far from him. He who oppresses the poor, who increases riches, and he who gives to the rich, will surely come to poverty. May Jehovah bring his judgments of old to mind and comfort us in them.

Almighty Heavenly Father, we ask now that you would prepare the soil of our hearts to hear your word. We ask that you would give us understanding of this truth that is in your word. We ask that you would give us a right understanding and that you would apply it to our hearts and we ask that you would sanctify also these sinful lips that they might proclaim what is holy and true. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, last week we started this chapter with the first five verses dealing with a good name or a good character, what Proverbs calls a good name, and saw how that is foundational to a prosperous culture, this importance of character.

It is better than silver and gold, better than riches. And so it is the foundation. Well this week as we look at the next section, verses 6-16, we have a chiasm again, as we have had many times in Proverbs. We've had them throughout. They particularly fill this particular section of Proverbs, which extends from chapter 10 all the way through here, verse 16 of chapter 22.

This is essentially the second major collection of proverbs in this book. And it abounds in these chiasms. So we have in this section another chiasm. We actually have two interlocking chiasms. These are very helpful, I think, in understanding the message of proverbs It's a literary device a chiasm.

You remember it's a it's its purpose is to in a lit in a literary way emphasize a central point by by making similar points on either side before and after the main central point. And so we have this section is another chiasm that begins with verse 6, train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. So That is paired with a similar verse in verse 15. Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction will drive it far from him. These are both speaking in a similar vein, that a prosperous society is built with well-trained families.

So a foundation is a good name, a good character, and Now we are seeing some of the details that go into what good character is comprised of. The first point, the first theme, is that a prosperous society is built with trained families. Secondly, if we move in a verse, we see that the next point of a prosperous society is that it has minimal debt. The rich rules over the poor and the barber is a servant to the lender and that matches B' down in verse 16, He who oppresses the poor to increase his riches and he who gives to the rich will surely come to poverty Now these are a little out of order, and I don't know exactly why but it may be Because there are two Chiasms and we'll look at the second chiasm and they are in order in the second chiasm That may be it may be some other reason that the Holy Spirit saw fit to Put these out of order But the third the third then point in our in our chiasm is it heads to the central point is that a prosperous? Society flees fornication And we see that by looking at verses 8, He who sows iniquity will reap sorrow, and the rod of his anger will fail.

With verse 14, the mouth of an immoral woman is a deep pit, and he who is abhorred by Jehovah will fall there." Then the next element of a prosperous culture is that they labor diligently to give to those who are in need. Verse 9, He who has a generous eye will be blessed, for he gives of his bread to the poor. And that matches the D' down in verse 13 about the lazy man who doesn't even go out to work because he says there's a lion outside, I'll be slain in the streets. Diligent labor and giving to those in need. Then in the next level is a prosperous society needs church discipline.

Cast out the scoffer. Cast out. In the New Testament we read about people being cast out of the synagogue. That was the discipline of the Old Testament Church. Casting out.

Cast out the scoffer and contention will leave, yes strife and reproach will cease. And then in the counterpart in verse 12, the eyes of Jehovah preserve knowledge, but He overthrows the words of the faithless. The Lord overthrows, because remember Jesus told the disciples to whom He gave the keys of the Kingdom that what is bound on earth would be bound in heaven and what is loosed on earth would be loosed in heaven. And so what the earthly courts do is to be a reflection of what is happening in heaven. So there is this one chiasm, and then pointing to this main point that he who loves purity of heart and has grace on his lips, the king, the king will be his friend.

But there's also another interlocking chiasm right in these same verses and if you look in your handout you can see it's a little bit shorter and it starts with the verse 9 and verse 16 about a generous culture cares for the poor he was generous I will be blessed he gives his bread to the poor and a prime he oppresses he oppresses the poor to increase his riches, and he who gives to the rich will surely come to poverty. So there those two now, that verse 16 is fitting. And then the second point is that a prosperous culture has strong family and church discipline. And this is the cast out the scoffer and the foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction will drive it far from him. These are the tools of discipline in the family and in the church, the rod and the church censors, that of handing someone over to Satan that their soul may be saved.

And then the third one there is C in the second chiasm, is that The King befriends the righteous and overthrows the wicked. He who loves purity of heart and has grace on his lips, the King will be his friend. But in C', the mouth of an immoral woman is a deep pit. He who is abhorred by the Lord will fall into the pit. And that's driving them to the main point, the eyes of the Lord preserve knowledge, but He overthrows The words of the faithless.

This is what God does. This is how God governs His universe. Proverbs is telling us how God governs His universe. You want to know what God will do. What kind of a king is he like?

What does he reward? What does he bless? And what does he overthrow? What Proverbs here is telling us? Well, we're not going to be able to get to all of this today.

It became obvious. We're just not going to get that far, in fact we really aren't going to get off of the first A here dealing with this proverb to train up a child in the way that he should go. And that is, the reason is that there is considerable debate Today about what these words mean train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old He will not depart from it There is considerable debate about even what these very words mean, train. What does that mean? Does that mean dedicate or inaugurate or does it mean to disciple?

Or there is debate about the should, should go. Some would say that the word should should not be there. That it's not talking about the way that our children ought to go, but that it's speaking about the way that they will naturally go, their natural inclination. There is debate about what the word child is referring to. Is this a young man?

Is this a baby? Is this someone in between? Who is this talking about? There is debate on the very sense of this verse. Is this speaking about how parents are to train and teach their children from a young age?

Or is this focusing on their transition of young adults into adulthood and talking about them becoming a provider for their own families and something that we are to do in that regard. There is debate on even how to take this verse. Is this verse a promise? Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he won't depart from it. Or is this just a proverb, a maxim that's true in general but you can't depend on it.

You can't say that it's always true. Some would say that this verse is a sarcastic command. Not a command we're actually supposed to do. This is really sarcasm and irony in this verse. And it's saying, train up the child in the way that he is naturally inclined to go and let him do whatever his natural sinful self would lead him to do.

If you train him that way, then even when he is old he won't depart from that sinful way. In other words, this is a cautionary warning proverb that's saying, do that and you will regret it. In other words, don't do it. And it's not a promise. It's a warning about the eternal consequences of not training our children.

And so what do we need to do with this? So I thought it would be worthwhile, given that this proverb is so frequently quoted and so well known by many people, to take a moment and to look at what does this proverb say. And so the words then in this proverb, these key words, the first one is child here, na'ar, a child. What is that referring to? Well it is frequently used of young men in the Bible.

This word is used many many times in the Bible so we can get a pretty good idea just by looking in the scriptures as to what this word means. David when he was anointed by king by Samuel is called a na'ar, a child. He was called this when he fought Goliath. If you read the chapters of his battle with Goliath, he is called this word, a child. It is used of Benjamin, Jacob's son, in the discussions about taking him down to Egypt.

Remember Judah and the brothers were having talks with Jacob trying to get him to let Benjamin go down to Egypt and that uses this word. This word, this na'ar is used to describe Joseph when he is in his late twenties as he is about to become ruler of all of Egypt, which we know he did when he was thirty. Solomon, the writer of Proverbs, uses it of himself after he has become king. Remember when he prayed, the Lord said to him, what would he, he had the Lord to give him and he prayed, his answer to the Lord was, Lord I am a child, I don't know how to come and go, I need wisdom. Solomon used it to describe himself when he was an older man Right now older man, but and and a young man as King he's King It's but This word in our is used of Moses when he was hidden three months old as a three month old baby.

This is where it is used to describe him. It's used of Samuel when he was three years old. It's used of Samson when it said that the child would be a Nazirite from the womb to the day of his death. It is used to describe Ichabod, the grandson of Eli, on the day that he was born. So a newborn infant is used, this word is used for.

It's used to describe David's son who died, the first son with Bathsheba who died at a week old. So it's a newborn infant again. So we see then this word is used, child is used to describe someone from infancy, newborn, even unborn, to young adulthood. So if you were going to pick a word to describe something parents ought to be doing throughout their lives of their sons and daughters, this would be it. See, this is a word, it's not limited.

There's a word for nursing infants, that's not this word. There's a word for young men that's different from this word. This word is used, this is an R, it Describes a child from pre-born Infancy all the way up to a new king in the land a young new king a young man And so this this word that I think is is a is the perfect word to describe something that ought to be happening beginning from infancy and continuing throughout the life. Now the second word in this proverb that we want to look at is this word, train up. Train up.

It's a command. It's an imperative. It's command of God. It's something God is telling us to do, unless we can show that it's an ironic command or an antithetical proverb telling us what we ought not to do and using some irony in doing it, this text is a command. It's a verb that is very infrequently used in the Hebrew Bible.

Very infrequently. So it's more difficult in that sense to know what it means. We can't just look at hundreds of uses in the Bible. And so Bruce Waltke, the Old Testament scholar, points out that outside the Bible, and this word is used, it's an Aramaic loan word actually, loan from the Aramaic, and when it's used with inanimate objects it can mean initiate or put something into use, initiate something. When it's used to personal objects like it is in this verse a child Then it can mean to a custom to a custom Someone to something to get them used to something but They in the Hebrew Bible Walkie says that this word means to dedicate.

To dedicate. The noun form, you probably recognize, the noun form of this verb, This is a verb to train up. The noun form is the word Hanukkah. The feast of Hanukkah celebrates the rededication of the temple at the time of the Maccabeans when they conquered it from the Seleucid Empire. And so in this verse, Walkie says, quote, it is used with reference to the education of youth and signifies to initiate or perhaps consecrate and so orient and commit him in the appropriate moral correction that his innate folly dictates.

Let me read that again. It is used with reference to the education of youth, and it signifies to initiate or perhaps consecrate, and so to orient him and commit him in the appropriate moral correction that his innate folly dictates." Now that's a lengthy description about this word, but I think it quite well comprehends the command, train up. Train up is in other words a good summary word, a good descriptive phrase of what this word is and what it is commanding us to do. Now we are to train then, we are to train up a child, that's the object of the training here, it's the direct object of the sentence, Train up a child in the way that he should go. So this command to train up is literally, in the way that he should go, that phrase literally is according to the mouth of his way.

Train up a child. Literally, the literal idiom here is, according to the mouth of his way. What does that mean? Well, it's obviously an idiom to bring the word mouth into this and And it referred according to the mouth That that Hebrew phrase refers To what someone or something? Dictates that makes sense right According to the mouth is according to what someone or something is dictating.

For example in Genesis 45, 21 uses this phrase according to the mouth of to describe the commandment of Pharaoh And Joseph gave them wagons according to the commandment of Pharaoh. It's the same, the exact same phrase. According to the mouth of Pharaoh is what that literally says. According to the mouth of Pharaoh is according to the dictates, according to what Pharaoh has commanded. And in Exodus 17.1 this phrase, according to the mouth of Jehovah is translated according to the command of Jehovah.

In other places this phrase according to the mouth of Jehovah is translated according to the mind of Jehovah or according to the word of Jehovah. But in each of these cases, according to the mouth of Jehovah, is referring to what Jehovah dictates. So we can say this phrase is referring to what someone or something dictates. Now in this case, this is according to the mouth of his way. Train up the child According to the mouth of his way so that if we if we take this Principle of what we think according to the mouth of means it would be according to the dictates of His way Remember this isn't it says that this is not a personal thing here.

This is a way and the way Proverbs always uses to mean the path of somebody's life the course of their life To train it up according to their way. It's a neutral statement this the way Your way it by itself meaning it's neither good nor bad It's used for example Proverbs 16 17 The highway of the upright is to depart from evil. He who keeps his way preserves his soul. There it's talking about the way of somebody who is wise. Or in Proverbs 11, the righteousness of the blameless will direct his way aright.

Or Proverbs 14, the wisdom of the prudent is to understand his way. So those are all references to where the way is referring to the way of someone who is wise. But it could also mean a different kind of a way, the way of a fool. And if we remember the hermeneutical principle this morning of paying attention to the chiasm in interpreting these Proverbs, we are going to look down to verse 15 which says that foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child. And we see then that the way of a child is foolishness.

That's the same word for child, R, used in verse 15. Proverbs has a number of things to say about the way of such a child. It groups the way of a child like this with the simple, the gullible. It says that he is devoid of understanding. It tells parents not to withhold correction from this child, for if you beat him with the rod he won't die, but you will save his soul from Sheol." And it says that if this person is left to himself, will bring his mother shame.

In other words, the way of the child, the way of the Na'ar, is foolishness. And so the command to train up our child according to the dictates of his way is a command to tailor or to adjust our training from the very beginning to his or if it's a daughter to her life to train out this foolish way. To quote Bruce Walkie again, he says, quote, This proverb implies that the religious and moral instruction of the youth should be oriented from the first to counteract his foolish way. The fool's mouth cries out for a beating. This instruction and discipline must not be withheld from him.

The consequence of this strong spiritual initiative is that the dedicated youth will never depart from the original initiative, from that original dedication. The New King James and many others have trained up a child in the way in which he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it. But it would seem according to Bruce Walkie and many other translations, that it would be better translated even. And I think in looking at that, that is true. Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old, he will not depart from it.

He won't depart from it as soon as he leaves your house, he won't depart from it in middle age, even when he is old, he will not depart from it. Now grammatically, this verse could be a sarcastic or ironic command. Train up the child in the way he should go, according to the dictates of his way, and when he is old, he won't depart from it. He will be locked and stuck in that sinful way. But there are three contextual problems that lead me not to reject this view.

First one is, Waukee notes, that this would mean that youth obtained old age in his folly, but the message of Proverbs is that it is the wise, not the fools who obtained the gray hair of old age. And secondly, You notice this command is a command to do something, to proactively do something. It doesn't take any work to let a child go his own foolish way. They do that without any effort on our part whatsoever. It takes effort and work to train them differently.

Takes a lot of work, takes a lot of prayer, a lot of instruction and training. It's repetitive and it's work. It wouldn't be any work to do, it wouldn't be any training involved if we were going to let a child go his own way. In fact, the example that Gordon Hugenberger gives, one exegete, gives of this type of sarcastic proverb, and he's of the view that it's this type of proverb, is Proverbs 19.27, which says, Stop listening to instruction, my son, and you will stray from the words of knowledge.� See that involves stopping something that is taking an effort. Stop doing something that takes effort.

Stop listening to instruction and this bad thing will happen. But this is saying to do something that takes work. It wouldn't take any work to let a child go in his own way. The third problem is the chiastic context here. The theme, train up a child in the way he should go, understood as Bruce Walkie understands it, and as I believe this text is saying, is consistent with verse 15 which says, Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction will drive it far from him.

And so I think that sense better fits than this sarcastic sense. It wouldn't really fit. It would make it an antithetical chiasm, and mostly these are synthetic chiasms. They are both, each part, A and A' and B' are reinforcing each other, they are not so antithetical. Whether it is a positive or negative aspect, they are reinforcing that.

Now, I have spent a lot of time here talking about details. I have taken you into the kitchen, as it were, and shown you the preparation of the meal instead of just serving the meal as sermon givers are taught to do. And I've stayed very close to Bruce Waltke's translation and his interpretation, because there are some people, some of whom I very highly respect, who do not see this proverb as a command to parents to train our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. They don't see it as a proverb with a promise that if we do this, our children will not depart from that even when they are old. And I think the big overriding white elephant, the big concern with understanding this proverb as a command and a promise, is the fear that interpreting this verse as a spiritual promise from God regarding the training of our children has led to much grief and guilt and self-condemnation by parents.

Because people know many fathers and mothers who from day one have sought to train up their children in the fear of the Lord and have had their children leave the faith on reaching adulthood a Great tragedy and so if this is a promise that if you do this then God will bring this then the implication their concern is that the implication is that the parenting was defective. And to tell faithful, godly parents who did everything in their power to train and to teach their children, but are now experiencing one of the greatest sorrows that a father, Christian father or mother could know. To tell them that their parental training was defective, it really seems to make this promise somewhat meaningless. If good Christian parents are not able, if we have to say, well, their parenting wasn't good enough, then this promise seems sort of meaningless. If Godly, devout Christians aren't able to train their children, then what good is this promise?

What kind of a promise is it? What kind of confidence does this give us that if we train our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord, even when they are old, they won't depart from that way. Well we'll look at that. But I would just point out before we do that nearly all translations, and I'll read you a few of them, have retained this translation of what we might call the traditional view of the King James. The NIV even says, start children off on the way that they should go.

They put the should in there. And when they are old, they will not turn from it. The ESV, another modern translation, says train up a child in the way he should go. And when he is old, he will not depart from it. The New American Standard Bible, which seeks to be a very literal translation, says train up a child in the way he should go, and even when he is old he will not depart from it.

The contemporary English version, teach your children right from wrong and when they are grown they will still do right. The international standard version, train a child in the way that is appropriate for him, and when he becomes older he will not turn from it. In the Young's literal translation, it is given instruction to a youth about his way, and even when he is old he will not turn from it. In Walkie's translation, it is dedicated to a youth according to what his way dictates and even when he becomes old he will not depart from it. In other words Walkie is bringing in the idea of a personalized contextualization of what each child needs to dedicate them and to set them on a path of fearing the Lord.

So how do we handle then this objection that this promise would make, it would say that godly Christian parents who have children stray have not adequately trained their children. What do we say about this? How do we hold these truths? How do we look at them? Well, let's look at some of the principles in dealing with the promises of God.

In the first one, I think we have to say that God's promises are yea and amen in Jesus Christ. Not true? God's promises are yea and amen in Jesus Christ. And so the approach of saying that God's word when it promises something isn't really a promise that it's just a maxim or a proverb that's generally true but not always true, I think we have to reject this at the outset. God's word is true.

His promises are true. They are, Yea and Amen in Jesus Christ. We don't want to tone down the scriptures or to alter or diminish a promise, a precious promise. The promises of God's Word are precious promises to us. We don't want to tone those down or to change these precious promises into a mere maxim that might not be true, or is only generally true, just to avoid the uncomfortable assessment of God's Word regarding our work as parents.

In other words, we can't allow our pride as parents to drive us to reinterpret the scripture or our sorrow at the grief that some parents, Christian parents experience when their children go astray. The second thing we can say about the promises of Scripture is that all the promises of Scripture need to be interpreted consistent with the rest of Scripture. All the promises of Scripture need to be interpreted and understood with the rest of Scripture. And a very important truth of Scripture is that God is sovereign in election. In the covenant of circumcision, God promised Abraham to be God to him and to his children.

But not all his children were believers. In fact, we might say over half of the men held up in Hebrews of the Bible, as examples of faithful saints, had unbelieving sons. So is our faith greater than David's or Samuel's? Both of whom had unbelieving children. And so we say, well what if our baptized children have grown up in our home with the Word of God?

What if they've heard the Word preached each Lord's Day as we took them to church? What if they've heard it read and taught each week by us, our parents? What if they've observed a godly example, as godly as that example of sinful parents can be. What if they've committed the Scriptures to memory? What if they've learned the catechism and the creeds?

And what if they grow up and turn away? Is God failing to keep His promise? Is God failing to keep the promise of the covenant? Well, Paul asks that very question in Romans chapter 3. He said, what if some of the Jews who had these covenants, What if they did not believe?

Does that make the faithfulness of God without effect? Does that make God's promise somehow deficient? What's his answer? Certainly not. Of course not.

The deficiency is not with God. The deficiency is with us. What if some did not believe? Does that make the faithfulness of God without effect? Certainly not.

Indeed, let God be true, but every man a liar. A little later In Romans 9, Paul elaborates further in explaining that this is so God's purpose according to election might stand. It's not of him who runs or wills, but according to God's decree of election. Jacob, have I loved? Esau, have I hated?

So the third thing we need to remember looking at this is that no one, No one is good enough to keep God's commands. No one. For example, the Word of God commands all men everywhere to repent. Paul proclaimed that. God now commands all men everywhere to repent.

And it promises that if we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead, we will be saved. That's a promise. We would say that is a sure and certain promise. It's not just a maxim. It's not true most of the time.

It's always true. It's a precious promise. But who can do that? Who is able to keep that command? To repent, to confess the Lord Jesus Christ?

Who of us can obey that command? Of course no one, none of us. None of us, there isn't one of us that can obey that command to repent and believe on our own. It's only by the grace of God that any of us were ever able to obey that command and repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. So the fact that we are not able to keep that command apart from the grace of God in our life, does that make that promise useless or not a promise?

No, it doesn't. Our inability to keep that command does not in any way diminish the certainty of that promise and the preciousness of it. What it does mean is that those who have repented and believed have nothing to boast about. Nothing. There is nothing in any of us that makes us any better than those who didn't repent.

So no one is good enough. No one is good enough on their own strength to raise godly children. None of us. We're all sinners and we fail. We fail in our duties to raise our children.

See this is a matter of God's grace in our life. This is solely a matter of God's grace in our life. That our children come to faith in Christ. And so if your children have grown up the faith in Christ Don't pat yourself on the back Don't think that you're any better than your brother in the Lord who is grieving under the awful burden of lost children unbelieving children Remember just like our salvation, who made us to differ? It's not because we were better.

We didn't save our children. It's God's decree of election. It's God's grace. God did. God saved them.

And so we can't presume to know what God is doing in our brothers or sisters' life. We shouldn't be like Job's friends that presumed to know what God was doing in Job's life. And so the next principle we need to remember is that we are responsible. We are responsible to obey all God's commands. We are not able, none of us are able, to keep the commandments of God.

But we are all responsible, nonetheless, to obey God's commands. The fact that we are not able to keep God's commands, apart from His grace, doesn't relieve us of the responsibility to do so. We know that parents are held accountable to train our children in the fear of the Lord. And Eli, why? Because Eli was rebuked Because he didn't restrain his wicked sons.

The sword did not depart from David's house and his descendants because of his sin, his failure to train his children to restrain sin in his own family. We see in the New Testament that the conduct of a man's family either qualifies or disqualifies him for church office. That indicates that there is some responsibility on the part of fathers for their children. Now while we shouldn't let pride drive our desire to reinterpret scripture, though on the other hand, Neither should we live under the condemnation or let guilt weigh us down where we have failed God's commands Jesus died To take our guilt and our shame he took it upon himself The confession brings the grace of forgiveness. And forgiveness removes our guilt.

If you are laboring under guilt in any area, not just in this command, but in any command. It is confession, acknowledgement that yes, we are sinners. Yes, we have failed. Yes, we have broken the law of God. But in Christ there is forgiveness.

In Christ there is grace. In Christ our guilt and our shame is taken away and He gives us peace. Peace, He speaks peace to us. And that forgiveness and that removal of guilt and shame includes any and all parental sins and all parental failures. He removes those from us as far as the East is from the West and he remembers them no more.

We are clothed in His righteousness. But you see that all begins with if you confess. If you confess, begins with a confession. Begins with an acknowledgement that we have sinned. That we have failed in our duty.

You see, the relief and the promise of this verse doesn't come by minimizing the certainty of the promise or changing the promise into a maxim or a proverb. But it comes in acknowledging our duty, comes in acknowledging our responsibility, comes in acknowledging our failures and taking them to the foot of the cross, and that in Christ our sin bearer, bear our sin and our failures, and trusting in His righteousness. You see, This King in verse 12 is Jehovah. Jehovah is the friend of those who love purity of heart. He is a friend of the righteous.

He who has grace on his lips The king is his friend. Now, how do we get to love purity of heart? How do we get to have grace on our lips? Well, that was also the work of the king To subdue our rebel hearts. We didn't put that grace in on our lips.

We didn't put that Love of purity in our heart. That was that was the work of our King to conquer us And he is able to conquer the rebel hearts of our children as well. That ought to be our daily prayer. Daily, daily, we lift up our hands to the Lord for our children. No matter what age, no matter what age.

Because where there is life, there is yet hope. Where there is life, it is a day of grace. And it is by God's grace that our children come to know Him. It is by His grace and His grace alone that He makes our work, our ministry as parents, and the lives of our children, effectual in their conversion. It's the Lord working through His Word.

It's His Holy Spirit. Amen. Almighty Heavenly Father, who of us is adequate for any of the things that you call us to do. Who can count trials a joy? Who can forgive the unforgivable?

Who can forgive those who have sinned against us? Who can love our enemies? Who can bless those who persecute us? And say all manner of evil against us. Who can turn the other cheek to those who spitefully use us?

Father, we cannot do these in our own strength. We cry out to you for your grace to be shed abroad in our life, for your grace Lord to make effectual our work as parents in teaching and training our children in the way that they should go. To dedicate them from their birth, even before, from diligently seeking to understand and know them, and to train them in a way that is appropriate to their needs. Father, we ask for your grace, for your power to do this. We ask for your Holy Spirit to dwell with us and to be in our home.

We pray that your Word might dwell richly in each of our homes. For it is through your word that your spirit works." We ask that that word might not return void. You have promised that it won't, but that it will accomplish the purpose for which it was sent. So Father, we do commit our way to you and we trust in you and we ask that you would take away the guilt of those sins that we have confessed, those sins that we have acknowledged, that you would give us the peace that you promised, the rest, the freedom. For you are the one, the Father, who knows us, who loves us.

You are the one who will wipe away every tear from every eye. Lord, we pray that this may come, that you might come quickly. In Jesus' name, Amen.