Biblical Parenting

This morning we will be looking at our memory verse, . How is this text to be applied to our daily lives? In this series we have looked at singles, married couples, and children. But what does biblical parenting actually look like? As you turn there I’d like to start off with what I call “The Five Laws of Worldly Parenting”. Yes, if you’ve ever wanted to know how to parent your children according to the world, here are the five laws:

Law #1: Do NOT teach them religion

First, Do not, and I repeat, do not, teach them Christianity. That is brainwashing. You can teach them Judaism, or Islam, or atheism, that’s fine. That’s broadening their horizons. And you can teach them science without reference to God. That’s just teaching. But teaching them Christianity? Can there be anything more appalling? I mean, really, if you sincerely believe that without trusting in Christ Jesus your children will face an eternity of deserved judgment, that’s on you. But don’t warn them!

Law #2: Children are Mostly Incapable

Children have complex brains and have been shown to excellent thinkers and doers. Therefore, don’t expect anything from them. When I was a kid, I simply couldn’t have been able to memorize the Ten Commandments. I could memorize the names of all 151 original Pokemon, in order, but the 66 Books of the Bible is a bridge too far. Far better to let them huddle together and play Fortnite or Rocket League and leave them to their own business.

Law #3: Age-segregation is the Best Policy

Speaking of leaving them to their own business, that gets us to the third Law of worldly parenting: Age-Segregation is the Best Policy. After all, adults have nothing to teach kids, and adults receive no benefit from being around kids. That is why at any given function, the faster the kids and the youth can get separated and unsupervised, the better.

Law #4: Ask, Don’t Tell

Number 4! Dinner is ready, and the kids are still watching something on TV, I’m sure an educational documentary. You want to eat dinner, but they are clearly having too much fun. So you should tell them to come to the kitchen and eat, right? Well, if you want to break the fourth law of worldly parenting! Ask, Don’t Tell. Never act like you have authority over them. Treat them like an equal, or better yet, as an inferior.

Law #5: Psychologists Today Know Best

And finally we come to the fifth law of worldly parenting. This is the ultimate law that goes before all others, which is why I’m listing it last. Ready? Psychologists Today Know Best. Specifically, today. Now, tomorrow is a different story. Who knows what will be the best way to parent them tomorrow? So hold on to these laws as absolutely essential…but change them at the slightest whim of whoever the world says is the preeminent child psychologist today.

Back to Reality

Alright, now of course I’m being tongue in cheek here. This is all absolutely terrible advice. But can we see how these thoughts have ravaged the world’s understanding of parenting? Can we see how some of these have even infiltrated the church? These five laws stem from one basic assumption: We Have No Instruction for Childrearing. Therefore, they make up whatever they want.

But that assumption is false. We have been given instruction. We have been given God’s Word, and while it doesn’t tell us absolutely everything about parenting, the key principles are laid down for us in the Scriptures. We see that a father and a mother is to have compassion on their children, and to love them dearly. We see that they are to discipline their children, yet not to exasperate them. And we see that they are to teach their children. It is this last aspect we will focus on today. So let us read :

Deuteronomy 6:6–7 ESV

And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.

Know the Things of God ()

First, verse 6. “And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.” That command isn’t given to the child, it is given to the parents. Fathers, if you are going to teach your children about God, you must know about God first. You cannot teach what you do not know. You cannot teach them beyond what you know. So parents, I exhort you, and encourage you, know deeply the things of God! How do you do this? Let me give you six actions you can take to know God more deeply. (Oh, and by the way, those who aren’t parents will benefit from this list just as much!)

Read Scripture Diligently

First, and most importantly, is that you read Scripture diligently. I recommend reading it daily. Whether you want to use a plan or not, that’s up to you. But the Bible is food for your soul, don’t neglect it! And don’t stick to just the places you’re comfortable with. Read the Prophets. Read Ecclesiastes. Read Leviticus, and Numbers, and Revelation, and Acts. We are in the New Covenant and we have the New Testament, but that doesn’t mean we should unhitch ourselves from the Old Testament! It is a precious treasure, and we should be reading it.

Read Theology

Scripture is our final authority, but we are not the first generation of Christians, and we very well may not be the last. We live in a history of the Church, and that Church history has provided for us some absolutely brilliant writers. From Ignatius of Antioch, to Gregory of Nyssa, to Augustine, to Bernard of Clairvaux, to Peter Waldo, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, to John Calvin, Nehemiah Coxe, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, B.B. Warfield, R.C. Sproul, John MacArthur, John Piper, Jim Renihan and beyond, that is just a short list of people whose writings God has blessed the church with. Many of these men write contradicting things, but that is why we always go back to Scripture. Take advantage of the rich works of theology that we have.

Read Creeds and Confessions

Beyond your general theology book, look at historic creeds and confessions of the church. Over the last 100 years or so, Baptists have largely ignored the wealth of treasure in these documents. Yet what clear doctrine is found in the Apostle’s Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed! Look at the historic Confessions of the Faith, particularly ones produced by Baptists such as the 1689 London Baptist Confession, and the New Hampshire Confession of Faith. What is especially helpful about these is that these were not written by just one person, but by a large group, minimizing the chances of error.

Listen to Biblical Sermons

Looking beyond creeds and confessions, I recommend listening to biblical sermons outside of the Sunday morning gathering, and good quality podcasts. There are so many good preachers to listen to and podcasts to subscribe to, honestly I don’t know how to start. You can get with me after service, or we can talk about it sometime, but there’s just so many I’m gonna go ahead and move on.

Meet with Other Believers and Discuss Doctrine

Now, up to this point the introverts have been happy. Stick your nose in a book or stick your ears into headphones and escape into theological paradise. Well, I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but we can’t do theology alone. We need to be meeting with other believers and discussing more than just the weather and the game. We need to be discussing life. We need to be discussing the truths of God’s Word, and we need to be talking about how those two meet. What does it mean that Jesus says, “Come to Me, all of you who are weary and heavy burdened, and I will give you rest?” How have you felt that rest this week? This is an area where I fail miserably. So far I’ve been doing great, but when it comes to actually meeting with believers like this I just faceplant. Yet it is part of our fellowship.

Love the Lord Through Doctrine

Finally, we must remember that does not say “These words that I command you today shall be on your mind.” It says they should be on our heart. Love and devotion is the only proper end of our doctrine. If we can learn about penal substitutionary atonement or covenant theology and not love God deeper, we have not fully learned the doctrine. You can’t love God without theology, but you can definitely know theology without loving God. So grow in your understanding of who God is, what He has done, and what He will do.

Teach the Things of God ()

Now let’s move to our second verse. says:

Deuteronomy 6:7 ESV

You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.

Having the knowledge of God, it is our job as parents to teach our children the things of God. The responsibility does not lay primarily on the Pastor. It is on primarily their father, as we see in :

Ephesians 6:4 HCSB

Fathers, don’t stir up anger in your children, but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

Ephesians 6:2 HCSB

Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise,

This does not mean that only the father can teach, but it lays on his responsibility. He can and does delegate this education to those able to help him, most importantly his wife. But he can certainly delegate teaching to others. But know that fathers are responsible for the education their children get, whether it is at home, at a Christian school, or in government education.

Yet when we think of child education, oftentimes we only think of the child in a desk listening to someone talk to them for a long time. Yet there are two forms of education: passive and active. So let’s look at how parents can passively teach their children, and then look at active teaching.

Passive Teaching

God-Centered Conversations

The most crucial piece of passive teaching is having God-centered conversations. This doesn’t even need to involve the children, and they don’t need to understand what you are even saying for it to have an effect. If you and your spouse are consistently talking about Scripture, about God, about theology, about evangelism throughout your day, when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise, even if the kids don’t know what you mean, they will be getting the message that the things of God are important, and that it is worth our time to talk about them. But if we only talk about Scriptural things on Sunday morning, that will do more damage than good.

Reading your Bible (personal reading)

Secondly, read your Bible. I’m still talking to the parents. Read your Bible. Not just for you to learn, but for kids to see you. That is why, even though I love digital books, and digital Bibles, I’m saying, don’t read digital Bibles in front of your kids, read physical copies of God’s Word. Let them see with their own eyes that you see the Bible as a treasure.

Modeling

Conduct/Words/Repentance

That leads us to our next way of passive teaching, modeling the Christian life for our children. We should seek to be godly in our conduct and in our words. We are being conformed into the image of Christ, and so what we say and do should increasingly look like Christ. But we all know that we don’t always say or do the right thing, and that means that we should be modeling repentance for our children. When we sin against our children, we should be going to them, repenting of our sin, and asking for their forgiveness. For a parent to have a firm understanding of their authority over their children, and yet for them to be asking their children for forgiveness, that is a clear pointer to the authority of God over all, even their parents.

Corporate Worship

One of the things Highland View Baptist Church encourages is for children to stay in with their parents for the entire service. Now, I don’t think Esther or Christina got a whole lot from our study in James, and I certainly don’t think they can give me the names of the Five Solas in Latin from our series last year. But they aren’t here to listen to the sermon. They are here to watch godly men and women worship God. They are here to see what corporate worship is and looks like, even before their parents can really explain what is going on. That is a blessing you just don’t see when a church takes the children out of service to go play games and maybe get a watered-down Bible lesson. Plus, keeping the kids in service may be a headache for parents of young children, and I may or may not know EXACTLY what that feels like, but I understand it is much better than trying to convince your 8-year-old to stop playing games during service and start sitting in the pew.

These are ways to teach children the things of God passively. Talk about these things consistently. Let them see you read your Bible. Model Christian conduct, speech, and repentance to them. Let them see the corporate worship of God.

Active Teaching

So that brings us to active teaching. Now, this is a much bigger topic than what I can reasonably discuss this morning. So I’m not going to address things like science, math, you know, the typical “school” things you think of. I’m going to focus on three methods that you can utilize no matter how you educate your children, or what curriculum you may use.

Catechisms

The first is a lost art, unfortunately, and that is the catechism. I have told a number of non-Christians that I catechize my children, and every single time the response is one of two: 1) I have never heard that word before, and 2) Isn’t that a Catholic thing?

Really, it’s not. Catechism has been a part of Protestant life almost as long as Protestantism itself! Martin Luther wrote both a larger and shorter catechism. The Westminster Assembly in England back in the 17th century created the Westminster Shorter Catechism, and here is a book called “Teaching Truth, Training Hearts: The Study of Catechisms in Baptist Life”. There are catechisms in here ranging from Hercules Collins’ Orthodox Catechism in the 17th century to A Catechism of Bible Teaching by John Broadus in the 1890s. It is only the last hundred years or so that catechisms have fallen out of favor. Thankfully, as there has been a resurgence of Calvinism, so there is beginning to be a resurgence of confessions, creeds, and catechisms.

So what is a catechism? Very simply, it is questions and answers. The parent asks a child a question, and the child response with an exact answer. For example, in our home we use a modified form of A Catechism for Boys and Girls. So from time to time, we will get our children together and ask them catechism questions, and it will go like this:

Q: Who made you?

A: God made me.

Q: What else did God make?

A: God made all things.

Q: Why did God make all things?

A: For His own glory.

And it just goes on and on, teaching about the Trinity and the nature of God, the creation of man, the fall of man, the redeemer Jesus, the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the final judgment. Many who oppose catechisms complain that it is rigid and robotic, and only makes theological parrots. But let me read the experience of pastor Tim Keller:

When my son Jonathan was a young child, my wife, Kathy, and I started teaching him a children’s catechism. In the beginning we worked on [the questions I just asked].

Question 2. What else did God make? Answer. God made all things.

Question 3. Why did God make you and all things? Answer. For his own glory.

One day Kathy dropped Jonathan off at a babysitter’s. At one point the babysitter discovered Jonathan looking out the window. “What are you thinking about?” she asked him. “God,” he said. Surprised, she responded, “What are you thinking about God?” He looked at her and replied, “How he made all things for his own glory.” She thought she had a spiritual giant on her hands! A little boy looking out the window, contemplating the glory of God in creation!

What had actually happened, obviously, was that her question had triggered the question/answer response in him. He answered with the catechism. He certainly did not have the slightest idea what the “glory of God” meant. But the concept was in his mind and heart, waiting to be connected with new insights, teaching, and experiences.

Such instruction, Princeton theologian Archibald Alexander said, is like firewood in a fireplace. Without the fire—the Spirit of God—firewood will not in itself produce a warming flame. But without fuel there can be no fire either, and that is what catechetical instruction is.

Bible Memorization

Second, in addition to the use of a good catechism, teach your children to memorize Scriptures! I know if there is one Scripture all three of my children know by heart it is , “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ”. But we know the Scriptures are filled with treasures, and we should be teaching them to our children. There are a number of ways to do this, but I think one of the best ways is by song. Sing scripture to your kids, and find music of Scripture being sung to them. We are musical creatures by design, and when we hear it sung it will oftentimes stick better.

Family Worship

Lastly, worship together in families. This is a difficult practice that seems to have always been difficult. Let me read from the introduction to the 1689 Confession:

Baptist Confessions of Faith 3. Assembly or Second London Confession

And verily there is one spring and cause of the decay of Religion in our day, which we cannot but touch upon, and earnestly urge a redress of; and that is the neglect of the worship of God in Families, by those to whom the charge and conduct of them is committed.

And that was before TV, radio, smartphones, videogames, and all the other things that can so often distract us from spiritual growth! It is good for every family to have a time of family worship. Do you have children? Teach them in family worship. Is it just you and your spouse? Have family worship together. Is it just you? Set aside a time to worship, or better yet, join another family for family worship!

God’s Grace in Parenting

Now, if you are sane, you are probably thinking to yourself, “Most of the things he’s said I don’t do, and the rest of it I don’t do well! What about me?” If you’re thinking that, you’re in the same boat as me. So what hope do we have when we have so clearly failed to teach our children as we ought? When we have failed to model Christ for them? When we often neglect our own understanding of God? What now?

Look at .

Colossians 2:13–14 HCSB

And when you were dead in trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive with Him and forgave us all our trespasses. He erased the certificate of debt, with its obligations, that was against us and opposed to us, and has taken it out of the way by nailing it to the cross.

All of our sin, all of our failures, all of our nights watching tv instead of doing family worship, all of the times we neglected to build one another up in understanding the Bible, all of times we have failed to model the Christian life for our children, all of it, where is it? Where is the certificate of debt, with its obligations, that was against us and opposed to us? Jesus erased it all, He took it out of the way by nailing it to the cross. It is gone. There is no room for guilt. There is now, therefore, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. None. The burden of the law has been swallowed up by the grace of God in Christ’s active obedience. So live in that grace. Have you failed to do family worship this week? This month? This year? Ever? Set aside that guilt, and strive to parent in a more biblical way. And when you fail, and you will, be grateful for God’s grace, and continue to strive, succeeding some and failing some, as long as your children are in your home.

The Role of the “Non-Parent”

As we wind down this morning, let me address a different demographic. Praise God there are a number of families with younger children. But praise God there are a number of families who have already raised their children. They have left the home. So what is the role of the so-called “non-parent”? I understand that definition is not completely accurate, as parents whose children have left the home are still parents. But we understand there is a shift in role when the children leave the home. What can adults who are not the parent of a particular child do? Three things:

Build Relationships with Children

First, build relationships with children. Do not simply ignore them. The church I grew up in had a youth group. I almost never spoke to any adult in our church except for the few who worked with the youth, or were parents of someone in the youth group. Functionally speaking, there was “youth church” and “big church” and never the two shall meet. Even Sunday mornings there was a particular section for youth, so that even when we were in the same room we were age-segregated! Brothers, this should not be. Seek to be a part of the lives of the children and teenagers in our church. Teach them your lingo, and learn theirs. Speak about the Word, but also speak about other things. Have conversations with them about the blessings and burdens of home ownership, and genuinely listen to them talk about their first Victory Royale. And children, young adults, same thing. Invest in the adults of the church as they invest into you. Bridge the generational gap.

Build Relationships with Parents

Secondly, build relationships with parents. As a young father, I think I can speak for all young parents when I say that we need your guidance. I know what its like to have a two year old. I don’t know what it’s like to have a seven year old. I need to learn from those who have raised seven year olds, maybe there are some mistakes I can avoid by listening to the wisdom of others.

Help Weary Parents

Finally, help weary parents. Raising kids is hard, and we need help. Sometimes we just need a night to ourselves, or even just a few hours. A few weeks ago Pastor Chris talked about the blessings Singles provide to the church. This is one of them.

God’s Grace in Parenting

Look at .

Colossians 2:13–14 HCSB

All of our sin, all of our failures, all of our nights watching tv instead of doing family worship, all of the times we neglected to build one another up in understanding the Bible, all of times we have failed to model the Christian life for our children, all of it, where is it? Where is the certificate of debt, with its obligations, that was against us and opposed to us? Jesus erased it all, He took it out of the way by nailing it to the cross. It is gone. There is no room for guilt. There is now, therefore, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. None. The burden of the law has been swallowed up by the grace of God in Christ’s active obedience. So live in that grace. Have you failed to do family worship this week? This month? This year? Ever? Set aside that guilt, it’s forgiven, it’s atoned for, and dwelling on guilt will just send you to despair. Trust in Christ’s work, in God’s forgiveness, and strive to parent in a more biblical way. And when you fail, and you will, be grateful for God’s grace, and continue to strive, succeeding some and failing some, as long as your children are in your home.

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