WISDOM & PARENTING
Proverbs 1:8
Johnny Cash had a famous song called “A Boy Named Sue.” Its the story of a boy whose father abandoned him and his mom when he was born. The final thing his father did before leaving him was to name him Sue. Years later he searched for and found his father. After they were in a knock-down-dragged-out fist fight, his dad explained why he named him Sue.
And he said, “Son, this world is rough
And if a man’s gonna make it, he’s gotta be tough
I knew I wouldn’t be there to help you along
So I give you that name, and I said goodbye
And I knew you’d have to get tough or die
It’s that name that helped to make you strong”
I suppose that’s one way to parent. Its a fun song but I wouldn’t recommend parenting from it. The Bible gives us better ways than abandonment and humiliation.
Probably the hottest furnace the Lord uses for our purification is the furnace of parenting. I think marriage and parenting, although difficult, are the two most effective sanctifying tools the Lord has.
So the Scriptures speak a lot to parenting. Children are arrows in your quiver. Jesus declared “Do not keep the children from coming to me. For the kingdom belongs to such as these and their angels look upon my Father’s face in heaven.” You have examples of good parenting like Timothy’s godly mother. You also have anti-examples like________. If you’ve been in church for a while then you probably have heard some of the more famous verses related to parenting. Their phrasing may be familiar to you because you’ve heard them from other parents, from baby dedications, or from the pulpit. “Do not exasperate your children.” “Raise your children in the love and admonition of the Lord.” Probably the most famous and confusing is “Train a child in the way they should go and when they are older they will not depart from it.” Jesus said, “Do not keep the little children from coming unto me….”
Proverbs tells us that parenting is about wisdom. Raising with wisdom, and imparting wisdom.
#1: INVEST IN YOUR OWN FUTURE JOY
Proverbs 10:1 says, “A wise son brings joy to his father.” Proverbs 27:10 is a father imploring his son, “Be wise, my son, and bring joy to my heart; then I can answer anyone who treats me with contempt.” “A man who loves wisdom,” Proverbs 29:3 says, “brings joy to his father.” Then, 29:13 says to invest in your own future peace, “Discipline your children, and they will give you peace; they will bring you the delights you desire.” We’ll talk about discipline a little later here in the sermon. But notice again that Proverbs is connecting joy, peace, rest, happiness with raising a child to be wise.
Proverbs brings it out in the opposite way too. For instance, turn to 17:21, “To have a fool for a child brings grief; there is no joy for the parent of a godless fool.” Commit to immersing your children in wisdom’s teachings and you will be investing in your future joy.
APPLICATION: Realize that your future joy and peace as a parent is connected to wisdom. Parent now for your joy later on in having your child grow up and walk in wisdom.
APPLICATION to the APPLICATION: Parent them now with them as adults in view. Its hard to form them towards something that you haven’t formed in your mind. What kind of adult do you want them to be? Then let that guide you in how you shape and correct and mold them while they’re young.
#2: BE WISE YOURSELF
If we want our children to be wise, the first thing is to be wise ourselves. Follow me to several verses. First, to Proverbs 1:8, “Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction, and do not forsake your mother’s teaching.” Chapter 2:1 and 3:1 say the same thing. But turn to 4:1-4 with me. See how the father was taught by his father, and now he is teaching his son? The son in Proverbs is blessed with a rich heritage of wisdom: his grandfather taught his father wisdom and now his father is teaching him wisdom.
Wisdom, remember, is defined as the skill for living right in God’s eyes, or, the ability to live morally right. Parents have to be wise, meaning we have to be skilled in living right and able to live morally upright lives. We don’t just tell our kids how to live, we show them. Let our first commitment in raising children be that we are wise ourselves. The English writer, Samuel Johnson said, “Example is always more efficacious than precept. Therefore, What Paul says to the churches we should say to our kids, “Follow me, because I follow Christ.” “Follow me, son, because I follow wisdom.” Our kids should not just hear about wisdom from us, they should see it in us. I give this warning: Lecturing without modeling will make them reject wisdom. If I reject wisdom by not modeling it then I certainly have no right to expect my children to live wisely. Their rejection is merely an imitation of my own example. How great is wisdom’s credibility when I live by it, and how scandalized is wisdom’s credibility when I don’t live by it.
APPLICATION: Commit to your own wisdom. Don’t try to make your kids wise to make up for your own faults. Let your teaching of wisdom to them be an overflow of your own learning of wisdom and living by it. Don’t expect them to live wisely to somehow make you feel better for you not living wisely.
APPLICATION: Get wisdom and be confident in wisdom’s value. Do you notice how in the father’s urging wisdom on his sons that there is also a confidence the father has in the wisdom he’s passing on? That confidence is because he knows personally the value of what he’s teaching his son, so he’s confident in his wisdom, and he urges it on his son.
#3: BUILD YOUR HOME OUT OF WISDOM
What is your home made of? Turn with me to Proverbs 24:3-4 and see what our house should be made of…. [read]
Wisdom. Understanding. Knowledge. These are what your foundation is made of; these are what you frame in your home with.
Proverbs teaches us not to think that having things and wealth are what matters most. Turn to 15:16-17 with me…. [read] Fear of the Lord. Love. These are the drywall and the flooring of a home.
Proverbs 14:11 says, “The house of the wicked will be destroyed but the tent of the upright will flourish.” One thing I’ll point out there is that a home built on uprightness, which is righteousness, will flourish. There is a security described here: the wicked house will be destroyed, but the flimsy little tent of the upright will be secure and flourish. “Whoever builds his life on my words is like a man who built his house on the rock.” Jesus said. Make uprightness, which means correctness – correct in God’s eyes – another material you build your home with.
Proverbs 17:1 says, “Better a dry crust with peace and quiet than a house full of feasting, with strife.” Peace. Quiet. Build your home with the materials of peace, quiet, wisdom, knowledge, understanding, the fear of God, and love.
#4: TRAIN THEIR ACTIONS IN WISDOM
Fourth, train your child’s actions in wisdom. Proverbs 1:3 says the proverbs are “for receiving instruction in prudent behavior, doing what is just and right and fair.”
Make them conform their outward behavior to wisdom. The idea here is that they are learning how to act – regardless of whether they want to act that way. They gain the experience of right behavior, and so they know how to act because they’ve been made to act the right way.
Furthermore, as the next point will address, the heart is the real matter in parenting. We always are aiming at the heart, and forming the heart will often be done by forming the actions. Many times, the actions will have to be formed before the heart. A child may not want to share. A child may not want to let others go first. A child may not want to ask before taking something. A child may not want to say they’re sorry and ask forgiveness – or give forgiveness. A child may not want to make their bed, clean their room, pick up their toys, do household chores, do their schoolwork, speak respectfully, or be kind. A child may not want to include their siblings, or a child may need to understand they can’t impose on their siblings or act certain ways just because they’re upset. The list goes on. We have two sayings at home: you can’t always do what you want to do, and you have to do things in life you don’t want to do. Its just life. And it relates to this point: train their actions. We will train them to act rightly and with wisdom. Which means often they have to do things they don’t want to do and they don’t get to do things they want to do.
APPLICATION: For younger kids, realize that you have to make them do the right thing. Years ago I heard of someone who believed in “free-parenting” or “hands-off” parenting. So when it came to “sharing” for instance, the mom said she didn’t want to make her child share. She wanted her child to share if she wanted to and wanted it to come from the heart. The problem is that children don’t “naturally’ do right. That is a messed up view to think that. Children are raw sinners, which means they think entirely selfishly. I want a generous child so I know I have to train them to be generous. There are times when they don’t have to share, and there are times when they do. But when there are times for them to share I will train them by making them share. Not like an ogre, but making them nonetheless. Because I’m training my 3 year old for when they’re 6 and 7, and I’m training my 8 year old for when their 11 and 12, etc.
APPLICATION: For kids that are older, it takes attention and wisdom as a parent. How much of the decision making do they have in this situation? Will I let them make the decision or make them make the right one? Will I let them make a bad decision and suffer natural consequences, or consequences I will give them even? The older kids get the more reasoning with them should be taking place. The more their mind and heart should be engaged. You can’t treat a 14 year old like a 6 year old, which means you can’t just force a 14 year old like you do a 6 year old. Which is a lesson for us as parents: we need to grow with our kids. We can’t treat 17 year olds like13 year olds and we can’t treat 13 year olds like 7 year olds. If I’m teaching my kids right behaviors, and as we’ll see next, I’m also forming their hearts towards those right behaviors, then I have much more to work with as they get older in terms of reasoning and thinking through wise behavior.
#5: TRAIN THEIR HEARTS IN WISDOM
Train them to love wisdom from their hearts. Parenting aims for the heart. Follow me to a bunch of passages: 2:2, 9…..4:4…..23:19,
The dad was not merely concerned with outward conformity. I would press this further that reciting the “right answers” should not satisfy us as parents. We want to form and train their hearts to love wisdom and to pursue it themselves from their own desire.
The heart is the heart of everything. The greatest command in all the universe, Jesus told us, is “LOVE the Lord your God with all your heart…” Parenting is training a child to love God and God’s wisdom with their heart.
One of the things I pray for me and Annie is that we win the hearts of our children to us. Proverbs 23:26 says, “My son, give me your heart, and let your eyes delight in my ways.” That’s what I pray for my children, and that is how I talk to my children, “Evan, Reese, Ceci, Levi, Luna, Grace and Lyra, give me your hearts and delight yourself in my ways – the ways of wisdom that I am teaching you.”
Do this by conversations with them, openly discussing their heart with them.