Some of you have not been with us for the last few weeks or months. We've been looking at Proverbs, and we've gone through verses one through seven, and that was the preamble to Proverbs. It tells us the purpose of the book. We're gonna look today at verses eight and nine. Verses eight and nine of chapter one. So, let me read these verses, verse eight. Hear, my son, your father's instruction, and forsake not your mother's teaching, for they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck. So, hear, my son, your father's instruction, forsake not your mother's teaching. I did not plan this to fall on Father's Day, but it did happen to fall on Father's Day. Today we are going to look at these verses and in particular how they relate to parents. because my plan is that verses eight through 19 are addressed to the young men especially, but to children and to youth, that they would not be enticed by sinners, by peers who are influencing them, and so I'm gonna take those verses in a sermon to the whole congregation with all the children and all the youth here, and so we're gonna look at verses eight and nine here, but not from the perspective of the son or the child, but from the perspective of the father and the mother. It says, you see there, if the son is to listen to his father's instruction and his mother's teaching, what does that mean? That means that fathers and mothers have a responsibility to instruct, to teach. And this teaching, the proverb says, will be for the child like a graceful garland. This is a sign like a little crown, a wreath, a sign of victory. And so it's a picture of success. Success in life will come from listening to your parents' godly teaching. And then the necklace around the neck is a sign again of maybe we could say attractiveness or a blessing, blessed life, but also as a reminder. The necklace is there as a reminder for the child as the child goes by Lady Folly's house that remember we've talked about. He's walking by Lady Folly's house or he's walking by the house of the adulterous woman who says, come in, come into my house. Or in these next few verses, he's hanging around with his friends and his friends say, let's go and sin. And this necklace is there as a reminder. No, that's not what my parents taught me. So wear this necklace around your neck to always remember the teaching of your father and mother. So this is what the teaching is supposed to be. But again, let's focus on the responsibility of mother and father. So notice here in this proverb is interesting. We do have father and mother listed here, described. And so mothers do have a responsibility to teach their children. Mothers are called to teach the word of God to their children. So mothers, you too, you need to be well-trained, well-taught, you need to have sound theology, you need to know theology and be good at theology so that you can also teach your children. Recently I heard a story of a pastor, he was in a room of a thousand people And he asked everybody to stand up if they believed that they were converted as children, became believers as children. So many people stood up, hundreds of people stood up. And then he said, if your conversion had nothing to do with your mother, sit down. And hardly anybody sat down. So just in this story, you see that out of these hundreds of people who believe they came to Christ as children, almost all of them, God used their mothers to bring them to Christ. And of course, mothers spend a lot of time with their children. Generally, it's the father, he is off at work for most of the day, and so the mother spends a great deal of time with her child and has a huge influence on them, and so the mother has many opportunities to teach the truth. But we also see here, that it's the father's responsibility also to teach. And remember, these nine chapters are really the father speaking to his son. So over and over again, it's my son, listen to your father's instruction. It's the father speaking. And so we have both things here. We have both the fact that the mother has an important role to play, but also that the main leader of the home and the main teacher of the home is the father. And so mothers ought not to go against their father's teaching. The father's a believer. The father leads in the teaching of the home, the beliefs of the home. And then when the mother and father are both at home, like in the evening, at night, it is the father who needs to take the responsibility to teach the family, to teach his children. In many churches, many families, it's often the mother who is dragging the kids to church and the dad doesn't wanna go to church. He stays at home. And that's not the way it should be. It should be the father leading his family to be part of the church and to go to church. So the father is the spiritual leader of the home. And so we see here in Proverbs the emphasis on the father. So what are the father and mother to do? Well, we have two words here, instruction and teaching. We've looked at instruction a few weeks ago, that we are to be instructed and taught and realize how much we don't know so that we can learn instruction. But then he uses the word teaching. And the word that's used there is Torah. So maybe some of you men, you know this word. Can somebody tell me what the word Torah is? What is Torah? The law, yes. Mike? Yes, more specifically, it's usually often used as the law of Moses. So the five books of the law. So it can be a general word, teaching, instruction, or it could be a more specific term, that the parents are teaching the Torah, the law of God. And so we're talking here about training in the faith, instructing in the faith, teaching the word of God. Now you are probably familiar also with this passage. You can look it up if you want in Ephesians 6-4, but you might have it memorized. In Ephesians 6-4, Paul writes to fathers and he says, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Now, there are so many different translations that I always get the wording mixed up, but does anybody memorize maybe different wording for that? Bring them up in the? Admonition, okay, any other? Fear, yeah, so I think in my memory it's usually fear and admonition or something like that. That might be King James. But we have these concepts of discipline and instruction. And so that first word in Ephesians is the word paideia, having to do with education or discipline or training. And so maybe it has more of that emphasis on disciplining your children. It's used in 2 Timothy 3.16 to talk about scripture. Scripture is given for our training, for our instruction in righteousness. So it helps us to know what to do, to grow. So that's more maybe the discipline aspect. And then the second word, you might recognize, newthesia, newthesia. So discipline and instruction of the Lord, paideia and newthesia. And that has to do with admonition, admonition. Maybe you've heard of newthetic counseling. It's counseling where the counselor doesn't just make you feel good and listen to you all the time, but then the counselor says, well, here's what you need to do. Here's where you're wrong. Here's what you need to change. And so that's the idea of newthesia. scriptures in 1 Corinthians 10 verse 11. Remember, it's talking about Israel and the golden calf. And Paul says, these things were written for our instruction so that we should not do what they did. So what does Paul say in Ephesians that we're to do? We are to discipline and instruct. But when we're instructing, when Paul is saying bring them up in the instruction of the Lord, he's not just talking about behavior, but he's also talking about values. And those things are related. And so when you're a child, maybe you remember Willy Wonka, you remember Veruca Salt, And you remember Beruka Salt says, I want it now. I want the world. I want the whole world. And she goes off in her song. And your child acts like that and says, I want it now. Well, you might need to discipline your child for that bad attitude, that behavior. But you also need to instruct that child at that point. You know, my son, my daughter, if you get everything now, it's not going to make you happy. And you can't have everything now anyways, and that's not what it means to be a Christian. To be a Christian is to deny yourself and think about how you can love others and bless others. So you see how we're called to be strong. Okay, we're going to talk about a few topics here. So first, why do we need to instruct? Why do we need to instruct? Why do we have this command here in Proverbs for the father and mother to instruct? Why can't you just discipline your children? If you just discipline your children very consistently, is that going to make them turn out great? Is that all you've got to do? Well, no. Because when children are small, you can pick them up and basically take them wherever you want them to go. You can make them do things that they don't necessarily want to do. So maybe you've had that experience of your small child. stubborn, saying no. Maybe it's even something like they're in the road, and you tell them to come back, and they stand there. They say no. And if the car is coming, you have to run. You have to grab the child. And that child is going to kick you and smack you and scream in your ear, no. But you are strong enough that you can make that child physically do what you want. But this father in Proverbs knows that his son is about to become a young man, and his son is going to be walking around the streets on his own. And when his son gets to Lady Folly's house, the father isn't gonna be able to run over to the door and keep his son from walking through the door. What he has to do, is teach his son, persuade his son, appeal to his son. And so this is what the father is doing here in these nine chapters. He's coming up with every possible method of persuasion that he can imagine to appeal to his son. My son, since I can't physically control everything that you do when you grow up, you have to be persuaded that I'm telling you the truth and that you need to listen to me as much as that woman might call to you and tempt you, listen to me. Keep that instruction around here. And so that's why we need to teach, teach with words. Well, the next thing you want to think about is who should instruct? And I don't mean father or mother, but I mean What kind of father and mother should we be? And this, by the way, is grandfather and grandmother as well. What do you need to be as a good instructor? Well, I'm going to use some words that maybe you don't know, but I'm using them because it might help you remember them. They're great words. They're Greek words that people have used to talk about how to be a good teacher. And you see this in Jesus, you see this in Paul. So here are three things for you to think about for yourself. The first thing to be a good teacher for you is you need to have what people have called logos. And logos is the word, the truth. Now, you can think of all these as a sermon listener, and you know that in your head you judge if a sermon is a good sermon or a bad sermon. And it's really based on those three things. So think of yourself as a sermon listener, but also then you as the teacher, as mom, dad, grandpa, grandma. So, logos. You need to speak the truth. You need to say the right thing. So maybe you listen to a bad sermon, and you say it's a bad sermon because you say, that guy said a bunch of nonsense. Nothing that he said was true. Nothing came out of the Bible. He just stopped and watched himself. You need to speak truth. So for you and me, again, that means we need to know the truth. We need to know the Word of God well. We need to have sound theology. It's also related to the way that we teach. So another aspect of bad sermons is you say, I couldn't follow anything he said. He was all over the place. He was talking about how Jesus was God, and then he started talking about the snakes in Egypt and all these different kinds of snakes in Egypt. And I had no idea what those things had to do with each other. And so that's another aspect of teaching. Teach in a way that makes sense to your children. That's often a challenge for us. We have to grow. The next thing we need is what people call ethos. And that means that your life needs to back up what you teach. So again, you don't want to hear a sermon from someone who you believe is a hypocrite. We've looked at the qualifications for an elder, and those qualifications are there because they give credibility to the one who is teaching. But that also applies to parents as teachers of your children. Your children will be able to tell if you are living in hypocrisy, if your life is not backing up the things that you are talking about. Of course, we're all sinners. We all fall short. great standard of a worthy God, and so this doesn't mean that we, as parents, are going to be sinless, but part of the ethos is that we repent when we sin, we confess when we sin against our children, and overall, we need to show our children that we're not just putting on the show. We're not just doing this because we're here at church, so we all act nice. or people are expecting us to be this certain kind of dad at home, so we need to look like a certain kind of dad. Our children will be able to figure that out. They know that we're a person. So we need to have a life that backs it up. And then the third element of teaching is the pathos, which is related to the word for passion. So we need to have passion. But that doesn't mean we have to get all excited and be very loud. But it means we have to really believe and feel the things that we are teaching. I don't know if you guys have ever watched or heard Joel Beeky talk about parenting. But it seems like from the way that Beeky talks, it's like he grew up in a practically perfect home. And he talks about how he remembers his father on Sunday evenings. They would all agree over in progress every Sunday evening. And his father, he says, would plead with him in tears to know Christ, to know Christ personally. And obviously, that stuck with Joel B. I'm not saying that we have to always have tears, But hopefully our children can know that we are passionate, we really take seriously, we really believe in the things that we teach. Sometimes we might think that if all we do is the models, if all we do is get across the right information, that our children are like computers that you put in the data and out spits a picture. How to become a Christian, as long as you teach them all the true theology. And that's not how it works. So one of the aspects of good teaching is that they know that we love Christ, that we care about Christ and we care about them, we care about ourselves. Charles Bridges says it this way, this is from his Proverbs commentary. He says, authority softened by tenderness. instruction molded in parental inferiority. This will always command his measure of reverential and affectionate attention. Okay, so how do you get the affectionate attention of your children? It's instruction molded in parental They know you really love them, and you care for them. Listen also, this is another quote from Ted and Margie Tripp. It's from this book, Instructing a Child's Heart, if you want to read more about these things. They say, instructing a child's heart is not simply transferring data from parent to child. It is impressing the heart The instruction that you provide not only informs the mind, it is directed to persuading the hearts of the wisdom and truthfulness of God's ways. We should impress the truth on the hearts of our children, not to control or manage them, but to point them to the greatest joy and happiness that they can experience, delighting in God. So we want truth impressed upon their hearts. And it's interesting how we have that little phrase that says, not to control or manage them. Because sometimes we think, well, all I can do is get them to behave. That's good. Well, obviously, we want to get them to behave. But we want more than just good behavior. We want to impress. teachers. So to be a good teacher, if this helps you, if you can remember this, Logos ethos pathos, truth, life, and heart. That's what we want, what we want to impress on our children. Well, next, let's talk a little bit about when to instruct. Okay, so we've talked about why, who, what kind of person, and now when. And so what I want to talk about now is something I think a lot of you are familiar with. It is something that can be new to also a lot of people, something that I didn't really grow up with, and most of the people that I was around in church did not grow up with this. And so, we're going to talk about family worship. Family worship is, in our church, what we expect and desire of members of the church, the heads of the household, the men of the family, that they are leading their children and their family in family worship. And all of that is out of just so many examples and teachings in the Bible about how the man, the father, is the leader of his home spiritually. So if you're the leader of your home spiritually, of course, one of the main things you are going to want to do is to lead your family in worship and in teaching your family. So I know this is familiar to many of you, but let's just remind ourselves of this. for a few minutes. Thomas Watson says, neglect of family prayer, as it were, uncovers the roof of men's houses and makes way for a curse to be rained down. that image of you're sitting at the dinner table with your family. And dad says, hey, I've got a great idea. I'm going to go cut a hole into the roof and not cover it up. And the rain comes, and the storm comes, and you're sitting there at the dinner table, and the rain is falling through your house all over your table. Doesn't sound very smart. And so Watson is saying that, You're, in the same way, as a father, by neglecting to pray with your family, or to worship with your family, you are opening up a giant hole, and you say, God, just bring all your curses down upon my family. So that's what he said. And that's just because it is through this instruction and leading of our families that we train our children. We train our children in wisdom, in the Word of God. So, we need to have these times set apart of instructing our children. By nature, our children are sinners. They are the fools. Psalm 14 says, the fool says there is no God. That's our children. So if we do nothing, then our children will continually be fooled by their sin. The world will continue to pull them in. Whatever type of schooling you do, that's not going to prevent your children from sin. It's not going to fix their hearts. They will always be pulled in by the world and by sin, and so our responsibility is especially to fathers to instruct our children. It's not just the responsibility of the church. It's not just the responsibility of a curriculum, but of the father. He is the authority that God has put in the home to lead the family. Family worship is just doing that each day, each day, set aside time. The way that we do it is sing, Bible, teaching the Bible, and then prayer. Not everybody sings, not every family, not every family sings. Some families don't sing, but I think it's good to lead your children in worship and singing. So sing, teach the Bible, is what we are to instruct them. And so another thing that may be familiar to some and not to others, we're going to talk about is catechism. So, who can somebody define what a catechism is? Right, so doctrines, theology, usually for children, and usually questions and answers. So it's a way of teaching by asking questions and having answers, and then often it's through memorizing the answers. So we see this type of teaching in the Bible, in Deuteronomy chapter 6, You probably are familiar with that passage of teaching your children when they rise up and when they lay down and they walk along the way. That's teaching throughout life, when things happen in life. But then in chapter 6, verse 20, God says, when your son asks you, what do all these laws and statutes mean? Say to him this, give him this answer. We were slaves in Egypt, and God brought us out of Egypt. And then he goes on and on. And so you have a category in there. The son asks a question. The father has a rote answer of what he is to say to his child, that the child knows this is the answer. When your son asks you what the Lord is asking you. And then also about the Passover in Exodus chapter 12, verses 26 and 27. When your children say to you, what do you mean by this Passover? You shall say, here, all of this. It is the sacrifice of the Lord's Passover. And he goes on to tell the story. So, again, you have this standard, written-down answer of what you are to teach your child. So that's Catholic. Now, why catechism? Isn't the Bible, reading the Bible, isn't that just enough? Well, of course, I'm not saying the Bible is a bad thing. Bibles can be very good. So reading the Bible with your family, that's excellent. What catechism does is it's summarizing truth of the Bible. And when you're summarizing in these doctrines, What it does is it helps a child and an adult organize what they are reading in the Bible. So our children, well, I'll give this image to you. So think of a coat hanger in the closet. So think of your child's closet. In the child's closet, the child gets the clothes and throws all the clothes in the closet in just a giant pile. So what you want for your children is to have those clothes organized, drawers, coat hangers, and that's what catechism does for our brains. When they read the Bible, they have lots of information all packed there to the closet, okay, of their brains. So they know all the stories about Daniel and David and Jesus and all His healings. But what does it mean? That's what catechism does. How do we organize all of this information? So if you ask your child, what are the three offices of Christ? And the child learns prophet, priest, and king are those three offices of Christ. So now, when you go and you tell this Bible story, the child has a category. OK, here is Christ acting as a priest. Here is Christ acting as the king. Here is Christ acting as a prophet. And so they understand how these stories fit into the truth of Scripture. You think also about children learning English. You grow up in an English speaking home. It's no work to learn English. But then we have to teach our children so that they can better understand the language you're going to speak. And so that's also what catechism is. Also, good catechisms are not just doctrine, but they go through usually the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments. So those are opportunities to teach your children. That's what they're designed for. You teach them what to believe. You teach them how to have a relationship with God through prayer. And then you teach them how to live in a way that pleases God. So that's the whole point of these catechisms. So catechisms, historically, for the last maybe 500 years, and even before that, have been the main way that parents pass down the faith. It used to be that pastors would write their own catechisms for their church, and then they would go around visiting the families of the church, and they would check and ask the children questions, even pop quizzes, and see if the fathers were catechizing their children. So that's what they used to do. But let me read to you some quotes from historical figures that might inspire you. So John Owen said, after the ordinance of public preaching of the word, there is not, I can see, any more needful ordinance than catechizing. After preaching, the second most important thing that people need in their families is catechizing. John Calvin said, believe me, the Church of God will never be preserved without catechesis. The Church will never be preserved without catechesis. And then one more from Thomas Watson. He says, I fear that one reason there has not been more good done by preaching has been because the chief doctrines of religion have not been explained in a catechetical way. To preach and not to catechize is to build without foundation." So he's saying, similar to what I said a minute ago, that preaching, you can hear a bunch of good information, but Catechism has helped people organize all that information. So, who want more good done by preaching? Catechize. If you want to learn more about catechism, there's a great little book called Catechizing Our Children by Terry Johnson. It's about the Westminster, so you're going to have to adapt it a little bit to us. but good stuff on catechism. And if you're wondering what to do, this is called the first book of questions and answers for little kids that I did when my kids were a little less of an actor to talk about. So first book of questions and answers for little kids, and then I use a catechism for boys and girls later on, which is free from Chapel Library. And then out there, we have a prubate catechism, which is from the Reformed Baptist Church in the Grand Rapids. And so I'm sure it's good. It's just not one that I've personally used. So one of these, if your kids are older, and this one if they're young. So there are obviously many more that you could probably find on the internet, as long as they're solid enough. So you need to instruct, because you need to persuade your kids, because you can't always cajole them physically. What kind of person needs to be the instructor? He needs to have the truth, a life, and the heart. That backs it up. When to instruct? Fathers, you need to lead your families in family worship. And what to instruct, of course, the Bible is great, and as long as you're instructing the Bible, that's good. But I especially would encourage instructing in practice. So, here, my son, your father's instruction, forsake not your mother's teaching. Fathers and mothers, let's make sure that we Our great God, we thank You for the great revelation of truth that we have in Your Word, that we might know You. You, great and glorious God, who is far above, transcends us, whose thoughts are far greater than our thoughts, yet You, Lord, have spoken to us, and You've revealed much truth about Yourself in Your Word. Help us, Lord, to walk in your Word, to walk in your Word, to learn your Word. And we pray especially that you would help us to pass down your Word and the truth of your Word to coming generations. May our children not forsake their parents' teaching, and may we as parents not forsake the responsibility that we have. We ask for your help, and we ask for the strength and endurance and guidance of your Holy Spirit. For those of us who have children in the home, maybe our grandmothers or grandfathers, we pray,