Lessons from Lois and Eunice on Parenting

Okay, if you have your Bible with you, and I hope you do, I want you to turn to the book of 2
Timothy. It's near the back of your Bible. And we're going to do something a little different this
morning than what we normally do. And if you're a visitor here this morning, welcome. Our normal
pattern here at Redeemer is to work our way through books of the Bible. We'll take a book and go
verse by verse. Through the Bible, we've been recently in the book of Ephesians and we have put
that on pause for the summer. Next Sunday, we're starting a study in the Old Testament book of
Judges that will go for 12 weeks and then we'll pick back up with Ephesians in the fall.
But this morning, because it's Mother's Day, I want us to look at the impact that two women had.
This is a mom and a grandma whose names were Eunice and Lois. The impact they had on a young man
whose name was Timothy, who is well known, well regarded, became a pastor in the early church.
And the Timothy we're talking about, of course, is the one who has two books of the New Testament
with his name in them. These are... correspondences, letters that came to Timothy from the Apostle
Paul, and 1 and 2 Timothy were written by Paul to his young friend. Timothy's mom and grandma are
referenced twice in Paul's letters, and it's clear that Paul understood that these women had an
impact on his young companion. And so we're going to look this morning at two passages from 2
Timothy, beginning in chapter 1 and then one in chapter 3, that mention the impact of Timothy's mom
and grandma, and we'll see about the spiritual influence that they had on his life. So we're going
to read through these two passages in question. Before we do that, let me pray for our time in
God's Word. Lord, we need you. We need you to speak to us. We need you to soften our hearts to hear
what your Word would say. to us, we need you to strengthen us in this hour. Be near and be our
teacher and help us to be not just hearers of your word, but doers of your word. We pray in your
name. Amen. Would you stand as we read? This is the word of God for the people of God.
And I'm going to ask you after we're done reading to remain standing until I tell you to be seated.
So first, excuse me, 2 Timothy chapter 1, beginning at verse 3. Here's what the Bible says.
I thank God whom I serve, as did my ancestors with a clear conscience,
as I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. As I remember your tears,
I long to see you that I may be filled with joy. I'm reminded of your sincere faith,
a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice,
and now I am sure dwells in you as well. For this reason, I remind you to fan into flame the gift
of God, which is in you through the laying on of hands. For God gave us a spirit not of fear,
but of power and love and self-control. And then jump ahead to 2 Timothy 3 and look at verse 12.
We'll pick it up there.
Paul writes, Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,
while evil people and imposters will go on from bad to worse,
deceiving and being deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly
believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the
sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof.
for correction and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete,
equipped for every good work. Amen. May God bless this reading of his word. The grass withers,
the flower fades, but the word of our God will last forever. You may be seated.
So I have three simple points for you this morning from these two passages. Here's what I want us
to see in the text. First of all, the power of a sincere faith in the life of children.
When parents and grandparents have a sincere faith, that's a powerful legacy to give to your
children. Secondly, I want us to see the priority that God's Word should have as we raise our
children. The priority of God's Word. And then third, I want us to see the pattern of instruction
that's laid out for us in this passage, because there's a pattern here for how we're to do this.
But before we get to these three points, let me just give you a little bio of Timothy. Let's find
out a little bit more about his life and his ministry. This is background, just so that we'll
understand the story and understand who he is. See if you can follow me on this. Timothy was born
in Asia Minor, as far as we can tell. That's where he came from, a town in Asia Minor called
Lystra. It's in modern-day Turkey. That's where it's located on the map. So you can see in the
right-hand corner is Iran and Iraq, and then Israel is at the bottom center.
And then if you look in the upper left, there's Greece and Rome. So that gives you kind of the
Mediterranean picture. Timothy was raised in Lystra. And here's what the region looked like in
Timothy's time. This is a map from the Apostle Paul from his missionary, his first missionary
journey. He started his missionary journey up in Antioch. So you can see,
can we highlight Antioch there? Yeah, that's where he started his missionary journey. And then he
went first to Cyprus, and then later into the region of Galatia, which includes Lystra,
which is where Timothy was from. Paul would later write a letter to the Galatians. That was to all
of the churches in this region of Galatia, and Lystra was one of those areas. So on this first
missionary journey, when Paul first gets to Lystra, There's a man who is lame there.
This is in Acts chapter 14. Paul comes into Lystra. There's a lame man there and Paul heals him.
And all of the people are amazed that this man is healed. They believe that the Roman gods have
come to earth and are here and they come and want to worship Paul and Barnabas. They want to offer
sacrifices to them. And Paul and Barnabas say, no, you're not supposed to do that. And then the
Jews get incensed and they come and they want to stone Paul and Barnabas. In fact, they do. They
think they're dead when they toss him out of town. But the Bible says that Paul got up and the next
day went to the next town. That's just how Paul was. Now, Timothy is not mentioned during this time
in Lystra in Acts chapter 14. But it does seem like his mom and his grandma and Timothy...
the teaching of the apostle Paul in Acts chapter 14, and they were converted as a result of that.
So when you skip ahead to Acts 16, Paul is now on his second missionary journey, and he comes back
through Lystra. He's on his way to Greece this time.
In Acts 16.1, he says this. It says, Paul came to Lystra. A disciple was there named Timothy,
the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer. But his father was a Greek.
He was well spoken of by the brothers at Lystra and Iconium. Paul wanted Timothy to accompany him,
and he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in those places, for they all knew
that his father was a Greek. This is Timothy's first appearance in the Bible.
His mom, we're told, is a Jewish woman. who had come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah. We
presume that's true about his grandmother as well. His father is not a believer. He's a Gentile.
This would be a mom who, as a Jewish woman, she is a part of what's called the diaspora.
These are people who lived in the Holy Land but have been dispersed throughout the Greek and Roman
Empire. They're no longer living in the land of promise. So she's living in the Greek world.
We don't know how she ended up in Asia Minor or how long she's been there. And it looks like her
Jewishness is kind of a mixed bag because she married a Gentile.
She's not living in the Holy Land. She did not have her son circumcised when he was born.
She did give him the name Timothy, which means one who honors God. She apparently does not make
pilgrimages back to Jerusalem for the feasts and festivals. So she's kind of a Jew living outside
of the circle of Judaism. But she and her mother have both been teaching.
her son, Timothy, about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. She's been passing on to him,
they've been passing on to him, the truth that they know from the Jewish scriptures, their
understanding of the faith. Now, they would not have had a Bible or a Torah in their home,
so what they're passing on would be what they had memorized, what they had learned, what's called
the oral tradition. And they would have had a lot of the Old Testament memorized, and so they're
acquainting Timothy with all they've learned about the one true God, even though they're living in
a place where they are in the minority. So they've become culturally accommodating Jews,
but they were not faithful to follow the law, but they remain sincere in their faith, and they
raise their son to be exposed to that faith as well. And of course, when they heard the gospel,
when Paul first came through and he said, God has sent the Messiah, they believed and they were
converted and they became followers of the way. They became disciples of Christ. And so when we get
to Acts 16 and Paul's on his second missionary journey, Timothy has become a follower of Jesus as
well. He has a good reputation in the church. and Paul recruits him to come along, and he agrees.
Now, we don't know how old Timothy was at this time, probably a young man, maybe even a teenager.
And when Paul says, I want you to come with me, and Timothy says, that sounds great, and Paul says,
there's one thing, we're going to have to be circumcised. Now,
that might have been one of those times when Timothy said, I'm not sure I'm called to go on this
journey now. And the reason was not because circumcision would make him more pleasing before the
Lord, but Paul knew that an uncircumcised young man would be a stumbling block as they tried to
reach Jews throughout the Greek and Roman world. So he wanted to take away any stumbling block,
and Timothy agreed to be circumcised.
Timothy joins with Paul on the second missionary journey and stays with him throughout the rest of
his life, although they're not always... constant companions. There are some times that Paul says,
I want you to go here or I want you to stay here while I go on. So they journey together,
but they're not always together. Paul comes to refer to Timothy as my true son in the faith.
He had a deep love for Timothy and mentored him. He is named as a co-sender.
Of many of Paul's letters, he may have actually contributed to those letters.
2 Corinthians lists him, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Philemon.
Timothy is mentioned in all of those letters. And it was a 15 to 18 year period that Timothy
traveled with Paul. This is what he did in the early years of his life.
This was his assignment. Paul would, like I said, either leave him behind or send him ahead.
He was with Paul during his first imprisonment in Rome. He traveled with him to Jerusalem and went
back there when Paul was released from prison the first time. Paul and Timothy traveled back to
Rome together, and eventually Paul writes to Timothy, who is in Ephesus, and says, this is in 2
Timothy, the last letter we have, he says, I hope you will come see me, and I hope you'll bring
some of my stuff with you when you come, and that's the last we hear. about this.
We don't know if Timothy was able to get to Paul before he was martyred for his faith. One
interesting side note here, there's a verse in Hebrews 13 that suggests that Timothy may have been
imprisoned as well, along with Paul. The writer of Hebrews says, you should know that our brother
Timothy has been released with whom I shall see you if he comes soon. Now,
we don't know if that's the same Timothy, but we presume it is. Just a few other things you should
know about Timothy. Timothy was apparently prone to anxiety and fear. That's why Paul,
in writing to Timothy, says, God has not given you a spirit of fear and calls him to be strong.
and to trust in the Lord. Timothy was also a young man, we know, and he had to be reminded that
while he was a young man that did not disqualify him from service to the Lord,
Paul told him at one point, don't let anyone look down on you because you're young, but set an
example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, and in faith, and in purity.
We know that Timothy had a tendency toward being timid when Paul wrote to the Corinthians and said,
Timothy is going to come see you. He said, when Timothy comes, see that you put him at ease among
you for he is doing the work of the Lord as I am. So let no one despise him.
Help him on his way in peace that he may return to me for I'm expecting him with the brothers. So
the fact that he needed to say, put him at ease, don't let anyone despise him, tells us a little
bit about Timothy's life. He also apparently faced some medical issues during his life,
because Paul had to write to him at one point and said, go ahead and take a little wine for your
stomach issues. So that's the profile. of Timothy, how he came to faith,
how he traveled with Paul, and who he was. And the reason for all the detail is this. I want you to
see that the young man Timothy was, who he became, a young man who God used powerfully and
significantly in the spread of the gospel in the early church, these seeds of faithfulness were
sown in Timothy's life by his mother and his grandmother. That's where it started.
They laid a foundation in the life of their son and grandson that would ultimately bear much fruit
for the kingdom. And wouldn't you like that to be your legacy? As a mom,
even as a dad, wouldn't you like to think that you are sowing seeds of the gospel in the life of
your child that will bear kingdom fruit as they grow? Let me just say here,
I see a lot of Christian parents who I believe are neglecting the responsibility we have as parents
to do what Timothy's mom and grandmother did. They're neglecting their child's spiritual
development and spending a lot more time and a lot more money and a lot more effort on other areas
of development, secondary things. Now look, these secondary things are not unimportant.
Your child's physical development matters. Your child's intellectual development matters.
child's social development matters. But I will tell you that years from today,
what will matter most to you about your child is that your child's walking with God.
That will matter more than how good their job is or how great their marriage is or how much money
they have or how impressive their resume is. I have a friend who is an author.
His name is Tim Kimmel. He wrote a book called Raising Kids for True Greatness, and he said most
Christian parents have not stopped to define what success should look like as they raise their
kids. He said... have short-term goals. They want their kids to do well in school. They want them
to get good scores on their ACT or their SAT. They want them to do well in college. They want them
to get a good job. They want them to find a wife who will give them or a husband who will give them
good-looking grandbabies. They want them to have wealth and health throughout their life. They
want recognition or acclaim. But Tim Kimmel said, here's the problem. God does not place value on
those things in the Bible like he places on the spiritual development of your kids. He said,
you don't need God's help to raise a successful child, if that's how you're defining success. He
said, my unbelieving neighbors are aiming at those kinds of goals for their kids,
and they're doing fine with them. They don't need the Lord's help with that. He said, here's what
you should be aiming for. You should want your child to have a passionate love for Jesus and show
that love to others through care and concern for others. He says, it's really that simple.
You can't control the outcome as parents. Now, keep that in mind. You can't pre-program your kids.
This is not you feed in this formula. There's a recipe. You do this and your kids will ultimately
love Jesus. That's in God's hands. Only God can change the heart of a child.
But you can point them in the right direction. You can give them a foundation that will serve them
throughout their lives. And that's what Lois and Eunice did. And I want us to see three things they
did specifically as they raised Timothy. First of all, they had a sincere faith.
So we see this in 2 Timothy 1 where Paul writes to Timothy and says, I'm reminded of your sincere
faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now that I'm
sure dwells with you. The key word there is sincere, a genuine faith.
In the Greek language, the word sincere that's translated there is a word that means without
acting, without pretense, you're not putting on a show. It's genuine,
it's real. You don't have to manufacture it. In the Latin, it's interesting, there's a folk
tradition about the word sincere that takes it in two Latin words,
sine cere. Sine means without, cere means wax. And this tradition goes back to the idea that
potters, when they were making pottery, if there was a crack in the pot that they were making,
one of the ways that they would fix that is they'd put wax in there and then paint over it,
and nobody would be able to tell from looking at the pot that it has a crack in it.
And until you get it home and you pour some hot water in the pot, and then the wax melts, and then
it's a leaky pot, and you bought a bad pot.
A pot that is sincere is a pot without wax. You could hold it up to the light sometimes and you
could see whether their cracks were in there because the wax would show up that way.
We want to be parents whose faith is without wax, where it's without acting,
without pretense, a sincere faith. Researchers tell us today...
that kids who grow up in the church and then leave the church in their teens or 20s often point to
the fact that they did not see a sincere faith at home. And that's not always the case. There are
kids who wander off for any number of reasons. But the biggest thing that kids report is,
I heard one thing at church and saw something very different at home. I heard my parents saying one
thing on Sunday and then saying something very different throughout the week. We need to have a
sincere faith. Now, let me be careful here. A sincere faith doesn't mean that there are no cracks.
I mean, I just talked about the pot having cracks. It's not that you don't have cracks. It's what
you fill the cracks in with. Because all of us have cracks. If you've got to be without cracks to
be an effective parent, nobody's going to do this. We all mess up. The question is,
how do you fix it when you mess up? Do you try to put wax in the cracks? Or do you...
the potter reshape the pot so that it's true. An insincere faith is a faith that covers up the
cracks for appearance's sake. A sincere faith is where you go back to the Lord and say, I need you
to fix me. I got a crack. And God restores you without, he fills it with grace,
not with wax. Timothy had a sincere faith. He saw what a sincere faith looks like in the life of
his mother and his grandmother. And your children are learning what faith really looks like by
watching you. I've said it for many years. Your kids will hear what you say.
They may do what you tell them, but they will ultimately become what they see.
What you model for them about your faith may be the most important thing you do. Not the only
thing, but the most important thing. What are your kids learning from you about what faith looks
like? What kind of lessons are they learning? Do they see that you really live out what you say you
believe? And this is the key. When you mess up, do they see you when you mess up?
They know you mess up. Are you showing them what it looks like to repent and to be restored?
I did not do a good job of this when my kids were growing up. I thought my job is to model for them
what it looks like to live a godly, righteous life. And when I messed up,
I wanted to keep that kind of... I don't want you to see. We'll just ignore that.
I tried to cover it up. Instead of saying, I'm a sinner just like you,
and I need to confess and repent as well.
So I think... need to make sure that we are modeling. In fact, one of the things,
I heard Tim Kimmel say this, I shared it, and our kids do this from time to time. One of our kids
at the dinner table, they'll, you know, at the dinner table, how was your day? Or what were your
highs and lows? Maybe you do that at the dinner table. One of my kids will say, let's talk about
how we sinned today. I'll go first. And then he confesses there.
I got mad in traffic today when somebody pulled in front of me and I had some angry thoughts and
said some things I shouldn't have said and the Lord's forgiven me for that. How about you? What
they're doing is they're normalizing that yes, we are sinners and yes, God is a God of grace and
letting that be on display at the dinner table. When you try to cover up the fact...
there's sin, two things happen. First, you're not modeling what repentance looks like. Your kids
have to see what it looks like to repent. You have to show them. And then secondly, if all they see
in you is... you're a good, pious Christian, when they get sinful thoughts or do sinful things,
they think, I just can't be like mom or dad. I'm just not good enough. There's something wrong with
me. So you have to help your kids see that they're just like you. You're just like them. You're a
sinner too. A sincere faith is an honest, genuine, without wax faith.
Timothy saw it in his mom and his grandmother, and your kids need to see it modeled in your life as
well. Second lesson from... and Eunice, the priority that is put on the passing on to Timothy of
what the Scriptures teach. 2 Timothy 3, Paul says,
for you, continuing what you have learned and what you firmly believed, knowing from whom you
learned it, how from childhood you've been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to
make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Lois and Eunice are not mentioned
specifically here, but from childhood, Timothy was taught these things, and they're the ones who
were doing the teaching. Now, listen, moms and dads, there's no better time than right now.
Whatever age your kids are, start planting Scripture, Bible verses,
the truth about God. Plant these things in your child's heart. Start early.
Make it a priority. You have no idea how a Bible verse that you teach your child today is something
that will come back to them 30 years from now in a trial, in a hardship,
and they don't even know where it came from, but it comes back to them. And I'm going to give you
some thoughts on how you make the scriptures a priority as you raise your kids.
First of all, surround you and them with songs that sing scripture in your car.
Your smart speaker at home, on your devices. Have the whole family listening to songs that our
scripture put to music. Because there's something about music. First of all, it connects with us
emotionally. But secondly, it makes the Bible memorable. I don't know how many times I'm reading
through a passage in the Bible and I see a verse and I go, I know that song. And I can just start,
I know that verse because I know that song. So there are a whole bunch of sources for this.
One of the great sources is Seeds. It used to be Seeds Family Worship. It's now Seeds Kids Worship.
And this is their YouTube page. And yes, limit the screen time your kids have,
okay? Give them a limited amount of screen time, but give them time on the YouTube page for Seeds
Family Worship and let them watch the YouTube videos of these songs. And the people doing the song
motions. They want to say, if they said, can I play my game? Say, watch 15 minutes of Seeds and
then you can do your game.
Let them have that. Or pull up Spotify and search for scripture songs for kids.
You'll find playlists and you can pull up these playlists and you can listen to them and go, do I
like that style? And play it in the car. Learn these songs. Sing along. Or search for scripture
lullabies in Spotify. And when you put your kids to bed, turn on the music in their room and say,
shh, time to go to sleep. There's going to be music. And let these scripture songs just play over
and over again. Or pick a verse that you can memorize together as a family,
a verse for the month or a verse for a week. And everyone do it,
not just the kids, but at the dinner table at night. Let's go over our verse. Here's our verse for
this week.
Find some Bible story books that you can read. Last weekend, we were in Brooklyn with our daughter
and our son-in-law and two of our grandkids. Cedric is 11. He just had his birthday. And Lyle is,
what is Lyle? Seven years old. And Lyle wanted me to read stories to him before I went to bed.
And I have on my iPad a storybook, a Bible storybook about Zacchaeus.
The Man in the Tree is the name of the book. And so I said, here, I'll read this one to you.
And I pulled it up on my iPad and I read The Man in the Tree to Lyle. And the next day he was like,
can we read that one again? I think I read it four times while I was up in Brooklyn to him. And now
he knows the story of Zacchaeus. As a result of that, Kevin DeYoung has a great...
Bible storybook for kids ages 6 through 12. Get a copy of his book and share it.
So stories, songs, scripture memory. Oh, and let me just say, Awana.
You've got your kids coming to Awana. Awana is all about scripture memory. Now, stop for now.
Let's start it back up in the fall, in August. But let me just say this, moms and dads, each week
your kids are given verses that they're supposed to learn for the next week. you need to help them
with this. You need to be, when they come home with their book and you say, what are your verses
for this week? Let me help you learn these. It's a great way. Kids who go through the Awana
program, I don't know what the number is, but it's like 150 verses they're going to learn. Is that
right, Laura?
800? Okay, so 800 verses as they go through Awana.
That's what it's here for. It's not here as a babysitting service on Wednesday night. I know that
you're happy for that, but... here so that your kids can have God's Word pressed into their heart.
I was having lunch this week with the young dad in our church, and we were talking about the
subject of family devotions and God's Word and how you drive this home. And I shared with him again
that I didn't do this well as a dad, didn't do it perfectly. But I told him what I had learned from
doing interviews with a couple of filmmakers, Alex and Stephen Kendrick, the guys who made the
movies Fireproof and Courageous. I was doing some video shoots and I said,
tell me about how you do it. And I'm just going to, this is a one minute clip of them talking about
what they did as a family. So watch this.
Parents who are not familiar with family devotions, it's awesome. You got to do it. And basically
no preparation. You don't have to be seminary trained or anything, but get some copies of God's
word in the same translation, turn off the TV, sit on the couch together as a family and just pray,
God, would you speak to us now? and then open up the Word of God and read a chapter of God's Word
out loud, and then just talk about it. And then pray together as a family for God to help you to
apply what you've learned, and then for the events of the day. It's not rocket science. You're
sitting there reading God's Word, talking about this very relaxed setting, but in doing so,
we are prioritizing time with the Lord and time with each other. It makes our relationships
stronger. It breeds the education of the Word of God in the lives of my children.
And it gives them a hunger to know the Lord more. Okay, pretty simple. End of dinner. Get out the
Bible and say, before we're done, let me just read this paragraph. Let me read these three verses.
Read them. First you pray. Lord, would you speak to us through your word? Read the three verses.
Any thoughts on those three verses? You talk for a few minutes about what it is. How can we pray
for one another? You're done. Pretty simple. But the routine of doing it.
Helps your kids understand this is a priority. God's Word's a priority in our home and with my mom
and dad. Here's the last parenting lesson from Lois and Eunice about parenting.
Follow the pattern of instruction that is set out for parents in these verses. You're familiar
probably with 2 Timothy 3.16 that says all Scripture is inspired by God.
point to this verse as evidence that God's word is authoritative and inspired,
but we often forget it's in the context of how God's word was poured into Timothy's life as a
child. He's been talking about how Timothy was exposed to the sacred writing from childhood.
And then he says, and the scripture you were exposed to is profitable. It's breathed out by God and
profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness. And I see two things
as I look at this verse. First of all, connected to what we just said about the priority of God's
Word, Paul is saying maturity, that the man of God may be equipped for every good work.
Maturity is connected to the Word of God. If you want to raise a child to be mature,
God's Word is going to be an essential part of how you get to maturity. I just need to say here,
I see a lot of young parents who are putting their hope or their confidence for the success of
their children in Reddit threads, in Substack posts, in podcasts,
in something other than or less than the authority of Scripture for how you raise your kids.
Scripture stands above and ahead of the opinions or the theories of parenting experts or mommy
bloggers or podcasters. Look to what the Bible says. The Bible rightly divided will help you know
how to raise your kids. Put your hope in that. Put your hope and confidence in what is inspired,
what is God-breathed, what is profitable. Second, there's a pattern here. The pattern is,
first, teach, then reprove, then correct, then train.
You see those four words? Teach, reprove, correct, train. I see a lot of...
today, who are trying to correct their children from things they never taught their children. Their
children are acting up, they're trying to correct them, but they've never taught them how to act
right. You've got to take the time to teach your kids first as the first step toward obedience.
When our kids were little... Again, I remember doing this with one of the five. So as I'm telling
these stories, don't think, oh, they did it perfectly at their home. Our kids will be here and
testify that we didn't do it perfectly. But I got the idea one night.
I was sitting on the sofa, and I said to my son, Jimmy, wanted to play a game. And I said,
let's play the obey game. And he said, what's that? And I said, well, here's how it works. I'll sit
here on the sofa. I'll be reading and you go play over there. And in a minute, I'm going to say,
Jimmy, will you come over here? And when I do, I want you to jump up, say yes, daddy, and run over
here. Okay. Can you do that? Sure. So he went over there and he said, so I'm reading and he's
playing. And I said, Jimmy, can you come here, please? And he jumped up, said, yes, daddy. And he
ran over and I said, great, you won the game. High five. He said, let's do it again.
So for 10 or 15 minutes, we played the obey game, right? He was loving the obey game. But I was
trying to teach him, train him. You listen to your mom or your dad's voice,
and then you do what they say. You have to start with the work of teaching. You have to teach your
kids manners. You have to teach them character development. You have to teach them life skills.
Teach them chores. Teach them the work ethic. Teach them how to handle money, how to clean their
room. Teach, teach, teach. It's exhausting.
And they won't get it. And you'll have to teach them again. And by the time you think they've got
it, then they'll not get it again and you've got to do it over and over again. And then when they
mess up what you've taught them, the next thing is to reprove them. Now that sounds like a harsh
word. It doesn't have to be. Reprove means you identify error. So to reprove a child,
you say, let me show you what you did wrong here. You show them where the error came from.
And you don't shame them with that. This is part of the training process.
You teach, and then you point out where they messed up. And then if reproving means to point out
what they did wrong, correction means show them how to do it right.
Correcting is about restoration, rebuilding. Expose the problem, then show them the correction.
And finally, training in righteousness, that's just the repetitive work of doing teaching,
reproving, and correcting over and over again. That's how you train. Training means you're helping
them develop habits of righteousness. What do baseball players do before the season starts every
year? They go to spring what? Training. They go away, and these are... Highly paid professionals,
guys at the top of their game, and they go and retrain themselves in the basics of playing
baseball. They're already the best in the world, but they got to get back in those habits. They got
to get the rust off. They got to be doing it again. Training in righteousness is something we do
throughout our lives. And we start it as parents. Kids have to be retrained over and over again in
righteousness. Re-taught, re-reproved, re-corrected. And over and over again. And it's
exhausting. But let's make sure when you step in to reprove and correct the child, you stop and ask
the question, did I ever teach them what's expected here? Don't start off correcting and reproving
until you've taught them first.
There were times when we would take our kids to the grocery store. We didn't do this all the time,
but we learned after a while this is a good thing to do. Pull in the parking lot. and say, before
we go into the grocery store, let's remind ourselves, what kind of behavior does mommy expect in
the grocery store? And what do we not do? We don't grab stuff off the shelves that we want.
We don't run ahead of mommy. We don't throw a tantrum in the store. You kind of go over what the
rules of the grocery store are. That's teaching them. That's reminding them. So that when you get
in there, you've done the preparatory work. So from Lois and Eunice,
pass on a sincere faith. Prioritize Scripture and then follow this pattern of teaching,
of reproving, correcting in order to train your child in righteousness. I'm going to wrap up with
something I read this week from somebody online. Her name is Ann Kennedy. She lives in western New
York State. She's a pastor's wife. She's a mother of six kids.
Her six kids are older. One of them got married this year. She was reflecting on her assignment as
a mom, and here's what she wrote. I thought this was good. She said, one of my guiding principles
when my children were small, and this wasn't my own thought, but I can't remember where I got it,
she says. One of my guiding principles was that my job was to make my children into people I wanted
to be with.
Young children are lovely, of course, she said, but they have to be socialized into regular people
who don't chew with their mouths open. who don't hunch over their plates, who don't interrupt,
who know how to be interesting and funny and aware of the needs and desires of other people around
them. That's why parenting is a full-time and very delicate job, because you don't want to crush
their little spirits, but you also don't want them to vaunt and exhibit themselves everywhere in
ways that embarrass them when they aren't cute anymore.
She said, I think teaching good manners is a little bit like picking out a nice outfit for your
child to wear. If you dress them nicely and you make them be polite in public, you're buying them
favor and patience from people who don't have a lot of experience with young children and who might
be unkind to them otherwise. She ends by saying, if you want your... to count other people as more
significant than themselves when they are adults, which is something that every parent should aim
for. You have to give them the tools they'll need to make such a thing possible, including knowing
what to do and how to behave around other people. I thought that was pretty good advice. Teach
them, reprove them when they mess up, correct them when they don't do it right, and then rinse and
repeat. And of course, this goes without saying, but... guess we need to remind ourselves of this.
All of this parenting and seed planting that we're talking about here requires that God the Holy
Spirit comes and waters and provides the sunlight to cause these seeds to grow.
Spiritual life in your child is something only God can give. You cannot make your child be alive
spiritually. The good news is spiritual life... life is available to anyone,
child or adult, who will turn from sin and turn to Jesus and say, I'm not my own. I've been bought
with a price. I want to follow you. God gives new life to all who will turn to Him and follow Him
and obey Him. And that's what we prayed for for these babies who were dedicated this morning, that
they would turn to Him at an early age. That's what we pray for for any person who's here this
morning who doesn't know Christ. If you're here this morning and you're thinking, I don't know that
I have a sincere faith. I don't know that the scriptures are a priority for me like they should be.
Honestly, they've never been a priority. Well, no matter your age, you can begin a spiritual new
life. This can be a spiritual turning point in your life. It starts with surrender, surrendering
yourself to Jesus and saying, I know I've messed up. Lord, I've sinned. I want you to forgive my
sin. I want you to give me new life. I will follow you. And I'm praying that some of you today,
this might be the day where that decision happens and where it reshapes the rest of your life.
Because at the end of the day, that's what really matters for our kids and for each one of us.
Pray with me, if you will. Father, thank you for your word and for the clear instruction it
provides. Thank you for children and the gift and the blessing that they are to us. Thank you for
the children who are in this church. Thank you for the moms and the dads who are here,
but the moms who give tirelessly to pour into the lives of their kids. Give them wisdom as they
seek to do what you've called them to do, to help sow seeds,
gospel seeds in the lives of their kids. And Lord, I pray for those who are here this morning who,
as they look at their lives, would have to acknowledge that their faith is not a sincere faith.
that they put wax in the cracks.
Lord, I pray that they would turn to you today and surrender to you and receive from you new life
that comes from a genuine faith. I ask this in your name.