The Foundation

Thank you very much. I've only been to see Mrs. Allen one time since I've been here, but I enjoyed the time I spent with her. How many of you have ever had foundation problems with your house? It's funny. Everybody that raised their hand has a very grimace on their face. It's expensive to fix foundation problems. It's better not to have them. Once you have foundational problems in a house, the whole house becomes destabilized. I think I might have told you when Kim and I were looking for a house when we moved here last year, we were looking in different places around.

In fact, we looked in this area. We looked all over Nashville and Murfreesboro. We found this house out in the country. We couldn't figure out why it was in our Chrysler age because it was a beautiful brick house. It was an older house, beautiful brick house.

It had lots of land with it. It had a big metal barn. It had a little area that was set up like a park with a basketball hoop. It had its own cemetery. That's about as cool as you can get. The upstairs had a big attic that was partly unfinished.

I asked the real estate agent, I said, what do you think would cost to finish this attic? She pulled out her calculator and she said, she's about ten grand. I said, how much would that increase the value of this house? She added up the square footage. She said, about $50,000. I said, Kim, I've got to buy this house. I don't know where I'll get the ten grand, but we've got to buy this house.

We walked through it. There were a couple of weird things about it, which my wife remembers. I just remember the neat stuff. We walked around and we were looking around the outside. My wife goes, what's that crack? It started at the peak of the wall, because it was a two-story house. This big white crack just meandered all down the side of the house to what got to the foundation. There was this big huge crack in the foundation. The real estate agent looked at me and said, you do not want to buy this house.

Because if the foundation is cracked, you're going to have all kinds of problems. The house is destabilized, and you don't know what kind of other damage you may have to deal with. Let me ask you a question today. What are the foundational principles of the Christian family? What lays the foundation for the rest of the house? When we had our congregational meeting here in July, one of the things that was brought up was a number of people here, and even a couple of people in Murfreesboro said, we need some more sermons on marriage and family.

I finished the ninth commandment last week. I was going to do the tenth commandment this week, and I thought, no, I want to tie in the tenth commandment into the Feast of Tabernacles, because there's a principle there that applies to the feast. So I thought, well, let's start doing a few sermons on marriage and family that we can do over the next year. What I want to do today is just look at five foundational concepts. In fact, some of the things we're going to talk about, I'm not going to go in great detail because they actually come right off of the two sermons I did on the fifth commandment, honoring mother and father, which protects the sanctity of family, and then the seventh commandment against adultery, which protects the sanctity of marriage.

So we're going to take those concepts and we're going to help lay out this foundation. Then building the house, you know, we can talk about building that house all we want, but unless we have the right foundation, the house will have a big crack in it. It'll be destabilized. So what are? What will we say? Okay, here's just five foundational concepts for the Christian family. In a book I read many years ago called The Traits of a Healthy Family, Dolores Corinne, the author, did something that was interesting.

She took 551 interviews. Now, to me, research, the bigger the group of people, research the better. So this was a good sample of that they were dealing with. And these were all people that dealt with family problems. The people she interviewed, the 551 people included ministers, medical doctors, family counselors, principals, teachers, social workers, and coaches. Some of them were Christians, some of them weren't. But she interviewed these people and she had a whole series of questions.

What is it that you see as the traits of a healthy family? That you know that these children that you're dealing with are coming from a background where, you know, you're not dealing with problems of dysfunction at the level you are with unhealthy families? I mean, what are the traits? What are the what do we look at in a family?

One of the things that they brought out is the most important. They made a list of the most important traits. She could find a consensus among all these people, different backgrounds, different educational backgrounds, different approaches, different religions. But they all came up with a set of basic traits and said, this is what makes a healthy family.

One of the first points that they came up with as a trait was a shared religious core. In fact, to be a healthy Christian family, they have a right foundation. As a Christian family, what other foundation can you have? God has to be the center. God has to be the center. Now, we talked a little bit about that on the Fifth Commandment, but God has to be the center of the family. And you say, well, that's obvious. Well, we can state that.

But there's a huge difference between stating God has to be the center of our family and having God as the center of the family. In fact, it is so easy in the world that you and I live in because the pressures to destroy family are so great to insulate the family and make the family the center of the universe. Now, family is important. We're talking about family, husband and wife, children. This is important. But that isn't the center of your universe. In fact, if you want to build a strong family, God is the foundation.

In fact, the conclusion she came to—this is very interesting, listen to this—there are families among us today who idolize the family to the point that they expect the impossible for themselves.

This kind of family has a built-in failure device. It believes that if you can just try hard enough and focus hard enough on itself and its needs, it will have no problems. And I've seen people do this. They want to save their children from the world. They want to save the world out of their family. And they isolate themselves to the point that their whole life is centered on each other and the family until it becomes actually a form of selfishness.

So building the core of the family, the center of the family, actually isn't the family. There are other principles that we build on. You say, well, what does that mean? Now, think about this for a minute. How many people and some of you may have experienced this? The only reason you're not divorced is because God was the center of your relationship.

You had problems in your marriage, but you would not divorce. Why? Because there was a greater principle based on God as the center of your relationship. If God wasn't the center of your relationship, you would have divorced. Same way with the family. If God isn't the center of it, focusing on itself will not produce what God wants in our families. What God wants in our families is actually, our families are very important in His plan. The function, if we look through the Bible, the function of the family. When I talk about the family here, I'm not talking about two men who get married and adopt a child. I'm talking about God's definition of marriage. Husband, wife, children, grandchildren, cousins, right? Now, some of you are struggling with that because that's not what you have. Maybe you're a single mother trying to raise children. Okay, principles still apply. The principles still apply. Sometimes you have families where they'll come together. They call them blended families. The husband has children from another marriage. The wife has children from another marriage. They come together, and now they have these kids from two different marriages coming together. Maybe they have children of their own, and they're trying to make this work. That can be very difficult. Same principles. It's the same foundation if you want that family to function. If you want that family to be happy. It's the same principles. So we're looking at the same foundations. So the foundation, what God wants to do with families, is it is an extension of God's family and actually God's government. How God's sovereignty of governing the universe is carried out through the family. So the family is very important, and God's plan. It is the basic social unit. It's where you learn your social skills and you interact with other people, and that extends beyond that. It is the basic economic unit, right? Where children are taken care of, and they're fed, they're clothed. It is the basic economic unit. It is also—and this is very important, because we're going to talk a little bit as we go through these bigger concepts. We're going to narrow this down a little bit. It is also the environment that builds emotional bonds between its members.

This is the place of emotional development.

It's supposed to be a stable, secure haven for every member of that family when they're in trouble. They have one place they can go to, whether it's husband, wife, or children. There's one place they can go to. That family is a place that's safe. It's a safe place. It's why children in highly dysfunctional families, whether it's violence or sexual abuse, emotionally—boy, how can that adult be that messed up? Find out what their childhood was like.

Because we come down to another reason for the family, and that is, it is a training ground to prepare children to become productive, mature adults.

It is the training ground to prepare children for adulthood.

So the family is very important. So it can't be built on itself. It has to be built on other things. It has to be built on very important biblical principles. And if that means that this is God-centered, we must be dedicated to teaching children God's way. We always say that Deuteronomy 6, 7 is the basis of all child-wearing principles. I want to go there, but I want to start in verse 6, because this is very important. Deuteronomy 6. Deuteronomy 6.

God here is talking about the commandments and obeying Him.

In verse 6, He says to all of Israel, this is the adults, to the adults, He says, And these words which I command to you today shall be in your hearts. You and I cannot train children until the way that we're training them is in us. He didn't say, You have knowledge of my way. Go teach it to your children. That's a totally different statement. In other words, this is like going to school and learning geography, right? You parents learn geography and teach geography to your children. He says this has to be in you. This is in your hearts. Now, if it's in your heart, what's the next step? Because it's the next verse we read, but that one has to be read first. It has to be read first, because a Friday night Bible study with your kids is not enough. Bringing them to church is not enough. Well, if they're Sabbath school, Sabbath school does not fulfill Deuteronomy 6, 6, and 7. It does not. It's simply a tool to help you. It's simply a tool to help you. Responsibility for our children is in the hands of the parents. He says, You shall teach them diligently to your children. Now, there didn't have to be in your heart first. Diligently to your children. And you 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 up.

That's not a classroom. Now, there's time for formal teaching, but it has to be taught in the way you talk, the way you act. It has to be where are the lessons in life that we talk about this? Where do we have our discussions? What do they see us living? Because they model our behavior at times. How do they see us live? What are our priorities? How do we treat each other? How do we treat them? How do we treat our husband? How do we treat our wives? That's what they're watching all the time. And they're just absorbing that information. We can't sit down once a week and say, now I'm going to teach you God's way, unless the rest of that's happening. Or you know what will happen as they get older? They'll begin to resent the Friday Night Bible study. It's just another classroom situation, and they go to school all day long. So why do I have to sit in another classroom?

They're missing the point, because it has to be part of a relationship. Teaching our children is part of a relationship. One of the most important things that you and I can do for our families is to pray for them.

Husbands for wives, wives for husbands, parents for children. They say, oh good! I'm going to get on my knees tonight and say, God, please fix my wife. No, it's to pray for their benefit. That your family builds these foundations. That you build these foundations together, and that your children have these foundations in their lives.

So this is a very broad concept. If our first concept here is, you have to build your family on God, not on the family. It has to be built on God. That is the basis of the spiritual foundation of your family. The second thing we're going to talk about is the basis for the emotional foundation of your family. And that is, our second point is, you must develop a stable, loving relationship between parents. Nothing is more beneficial to the emotional development of children than mom and dad's relationship. And it's got to come first. Nothing is more important to the development of especially small children than mom and dad's relationship. When mom and dad are unified, they work together and they show love to each other. This is not, by the way, a common belief more and more in our society. You know, when we look at the roles that God talks about in the scripture for men and women, even in the church, these roles are being rejected more and more often. Well, yeah, that might be good for back then. That doesn't fit the 21st century we live in. You know, Ephesians 5, the section there that Paul writes about marriage, is probably the most quoted part of scripture when we talk about marriage. It's sort of a cliche. It is also denied, and at times denied in the church. Let's go to Ephesians 5. Now, we're not going to spend a lot of time here because this is a whole other sermon, Ephesians 5, but we're looking at foundational concepts. And you have to ask yourself, is this a foundational concept of my family? Because this is where the emotional security and emotional development of children happens, not just because of your relationship with them, but because of mom and dad's relationship with each other. If mom and dad are okay, I'm okay. That's the emotion I have.

If mom and dad are okay, I'm okay. What's the greatest fear of a child? Being alone? Who takes care of me? I can't even tie my shoes. Who will feed me when I can't tie my shoes?

Mom and dad being okay is the basis of their security that they grow and that they mature in.

Verse 22. Now, I'm going to alienate about half of the congregation here, but that's okay. Just hold on because I'll get to the other half in three verses. Okay, wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. Man, that's tough! Do you realize what he's actually saying? You know, he's not saying obey your husband if he tells you to do something against God. Okay, that's not what he's saying. I get a marriage seminar years ago, and I mean some people there from another Stanford fellowship, and afterwards the women came up to me and just attacked me because they said, no! If our husbands tell us to, we're under their direction from God. I said, so if your husband told you to steal, you would. They said, you bet. If your husband told you to lie, you would. They said, you bet, because he's responsible to God. I said, then you don't see yourself as an equal child of God. Well, yeah, we do. I said, no, you don't. God sees you as an equal child, which means you have equal responsibility. You see yourself as an inferior child of God. I'm just saying women are equal. Now, that has nothing to do with roles. It has to do with equality before God. Women are equal before God, equally responsible. But men have a role, and women have a role within marriage and within the family. Now, this takes a lot of explanation. We'll do a whole sermon on Ephesians 5. But how much of this is looked on? I mean, even in the church, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I don't have to submit to my husband. You know, he wants to do... he's made a decision. I disagree with it. I just don't go along with it.

For the husband is the head of the wife, as also Christ is the head of the church, and he is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives meet with their own husbands and everything. What? Because I can tell you, if you haven't figured it out by now, you're not married to Christ.

Right? He makes a lot of mistakes.

Now, in a minute, Paul will show us why he's saying these things. So now husbands, so I can offend you also, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for it. Okay? Love them enough that if you had to, you'd be crucified for her.

Well, I'm not even willing to give up hunting and fishing. I gave up bowling night. That's all she gets. Okay? I have sacrificed enough for that woman.

You love her enough that if you had to, you'd let somebody beat you to death? Ah, this is... we read through this and we don't actually see what Paul's saying. Now, that's because this is a big concept. Okay? We need to break it down into the smaller bites of real life, but it's a big concept he's trying to get across.

He says that he might sanctify...verse 26... Christ might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of the water by the Word. They might present to himself a glorious church, not having a spot or a wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy without blemish. So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one has ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. He says that you are to love the church and you want an example.

Look how Christ loves the church. That's what you're supposed to do for your wife.

Wow. But here's why. Now there's two major directions this passage goes in that tells us something really important. One is why he's using this analogy. Verse 30, For we are members of his body, we are members of the body of Christ, of his flesh and of his bones. For this reason the man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. He goes back to the original command about marriage and says, you and I are married to Christ. And that first marriage ceremony is a type. Remember, we were talking about types every one of the holy days we've been going through types.

And we went through it last year at Atonement, how the mercy seat is the type of the throne of God. We've talked about the type of unleavened bread, the type of the sacrifice of the Lamb, you know, as the Passover, how Jesus fulfills that. We've been talking about all these types. Remember, the type is a secondary issue that teaches us something greater. And here he says, when you go back to the very beginning, this whole idea of this intimate relationship between husband and wife is to teach us about a relationship with Christ. Now, vice versa, by the way. A relationship with Christ doesn't teach us about a relationship with husband and wife, and vice versa. I don't know about you, but I feel a lot of pressure right now.

My marriage is supposed to reflect the relationship between Christ and the church. Well, it only does so in a tiny way because it's a type. It's a type. We're not going to reach perfection. But we understand what's going on. Ah, this relationship teaches us about the relationship between us and Christ. He says, this is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. So, we've got our first point here. He's using marriage as an analogy, as a type, of a relationship with Christ. But the next verse tells us the core issues for most conflict in marriage. And this is a whole subject in itself. Nevertheless, let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

The core of most marriage problems are these two things. A husband that is not loving his wife, and a wife that is not respecting her husband. Well, I would love her if she was worthy of love. Oh, I would respect him if he was worthy of respect. I'm sorry, you have to earn love. I'm sorry, you have to earn respect. Now, when we got married, we promised God, and we promised God we would do that. Now, when I get married, I promise God I would love her.

God, I've taken that back now. You know, can I dump her and get another one? No, I've never thought that, okay? Because I'm, you know, I'm happily married. But, if I'd ever thought that, you know what, the answer is of course, oh no, you promised to love her. Oh, God, you know, I didn't realize what a slob he was. I just can't respect him. And you know what God's response is? Oh, no. You promised to respect him. It was part of the deal. Yeah, but God, if you knew, no, no, no, no, you promised. Boy, this is a tough one when we get into this one. This is at the core of most marriage issues. Not understanding how to love your wife and not understand how to respect your husband. Men try to respect. We try to do the opposite. We try to respect our wives and they're trying to love us. But we're told to love them and they're supposed to respect us. We approach this differently. We have an issue. So, what we have here are two core blocks in this foundation. So let's look at...so these are big ones. Now let's start breaking this down. Now these are big concepts, but we can break the next ones down a little bit and we can add to them as we go through occasionally another sermon on family and marriage. A third foundational concept of family is that they are well-defined shared concepts of right and wrong. Well-defined. Husband and wife have a consensus on what right and wrong is. And they define that for the children. It is well known and it is defined. So children know and remember everything has to be age-specific. The human brain is developing all these years that you have children. In fact, it's not even complete usually when they leave home. That's why they still act so stupid. No, I didn't mean it. It's not fully developed. So what we have to do is teach them age-specific, but we have to agree as parents what's right and wrong and define it for them at their age level.

At their age level. Now years ago, the United States Chamber of Commerce published a little pamphlet called How to Train Your Child to be a Delinquent. Has anybody ever seen that?

Oh, you haven't. I was surprised. No one in Murfreesboro either.

So here's how to train your child to be a delinquent according to the United States Chamber of Commerce. Now this was years ago. I don't think they would publish this today. One. Twelve steps. When your kid is still an infant, give him everything he wants. That way he'll think the world owes him a living when he grows up.

Two. When he picks up swearing and off-caller jokes, laugh at him, encourage him. As he grows up, he'll pick up even cuter phrases that will floor you. Three. Never give him any spiritual training. Wait until he's 21 and let him decide for himself. Yeah. Satan doesn't play by that rule, folks. Neither does society. Neither does your child's friends. Nobody plays by that rule. So if you're going to play by that rule, you don't love your child. Because I've had people tell me, well, my children have to decide for themselves. So, you know, when they get to be... I'm not going to teach them anything. They'll just have to come to church, read their own Bibles, and then you don't love your child. But how can you do Deuteronomy 6, 6, and 7 and ignore the spiritual training of your child?

Four. Avoid using the word wrong. It will give your child a guilt complex. You can condition him to believe later that when he's arrested for stealing a car, that society is against him and he's being persecuted. Five. Pick up after him. His books, his shoes, his clothes, do everything for him so he will be experienced in throwing all responsibility onto others. Six. Let him read all printed matter. Let's just say, see all electronic information, all games, everything that's on the Internet. Let him just pull whatever he wants to in his mind. Sterilize the silverware and let him feast his mind on garbage. Seven. Quirrell frequently in his present that he won't be too surprised when the hole was broken up later. Eight. Satisfy his every craving for food, drink, and comfort. Every sensual desire must be gratified. Denial may lead to harmful frustrations. Nine. Give your child all the spending money he wants. Don't make him earn his own. Why should he have it as tough as you did? I've actually heard that one. Right? Why should my child have it as tough as I did? Ten. Take his side against neighbors, teachers, and policemen. They're all against him.

Eleven. When he gets into real trouble making up excuses for yourself by saying, I never could do anything with him anyways. Number twelve. Prepare for a life of grief.

You know, that's a pretty interesting list. It's a pretty interesting list. It's a pretty interesting set of ideas. Because at the core of this list is the idea that children must be taught moral behavior, and then they must be held responsible for their behavior. They must be taught moral behavior, and then they must be held responsible for it. You and I have to discuss real-life situations with our children that are, once again, age-appropriate. You just can't quote Bible verses. God says this.

That's why you do this. Now, there are times to say that God says to do it, but I say that can't be the only reason you tell them. We have to explain to them the benefits. You know, the benefits of obeying God. David talks about God's benefits. How often do we explain to our children God's benefits? So we have to personally work with them to teach them how to cope in today's world. Now, remember something about children. This is so important.

Children, even up into their teen years, are more emotionally driven than objectively driven.

So if we're going to teach them God's way, there must be an emotional component.

How do you teach children not to run out in the street? You make them afraid.

To tell them that car may hit you doesn't mean much.

So you make them afraid. You will get hurt. Oh, that's different, right? If you say, oh, don't go out there, that car may hit you, that may not register. You will get hurt registers. Oh, I now have an emotional response. I don't want to get hurt.

We have to put an emotional element. We sometimes think, well, they're going to get this objective, you know, cognitive response. And I'll give you an example. I guess, are all the kids down at YMADE? Are they done down there? Oh, they're up here? Let me look around. Okay, I'm not going to... I'll just have the parents do this. I've actually done this before with groups of kids. Um, to get their responses. And it's always fascinating to me the responses.

And so you parents can ask these kids later. I'll tell you what one of the children at Murfreesboro said this morning. But two questions, two situations. And the question is, which of this... of these children really was bad? Okay? Which of these children really was bad? The first one is, a child climbs into a cupboard to sneak some candy and accidentally breaks the the candy jar. Secondly, a child is helping mothers set the table and accidentally breaks four of her favorite dishes. Which did... which child did the wrong thing? Now Murfreesboro, one of the women leaned over to her six-year-old in services and said, which one do you think? And she said... he looked at her and said, I didn't do either of them, okay?

He does want to make sure he's not involved in this at all. You know, I'm out of this. Now the reason I say, for adults, I'm like, this is a simple answer. For children, it's not. And there's a number of reasons why. Adults, we look at this and we say, well, the first kid was stealing. They were sneaking candy. Breaking the jar is incidental. To children, you're breaking a jar and you're breaking things that are important to mommy. She'll be upset. It's an emotional reaction. And sometimes the kids... some kids will get... oh no, the first one, because he's stealing. Many others will say, oh no, oh, mom's... oh, her dishes are broken. She'll be so upset with me. Some children will say, well, it's one jar. It was a whole bunch of dishes. So the dishes are more important. They miss entirely. Not all of them. But many of them miss... or they'll have this moral dilemma. I don't know. Why? Not because they're morally deficient. They see both of them as very wrong. It's because they don't understand. There's a difference between an accident and stealing. The intent of the first one was wrong. Breaking the jar doesn't matter here. You were sneaking candy. That's the issue. But that takes some thought process.

So if we don't deal with the emotional side of right and wrong, they will become rules-oriented. But they may not know why they do what they do. They may not understand why God wants them to do it this way. Why this is better than the other way. It's just rules. One of the most important concepts that we can teach children about right and wrong is that their success in life, their happiness, their relationships all depend upon the fact that every day they fight a battle. A battle which inside part of them wants to do the wrong and they have to have the self-control to do what's right. That's a battle that everybody fights you and I fight as adults our whole lives. They need to understand that moving into adulthood doesn't erase. In fact, when you're a child, a lot of times you can not have any battles at all internally. You're just playing or whatever. But as you become an adult, there is an internal battle between selfishness and self-control. You don't want to go to work. You have a choice not to go to work and get fired or go to work, right? And there is an internal battle. I don't want to mow the grass. That's my big one. I don't want to mow the grass. But there's like little furry mammals living in our backyard. I have to go mow the grass.

They need to understand that. I give you a little... something a teacher taught me years ago that I found helps with my grandchildren sometimes. When they're having trouble with self-control, you know, what do you usually say? Get control of yourself. You know what? That's about a meaningless thing you can say. What's that mean to a child? And the teacher said what she did is she had them fold... close her eyes, fold her hands, and take about three big breaths.

Hey, kid, get... I found them in mine. Not all the time. There's a point where there's too far beyond. But I want that piece of candy. And my grandkids' dad has figured out, wow, I'll avoid the responsibility by sending them to Grandpa. Can I have a piece of candy? I can go ask Grandpa. Hey, what are you doing? Mom's not around, so you know you have to be the bad guy.

So I say, no, it's... that too much sugar is not good for you. You already had dessert last night. You can't have a piece of candy. No, no, no, no. Put your hands together, close your eyes, take a big breath.

Okay. And if you catch it right, depending on the personality of the kid, if you catch your right time, it actually helps. It helps them give the ability to get control of their thoughts instead of just emotionally being out of control. Self-control is so hard as an adult. Imagine what it's like as a child. I mean, self-control is a child when you're just driven by emotions. You're just driven by feelings. You're not driven by logical thought. So teaching them right from wrong at their age level with the concept of benefits, with the concept that there is objective truth. This is right, even if you feel differently. Oh, but that'll hurt their feelings. Well, when does right and wrong have to do with feelings? It has to do with what's right. I mean, if it was feelings, we'd probably know what would show up today. Well, I'm mad at that person. I'm not going to church today. Or I'm tired today. I'm not going to church. I mean, you see what I mean? We do what is right because it's right. Then we're always glad when we do what's right. There's always a benefit to doing what's right. They need to know the benefits. The fourth foundational block here in the foundation of a healthy or of a Christian family is a willingness to communicate with each other. Now, we all say, but we are trying to communicate. But how many times have you heard parents say, they just never talk to me. A wife says, he just never talks to me. And the husband says, she doesn't understand me. You hear that all the time. He does not talk to me. She does not understand me. You'll hear parents say, the children don't talk to me. And the children will say, they don't understand me. We won't talk. We don't understand. Or we yell. Okay? Well, we can't fix this. So we'll just yell at each other.

Stephen Covey in Seven Habits of Highly Effective People gives this little story of what we do. This is sort of what we're like when we sit down with each other, even as parents. We're dealing with our children with our experience as opposed to their experience.

So I've got 60 years of experience. I'm going to sit down with my 10-year-old, and I'm going to explain to her something. And if we're not careful, this is what we do. Suppose you've been having trouble with your eyes and you decide to go to an eye doctor for help. After briefly listening to your complaint, he takes off his glasses and hands them to you. But these awning says, I've worn this pair of glasses for 10 years now. They've really helped me. I have an extra pair at home. You can wear these. You put them on because it just makes the problem worse. This is terrible, you say. I can't see a thing. But what's wrong? They weren't great for me. He says, try harder. I am trying, you insist, but everything's a blur. Well, what's the matter with you? Think positive. Okay, I positively can't see a thing. So then the doctor says, boy, you are ungrateful after all I've done for you.

Sometimes we have to see it through their eyes to understand how to teach. I'm not saying see it through their eyes so you can justify what they've done wrong. I've been very frustrated with my five-year-old. Well, she just turned five. But in her threes and fours, she's just such a selfish little girl that would just lose her temper and violently punch or kick her older siblings.

And she's been trying not to do that. So they were there this week. So I just watched her a lot.

I watched her a lot. And I realized something as I watched her because she gets corrected a lot. And she should. You shouldn't punch. You shouldn't hit. But I watched the older kids manipulate her. They want one of her toys and they talk her out of it. And then she doesn't know how they did it. And she's always trying to keep up with them. She's trying to keep up. She's trying to keep up. And one day the seven-year-old tricked her out of something. And she said, but I want that back. And he said, no, you gave it to me. It's mine now. And she just hold off and hit him. And he looked at me and said, grandpa. And I said, hold on. I said, I watched you cheat her and I watched her hit you.

If I deal with her hitting you, I'm going to deal with your cheating her. So you decide how you want to handle this. Okay, we're just going to play now. Okay. Because boy, you want to pursue this action here. We're going to deal with both ends of the problem. Because we've only been dealing with one end of the problem for a long time.

And suddenly he was the nicest guy and sharing with her.

We have to see it. And I thought, okay, she deserves... She loses her temper to easy and she becomes violent to easy. Okay. But we also have to understand her level of frustration is because she's being taken advantage of. How do you do that? How do you understand that when you're four years old?

Okay. So we have to start dealing with those issues, too. We have to look at them and, you know, we can't be like the father that once said, I just can't understand my kid. He just won't listen to me. I mean, I can't understand my kid is one statement. He won't listen to me is actually another statement. I can't understand him because he's not listening to me. You'll never understand him by talking. Think about that. My child doesn't understand... I just don't understand my child because I keep talking.

Well, there may be a reason. I'm saying we need to talk to our children. We need to correct our children.

Children need to be corrected. The Bible actually says that. But why are they doing what they're doing? Proverbs 1813. Have you ever thought about using this in child rearing?

In parenting. Proverbs 1813.

Because I'm going to tell you in a minute how I learned this. I learned this one time, not because I was wise, but because the situation played out. Proverbs 1813.

He who answers a matter before he hears it, it is folly and shame.

It's so easy to see a child do something wrong, or hear them do something wrong, or hear them say something wrong, react and never ask, what caused you to do that?

I'm not saying there shouldn't be punishment. That's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about understanding. Because sometimes a child can explain something to you, and you can say, well, that won't work. Depending on their age, depending on their mental maturity at the time. Here, let me explain why. I'll give you an example. My son was a teenager. I got a call one day from school. It was a teacher, and she said, Your son is a good student, but he's become so disruptive in my class. She said, I don't understand why, because he's a great guy. But she said, all the boys in the class gather around him. She said, he is funny. He's a funny kid. She said, he would say the funniest things in class. They all laugh, and then they all crack up, and then they are still acting up. They disrupt my class. She said, they all look at him as a leader. He just takes over my class.

My first reaction is, I didn't want to show her, but what's going on in my head, wait until I get that boy home.

So I said, well, I'll talk to him. She said, would you talk to him right now? The next thing I hear is, hi, dad.

He said, I need to explain something to you. I can tell by his voice, something was real serious here. I said, look, Chris, when you get home, let's sit and talk about it. You can explain it to me, but in her classroom, that's hers. And in her classroom, you let her run the classroom. He goes, okay. And I could hear, as he handed the phone to her, I heard him say, I won't do it anymore. I'm sorry. And she came back on. She said, wow, I don't know what in the world you said to him, but that's the first time I've ever had a male student say, I'm sorry, and I won't do it again. She said, thank you so much. I said, he'll be okay, though. So he comes home, and he came in and said, hey, I said, so we, you know, sit down. I said, well, explain to me why you're doing this. Now, I have to explain to you something. We lived in a little rural town in Wisconsin. I remember my daughter saying the biggest problems they had in high school was they caught a kid smoking, and one time a girl got pregnant and disappeared. I mean, just she never showed up again.

We moved to San Antonio, Texas, and they're in a school, high school of 5,000 kids.

It is a school where when they go to school on the bus almost every day, they're pulled over. The police come on and clean out the drugs.

The violence they see every day is astronomical. My daughter, we were talking about this this week, and my daughter said, well, Dad, you may be exaggerating. I mean, in the four years I was high school there, I only saw two guns. Yeah, how many did you not see? Okay.

Like she's hanging around with those, you know, like she was hanging around with people with guns. I mean, there were knives, guns. It was a pretty violent place. There were all kinds of tensions between different groups of people, including racial tensions. You have about 50, at least 50 percent Hispanic, 25 percent black, and 25 percent white.

And there's gangs. First thing we noticed when we went to school was kids said, or Kim said, look, Gary, and over there there's a whole group of people. They all have the same color clothes on. And over here there's all people with the same jackets on. It's just gangs all over the place. ROTC. There was an Air Force base just down the street. You could tell all the ROTC kids, you know why? I mean, think about all these kids coming in from different schools. They've got to protect each other. They came to school under uniforms and they hung out together. So ROTC was a gang. You can see they had military uniforms and they're all over the place clumped together. It's just a place full of gangs. So I said, why are you acting up in class? He said, dad, it's how I survive.

He said, I'm funny and I'm big. He said, because I'm big, everybody wants to push me. Everybody wants to see just how tough I am. And he said, there is my he says, I'm big. There is my he says, I have friends all over the place. He said, there's one Hispanic gang and there's one black gang that I've been in trouble before. And one of those gangs have showed up and said, he's with us. You mess with him. You mess with us. He said, it's because I'm funny. And, you know, he could play ball. He was an athletic guy. And he said, I'm the only one that'll goof off in classes and get away with it because I'm a good student. He said, that's how I survive. I asked him if he wanted to be homeschooled. He said, no, you've taught us we have to face life.

Needless to say, I did not punish him. I told him, you can't do that in class. Now, you may be goofing off the rest of the time.

That's what you have to do.

But in class, you can't. He said, okay. I asked him one time, I said, did you ever get in a fight in high school? And he said, no. He said, one time I almost did. And he said, I lost my temper. And he said, I was so afraid I was going to kill him. This was such a violent school. I mean, you know, he said, I was so afraid. He said, I stood there and I just started to shake. He said, the guy just turned around and walked away real fast.

He said, I thought, I think I would hurt him really bad.

What if I would not have asked his viewpoint? What if I would have just corrected him for goofing off in class?

He did what I said. Never had trouble with him goofing off in class again. We have to recognize communicating with them is not simply preaching to them.

It's understanding who they are as human beings and realizing we're there.

I mean, there's God, except for God, we're the best chance they have.

And this world, we're the best chance they have.

The fifth point is that family members have strong emotional bonds, but at the same time they encourage individual development. You know, it's sort of sad. Have you ever seen a family where the parents are trying to live through their kids? Oh, my problem was so nice, but I didn't get to wear a nice dress. So I want to make sure you get a nice dress. And the girl's saying, I don't even want to go to the problem. Or I don't care. This is the dress I want. No, no, no, you have to wear this dress. But I hate that dress. No, no, this is the dress. Just, oh, this is like the one I wanted to wear.

You can't live your life through your kids. We've got to understand who they are. You know, you might have been a great athlete, and your kid can't catch a wiffle ball.

You have to work with your kids with their abilities. So yeah, there's these strong emotional bonds, but in the end, what are you teaching them to do? You know, there's an interesting passage here in Judges 13.

God sent the angel of the Lord to tell Manoah's wife that she was going to have a child, and that his name would be Samson.

And his wife goes to Manoah and says, angel of the Lord appeared to me. We're going to have a child, and he's going to have to take an Esri-Vowel, and God's going to be with him. And Manoah, you know, he doesn't say, first, you're crazy. He doesn't go around and tell everybody, oh, why I'm going to have a child. What he does is he goes to God and says, would you send the angel back? I need to ask him a question.

This is very interesting. Would you send the angel back? Now, what's the question?

Verse 12. Verse 12.

Manoah said, Now let your words come to pass. What will be the boy's rule of life and his work?

How do I train him the rules of his life for his work? Not Manoah's work. In this case, Samson has specific work for God. We can't make our children fulfill our dreams.

Yeah, I'm a veterinarian. I'm a successful veterinarian, but I'm really not happy. Why? Well, that's what my mom always wanted me to be a veterinarian. What did you want to be? Oh, at age five, I wanted to be a lion tamer. At age 10, I wanted to be a race driver. At age 15, I wanted to be an NBA player.

Right? But what did you really want to be? I don't know. I told I was going to be a veterinarian. That's what I became.

We can't live our dreams through them. We have to help them become what they're supposed to be and who they're supposed to be. Now, the rule of life is simple. We teach them God's way, and we live God's way. It's in our heart, so we teach it where we walk and where we lie down and where we go and where we eat. We do all that because it's in our heart.

This applies to grandparents. This applies to those of you who don't have children, because all of us as adults are examples to children. All of us are examples to children.

And how we interact with them. Proverbs 22, or last scripture here, Proverbs 22 verse 6. Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. Train. I like the way the modern language Bible translates this. It says, educate a child according to his life's requirements. What is required of life, remember? What Manoah said? Okay, what is his life requirements? And then what does he do for his work? What does it you want him to do? You pray that God will help your children find what they should do. Or do we just simply try to make them fulfill our dreams?

Are we so wrapped up that our ego, our self-worth is based on whether our children do this or that or the other? Oh yeah.

Do all of our children have to have a master's degree for us to finally be proud of them? Or accept them? Do they have to fulfill our dreams?

The Hebrew word here that's translated, train, in the New King James, and educate in the modern language Bible is a very interesting word. The Hebrew language is descriptive. I would not give a sermon on the intimate descriptions that are laid out in the Song of Saul. It would be shocking because their words literally are like pictures. So we use the word train or educate, and there's any number of synonyms that we could use that are only having subtly different meanings. The Hebrew word literally means to make something narrow. In other words, it's broad, but you're making this path get smaller and smaller and smaller towards his path in the way he should go, or in the way she should go. It's very personal. In the way he or she should go, you make this more and more and more narrow till they're in their way, the requirements of their life by God, and they're fulfilling what God wants them to do. We make it narrow.

That's what we do. So that fifth point is, yeah, there's strong bonds between the family, but at the same time we're helping them develop into who they are, who they're supposed to be with their own personality, their own abilities, their own desires, their own dreams.

The erosion of the family has been taking place in this country for decades, and it is a societal nightmare. One of these days we're going to reap—no, no, we saw the wind in this country decades ago, two generations ago. We are reaping the whirlwind. I do not believe you can turn this country around. The family structure is too destroyed.

The educational system is too wrong in its value system—and I know that's unpopular, but it is—the educational system is based on wrong values, clear from the highest levels of education down to the grade school level. And so we have now the third generation of people that just the value system keeps collapsing and collapsing. Now even the definition of marriage—the biblical definition of marriage is seen as hate speech. The biblical definition of marriage is seen by many Christians as being anti-God. Now that's a long stretch from 30 years ago, isn't it? And here we are, trying to be in this world, trying to create and help be Christians, have Christian families.

Where we are a reflection of God's family.

And there in doing that, we look at the things that we learned here today. The foundation—now there's lots of bricks we'll talk about—but the foundation is built on one, being God-centered, two, developing a stable, loving relationship between parents, three, developing and teaching well-defined concepts of right and wrong, four, participating in active listening and meaningful communication that is age-appropriate, and then five, exploring and encouraging individual development and achievement. This is a tough road, but this is what we've been called to do. You and I, by the way—and you have to stress this in every parenting sermon—you and I cannot determine how these kids, the decisions they make. We can prepare them, but they are free moral agents. They have free will, and you can't take their free will away. Try to take the free will away from a 15-year-old. You'll probably end up with a rebellious 15-year-old. You can't take away free will. God gave it to them.

We guide, we help, we correct, we love. And in the end, they become the people they want to be. But we can make such a huge difference. As parents and grandparents, you are the number one influence in the life of your child. And as they get older, you become less and less of an influence. Other people become more and more of an influence.

So the bonds have to be constructed very early in life. But it's something my dad said that I think is a foundation. I heard him say this one time, and I say it quite often. I think I said it in another sermon. He said, someone asked him about the secrets to child-rearing. He said, it's very simple. You spend 20 years of your life preparing them to leave you.

That's exactly what you do. You don't spend 20 years of your life so that you can keep them, that they're 30-year-olds living at home, living off of you playing video games. That's not what parenting is all about. It's preparing them to be the very things that we mentioned here. So this is the beginning of, I think, a lot of things we'll be talking about marriage, family, child-rearing, just intermingled in sermons over the next year or two. But I think the fight for the family is one of the greatest fights we're facing. I think the fight for marriage is one of the greatest fights we're going to be facing.

And we have to know what God expects of us. We have to know that God, as long as he is the foundation, that God will be the builder of the house.