In the early 1970's Neil Young wrote a song called "The Needle and the Damage Done". He wrote this song because in the 60's and 70's he witnessed tremendous musicians, some of which he played with, losing their lives to heroine. So, he wrote the song, "The Needle and the Damage Done". It seemed to him that the damage was all around him when he wrote,
"I've seen the needle and the damage done. A little part of it in everyone, but every junkies like the setting sun."I believe that if pastor's were to write a song about a problem causing massive destruction in their congregations they would write a song about the damage done by ungodly parenting.
God has a much different plan for parenting, and we will see this in Psalm 127. Here we will find that successful parenting is dependent upon the grace of God. Successful parenting is dependent upon the grace of God. Parenting itself is a blessing. We will look at the goal and result of godly parenting. Successful parenting is a blessing that produces a glorious legacy.
Read Psalm 127
We Can Be Successful In Parenting: By The Grace of God (Psalm 127:1-2)
Our success in parenting as well as all other facets of life is ultimately due to the grace of God. We are to labor with all our might to build the home. This passage supposes that the worker will do all they can do. Even though all the credit should be given to God and it is God who blesses the labor, we are to be laboring to build the home. So, instead of not laboring we labor with all our might, trusting in God instead of ourselves.
All success in this life, and specifically the work of building the family is a gift from the Lord. We are given three examples here. He begins with the building of the home, which is the subject of this Psalm. If we are going to be successful in building the home it is due to the grace and the mercy of God. The second example given is the guarding of a city. If there is a guard looking out of the tower watching for enemies to come and an army guarding a city they will only be successful against the onslaught of their enemy only by the grace of God. Ultimately God is the one who gives the success in the guarding of a city, or has planned its collapse (Amos 3:6-7). The third example given here is that of earning a living. If one is to earn a living for their family they will only be successful by the grace of God. God is ultimately the one who gives all success for the labor that is done. There is something that should be seen in all of these examples that Solomon sets forth. They all consist of the human laboring. We labor with all our might, but we do so knowing that it is ultimately God who brings the success. We build our home with all our might, but it is God who will bring the success or the failure. It is ultimately God who blesses our labors.
We can work day and night and worry ourselves to death, but it is God who gives the increase. It is God who blesses all of our labor and it is God who we are entrusting our family to. And it is in Him that we can find our rest, "for He gives His beloved sleep." It is in our trust in the sovereign God of the Universe that our worries and fears about our family can be calmed. For though we work long and hard, the results are ultimately in His hands.
We are to be faithful in carrying out the task of raising our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. And any success we have, from supplying the needs of our family to the salvation of family members is a gift from the Lord.
We strive with all our might, using all resources that are at our disposal to raise our family as Scripture directs. But we also understand that it is only by the power and grace of God that our labors will be blessed. When we understand that our children are sinners separated from God and there is nothing we can do about it, we begin to understand that God really does have to bless our labors from beginning to end. Part of this He has already accomplished.
God existed before time began complete in Himself and not needing anyone or anything. he was and still is and always will be perfect in all of His characteristics. He is love, but He is also just and righteous. He passionately hates sin and will punish it.
Man was created in God's own image. Man was good at creation, but man has fallen and fallen hard. We see that man is now evil and corrupt. Because of Adam's sin all humans are born dead, unable to come to Christ, and unable to follow Christ. We are not sinners because we sin, we are sinners because we are born sinners unable to live a life of integrity. We sin because we are sinners unable to follow God's law due to the fall and our corruption.
The good news is that God did not leave us in such a state. God sent His Son to earth. He lived a perfect life, and was placed on the cross dying in our place. He was our substitute. Our sins were placed upon Him. Every sin of everyone that would ever believe was placed upon Him. Every lie, every theft, every lustful thought, every murder, every adultery, every rape, and every other sin that would ever be forgiven was placed upon Christ. In turn we are given His righteousness. We are credited with the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ who committed no sin and fulfilled all righteousness while He was on the earth. In response to this message we repent and believe the gospel. We acknowledge that God is correct about our depravity and we turn to Him in faith. We submit our lives to Christ and His Lordship.
This is what God has already accomplished for the salvation of those who will believe, yet this is not the only work that God has to do for our salvation.
We and our children are born spiritually blind and dead in our sins (Jeremiah 17:9, John 8:34, Romans 3:10-12, 1 Corinthians 2:14, Ephesians 2:1-3). When we understand this we begin to understand that it is only by the power and grace of God that they are brought to spiritual life (John 1:12-13, Acts 13:48, Ephesians 1:5, Ephesians 1:11, 2 Thessalonians 2:13-14, John 6:44, John 6:65, John 10:25-26, 1 Peter 1:3, James 1:18). So, we would understand that our children's salvation, from beginning to end, is the work of the Lord. But we do play a part.
We are faithful to the task. God has blessed us to give us a role in God's work. We are given the great privilege of teaching our children God's Word. God has chosen that humans would be given the task of spreading the good news of the gospel. And we have been given, as parents, the task of spreading this good news to our children. We are faithful to the task and rely upon God to bless the labor.
This attitude should move us to dependence upon the Lord and a pleading with Him in prayer for our family. My wife understands this very well. My wife and I pray for our son Haddon daily, if not more. But I am privileged to be able to hear the prayers of my wife for our son, whom we have been praying for since we found out my wife was pregnant. Every night as she is putting him to bed she prays that God will give us another day with him and that one day God would give him spiritual life and that Haddon would become a believer (Ezekiel 36:22-27).
This is the attitude we are to have in raising our children. We work with all of our might for the spiritual well being of our children, but we know that ultimately the results are left to God.
So, we have seen that the success of parenting comes only from the Lord, now we will see that it is a blessing.
The Blessing of Parenting: The Gift of Children (Psalm 127:3)
Solomon shows here that a gift and a blessing that God gives His people are children. But this demands a drastic change of mindset for the believer in today's day and age. We are told to put off having children, to accomplish everything we want to accomplish in life before even thinking about having them.
My wife and I found ourselves thinking in this way for a few years. We actually ran into this verse (Psalm 127:3), and found that we didn't have the right attitude about children. Anytime we would talk about children we would say later, because I wanted to finish my master's at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary before having kids. We thought a child was an inconvenience, but God brought us out of this attitude.
I am not saying that there are not hard times in parenting. Some parents have gone through tremendously hard times, but children are a blessing and not a curse. I remember our first night with Haddon. We stood over the crib wondering what to do at 2:00am as he cried and cried and cried and cried and cried. My wife called the nurse's station and they told us to turn the radio on and he fell right to sleep for a few hours. There are other hardships that come with being a new parent, and Haddon's doctor later told us these words.
"Taking care of your child before he reaches two months of age is like running bare foot through a desert full of cacti while you are blindfolded."But even with the hard times considered children are a blessing. Here is what we need to understand. If God says that children are a blessing and we don't think so, then there is a problem with out thinking and not God's thinking. It is not the time period we live in or the circumstances we live in it is us and we need to repent. Later we will see the type of child that continues to be a blessing their entire lives.
We have seen that parenting is only successful by the grace and mercy of God and that it is a blessing that comes from the Lord, but what is the goal of parenting?
I have heard it said that "if you aim for nothing you will hit it every time", so why do we approach parenting in this way. Why do we consider it success to simply get them out of the house alive? If you want to retire, you set goals to make it happen. If you want to pay off your house you set goals to make it happen. if you want to get a higher paying job you set goals to make it happen. Then why do we approach parenting aiming for nothing?
The Goal of Parenting: Send Them Out Mature in Christ (Psalm 127:4)
The visual that we are given is of a warrior sending out an arrow to hit its target. We have all seen this visual in movies. A warrior is aiming his bow and arrow at a target. His intention is to hit a specific target. This is the view we are to have of raising our children. The goal is not to keep them, but to raise them to maturity in the faith and send them out flying straight and true to the target we have aimed them at, which is Christ and His exaltation.
This is by no means an easy task. It requires long and hard labor that most today are unwilling to give. This is evidenced by the children that are presently being raised in our churches. Instead of raising the children themselves they hand the responsibility of raising their children off to the church and wonder why their children are weak in the faith.
Here is a pretty typical situation. Mom and Dad both work allowing them to spend 4-6 hours with their children in the evenings. We will not count the morning, because it is spent trying to get them out the door for school. One of these hours is spent eating and cleaning up; this only leaves 3-5 hours per night with their children. Instead of making wise use of this time, Mom and Dad are tired. They check out and watch television and do chores while the children play video games and watch television.
Is this the work required for parents to send their children out one day as arrows that are going to hit their mark? The obvious answer is no.
So, how much time and effort is to be given to this task? I think we find the answer to that question in Deuteronomy 6:4-9.
"Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates."-Deuteronomy 6:4-9This is a lot of work. We are to teach our children at all times when we sit, travel, lie down, and rise. We are to be teaching them the Word of the Lord at all times.
You have your goal. The goal of parenting is to fashion arrows that will run straight and true to Christ when you send them out. Now make a plan to raise your children to maturity and send them out as arrows hitting the mark you are aiming them at.
In a sermon delivered on May 11, 1856, Charles Haddon Spurgeon told his congregation that the reason many of his people were weak in the faith was because they didn't receive from their parents the instruction they should have received. He said,
"If you had, you would have been so grounded, and settled, and firm in the faith, that nothing could by any means have moved you."The point that must be driven home is that we must ground our children in the faith. Do you see why it is important to teach your children the faith?
Successful parenting is a blessing, but what does it produce?
The Result of Godly Parenting: A Legacy That Will Not Put You to Shame (Psalm 127:5)
The quiver that is spoken of in this passage of Scripture is full. From what has already been stated we see that this is a lot of children. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full, not has an arrow or two. I don't want to say that everyone has to have a lot of children. That is not taught in Scripture, but we need to see children for what they are: a blessing. If our thinking is correct on this then we will not look at the person with 5 children or more as the most cursed person on the planet. We will see them as blessed. Why does Solomon insist that the man with many arrows is blessed?
The blessing comes to the person who has many children who are "arrows in the hand of the warrior". The child that grows up to be a blessing to his or her parents is the child that is an arrow in the hand of the warrior. This is a lot of work, but also a lot of blessing.
The picture Solomon has here give is of judicial assemblies meeting at the city gate. So, the picture we are seeing here is of those who would accuse us. It is our reputation that is at stake here, and godly arrows are not like godly arrows in this matter are they?
Solomon who wrote this Psalm also wrote much of the book of Proverbs. Read what he has to say about ungodly children. He describes them as "a sorrow to his mother", "a grief to his father and bitterness to her who bore him", and the person who has an ungodly child is said to "get himself sorrow", and "the father of a fool has no joy" (Proverbs 10:1, Proverbs 17:21, Proverbs 17:25). The point is that the child that grows up in rebellion is not a blessing to his parents, but a curse. Though children are a blessing from the Lord, they don't all grow up to continue being blessings.
We have all seen it in life also. The child who curses at his mother at the grocery store doesn't seem like much of a blessing. We have seen children grow up to squander their mother and father's money even until their parent's death. We, like Solomon, would say that these children grow up to be a curse, and their reputation is no help when the accusers come. This is the point. The meaning is encapsulated in Proverbs 27:11
"Be wise, my son, and make my heart glad, that I may answer him who reproaches me."-Proverbs 27:11The child Solomon is speaking of here is the child that grows up and does not bring reproach upon you. This is the child that exalts Christ and brings a good name to your family. This is the child that is like an arrow in the hand of a warrior. This is the child that is a legacy that you have left behind that exalts Christ and does not put you to shame.
Whether you realize it or not you are leaving behind a legacy. For those of you who had a glorious legacy of biblical faith passed down to them from their parents, you are continuing a legacy and reputation of your family. More importantly, you are furthering the faithfulness of your family in the Lord. For those of you who did not have that blessing, you have the opportunity to begin something. You have the opportunity to begin a legacy of faithfulness to the Lord, passing it down from generation to generation.
We in this room know of Jonathan Edwards. He was a brilliant man. His sermons and books are still circulated and read to this day. His sermons are thought to have sparked the 1st Great Awakening in the U.S. He was also a prolific writer and eventually became president of Princeton University, a college that was created to educate preachers to reach the Indians. But, as busy as he was he understood the value of family, and scheduled time everyday to be with family. He and his wife made it their business to train their children. Listen to a study of Jonathan and Sarah Edward’s descendants,
“In 1900, A.E. Winship studied what happened to 1,400 descendants of Jonathan and Sarah by the year 1900. He found they included 13 college presidents, 65 professors, 100 lawyers and a dean of a law school, 30 judges, 66 physicians and a dean of a medical school, and 80 holders of public office, including three US Senators, mayors of three large cities, governors of three states, a Vice-President of the United States, and a controller of the United States Treasury. They had written over 135 books and edited eighteen journals and periodicals. Many had entered the ministry. Over 100 were missionaries and others were on mission boards.”-“Jonathan Edwards, America’s Humble Giant”; Christianity Today International, 2008; http//chi.gospelcom.net/GLIMPSEF/Glimpses/glmps097.shtml.What are we doing or going to do to leave behind a legacy that is going to glorify and honor Christ long after our death?
What are we as people in the ministry doing or going to do to train parents to raise their children in such a way that they leave that kind of legacy behind?
R. Dwain Minor
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