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For The Good of Your Child, Introduction – Lesson I
The Lord willing I will be teaching a series of a dozen or so lessons formulated from our founding Pastor’s Biblically based Booklet entitled “For The Good of Your Child” using its structure to teach the important subject of child rearing.
This Biblically based Booklet is based on a series of messages given to Grace Bible Church in the 1980’s which were transcribed and published in our quarterly paper, “The Projector”, the first one appearing in the winter issue of 1989 and the tenth one in the summer issue of 1991.
For the benefit of those listening over the internet you can find these articles on our website http://www.theprojector.org or you can order the book from http://www.childrensbibleclub.com.
I will of course be adding to the information within this book, sometimes plagiarizing its words, but now giving credit at the beginning of these lessons to their source.
I knew and worked with Dr. Hobbs for many years, sitting under his tutelage, and I know one of his favorite preaching topics was about Biblically based child rearing.
I trust he would be pleased that these truths will again be aired, and aired to a wider audience who will have these lessons in audio and text form available on our church website.
To begin our series of lessons we are to recall from scripture that faith pleases God.
Faith is not complicated, faith is not something kept for an elite group, a group with high intelligence or great wealth or power for faith is simply believing God to the point of doing His Word.
Faith is obedience to the Word of God knowing that all that God commands is for our good.
A person of faith delights to do God’s Word for to him it is all profitable!
Abraham, whom scripture calls the father of faith, believed God to the point of sacrificing his own son, Isaac in obedience to the command of God.
God was pleased with Abraham and pronounced this is:
Genesis 18:19, For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD, to do justice and judgment; that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him.
Now in saying this to Abraham, the father of faith, I believe God is saying this to all fathers who dwell in the faith.
God is pleased by faith and a father who commands his children and his household in the keeping of the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment will inherit the promises of scripture.
It is another way of saying: Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.
Fathers, in military terms, these are your marching orders.
And as a good soldier in God’s army you are to read and understand your orders so that they are carried out to the fullest. (Read orders to Vietnam)
You are to
insure that your children and your household keep the way of the Lord for the
way of the Lord is not hidden, is not vague, is not secret. However it is apparent that the knowledge of this way has fallen on hard times as the culture of the world preaches its heresy and espouses a way that in times past was considered evil.
I have been on this earth over three score and sixteen years and come from a generation where the majority of parents knew what was best, even though they may not have been diligent in seeing that which was best was carried out.
Now what is the difference between my day and the current day?
Do children and parents come into this world differently?
Has there been a sea change in the man, woman, boy or girl, that is presented Biblical truths so that different results are realized?
Well I find no truth to this in scripture.
I find that children and parents are basically the same today, that is, both children and parents of any generation are sinners before the Lord and in need of Divine grace in order to be made right with God.
It is clear in scripture that fathers have great responsibility before their children to pass on that which they have been given by God.
Among many places in the Bible this truth is presented in Psalm 78:5-7, as marching orders.
For he established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children: That the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children: That they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments.
But the scriptures are replete with disobedience to this command and the disastrous results thereof.
Samuel the Prophet, who many think wrote the Book of Judges recorded in Judges 2:10, And also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers: and there arose another generation after them, which knew not the LORD, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel.
It appears to me clearly our present generation is to be included in that other generation after them which knew not the Lord.
So the primary difference in most parents of today as opposed to the parents of yesterday, lies in their Biblical understandings.
Most of the parents and grandparents of my generation were reared with the Bible, and even those who were not directly from Bible homes were affected by Bible principles, which permeated almost every area of America's life, especially as it related to the rearing of children!
However today many voices are heard which proclaim not the ways of the Lord but instead proclaim the ways of man which according to the Bible are the ways of death.
Jesus Christ said, I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
If you are a person of faith you are to dedicate your life to Him, living your life in him and when you do so your ways will be God’s way and that way will insure that your child is raised up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
Paul preached to the Ephesians in 5:11 in this manner:
And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.
Having fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness certainly applies to this all important subject of child rearing for the world is full of instructions to you so that you will bring to its altar children fit for its Satan produced world system.
Dr. Hobbs entitled his series and book, For the Good of Your Child.
Meditate upon that title for in it you will find the difference between the world system of child rearing and what the Bible tells us concerning the raising of children.
Refer to Hebrews 12:9.10, from which this title emanated.
Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure (as seemed best to them); but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.
So the writer of Hebrews brings to our mind a contrast between the good of the father or the good of the child.
He assumed that we all had "fathers of our flesh" who gave us correction and that that correction gave us "reverence" for those fathers.
This chastening or correction is again mentioned in verse 10 and is assumed to be the normal thing in the home.
In fact it seems that the writer is establishing the fact that the identifying mark of a father is the correction or chastening of the child.
Look at the previous verses in Hebrews 12 regarding God’s responsibility to chastise and then apply this to earthly fathers.
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