Proverbs 17:1
Let’s hear the word of the living
God. This is Proverbs 17, verse one. It says, better is a dry
morsel with quiet than a house full of feasting with strife.
And then back to chapter 15, verse six. In the house of the
righteous, there is much treasure, but trouble befalls the income
of the wicked. So tonight we want to think about
wisdom and the family, and I’m gonna jump back off of a little
bit of the foundation we covered in weeks past, wisdom and the
wife, largely from Proverbs 31, and then last week, wisdom and
the husband. But I want us to think for a
few moments about big picture. There are people who rule or
serve on behalf of Christ on earth. Christ ascended into heaven
and sits at the right hand of God the Father. So he is not
present here physically, he’s present in spirit. But he has
those who rule or serve for him. This week we had the peaceful
transfer of power, as it were, of one president to another.
And so we remember that governors, kings, and magistrates serve
for Christ. They don’t sit on a throne unless
Christ gives it to them. They don’t hold a scepter in
their hand unless Christ places it there. And so Psalm 2 is a
reminder of, therefore, O kings, be wise. lest the king be angry. And so governors, kings, magistrates
rule on behalf of Christ. And so in our obedience to these,
we obey Christ. So we pay our taxes, we render
under Caesar what is Caesar’s. The second category of those
who rule for Christ would be the elders of the church. On
Friday night, I attended the ordination installation service
at the First Reformed Church in Durham for their two ruling
elders. And all the language in that, I believe it was close
to a two-hour service, all the language of ordination being
set apart, all the language of serving for Christ were good
reminders. of what’s good, right, and true,
but elders and ministers serve for Christ. Ephesians chapter
four says, when Christ ascended on high, he gave gifts to the
church, the apostles, pastors, teachers, and on down the line. But tonight, I want us to think
about the third category of those who minister for Christ, who
serve on behalf of Christ, and that is parents. God has ordained
that parents be the ones who are the heads of the family,
the ones who make child rearing possible, make it possible for
children to grow up in the fear and admonition of the Lord. And
so a handful of verses we think of from the scripture about parents
and children, The first place in Exodus 19, where the 10 commandments
are given first, honor your father and mother, that your days may
be long in the land of your forefathers, or the land the Lord your God
is giving you. And then if you read in Deuteronomy, where the
second giving of the law is placed, the same commandment is given,
honor your father and mother, that your days may be long, and
then it adds an additional condition, that it may go well with you.
And so we remember those commandments. Ephesians chapter six, verse
one, children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.
Then he quotes the fifth commandment, honor your father and mother,
and then says, this is the first commandment with a promise. So
we were reminded of not just the commandment, but those are
conditional commandments. If you obey, you’re blessed.
And if you disobey, you are cursed. Often the way we find commandments
in the Bible, they’re covenant commandments, they’re conditional
commandments. And then in Ephesians chapter
six, it goes on to say, but bring them up in the discipline
and in the admonition of the Lord. So we think about home
around here a little bit lately. We’ve talked about it with moms,
dads. We’ve talked about it the other week in the morning sermon,
let the little children come. And we’ve often given the image
that home is to be a greenhouse. If you go down Saddle Club Road
here, part of the way to Elon, maybe two thirds of the way to
Elon, on the right-hand side, there is a beautiful greenhouse.
And if you look in the windows of that greenhouse, you will
see these huge green plants. And it’s 43 degrees outside.
But what do we call a greenhouse? A hot house, right? It lets the
sunlight in. It maintains moisture. It maintains
heat. And inside that greenhouse, where
if you, I encourage you to ride by, it’s a beautiful sight, you’ll
see these huge tomatoes. I mean, riding about 35 miles
an hour, you can see them. I mean, they’re not this big,
like my hands are doing, but they’re pretty good size. And so those
of you who are into planting and agriculture and gardening
and all know what it takes to grow these things. This greenhouse
is quite a sight to see, but isn’t it neat to ride by a house
and see in the windows of a home life and to see growth, to see
God’s blessings as a family, as a greenhouse where children
can grow and really become developed in that greenhouse before they’re
cast out into the elements of the world. If you put these tomato
plants down the road here, out tonight, and over the next few
days when we’re supposed to get some winter weather, what would
become of those tomato plants? Well, they would freeze. They
would dry up. They would shrivel up. And that’s
really the thing we must think about with raising our children
is I think we put too much on them too soon. And so they get
out of the greenhouse at an early age where the elements are harmful
to them. And so a greenhouse is a family
picture, I think, where we allow our children to grow before they
have to go out into the harsh world. It’s a proving grounds,
one of the uncles on Mandy’s side of the family worked for
the Aberdeen Proving Grounds up in Maryland where they tested.
They put to the test everything the U.S. government wanted to
put in their fleet or in their service and so it was a scientific
place where they could test, they could prove what was made
for the government’s use. We think also of raising our
children to be like saplings. You know, we put a little tree
in the ground and we don’t just say, good luck, little tree.
We stake it, right? We put the peat moss around it.
We put the, what do you call it? The potting soil in there. We put the, I can’t get the word
though. Mulch! Yeah, we mulch it. We
take good care of it, and we let it grow, and when it gets
rooted, we start to remove the stakes. But if you remove the
stakes too quickly, the tree can become bent. It can grow
this way or that way, or it can fall completely over, or if there’s
a great windstorm, it can snap. And so these images are on the
forefront of our mind as we think through wisdom and the family. Proverbs 22.6 says this, train
up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will
not depart from it. So I have five categories tonight
I want us to think about. These are not the only five categories,
but these are the ones I could come up with and the ones I could
find a verse for. That’s the scientific background behind
it. I’m gonna rely a lot on some of the things we have already
said. So maybe some of this is really an extension of our previous
two or three weeks of our studies in the morning and in the evening.
So five things we ought to think about for the home. The first
thing is provision. We remember back to Proverbs
31, what was the wife? The wife was a hardworking, industrious
woman who made the home thrive. And the way she made the home
thrive was by providing for her family. Remember, she had confidence
when the snow came that her family was clothed in scarlet. Her family were ready for winter. They had food and provisions
for all the household, including the servants. And then we remember
that her husband was an elder in the city gates. He was a diligent
husband. We looked at last week. He worked
hard. He farmed. He produced. The family was provided
for. But is it only financially we
should provide for our children? I can remember some years ago,
I think some of y’all heard this, we had a little full moon back
in the Huntersville church. And so there were a number of
couples that had babies all at once. And so that’s when we went
through all these parenting classes and these sorts of things. And
there was one fellow in the group and he said, we’re only going
to have two children. And so you ask, why is that?
And he says, well, that’s all I can afford. And I said, well,
if that’s the case, we wouldn’t be having any, because we can’t
afford that to start with. Having children is expensive.
But is financial provision all that we must think about? I think
what was in the forefront of this man’s mind is, how am I
going to pay for college? How am I going to stuff enough
money away in one of those 50-whatever plans so that when my child gets
18 and they get accepted to wherever it is, that there will be enough
money in there to pay the tuition? But provision is not only financial,
it is financial. But we should provide our children
a house, we should provide them with clothing, and we should
provide them with some level of education. Some of these go
without saying. It takes money to buy shoes,
it takes money to buy groceries, it takes money to put braces
on, it takes money to provide things necessary for life. Now,
we probably would consider in today’s society that providing
financially for our children requires a trip to Disney, it
requires a college education, it requires A trip to the beach
at least once, maybe twice, three times a year. Paying for every
weekend trip they want to go on with their friends and those
sorts of things. But no, financial provision really is food and
clothing, shelter, the basics. Children need a house to live
in. They need clothing on their backs. But think for a moment
about education, providing for them education. I like to say
the best motto for why we educate our children is because our children
are called to love God and live well in the world that God made
and over which he made them lords. And if you are poorly educated,
you can’t be lord of creation very well. And so you learn your
math, you learn your science, you learn your reading and writing,
you learn to keep a checkbook, you learn all the building blocks
of being basically successful in this world. We want our children
to get going as it were as a functional member of society. But one of
the other things we ought to think about in this category
of provision, we ought to think of the home as a as an economy. You remember back before the
industrial Most homes had what we call a
cottage industry. Most homes produced something.
And most homes that produced something went to market and
they traded with one another. Maybe you’ve heard in recent
generations, we trade with so-and-so. I can remember my grandfather
in the furniture business, he horse traded everything. Most
often he would come back from the YMCA steam room, somebody
was going to get furniture, and his wife was going to be getting
her Lincoln traded for an upgrade. And that’s how we bartered, right?
That’s how it went. You traded your corn for somebody
else’s tomatoes, or you traded… One of the best ways I think
that this has been learned in our household, there’s an old
story called Oxcart Man. An ox cart man, I see some recognition
over here, ox cart man is about a man who throughout the seasons
of the year, he grew, he planted, he tended. And as his barns filled,
he went to market in Boston with his ox cart full. And by the
time he got to market, he sold the corn, he sold the goods that
his children had made, he sold the firewood that they had had
collected and aged. They sold the produce of the
house and of the farm. And by the time he ended up leaving
Boston Market, he had sold the ox cart, he had sold the harness
that he had made, and he even sold his faithful old ox, only
to go home and to do it again through the next seasons. And
it’s good, I think, for children to learn, where do apples come
from? Well, not food land. So visit
an orchard. Where do clothes come from? Well,
they don’t come from Target or wherever. They usually come from
Malaysia or some foreign land, and so we need to teach about
industry. We live in the land of textiles here, and so it may
be good to go visit the textile museum that we have here in our
county. And so on it may go. We not only
want to provide for our children in these areas, but we want to
show them, teach them, when it’s your turn, And it ought to be
their turn sooner rather than later. Children these days are
consumers. They bust their iPhone, and what
do mom and dad do? Well, they need another one,
because I don’t want to hear it with them, not without an
iPhone. Back in my days, not only would
we not have had an iPhone, but we would have had to have bought
it, worked for it ourselves, that kind of thing. But it’s
an expensive world. And we need our children to be
producers. And so home is an economy where
we learn to care for and value what we have. A couple years ago, we sold our
family van. It had 100,000 miles on it. We
cleaned it up one day, put it out in the driveway, and a lady
stopped by to buy it. And it was a good lesson for
the kids because we had taken good care of it. We kept the
floors clean and covered. It wasn’t full of chewing gum
and Burger King and that kind of thing. And a lady paid us
a good price for it. And it was a good lesson for
the kids to see if we take care of something, it still holds
value. And so on with the house. So on with expensive things in
life. It’s amazing these days. You
go into a house that’s on the market and it’s trashed. You
go to the used car lot and the car that you want to purchase
used has been just used up and is gone with its value and its
cleanliness. So provision, it’s a pretty wide
ranging subject. Now, the second thing is discipline.
We want to be providers, but we also want to discipline. We’ll do a little flipping here.
And I think there’s a progression to some of these verses, chapter
13, verse 24. Whoever spares the rod hates
his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.
And some translations even say discipline him early. And then
chapter 22, verse 15. 22, verse 15 says, folly is bound
up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives
it from him. And then just one chapter over,
chapter 23, verse 13, do not withhold discipline from a child.
If you strike him with a rod, he will not die. But if you strike
him with a rod, you will save his soul from Sheol. And then
chapter 29, verse 15, and then also verse 17. 29, 15, the rod and reproof give wisdom,
but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother. And then
verse 17, discipline your son and he will give you rest. He
will have, he will give you delight to your heart. And we’re going
to read one more in just a moment. But one of the things I want
to say about discipline at the outset is discipline is not always
negative. Discipline is largely positive. Here, my son, do the right thing,
right here, daughter. This is the good thing before
you do this. Negative is when we say, don’t
stick your, metal toy in the electrical outlet and they get
a nice little lesson and probably you give them another one later.
But discipline is often positive. Here’s the right thing to do.
Encourage them to succeed. Don’t provoke them to anger.
Don’t set them up for failure. Friday night I was sitting at
the dinner table at the church ordination and this fellow asked,
how do you get your little ones to sit in church? And so how
do you get them to behave? And I was thinking back to the
little rule that we had about kids, and this was a very helpful
thing to remember. Before discipline becomes negative,
especially with little ones, are they fed? Are they dry? and are they rested? Because
if you have a kid that’s hungry, wet, and tired, it’s not going
to go well for anybody. But that’s not a time for negative
discipline. That’s time for you to do your
job and change the diaper, make sure they have food, and enforce
nap time, that sort of thing. But to see this man was asking,
how do I get the kid to sit still in church? And he said, it starts
at home. You can’t just have a week where crazy, crazy, crazy,
crazy, crazy, run, run, run, run, run, you know, party, and
then say, but we’re going to sit still for an hour. It just
doesn’t work. And so discipline is training.
It’s getting them ready to succeed, but it’s also got to be heart
oriented. We want our little ones and us
big ones to have a change of heart and not just a change of
behavior. You know, we can straighten our
tie and look good. We can brush our teeth and have a pretty smile,
but isn’t it better when our behavior flows from the heart. And so we want to discipline,
we want to train our children for a change of heart and not
just change of behavior. And that’s really where the gospel
becomes the center of the discipline of the home. We want our little
ones to come to a point just like we do as big kids to see
our sin, To hate our sin for what it is, it’s an offense to
God, it’s a stench in his nostrils, and our sin is dangerous, and
so we want to hate and forsake it. And so as your children grow
up in the home, yes, there’s positive teaching, yes, there’s
negative discipline, but it’s with the hope that the gospel
will take root in their lives and see their sin, hate it, and
forsake it and follow Christ. But the book of Proverbs speaks
of corporal punishment. It speaks of spanking. It speaks
of not sparing the rod. We live in a day and age where
the psychologists have told us this, the modern day has told
that, and I would guess that largely in the Christian church,
undisciplined children probably have had the rod spared. Now
some of us have grown up in different eras. I probably grew up in the
era where You know, you feared mom and dad, you do what’s right
because they say so. And if you don’t do what they
say, you’re going to get it, as it were. But when we consider
use of the rod, it ought to be in a loving environment. You
know, we tell our little ones clearly through positive discipline
what we expect from them. And then when it doesn’t happen,
we explain why on God’s behalf, they must discipline you in order
that they will no longer be foolish, but possibly become wise and
holy. Never out of anger, never out
of rage and all those sorts of things. But Proverbs chapter
19 verse 18 gives us, I think, an encouragement and a warning. 19 verse 18 says, discipline
your son for there is hope. And do not set your heart on
putting him to death. One of the things about discipline
is the longer you wait to do it, the harder it becomes. I
watched a group of men the other day pour a concrete driveway. I can’t think of where it was.
It was somewhere back this way. I was on my ride home. And that
concrete truck was mixing. and the concrete was coming down
the chute and there were seven or eight men just hustling and
why was it they were hustling well there’s a number of reasons
that concrete man wants to dump his concrete and get on to the
plant and get another load because if he runs another load he makes
money so there’s that hustle uh but that concrete is going
to dry and nobody wants a driveway that’s a bunch of lumps and has
air bubbles in it they want it smooth and pretty and they want
the line straight they want the You know, they slide their broom
across and put that nice texture on, but there’s a point where
that concrete is going to begin to set and it’s going to begin
to dry. And so discipline, whether it’s positive or negative, the
sooner, the better, the more consistent, the better. But the
warning here in chapter 19 verse 18, we ought to take heed of
this warning. We should discipline our children
while there is hope or for there is hope. Do not set your heart
on putting them to death. I think so many today are setting
their hearts on putting their children to death because they’re
listening to the psychologists. They’re listening to the experts.
And no, children do not come out with a instruction manual
strapped around their toe. We all know that. But the Bible
is sufficient to be our only rule in faith and practice. And
so the book of Proverbs says a whole lot to us about how to
raise little ones. And so we ought not set our hearts
upon a horrible end, putting our children
to death because we listen too much to this world. Well, the
third thing we want to teach is the fear of Yahweh. In the
home, there ought to be provision. There ought to be discipline,
but there ought to be the fear of Yahweh. Chapter one, verse seven, we
spent a good little while on the fear of the Lord is the beginning
of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. And we spent a whole night on
the fear of the Lord. We spent a little bit last week
saying, if you want to find a good husband, he needs to fear the
Lord. But remember, it’s someone who reverences God. He knows
who God is, he knows what God has done, and he knows what God
is capable of doing. He knows of the wrath of God,
he knows of the mercy of God, he knows that God sees, he knows
that God gives, and he knows that God takes away. I’m told by the internet, most
families spend about 700 a year per kid on sports. But some families,
I found this statistic out today, spend as much as $35,000 a year
on sports. And you think about hotels, and
travel teams, and fees, and shoes, and Air Jordans, and gym bags. If you don’t believe me, look at
how many sports stores we have just in our town. We have an
academy sports that’s not very old. We have a Dick’s Sporting
Goods that’s been there a little bit. The sports industry is huge. And we will spend tons and tons
and tons and tons to get our kids in sports because we hope
they’re the next Michael Jordan and can dote on us in our retirement
when they get rich and they buy mama a house, that sort of thing. But we have to train up our children
in the fear of the Lord. I mean, sports are fine. Sports
are great. They teach many good values. But we need to train
our children in the fear of the Lord. And this little phrase,
train up, has often been translated into the practice of the churches,
catechizing our children. Who made you? God. What else
did God make? He made all things. Why did God
make you in all things? For his own glory. And so on. As children are coming up, they
can remember these little facts. And as they root in their heart,
and their lives take root in your home, especially as you
worship together as a family, these things will begin to take
root. Children catch most things than
learn most things. And so as they see you fear the
Lord, they also will fear the Lord. We could say a whole lot
more about this, but we’ll pass right along to the fourth thing.
In our homes, we ought to teach what is right and wrong. So we
should provide for them. We should discipline them. We
should be a household of the fear of Yahweh, but right and
wrong and really blessings and curses ought to be on the forefront
of what we teach our children. Chapter one, verse three in Proverbs
says that we are to receive instruction in wise dealing. And it says
in righteousness, in justice and in equity. There’s a little
book out and it’s called Respectable Sins. I believe it was written
by Jerry Bridges. And that’s really a book for
big people, right? It’s respectable sins that the
church has more or less allowed to, well, it’s okay to do these
things. God really doesn’t frown on them.
But I wonder what the respectable sins are in the home. Do we allow
Do we allow tattling? Do we allow lying? Do we allow
cheating? Do we allow stealing? Do we allow
delayed obedience? Do we allow all these sorts of
things? And the reality of this is if
you let, we’ll just call it criminal activity, go on when they’re
little, you’re gonna have little vagrants, right? Read the police
blotter, right? The Alamance News is wonderful
for things like this. Who is it that’s getting arrested?
It’s young people. And why are young people getting
arrested? Because when they were younger people, nobody said no. Nobody put a stop to it. And
so teaching what is right and wrong is important. Up until
about a year ago when school was in, we had the weekly gathering
for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes over at the high school.
And so at the end of our little devotional, I’d ask the teachers,
what can I pray for for you? And almost to a person, every
time they would say, pray that we would have sanity because
we feel like we are prison wardens running a jail. And if you talk
to most teachers today, the reality of children and their behavior
is often the same reality in the generation above them, their
parents. And so you see very often generational distortion
between what is right and what is wrong. I think we were talking
Wednesday Bible study. I forget what the subject was,
but oh, we talked about repentance. And we talked about how in raising
your children, you’ve got to teach them not only to repent
for what they’ve done wrong. The confession was saying, repent
of your sins, repent of your particular sins particularly.
So we’re talking about when we raise our kids, we need to teach
them to do that and not say, I’m sorry if, right? But we’re
all talking about how we all or some of the parents or the
mothers in the room had made their children go back to the
store where they stole something. Y’all remember when Chapstick
was in the big bins by the cash register? I came home with about
three or four tubes of it and my parents found that and I had
to go back to Food Lion and not only apologized to the manager,
but I had to pay for it out of my allowance. And that manager’s
jaw, I think, dropped when we walked back in there. But that
is the way you will learn right and wrong. There’s restitution,
there’s fixing the wrongs you have made right. Chapter two,
verse 20, speaks to this, and it says, walk in the way of the
good. keep to the paths of the righteous.
There are only two ways to live, right? There’s the right way
to live, there’s the wrong way to live. And a Christian home
ought not to have, as far as it is possible with you, through
discipline, positive and negative, in the work of the Holy Spirit,
a Christian home ought not to have worldly ways in it. And so we ought to, like verse
20 says, walk in the way of good and keep to the paths of the
righteous. And then chapter four, verse
27, Do not swerve to the right or to the left. Turn your foot
away from evil. So as our kids get a little older,
they pick their friends, they go out in the world a little
bit. You know, we’ve taught them right, wrong. We’ve, we’ve disciplined
them, but we ought to encourage them and implore them not to
swerve to the right or left and to turn their feet from evil.
There’s the 10 commandments. They become the 10 suggestions
today’s day and age. In Proverbs, it speaks of dishonest
scales. Your kid gets a couple yard mowing
jobs. They realize it’s a lucrative
business. Well, I can overcharge this lady because she’s rich.
And this one I’ll have to, you know, and then you wonder why
they grow up and they’re running a landscaping business. And on
Yelp, nobody likes them because they’re price gougers on this
side of town. and they’re maybe not getting too negative reviews
over here. But these little things do add
up. They do add up, and they become
real-world problems for real-world adults. How do you think Enron
got to be the scandal of the energy business and then the
CPA firm, which followed suit, who covered up their trail? These
things begin in the home. They begin in the greenhouse.
There’s a fifth thing for us to think about, and we’ll just
mention it very quickly. And I tell you what, I’m having
to reach to do this one, but I think I’ll be able to show
you the picture of this. And I’m gonna call this one service
and social graces. And so for service, look at Proverbs
11, verse 25. Whoever brings blessing will
be enriched, and one who waters will be blessed. will himself
be watered. I can remember back in high school,
there was a young man who was a student like the rest of us,
but you would have thought he was a teacher. He just did all
kinds of things around the school, and we all made fun of him. What
a dork, or whatever word we used in the 90s. But he was, and really,
now that I look back on it, he was finding ways to serve and
not be a consumer. And it’s such a wonderful thing.
There are various restaurants you go into town. Of course, restaurants
are closed. But say, for example, you go
to Chick-fil-A, you sit down after you’ve ordered your meal,
and you realize your order’s ready. And so you’re about to
get up and go get it. But then a nice young person
brings it to you, and you say, thank you. And what do they say?
My pleasure. Now, they’re forced to say it,
right? Or you lose your job. But that’s
service, right? And service with social. We live in such a consumeristic
world. You know, you walk through a
store nowadays and you see one of those displays and somebody
knocks it over and so whatever’s on display goes flying. And what’s
the first thing? I didn’t do it. And so some worker
who’s tired has to come pick it all up. But then you see the
same scenario where somebody says, you know, that was my mistake.
I’m gonna help fix this. And so Proverbs 11, 25, I think
is a good principle. Whoever brings blessing will
be enriched, the one who himself waters will himself be watered. But think about service and social
graces for just a moment through the lens of verse 11, 22. Like
a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman without
discretion. You can read through the Proverbs
and find social graces. Proverbs says, you know, don’t
be a loud mouth, right? Don’t be too much at your neighbor’s
house lest he become weary of you. You can read several places
where it speaks of not being gluttonous. And you can go through
the list. And so here’s maybe a test question. When people are around you, do
they feel refreshed or do they feel like the energy has been
sucked out of them? And that’s a really good test
question. Are we serving ourselves or are we serving others? Why social graces? Why service? Well, it really stands out in
today’s world, doesn’t it? You go to most places these days,
and this really burns me up, you go somewhere and you order
takeout and they say, would you like for me to put a tip? on
the card. And I think, I’ll give you a
tip. You walk something out I just purchased to me, and you want
a tip for that. And you understand the whole
economy. They’re losing tips. And so I try to be thoughtful
and gracious in that era. But if you go to Walmart and
you ask somebody, hey, where’s the mouthwash? And they take
you to it. Do you give them $2? They’re selling you a product that’s
on their shelf. And so this day and age where
service is expected with a tip. And I don’t mean in the tip world.
There’s some of those jobs where they make two bucks an hour and
they live off of tips and we should be generous because that’s
the right thing to do. If we expect them to serve us,
we should pay for that. But it’s a very self-serving
oriented world. I’m gonna do something for you
and I expect something big in return, maybe even if not earned.
So I think we have the chance here as Christians, not just
to show social graces, but to serve others as unto the Lord
Jesus Christ. So how should we think of all
these things? Provision, discipline, fear of Yahweh, right and wrong,
service and social graces kind of jammed into one. Well, the
people of Christ ought to be a fragrance, right? We want to
be a witness to the watching world. We want people to drive
by our home and as they see the lights through the windows, we
also want them to see the green plants. like maybe you see down
the road here at this greenhouse. We want them to see that while
everything else in the world is rotting away, while everything
else in the world is dying on the vine, not so in the Christian
home, not so in the Christian family, not so in a home with
provision and discipline, the fear of Yahweh, teaching right
and wrong and service and social graces. And so the main thrust
of all this is for God’s glory and for other people’s everlasting
good. And so ultimately, we want people
to come to faith in Jesus, not only our children, but we want
others that bump into us to know the fragrance of the Lord Jesus
Christ. So pause and pray with me. Lord,
we ask and pray that you would help us to have homes that are
fitting to be outposts of heaven, homes that are fitting to be
where Children who are servants of the King are trained for the
master’s service and help us and bless us, we ask in this
great endeavor in Christ’s name, amen.