Diapers to Disciples

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

So a little bit about Gail and myself. We started the parenting process 32 years ago. This picture is actually about 25 years ago. I had a little bit more hair back then. It is proof by the way as you go through these pictures that kids do make you lose your hair. And it’s been quite the journey. I don’t stand up here before you today to claim to be any kind of an expert and tell you that you know I’ve been there done at all.

I think this I could honestly stand before you and say that probably I could tell you as many things not to do I could tell you as many mistakes that I made in the parenting process as to what we did, right and By and large it’s all the grace of God that’s brought us where we’re at But you know you you give birth to them you feed them you change your diapers You kind of take care of them And they just kind of slowly over time start to grow up and change on you and they go through the teenage years And here they are all as young adults That’s the, he recognized Gail and I, and then for those that don’t know my family, the other girl there is my daughter Esther, and then kind of moving just above her into the other direction, we got Chris.

Chris currently serves as a pastor in Spokane, Washington today. Jesse, he’s the one in Germany. He has, Chris, I should say, has three little children right now, and Jesse, he has one, and Jeremy is in South Carolina, and they are all married, as I got a picture here that shows that. They grow up, they fall in love, and as is the way of life, they go off and they start their own families. And so that’s the Martin household as it currently exists today. And I found out this week that Chris and Nizumi, they’ve been going through the process of trying to get foster care approval so they can be a foster home. They just got approved this week.

That was Thursday, and by Friday they had four calls asking to place children into their home. And their plan, long-term plan, is to actually adopt. And so one of those placements they’re being asked to consider is an 18 month old boy who has some heart problems. And they’ve been actually, that’s right exactly what they were looking for, is about an 18 month old boy. So they’re considering at least fostering that boy and then the possibility of you to adopt it. So I could have another grandchild here shortly, Lord willing. So again, welcome and just let’s go ahead and get into it and see what God does. The purpose of the seminar is to arm you with enough biblical principles on parenting that you will be equipped to fulfill your God-given role as a parent.

For those of you who have studied secular approaches to parenting, you may find parts of this course to be in stark contrast to those approaches. There’s lots of material out there, the bookstores are filled, lots of people are willing to share their advice on parenting, and what I’ll be sharing with you today flies in the face of a lot of what is being said in the secular world today. The reason for this is that the world’s view of man and his basic nature is diametrically opposed to the biblical view. If you start with a bad presuppositions you’re going to end up with some faulty thinking on how to raise a kid. The world’s view of the world views man’s nature as essentially good.

This view says that a child is born without any proclivity to doing evil. Your job as a parent is to not mess the kid up. Some progressives even advocate that the state should have primary responsibility for raising the child and an example of that would be Jean Jacques Rousseau. He actually believed that the state should take the children and the parents would have visitation rights. Just to show how wacky some of that thinking is. A more recent example of this kind of anti-biblical views on parenting out there comes from that great guide to parenting, the Costco connection. In the most recent edition under the For Your Health section, there’s an article by by Dr. Shafali Saabary, who, the article claims, is a clinical psychologist specializing in the integration of Western psychology with Eastern philosophy.

In the article, the doctor points out that children misbehaving is only natural for them. And we would agree with that. She goes on to say, quote, because children’s reactions are only natural, it’s a huge mistake to blame, shame, or scold them. Instead, it’s vital to accept that just as we often can’t help ourselves, so too children can’t help being the way they are. She follows this line of thinking later by saying, so if children steal something from a store, the way forward isn’t to reprimand them and give them a consequence, which is just another word for punishing them, since true consequences are things that naturally happen as cause and effect, not something we impose.

you read the rest of the article and she just goes on that you’re basically just trying to raise a child’s consciousness to understand that ooh, if you steal things that’s not nice and that has maybe negative consequences and you want positive consequences and it’s a totally interesting and foolish philosophy. In essence, Sawberry is telling us that there really isn’t anything morally right or wrong. There is only that which produces good consequences and that which produces bad consequences. In this approach to parenting you would never tell your child they were wrong in their choices, but simply unproductive or unhelpful in getting along in society.

Now, conversely, God says in His word that man is utterly depraved in his nature. This means that man has no inherent ability to live the kind of holy and pure life that God expects of him. Keen David recognized this fact about human nature. In Psalm 51.5, he wrote, “…behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.” It doesn’t take a new parent lawn to discover the reality of this truth. Think back to when your first child was born. Which of these words first came from their precious little lips? Yes, Mommy? Or No?

If some of what you encounter in this course seems odd or even foolish to you, what the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 3, 18 through 20, Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become foolish that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God. For it is written, he is the one who catches the wise in their craftiness. And again, the Lord knows the reasonings of the wise that they are useless. Now I realize there’s most of you in this room are probably professing believers in Christ, I’ll assume that, but there are, I never known in an audience that there might be somebody who is coming from a different persuasion and has perhaps read lots of parenting books out there.

And again, I just reiterate that this course will fly in the face of much of what you read out there in the secular world. And sadly, much of it is based on faulty premises, faulty understanding of the nature of man. And when you go down that road, you’re in for a world of grief in your parenting process.

This course is prefaced on the conviction that the Bible has the answer for all of life’s issues. Wherever the Bible does not specifically address an issue, it gives principles that we can use to formulate an appropriate response. And I would say parenting is one of those things. You’re not going to go to a lot of chapters and verses that specifically say parents or children, but there are a lot of principles that we will see that apply directly to the parenting process. Second Timothy 3 16 through 17. You know that well, makes that claim for itself. All scriptures inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. Our understanding of the parenting process begins and ends with what the Word of God says. Wise parents will be far more concerned with the state of their child’s eternal soul than simply seeking after desired external behaviors. In Matthew 16 26 Jesus asked a

very probing question. He asks, for what will a man be profited if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul. If you let me, I’ll twist that verse a little bit. A similar question might be asked of parents. For what will a child be profited if he learns how to be outwardly compliant and yet forfeits his soul because he was inwardly rebellious? This course is not going to be telling you how to train your child to jump when you say jump, but it’s going to be teaching you how to get to the heart of your child, which is what you should be concerned. And that brings us then to what the goal of biblical parenting is.

The goal of biblical parenting is to make your child a mature disciple of Jesus Christ. Several verses now support that goal statement. Matthew 28 19 contains the command known as the Great Commission. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I command you. This command is addressed to all believers, of course, but it certainly applies to parents regarding their children. If our children are not disciples, who is? About Proverbs 22.6, it speaks directly to parents. Train up a child in the way he should go.

Even when he is old, he will not depart from it. and training a child is teaching them to observe all the commands found in the Bible. How’s that for job description? How are you doing that? Teaching them to observe all the commands that are found in the Bible. Ephesians 6, 4, and fathers do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and the instruction of the Lord. And then finally Deuteronomy 6, 6 through 7 implies that this training is not to be a random or haphazard but systematic and regular. And these words which I’m commanding you today shall be on your heart and you shall teach them diligently to your sons.

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 sounds a lot different than drop them off in a Sunday school on a Sunday and hope somebody else put some good stuff into their head. That’s a full time job. Now note the use of the word mature in the goal statement. The word mature is often used in the Bible to connote the idea of perfect and complete. So with that definition in mind, it should be pointed out that the goal of biblical parenting isn’t fully achievable. The reason for this should be obvious. No person ever reaches maturity in Christ here on earth.

Your goal by the time your child leaves home should be that they’ve reached a level of maturity such that they are characterized as being sound in doctrine, they know the word, godly in character, they’re living out what the Bible says, and equipped to lead a productive adult life and happily embrace the relationships and responsibilities God has given them. That’s a mouthful, but if you could actually send your children off into life and that statement is true of them, they will be well prepared for life. As you give your child biblical instruction, you are instilling a very important principle in them. The principle is this, all authority comes from God.

It’s extremely important that your child comes to understand that all authority begins and ends with God. That includes your authority as a parent. Don’t make the mistake of allowing your child to think you’re the final authority in life. such as you have to do it because I’m your parent and I said so, causes the child to see the parent as the final authority. Now that’s going to maybe work when they’re little, you know, they’re knee high, but it’s not going to work so well when they look like my sons and they’re all looking down on you on this angle. You know, they’re just going to say, wait a minute, who are you? You know, you’re just another person like me. You know, they’re in their mind, they’re thinking, you know, who died and made you God? And so you have to train them early on that all authority begins and ends with God. So an act of disobedience to you as a parent is a sin and it’s a sin towards you, but more importantly it’s a sin towards God that they have to understand that when they defy you, they just defy you.

It’s exactly the same as that they just defied God. Most kids, when they understand that, they might be willing to go toe-to-toe with you, but it gives them pause to consider, do I really want to stand in the face of God and tell God, no. And you make it clear that’s exactly what they’re doing. It’s as if God was standing there and they just said no. It makes them stop and think. By giving your child biblical instruction which includes the command to obey parents, the child learns that God is the ultimate authority and obedience to the parents is equivalent to obedience to God. Statements such as you are being selfish, God said do nothing from selfishness, will help reinforce in your child the truth that all authority stems from God and not you, the parent. Now you need to talk a little bit about avoiding what we call the extremes. You got to be careful. There’s two extremes you ought to watch out for.

You might recognize yourself in one of those illustrations there. The two extremes obviously we’re talking about is being too harsh or being too permissive. It’s been said that the two greatest predictors of teenage rebellion are harshness and permissiveness. If I see a home where one or both of those is in play, I can almost guarantee you 100%. I haven’t found a case yet where it’s not true that it’s not gonna end up in teenage rebellion. If you don’t want to undermine your parenting efforts and you need to make sure you are not characterized by either of these two extremes. Now harshness is that parenting style that attempts to parent with a rod of iron.

The child is held to a rigid and often impossible standard. Any infraction is met with a full force of the law. Legalism typically goes hand in hand with an overly harsh parent. Everything is viewed as black or white. Little consideration for the child’s age or temperament or to the context of the situation is given when responding to issues. Usually, the harshness is a reflection of the parent’s own frustration or disappointment with the child’s behavior. It isn’t God’s standard that was broken that provokes the ire, but rather the parent’s standard. Words of encouragement are rare with a harsh parent. That’s because a child can always do a little better.

I may refer to butt sandwiches later in the talk, I can’t remember, but do you guys know what a butt sandwich is? And that’s where you tell the child, yay, nice, butt, next time, can you make sure you do this or that or the other thing? And you basically totally undermine the positive feedback that you’re trying to give them. So can I just suggest that when you’re giving the word of encouragement. You separate that from the correction. If you’re teaching your child how to clean up the room, make a bed, and they get the pillow at the right end of the bed this time, but the bedspread is still disheveled. You say, yay, good job. You put the pillow in the right place. And then the next time, when it’s time to make the bed, you say, hey, go make your bed.

Hey, and on this time here, you know, last time you did a great job on the pillow, would you also get the bedspread straight this time? And you’re kind of separating those events. But a lot of us are guilty of using the butt sandwich and a harsh parent tends to do that Because there’s always room for improvement. You can always do a little bit better Considering the context of the situation The situation Sunday morning church is letting out the kiddies are running wild in the foyer and they’re they’re just running haphazardly And they’re not being mindful of factors older people who are afraid of falling and breaking hip So dad grabs the kid roughly by the arm jerks him to the side and says, don’t let me catch you ever running in church ever again.

Well, the kid’s thinking, well, tonight’s the old one, Olympics, and we’re supposed to be practicing and running around in circles. What am I supposed to do now? So without thinking about the context of the situation, far better for that dad to draw the child alongside and say, son, do you see these older people walking around here? And they’re a little bit afraid of you right now, because they’re afraid you’re going to knock them down, and they’re going to break a leg. You think we can show consideration for them and maybe go outside and run around? Much better way of dealing with the situation than just the harsh, common, irregardless of the circumstances.

Now on the other extreme of parenting, you have permissiveness. Permissiveness in parenting is often seen in a failure to hold to a consistent standard. This type of parent is overly lenient in their dealings with the child. They are also inconsistent. What was allowed yesterday might not be allowed today. Yesterday, the kid was jumping up and down on the couch cushions and no problem. And all of a sudden today, you’re having a bad day and they’re jumping on the cushions and all of a sudden you come down like a ton of bricks. What, you know, did you grow up in a zoo? What’s wrong with you? Get off the couch. And totally inconsistent standard.

This leads to confusion and ultimately resentment in the child since they don’t know what’s expected of them.

Often a permissive parent is simply trying to avoid conflict. Permissiveness can also manifest itself in hypocrisy when a parent holds their child to a different moral standard than they hold themselves. In essence, the parent is telling the child, do as I say, not as I do. If it’s not okay for the child on a moral issue, it’s not okay for you. In contrast to these two biblical extremes, parenting upholds a consistent standard according to God’s word and not the parents whim. The parent does not respond out of personal anger or frustration, but rather out of selfless love and a genuine desire to see the child come into compliance with God’s laws. Guys, I’ve been there, done that, raised four kids. I understand there’s those moments and I can’t believe they’re doing that again and you feel the ire right raising in yourself but you really have to fight back the urge to react based on your emotions you need to go back to what is the issue is the is the word of God and his standard and you

come alongside the parents again I like to say you when you’re dealing with your kids use the same emotion you use when you take out the trash unless you really hate taking out the trash basically it should be a non-emotional event for you. It should simply be a time of correction and then there’ll be some you know correction and reproof involving some disciplines that may not be so fun for the child. We’ll talk about that in the last session but when you’re dealing with them you really have to separate your normal fleshly response to the fact that this little munchkin is defying you and what is in the best interest of communicating God’s standard to them. Biblical parenting seeks to influence the heart of the child to know and love God out of the child’s love for God right behavior will flow emphasizing right behavior while ignoring the underlying heart issue is not biblical parenting no matter how God that the external behavior may seem the Bible is clear that the heart of the child is what the parents got a focus on if you don’t only get one thing all

afternoon, the heart of your child is what you’re after, not the external compliance. Mark 7 21 through 23 says, for from within, out of the heart of men precedes the evil thoughts, foreign occasions, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting, wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness. All these evil things proceed from within and defile the man.

That one verse alone is worth the price of the seminar today. When you’re asking your child, why did you do that? And they look at you and say, I don’t know. Take them to that verse. I know it came from your heart. That’s where it came from. And you start to hold them accountable. And they can’t just try to shirk and avoid accountability and responsibility with the lame. I don’t know. Proverbs 27 19 as in the water, face reflects face, so the heart of man reflects man. Dealing with improper behavior in your child can be likened to weeding a garden. The gardener who breaks off the stem of the weed, focusing on the externals, will have to come back and weed over and over the same patch of ground. The gardener who goes after the root of the weed, focusing on the heart, will find less and less weeds, ie. wrong behaviors, to deal with over time. In fact, you will find that you deal with the heart of your child in one area of life. It will often prevent weeds from popping up in other areas of their life. And we’ve seen that over and over again,

is that as the child begins to understand the moral reasons for why you’re telling them what to do, you can give them one instruction and when they understand the heart issue, They can then take that and apply that to a dozen other situations in life. If you’re just dealing with them on an external behavior orientation, you’re going to have to be coming up with new rules every day. It might be an issue of showing kindness and they’re pulling the cat’s tail. You just say, don’t pull the cat’s tail. Make a note, don’t pull the cat’s tail. Well tomorrow I can pull the dog’s ears. didn’t tell me not to pull a dog’s ears.

The child who understands why we don’t pull the cat’s tail can then make a connection, say, OK, it’s probably a bad idea to pull a dog’s ears too. And so your job as a parent becomes easier and easier as you develop the heart of the child, because they can then extend those principles out into other situations that they have not encountered and that you’ve not yet taught them about. We stated earlier that this course is prefaced on the conviction that the Bible has the answers for all of life’s issues. Therefore, it is your job to understand what the Bible teaches and then pass that knowledge onto your children.

Others may assist you with the tasks, such as teachers and relatives, but you as the parent have the primary responsibility for accomplishing it. It means you’re going to have to become a student of the Bible yourself. You’re going to have to know what it says so that you can communicate it. One of the issues that we faced here at the church as we were starting up TEC is, do we have a Sunday school or not? And the typical arguments for came our way. Well, who’s going to teach our kids about the Bible if we don’t have a Sunday school? Which we would smile and look back and say, got a mirror? Go look at a mirror. You’re going to teach your children things about the Bible.

Now, if some of you moms and dads are panicking like that, well, I don’t know the Bible. Well, that’s where you come alongside somebody else who’s walked a little further than you and say, hey, would you help disciple me? Would you help show me how I can instruct my children in the things of the Lord? and we’d be happy to do that, but we really believe in making the parents take that responsibility. As people who wish to parent biblically, we need to understand the day and age in which we live and make sure that we lay a firm doctrinal foundation for our children to stand upon. Get this, our children will end up adopting some philosophy to guide them through life.

No question about that. They are going to adopt a philosophy. If we leave a vacuum, then something else is going to fill it. The goal of this course is not to simply teach you how to raise externally compliant children. I’ll be giving you lots of lists and lots of suggestions on ways you can develop some of these skills in your kids’ lives. But please, please, don’t walk away just saying, good, somebody taught me how to train a little monkey. That is not what this class is about at all. children might be nice, but in the end it will be an exercise in futility if they spend an eternity separated from the God who created them, loves them, and longs to be their God.

As you continue on in the parenting process, keep reminding yourself of the goal of biblical parenting, which I said earlier is to make your child a mature disciple of Jesus Christ. Now, if you let me, I’m going to actually modify that statement just a little bit. How about this? The goal of biblical parenting is to make a child a mature image-bearer of God.

Genesis 1.27 tells us that God created man in his own image. This means that all of us are image-bearers of God. We’re either good image-bearers or we are bad image-bearers, but we are image-bearers nonetheless. You can’t opt out of being an image bear. No human being can opt out of that. This means that all human beings are wired by God to be imitators. Now, you talk about imitating today in our culture and people usually revolt against that. He’s, no, I’m not going to imitate him. I’m going to be my own person, my own man, my own woman. I don’t like to imitate. Well, you’re fighting against nature. You’re fighting against the way God made us. It’s how we learn and grow. Even those free spirits who reject cultural norms and standards demonstrate the power of imitation by how much alike they are in their speech and dress. You ever notice that all the all the people that are anti everything all end up looking the exact same and sounding the exact same? Showing again the power of imitation in their own life.

Rather than fight against being imitators we need to work with it and make sure we have found something worth imitating. As Christians this is the person of Jesus Christ. In 1 Corinthians 11 1 Paul urges his listeners to follow his example as he follows Christ. This universal principle is especially true when it comes to raising your children. They are going to imitate you, parents.

Does that make you nervous? Wow, my kids gonna be like me. I don’t know how many times Gail and I have looked at each other over the years and said, where on earth did they learn that? Oh yeah. Children will be imitators. Your job is to make sure you are giving them something worth imitating. So then we can restate the goal there. The goal is to make your child a mature image bearer of God. Now fundamental to the idea of being image bearers of God is embracing relationships and taking responsibility. Sean will probably talk about it more as he gets into his Genesis series, but when we use that phrase, be an image bearer of God, you’ve got a good handle on it if you say, okay, what does it mean to be an image bearer of God? It means to embrace the relationships that God has placed me in and to take the responsibilities that God has given me. If you can understand those two pillars, you’ve got a good handle on what it means to be an image bearer. And so using those two words, that’s how I’ve structured the rest of the time we’ll have

today. In sessions one and two, we’re going to be discussing helping your children learn to relate with others. We’ll be talking about the family structure and relationships with the family, relationships to the community, relationships to the church, but it’ll be all focused on how to develop better relationship. And then in session three and four, we’re going to be talking about helping them to learn to take responsibility. I don’t know of many things that are sadder than to watch an 18-year-old man about ready to leave his parents’ home, kind of culturally, about when they do it here. And he really has no clue what he wants to do with his life, doesn’t know what his interests, his gifts, his talents are.

He knows how to get to the 50th level of whatever game is currently popular, but as far as how to do life, he’s got no idea. That’s just tragic that we turn out not 18 year olds like that. And then in the final session, we’re gonna cover what to do when there’s needed correction or reproof. Just because of the fact that we all have sin natures, including our kids, there will be times that they will make choices that are not wise and you as a parent will have to step in and use some form of correction or reproof to help them get back on the right trail. Now, one mistake to avoid is to take what you like learn in this course and try to apply it too rigidly.

Make sure you understand the principles that’ll be taught here. We’ll be sharing suggestions of how to apply the principles in your home, but these are only suggestions. You notice I didn’t title those seminar, you know, raising kids God’s way. But I do believe what I’ll be sharing with you is a Godly way. But I’ll just be giving you suggestions, the lists I’ll be giving you are things that Gail and I, they’re at least road tested. They’ve been tested in the laboratory of raising kids. We know what worked and what didn’t work in our home. We’ve talked to many other parents. I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to be speaking to parents now for about 25 years, hundreds and hundreds of parents.

Nobody’s come back yet and said, Jim, that was the stupid thing you ever told me to do. But don’t go home. And if I give you an example that says, teach your kid to hold your elbow before they interrupt you, don’t come back and say, well, is it plus or minus six inches and is it every time? I mean, take the principle of what I’m sharing and then you apply it to your situation. Okay, it’s always a danger in these kind of seminars is that you’re gonna take what I’m saying as gospel. What I’m not saying is gospel. What I’m gonna be saying is hopefully based on the gospel, but you can have other ideas of your own how to hopefully will agree today on what the principles are, what you’re after, how you how you affect that in your home may be way different than how we did it in the Martin household.

One size does not fit all when it comes to parenting, even among different children within your own home. So one final thought, the absolute greatest parenting tool of all is available at all times to all parents in all situations. And I’m referring to prayer. Don’t underestimate the power of a parent on their knees, beseeching God on behalf of a child. Too often we use prayer as the last resort. It’s sort of like, you know, the football game. You’re down by six and you got one play left and let’s just throw the Hail Mary. I’ve tried everything else in my parenting so I’m gonna throw a Hail Mary. We’re gonna pray and see what happens. Learn to use prayer as your first line of defense and the middle of the process and at the end of the process and everywhere. Pray, pray, pray. A very key principle. I mean it may sound corny but there’s many times for Gail and I it’s like we’ve tried all the tricks, nothing else works.

Let’s pray and lo and behold God affects a change in the child’s heart wonderful thing All right, so that was all by way of introduction