Hypocritical Households and Apostate Adolescents

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Well, yes again we arrive at session three hypocritical households and apostate adolescents and As the title would suggest this does deal with Not just getting our kids saved but keeping them saved when we launch them out into the real world the question That has been on the minds of many Christians of late actually for a long time but increasingly of late is why so many young people walk away from the faith. They grow up in Christian homes perhaps, they go to church, week in week out like clockwork, they go to their prayer services on Wednesday night, they go to Awana, they pray before meal times. But when they go out on their own they walk away from the faith and we wonder why. Well maybe we we can start by looking at ourselves.

I mean, how many times have your kids seen you sin? Sure, fair enough. How many times have they seen you repent? If you’re anything like me, the first number is unfortunately far greater than the second number, and it’s not something I’m particularly proud of. That is bad. And especially considering how many times I’ve called my own children to repentance, or perhaps you’ve done the same thing. This is a dual standard, this is hypocrisy, this is not living consistently with our confession. And while of course there are likely a host of reasons why Christian children walk away from the faith, a good place to start then would be to look in the mirror.

We understand God’s prerogative to save. We understand God’s prerogative and his power to preserve, to keep people safe, to preserve his saints unto the end. But we have clear responsibility here too. And there are no doubt a lot of earthly explanations to this problem. Blogger Brandon Darryl Lane Flannery conducted an online survey related to this question. And he posted his findings on the Baptist News Global website in December of 2022. So just a couple of months ago.

The question centered on why people are leaving the church and the top reasons that he cited from his findings from conducting that survey with over 1200 people was number one, discrimination against the LGBTQ community and other marginalized groups. Number two, the behavior of Christians. And then three, intellectual integrity. Namely, they didn’t believe that Christianity was actually intellectually tenable. So the first point, of course is worth talking about, the discrimination piece. I mean, to be perfectly honest, there is no faithful treatment of Scripture, adherence to scriptural principles, and then treatment of those who are living in sin that they’re going to actually appreciate and enjoy most times if we’re being honest. We’ll be focusing primarily on number two, but in the interest of looking at the sort conundrum that faces our young people when they leave our homes. Entertain this with me for just a moment. Flannery is himself a gay man and so when we look at the social media crowd that is likely to respond to his invitation to comment

that has to be factored into account as well. So it’s not so that may or may not have been a fair cross-section of our culture responding to that that invitation to say why they’re walking away from the church. So those numbers may in fact be skewed, but at a rate that we haven’t seen before, people are walking away from the faith. Can we really be surprised though? Western culture has been shaped by the gospel and by Judeo-Christian morality. The Christian worldview teaches that all humans are deserving of respect and they bear dignity as image bearers, no matter their lifestyle or their creed. So that is something that is common to humanity. They may hate God, they may change genders as often as they change their socks, and our worldview teaches that they have value as humans. It also teaches that to condone an unbiblical lifestyle is actually loving. Our culture preaches a different message.

Today, identity politics has helped us to blur the lines distinguishing a person’s behavior from his personhood. So we’re told that if we do not affirm a person’s identity which he alone determines. So he determines his identity. If you don’t affirm that, you’re actually denying his personhood. Or they’ll even go a step further and say his very existence. So Jim talked about that just a little bit. Strangely, this sort of conflation and this demand for affirmation presupposes the cultural grace that is brought about by the influence of the gospel over generations. It depends on that cultural grace and where grace is present, you can count on it. Grace will be abused. And like entitled children, we find we depend on God’s common grace and do so to demand our rights. Then we wonder how we got here.

We find ourselves culturally poised on the branch that we are sawing off with our chainsaws of identity politics. So I’ve taken a moment to key in on that as a sort of an example of the sort of curve balls that we are thrown and that we miss in spectacular fashion when we’re at the plate. We are not equipping our kids with the philosophical, theological, or the practical tools to combat these competing ideologies. Sadly, many of our young people today are not equipped to address these objections on the part of their contemporaries and using a morality that depends on Christian categories, they call God cruel. They call him wicked.

They call us hateful. And when then Christians push back instead of being pushed around, they call us unloving. And they tell us to turn the other cheek because Jesus told us we have to. And if we don’t, then we’re being hypocrites. So they’re defining the terms, defining the categories, they’re using enough of our language against us to think that they’re doing so strategically. This sort of resistance from the world is hard to face without a thorough grounding in scripture and in the Christian faith. But that’s bad enough, but then when coupled with hypocrisy in the home, it’s just too much for many Christian young people to survive. Christian kids are in fact in a cultural river, the current is strong, and just treading water will carry them downstream. If they wish to make any cultural headway, they have to swim hard and be in pretty good shape. In the church where part of the aim is to get into this spiritual shape, the situation is decidedly better, I think, because at least we know the solution. We may not be

fantastic at executing it all the time, but we do have the handbook. This is a time where facts are fluid and where confusion is clarity and we sound like George Orwell and in this time we need to live by faith. Otherwise, like so many Christians today, though we hand our children a monetary inheritance, their souls will be lost. The theme verse for this seminar is Proverbs 1322, a good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children, but the sinner’s wealth is laid up for the righteous. Solomon here is talking about material inheritance, and it’s a good thing for a man to provide for his children and for his grandchildren, monetarily and materially, absolutely, to be sure. But I don’t think the Solomon would mind us too much, broadening the application of the principle to include a spiritual inheritance as well. Many good men are are unable to hand down wealth to their children, yet they are still able to establish and grow for their families a godly heritage.

And that is a rich inheritance that will yield dividends for generations. Though both types of inheritance are important, our focus is the spiritual inheritance, not because wealth is unimportant, but because the spiritual is more important. And I don’t style myself a dualist, but I don’t really make apology for that.

the spiritual inheritance of greater value. Jesus seemed to think so. If a father builds a tremendous inheritance to hand down to his sons, but has not trained them to receive it well, to steward it well, to use it for God’s kingdom, he’s missed Solomon’s point and has not actually provided for his household at all. If, in the name of providing for his household, a man has built transferable wealth at the expense of his children’s souls, or at the expense of fellowship with his wife or at the expense of a harmonious and godly family culture, he’s not ultimately provided for them at all. What is such an inheritance but a reminder to his son of his father’s years of neglect? What child would exchange the affection of a doting grandfather for a million dollars? Jesus himself asked rhetorically, what is a profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul in Mark 8 36. A concern for our children’s future bank accounts without a concern for their souls is a wickedness. So if we would honor the spirit as well as the letter of Proverbs 13 22, we must

work to grow wealth, to be sure, grow assets, to be sure that will bless our children and their children. But we must work even harder to ensure that we transfer to our children an inheritance of of godliness. We must work to rear our children in a Christian culture, in the arenas of the household, school, the church, our neighborhoods. If we do, their presence in the community will be potent, whether it is on a youth soccer team or in the line at the grocery store or in your neighborhood. I’ve had opportunity over the years to interact with a lot of different types of Christian families. I’ve been able to see some trends over the years in terms of which families leave an inheritance of godliness to their children, and of course their exceptions.

There are tremendously faithful Christian parents whose children walk away from the faith, and there are plenty in this room who came from unbelieving homes themselves, or even moderately Christian homes. Many Christians didn’t come from Christian homes, that’s true, but most of them did. As often as not, children are reared in a Christian home and walk away from the faith, I don’t say that flippantly, as often as not. And especially when you take it to university, when Christian kids go off to universities, between two-thirds and three-quarters of them deny the faith by the time they’re done. And sometimes though, even very faithful Christian families produce unbelieving children.

But we can also observe trends among those who raise children who remain in the faith. And more often than not, Children who remain in the faith have parents who parent by faith and who take their own faith seriously. You don’t want your kids to remain in the faith in spite of you. It won’t be because of you, but hopefully it’s not in spite of you. God is the one who saves. And he blesses faithfulness and ordains means as well as ends. And while salvation and sanctification are of the Lord, he does routinely use our obedience to bring about his will, his will to effect his will. Our job is to be faithful as parents and to raise our children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

So my aim with this talk is to consider how we can do our part, to ensure that we are giving our children a godly spiritual inheritance. What can we do to demonstrate for our children that our faith is real, that it matters, that we actually believe what we say? My suggestions here center on the elimination of hypocrisy from our homes and our lives every day, all the time. We must fight hypocrisy all the time at every turn, taking our own faith seriously before we expect our children to do so. Now hypocrisy is a pretty broad term.

Oxford defines it as, the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one’s own behavior does not conform or pretense. That’s helpful. So hypocrisy is behavior that is contrary to your confession. And hypocrisy is a cancer to Christian culture. The opposite of this word would be integrity, at least for our purposes. A wholeness of character as one lives consistently with what he believes. So my exhortations here, or he says he believes, my exhortations here are intended to help us live consistently with our profession unto the rich spiritual inheritance of our children as they continue in the faith.

So my exhortations here are intended to help us live consistently with our profession unto the rich spiritual inheritance of our children as they continue in the faith. My suggestions here are about killing hypocrisy in in yourself and hedging against hypocrisy in our kids. So let that be the sort of program that’s running in the background as we consider these things together. Allow me to suggest some ways to kill hypocrisy and keep our kids saved. First, get integrity. Yes. I mean, Solomon says the beginning of wisdom is this, get wisdom, right? If that’s the case, then perhaps we could say this, the beginning of integrity is this, Get integrity, dude.

It’s not complicated. It’s not easy, but it’s not complicated. Actually think about it and you will be better off. In many cases, mindfulness is all one needs to start making progress toward your goal. So being attentive to integrity in this case is an important step to being characterized that way. If you think about what you put in your mouth, soon you’ll be healthier. Just pause for a moment and give it some thought before you eat the candy bar or the choc-chip cookie or the carrot stick. Or the piece of steak and then do it with relish. Go ahead. Think about every dollar before you spend it and soon you’ll be wealthier.

You’ll find that you’re spending a lot of dollars mindlessly. Think about every word before it comes out of your mouth. Just take a moment and be quiet and think, then speak. And you’ll be wiser because you’ll find yourself listening more than you’re speaking. Likewise, if you think about what you’re doing and whether it is consistent with your profession of faith in Christ, soon you will grow in integrity and wholeness of character. If you are mindful of integrity, living consistently with your confession, the Spirit will convict you of any hypocrisy. I mean, you know that’s the case, right?

When you’re working on a certain character attribute or you have something, a defect in your own character that you’re attentive to and you’re working hard on at the moment, noticeably attentive to it and others as well. So you see if you’re working on patience when somebody else is acting impatient and so on. But so that that’s an evidence that when you’re working on it you’re mindful of it and if that is the case the spirit will point out to you when you’re acting hypocritically. And in case it’s not obvious we’re not looking for a wholeness of character among pagans. Right? A person could listen to this and go, Well, since I don’t want to be a hypocrite, I’ll just walk away.

I will embrace godlessness.” Well, this is a different talk from that one. That person needs to get saved and give his life to Christ and bow the knee to Jesus. I’m talking to Christians who are struggling to live Christianly everywhere all the time.

If you need a reference point beyond the Bible, consider whether your behavior matches up to the standard that you’re holding for your children. And you’re believing children in particular. How would you counsel your kids? If you don’t have kids, how would you counsel somebody else in your situation? I use this one all the time to talk sense into myself. I try to remove myself from the context for a moment and say, how would you counsel somebody else who’s in your predicament? And then that allows me enough distance and objectivity to think a little bit more clearly, well, likewise, are you behaving in a way different from how you would counsel yourself, all things being equal? Then in the Bob Newhart thing, stop it. I’m surprised Dave made the whole talk without referencing that. When it comes to morality, work to be the same person wherever you are. Now, you may let your guard down in certain circles, but you should be the same person morally wherever you are. Would your co-workers or your friends from church be surprised

to witness your dinnertime behavior in conversation? The morals and the principles that inform our decisions come from the Bible and they transcend contexts. They’re the same principles that should come to bear on other decision-making no matter where we are or when. This should be self-evident, but how many of us are guilty of behaving one way at church in a different way when we’re alone, at home, or with our families? Why is this? Well, whether household or national culture, there’s little that I can think of that will undermine the power of our testimony, the living inconsistently with our profession. We must get integrity.

What else? Educate Christianly. So I am revisiting a couple of points that Dave said far more completely. So I’ll be skating over the top. Educate Christianly. Parents are to raise our children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, Ephesians 6.4. If we do that well, they are more likely to keep the faith. And done well, it’s also a very powerful weapon against parents’ hypocrisy as well. So whether homeschooling or day-schooling your children, they need a Christian education for a hundred reasons. And some of that triage may come around the dinner table in the evenings. But as I said, this is for a bunch of different reasons.

Among them, an education according to reality will be necessarily a Christian education. The starting point is the word of God. Educational models that omit or deny the word of God are like guacamole without avocados. Let’s think about that one for a second. A proper study of history will include the culture-shaping influence of the gospel, and not only in Western culture. You’ll see what happens when the culture is influenced by the gospel outside of the West as well. A Christian education gives them practice in living in Christian community. Again, that may be a tiny Christian community in your home. It may be a Christian school.

particularly how to resolve conflict biblically with a view to full Christian fellowship. Man, that’s a good habit to get into. And if our children practice biblical conflict resolution throughout their childhood, they’re more likely to practice it when they get older. So as we talk about how to keep our children from walking away from the faith, if they’re allured by Christian fellowship, they’re less likely to do that, are they not? It also includes an honest examination of worldview which will then compare the Christian worldview with the alternatives and in a context of discipleship. The Christian worldview teaches the value of Christians and work and their relationship with one another. If it’s a good education they’re going to develop an interest in work and a big capacity to do lots of it. For my part I’m a fan of classical and Christian education and it is heavy on the study of the great books of Western civilization, which have been the vehicles of the great ideas that have helped us shape our culture.

Classical education trains students in logic and rhetoric, which is different from most modern counterparts today, and helps students to be able to combat the lies of the world around us.

I’m not in the classroom very much these days, but when I was, I used to enjoy asking my students periodically throughout the year about their greatest fears and hang-ups about the Christian faith. Like, given to me, what are you afraid of about Christianity that may not be true? What, you know, does God actually exist? How can we know the Bible is true? Does the Bible endorse slavery, capital punishment, polygamy? Does God hate homosexuals? How is the doctrine of God’s sovereignty different from the fatalism of the Greeks and the Romans? How about the crusaders who killed Muslims in Jesus’ name or the reformers who executed Anabaptists. Like, give it to me. So first, if we’re afraid of questions like these, it won’t keep our kids from asking them. Don’t tell your kids that good Christian kids don’t ask questions like these. Shame on you if you do, because they’re not going to stop asking them, and if we don’t, the world will. Even if we manage to convince them that good Christians don’t ask questions like

these, the world’s still going to ask them. And they, and will also do so in a culture of discipleship of a different nature. The world is trying to make disciples of your kids. And so I would much rather have the students wrestling with those things and reading Nietzsche and Hitler and the rest in this context from a Christian worldview with a teacher who is interested in loving the student, rather than a teacher with an extra grind and an agenda to remove the faith of Christian kids. But the world will ask them, our kids need to be grounded in the faith to be able to answer them. And as a bonus, it turns out that giving our kids, as I mentioned before, a thorough Christian education serves not only to help them, but also it helps us.

I’ve seen lots of parents benefited greatly by their children’s education, myself included. So then, because this is a talk about hypocrisy and keeping our kids safe, be ready for your kids to ask these questions of you. Position yourself to be sharpened and held accountable by your own children. Third, love Sundays. Love them. Sunday should be central to the week. you know, Shawn’s illustration of the fat kid, given the big push to the merry-go-round out on the playground. He’s awesome at that. On Sundays you gather with your church family. You behold the image of Christ and are conformed a bit more to his image week by week by week. On Sundays you take communion. You’re compelled week by week to confess your sins, to ensure that you’re actually in fellowship with others.

Like how many times have you been prodded to repent because you knew that confession time was coming, you didn’t want to wait to deal with it then, or you did wait to deal with it then, and you dealt with it in confession time, and there’s a good thing you did because communion was coming, you didn’t want to miss out on that. How many times? Don’t tell me. Lots, I know, me too. On Sundays, you see many of your favorite people, and you take your position beside them, and you grab your handle on the battering ram of corporate worship, When you take another swing at the gates of the citadels of unbelief, it is potent, it is relentless, it is coming again another week, it is sweet.

We should do our part to help make Sundays alluring for our kids because they’re going to have Sundays after they leave our homes. What are they going to do on those Sundays? We want for them to love corporate worship and fellowship. This is something that the SARS have tried to be intentional about for years, but before that, before we were intentional about it, our kids already loved Sundays. And I think it’s because of the people in large measure. Our kids were already loving Sunday before we made it an explicit aim. When we were planning a vacation, I’m not kidding you, the first question they asked is, will we miss church?

Will we miss a Sunday? sooner cut a vacation short than Miss Church. At least giving me a nod right now. This is not because of Sonia and me because they’ll have Sonia and me on vacation, right? It’s not like they’re they’re afraid of missing time with us.

They’ve got us. It’s you. They don’t want to miss you. Hopefully though, it’s not in spite of us as parents. Hopefully part of the reason they were liking it before is because we were, hopefully. We do some big things, some little things to help make Sundays more alluring for our kids to make them not hate Sundays and none of it is magical. Like I give my kids mints during the sermon. I got that idea from Matt Whittling who wanted his kids to associate worship and the Word of God with sweetness. That’s my aim for my kids too. I hope that when they’re my age and they pop a peppermint in their mouth they’ll be taken back to Sunday mornings of corporate worship in their minds and enjoy some sweet memories. A couple of Sundays a month ahead of Trinity Family Fellowship Sundays or a couple of Saturdays a month we have a big Sabbath dinner and part of the aim there is to make Sundays a feast in every way and that starts for us on Saturday nights ahead of time and that is something my kids enjoy. I enjoy it but it is it is different doing so

strategically with a view to helping my children to love Sundays and to anticipate them with intentionality. Also another benefit of that is if we make enough food on that sort of day of preparation then the hardest working part of our home on Sunday is the microwave as we reheat some glorious leftovers. So we make Sundays as restful as we can. Sunday is a day that we consciously relax between services. We are not Sabbatarian strictly speaking. Our rest on Sundays is more out of delight than duty. It’s a get to it’s not a got to. And I mean, Sundays are not crazy restful for me. Um, but even I, for myself, I’m doing my part to make Sunday something that I look forward to. And I I love Sundays. I love locking arms with musicians and technicians in the morning to help prepare worship and song, and it never disappoints for me.

In 11 years of doing it, I still love it. My heart is transcended like clockwork every Sunday as I join with you all in that worship. Then I go home and I take a nap, or I mow a lawn or read a book or watch a movie, or it’s usually a nap, or whatever else I feel like doing, but I do it because I feel like it. My family does the same, and we look forward to that sort of reboot every week. A couple of times a month, we go back in the evening we do it again. And these are these are these are what we do. You don’t have to any of this. But my point is I want for my kids to look forward to Sundays. My kids don’t do homework on Sundays barring some extenuating circumstance.

So we plan for this. They’re they’re still expected to act like a sour on Sundays. So they may be dishes to do or meals to repair or things like that.

But over time we’re trying to make even that alluring as well. The idea here is that corporate worship on Sunday is important and we want our kids to want it for the rest of their lives. We want for them to view it as essential and as sweet. Want them to love Sundays. Fourth, suggestion, parent faithfully. Psalm 127 1 tells us that unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain, unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. While the builders and the watchman alike have a job to do, the ultimate builder is the Lord and the ultimate watchman is the Lord. The same is true of parenting. We must work as though the salvation of our children hinges on our faithfulness, knowing full well that it actually depends on God’s grace. Our job is to be faithful and then trust that God will, as you’ve said before, affect the outcome. He will make it happen. And we must also know that he blesses the faithful labors of parents in the salvation of their children. This sort of faith, this sort of resting in the

sovereign grace of God, hedges against temptations to freak out. We don’t need to freak out. It’s kind of nice not having to freak out. If the outcome does not finally depend upon us, and if God tends to bless faithfulness, then we can rest and then we can work. We can rest in the knowledge that God is going to work his will and we can work hard knowing that he will bless our labors. Sometimes Christians take their faith so seriously, unfortunately, that they then cram it down the throats of others, including the throats of their children.

Well, that’s not parenting by faith. That’s actually a sort of hypocrisy that I’m trying to help us combat. It is professing the sovereign goodness of God while denying it in practice. I mean are you really so convinced that God is sovereign that you’re going to force your spirituality on your children while acting like a pagan? It’s no surprise when children resist this. It takes faith to believe what we know, but we know that the gospel is effectual and we know that grace shapes hearts, including the hearts of our children. So don’t hold your children to a different standard from yourself. Your grace to them will be effectual, provided that it is a means that God is using to save them, to preserve them. That grace works. So you can be patient It’s not as though, and think about this, how would you counsel another parent who’s struggling, man, what am I gonna do?

I’ve told my son twice to take out the garbage this week and he actually still hasn’t done it. And I mean, take a step back, how would you counsel somebody? Wow, have you ever needed to be reminded of anything? Well, yeah, but I mean, I’ve told him twice, okay. Have you ever needed to be reminded more than twice? more than three times, did God remind the Hebrews in the wilderness a few times? Yeah, I mean, just don’t be super surprised if it takes reminding. It doesn’t mean that he is being a rebellious punk. Maybe he’s being a rebellious punk, but maybe you need to chill out and be faithful and remind him and be patient.

Have a little levity, as Dave was saying, have some fun, and then maybe it’ll be alluring in time. That’s parenting by faith. Freaking out, well, you know what that is. So I don’t need to tease out that illustration because we’ve got far too many examples from our own. Just look at your diary. I’m sure it’s got something in there. But don’t hold your children to a different standard from yourself. In the end, you don’t get them saved and you don’t keep them safe. God does that. Your part is to parent faithfully. Last, repent frequently. Some of you are like, he said last. It’s number five. Repent frequently. Now, this is a review and brief of what Dave said more extensively.

I thought about dubbing this one, preserve fellowship. Are they really different? If you repent frequently, you’re preserving your fellowship with your creator, as well as those you’ve sinned against. But repent frequently is a bigger umbrella and encompasses more. If you repent frequently, you will be preserving fellowship. So we’re going to stick with this one. But first, let me get too pokey, let’s talk about somebody else. Not you. Not you. If other people are going to sin, don’t you like it when they ask for forgiveness? If they sin against you? And if somebody sins, don’t you like it when he does it on his own?

As opposed to seeing how much he can get away with? Or, okay, fine. You got me. I’m sorry but you forgive me. Or do you like the reverse? Well, if you like it when he confesses and repents on his own with a view to making it right, actually making it right and restoring fellowship, then go and do likewise. I have put this one last because it’s powerful, but also because it never ends. So we’re going to leave with this one. Your kids see you sin. Right? Your kids need to see you repent. This needs to happen. And I opened with the how many times they’ve seen you sin, how many times they’ve seen you repent, and in many cases, it’s not a one-on-one.

It’s not a, they’ve seen me sin five times and five times. I’ve repented and asked for forgiveness. Who’s going to teach them? I mean, even like the best literature with repentant people very rarely has demonstration of Dustin Asch’s repentance that has not been born out of some colossally bad story. I think of a, what is it, is it Psalm 32 where David is wasting away because he’s harboring sin. And he gets confronted by Nathan the Prophet and he writes Psalm 51 afterward and you know that David held on to his sin for a long time before he broke? I mean David’s not in my notes but it’s true. If you do the math and look at when Nathan confronted him, there were some good months of misery for David.

And you don’t want that. Like that did injury to David’s household. And I can think of no more potent way for a Christian parent to illustrate an integrity and a love of fellowship and a commitment to his Christian testimony, his profession of faith, than to be quick in his repentance. I can see no more potent example for a Christian parent to set for his children than to be quick in his repentance. Doing so shows our children that we take seriously the fellowship to which we are calling them. Kids, we want you with us in fellowship. Show them. It builds trust at some kind of supernatural speed.

If I confess my sin and I seek the forgiveness of those against whom I have sinned, especially when I don’t have to, like I didn’t get caught, I confess before I’m caught, they can trust that there’s nothing I’m harboring secretly. Our household is a safer place for everyone too if I’m not harboring secret sin. Dave also mentioned it builds trust because it shows them that I’m not going to punish them for my sin. I’m not going to blow up at my sin, maybe my son even if it’s provoked and punish him for my sinful response. If I am owning my stuff, if I’m repenting, if I’m asking him for forgiveness and I’m showing him what that sort of, that sensitivity to sin and repentance looks like, then he will, he will see that benefit and that will build tremendous trust. It’s brutal and it’s hard, it is humbling, it’s even embarrassing, and it’s also powerful. The reverse is also true. When we sin and everybody knows it and we do not kill it quickly, we also do some terrible things. Among them, we prioritize our pride,

which actually needs to die. You are nursing your pride. We choose our own personal comfort over fellowship with those against whom we’ve sinned. So the the SARS routinely pray that we would love fellowship more than we love our own comfort or sin. We teach our kids that these sorts of things, these behaviors, when we don’t confess our sin and repent, we teach our kids that that’s acceptable. We teach our kids that that is a legitimate option. By our example, we may not say it with our words, but we teach them that tolerating sin is just fine and there’s no need to be fighting it. We teach our kids that you don’t need to seek forgiveness unless and until you’re caught or confronted.

Man, that’s bad. Don’t do that. Because you won’t get caught all the time. And examples abound. I’m sure I could say, now take five minutes and share with your neighbor an example of a time. Like, if I lose my dinner table of temper, I’m sitting there and I’m cool until I’m not cool anymore. And everybody knows it because they’re all looking at me while I blew my stack.

My job there is to show my kids it’s how a faithful Christian ought to act and ask for forgiveness even if I was provoked. So even if I blow my stack, I’m just thinking of an example here, because… no, I won’t share that example. Because my children have done something that I’ve asked them not to do and dang it, they’re teenagers, they should know better. So I lose my cool. I am teaching them about a value of fellowship and how to deal with sin when it happens by my hesitancy to repent or my waiting for them to do so and then once they’ve done so that I mean do I really let my kids lead in that situation? Is that a good idea? Well God bless that. The aim is to restore the damaged fellowship and get back into fellowship as soon as possible.

Now here’s the point here. Repentance yields a pleasant and an enticing spiritual aroma. Your sinful family will be shaped by this. They’re not your enemies, but when your children who provoke you to anger see you humbly asking for their forgiveness for getting irritated, it has the same effect of heaping coals. They’re shaped by that. They’re not your enemies, of course, but they are the recipients of blessing that may or may not be deserved in that situation. Our repentance can be used by God to shape others, and it does forge a family culture that is alluring for Christian kids. A refusal to repent is a gross sin. It is a recipe for relational weirdness of the sort that like most humans our kids will want to get away from as soon as they possibly can. So if you wish to keep your kids in the home, let alone in the faith, then cultivate fellowship, preserve fellowship, and this necessarily includes repenting frequently.

If you wish for your children to pursue Christian fellowship and community tomorrow, then for pity’s sake, cultivate Christian community and fellowship in your home today. So if we don’t take our faith seriously, we should not expect for our children to do so. Our children are like plants, and our homes are like greenhouses. The home offers shelter for the establishment of a firm foundation and deep roots. And then the idea, of course, is to move them beyond the greenhouse. Hypocrisy is a poison that leeches spiritual nutrients from our children’s soil. If the plants actually manage to survive their spiritual nutrition, they flee the greenhouse as soon as they can and they search for the nourishment that we’ve kept from them.

And the world is happy. I mean, we can just tease this illustration out or this example that breaks down, but happy to offer all sorts of synthetic artificial fertilizers of worldliness and identity politics and the rest that may sound alluring but will actually kill them. So for our part then, let’s allow fellowship and integrity and love to be the food that is in the spiritual soil of our homes. But I’ll finish with a word of warning and that is this. If you commit to the elimination of hypocrisy in your home, living consistently with your confession, there’s a chance that everybody will soon find out who you really are.

Well, news flash, your kids already know. If they see you living differently at home from everywhere else, expect for them to do the same. Let’s pray together. Father, please grow our faith and help us to parent by faith. And we do delight to know that you even enjoy using fallen vessels for glorious purposes. We are far from perfect. We depend upon your grace. And as has been said, plenty of times before, you draw straight lines with crooked sticks, and we are very crooked. But please help us to be faithful and to do what we know is right, and then you, and And then help us to trust that you will bring about your desired end.

So for all the families that are here this evening, we pray that you would help us to parent by faith and for our children to be reared effectively in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And we depend upon you to bring this about and we make our requests in Christ’s name. Amen.