Teach Your Children Well

[The following is a manuscript of my sermon delivered on Sunday morning, the 18th of June, 2017 - Father's Day.  Look for the video on our Vimeo channel:  http://vimeo.com/pilgrimreformedchurch.]

Today is Father’s Day, the day when we pay honor and tribute to our fathers by giving them tacky neck-ties and homemade Father’s Day cards.  For many of us, it’s the day when we remember all the good things our fathers did for us, while somehow forgetting any of the not so good times.  For those of us who are fathers, it is a time to reflect on just how precious that title “Daddy” is to us.

Are we a good father?  Have we been the best we could be?  Our Bible tells us there is far more to being a father than simply contributing our DNA in forming a new life.  Listen and follow along to the advice the Apostle Paul offers us, from his letter to the Ephesians, chapter 6, verses 1 through 4, and I’ll be reading from the New Living Translation of our Bible…

1 Children, obey your parents because you belong to the Lord, for this is the right thing to do. 2 “Honor your father and mother.” This is the first commandment with a promise: 3 If you honor your father and mother, “things will go well for you, and you will have a long life on the earth.”

4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger by the way you treat them. Rather, bring them up with the discipline and instruction that comes from the Lord.

--Ephesians 6:1-4 (NLT)

Let us pray…  Happy Father’s Day, God!  You are such a wonderful Father!  Teach us, Lord.  Speak to us now through Your Holy Spirit directly into our hearts, that we might receive, understand, and obey Your message this morning.  In the blessed name of Jesus we pray.   Amen.


A small boy in church for the first time watched as the ushers passed the offering plates.  When they neared the pew where he sat, the youngster piped up loud enough for everyone to hear: "Don't pay for me Daddy, I'm under five."


Ah, Father's Day...  One year on this day I gave my Dad $100 for his gift and told him to buy himself something that would make his life a little easier.  So he went out and bought a present for Mom.

Mark Twain once commented on a phenomenon I think we all may have observed at one time or another when he said, "When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant, I could hardly stand to have the old man around.  But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."

The older I’ve grown, the more I’ve come to understand just how much my father tried to teach me, how much of the wisdom he himself learned through life that he tried to share with me.  Those memories of my Dad and the topic for this message are all surrounded by the lyrics of an old song by Crosby, Stills, and Nash that says "Teach your children well".


For those of us who grew up knowing and feeling our father’s love, we may not be able to grasp how a father could not love his child.  Those of us that are fathers may find it difficult to fully understand how so many fathers today can completely ignore their offspring, going through their own selfish life like they don’t even have children.  They may have fathered a child, but they definitely fail to follow the biblical role of a father.

Even those of us who are fairly decent fathers probably don’t fully live up to biblical standards.  The Apostle Paul cautions us not to provoke our children to anger.  How many of us Dads have ever made our kids mad at us?

In Proverbs chapter 22 verse 6, wise King Solomon tells us…

6 Train up a child in the way he should go,
And when he is old he will not depart from it.

--Proverbs 22:6 (NKJV)

We try to raise our children right, don’t we?  We want them to have more opportunities, greater happiness, and a brighter future than we had.  We try to train them in the way they should go and hope and pray they will not depart from that path as they go out into the world on their own.

In Psalm 78, verses 4 through 6, Asaph writes…

4 We will not hide these truths from our children;
we will tell the next generation
about the glorious deeds of the Lord,
about His power and His mighty wonders.
5 For He issued His laws to Jacob;
He gave His instructions to Israel.
He commanded our ancestors
to teach them to their children,
6 so the next generation might know them —
even the children not yet born —
and they in turn will teach their own children.

--Psalm 78:4-6 (NLT)

His instructions are a little more explicit.  We are to teach our offspring the truth of God, what He has done for us, what His laws mean to us.  And we are to teach our children well, so that they can teach their children in turn.

And Dad, it isn’t enough to make sure they come to church on Sundays.  We must live what we are trying to teach!  The best teacher is often the example we ourselves set for our children to follow.  If we want to train up our child to walk in the path of Jesus, then we must live a Godly life for Jesus!


So Dads, and I include myself here, are we good fathers?  Do we fit the biblical role?  Maybe in one regard.  In his Gospel account, the Apostle Matthew records Jesus talking about fathers, in chapter 7, verses 7 through 11…

7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. 9 Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? 11 If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!”

--Matthew 7:7-11 (NKJV)

None of us would give a hungry child a stone or a snake to eat when they asked for bread or a fish.  And most of us give nice gifts, don’t we?  We give as good as we can, and sometimes better than we can afford, or perhaps should give.

But Jesus hit the mark when he called us “evil”, meaning sinners.  For we are sinners, we are evil when compared to God.  And if we mere mortals can do good by our children working with nothing more than our earthly resources, how much more can the all-powerful Creator of everything do for His children?  God has more at His disposal than we can even dream, and He will give it all to His beloved children.


So that leaves the question of who are God’s children?  We confess that Jesus is God’s Son, and in fact we claim Jesus is God’s only begotten Son.  If Jesus is God’s only child, where do the “children” come in?

The key words there just might be “begotten Son” when referring to Jesus.  Paul makes it a little clearer, in his letter to the Galatians, chapter 3 verse 26 through chapter 4 verse 7…

3:26 You are all sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus. 27 For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, and there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

4:1 Now I say that as long as the heir is a child, he does not differ from a servant though he is lord of all. 2 But he is under tutors and governors until the time appointed by the father. 3 So when we were children, we were in bondage to the elements of the world. 4 But when the fullness of time came, God sent forth His Son, born from a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. 6 And because you are sons, God has sent forth into our hearts the Spirit of His Son, crying, “Abba, Father!” 7 Therefore you are no longer a servant, but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.

--Galatians 3:26-4:7 (MEV)

We are God’s children.  Once we accept His Son Jesus as our Master, God adopts us as His own.  We may not be begotten of His Spirit as Jesus was, but we are filled with His Holy Spirit and brought into His great family when we acknowledge Jesus as Lord.  And the full, rich kingdom of heaven is ours to inherit.  This is not only something for us to understand and remember, but also for us to teach to our children.

One thing we can all do is to make sure we are right with God, that we are righteous in His eyes.  Use these next few minutes and our prayer time to repent of any sin and seek our Father’s forgiveness.  Let’s teach this also to our children, that our loving Father in heaven will forgive us if we but ask and promise to turn from our sinful ways.

We must teach our children well the ways of God.  In the holy name of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.


Let us pray…  Father God, You love us more than anything else in Your creation and You show Your love in so many ways.  All we have to do is truly believe in and follow Your Son Jesus and You give us Your very Holy Spirit and promise us all of heaven as our inheritance.  You are so good to us, Father.  Help us turn from our sin.  Forgive us our disobedience.

Please hear us now, Father, as we silently speak to You from our hearts, repenting of our sin and once again giving ourselves to Your Son Jesus…

Lord Jesus, You are the only begotten Son of our Father God, but through You we are adopted into His wonderful family.  God is now our Father and You our brother and the Holy Spirit our indwelling guide and constant friend.  There is nothing more we could ask, but sometimes we still seem to want more.  Help us, Lord, to not desire the physical things of this world that have no permanence, but to want only to serve You and to seek only God’s face as we strive toward the eternal.

This we pray in Your glorious name, Lord Jesus Christ, our Master and our Savior, the one true Son of God, in whom we place all our hope, all our trust, all our faith.  Amen.