Train Up A Child
Scriptures: Deuteronomy 4:9; 6:4-9; Proverbs 22:6; 13-15;
Introduction
We have set aside today as our child dedication day. At the conclusion of this message we will dedicate those children who are brought forth. But what is the purpose of dedicating a child to the Lord? We will be asking God’s blessing upon the child and that God would protect the child until such time that the child comes into the knowledge of Christ and accepts Him as their Lord and Savior. This is a personal choice that each person must make and even though we dedicate the child, that child at some point in their life must make their own decision to accept or reject Christ. That being said, the child dedication is more so for the parents than it is for the child.
Some of you may be wondering how this can be so let me explain. When a parent brings a child before the Lord to be dedicated to God, that parent is making an oath before God that they will do whatever it takes to train that child in the understanding and knowledge of God. This is not a simple task. This requires the parents to always consider what they place before that child, both in action and in words. A child that is dedicated to God is truly a blessed child and God does not look on it lightly when parents bring their children before Him. So this morning, before we have the dedication service, I want to talk to the parents and to all of you who may one day be parents. Now let me say this before I go any further, I have two daughters and three God daughters and I am not perfect and have made many mistakes in trying to live for God before them. So if you’re looking for perfection in the things that I will share with you this morning, look to God because although I am trying to get there, I am not there yet. What I will share with you this morning comes from my understanding of God’s word and from some of the mistakes I have made with my daughters.
I. In The Beginning
In the beginning when God made Adam and Eve, one of the first commandments that He gave them was to be fruitful and to multiply. In other words He wanted them to have children. Genesis 1:28a says “God blessed them; and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, and subdue it…..” God had an expectation of Adam and Eve, even before they sinned, that they would have children and that with their children, they would rule the earth. We know that it did not play out this way, but what I want you to understand is that from the beginning, it was believed that children were a blessing from God. Because children came from God, women who did not have children sometimes believed that they were being cursed or punished by God. We have examples in the Old Testament where women who did not have children were sometimes treated differently from those that did. The story of Abraham and Sarah comes to mind. It was so important to Sarah that she have a child that she could not wait for God to fulfill His promise and she gave her handmaid to Abraham. Then there is the story Hannah whose husband other wife made fun of her because she had no child. When she conceived a child, she named him Samuel and literally gave him to God and he became a great prophet in Israel. As you read through the Old Testament, you will find multiple stories about women desiring children and having the joy of seeing their children walk with and serve God.
We all remember Moses’ mother. She bored three children that we are familiar with: Aaron, Miriam, and Moses. Their parents, being part of the tribe of Levi, operated as the priests on the Israelites. So it would be natural for their children to have an understanding of God. Although Aaron and Miriam appears to have walk with God from an early age, Moses was in his late seventies when he came to fully understand God’s call on His life. He was 80 years old when he led the children of Israel out of Egypt and this is what I want you to think about. When Moses brought the children of Israel out, He told them to do something for their children. He told them to teach their children about what God had done for them so that it would not be forgotten and so that they would know God. Deuteronomy 4:9 says “Only give heed to yourself and keep your soul diligently, so that you do not forget the things which your eyes have seen and they do not depart from your heart all the days of your life; but make them known to your sons and your grandsons.” Moses instructed the people to teach their history and what God did for them to their children and their grandchildren. What we see here is the desire to help the child know God so that what God has done is never forgotten. Before I go further, let me ask you a question. Do you ever brag on God to your children? Do you ever share with them when God has answered your prayers or done something for you? This is what Moses instructed the people to do because he understood that if the children who did not witnessed the exodus but heard about what God had done, they would learn to expect God to continue to move on their behalf. When we teach our children that God loves them and wants a relationship with them, they grow up with the knowledge that this is an expectation – that they will have a relationship with God. Any two people can produce a child, but it takes a lot more to train up a child in the knowledge and understanding of God. Listen to what Solomon said in Proverbs 22:6.
II. Train Up A Child
“Train up a child in the way he should go and even when he is old he will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6)
How many of you understand that you are training up a child even if you are doing very little to formally teach them. Children learn from the behaviors of the parents even when the parents are not taking any special steps to train the child. We are all products of our environment. I learned some things from my parents that I am sure they did not realize they were teaching me just as my daughters have learned some things from me that I was not intending to teach them. But Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, said that if we train up a child in the way they should go, they would not depart from it. Let’s examine what he meant when he used the word “train”.
I looked up this word in the original Hebrew and Chaldee dictionary. Here is what it said this word means: “to narrow, to initiate or discipline; to dedicate. What Solomon was saying with this one word is a lot deeper than what we think about when we casually read this verse. I want to walk you through each of these words so that you can understand from the Hebrew words what Solomon meant when he said “train up a child.”
To Narrow. Something that is smaller in width or not wide is considered to be narrow. This word carries the meaning that there is a limited amount; there are margins and/or constraints. So one of the meanings that Solomon had in mind when he used this word for what should be done with a child was to set some boundaries; some limitations as to what they could do. Our society has done this in some aspect. For example, a child must be 21 before they can “legally” consume alcohol. They must be a certain age which differs by state in order to get a diver’s license. These are just a couple of examples that our society has placed on a child. But our “narrowing” should go much further than this. As a parent, we should know what our children are doing. We should know the friends they hang out with. We should know what they listen to or what they watch on TV. We should have limitations on what they can access on the internet. We should know if they are doing things that are not lawful. These are all part of “narrowing” their way. By taking away or limiting some freedoms until they can handle them we hopefully enable them to make better choices in life because they will be making these choices with better information. When you think about this “narrowing”, consider what Jesus said.
He said “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.” Matthew 7:13-14. What Jesus was talking about is eternal life. He was stressing that the road leading to heaven is a narrow one – meaning that we cannot live any way we wish and expect to get there. He also said in verse thirteen that the way leading to destruction (to hell) was wide, meaning that there are a whole lot of avenues that will lead to destruction. If this is true for eternal life, then it must also be true for our earthly life. Think about the children you know who grew up with no boundaries – what are their lives like today? I have shared with you before the interviews that were conducted in prison and what the inmates said. Most stated that they did not have boundaries growing up which led to them getting into trouble. As parents, our primary job is to protect our children and to do this we must narrow what they can and cannot do until they are ready for the responsibility. The next work in the Hebrew definition for train is initiate.
To Initiate. To initiate means to “to bring into practice; to teach the fundamentals of.” Most parents understand that our job is to prepare our children to one day leave our homes. In order to accomplish this, we must initiate them to life. The term to bring into practice means to bring something into being in such a way that it is more or less a lifestyle. It becomes the only (or primary) way to do something. For parents it means that we must shape the responses of our children as they are learning. For example, when our children are younger and they start playing out in the yard, what do we tell them? We tell them not to go into the street. We also instruct them that when they do go out into the street that they must look both ways before crossing the street. This initiation into how to cross the street brings into practice what that child will do for the rest of their lives. They will teach their children to do the same thing. This is what the word “initiate” means in this definition. So let’s look at the second definition. It says to teach the fundamentals of. This is a daily activity of parents. We teach our children the fundamentals of cleaning; cooking; driving a car; good study habits for school; hygiene; and the list goes on and on. To initiate means that we must bring our children slowly into the ways of living in this world. The teaching starts young with simple instructions and intensifies as they get older and begin to do as my mother used to say “smell themselves”. Even when they get to this point, we must continue to teach them the fundamentals. The third word in the Hebrew definition of “train” is discipline.
To Discipline. The popular belief today is that people are basically good and that children come into a world morally pure and are then “socialized” into the harmful creatures they become by their parents and others. Based on this, disciplining children has become a way of the past and a form of abuse, especially if you spank a child in public. Some of you sitting here this morning may disagree as to what it means to discipline a child with some believing that it is okay to spank a child while others believing that it is horrible to ever spank a child. Now let me share with you what Solomon said and remember this comes from the man of whom God gave wisdom in the likes of which was never possessed by another man before or after him and never will be. There are several principles of discipline found in Proverbs.
• Discipline is not only corrective but preventative. When we punish a child, it is not just to be corrective, but it should also be a means of helping the child to not choose that behavior again so it become preventative. Punishments has the ability to steer a person away from more powerful forms of evil and ultimate destruction. There are things that I will not do because of the “punishment” that could come from it. Solomon gave this example of someone who did not listen to what they were taught. “…How I have hated instruction! And my heart spurned reproof! I have not listened to the voice of my teachers, nor inclined my ear to my instructors! I was almost in utter ruin…..” (Prov. 5:12b–14a) Here is something else that he says about discipline being both corrective and preventive: “Do not hold back discipline from the child, although you strike him with the rod, he will not die. You shall strike him with the rod and rescue his soul from Sheol.” (Prov. 22:13-14) In the Kings James translation it uses the term beat versus strike. The point here is that corporal punishment is meant to correct current actions and prevent future ones. It is not meant to harm the child or become a form of abuse. It is meant to literally save the child from going to hell.
• Correction/Discipline demonstrates love. In the inmate interviews that I mentioned earlier, many stated that they wished they had been punished as children for it would have kept them out of trouble, but more important it would have proven to them that their parents cared about them. Isn’t that amazing? When discipline is carried out appropriately, the children understand that the root of the discipline is love. This is actually Scriptural. Solomon said in Proverbs 13:24 that “He who withholds his rod hates his son; but he who loves him disciplines him diligently.” Again, this is not permission to abuse children as some think of abuse, but it is to correct behavior and hopefully prevent future bad behavior. (Oh by the way, I am not saying that it is wrong, but I have not been successful in finding in the Bible any Scripture that says giving a child a “timeout” is better than a spanking – just an FYI.)
• Discipline purges children of foolishness. The final reference around discipline being corrective and preventative in nature is found in Proverbs 22:15. It says “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; the rod of discipline will remove it far from him.” Of course children will be foolish as a part of being a child, but some foolishness must not be tolerated as the end result could be deadly for the child.
To discipline a child, correctly, is meant to deter future bad behavior. In our present society any type of corporal punishment is viewed as abuse and yet we find teachers being afraid of students. When I was in school I never had a teacher who was afraid of me, even though I stood inches above some of them. Today we have parents who are afraid of their kids. I out weighed my father by 30 pounds as a teenage and he was never once afraid of me. Today adults are afraid of teenagers they see in a public parking lot or in the street. When I was younger even the bad teenagers would get out of the way when they saw an older person walking on the sidewalk. What has changed? What has changed is how we discipline our children. I cannot tell you the number of whippings I got, at home and at school. An when I got one at school, I automatically got another one when I got home for getting the one at school. So on those days I got two. My older brother used to tell people my mother whipped him every morning “just in case” he did something during the day that she did not see. Imagine my mother’s face when she found this out (of course it was not true). If we are going to train our children to walk with God, we must discipline them. The final word in the Hebrew dictionary that gives an understanding to the word “train” is dedicate which is why we are having this ceremony today.
To Dedicate. To dedicate means to “set apart for or to dedicate to…” These parents today have chosen to set their child apart for God; they are giving their child to God. This will not replace the child growing up and making their own decision to accept Christ, but it does mean that the parents will do everything within their power to see that what they do and place before their child are those things that will lead them towards accepting Christ at some point in their life. Moses told the Children of Israel in Deuteronomy 6:4-9 “Hear O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and 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. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”
As parents, our first responsibility is to be faithful to the Lord and walk upright before Him so that our children will see us as an example. This is what Moses was commanding the Children of Israel. This is the first step. The second step is that we must teach our children about God and what He has done for us and what was accomplished through His Son Jesus Christ on our behalf. Remember, what we do not teach our children at home will not equip them to handle what will come before them in the world. We must give the foundation from which to build upon as well as to be able to refute the false teaching of our society. When we dedicate our children to God, we are coming into agreement with God that we will do whatever we can to ensure that our child is brought up to be strong, secure and knowledgeable of Him in the hope that one day they will accept Him. When we dedicate our children to God, we come into agreement with God that we will keep Him before them through our actions.
To that end, at this time I would like the parents to come forth with their children to be dedicated to God.
