Clough Proverbs Lesson 33

Teaching Children to Accept Responsibility – Proverbs 4:10-19

Before we get started another question handed in last time on the feedback card: Just as the –R learned behavior patterns increase for each successive generation on negative volition, do positive learned behavior patterns increase in each successive generation on positive volition? The answer is yes and there is a verse that teaches that right in Proverbs 4 this morning. So we’ll cover that later in more detail.

In Proverbs 4 we’re back to the text again this morning; we departed at the end of verse 9 for a little extended series to illustrate some principles of the third divine institution, to show you the cutoff principle and the momentum principle that are revealed in God’s Word about family life and how God has designed the family for the transmission of wisdom. But in Proverbs 4, particularly in the first 9 verses we have the father teaching the son and the son responding to the father’s teaching. And you have the idea that a son is going to face many situations in life, many different and difficult situations in life. Man is not a machine and man is not a computer and therefore man cannot be programmed to handle every situation automatically. This means that men must be taught and the third divine institution, or the family, is the means of doing this teaching. So the son, as he faces different situations in life, if he is going to develop wisdom, must have two things as a result of his family training. One is that he must have understanding. This separates him from animals; we’re not just training children without understanding; this is the difference, understanding, divine viewpoint. So the children are taught to respond not automatically but are taught to respond with understanding to various situations.

And then, obviously, during the upbringing of the child he is to develop some righteous learned behavior patterns, and these righteous learned behavior patterns do not come automatically either; they come by habitual and sometimes painful training. So that is basically the role of the father in the family and the parents, to convey wisdom to their children. And if the parents do nothing else than provide their children with wisdom, and if they let go of some of the other things, the material things to do this that’s all right. The key thing that parents should provide their children is wisdom. And that is the number one priority and that as you will see is not just providing them with education. Sometimes more human viewpoint and foolishness is picked up in academic circles than any other place. So providing one with wisdom, children with wisdom, is the key, and so in the first 9 verses of Proverbs 4 we have this problem of wisdom.

Now in Proverbs 4:10-19, notice the sections in chapter 4 begin “My Son, or “Hear, ye children.” So this morning we’re on the second section from verses 10 down through verse 19. And in this section we’re dealing, not so much with the father’s advice to his children, but here we’re dealing with a particular kind of advice that the father gives his children. This kind of advice in these ten verses has to do with transferring responsibility to a teenager. So these ten verses have a very contemporary, a very important impact because these are the verses that show how responsibility is transferred from the parents to the children.

Now obviously when children are very young the parents make the decisions. The parents have to make the decisions for the child because the child cannot operate responsibility unless the parents do make the decisions. Children have no business making many decisions for themselves; it’s the parent’s job to make the decision and that’s it. And then when the child gets old enough so that he can understand the nature of the choice and he can see the consequences, then you can begin to shift responsibility over to the child so that as the child grows up the first divine institution, which is responsibility, will grow and grow gradually and steadily.

Now by the time of the teenage years are reached there’s a tremendous shift of responsibility away from the parents onto the children. Before this time you’ve had a rather structured type situation where the decisions were rather clear-cut, what mother said, what dad said was it, period. Now the rocky road is when you begin to transfer the responsibility, and this passage is then written with the idea of this response transfer, responsibility in mind.

So beginning in Proverbs 4:10, Solomon recounts what David, his father, told him. And the first thing you want to understand about this passage is that from the divine viewpoint when the parents shift the responsibility over to the son, or the daughter, the responsibility that is transferred is not responsibility of the parents; it is responsibility to God, that’s the responsibility. So often you hear parents say well, son, you owe it to your mother, or you owe it to your father or you owe it to something else. You don’t owe anything; you owe it to God, God is the source of the responsibility, not parents. And if you start trying to plead your case with your children that they owe you something you’ve automatically lost the game in the first inning; no way you’re going to survive, they don’t owe you anything as far as they are concerned. And you have to make the issue clear that they owe God something, that you are under God, you structure your family as unto God, you run by the law of God, and it is responsibility to Him that is the issue.

And so whereas you, as a parent, up to this point have been responsible, so that if Johnnie goes out and clobbers somebody God holds you responsible. Now God is going to hold more and more this child responsible, and that’s the point; the responsibility that is transferred from the parent to the son, or to the daughter, is responsibility to God, not to the parents, not to society. We don’t owe society anything either, contrary to the usual propaganda. Society has no claim on me or anybody else; God has the claim, not society. So it is not a social responsibility, it is not a family responsibility; all these are sub versions of the major responsibility which is responsibility to God.

So in Proverbs 4:10 Solomon repeats what his father told him and he says: “Hear, O my son, and receive my sayings, and the years of thy life shall be many. [11] I have taught thee in the way of wisdom; I have led thee in right paths. [12] When you go, thy steps shall not be straightened [hindered]; and when you run, you will not stumble. [13] Take fast hold of instruction; let her not go. Keep her; for she is thy life.”

Now from verses 10-13 we have the father spelling out the transfer of responsibility. He is going to spell it out from one way in verses 10-13 and them from verses 14-17 he’s going to approach it from the other side. And then finally in verses 18-19 there’s going to be a summary contrast; before he stops teaching his child he wants the child to be clear as to what the issue is and what the choice is.

So let’s look first at verses 10-13 when he takes the positive side. “Hear, O my son,” this is the parental authority, and once again reminds us that if parents do not have authority exercised in the home there can be no teaching; teaching, all major teaching is done by authority. And this is the parent’s authority in the home. “Hear, O my son,” and it involves the obligation of the son unto God to hear his father. “…receive my teachings,” that means submit to my authority, “for the years of thy life may be many.” Now “years of thy life” is an idiom in the book of Proverbs that refers not just to longevity. Now obviously that is included. It is true that obedience, +R, results, all other factors being equal, in longer life. How do you get this? Well, for one reason you have, because of a lack of –R you have a lack of guilt and therefore you have a lack of adverse physiological reactions in your body, so you don’t tear your body down with the results of guilt. So that alone, the physiological pressure is considerably reduced and you do have a longevity here. And so it means at least a longevity, “the years of thy life be many.”

But it doesn’t just mean physical longevity. Remember what we said, that the word “life” has to do not just with breathing but it has to do with the full-fledged enjoyment, the abundant life, and this is the spiritual maturity that comes from knowing Jesus Christ personally and systematically taking in and applying the Word of God. So the word “life” means more than just breathing and it means more than just existence; it means a time of maximum happiness. And what David has told his son is that if you will receive my teachings, then you will have maximum happiness in your life.

And then he explains why because in verse 11 he says, “I have taught thee in the way of wisdom; I have led thee in right paths.” Both verbs are in the perfect tense; the perfect tense in the Hebrew here looks like a point in time, one single event, looked at from the standpoint of completeness. This has already been completed. If that’s the case, then what is happening is that we have David looking on his teenage son, Solomon. Solomon is getting to the point where as a young teenager he is going to have more responsibility placed on his shoulders, but David says now look son, before you go out here and make these choices by yourself now, just remember that from the time that you were a little baby up until the time that you entered your teenage years, during all of that time period I have taught you. So both verbs in verse 11 refer to the pre-adolescent phase of Solomon’s life and testifies that David had taught him consistently over that time period.

“I have taught you in the way of wisdom; I have led you in right paths.” Now both these verbs also point out the method that David used to teach his children. “I have taught you in the way of wisdom,” that, for one reason, since we know what wisdom is, this obviously shows that David taught him, not only the understanding, that is, not only did David teach Solomon divine viewpoint, but David also sat down with Solomon and gave him illustrations on how to apply the divine viewpoint to specific situations. So not only did David teach him this but David taught him this. David taught him application. David would sit down with Solomon and say now Solomon, you’ve got this kind of a situation in life, here’s your situation and you’re faced with this thing; now Solomon, how are you going to respond to this situation in life. Well, here’s what you do Solomon, and David would go down and he would explain to Solomon the various ways that Solomon had of choosing how to respond to that kind of a situation. And then David would say, as Solomon was young, he’d say all right, Solomon, now I’m going to tell you you want to go this way, so let’s go. And I want you to respond that way. Now he didn’t give Solomon the freedom of choice here, he just explained to Solomon, now you’ve got four ways to go son, and this is the way to go, let’s go. So that’s he handled it up to chapter 4.

Now here we’re going to see the transfer of responsibility. Up to this point “I have taught thee in the way of wisdom;” up to this point “I have led thee in right paths.” The word “lead” means that David taught by example. This was not theoretical teaching; David would sit down with his son, give him the application and then try as much as he could to take situations in his own life so that Solomon would have a model. Children need models or patterns to mimic. It’s not wrong for children to mimic; they love to mimic. And this is where parents come in that you leading a godly life actually can be a powerful deterrent, without even saying a word to your children, because they will tend to model themselves after you. Now say well, that’s never going to produce mature understanding. No, but it’s one of the ways that they will prepare themselves for when they will have mature understanding. So we have the child, then, being taught by example, application and so on.

Now in Proverbs 4:12 David tells the results of his pre-adolescent program of training Solomon. “When you go,” go where? “go in your paths, “when you go,” when you live your life, “your steps shall not be straightened; and when you run, you will not stumble.” Now both these words, “straightened” and “stumble” have to do with an adverse response to live. For example, here’s young Solomon and he’s facing a situation of disappointment; somebody might have taken his lollipop away from him while he was trotting through the palace and he comes bellyaching to his mother, stole my lollipop or something, and this is a major disaster as far as Solomon’s concerned at this point. Now parents that look on that and say ha-ha-ha and so on, now son, that isn’t as bad as it looks, and so forth. But as far as Solomon is concerned, from his perspective it’s a major disaster. So this is a disappointment.

Now what David is telling Solomon here is that Solomon, when you face a disappointment like this, how are you going to react. If you are going to react the way I have told you to react to disappointment your paths will not be straightened. Now what does straightening of the paths mean? It means that if Solomon does not react the way David taught him, and he sees a situation of disappointment he’s going to react by the usual self-pity, tantrum, he can throw a screaming fit, he can have certain other kinds of reactions, going around the palace for the next week sulking, all sorts of other reactions. So we’ll just take these three: self-pity, tantrum, sulking. And these are three possible ways that he has of reacting adversely to life.

Now here’s the point about training children in this situation; you can never prevent your child from being maltreated. Never! We live in a fallen world so it’s ridiculous to think that your child is going to grow up in justice. It’s foolish to think that your child is going to grow up without having some sort of injustice done to them, and sometimes serious injustice done to them. So why not start out with a minor disappointment and accidents of life and train them how to respond to injustice; train them how to respond to disappointments. Or, you have another way and that is if you have never learned how to respond to disappointment and injustice this is what you’re doing, except that you might not throw lollipops all over the room when you get mad but nevertheless, adults do the same thing, have tantrums, sulking, self-pity and so on. They’re symptomatic of adults just like they are children.

And here’s the danger of living in a home in that situation because the child is automatically modeling himself after his parents, for good or evil. And so the kid sits there and he watches you, and he watches how you face injustice, and how you face disappointment, and he watches you and he hears you talk to somebody else on the telephone, do you know what so and so did to me, sniff-sniff? And what’s the kid going to learn from that? What’s he learning from that? To do exactly like you’re doing, except he doesn’t get on the telephone, he goes out and tells his friends and neighbors, do you know what so and so did to me, sniff-sniff. Where’d he learn that from? You! And he learned it automatically, you didn’t have to sit down and train him how to do that. He just mimicked you, and this is where a child learns how to handle his disappointments with –R learned behavior patterns; he learned it straight from the horse’s mouth.

So what David has done for Solomon is say now Solomon, you are going to face disappointment after disappointment after disappointment, and if you’re going to go around and bellyache about what so and so did to you, and so and so is a meany and so and so crossed me on the job, and I’ve had this great crushing disappointment in my life and so now what I’m going to do is I’m going to sulk and I’m going to crawl up in my room and shut the door and not eat for a week, and everybody will feel sorry for me and that’ll make me feel better and that’ll boost my ego for a while. Well David hasn’t done that; David says look, Solomon, you’re always going to do this, let’s knock out this stuff, because Solomon, if you start reacting this way your paths are going to be straightened.

Now the word “straightened” in the Hebrew is narrow; it means to restrict and here’s what happens when you launch off in self-pity, tantrums and other systems of maladjustment in life’s situations. Here’s a situation in life and you start off with one of these childish responses; the number of options that you have open to you greatly decreases with time. Instead of straightening out the situation with +R learned behavior patterns with divine viewpoint immediately and responding to something biblically, what happens? You go on negative volition; instead of saying that “there is no testing that has taken me but such as is common to man, and God will provide a way of escape that I may be able to bear it,” let’s turn to 1 Corinthians 10:13, one of the more unpopular verses.

Now David did not have 1 Corinthians 10:13 as a verse but he had the truth of 1 Corinthians 10:13 and undoubtedly many times David sat down with Solomon and said Solomon, I know that you’ve had a disappointment; now there’s nothing that we can do about changing your disappointment; there’s nothing we can do about changing the act of injustice, it’s already happened; you can’t go back in history and erase it. There’s no way of handling it that way so stop crying about that and let’s learn how to respond. And so the first thing he’d do, he’d go take Solomon to a verse like this, there are equivalent verses in the Psalms but this is most clear here. And then he reads through it.

Let’s look at verse 13, “There has no temptation,” this word can also mean test or trial, “there has no trial taken you, but such as is common to man,” do you know what that means? That no matter what kind of a problem you have it has details that are unique to you, yes, but in its heart you will never face a problem that is unique, totally, completely at its base. Somebody, and probably thousands and thousands of other believers have already faced exactly what you’re facing. And so this verse teaches right away that you cannot operate in self-pity because God has singled you out, He’s just a bully-boy and He’s singled you out to really clobber you with something that no other believer has ever had. Now either this verse is true or it’s not; this is a lie or it’s the truth, now what is it? “There has no testing taken you but such as is common to man,” I notice the looks of unbelief, oh no, I’ve got a problem that’s not common to man. Well then, you might as well take a scissors right now and cut this out of your Bible because this says you’re wrong; whatever that problem is that you have it is common to man.

Furthermore, “God is faithful,” we’ll come back to that clause, but “God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tested above that which you are able.” Now that means that God is sovereign, this goes back to the character and the essence of God and this is why this verse is so important, because it brings divine viewpoint immediately to bear on the situation. Here is God; God is sovereign, God is righteous, God is just, God is love, God is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, immutable and eternal, that is God’s character. If that is God’s character and God is sovereign, what is this verse saying? God is sovereign and that means… not just s-o-v inside a box on Clough’s overhead projector; sovereignty means that in your life the details of life are screened by Him and no matter how much it may hurt and sting and smart there will never be a situation that will arise in your life for which He has not authorized it. It has come before His presence and He has said I count you worthy of the trial and I’m allowing this to be dropped into your life to see what you’re going to do with it. And God has allowed it to be dropped in your lap because He knows that you have the capability of handling it and if you don’t have the capability of handling it correctly He wouldn’t have allowed it to drop in your lap.

So immediately this verse can be a source of blessing and thanksgiving, because the very fact that you may have a child that is so upsetting to you that you think you’re at the end of your rope, you think all is shot, that there’s no way out of it, immediately if you will come and take the truth of this you’ll come to a fantastic understanding of the fact that God has screened it and allowed it to happen because He already has evaluated you and come to the conclusion that you are capable of handling that kind of a pressure.

Said another way, you can take it as a compliment that you have the trial; it’s a compliment, a commentary on your spiritual growth at the moment because if God did not think that you could not handle the problem he wouldn’t have given it to you in the first place, and if you think He has then you are beginning to engage in a satanic onslaught against the essence of God. If you think that this verse is wrong, that God is not faithful, that he has not considered me or you to be capable to meet the trial, then you are saying that God is not a good God. And immediately you are aligned with Satan and any time you gripe about a pressure or a trial like this and you don’t think God knows what He’s doing you are a sucker for satanic delusion right at that point because that’s exactly what Satan wants; exactly what he wants, to smear the character of God. Satan; what does the word itself mean? The accuser, the accuser and smearer of the character of God.

So Satan wants to show God is not faithful and that He will allow you to be tested above that which you are able. If you wonder how Satan would respond and how Satan wants you to respond to life’s pressures, just reverse the 13^th verse; everywhere you see a verb that’s positive put a negative one in. Every place where you see a negative verb in verse 13, replace it with a positive one and that’s Satan’s thoughts. So let’s read it in the opposite way: There has a testing taken you which is not common to man and God is not faithful, who will allow you to be tested above that which you are able, and He will not, with the temptation, make a way of escape so that you may be able to bear it. Now the chilling thing about reading verse 13 backwards like this and changing all the verbs around is that comes very close to familiar thought patterns in all of our minds, doesn’t it? And that chilling awareness of how close a negative meaning of verse 13 comes to thought patterns in our mind is a chilling revelation of how easily we can be satanically influenced.

And so here’s a little test and it’s a test which I am sure David wanted Solomon to know, is that first of all, when you meet a situation like this, take a verse like 1 Corinthians 10:13 and run it through your mind and see which way it comes out, positive or negative. Can you circulate this verse through your mind and agree with it, or when you circulate the verse through your mind do you disagree with it and say no, that’s not true. And if you get this reaction, no, it’s not true, you have been infiltrated by satanic thought. So that shows you how close we all come, daily, in our lives to assassinating the character of God by the way we respond to situations in life.

And then the last part of 1 Corinthians 10:13, “He will not allow you to be tested above that which you are able, but will, with the testing, also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.” The second thing God is doing then, not only does He screen the trials and the pressures that come your way, but in addition to that He also provides somewhere where you can get it if you want it. Now He usually doesn’t supply the answer staring you right in the face, it’s usually off to one side somewhere but it’s there. And the reason He does it this way is He wants to test your volition. God wants to see just how positive you are and if you are positive you will look around to find that way of escape. And God is putting it there some way, and He wants to see, are you trusting me enough to look for the way of escape or are you going to very easily, as a weak believer, just go right along with the satanic thoughts and character of the world system.

So that’s one verse that David would have taught Solomon, his pre-adolescent son, that when you face a trial or situation, son, like this, always remember, unjust it may be, yes; bad, oh yes; but you can’t stop evil in a fallen world so you might as well learn how to deal with evil now and not learn to throw tantrums and such because once you start –R learned behavior pattern tantrum, then what’s going to happen? When you get a teenager you’re going to be throwing your tantrums still and when you get to be 30 you’ll be doing it even more because –R learned behavior patterns are strengthened by usage. And so the older you get the more sophisticated your tantrums, until finally you may go out and murder somebody some day because you’re having a tantrum, and then you can turn around and blame the Navy for how he treated you or something and that’s why you went up to Howard Johnson’s and shot somebody. Or somebody else treated you in a bad way and so you couldn’t help, so you ran the glass in their face or something. This is tantrums; it’s nothing more than the little tantrum of a little brat and yet in the front pages of our newspaper daily this is how major crimes are explained away, and in essence all they’re saying, do you realize this? In essence all they’re saying is that so and so had a tantrum. That’s all they’re saying, when they’re saying that somebody maltreated them and therefore this is an excuse for crimes of violence or any other crime, all they’re saying is that just like a little kid we had a tantrum here. Well, this is how it starts, right here in the pre-adolescent era.

Let’s turn back to Proverbs 4:12, “And when you go,” Solomon, David would say to his son, “your steps will not be straightened;” he presupposes now Solomon is going to meet the disappointments and the heartaches of life biblically, with divine viewpoint, and then your steps won’t be straightened, “and when you run you’re not going to stumble.”

Proverbs 3:13, “Take fast hold of instruction; let her not go. Keep her; for she is thy life.” And verse 13 says to Solomon, now Solomon, I have taught you this far in your life, I have taught you up to this point in your life, now from this point on son, it’s more and more up to you to take the thing in your own hands; you are going to have to take the responsibility before God of running your life and you are going to have to take the responsibility of applying wisdom in all your details of life. So this is a period of transition.

Now for example, here’s a parent, a teenage son comes up with something; the question is should the teenager, or it doesn’t have to be a teenager, just any time during this process of transferring responsibility, should the child be permitted to choose by himself or not. I think some guidelines would be this: if it has serious consequences and if the child is not experienced in making that kind of a decision, the parent should make it. But if the consequences are not severe, then turn him loose on some of the ones where you have a choice and depending, no matter how badly they screw up at least the consequences aren’t going to be too bad. Now maybe something like a matter of dress or clothing or something, you may be embarrassed by it but it’s not going to do any real serious damage and you turn them loose and see what they can do with it. And you may be appalled by what comes out but that’s all right, at least you are turning them loose on certain problems and letting them begin to develop their discernment, their choice, their freedom, and their responsibility.

You don’t do it all at once. You faze them into it gradually. And if the thing is a serious situation you back off until you have some more practice with it. Now if the choice is a serious one, and involves serious consequences and the child has not had a chance to practice with those kind of decisions, the best thing to do is run through them with them, and you make the decision and let him in on the process. Sit down and explain; now this doesn’t have to happen every single time but if you will train your child how you think through, and I rather suspect a lot of children aren’t trained because the parents don’t know how to apply the word in the situation. But if the parents would sit down and say, well now son, this is how we apply it, watch how I do it, learn it form me. Maybe you can do it better than I can later, fine, but watch me, watch how I do it so you can see how you can do it, and then you’re training them. Take advantage of various incidents to show them consequences of actions. See the last of Proverbs 4:13, “for she is thy life,” there’s a reason, and always in the book of Proverbs instructions are backed by motivation clauses, reasons, do this because of these reasons. In other words, the Bible emphasizes teaching your children the consequences of choice.

I’ll give you a little illustration of one thing that happened this week. I think it was Friday my wife was taking my son to school and they got about two blocks away from the house and this guy pulls up in the car and says do you want me to take your kid to school for you; it was a cold morning. And of course, with the sweet people we have running around the streets of Lubbock my wife turned it into an opportunity to say no, and she then told my son, see, no matter how nice the person may be, not matter how nice appearance they may be you never can trust them in this situation; you just tell them that mommy wants me to walk to school and refuse, no thank you. Well that was all that we heard about it that morning, until in the afternoon all of a sudden police cars started driving up and down, cruising back and forth, detectives. What was this? It was a sex nut out that was the guy. And so when we found out about that I thought well, let’s turn this into a teaching situation to forever dramatize to my son the consequences of disobeying what his mother told him. Suppose he had gone with that guy; so to dramatize the thing, since my wife was the only one that had a description of what he looked and the car we had the detective come over and I brought my son in and we talked to the policeman. Well, his eyes were just about like this, and of course that was better than Adam 12 as far as he was concerned. But I’ll guarantee you he won’t forget the lesson for a while, simply because it turned out the instruction and the consequences were dramatized by a real life situation, and what we did, we just turned that around as an incident to reinforce the original command that we’d given him.

Now be alert for that because this is where parents have it all over any school system; no matter how sound the school is, no teacher will ever have those situations; only you as a parent have those situations, only you can turn those choice situations around and use them to reinforce your commands because you have the maximum flexibility to do this, and this is what David did with Solomon.

All right, Proverbs 4:14-17, “Enter not into the path of the wicked, and go not in the way of evil men.” Now in verse 14 we have a repeat of Proverbs 1:15, if you’ll just turn there for a minute. The book of Proverbs gives us an understanding of the process of evil. And you want to notice certain things about this; they occur again and again and again. I don’t know whether you remember but when we went through Proverbs 1, in verse 15 I made a major point of saying that the commands, “My son, walk not thou in the way with them; refrain thy foot from their path.” The command there was immediate, get out of the way, move it. In other words, a quick stern decision to evacuate, just move out. Now over and over again in the book of Proverbs this is the case.

Back to chapter 4 where we read this command, “Enter not into the path of the wicked, and go not in the way of evil men.” Avoid it, pass not by it, pass away. Do you see the emphasis? Avoid it, avoid it, get out of the way, move, get out of there. And this is one of the points in the biblical psychology of evil and this has to be trained into people because this doesn’t come naturally. But the best way of dealing with evil is to make a firm decision, quick and radical. Make a radical, quick and firm decision to deal with it. Don’t play with it gradually; make a clear cut break; no matter what the barrier may be. The Bible emphasizes that when you break with evil do it radically and involve as much behavior patterns as you can with the break; radicalize every break with evil, as much as you can. And this is just emphasized the radicalness of positive volition. Over and over you’ll see this in the book of Proverbs; you won’t see it so much in these first 9 chapters but you’ll see it later. That’s one of the features that occurs again and again and again.

Proverbs 4:16, here we have another parallel with the psychology of evil from chapter 1, “For they sleep no,” who’s “they?” “They” are the wicked ones of verse 14, “For the wicked ones sleep not, except they have done mischief; and their sleep is taken away, unless they cause some to fall. [17] For they eat the bread of wickedness, and drink the wine of violence.” Now the second principle of the psychology of evil in the Scripture is that when evil is pictured, the Bible always draws it to the logical conclusion rapidly. The Bible always makes evil more evil than it seems to appear, because you can look at verse 16 and 17 and say now look, I know wicked people that don’t make a business of it. But yet when David begins to teach Solomon, what does he do? He always makes evil as evil as he can. Why is this? Because the Bible insists that the only way to evaluate a course of action is by looking at the final results of the action. The Bible trains people to look to the final results, not the immediate results. And so therefore when the father presents the choice before his son, he points out the ultimate results of the evil.

He wouldn’t, for example, point out oh, don’t take drugs; he wouldn’t say that in the Bible; that’s not the way the Bible presents it. The way the Bible would be presenting it would say if you take drugs this is the result and then it would picture all the extreme results of it. Why? Because that is the only fair way to judge evil. Why is this? Because in God’s universe where we have God as good Satan always tries to steal some of the good to sell as evil; that’s always a characteristic of Satan; Satan never comes to you with big black clothes and a pitchfork and invites you for a little trip. Satan doesn’t operate that way, he always pulls enough of the goodness of creation along with it all so that the extremes never show up. Satan doesn’t come to you that way. But when the Bible reveals Satan, “reveal” means uncover, and it means to show what the real nature of evil in Satan is and that means results stripped of the borrowed good. This is why evil is always presented in extreme forms; it strips Satan of any borrowed good.

Now Proverbs 4:18-19, the final summary that David gives to Solomon. Notice he concludes with a choice to his son. Solomon is going to have to make this choice himself, David recognizes it and he knows, now son…. [Tape turns] … overhead point in the sky and the idea is that when you have positive volition you have the enlightening ministry of the Holy Spirit which increases divine viewpoint framework which allows you to encounter and participate in God’s love and then obviously fulfillment in your life. This is nothing else than Christ in the heart that we covered earlier in the introduction to Proverbs. And the enlightening ministry is a continuous one.

And so this is saying two things; first in verse 18 it is saying that the path of the just results in more and more light because you are pursuing what you know to be true and you will learn more as you do that. But the second thing, and this answers the question that was handed in, this doesn’t just refer to the individual because in verse 18 who’s doing the teaching? Look, David is teaching Solomon. Solomon is teaching Rehoboam. You’ve got three generations and what the teaching in verse 18 is saying is that the path of the just would include the path of the just one in the family unit, and as the first generation follows in justice, and follows the Word, it opens more light for the second generation. And as the second generation follows what it knows of the Word of God the third generation receives more light. So this is an answer to the question, do +R learned behavior patterns increase in each successive generation on positive volition? Answer: yes! Here’s the verse that teaches it. That the “light shines more and more” in each generation.

You see, some of you have become Christians out of a very poor background, spiritually speaking. Some of you have become Christians and you had human viewpoint by the ton in your life; you had absolutely no spiritual heritage whatever. And you managed in all of your life by a systematic program in the Word and application, you manage to grow. So there’s your circle of maximum growth. Now you children don’t have to go all the way back to the beginning, like you had to. If you start training your child then your child should be able to eventually outstrip you, spiritually. They should be able to do a better job than you or anybody else is doing in this kind of a situation. Your children should start where you left off; they don’t have to go back to the beginning. So every time you advance yourself spiritually you are fighting for the second generation; you’re fighting for your children because you’re giving them a greater opportunity to grow spiritually.

Conversely, Proverbs 4:19 says, “The way of the wicked is as darkness; and they know not at what they stumble.” The final answer, “they know not” is the decreased view of reality that is caused by negative volition; chaos in the heart, negative volition leads to darkening, the in draft of human viewpoint leads to the experience of hatred toward God, hatred toward men, and final frustration; that’s chaos in the human heart. And when you have the increase in human viewpoint you have minus faith, you have minus prayer, and you generally have confusion in the life. Now those are the two options David spells out to his sons. But I want you to notice that he spelled out the choice, he gives the consequences.

Now when this comes and finally the parent does hand over the responsibility for choice, I would suggest based on the Word of God that something like the following thing be said: that the parent says okay, I’m going to let you choose this time; I want you to sit down and review with me the results of your choice and the consequences of it, and then I want you to pray about it and think about this, because remember you don’t want to get the idea in your child’s mind that he’s doing it for you; he’s not doing it for you, he’s doing it for the Lord. So you tell him, I want you to pray about this and consider this spiritually for a moment, maybe for two or three days but give him a time of choice and thought.

Then I’m going to let you choose and I’m going to let you experience the results of your choice and I’m not going to bail you out; it’s all up to you, you want the choice, you face the consequences. That is part of what it means to take responsibility.

Next week we’ll begin with verse 20 and we’ll show how David deals with another problem that must be taught children, the keeping of the springs of the heart and how this is to be done.