Clough Proverbs Lesson 71
DI #3: Family
What areas of
application do the truths of the first divine institution have today? We know the first divine institution deals
with the responsibility to produce before God; we know that the first divine
institution has to do with the validity of private property; we know that the
first divine institution cultivates a mental attitude against theft. So we could make at least four applications
of these areas and if you’re interested in further study in the economic areas
I would suggest Gary North’s book, Introduction
to Christian Economics. But we would
say that the Christian applying the Bible doctrine of the first divine
institution in his situation should be very, very against government seizure of
private property, under such guises as the eminent domain clause and so
on. The Christian citizen applying Bible
doctrine to the first divine institution should be very much against any
financial policies that are pro inflation; as we see from the Bible this is
nothing more than systematic larceny. We
would say that the Bible doctrine of the first divine institution applied to
contemporary situation is that we would emphasize as Christians that the
solution to theft is restitution and training those who steal how to work. And we would also say that the fourth
application of the doctrines of the first to our present situation, and that is
personal, very individual, and that is minimizing our own personal
indebtedness. The Bible considers
indebtedness another form of servitude and slavery. Therefore we would have to cut across the
whole mental attitude of the business world today that’s grounded from top to
bottom on credit.
Now the second
divine institution dealing with marriage, which we finished last week, we learned
several things from the Word about this.
What does that teach us? Well,
first it would teach us that we must submit, each partner to God as
individuals. The first divine
institution precedes the second. See,
the second divine institution doesn’t negate anything the first one teaches so
we have to respect the first institution inside the second one. Marriage has to respect responsibility. And therefore each partner has the
responsibility to submit to God’s will for themselves first, before you worry
about whether your mate submits to God’s will or not. We also found under the principles of the
second divine institution that each partner should be determined to humbly
learn before God about the roles of man and woman in this institution. Again, if you wish more reading on the
subject I recommend Jay Adam’s book, Christian
Living in the Home.
What other areas
can we apply our Bible doctrine learned under the second divine
institution? We should say that at least
in society we would be against easy marriage and easy divorce. We should shore up the bounds of the second
divine institution; if you make it too easy to get married you make it easy to
get divorced and oftentimes people have tried to solve this problem by just
simply saying all right, we’re going to make it very difficult for people to
get divorced. That really is not so much
of a solution biblically as making it difficult for them to get married in the
first place; make them sweat a little bit and then you can decide whether the
marriage will last.
Today we move to
the third divine institution. And to do
this we have to go back again to the ground text which is Genesis
“Be fruitful, and
multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the
fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that
moves upon the earth,” called the cultural mandate verse in Scripture. That is, man’s role on earth depends upon the
third divine institution as well as the second.
The family is essential to man’s conquering his environment. And we’re going to see exactly how in a few
moments. The family has something to do
with training the next generation how to live.
That is the fundamental purpose of the family; to train the next
generation how to live and if people cannot get along in a family situation
they are not going to get along in the Christian life. The Christian life is more difficult than the
family, not easier. And if a person
can’t get along with the interpersonal relationships between parents and
children, mother and father and so on, they are not going to make it in the
Christian life. The family is easier
than the Christian life. You graduate
into the Christian life after you have survived the family experience. So families and family living is a prelude to
man conquering the earth.
Now we’re going to
turn to a series of verses in Proverbs; we’re going to deal with many, many
different Proverbs for several weeks on the family. You’ll notice on this chart that the third
divine institution centers on the concept of authority and education, which is
a shocker because most people think of education as having to do with the
state. We have the (quote) “public” (end
quote) schools. But the Bible doesn’t
recognize that; the Bible says education is fundamentally the aim of the third,
not the fourth divine institution.
Now we have
various parts to discuss with this third divine institution. And so today we’re going to deal with a
series of verses in Proverbs that stress one point and that is the criteria of
success for a family is the character of its children. The biblical criterion of success is the
character of the children produced.
There’s going to be some amendments to this particular thing in view of
the fall; you can’t always judge a family by a few clods that come out because
you always have people who reject the Word of God on their own. But generally
speaking the Bible says the success or failure of the family is not to be
measured by their material acquisition, how much they own, how many cars they
park in their garage, what kind of a house they live in, nothing. That’s just American materialism, that has
nothing to do with the Bible. The Bible
emphasizes the character of the children.
Now just as we
said with the second divine institution, that the Bible would ask, or an
employer has chokmah or wisdom
scripturally when he hires somebody for the job, and he’s applying the things
of Scripture, the employer would well be advised to look at this person’s
wife. And some people stopped me at the
door and they pointed out that many of the corporations indeed do this, in
fact, the military does this for the higher ranks. But the do look at the wife, and why do they
look at the wife? Because they know…not
because of the Bible, but because they have simply noticed it throughout
experience that the wife is a reflection of her husband. 1 Corinthians 11 says she is his glory. And by looking at the wife you can pretty
well tell whether the man is managing himself properly or not. If she’s going of ala Martha Mitchell or
something then that tells you certain things about what’s been going on. You don’t have to look any further, you just
look at that and you can tell what’s happening.
And in the family
it’s the same thing, that families are judged scripturally by the long-term
character of their children. It’s always
been interesting to me in looking at different families, you hear so much about
the deprivations and how economically deprived families are always at a
disadvantage but it’s been my experience that some of the tremendously strong young
people have all come from what you would consider economically deprived
homes. I’ve often wondered why that is,
and I can’t generalize but just from my own experience here as a pastor the
thing that I do notice is that children out of (quote) “economically deprived”
situations have not had the benefit of a lot of materialism. And as a result they seem to have a lot
stronger character. And some of the
children out of wealthy homes have very little character, they’re spineless,
they have no character whatever. Now
this isn’t always true, but it’s true to a surprising degree. The only thing I can think is that
materialism has something to do with it.
There’s a central preoccupation with wealth and not with character
building.
Now let’s look at
some of these verses and see how the Bible looks at the family. Proverbs 10:1, remember, a long, long time ago we left off with
Proverbs 9, we stopped our verse by verse exegesis there and we said we were
going to work with Proverbs 10-22 on a topical basis, and then we went to the
first divine institution, we went to the second, and now we’re on the
third. We’re still studying that section
of the book of Proverbs topically.
“The proverbs of
Solomon.” This is the second part of the
book, it is a collection. These proverbs
were collected over a long time period and this is a section that at one time
existed by itself, apparently, it started out with chapter 1 was chapter 10 and
it was all Solomon’s writings. “A wise
son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is the heaviness of his
mother.” Let’s first look at “wise” and
“foolish.” These are antonyms and they
say a lot right off the bat. The word
wise is chakam, c-h-a-k-a-m, and it’s
the word from which we get chokmah or
wisdom. It’s the adjective form, and the
son who is wise, what is a wise son biblically?
Let’s look at the wise son because this word, chakam is a word which denotes his strong character. It’s not talking about the fact the kid’s a
genius. That’s not it at all, it’s not
just mental. It is spiritual, a
spiritual character.
Let’s look, first
from the standpoint of how he operates in the middle of situations. Every person is going to meet a situation and
is going to respond to that situation a certain way. Now, how does a son who is chakam, how does this son respond to
this kind of situation. First of all,
over the time period of his training, say we’re looking at this at age 20
because that’s about the age that’s mentioned here with the son, the concept
here is that these children have gone through the family, now they’re young
adults and Proverbs is evaluating this young adult’s relationship to his
previous family training. So let’s just
say mentally in our minds, here we have a boy age 20. He encounters a situation; here’s his
response to that situation. If he is
wise it means that first of all he has in his mind a divine viewpoint
framework, not that he knows everything about the Bible, not that he knows
every single doctrine but he has a basic grasp of Bible doctrine and a basic
grasp of Scripture. He knows where to go
in Scripture to solve some of his problems; maybe not all of them, but some of
them he can.
Now that’s one of
the weaknesses we found in our family training framework quiz when we… we found
this weakness in the whole congregation, all the way from preschool all the way
up to adults, university, everybody and the central weakness we found in that
quiz was we do not know where to go in the Bible to find answers. Some of you know the answers but you have no
idea where in the Bible they’re found.
And so we’re going to take steps to correct that. So in the ensuing weeks we’re going to deal
with the overviews of Scripture.
Well, a wise son
is one who’s going to be operating with this framework of understanding. But more than just that, because of his
family training he is going to have developed what we call +R learned behavior
patterns, that is, by repetition over and over and over and over and over and
over and over and over and over again in the middle of many situations his
parents have coached him. Now in that
situation God’s Word gives you this kind of an answer. And when he was a young son his parents made
the decisions for him; they didn’t let little brain decide what he was going to
do on his own. That’s what the modern
educator wants because then they’ll produce children as confused as they
are. But the Bible doesn’t buy this; the
Bible points out the parents make the decisions and the children obey it,
period. That’s the way it goes. And after, as you grow up you gradually pull
back the responsibility and let them kind of jump out on their own, after they have been trained how to work
with those situations. Never let a child
make a decision for himself in the middle of a situation in which he can’t;
he’s not qualified. So whether (quote)
“democracy allows it” (end quote) or not, the issue is what the Bible says and
the Bible does not permit this kind of thing.
If you want an analogy to see go back to Israel. In the early days of Israel you have specific
instructions on how to eat, drink, put on the clothes and take them off; it’s
all in the book of Numbers, Leviticus and Deuteronomy.
So why did God
have such nitpicky rules? The reason was
that He wanted to teach this, +R learned behavior patterns which you will see
in your Bible as the word “godliness.”
That’s usually what that word means in the New Testament,
“godliness.” It’s not floating on a
cloud through the door, godliness is learned behavior patterns that are
righteous and it comes by discipline and practice and exercise of authority in
the home. So this is the chakam, this is the wise son, and he
makes his father glad. We’ll comment on
that in a moment.
Let’s move to the next word found in this verse, the “foolish son.” Now that’s our familiar word kesil, it looks like this in
the Hebrew, k-e-s-i-l, a kesil
is a son who over many years, remember, this boy is 20 now for our
illustration, so he’s had many years of practice. During these 20 years or so of practice he
has also learned how to respond to various situations. He has trained himself in ungodliness. So when he meets a situation he has little
pieces of human viewpoint, some divine viewpoint mixed in, he couldn’t help but
pick up something, but most of it is human viewpoint. All the while the Word of God was being
taught he was on the back row goofing off with his friends and so on, and so he
never picked up much of the Word and when he meets a situation in life he
doesn’t know what to do about it, he can’t handle himself in it. So, what’s happened? He has developed –R learned behavior patterns
in how he handles life.
For example, he
can’t handle himself in a social group and so here he is and obviously there’s
a time in every teenager’s life when he feels like the world is looking at him
and would like to drop through the floor and get out of the way, just dissolve,
disappear or something, and he has never learned how to handle himself
socially. And so the result is that he’s
compensated and so he’s learned that he can just show off, and yak off and
badmouth and so on, and he really doesn’t want to do that, it’s just that
that’s his way of handling the situation because he doesn’t know any other way
to do it. Well, he finds the first
couple of times he scares the teacher and the teacher lets him do it, or he
scares his parents and his parents just let him get away with it. Oh, this is good, this is a nice way to cope
with this situation, I can get rid of all the embarrassment, I can get rid of
the discomfort by just doing this, and so first thing you know he learns to do
this and be a big showoff and disrupt everything everywhere he goes, yak, yak,
yak, yak, yak, and disrupts people when they’re tying to listen and so forth,
this kind of thing. And it’s a trained
behavior pattern.
Now there are
certain spiritual principles that operate.
Let’s look at the soul of this young man and see what’s happened
there. All right, he’s gone on negative
volition toward God. The reason he’s
gone on negative volition is because he’s met with authority in the home. We’ll deal more with that later on, not this
morning, but the central problem with children scripturally analyzed is that
they are in rebellion against God and the sign or manifestation of their
rebellion is that they are in rebellion against the authority in the home. The authority in the home is the authority of
God, that’s the way He set the institution up.
And so he’s on negative volition.
So the next thing that begins to happen is that he has darkening of the
soul. That sets in because God, in His
grace, pulls off common grace, backs it off, and lets the soul sort of blind
itself. That’s the blinding described in
Ephesians 4, Romans 1 and other passages.
Then as a result he sucks in human viewpoint, doctrines demons that are
surrounding the culture and so on, rebelliousness, and this is all sucked into
his soul, with the ensuing problems in his soul. That is a kesil,
that’s what the soul of the kesil
looks like.
So in Proverbs
10:1, the “wise son,” here’s the son who has this long training. Don’t look at verse 1 and think they just
became Christians and now the wise person is just a Christian that accepted
Christ last week and the foolish son is an unbeliever. No!
These are people who have been trained in their respective position for
years. Now let’s see the results. The “wise son” makes a father happy. Now right in that verse you have the biblical
success of a family. Biblically why
should a father be happy? If this is a
father who’s wise, who’s operating according to Scripture the thing that’s
going to make him happy is something that conforms to the Word of God, so
therefore when you see that phrase, the thing that makes a father happy is when
his son turns out with chokmah. That’s what makes the father happy; not when
his son turns out to have three PhD’s, when his son makes a million by the time
he’s 30, when the son does something else, that’s not what makes the father
happy scripturally. What makes the
father happy is when his son shows the results of his training. There’s nothing that is more rewarding deeply
to parents than to see their children survive in the world with character.
Now the last part,
“a foolish son is heaviness to his mother,” interesting, the word “heaviness”
means grief. Now he is the source of
grief to his mother. Interestingly, if you check all the verses in Proverbs,
which we won’t do right now, but if you check all the verses that are synonyms,
or synonymous with verse 1, you will find nothing that ever makes the mother
happy. It’s the strange way these verses
are constructed. You’ll have the father
made happy or you’ll have him made sad, and you’ll have the mother made sad,
but there’s not one verse in Scripture that talks about the happiness of the
mother. Now we don’t know exactly why
this phenomenon occurs but it occurs consistently through the entire book of
Proverbs. The only thing we can do is
guess, and my guess is the reason why the mother’s happiness is not good here
isn’t because the mother is being neglected, it’s because the father is the
fundamental responsible agent and when there is success she is happy through
her husband’s authority. She is happy
because her husband is happy over the situation. But there’s rebellion and when there is kesil and when there is all
this animosity that develops in the children then both the mother and the
father are made sad. The word, however,
is not just being sad in verse 1 it’s grief, deeply felt grief. This should also teach you something if you
are young parents, parents of young children, this verse, and you needn’t go
any further if you want an application in your life, and that is that you are
going to cause your own suffering if you don’t, right now start systematically
taking in the Word of God and systematically teaching your children and don’t
wait for the church to do it. God makes
you responsible to do it. Now some
parents don’t know how to do this; many parents don’t know how so at least here
in our congregation we have the family training program which is at least one
part, it’s not the whole story, not at all, I never said it was, but it’s one
method to get you started and if you want to have a sad situation later on then
just goof off, but if you want a situation that will give you tremendous
confidence and tremendous joy later in life, then you’d better get with it;
this is a program that takes years.
So verse 1
analyzes in a nutshell the whole philosophy of Proverbs. Every other verse we are now going to study
amplifies verse 1 or is synonymous with it or gives you an aspect of it, but
Proverbs 10:1 gives you the whole idea of the family, what is the failure, what
is the success where the children have character, godliness or not, that’s the
whole issue. The Bible doesn’t look at
anything else. You don’t read in verse 1
that a son that has good clothes makes a father happy and a son that has
dresses like a slob, now that may be related to his character, but the issue
isn’t clothes, it isn’t money, it isn’t other things, it is his soul and it
also shows that parents, whether Christian or non-Christian, in a congregation
this size, a meeting of this size, we’re bound to have both Christians and
non-Christian present; what we’re talking about applies to everyone, whether
you like Christianity or not you will find yourself underneath this kind of a
law because this is the law of creation in which you are personally
indebted. You are part of the creation. So you may not like Christianity, you may
rebel against it but you’re going to find your experience, you’re going to have
grief and sorrow from how your own children turn out. You can pretend it doesn’t bother you, and
you can try to hide it, you can try to compensate for it but you know deep down
in your heart the grief that comes from raising that kind of a son. Conversely, even if you’re not a Christian,
if you have a son or a daughter with deep character you have a pride and you
have a joy. Why is that there? Because God has built you, whether you
acknowledge it or not, God has built you as parents to raise children with chokmah.
Now let’s turn to
another verse, Proverbs 15:20, here we have the same Hebrew word but a little
different nuance. We have the wise son
and the kesil son, the
first part of the verse looks the same, “A wise son makes a glad father,” same
principle, but now we have something added.
The last part of verse 20 adds a principle, adds a little more content
to what we’ve seen so far. Before we
said with the mother, she suffers grief; that’s one thing the woman of the
house suffers, she suffers grief when she sees her children go out and just
completely blow it. And she knows that
they have developed those kind of patterns in the home. Now if you are in this situation I’m not
trying to depress you, I’m just trying to say this is what Scripture teaches
and if you are in this situation you can’t do anything about it now except pray
about it and pray that God would work in that child and bring him around. You can do that; you can have an intercessory
ministry for your children, but as far as direct working with them, if they’re
at this stage it’s all over.
The last part of
verse 20, “a foolish man,” a synonym for a foolish son, it’s the kesil Adam, “the man who is
foolish,” the reason why it’s man instead of son is because it’s a young adult
mentioned here, he “despises his mother.”
Now that adds a new dimension to the kesil,
not only does he cause passively his mother grief, but it’s more than that;
actively he despises here. The word
“despise” is a participle; it means this is his continuous attitude toward his
mother. He despises her. A continual rebellion, let’s see if we can
specify what it means to despise a little bit more, make it come home clearer. Basically the kesil is in rebellion against God; we know that, that’s
negative volition. But how do we relate
his attitude of negative volition toward his despising of his mother? How does this work. It works this way. First, he is in basic rebellion against God;
now he doesn’t know all this but logically this is what happens. It starts off with a rebellion towards God;
if it’s a rebellion toward God then it’s also going to have to be a rebellion
toward his institution, in particular the second and third divine
institution. So the son, being in
rebellion against God, naturally is in rebellion against God’s laws and one of
his laws deals with the second and third divine institution.
Now, the position
of the mother in the second and third divine institution is a position that
always emphasizes the authority problem.
Why? Because she is under the
authority of her husband and by looking at his mother day in and day out he is
reminded that his mother is in submission to his father, and therefore as a son
he should be in submission to his parents.
So the principle, then, is authority and submission, and he is actively
centering his hatred on his mother. Now
I find this very interesting in counseling.
Most of your severe problems in young people, most of them come and are
associated with bad attitudes toward the mother. Now often times the father is involved but
the mother catches it. Now why does the
mother catch it more than the father?
Well obviously one answer is that the mother has been the one that he’s
seen the most around the house. She’s
been the one who taught him from early childhood and she’s been present. So she catches it more than the father
because she’s present more. But there
are other reasons, as I’ve mentioned here, that namely she reflects, if she’s
operating spiritually, she simply reflects in her very life, she reflects the
principle of submission to authority and he can’t stand that. So he disrespects his mother. Now under the categories of suffering the
idea is that the mother here is suffering under category three type suffering,
that is suffering because she is part of a family unit in which you have
rebellion. This is the suffering of the
mother.
Now so far we’ve
stressed the suffering of the mother.
Before we go on I want you to turn to Genesis 3 and see where all this
began. The family wasn’t originally
created to have the mother in such a bad position. In Genesis 3:16 it talks about the effects of
the fall, physically upon the mother.
“Unto the woman He said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy
conception,” the idea being there is physiological changes in the female body
brought about in her reproductive system as a result of the curse. And the net result of this in one area, in
childbirth, is pain, “in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children,” now primarily
“in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children” refers to childbirth, that’s the
primary meaning, yes. But yalad, which is the Hebrew word to bring
forth also is found in other contexts in the Bible, and it can refer to the
whole process of raising the child; begetting the child and bringing him forth
into the world. In other words, 20 years
in the home and then the child goes out into the world. So the yalad
is the bringing up, and the “in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children” means
that the mother particularly bears the grief and bears the disrespect of
children in this process of the fall.
This is one of the things that all women this side of the fall must face. So it didn’t begin with God, it began with
Adam and Eve, so blame them.
Turn to Proverbs
17:6 for another verse in the same series.
Only by going through these verses, patiently one at a time, will you
pick up the mentality of the Bible in this third divine institution. Let’s look at 17:6, it talks about
grandchildren. “Children’s children,”
that’s just the Hebrew word that means the children of children, or
grandchildren, “Grandchildren are the crown of old men; and the glory of children
is their fathers.” Now this verse seems
to teach two opposite things so we have to take it apart. Take the first of 17:6, “The grandchildren
are the crown of the old men,” what does the word “crown” mean? Again we have to go to some place in the
Bible where we can get a picture for this word to control it, then we’ll come
back in the text. Turn to Jeremiah
13:18, here is a usage of the word crown that gives you the picture behind the
word. “Say unto the king and to the
queen, Humble yourselves, sit down;’ for your principalities shall come down,
even the crown of your glory. Now
there’s where crown is used, the metaphorical usage of crown. What does “crown” mean. Crown means the area of domain. See what’s the crown a symbol of anyway? It’s a symbol of authority, and it’s authority
over something. So the crown stands for,
so to speak, the kingdom.
Now if that’s the
picture of it, let’s go back to Proverbs 17:6 and see why the grandfather’s
crown is his grandchildren. “Children’s
children are the crown of old men,” now we have got the flavor behind the word
“crown,” we apply it to verse 6, what do we come up with. “The kingdom of the old men is their
children.” What does that mean? The kingdom of the grandfather is their
grandson. It’s because… this pictures
the godly family operating in the Word, according to the Word, according to
divine viewpoint, the character of his immediate children, the second
generation, that character is strong and righteous and has now produced into
the third generation and is passing on divine viewpoint and +R learned behavior
patterns. And by the time you get out to
the third generation the first generation knows that they were on the right
track. In other words, their effect is
now leap-frogged over the second into the third generation; the effect of their
powerful testimony has been transmitted successfully down to the third
generation. There’s a passion in God’s
Word not to have godliness stop with this generation; always the emphasis is on
the next one, the next one, the next one, the next one. Why is the promise of Abraham given, the
children forever and ever and ever will be my children; why does this go on and
on and on like this? Because there’s a
passion to continue in history, don’t ever let God in His fallout of history,
it must persist. So when the grandfather
looks down the corridors of time and he sees his grandsons with character he
knows that he has done a job and again this verse teaches a source of happiness
from a biblically functioning family.
Another source is the third generation, looking at their character and
watching how they’re being brought up.
But then the next
part of the verse seems to go against this.
It seems to be written the wrong way.
Why is it in reverse in verse 6?
“…the glory of the children are their fathers.” Notice it doesn’t say “the crown of children
are their fathers.” That would be the
modern educator, in other words, the children rule the parents and that’s
wrong. So it doesn’t say crown, it says
“glory,” “the glory of children are their fathers. Now why the word “glory?” What does glory mean? Glory obviously means something that they
cherish. You say it’s your glory, it’s
something that you cherish, something you’re always talking about and the
picture of verse 6 is a biblically functioning family and the children in this
verse are giving credit to their parents.
That’s a very interesting point; there’s where you see the honoring of
the Ten Commandments coming out, the children are turning around and giving
glory to their parents. This is one of
the most products of a biblical home, is where you have children that speak
righteously and proudly of their parents.
It’s a tremendous accomplishment, it’s one of the most difficult that
can be brought about, but it is fantastic and this verse is talking about
that. These children in verse 6 are
giving glory to their fathers, not to themselves, to their fathers. My father taught me the Word of God, my
father led me to Jesus Christ, my father trained me and I’m proud of my
father. That’s the attitude in verse 6.
Let’s go on to
another verse and see if we can capture more of the spirit behind these
verses. Proverbs 17:21. Now when you come to this generation problem,
we always talk about the generation gap, etc. etc. etc.; we’ve always had one but
it’s become critical in our age in America.
Why? Let’s look why. In three generations we’ve come a long way. You go back to the generation that are now
grandparents, and this, by the say, is going to explain why the children are
not generally growing in their parents today; there’s a reversal of this
thing. What’s happened? The first generation in this process in 20th
century America, the people who are now grandparents generally speaking, not
always but generally speaking, grew up in an atmosphere that was tolerant of
Scripture. Generally speaking of all
three generations the oldest generation has the most divine viewpoint because
in their generation the Word of God was taught from the pulpit in all the churches,
generally speaking. That generation, as
a generation, there’s lots and lots of exceptions, but as a generation that
generation was the most wise. So you
start, living in the 1910 area, before modernism really had come into the
churches, now you come down to the second generation, the generation of the
depression of World War II, the generation who are now parents, the generation
who is now the establishment, the generation who are not the parents of, say,
our college students.
This generation
grew up after modernism. See, modernism
came in between 1930 and 1940 and by that time most of the churches had gone
done; seminaries had been captured even before 1910. So you have a complete theological vacuum,
all during the late 30s, all during the 40s, in fact even in the early 30s, a
tremendous vacuum theologically. Not
much was done except ridicule fundamentalism.
This is where anybody that spoke of Jesus Christ on the college campus
was a Christer or something; anybody who would speak of the authority of the
Word of God was some sort of a fundy associated with William Jennings Bryan and
the Scopes trial, blah, blah, blah, we’ve gone on to bigger and better
things. So that generation does not, as
a generation, have as much divine viewpoint as the first one. This particular generation has a lot of
evolution in its thinking; evolution, progress, education, science, these were
the great gods and these were the things that motivated; you’ve got to get your
degree, you must have financial security and so on; that’s the theme here and
so that’s a lot of human viewpoint.
Now you come to
the third generation and the third generation looks back, as this one did,
looks back and they don’t seen any base; get a degree, why? Just degree, get a better job. Why should I get a better job? In other words, there’s no base there because
the theology was destroyed and so the answers that the second generation gave
to the third were usually incomplete and insufficient answers, with the result,
not excusing it because the third generation goes on negative volition and they
go in outright rebellion towards everything, standards, everything just goes
out the window. Why, as a generation is
this true? Because there was no doctrine
to back it up. Now I can back up what
I’m saying because I’ll challenge you. If you take a survey in areas where the Word
of God is taught today, in church after church after church you will find this
generation present as a generation and this generation present and very, very
few in the second generation. Now why is
that? Because that generation has
learned and has been brought up not to believe in these things; it’s somehow
foreign to them, it’s hard for them. And
that generation, as a generation, with many, many noteworthy exceptions, in a
generation that has dropped out so to speak theologically, and this is why
today there’s such a mess here between the two, one of the reasons.
Now in Proverbs
17:21 you have this principle continued.
“He that begets a fool does it to his sorrow; and the father of a fool
has no joy.” Now “He that begets” this
refers to the father but it does it in a very neat way; this verse refers to
the father as the begetter but instead of using the very and saying well, you
know, he begat the son and there he is, he doesn’t use it that way; the Hebrew
here is used… [tape turns] … meaning that this is the father’s continually
abiding character. He continually goes
on, point after point after point after point.
Now what does that mean? It
doesn’t mean he continually begets, what could it mean? It means that his life is marked by the fact
that he brought this son into the world.
That’s the Hebrew way of saying he’s ruined, he continually associates
the rest of his days, he associates them, I brought that into the world. So you
see the mentality here; you see the emphasis on the character of the children
and why it hurts parents when this kind of thing happens. And the use of the participle is just the
Hebrew way of stressing the abiding damage done in the heart of that man; I
brought that thing into the
world. Now it doesn’t hit you unless
you’ve been personally involved in your own family or you’ve been involved with
a very close loved one that’s been involved in the situation. And those of you who have know exactly what
I’m talking about, you know the tears, you know the grief, you know the sorrow;
what usually happens eventually the lid blows off and somebody gets arrested
and then it all comes out, where did we make a mistake, and blah, blah, blah,
etc.
“He that continually begets,” in other words,
his character is continually marked by this, feeling his grief, the same word
used before, “the father of a fool never has joy,” that’s the kesil, the father of a kesil never has any joy, the
deep joy.
Proverbs 17:25,
same principle, “A foolish son is a grief to his father,” literally it means a
source of anger, “to his father,” he is a source of irritation to his father,
“and bitterness to her that bore him.”
Now the participle is used of the mother, to the one whose life has
permanently been marked by bearing this son.
The mother, whose character goes on and on and on day after day after
day after day, she’s the one who beget that…that! Bitterness, it’s the word for deep, deep
hurt.
Let’s go to
Proverbs 19:13, “A foolish son is the disaster [calamity] of his father,” that
was the one we had fun with, the last part of it, “the contentions of a wife
are a continual drip,” but the first part of the verse… this deals with the two
central disasters that any man can meet, it ties them together in one verse. Two things that will tube any man; one, have
an idiot for a son. That’s a
catastrophe; the word “calamity” means catastrophe, disaster, that’s the first
thing; and the second thing to have is a woman that yak, yak, yak, yak, yak,
yak, yak, yak yaks, and that’s a continual drip. And any man who get hit with both of these is
flat on his back; this is dedicated to all men, verse 13.
Proverbs 19:26,
this is the ultimate end to the process, the next two verses I’m going to show
you shows you what happens when this thing goes on and on and on, until finally
you have a massive rupture in the family; its negative volition over a long
period of time. “He that wastes his
father, and chases away his mother, is a son that causes shame, and brings
reproach.” Now let’s look at the end of
verse 26 first. “He that causes shame”
is a participle, meaning he continually, it’s part of his character to
embarrass his parents, that’s what it means.
But then, what does the verb mean to “waste his father?” It means to bring him to ruin; it can be done
financially, it can be done physically.
It can be done many, many different ways; he brings his father to
ruin. But the Hebrew doesn’t indicate
“he that brings his father to ruin and chases away his mother,” no-no, not at
all. He “that ruins his father evicts
his mother,” the word here means to evict, just kick her out of the house. It goes back to the fact that the third
divine institution is built on the second.
You have to see these; they are built one on top of another. Now if the son is in rebellion toward his
father, and under the second divine institution the mother is under the
authority of the father, obviously it follows, if he has ruined his father he
will automatically ruin his mother.
I show you this
because I want you to see how these interlock.
The Scriptures always treat these institutions as carefully interlocked;
even the wording of the sentences follow this pattern and this wording is never
broken, you can take a concordance and look it up for yourself and you’ll see
the wording is always careful to build one institution on top of another,
constantly.
Another verse that
shows you the extreme nature of this: Proverbs 20:20, “Whoso curses his father
or his mother, his lamp shall be put out in obscure darkness.” Now it doesn’t seem to say too much but we
have to study it until we understand the Hebrew idiom. The word “curse” means to show disrespect, it
means basic rebellion. “Whoso curses his
father and his mother, his lamp shall be put out.” Now what does it means, “his lamp shall be put
out.” Now we have to study the
idiom. Turn to 1 Kings 11:36, here “the
lamp” is used and you can see how it’s used.
Here’s where the lamp is used in connection with family; now look at
this. “And unto his son,” God is talking
to David, “unto his son will I give one tribe,” now you see what that is, that
has to do with family, and the reign of the family, “unto his son will I give
one tribe,” this is at the revolution, 930 BC, and you have the eleven tribes
trotting off, actually Benjamin came back but Judah is left, “that David, My
servant, may have a light always before Me in Jerusalem.” Now what is that talking about, David having
a light. David had the tribe of Judah,
see, David means the king, this time it’s a jerk by the name of Rehoboam, he
was one of the worst idiots ever to sit on the throne of Judah, but he is
David’s grandson, and he is a cluck, but God, because of grace is going to let
him remain in control over Judah. Now
the remaining in control, the right to rule, the conquering, so to speak, as
you will, the subduing, that’s the light of the family. The light of David is the rule of that family
in history.
Let’s see where
that’s used again in 1 Kings 15:4, another verse that uses this “light” in the
sense of a family. “Nevertheless, for
David’s sake did the LORD his God give him a lamp in Jerusalem,” and then in
complete apposition, “to set up human spirit son after him.” Do you see that? All right; what does the “lamp” mean in a
family? It means the domain, the
success, the prosperity of that family measured, in Hebrew terms it would be
measured in the number of children with good character and their reign, their
position, their job, their calling, that’s the lamp of the family.
Now what
happens? Turn back to Proverbs 20 for
the one who curses his mother and father.
Now this is a principle, and by the way, you can have an interesting
discussion if you will, you take this principle and you look around at families
you know and try to go back 2 or 3 generations, maybe some in your own family
tree some place, but look at this, you’ll see this principle operate, it
doesn’t just operate for Jews, this operates in Gentiles, just like that third
and fourth generation thing operates.
“Whoso curses,” this is a participle meaning continually it is this
son’s nature to rebel against the authority of his father and his mother, the
promise is, “his lamp will be put out,” in other words, that family is not
going to amount to a hill of beans; he’s going to have a good set of parents
here, they’re going to go on negative volition in the second generation and
that family is going to come into disaster.
That’s the promise. Once you have
a son whose nature it is to undercut the authority of his parents, what happens
when he has children? He can never build
authority, because you see, it’s his nature to rebel against authority and a
rebel against authority can never build authority in anybody else. You have to submit to authority before you
can pass the concept of authority on to someone else.
This is why one of
the greatest military thinkers in the 20th century, B. H. Liddell
Hart has predicted an end to guerilla warfare.
He simply said that the United States Army and Air Force today does not
have to worry about many more guerilla wars, they’re not going to be
fought. And you say why? Why are we going back to conventional
war? Because lessons have been learned
about guerilla wars, you can’t turn them off.
Once you start a guerilla war, which is a war of insurgency, you have
already built the population hostile toward authority, so after the (quote)
“war is ended,” the guerillas are in power, what does everybody else got a
mentality? If you don’t like the
government, rebel against it. So
traditionally in areas where you’ve had guerilla warfare you never can get
political stability. It’s just a law of
God working its way out; if you destroy authority you’re going to wind up
destroying yourself, the birds always come home to roost. And we’re seeing it in this country with the
authority in the military; officers can’t tell privates what to do any more
because we’ve broken our authority principle.
And of course what is needed in the service is a little extra curricular
activity to take care of some of these privates and other people who don’t like
authority, things that can be done behind the barracks and other ways at night
and so forth, that will enforce authority; we use the unofficial means.
Now so far all
this has been bad news. I don’t want to
leave it on this, I want to turn to one more verse which is the principle on
how to resist this thing, this mess that gets started in the family unit, this
rebellion against authority that gets started that you just can’t seem to put
out once it starts.
Proverbs 22:6, one
of the most famous verses in all of Scripture for parents; every parent ought
to know Proverbs 22:6. Now this is not a
promise, in a strict sense, it is a principle.
The principle is, and there will be exceptions, but here’s the
principle: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he
will not depart from it.” Now there are
two kinds of interpretations to this verse.
Here they are and we’re going to have to decide which one is right. One says “train a child in the way,” and the
way is divine viewpoint; “train a child in the way he should go,” and then he’s
going to stick with it in later life.
But another alternate interpretation is that “the way” is his own way;
in other words, let him have his own way, don’t train him, just let him have
his own way, and when he gets old he’ll be still doing the same thing. He won’t depart from his own way, which is a
sinful way.
Now which of these
translations is correct? We have to
study one phrase, basically, the last part of this verse is easy, “when he is
old he will not depart from it,” certainly there aren’t any interpretation
problems there, it’s very clear what it’s saying. But what is not clear is “his way,” so that’s
the phrase we have to zero in discuss just for a moment. What does it say? “Train up a child,” the word “train” is a
word which means… it was used by the Arabs, it’s related to an Arabic verb
which means that the Arab’s mothers, when the children were growing up would
take dates and they would brush the gum of the little babies with this date and
it would develop a taste in the baby’s mouth for this food, and so the word
“train” has come to mean to develop a taste for. And so it’s a very picturesque word for
“train.” It doesn’t mean just ram it and
cram it down their throat; it means that these mothers would work to try and
develop taste; you know it’s like trying to get kids to eat vegetables; you have
to get the taste started. Now the word
“train” means that, to give a taste to the child. Give him a taste of something and develop his
appreciation.
But then it says
according to his “way,” and that’s the phrase we have to take apart. It means upon, literally, “upon the mouth of
his way.” Now that’s a literal
translation, it’s wrong because obviously it must mean something else than
that, “upon the mouth of his way,” that doesn’t look right. But we fortunately have this phrase somewhere
else in the Bible. Genesis 43:7, turning
to this verse we can tell what the phrase means so we’ll understand the
interpretation. This is Joseph in
Egypt. And they come back and they
report to the father. “And they said,
The man asked us straitly of our state, and of our kindred, saying, Is your
father yet alive? Have you another
brother? And we told him” and the next
part where you see the word “according,” ending with the word “words” is the
same phrase as Proverbs 22:7, “according to the tenor of these words. Could we certainly know that he would say
Bring your brother down.” Now what does
that mean, “according to the tenor of these words.” The key is this word “mouth;” the word
“mouth” came to mean tenor or measure.
Now we have something in our language that corresponds this, [can’t
understand phrase] “he bit off more than he could chew.” See, we use the same thing for mouth, which
means the bite and the bite is what you can chew. So the picture of the mouth is you bite off
what you can chew. And so, upon the
measure of his way means upon the size of his bite.
Now let’s see if
we can plug that back into Proverbs 22:7, “Train up a child in the way he
should go.” Now keep in mind, the
picture behind the word “train” to start with is the Arab mother taking the
date and rubbing her child’s gum with it to develop taste in it. Now obviously in that kind of a context the
mouth is a picture of the verb that’s involved in this picture behind the
word. So that’s not surprising that the
word “mouth” occurs again, so when it says, “Train up a child in the way he
should go,” means train up a child according to his bite, in other words,
according to how much can he take at his particular point of growth. And that is the ideal biblical education,
training or giving appreciation to a child at his own level, at his stage of
growth, his “bite.” Don’t give him more
than he can chew and don’t give him less than he can chew.
Always give him
just a little bit more than he can chew, and that’ll always be a challenge to
him to get up. This is why people who
teach speaking and so on in seminary and so on are always wrong; they always
tell you in seminary teach at the fourth or fifth grade level because that’s
basically where most people are. Well,
it seems to me if I applied that, then after about 15 years of ministry you’d
have everybody at fourth and fifth grade level.
To me that’s not very satisfying and so it seems to me, since I have
people in here from all sorts of levels I ought to aim at the highest and if I
preach it at the highest then everybody is going to something, even if they get
a word or two but they’ll get something, it’ll always pull up. And it’s the same here in this training, you
train up a child according to his size, always make it a little ahead of what
he can take to challenge him to move, but not so far ahead that you frustrate
him.
And the promise
and the conclusion, then, to the series is that “when he is old, he won’t
depart,” he won’t grow up to be a kesil,
he will have been trained point by point by point by point.
Next week we’ll
deal with some more of the problems of the techniques that Proverbs recommends
on how do you do this with your children.