Well, I want to lay down a principle that I think has application for everything that these men have been preaching about since we've been here. And it is that most fundamental principle that scripture is sufficient for everything, for life and godliness. And when you make up a life on your own, when you make up the church on your own, when you try to make up the government on your own without the guidance of Holy Scripture, you always find yourself really in a contrarian position before God. And man wants to self-define. Man has always wanted to self-define.

That's what Adam and Eve did in a garden. And now today, it's reached such ridiculous, insane proportions that you have people wanting to self-define as some gender that they're not, and it's madness. And so I wanna speak about this efficiency of scripture and one particular element of it. And I really want to issue one of you, I just want to say one thing in the next few minutes, and it's trust in the promises of God. Trust in the commands of God, and trust in the statutes and judgments of God.

Well, I could just walk down now because everything I'm gonna say is designed really to support that whole idea. And so I'd like for you to open up your Bibles to Proverbs 22, and I'd like you to find verse 6. Proverbs 22 verse 6. This is what is perhaps the most famous child-raising text in the Old Testament. And it reads like this, Proverbs 22, 6.

Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he's old, he will not depart from it. Now this, though it is the most famous child raising passage in the Bible, it is usually dismissed and it dies the death of a thousand qualifications. There are various theological nuances that can be used to dismiss it. There are various experiences that can be used to dispense with it. Disappointments in life with children who seem to grow up in godly homes, but they did depart, they went astray.

But rather than qualifying this to death, I want to encourage you to have an unwavering confidence in every word of Scripture as your default position. We've been given what the Apostle Peter says exceedingly great and precious promises and this one is this proverb is one of them and It should not be dismissed because a child somewhere went astray We don't know everything We don't know when God is going to move. And it's often very presumptuous when we dismiss a promise of God. Don't let a life example that you heard about or maybe even experienced yourself, wipe out what God has promised in His Word. His Word is holy, it is pure, it is true, it is sufficient, And it cuts through all the garbage and the confusion of this world.

And we ought to trust it. We don't know the outcomes. We don't know God's timing. There's so much we don't know. But what we do know is that God has spoken a definitive word of encouragement to parents.

And I want you to notice that it's a conditional promise. Now there are different kinds of promises in the Bible. There are unconditional promises, like God's promise never to flood the earth again. There are many unconditional promises. I will never leave you or forsake you.

That's another unconditional promise. But there are promises that are conditional. And they are... The fulfillment of those promises are only experienced by those who are diligent to obey the condition. Train up a child in the way he should go.

That's the condition. And the Bible makes astonishing promises like this all over his word. Well, the first command with Well, the first command with promise is in Ephesians 6, 1-3. If God promises that parents fulfill their responsibilities and obey the conditions then God will bless their children. Now theologians have wrangled about this verse and it can, I don't know if I've studied 50 commentaries on this verse, new and old?

Many of the older theologians call this a promise. Some of the newer theologians are more reluctant to call it a promise. And I think it's legitimate to even explain it in different kinds of words like an expected probability, a foreshadowing of an outcome. It's a likelihood, it's a reasonable expectation, it's a forecast, it's a forewarning, It's a reasonable calculation. But it definitely is a conditional promise for some kind of success.

That's actually defined in it. And the promise is conditioned upon two things. It's a condition upon obedience, but it's also conditioned upon God's sovereign wisdom working together with man's responsibility. Well here's what it all means. What you do really matters.

It's not a promise that your children will be converted. It's a matter of high probability. But it really is a promise that's conditioned upon obedience. That's kind of a hard reality. Parents should not expect these results without that kind of obedience that the verse calls for.

And this is how these conditional promises work all through the Bible. You know Solomon wants parents to know that they must do something. Now there is actually an interpretive controversy over this passage of Scripture and I'll give you the two primary views of this passage. I do believe it can mean one of these two things. I'm not exactly sure, but I am sure about the final conclusion about it.

And here's what I mean. First of all, It can mean that when you train up a child in the way that he should go, by obeying God's commands for parents, the child will not depart from them when he is old. And if this is the correct interpretation, then parents must diligently obey the Lord with all their heart to do their entire part of the ways God has commanded them to raise their children and if they do it will be a blessing to their children and they will walk in the ways they were taught to walk in other words parents infuse every good thing and they won't walk away from it. That's one way to interpret it. Here's the second way of interpreting it.

It can mean, and I think there's a legitimate exegetical case for this, If you let a child go his own way and do what he wants to do, and you do not restrain him, then when he is old, he'll keep living that way and he'll wreck his life. And if this is the correct interpretation, then all parents are put on notice that if they're negligent and are negligent with biblical commands, and they don't do their duty, and they're lazy, and they don't pay attention to the commandments of God, then their children will reap the pain of that negligence. The parents will. Because it'll cause their children to depart. And...

So in this interpretation, the promise isn't, if you're a good parent, you'll have good kids. What this interpretation is, if you're a bad parent, you'll have bad kids. If you let your kids do whatever they want, that's how they're going to live. So whichever interpretation you choose, one thing is very clear. Your children's future is profoundly affected by what you do.

What you train is what you get. What you dedicate your children to is what your children will be dedicated to. What affections you grow in your children will be the affections that will continue to grow. You have to be very careful what affections, what patterns you cultivate in your children. In your children because what you train in their affections will continue with them.

So what Solomon is driving at is that early patterns determine later patterns in children and what you do with your children when they're growing up defines the tendencies that they'll have later. So discipline your children while there's hope, while they're young. And if you let selfishness run in their hearts unimpeded, if you let dishonor run in their hearts and their lips unimpeded, if you let sibling rivalry run, if you let lack of prayer, lack of immersion in the Word of God daily, then that's what you're going to get. Now there may be some exceptions to that. You may have, and there are children who are raised in ungodly homes that actually turn to the Lord.

Praise God for that, many of us are in that room, in this room. Charles Bridges, in the commentary that he wrote on Proverbs uses this language. It's actually very offensive to a lot of the modern interpreters, but I'm going to read it. If the promise is not fulfilled, it is because the duty is not performed. Expect the fulfillment of the paternal promise as confidently as any other free promise of the gospel.

Exercise faith in the full energy of Christian diligence and the will. What Bridges is saying is you should trust this promise just like you should trust the promises of God for your salvation. My heart was so thankful when we started the day singing, he will hold me fast. And after we sang that song I looked over to Deborah and I said, Deborah, if I didn't believe in the promises of God that he would save me and wipe away my guilt, I would have no hope in this world if I didn't believe that he would hold me fast. I would just wonder if I could even ever be a Christian.

But what Bridges is saying is you should trust the promise that he will hold you fast and he will keep you until that final day. You should trust that promise just like you trust this promise. Andrew Murray wrote a marvelous book on the training of children. One of the ones I really liked that I read in the last few months. But Andrew Murray commenting on this verse speaks this way, This promise is the scriptural expression of the principle on which all education rests.

A child's training can decide what his life will be. He goes on. There have been many failures in religious training that many parents doubt whether the principle like this can be regarded as holding true in all circumstances. With such doubt, we undermine God's covenant. Instead, let us believe.

Now, I'm going to read this, and many will not like this. Let us believe that the failure was man's fault. Either the parent did not make the way in which he should go, his one aim in the child's training, or the training in that way was not what God's Word had ordered it to be. And then he says, there are many Christian parents who are anxious to see their children saved, but they do not choose this way for them. They do not decide on it distinctly as one and only way in which they are to walk.

They think it is too much to expect that their children should walk in it from their youth, and so they do not train them in that way. They are not prepared to regard the walking in this way as their primary objective. It is not their first aim to train wholehearted, devoted Christians. They will not give up their worldly interests. They are not always ready themselves to walk in that way only and completely and in that narrow way.

They have chosen it but not exclusively and not finally. The modern writers don't talk like this. He continues, without training, teaching and commanding, often more harm than good is done. Training is not only telling a child what to do, but showing him how to do it and seeing that it is done. The parent must see to it that the advice or command is given, is put into practice and adopted as a habit.

Doing habitually, doing from choice, doing. This is what we aim for. Well, Andrew Murray is just pointing out that it really, really matters what parents do. It matters what you do with your time. It matters what kind of prioritization you put on matters of training, the training and the admonition of the Lord and how vigilant and diligent and comprehensive and careful and involved you are.

God blesses his own ways. He brings forth the fruit of his own Commandments. I think that's the primary principle here. And Don't expect to have godly children if you don't obey God's commands. I know this must sound so foreign.

But there are very specific things that God commands parents to do. And if you do not do them, you should not expect to experience the blessings that they describe. And Proverbs makes it very clear that for parents to have lazy children, it's shameful, Proverbs 10, 25. It's shameful to have dishonorable children, Proverbs 19 26. It's shameful to parents to have gluttonous children, Proverbs 28 7.

Now, these parents that had lazy and Dishonorable and gluttonous children did not teach their children to be diligent, honorable, and self-controlled, and God blames the parents in the book of Proverbs. These children were like the children in Proverbs 29, 15. They were left to themselves. Parents reap what they sow. Now you'll find most of the time when you have a child that comes out of a Christian home goes astray, my natural reaction has been, and I've observed this many times, that people in the church, they try to bring comfort and they say, oh, it wasn't your fault.

You did all you could. That's the default counsel to comfort parents. And I understand it and I have done it. But let's be very clear, the Bible teaches that your children's future hangs on the teaching he receives when he's a child. And we know that that's true in other areas of life.

Some of you I know are involved in going to prisons, you're involved in prison ministry. And here's what you know. Almost everybody in prison had a disconnected father. Homosexuals, almost all of them, had harsh, disconnected, ungodly fathers. Girls who fall into prostitution, they had fathers that were disconnected.

I mean we accept this on a broad social level, but we don't want to think that way about our own children. But that's really the way it is in the real world. It really matters what you do. You know, every youth pastor knows this. Every youth pastor will just tell you the same thing.

99% of the time, the only kids that continue on in the faith are the kids that came out of homes where the parents really loved Jesus. And it was real, and it was happy, you know. And the other kids just fell away. It matters. These children were taught with a whole heart, and they did not exasperate their children, and they taught them diligently.

That's the promise here. And they were not hypocrites. They didn't parent for the applause of men. They weren't trying to use their children as their badge of honor. They weren't using their children as a public display.

They had a real faith and they had happy and they had loving homes. But we often hope for the promises of God but we forget the conditions of the promise, and we expect the blessings of the promise, but we don't obey the conditions of the promise. And the problem is often our disobedience, and I just wanna challenge every parent here to search your heart and ask yourself, are you fulfilling the conditions of the promise? This is not legalism. This is the Word of God.

There are matters to consider about this. Joel Beekie has written a book in Puritan theology and he has a whole treatise on divine promises. And he says that it's very important to understand that this is the wisdom literature and that it's God's wisdom that governs the fulfillment of all promises. And here's what he says, conditional promises, by contrast, are quote, no further promise than God in his wisdom sees to be best for his own glory and for his children's good. They are conditional on what God knows to be best for his glory and for the good of our particular situations.

So this is a proverb that brings a general principle which is also should also be regarded as a promise. But we need to recognize that God is the governor of the fulfillment of all the promises. And you know there are examples of this. Charles Hodge in his commentary on Ephesians chapter 6, you know, cites the example that the hand of the diligent makes rich. And what he says is diligence as a general rule does secure riches, and obedient children as a general rule are prosperous and happy.

But if you find a diligent child who falls into poverty from time to time don't think the promise has been broken. The general promise is fulfilled, as Charles Hodge says, as it shall serve for God's glory and for their own good. But the thrust of this is that if we do what God requires, we'll see the promise fulfilled. Now there certainly are exceptions to this. Out of the abundance of the divine, sovereign wisdom of God, probably a prime example is Esau himself.

Esau, the Bible tells us, was hated by God from before he was born. Jacob I loved and Esau I hated, that's in Romans nine, 10, and 11. His apostasy had nothing to do with the parenting that he received. But as a general rule, when a child goes astray, it's often the fault of the parent. Now when Peter says that we have exceedingly great and precious promises in 1 Peter 1 verse 4, It's very interesting to continue to read what comes right after that.

He immediately speaks of the importance of quote, giving all diligence and self-control and perseverance. We have these promises but we're also called to diligence and perseverance. Both are required. One of the early Puritans, John Trapp, said that means should neither be neglected nor trusted. Trust in the promises of God and do your duty.

Do it with all your heart and examine yourself to see if you're failing in any of the things God has commanded you to do to bless your children. So the Bible does not guarantee that your children will be saved if you obey God's commandments. But the Bible does promise that if you obey, He will bless your children. So examine what you're doing. Are you keeping God's commandments as a parent?

Are you keeping all of them? Do you teach them diligently when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise up? Do you inspire them in telling them of the strength of God, the great things he has done as Psalm 78 tells you to do? Do you discipline them promptly as Proverbs 13 24 says? Is the word of God in your heart like Moses said, it ought to be when you teach your children.

Are you praying together as a family? Are you exasperating your children? Are you a hypocrite? Because the Bible teaches that what you do makes a difference in your sons and daughters. And if we have failed, we need to repent of our sins and change our patterns and our priorities.

But let's be very clear, the weight of responsibility in this passage of scripture and in Ephesians 6 is on the parent and there's very little in scripture that takes parents off the hook. What you do matters and it matters for many generations and I hope you really believe that promise. I hope you believe it with all your heart. I hope you rest all your weight on it and trust in God's sovereignty. And you don't know all the outcomes, you don't know how things are gonna finally turn out.

Your child might go astray for a period but you do you have not heard the end of the story yet. There's a very very familiar comparison of families from history And you can read about it in different places. It's the comparison of two different men and their families. And there's a tremendous contrast between the family of Jonathan Edwards and another family whose father was named Max Jukes. And you can read all about this in Elizabeth Dodd's biography of Jonathan Edwards, of Sarah Edwards' marriage to a difficult man.

But she compares these two different men and the impact that their lives had on their children because it really mattered. And Jonathan Edwards had 1, 400 family members by 1900. He died in the 1750s. Of those 1, 900 family members, there were 13 college presidents, 65 professors, 100 lawyers, and a dean of an outstanding law school. There were 30 judges, 66 physicians.

There were 80 holders of public office, three US senators, mayors of three large cities, a vice president of the United States, a controller of the US Treasury. Elizabeth Dodd says, "'The women were repeatedly described as great readers or highly intelligent, although the girls were never sent to college then. Members of the family wrote 135 books. They edited 18 journals and periodicals. They entered the ministry in platoons and sent 100 missionaries overseas as well as stocking many mission boards with lay trustees.

Many large banks, banking houses, and insurance companies have been directed by them. They have been owners of or superintendents of large coal mines, of large iron plants, and of vast oil interests and silver mines. There is scarcely an American industry that has not had one of this family among its chief promoters. The family has seen nothing of cons or pauperism or crime or hospital or asylum service. On the other hand, there's another man by the name of Max Jukes.

He lived in New York City. 1, 200 descendants were researched. 310 were vagrants. 440 had their lives physically wrecked by debauchery and uncleanness, 130 were sent to prison for an average of 13 years each, 7 were murderers, 100 were alcoholics, 60 were habitual thieves, and there were 190 prostitutes. They collectively cost the state of New York over 1.2 million dollars in the 1700s and the 1800s.

It really matters what you do. The generations that follow you will feel the effect of your life. That's the promise of God. It was God who said that and I pray that we would believe it with all of our hearts and that we would rise up to seek to fulfill all the commandments of God. I just want to close with a statement by Cotton Mather, a father's resolutions.

He gives many resolutions, But here's what he says, oh parents, how much ought you to be continually devising for the good of your children, often devise how to make them wise children, how to give them a desirable education, an education that may render them desirable, how to render them lovely and polite and serviceable in their generation, often devise how to enrich their minds with valuable knowledge, how to instill generous, gracious, and heavenly principles into their minds, how to restrain and rescue them from the paths of the destroyer and fortify them against their particular temptations. There is a world of good that you have to do for them. I want you to notice the word devise in what I just read. He appeals to parents to devise ways to find every possible way you can to be a blessing to your children. God has given you His Word.

Moses said, it is your life, and it is the life of your children. Be very careful that you do not expect the promises to be fulfilled if you don't engage with your whole heart and your whole soul in the duties which are the conditions of that promise. Would you pray with me? Lord these are these are solemn words hard to bear for all of us for myself but we pray Oh Lord, that you would move within us, that, oh, we would have such a heart within us, that we might keep all of your commands, that you might give to our children the things that you promised. Amen.