Preparing Your Kids for the Real World (Part 11) - Intellectual Development Development (Part A)

Watch the video of this sermon on YouTube: Preparing Your Kids for the Real World (Part 11) - Intellectual Development (Part A) For the outline and the rest of the sermons in this series, click here: Preparing Your Kids For The Real World To listen to or watch the previous sermon in the series, click here: (Part 10) To listen to or watch the next sermon in the series, click here: (Part 12) V. Intellectual development 1. The responsibility of children's education and training rests on parents, not the local, state, or federal government. A. Modern, secular education is described well in 2Ch 15:3. i. Government schools are "without the true God, and without a teaching priest, and without law." ii. Consequently, we are witnessing unrest, great vexations, and destructions (2Ch 15:5-6). B. Fathers, not State bureaucrats, are commanded to bring up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (Eph 6:4) (this responsibility can be delegated - more on that later). i. Bring - v. 27. bring up. a. To bring into a higher position; to elevate, raise, rear, build up; to raise to a point or amount, etc. b. To rear from childhood; to educate, breed. ii. To bring up your children is to educate them. iii. Nurture - 1. Breeding, upbringing, training, education (received or possessed by one). b. Moral training or discipline. iv. Admonition - 1. The action of admonishing; authoritative counsel; warning, implied reproof. v. Admonish - 1. gen. To put (a person) in mind of duties; to counsel against wrong practices; to give authoritative or warning advice; to exhort, to warn. vi. Mother's are also supposed to help in this duty (Gen 2:18; Pro 1:8). vii. The father is the guide of youth (Jer 3:4). viii. Paul assumes that fathers exhort, comfort, charge, and warn their children (1Th 2:11; 1Co 4:14). ix. Fathers should have more weight in influencing their children than other instructors (1Co 4:15-16). x. The book of Proverbs presents a father instructing his son in a wide variety of subjects (Pro 4:1-4; Pro 23:15-26). xi. Fathers are supposed to train up their children in the way they should go (Pro 22:6). a. Train - III. 5. To treat or manipulate so as to bring to the proper or desired form; spec. in Gardening, to manage (a plant or branch) so as to cause it to grow in some desired form or direction, esp. against a wall, or upon a trellis or the like. 6. To subject to discipline and instruction for the purpose of forming the character and developing the powers of, or of making proficient in some occupation. (Also with up.) a. To instruct and discipline generally; to educate, rear, bring up. 1611 Bible Prov. xxii. 6 Traine vp a childe in the way he should goe. b. When a child is trained up in the way he should go (not in the way he wants to go), he will not depart from it when he is old. c. Like the prodigal son, he may depart from it for a season, but every parent's hope is that they will return to what they were taught. d. Make sure you have trained them up in the way they should go if you expect them to not depart from it when they are old. e. Don't live with regret because you didn't take the time to train them up right and they strayed from the Lord. xii. A father's primary duty should be to educate his children in the Lord's ways. a. This will include every area of life as God, through His word, guides and regulates all aspects of our lives. b. Education - 1. The process of nourishing or rearing a child or young person, an animal. 2. The process of ‘bringing up’ (young persons); the manner in which a person has been ‘brought up’; with reference to social station, kind of manners and habits acquired, calling or employment prepared for, etc. 3. The systematic instruction, schooling or training given to the young in preparation for the work of life; by extension, similar instruction or training obtained in adult age. Also, the whole course of scholastic instruction which a person has received. Often with limiting words denoting the nature or the predominant subject of the instruction or kind of life for which it prepares, as classical, legal, medical, technical, commercial, art education. c. Educating your children ensures they are prepared for the work of life, including religious instruction, scholastic instruction, social instruction, and vocational instruction. C. The most important area of your children's education is teaching them God's truth in the scriptures. i. The word of God is more valuable than silver and gold and previous jewels - it has no equal (Psa 19:10; Pro 3:13-15; Pro 8:11,19). a. It stands to reason that spending more time in God's book than any other is the most profitable. b. I firmly believe that if you had no other book but the Bible, you could be very well educated. ii. Teaching your children the scriptures is God's commandment in the N.T. (Eph 6:4) and it was also God's commandment to Israel in the O.T. (Isa 38:19). iii. It is fathers who are supposed to make known God's truth to their children. iv. Too often today the only religious instruction kids get is from their mothers because the fathers abdicate their responsibility. v. God's word should be passed down from the fathers (and mothers) to their children (Psa 78:4-6). a. It is important to do this so that the wonderful works of God are instilled in the minds of your children (v. 4-5). b. They then can teach them to their children who then can teach them to their children (v. 6). c. This is done so that each new generation can set their hope in God and not forget His commandments (v. 7-8). d. This is why churches die -- the generation which saw the works of the Lord pass on, and the upcoming generation doesn't know them (Jdg 2:10). e. Think about this in our situation: many of us experienced great deliverances by God from lives of sin, false religion, and false doctrine and we are forever thankful for what God saved us from. f. But your children will grow up in the church, not having seen the same great deliverances in their own lives. g. They don't have to spend years searching for that pearl of great price; it's right in front of them. h. You must tell them of the wonderful works of God in your own lives, teach them His truth, and impress upon them how important it is. vi. Teaching your children God's word is done by incorporating the scriptures into every aspect of your family's life (Deu 6:4-9). a. God's words first need to be in your hearts, parents (v. 6; Pro 3:3; Pro 6:21). b. Once they are stored in your heart, you can meditate on them throughout your day (Psa 119:97; Psa 1:1-3; Jos 1:8). c. When the scriptures are in your heart and on your mind, they will guide you when you are on the go, when you are sleeping, and when you wake up (Pro 6:22). d. When the word of God is an integral part of who you are, then you can teach it diligently to your children by incorporating it into all you do (Deu 6:7). (i) When you sit in your house (at the dinner table during meals is a good time). (ii) When you are walking by the way (or driving places with your kids). (iii) When you lie down (praying with them before bedtime). (iv) When you rise up in the morning (around the breakfast table). vii. Learning and living the scriptures will give a man more wisdom and understanding than enemies, teachers, and ancients (Psa 119:98-100). viii. Teaching children the things of God contrasts forgetting the things of God (Deu 4:9-10). a. Parents who do not teach their children have likely forgotten what God has taught them. b. Parents who teach their children better remember what they themselves have learned.