Imagine I was teaching you a new skill, let’s say coding. You’ve learned some basic commands. You can make a few changes to a website using AI. Now imagine that, in the middle of learning, I told you to go teach a boot camp to 200 people learning to code. You need to explain the different coding languages and teach them how to become a software engineer.
That is how I feel when I talk about parenting, because I am in the thick of it. I have a 13-year-old, an 11-year-old, and a 3-year-old, and many times I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing. But the good news is that I don’t need to rely on my wisdom or experience. I can rely on God’s wisdom. Proverbs 13, 22, and 29 have three key lesson in raising children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
The Big Idea in Parenting
The big idea in parenting is that we want to raise our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. This is what we read in Ephesians 6:4, “to bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” And we want to raise them to maturity. We don’t want our children to be immature.
Understanding how to raise a child really doesn’t take a whole lot of life experience. You need to submit your life to Christ, but you also need some basic understanding of what it means to be human. To be human means to be made body and soul to glorify God. So a child is just a small human, designed body and soul to glorify God.
A mistake we can often make is focusing on one to the neglect of the other. We can focus more on the soul than the body or more on the body than the soul. As Christian families, we may focus on making sure our children know the Lord and walk before Him, but neglect other important aspects such as training them in traditions, customs, propriety, and manners.
The other significant error, which I see when I talk to my neighbors who are not Christians, is to neglect both. They neglect to raise their child in tradition, custom, manners, and order, and when you ask what they’re doing about their child’s spiritual instruction, it’s basically, “Well, I hope they figure it out one day.” That’s not good for anyone, especially a child.
Both are a form of neglect, an abdication of your duty. It is your job as a parent to raise your children in body and soul to glorify God.
Children are to honor their father and mother. Exodus 20:12 says, “Honor your father and mother, that your days may be long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.” Paul references this in Ephesians: wrapped up in this commandment is a promise. Your capacity to honor your father and mother is tied to a kind of prosperity: that your days may be long. There is a direct relationship here between good life outcomes and submission to God’s wisdom.
Over and over, the Proverbs highlight fathers as essential in training up children. That’s because fathers and mothers are not interchangeable. Shocking, I know. A father is not a mother, and a mother is not a father. Thank God for that, because they have different roles and different responsibilities.
Having children is one of the greatest blessings in life. The norm and expectation, the way God designed the world, is that a husband and wife will be fruitful and multiply. The providence of God carries on through the lives of children. His mission advances through families. This is one of the things we have to be resolute on, because in many liberal contexts, having multiple kids is seen as something radical, like something’s wrong with you.
As an example, I’ve spoken with several families in our church who, when they go around town with their little flock, get strange remarks and a side eye about how many kids they have. So we must encourage one another to remember God’s Word and why it’s good and a blessing to have children.
The Bible doesn’t have a book that says, “Here’s how you parent.” Proverbs is honestly the closest we have. There isn’t a whole litany of literature in the Bible on parenting well but there is a lot on wisdom.
A Wise Son Hears His Father’s Instruction
“A wise son hears his father’s instruction, but a scoffer does not listen to rebuke.” (Proverbs 13:1)
To start, we want to focus on children. There are two pieces of instruction here. A wise son receives the advice, instruction, and wisdom of his father. The second half deals with admonishment: a child should receive correction and rebuke. There is admonishment in parenting. You must be able to tell children “no,” firmly sometimes. And children do not like to hear “no.” But children, it is good for you to honor your father and mother by receiving the word “no.”
One of the humbling things about becoming a parent is that all the insecurities you brought into it, all the deficiencies you thought you had buttoned up and hidden, get totally exposed. Somehow your children learn how to press the very buttons you thought you had mastered. If you’re a deeply insecure parent, meaning you don’t know Christ and the security you have in Him, then you will be tempted to give in to your child’s impulses, to not advise and admonish, to just keep the child happy. “How do I keep this thing from being upset? Because when it’s upset, our life turns upside down.” That’s not what we want to do.
Children, if you know when to be silent and when to receive parental instruction, the Bible is very clear: you’re going to enjoy many benefits in life. It will go better for you.
This was a difficult lesson for me as a young man. I’m the oldest of three, and the oldest child often gets the experimental treatment. The parents, as much as they’ve read and been raised in a Christian home, often don’t know what they’re doing. I was a stubborn young man. I argued with my father often, over a variety of things. It did not matter what it was. It led me to feel adrift, aimless, and bitter. Some of that bitterness was understandable; but much of it was undeserved and made up, because I was an angsty teenager. It took years to reconcile with my father, because I had to get over my own bitterness. But when I learned to forgive, lay it aside, and receive my father’s love, instruction, and wisdom, my life became infinitely better.
Children, as difficult as it is, you must learn to hear your parents not just listen to their words, but actually hear and apply them. Matthew Henry put it this way:
“He is a wise son, and is in a far way to be wiser, that hears his father’s instruction, desires to hear it, regards it, and complies with it, and does not merely give it the hearing.”
We all know the difference. When somebody is listening to you but not actually listening. Children often do this. They hear what the parent is saying, but they’re just trying to get out of the conversation. The same is true in marriage: you can tell when your spouse is nodding along to your story and not actually listening. We want to raise children who are able to receive instruction, desire instruction, and comply with it.
Underneath all of this is a reality: there is a hierarchy in the home under Christ. The husband and father is the head of the home, vested with authority by nature and by God to rule the home. The wife, alongside her husband, is under his authority. The children are under the father and mother. Both play key, indispensable roles in raising children. The mother’s unique biological gifting provides children with nurture, support, and provision that the father biologically cannot. The father is focused on public life, providing for the family, legacy, the future, and protection. His role is also tied to his own biology and God’s purpose for him.
This is a beautiful picture of how God has made the home. Children submit to their parents, the wife is under the husband, and the husband and the whole family are under Christ. And a wise child listens to his parents because it will go better for him or her than if they didn’t.
Why does this matter? Because it reflects how we listen to and obey God.
Jesus said that if we love Him, we will obey His commands. You were born into a family, not of your own choosing, God gave you your family. It’s one of the givens in life. Children must be raised to honor the Lord and His providence by honoring the parents they were given, because it reflects how we as sons of God must obey God. And we as parents must model the behavior we expect of our children, because we ourselves are under Christ. We should hear Christ’s instruction and not scoff at it. We don’t just read the Word and go away unchanged; we apply it and put it into practice.
You will notice a refrain: many of the things in parenting are very simple, do this, don’t do that. but they are incredibly challenging. Obeying your parents in your teenage years is challenging. Raising your children according to God’s Word is simple, but challenging. That is why you need the grace of God. If you think of yourself as high and lifted up, full of wisdom, never needing to grow, then you will not possess the power and grace necessary to persevere in parenting.
The degree to which you understand the authority of God and obey Him is directly related to your ability to parent well. If you think God does not really care about your sin, you will be licentious with your children. For example, you’ll give them whatever they want, but not what they need. And the opposite is true: if you view God as a miser, harsh and displeased with you at all times, that will invariably shape how you parent and how you view your children.
Train Up a Child
“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6)
Let’s talk about parenting particularly. We’ll focus on training and instructing children first, then correction and consequences second.
If you don’t train and correct early, you will pay for it later. It’s more difficult to train later than to train early, because habit and formation have already set in. Francis Taylor, a pastor of old, said it this way:
“Parents then are very inconsiderate, who suffer their children to live loosely for a time, hoping to reclaim them afterwards.”
If I can use a crude analogy…dogs are not children, as much as you may think; they’re animals…but there’s something similar in training a dog. We have a bird dog. If you train a dog later in life, it is more difficult to teach it good habits than when it’s a puppy. It’s a similar principle in rearing children. They must be trained early. They must receive instruction early.
This training, the way a child should mature spiritually, bringing them to God, so to speak, is our privilege and job as parents. How should we do this? I didn’t receive an instruction manual when I became a parent. My family didn’t practice much family worship growing up, and many of us are the same way. What does family worship look like? John Gill, a Baptist pastor, wrote in a way that broadens our perspective:
“by praying with them and for them, by bringing them under the means of grace, the ministry of the word, by instructing them in the principles of religion, teaching them their duty to God and man, and setting them good examples of a holy life and conversation; and this is to be done according to their capacity, and as they are able to understand and receive the instructions given them... And when he is old he will not depart from it; not easily, nor ordinarily; there are exceptions to this observation; but generally, where there is a good education, the impressions of it do not easily wear off, nor do men ordinarily forsake a good way they have been brought up in.”
What are we trying to communicate? We must be able to speak to children in a way fitting for them. One of my defaults is that I over-explain. When a child asks a simple question, I’ll treat them as a fellow adult, “Oh, you want to know about God? Let’s talk about predestination.” That is not helpful. Children need to be approached and educated as children, not just in the things of God, but in all areas of life.
Many parents today feel swamped, overwhelmed, and confused. It’s always humorous to watch parents who are very idealistic, typically millennials like myself, try methods that are different from their own parents’. They start with the first child: maybe we’ll try free-range parenting, or gentle parenting; we’re not allowed to say “good job”; we don’t want to say no. By the time they have their third child, the boomer inside them comes out, and they revert to all the default settings they were raised with.
If the church today were to err in one direction, I don’t believe it would be that we’re too strict with our children. But we may be a little too licentious. Many of us were raised in Christian homes that were rather strict in some ways. Christian rock music was considered worldly in my home; I wasn’t allowed to enjoy it. My wife watched Saved by the Bell growing up, which I find remarkable.
The temptation for us as parents today is to become too permissive. You’ll find people who were saved out of darkness and brought into the light of Christ, hungry to raise their children in God’s ways but then you’ll also have Christians raised in Christian homes who think, “My parents were a little strict.” The temptation in our day is that we’ve lost a bit of our edge as parents: the expectation, the norms, passing down traditions and customs. I was speaking with someone the other day about how, growing up, I wasn’t allowed to call any adult by their first name; it was all Mr. and Mrs. Somehow children run around today on a first-name basis. It’s a micro example of how many of us aren’t passing down tradition, customs, and norms. I don’t know that it’s a good thing.
In terms of how we raise our children in the things of God, a basic building block is family worship. Some theologians, and even the Bible, hint that the home is a little church. There should be a pattern and spirit of worship in the home: joy in the Lord and instruction in His ways. In our Sunday worship, we have a liturgy: a call to worship, songs, confession, repentance, the reading of God’s Word. Much of this is easily transferable to the home, and it is the duty of fathers to lead the family in it. It can be done through simple prayers, through reading the Bible, through teaching your children to forgive according to God’s Word. It can even be a full liturgy.
I’ve tried many things. There’s a book called Be Thou My Vision which is a liturgy book for personal devotion, with creeds, songs, and prayers. I was using it for personal devotion and tried it for family worship one time. It took 30 minutes to get through, and I’m never doing that again. The basic principle, especially for fathers, is that it is better to do something than nothing.
So many of us get caught up on what’s best, on what will guarantee our child turns out mature and knowing everything. But instead you should just try something. Pray. Lead your family in song. If it was never modeled to you, I know it can feel awkward. But say, “We’re going to read the Scriptures tonight, and then I’m going to lead us in Amazing Grace.” Pick a song you know. You don’t sing well? I don’t care. Maybe your wife can; have her help you. But you, father, are in charge of these things. You must do something rather than nothing. It’s your duty before the Lord.
This often gets into Christian schooling. I’m convinced that Christian children deserve a Christian education, whether through homeschool or Christian private school. Government schooling is incredibly subversive, especially in liberal contexts. These schools do not honor the Lord or fear Him; in fact, they often despise Christianity. We had a family at our church whose child was making a Christmas ornament to decorate the tree in his classroom and it had the birth of Jesus Christ on it. The teacher disallowed it because it promoted Christianity. That’s the environment we’re dealing with. This isn’t public school back in the ‘90s, where things seemed fine. These are radically subversive government schools.
At our church, we don’t make this a binding issue. We simply encourage, remind, and try to provide resources. Some Christian parents I know have chosen public school because of a child’s particular needs, and that’s permissible; they just have to do more work on their end to raise that child in God’s ways. But the exception does not diminish the principle: Christian children need a Christian education.
Education is one of the key ways our national allegiance to God has been undermined, through government schools that are atheistic and amoral, training children in godlessness. You won’t have a Christian nation for very long if entire generations are raised in these environments.
There’s an interesting question in Proverbs 22:6 that may be rattling around in your head. It says, “even when he is old, he will not depart from it.” What if they do though? I know several Christian parents whose children seem to have walked away from the faith after they left home. This is always tragic. I get calls from parents whose kids come to CU, a sophomore living away from home, saying, “Pastor, can you please do something? My child is walking away from God; he’s around terrible influences.” It is very difficult to watch a child walk away from what you tried to instruct them in.
Here’s the bottom line: you cannot control outcomes. It’s in God’s hands. You can only make it so the outcome is more likely than not. That’s your job. This is why we need the grace and mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ, because it is ultimately not your job to save. It is God’s.
I was at a meeting with a few other ministers a few years back. The Bible has very serious things to say about ministers and their children. One minister came to the meeting having written a letter of resignation, not because he had failed personally, to his knowledge, but because his adult child was no longer walking with the Lord. He said, “I need you to help me understand what I’m supposed to do here.” The other ministers formed what amounted to an investigation, which sounds more serious than it was, looking into his life. Did he raise his child in the Lord? Did he invest in Christian education? Did they practice family worship? Did he do all he could? At the end, they told him, “Yes, you did all you could, brother. You do not need to resign because your adult child walked away from the faith.” That man displayed a humility that is rare in our day. He was willing to own that he could have done better.
We need patience with one another, and we need the grace and mercy of God, not only for our faults, but because salvation belongs to the Lord, not to us. This does not give you a pass on neglecting your duties; it grounds your duties in the good news that God saves, and that you don’t.
The Rod and Reproof
“The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother. When the wicked increase, transgression increases, but the righteous will look upon their downfall. Discipline your son, and he will give you rest; he will give delight to your heart.” (Proverbs 29:15–17)
Let’s get to the part everyone wants to talk about: discipline. Reproof and correction are incredibly important for children (and for adults, believe it or not). Matthew Henry put it this way:
“If a reproof will serve without the rod, it is well, but the rod must never be used without a rational and grave reproof; and then, though it may be a present uneasiness both to the father and to the child, yet it will give wisdom.”
Consequences and correction are fundamental to our job as parents, particularly fathers. My mother had a wooden spoon in the Suburban that she would hold up, and I knew what it meant. My father had a belt. Take that for what it’s worth. Children don’t just need lectures and instruction all the time; they need consequences for their disobedience. You can’t always have a rational conversation with a child, many times it’s counterproductive. You need to speak to them with grace, truth, and love, in a way they can understand, but they also need consequences.
This goes back to what I said at the beginning: children are little humans with bodies and souls. Even in a Christian home, when a child says, “I’m sorry, please forgive me,” there still may be natural consequences to suffer. If an adult commits a crime, we hope he repents of his sin, but he still receives consequences. The home functions the same way. If you do not give a child consequences for disobedience, they will not learn.
This doesn’t mean you go around breathing empty threats which is a fault of mine too often. Ex. “If you do this, we’re not going to do that,” and then you don’t follow through. Children pick up on that quickly and take advantage of it; they’re very clever, and they become clever adults. You also don’t want to be a tyrant in your home. The goal of consequences isn’t to create a fearful home, but a respectful and honorable one, where mother and father are respected and the father’s headship is honored. We don’t rule the home with an iron fist. That’s unnecessary and unbiblical.
Understand that how you talk to your child, not just the consequences, but the instruction, will invariably and by design become the narrative they hear in their mind for the rest of their life. I still hear my father’s and mother’s voice in my head when I do something silly, when I make a mistake, or when I do something good. That track plays in my head. How we speak to our children forms the background noise of how they understand themselves and reality. So we must season our speech with wisdom and prudence, because it will shape them for the rest of their lives.
We should also not be fearful of our children. In our day, with so many disobedient children in the world, a lot of parents seem to walk on eggshells. It is perfectly reasonable to expect your children to obey what you say. I know that’s parenting 101, but our world is not saying it. Do not think that correcting a child and giving consequences is mean. To withhold that is to neglect their formation. Fathers have a duty to lead the way in correction.
Again, this connects to how you view the cross and sin. If you believe it was a small thing for Jesus to die for your sins and receive the punishment you and I deserve, then you’ll think consequences aren’t that important. But our sin is treason against the King of Kings, and Jesus took our punishment, our consequences, on Himself. And in His wisdom and providence, God still corrects us and offers reproof from His Word. He disciplines us. He shapes us.
What we’re after with our children is not just behavior modification; we’re after their hearts. We want them formed in Christlikeness. But that doesn’t mean we can’t expect them to conform their behavior to certain standards. Do you see the tension? This is the danger of the gentle-parenting. We want to train them to become mature adults. The consequences you design are not meant to be overly severe or aimed at revenge; they should be instructive. There’s a lot of room for creativity, whether chores or timeouts or something else, and parents will choose different applications. But there must be consequences.
Why does this matter so much? Solomon connects it in verse 16: “When the wicked increase, transgression increases, but the righteous will look upon their downfall.” This is sandwiched between two verses on parenting, because the home is the building block for society. As goes the home, so goes society. A society with undisciplined children leads to increased transgression and unrighteousness which is what we see today: homes that aren’t governed well, fathers who don’t know what they’re doing or who neglect their duties, fathers who are absent, mothers who are overwhelmed and anxious, children who don’t receive the instruction they need. This increases societal rebellion against God.
On the other hand: “Discipline your son, and he will give you rest; he will give delight to your heart.” A child who grows up wise gives you rest, because you can rest easy. I may not always agree with my son’s decisions, but I can trust that he has a good head on his shoulders, makes wise decisions, and knows the Lord. That breathes life into a parent. Those who discipline their children will be at ease, because they can trust them and delight in their accomplishments. Those who do not will suffer embarrassment and dishonor.
A Radical Vision
So what are the three key principles? First, children, you are to obey your parents and honor your father and mother. Second, fathers, you should lead the way in instruction. Third, children must receive consequences. In all of this, we must trust the Lord, who is the author of salvation.
What I’ve laid out is so radical that it’s almost unrecognizable to those who don’t follow Christ. We believe that God carries His mission forward through families; that children are a fundamental blessing from the Lord; that a husband and wife should have children, not as one option among many, but as a fundamental purpose of marriage; that husbands are to lead their homes; that children are to obey their parents and receive consequences.
All of this flies in the face of a world that despises children and seeks to enact laws enabling their murder as if they were inconveniences, a world that hates fathers and their duties, that despises motherhood and treats it as oppression, that despises God, and that scoffs at rebuke and consequences. There is a stark line between what God promotes and what the world celebrates.
But, the way God set up the world is the way to flourish, the way to prosper, the way to blessing. This is what we see in Proverbs. We cannot entertain the lies of the enemy on this fundamental matter. The world needs more children. The world needs more Christian families with children. This honors the Lord. If we do not heed God’s Word on these crucial matters, we’re not just looking at societal rebellion and disobedience; statistically, we’re looking at a catastrophic population decline in our nation.
Fathers, in the spirit of a duty owed to your fellow countrymen, I encourage you to celebrate families, to take hold of your responsibilities, to have children. Parents, I know that raising children is challenging in a day when the world seems designed against them. But our grumbling and complaining is unproductive. We are to celebrate, honor, and bless life. For those of us who trust the Lord, we aim to walk according to His Word, to obey His mandate, and to honor Him. And in all of this, we trust Him and have faith in Him, because He first loved us by sending His Son to die on the cross for our sins.
This sermon was preached at The Well Church in Boulder, CO on July 19, 2026. To listen to this sermon go here. To watch this sermon go here.