[0:00] This message was recorded at Vision Baptist Church in Alfred, Georgia. It is our prayer that you will be blessed by the preaching of God's Word. Turn to Psalm 127, please. Psalm 127.
[0:11] We'll start reading at verse 1. The Bible says, Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman watcheth.
[0:22] But in vain is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows. For so he giveth his beloved sleep. Lo, children are a heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is his reward.
[0:35] As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man, so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them. They shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.
[0:48] The answer to child raising we talked about last night is in the Bible. This is really God's Word, and it's really the truth. It spans every generation. It doesn't matter if you're white-headed, no-headed, or no-hair, whatever.
[1:02] It doesn't matter. The Bible's got the answer. I don't. The reason my wife and I qualify for this, I said last night, is we've made every mistake possible in raising children.
[1:14] There's no mistake that could be made that we did not make. Last night we talked about success in discipline. Discipline. Call it whatever you want.
[1:26] The Bible talks about scourging, talks about chastising, and correction. They need discipline. Discipline. You say it's not easy.
[1:38] They need discipline. And we talked, and we're not going to go through that again last night. But you say, well, I love my child. I can't do that. If you don't do that, you hate your child. You hate your child if you do not discipline your child.
[1:53] Your child needs to realize there's responsibilities for every action that they do. You've got rules. You've got limitations. They break those.
[2:05] They suffer the consequences. We won't read all the verses again. But there's also tonight, we'll start with success in direction. There's a leadership in the home.
[2:18] Notice Ephesians 5.23 says, For the husband is the head of the house. Hebrews chapter 12, when it talks about the Lord chasing in us when we do something we're not supposed to, it talks about the father.
[2:35] The head of the house is the father. Not the boss. Not the slave driver. But the Bible says, For the husband is the head. Ephesians 6.4 says, And ye fathers.
[2:49] When it comes to discipline, leadership in the home, Dad, look up here. You're in charge. You're in charge. You may let mama take over, but God's put you in charge.
[3:05] You are the man. And we'll never be godly fathers until we're godly men. Leadership is your job.
[3:16] It's nobody else's. Young ladies that aren't married, can I give you one word of advice? I don't know a lot. Let me give you some advice. Marry a man, not some sissy.
[3:28] Marry a man. Somebody that will lead you. Marry one of them. Don't get the other. You'll suffer the rest of your life.
[3:39] It's your job. God made you for this. That should be your passion. Your family. Your home. So I've got to man up.
[3:51] Man up. Be an example of leadership. Your children need to see you handle success and failure.
[4:03] They need to see you live what you say. Joshua said, As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
[4:14] Joshua 24.15 He didn't ask Miss Joshua. He didn't ask Leroy and Inez what they thought. He says, For me and my house, we are going to serve God.
[4:30] My dad never asked me if I wanted to go to church. He didn't. He didn't care if I wanted to go. I didn't care if Jim and Tamara wanted to go.
[4:41] I was going. I fed them. And clothed them. So they were going. It's just that simple. Noah, in an awful, wicked day.
[4:54] Terribly wicked. We think that today's bad. Noah's day was terrible. Noah decided he did not want Shem, Ham, and Japheth to be like everybody else.
[5:10] In his heart, he says, I'm going to obey God. God said, Build an ark. He said, God, what's an ark?
[5:21] God said, it's going to rain. Noah said, what's that? He didn't know anything about that. But he made up in his heart he was going to obey God. So he did obey God.
[5:34] Guess what happened? Hebrews 11, 7 says, He did it to the saving of his house. Man, He saved his children because he just obeyed God.
[5:51] Was it easy? No. I'm sure they mocked him. Children his boy's age come by and said, Your daddy's a lunatic for doing what he's doing.
[6:02] But his dad did what God said and his three boys come out on the other side. That's what I want for my children. I want my children to obey God.
[6:15] They watched their daddy do that. Their dad walked with God. In Mark chapter 9, 14 through 25, we won't read it all, but there was a dad that brought his boy to Jesus.
[6:30] He was a lunatic. He fell down, foamed at the mouth, and he brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and asked him, said, If you'll only believe, and that dad was so honest.
[6:43] He said, Lord, I believe. Help thou mine unbelief. That's honesty. There's days when you'll raise your children by this Bible and you'll look at yourself in the mirror and think, That's not working.
[7:03] I did. You made me much more spiritual than I am. I did. I thought, This ain't gonna work. She did too. But this does.
[7:14] I do what God says it will work. That boy, that dad, got his son given back to him because God healed him and gave him his child back.
[7:25] So I'm an example. Dad, Mom, you're an example of Christ. You're the Christ representative in your house. You're the Christian representative in your house.
[7:38] You're it. You're all they know. They live with you. They should know Mom and Dad love God and they're saved. Now, I was growing up in a small town.
[7:49] I knew my mom, my dad were saved. I knew a lot of other folks said they were. But as I got older, got to be a teenager in my 20s, I realized some of them had said they were.
[8:00] They really didn't act like they were saved. But I couldn't point my finger at Dad and Mom. I knew they were right with God. That's what I chose. They deserve that.
[8:11] They deserve a Mom and Dad that will represent Christ in their home. I need to represent Bible convictions in my home. I need to represent character in my home.
[8:24] So I'm an example. I've been elected as the leader by Christ. I have. God gave us that. I am to train my child.
[8:38] Proverbs 22, verse 6 says I am to train my child. The word train means nourish, feed, and dedicate. That's what I do.
[8:50] We do as a child of God. Now, we talked a little bit last night about it. Train. Boys and girls are different. Y'all know that? Huh?
[9:02] Yeah, they are. Praise God for it. They're different. Train your son what a man is. Train him what a man is. Don't raise a sissy.
[9:15] Train him to be a man. Don't let your wife, his mother, pamper him all the time. Boys are boys. Raise them rough.
[9:28] Knock them around. Wrestle with them. Knock them down. Do whatever. Train them to be a boy. A man. Because one day that boy will grow up to be a man.
[9:41] He'll have to lead a home. He'll have to get a job. He'll have to be the leader in his home. Raise boys rough. Raise them rough.
[9:52] Fight with them. Wrestle with them. Do whatever. I mean, I told him last night, we'd move the furniture out of the way. And I mentioned I watch wrestling.
[10:02] I don't anymore. But I used to. So don't let that get out. And my boy would bring boys over. They'd get on the couch and elbow drop me in the belly.
[10:14] And we'd fight. I fought with my dad. He'd hit me so hard and my shoulder would go numb. And I'd catch him walking down the hall with his back turned and I'd knock our daylights out of him.
[10:26] We fought. I mean, I thank God for that. I mean, you know, I let her do with my daughter that way. We didn't wrestle at all. We had tea parties and did the girls stuff.
[10:37] Raise boys rough. They're different. I watched mothers in my church and their little boy 10 or 12 years old they'd get in trouble and here went mother getting between them.
[10:49] Leave boys alone. Make men out of them. Really. Grow up. Let them be men. Don't rescue them. Guard your little girl.
[11:02] Your girl needs your protection and she needs your provision. her. She needs your security. If you messed with my little girl when she was growing up I'd have got you.
[11:16] I would have hurt you if I could. Girls need security. They need protection. They need to know what a man does.
[11:27] And the only way your little girl will know what because she's going to look for a man one day. She'll grow up. She'll tell you she's never going to get married and stay home with you until she gets to a certain age and then she'll start looking for somebody to marry.
[11:42] That's just normal. But when she starts looking she needs to know that she wants a man to marry not a sissy and some pipsqueak at mama's race.
[11:55] Now I'm just being honest. I don't hurt you feelings but that's what they want. So when she starts looking she needs to say I need somebody just like my daddy.
[12:07] My daughter she told her my wife had a ball game or something she's married to a Baptist preacher God help her but she told her sometimes I feel like I'm living with my daddy again.
[12:19] But she picked him herself I had nothing to do with it. But train them train little boys train little girls and they're different. They have different roles in a family.
[12:32] Train them. Then teach them. Teach them. Steadily earnest energetic stay with them. Teach them how to treat other people.
[12:44] Teach them how to teach them how to have good manners. For as worthless sometimes as Jim was he would say yes ma'am no ma'am give them good manners.
[12:55] It learns. They got to learn how to respect other people. people. You don't want a brat. And the only way you'll do it is train them and teach them in your house.
[13:09] They need to learn to respect people. If they don't they won't respect the police the preacher the governor the teacher they won't respect anybody if they're not taught it in the house.
[13:22] be real. Be real. Don't put a show in front of your children because when they're really pretty smart they can see through you probably that quick or quicker than that.
[13:43] Be real. Let them see you as you all the time. My kids was raised in a preacher's house. I made up my mind when they were born that they would not be different just because God called me to preach.
[14:02] They would be normal. I let them be normal. Make sure they're real. Be responsible for your children. Please be responsible that God gave them to you.
[14:17] I mean where I come from they raised dogs. Coon dogs, bear dogs, rabbit dogs, God squirrel dogs, tree squirrels, tree everything. Tree youth if you're climbing a tree.
[14:29] They're all kind of dogs and they train their dogs. But I look at their youngins and no they never trained their youngins. Never. They tie the dog up at night and turn the youngins loose.
[14:43] Something's right, something's wrong with that. It's okay to teach your kids to deer hunt, golf, squirrel hunt, do computers, teach them everything. But you better read this enough to know when they come to you and say, I need to be saved, you know how.
[15:00] I've had mom and dad bring their child to me and say, preacher, show my boy and my daughter how to be saved. And I do it, I'm glad to do it. But I'm thinking, man, how come you don't?
[15:12] Y'all know you're supposed to read this. I know what I told you. You need to read your Bible. You need to read your Bible. More than 30 minutes a day, you need to read your Bible. You need to know what the Word of God says.
[15:27] Then there's relationship. You need to do what you do, training and teaching, convincing. Be consistent and believe it yourself.
[15:42] Believe it yourself. wealth. And then the tools, God's give us all kinds of tools. And my wife is going to come.
[15:53] Come on up here, Red. I call her red or I was red once, but it's not. There you are. I am very nervous.
[16:04] I'm very nervous. It's just like Jim said, we don't have all the answers, but God has all the answers. And one thing that we want to keep saying to you is never be ashamed to ask God for help.
[16:20] God will give you what you need. Just some ideas and tools, and I think that God teaches this, especially in Deuteronomy chapter 6. Verse 4, it says, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, with all thy soul, with all thy might.
[16:40] And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart, and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up, and thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thy hand, and they shalt be as frontlets between the eyes, and thou shalt write them upon the post of thy house and thy gates.
[17:08] What are you supposed to teach your children? Your biblical principles. Biblical principles, when are you supposed to teach those to your children? All the time. When you're in the car, when you're at home, no matter where you are, they're supposed to be so important to you that you are constantly teaching them to your children, as the word of God says.
[17:32] I believe in having the word of God in every room of your house. God speaks loud. I do. I believe that God's word speaks, and it speaks loud.
[17:44] In fact, when Jim was lost before he got saved, he would come home and he would say, Mom, would you wash my clothes? And I would say, sure, I'll wash them so I could put Bible verses in the pockets of his jeans.
[17:59] And then he would bring more thugs home with him, and he would say, Mom, would you wash their clothes? And I said, sure, I'll wash their clothes so I could put the word of God in their jeans pockets.
[18:11] Why? Because God said his word would not return void. You must use the word of God with your children. When they're little, you've got to teach them.
[18:21] I read something today that there is five values that every child should have by the time they're five years old. Five values that you should have taught your child by the time they're five years old. These are godly principles.
[18:33] They're principles of honesty. A child by the time they're five years old needs to know that lying is wrong. If you lie, they're going to lie.
[18:46] So you have got to love the Lord thy God like we read with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.
[18:57] If you get stopped by a policeman, and actually we have had a family in our church, and she got stopped by a policeman, and she lied to him of where she was going.
[19:10] And she was readily to broadcast that. And I looked at her and I said, you're going to reap that. You're going to reap it. If I could take you to that home today, they have two grown children who have not married, and that house is so full of lies until they would not know the truth if it entered in.
[19:29] Those children learn that from their mom and dad. be honest and teach your children honesty. I can remember Jim and Tamara both, you know, you're born in sin.
[19:44] Your children are going to do things that are bad. That's the normal things for them. And when I had thanked and when we had disciplined and I could see no change, I can remember especially in Scotland taking Jim and opening up the Bible and telling him, son, you're lying and this is what the Bible says about liars.
[20:06] And I read to him that Satan was the father of all liars and his eyes got really big and I said, yes Jim, that's what the Bible says. And, you know, it's God that he's responsible to.
[20:20] Honesty. The second thing is justice. They have got to learn, like Jim taught last night, that if they make decisions that they have to be taught what's right.
[20:32] They've got to be taught what's right. You and your wife need to know what you believe and you need to teach that to your child. Yes, they will do what you do, but you must teach them that there is justice and they need to do that.
[20:50] How are you going to do that? How are you going to teach them that there is a response? You've got to take responsibility. Just like Jim taught, you have got to go the Bible route and do it the Bible way.
[21:03] You know, I know that a lot of you young couples right now are struggling with this. You're struggling with discipline because you feel like somebody is going to call DSS on you if you do it out in public and it very well could happen.
[21:21] But you still practice the word of God discipline at home. you tell that child if you're out and they're doing things that they should not do, say okay.
[21:31] You talk to them before you leave and say if you do this, you will get this and make sure you do that. Follow through with that. Teach justice. And then you want to teach them how to pray.
[21:44] You want to teach them a determination to serve God. Children need to hear you pray. I shared this before. I think it's worth sharing once again.
[21:56] Jim would probably get to this on getting to know your children. Getting to know your children. You pray with them. You read the word of God with them. Tamara read the Bible through by herself when she was 11 years old for the first time.
[22:10] There may be people sitting out here right now who have never started in Genesis and gone through Revelation and read their whole Bible. And you need to do that.
[22:21] But you need to do that with your children. Teach them to do that. Do you know when I was in the 11th grade of high school I had an English teacher in a public school and she said okay you're going to have 20 vocabulary words every week but you're going to find them yourselves and I want you to find them in the Bible.
[22:37] Was that not a great teacher? So what do you do? You read the Bible to find your vocabulary words. If you're homeschooling that would be a great way to get the word of God with your children.
[22:49] You know you never want to ram it down anybody's throat. I always thought it's got to be real to you. It's got to be life to you. You got to live it and live in it as an exciting thing because it is.
[23:03] It is exciting. There are so many exciting stories in the word of God. It's exciting and you want to let your children see that in you. You know if you complain and you want oh I hate this or this or that or the other.
[23:17] Your children are too. Your children are too. Sometimes when you hear your things come out of the mouth of your child you think wonder where they heard that. And then all of a sudden it kind of dawns on you.
[23:27] Oh yeah that sounds like me. So we have to be careful but we need to teach them that. We need to teach children consideration. We need to teach them consideration.
[23:39] They need to consider other people. Children are born selfish. Is that not one of the greatest sins that you ask for forgiveness for all the time. Is selfishness.
[23:51] You know we all are so selfish. And to prove that if we all took a picture right now of this group and we held the picture up. Where are you going to look first? You're going to look at yourself first.
[24:04] You're going to try to find yourself. Because we are selfish human beings. And we see that with our children. We've got to teach our children that sharing is important.
[24:14] Can I tell you that I grew up in a home that we had, we were poor. And my mom's motto was all you have is what you give.
[24:27] Do you know I saw that? My mother reaped that over and over and over and over. Because that's what she did. She gave.
[24:38] And in giving, she just had more. You teach that to your children. You teach your children to tithe. You teach your children to give faith promise.
[24:51] You teach your child to pray about what they give for faith promise. Now listen to me. This is important. When I was a child, my mom would fix out the tithing envelopes for the family.
[25:03] And then she would bring a tithing envelope to me and my sister. And she would give us, first we started out with just a dime. And ten cents went in that tithing envelope. And then we went up to a quarter.
[25:14] And then it went to a dollar. Now you're saying, Athena, that's crazy. No it isn't. Do you know that that put it in my mind and in my heart that that's what I was supposed to do?
[25:27] Teach your children to give. Teach your children consideration. And then the last thing is that you teach children love. You teach them love. How do you teach a child to love?
[25:39] You love each other. The greatest thing you can do for your children is to love your mate. Let them see you hugging your mate.
[25:53] Mama, don't run Daddy down. You love Daddy. Do not teach this. You don't make sarcastic remarks to each other in front of the children. You portray love.
[26:05] Daddy's pick up those little girls and love on them. Tell them, I love you. Daddy loves you more than anything in the whole world.
[26:16] Pick up that little boy. Tell him how much you love him. How much you are proud of him. Do you know that one of our son's best friends was the football coach's son.
[26:28] His name was Dylan. We practically raised Dylan for about five or six years. I gave him all his birthday parties. I mean, he was our child. One day he was at our house and he was doing homework.
[26:38] He was a senior in high school. And he said, Miss Roberts, do you know I've never heard my daddy say that he loved me. Not one time. Dylan was 17 years old and not one time had his dad ever said, son, I love you.
[26:54] Man, that is the saddest thing I've ever heard. We need to say those words, but we need to do those words. It is very easy to say, I love you.
[27:07] But it's what we do that proves whether we really love or not. The last thing I want to share with you is the fact that we need to teach respect to our children.
[27:21] We need to teach them to respect the house of God. We need to teach them to respect the man of God. Never, ever let your child walk up to Brother Austin and say, call him Austin.
[27:35] Out of respect, that's the man of God. You teach your children that this building is dedicated to the Lord. It is not the place that you come into and you run and you hoop and you holler and you scream and all the rest of it.
[27:50] You need to teach them that this is a different place. We go to the park to play, but we go to the house of God to hear from God. Teach that to them.
[28:01] The tools that we have to teach our children are all in the Word of God. It's the tools that God wants us to have for our own selves, and it's the tools that we want to teach them continually.
[28:13] Take every opportunity to teach them the truth of the Word of God. Do it continually. Okay. Thank you, Mom.
[28:29] Give me ten more minutes. We'll be done. Success in demands of our children. We need to have a good relationship with our youngins, our children.
[28:41] Your son, your daughter, we need to know them. You need to research them. You need to know them. To know them, you're going to have to spend some time with them.
[28:53] You're going to have to look them in the eye. You're going to have to talk to them. You're going to have to talk and we talked last night. You're going to sit down and have tea parties with little girls in the middle of the floor with them little bitty cups that's got nothing in it and sit there and sip tea that there's no tea actually in the cup.
[29:09] And you're sitting there telling her how good that is and your legs are breaking because you're sitting on the floor and she's little. You're a big large like me. And so you're sitting there. But you get to know them like that.
[29:20] Walk around with them. Play football with them. Coach them in little league. Do whatever it is to be around them. That way you'll know your child. And you can look.
[29:31] I mean, when Jim was 14, 15, 16, I could look in his eyes and know what was going on through that pea brain of his.
[29:41] I couldn't look at him and know it because I knew him. So be realistic with your demands of your child. Don't have too big.
[29:53] Don't make the expectations too big that Superman couldn't do it. Don't do that. Don't don't live out your dream in your child.
[30:05] I mean, I love sports. I love it. I love it. I ain't going to say no more than that. I love sports. I'd never made Jim play nothing. If he wanted to, that's his business wasn't mine.
[30:19] I never put him out there to do anything. Don't make. And if you didn't make straight A's, your young'un might not. If you wasn't the best student in class, I mean, why expect your children to be?
[30:33] You wasn't. I mean, Jim brought home a C. I'd say glory to God. Because that meant it wasn't a D. Or it wasn't an F and he got passed. So, I mean, you know, expectation.
[30:47] Don't don't don't fix it where your kid can satisfy you. Don't make the expectation so high that your child cannot satisfy you.
[31:00] I'll give you a great example. As a young man in our church, quarterback, the same high school team that Jim played in years after. Good guy. Good quarterback.
[31:11] Fast. Had a good arm. Third year of the third game of the year, he broke his arm. His dad got so mad at him, you would have thought that the kid did it on purpose.
[31:25] Next year, quarterback, still fast, good arm, arm healed. Third game of the year against the same stinking team. Guess what?
[31:36] Broke his arm again. I go over to see him. His dad is ready to strangle his own son.
[31:48] Because, see, he had envisions of him playing at Clemson or Carolina or somewhere. Now, those dreams are diced, which were never his sons, but they were his.
[31:58] He still has trouble with relationships with girls. He doesn't have a girlfriend now. And he's graduated from college and has trouble.
[32:09] And it's because he never pleased his daddy. Because his daddy's expectations were, I think, way too high. And then let your children be normal. Praise God.
[32:19] Let them be normal. Don't, don't, don't, don't walk around them like that. I mean, they're going to fall.
[32:29] They're going to have stitches. Austin, Betty, and all about stitches. Chloe fell again and getting more stitches. They're going to get stitches. They're going to do stuff you don't want them to do. Let them be normal.
[32:42] Then lastly, success in devotion. Let your children know you love God. God is the priority in your life.
[32:55] And when it comes to church, comes to God, God is always going to be first. And I thought of Isaac and Abraham. Can you imagine going with Isaac and Abraham to the top of the mountain?
[33:13] And Abraham's going to sacrifice his own son. I think Abraham laid him down on his back looking at his daddy. And his dad's got a knife in his hand.
[33:25] And he's going to plunge it in his chest. Reckon Isaac knew that his dad loved God? Do you reckon that he thought, boy, my dad would obey God more than anything in the world?
[33:42] That's the way we ought to be in our house. I mean, I knew my dad loved God. Dad didn't say much or do much. But dad loved God. And mama did too.
[33:52] I knew there were two Christians in the world. One was my dad and one was my mom. You need to love. They need to know you love God. They need to know that you love your wife.
[34:07] They need to know that you love them. And if you discipline right, have demands right and direct them right, they need to know you love them.
[34:18] There ain't nothing come between you. Jim was acting like a fool. Just goofy. There was never a time that me and that woman right there didn't love him.
[34:32] And if he called, I was there. If it was jail, some house he shouldn't have been in, somebody he shouldn't have been, I was going to show up because his last name was Roberts.
[34:44] And I might have wanted to beat him half to death, but he was my son. And I was going to love him no matter what he did. Your children need to know that. I believe the reason that my mother got to lead me and my brother to the Lord is because she instilled in us God was first and that they really did love me.
[35:06] Let's pray. Lord, we love you. Thank you, God, for your goodness and your mercy. Lord, we thank you, Father, for the opportunity to talk about the home and parents. God, I pray for these that are here tonight.
[35:19] God, that our parents will be parents who are not even married yet. God, you instill in their heart the Bible has the answer. Jim Roberts and Sandy Roberts don't, but the word of God's got it.
[35:31] And we'll thank you. In Jesus' name, amen. This message was recorded at Vision Baptist Church in Alfredo, Georgia. For more information, log on to www.visionbaptist.com where you can find our service times, location, contact information, and more audio and video recordings.
[35:49] Thank you.