This evening I want us to read from
the sixth chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy.
Still in this rather wonderful Old Testament book,
which, like those mines outside Johannesburg, which I
so often refer to, have great wealth buried
deep within.
But to get the wealth out, you've got
to use effort.
And in Bible study, well, the analogy holds
true.
Here in these Old Testament books, there's veritable
gold to be excavated and to be claimed
as your own.
Well, I'll read to you tonight from the
New International Version of the Bible, and it's
Deuteronomy chapter 6.
These are the commands, decrees, and laws the
Lord your God directed me to teach you,
to observe in the land that you are
crossing the Jordan to possess, so that you,
your children, and their children after them, may
fear the Lord your God as long as
you live, by keeping all his decrees and
commands that I give you, and so that
you may enjoy long life here, O Israel.
And be careful to obey, so that it
may go well with you, and that you
may increase greatly in a land flowing with
milk and honey, just as the Lord, the
God of your fathers, promised you.
Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the
Lord is one.
Love the Lord your God with all your
heart, and with all your soul, and with
all your strength.
These commandments that I give you today are
to be upon your hearts.
Impress them on your children.
Talk about them when you sit at home,
and when you walk along the road, when
you lie down, and when you get up.
Tie them as symbols on your hands, and
bind them on your foreheads.
Write them on the door frames of your
houses, and on your gates.
When the Lord your God brings you into
the land he swore to your fathers, to
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give you a
land with large flourishing cities you did not
build, houses filled with all kinds of good
things you did not provide, wells you did
not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you
did not plant, then, when you eat and
are satisfied, be careful that you do not
forget the Lord who brought you out of
Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
Fear the Lord your God, serve him only,
and take your oath in his name.
Do not follow other gods, the gods of
the peoples around you, for the Lord your
God, who is among you, is a jealous
God, and his anger will burn against you,
and he will destroy you from the face
of the land.
Do not test the Lord your God as
you did at Massa.
Be sure to keep the commands of the
Lord your God, and the stipulations and decrees
he has given you.
Do what is right and good in the
Lord's sight, so that it may go well
with you, and you may go in and
take over the good land that the Lord
promised on oath to your forefathers, thrusting out
all your enemies before you, as the Lord
said.
In the future, when your son asks you
what is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees,
and laws the Lord our God has commanded
you, tell him, we were slaves of Pharaoh
in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out
of Egypt with a mighty hand.
Before our eyes, the Lord sent miraculous signs
and wonders, great and terrible, upon Egypt and
Pharaoh and his whole household.
But he brought us out from there to
bring us in, and give us the land
that he promised on oath to our forefathers.
The Lord commanded us to obey all these
decrees, and to fear the Lord our God,
so that we might always prosper and be
kept alive, as in the case today.
And if we are careful to obey all
this law before the Lord our God, as
he has commanded us, that will be our
righteousness.
You might care to have your Bibles open
at the book of Deuteronomy and the sixth
chapter.
And from time to time, we'll be looking
at other parallel scriptures from this book.
Let me also remind you of two or
three verses.
You don't need to turn to them, though
you can make a mental note from the
sixth chapter of Ephesians.
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for
this is right.
Honor your father and mother, which is the
first commandment with a promise, that it may
go well with you, and that you may
enjoy long life on the earth.
Fathers, do not exasperate your children.
Instead, bring them up in the training and
instruction of the Lord.
Well, you might think that one of the
most unlikely books in the Old Testament to
look for a doctrine of the Christian family
and pointers for the training of children would
be the book of Deuteronomy.
Indeed, there would be a lot of people,
a lot of educationalists, if they had been
present here this evening, who would perhaps think
that this whole concept of education and the
training of boys and girls could in no
way find any help at all from the
study of Scripture.
Well, those of us who are a little
more informed, and we say that not piously,
we say that in gratitude to God, know
full well that in the Old Testament and
in the New Testament, there is a doctrine
of the bringing up of a family.
There is a doctrine of parental responsibility.
Indeed, there's a doctrine of the responsibility of
children to parents.
There is nothing, I am persuaded, even in
the complexities of the 20th century, that crosses
our lives.
Nothing that affects our lifestyle, which cannot find
help and pointers in the study of the
Word of God.
Indeed, I would put this out to you
for your consideration, that a great deal of
the Bible is nothing more than a rehearsal
of what happens in family units, a rehearsal
of what happens in family units.
Take, for instance, if you think that I'm
perhaps exaggerating, the opening book of the Bible,
which of course bears the name of Genesis.
How would you describe it?
What would you say the contents of the
book of Genesis are?
Well, as I read the book of Genesis,
I find on the opening pages the story
of Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel.
And one hears and listens and sees something
of that family environment.
You push on a little bit and you
come across the story of Noah and his
sons and the great flood and all that
happened prior to and consequent on that flood.
And how could you summarize those chapters that
deal with this particular event?
Well, you could say this is what affected
the family of Noah.
Right, go through.
Again, continuing in the book of Genesis, who
do you come to next?
Who's the most important person after Noah?
Well, of course, it's Abraham.
And what do you read of Abraham?
Well, he's taken out of the land of
Canaan.
He's taken out of the land of Mesopotamia
and he's brought to the promised land to
Canaan.
He comes with his wife.
What's one of the great problems in the
matrimonial relationship between Sarah and Abraham?
Well, they're childless.
And what has a great deal of the
Bible to deal with when it is taken
up with the story of Abraham and Sarah?
Well, it's the advent of Isaac, their son.
And what happens as a result of that?
Continue to read.
And what do you find?
Well, you're given an insight into the home
of Isaac when he's mature and when he's
married and the birth of the twins, Jacob
and Esau.
And then you go on further in case
I haven't convinced you.
And what are you confronted with now?
Well, it's the story of Jacob and his
lads and the problems that there are in
this family circle and the enslavement of Joseph
and eventually the creation of a home for
Joseph in Egypt and so on.
I hope I've convinced you.
The book of Genesis itself is more or
less a statement of one family circle and
its story after another.
And I say that you could go, albeit
to some extent piecemeal, but you could make
your way across the Old Testament in particular
and your study of the Bible would largely
follow the events around family circles.
And of course, when you come into the
New Testament, you're confronted with a magnificent story,
the story of the holy family, of Mary,
of Joseph, and of the infant maturing to
boyhood and on to manhood, the Lord Jesus
Christ.
And of course, wherever you get history, wherever
you get the record of narrative in the
Old Testament and the New Testament, you get
general deductions, general principles which are drawn.
For what reason?
Well, for this reason.
So that the likes of you and I
who live centuries after this biblical record may
come to this book and say, yes, I
can identify myself with that story.
I see that principle.
I lift out that lesson.
I apply it to myself.
I believe that God has encapsulated these narratives
in his book so that I might be
a better father, so that I might be
a better mother, so that I might be
a better husband, a better wife, and so
on.
So that I may fulfill my role within
the kingdom of God to a degree of
excellence.
This is the reason, says one of the
writers of the New Testament books, why all
these stories were recorded, and he's referring specifically
to the Old, that we might have instruction,
that we might learn from what these men
and women had to cope with and from
what the biblical writers have to teach.
Now, when you take such a book as
a Proverbs, how would you define Proverbs?
Well, I would say that within Proverbs you
have got precepts.
You have got Old Testament doctrines, which will
help you to control your life if you'd
submitted to the authority of God, yes.
And particularly, you've got doctrines that will help
a parent, and you've got doctrines which will
help a child.
The Hebrew philosophy, or rather theology, of education
is encapsuled in the book of Proverbs.
But alas, the majority of people, if they
know anything about Proverbs at all, could possibly
in this area only quote you that one
about sparing the rod and spoiling the child,
as though you've got the whole of God's
revelation and God's principles in dealing with the
family circle in that one maxim.
And of course, the proposition, the whole idea
is just preposterous.
But if you look into the book of
Proverbs, you will find there some basic rules
and help for parents and for children, for
young people, and how to conduct and control
their family lives and their personal lives.
Well then, so much for this.
I could continue for a great deal of
time just in the area of pure generalities,
trying to show you how the Bible itself
has a great deal to do with modern
life, and how the thing that is threatened
most, as I understand it, in 1979, the
family unit can be rescued, can remain intact
by an application of biblical principles to the
present situation.
Now, I suppose in a very general sense,
you could say that the whole book of
Deuteronomy is given to the children of Israel
by their father Moses, and because it was
very much a father figure that Moses adopted
during the whole course of his lengthy life
of 120-odd years.
You remember, he was the one who brought
them out of Egypt.
He was the one who disciplined them in
the name of God.
He led them, he encouraged them, he corrected
them, and so on.
And in the opening chapters or the opening
verses of Deuteronomy, you've got the idea of
this aged Moses, this father of the nation,
teaching his children, the children of Israel, these
things which he had learned himself from God.
But it's not in that general sense that
I want us to look into the doctrine
of the godly family from the book of
Deuteronomy this evening.
Rather, it's in the literal sense, where the
Lord God causes Moses to put down certain
principles and propositions to literal mothers and fathers
in the bringing up of their offspring.
So, what I have sought to do, and
obviously this is no exhaustive treatment of the
subject at all, what I have sought to
do is to place alongside one scripture and
another scripture, which directly or indirectly has to
deal with this idea of parental responsibility.
So, we turn to the first declaration that
you find Moses, in the name of God,
making to parents in his day.
The ninth verse of the fourth chapter.
Only be careful and watch yourselves closely so
that you do not forget the things your
eyes have seen or let them slip from
your heart as long as you live.
Teach them to your children and to their
children after them.
Remember the day you stood before the Lord
your God.
What is Moses here saying?
Well, he's saying this, and it's very simple.
You children of Israel have received a tremendous
inheritance.
It is something that makes you outstanding amongst
the nations of the world.
Indeed, he actually uses more or less that
language in the seventh verse.
What other nation is so great as to
have their gods near them the way the
Lord our God is near us whenever we
pray to him.
Now, these things that you have received from
the Lord, not only does he say in
the second verse of this chapter are you
not to add to them or subtract from
them, you are to preserve them and you
are to pass them on to your children.
Moses is not so much concerned about the
literal will that the Hebrews might write so
that their children benefit when they pass on,
but he is concerned about spiritual riches which
belongs to the Hebrew community as a whole,
which have enriched them during their wilderness wanderings
and which will greatly benefit the generations that
are to come.
So, addressing all mums and dads who are
before him, for you remember Moses is now
an old man and he's taking his leave,
he gives them this piece of advice.
Remember what God has done for you.
Don't let one thing, verse nine, don't let
one thing slip from your grasp, from your
hearts, but pass it on to your children
for you are responsible for that presenting of
the baton of spiritual treasure to the next
generation.
Well, come on to the chapter and you'll
find Moses saying exactly the same thing, but
with one addition.
We'll come to the fifth and start reading
from that verse, Deuteronomy 6, verse 5.
Love, love the Lord your God with all
your heart, with all your soul, with all
your strength.
These commandments that I give you today are
to be upon your hearts.
Impress them upon your children.
Talk about them when you sit at home,
when you walk along the road, when you
lie down, and when you get up.
Tie them as symbols on your hands and
bind them on your foreheads.
Write them on the door frames of your
houses and on your gates.
What's he saying?
Well, he's repeating what we've discovered in the
fourth chapter, that the parents are to pass
on what they've learned from God to their
children.
But here he's saying a little bit more.
He's saying that their lifestyle, that word which
I use so much these days because it's
much in vogue, and there is a Christian
lifestyle, their family circle, their environment is to
be conducive so that children shall accept what
dad and mom is saying and implement it
in their lives.
You know on many occasions when it's been
my privilege, my proud privilege, to have a
little babe in my arm here in the
front of the church and parents have brought
their offspring and they want to dedicate themselves
to the Lord.
And I generally put two or three questions
to them.
And one of the questions is this.
Do you promise as best you can and
on dependence also upon the prayers of your
brothers and sisters in the tabernacle to create
such an environment in your home so that
when your little boy, when your little girl
reaches an age of maturity, he, she shall
be led naturally to the Lord Jesus Christ.
And that's not just words that we're going
through when I make that particular proposition.
It's not just some empty religious practice that
we've adopted here as a sort of substitute
for infant baptism.
Here is something very, very holy indeed.
Here parents are contracting with the aid of
their other brothers and sisters to create that
environment so that it's natural to talk about
Jesus.
As the Hebrews were said, were told by
Moses, to make it so much a part
of their home in their tents as they
moved through into the promised land that they
could talk about the Lord God with no
embarrassment at all.
It's natural to them.
It's part of their family life.
And so children will grow up realizing that
what makes their lives so wholesome and so
happy is the trust that they had, that
their parents have in the Lord God.
And they'll want their trust also.
So verse 7 of this chapter says, impress
it.
Impress these things, these instructions you've learned from
God upon your children.
Well let's consider another couple of statements.
They're not directly related to the parent-child
situation, but indirectly they have bearing upon our
theme.
Turn back for a moment to the fifth
chapter of the book and let's look at
the 16th verse.
And now we're among the Ten Commandments.
And the people who are being addressed in
the 16th verse are none other than children.
That's why I say this is only just
indirectly related to our subject, because we've been
talking more about the role of parents.
But listen to what is said here and
perhaps you'll understand why I feel it's necessary
to introduce this point at this stage.
Honor your father and your mother as the
Lord your God has commanded you, so that
you may live long and that it may
go well with you in the land the
Lord your God is giving you.
Now I would go so far as to
say this, that the family circle which has
known the working out of these principles which
Moses has already given to the Israelites, will
be one in which the children will automatically
honor and respect their mother and their father.
One of the things that's basic to any
educational situation, if it's going to be successful,
is rapport.
It's confidence.
I used to teach as some as you
know in downtown London.
And really in the sort of blackboard jungle
area of the educational world, the last qualification
that you needed to start with was a
head full of knowledge.
You could have known Pythagoras's theory or theorem
backwards and you'd never have communicated it to
the London kids.
You could have been seated in the history
of the British Empire and they would give
you no listening at all.
You could be one of the greatest gymnasts
of all time and they still wouldn't be
interested, believe it or not, in PT.
Not these lads and lasses.
The first thing you had to do before
you could start to teach in downtown London,
and my colleagues who are there to this
day tell me the same obstance, the situation
is some degrees worse than when I was
present.
The first thing you had to do was
to gain the confidence of your children.
Until you'd, and particularly for your endeavoring to
teach scripture, until you had convinced that 13
or 14 or 15 year old that you
were a human being too and that you
got an interest in his life, that what
he had to say concerned you and you
were involved with his problems and the fact
that he came from a broken home and
that he wasn't very good to start with
in the English language and this sort of
thing.
Until you'd started to relate to him as
a human being, all that you had to
say went in one ear, accelerated and stayed
out of the other.
And you know, that principle can be plucked
from the direct educational context of the schools
and it can be placed back in the
home.
Unless little Benjamin and Ruben in the days
of the Old Testament had got confidence in
what mum and dad were, they'd never have
confidence in what mum and dad were teaching.
But that parent, mum and dad, who has
been before the Lord, whose life is conditioned
naturally by the Word of God, will automatically,
if one can use that expression, gain the
respect of their child, gain the honor of
their son.
And that's the reason why I brought into
our consideration this evening this commandment.
Honor your father and your mother.
It's directed to children, yes.
But there are some parents who don't deserve
to be honored because what they have to
teach and the way that they live are
so diametrically opposed, it doesn't ring true.
And there's nobody who's more gifted to spot
a hypocrite than a child.
A child is one of the most expert
people in the world today to detect humbug
and charade.
And children do not respect hypocrites nor humbugs.
So it's for parents, in the outworking of
God's demands in their lives, to gain that
respect that little Johnny and little Sally want
to give.
Because it's natural to them to respect mothers
and fathers who are lovingly and winsomely controlled
by the Spirit of God.
Have you noticed, and again this is not
directly relevant to our subject, but it must
come into it at some stage.
Have you noticed how Moses, when giving the
commands of God in this area, chastises anyone
who dares to interfere with the religious education
of a youngster as he or she has
received it from mother or father?
Turn to the 13th chapter of Deuteronomy, will
you, and the sixth verse and onwards.
From one end of the land to the
other, do not yield to him or listen
to him.
Show him no pity.
Do not spare him or shield him.
You must certainly put him to death.
Your hand must be the first in putting
him to death, and then the hands of
the people.
Shall I tell you something?
An hour ago I decided not to read
the latter part of that scripture because, and
I confess my weaknesses to a congregation as
I have to confess them before the Lord,
seem to me so harsh.
And I like to feel that I've got
a relatively sensitive nature.
Is this really what God meant?
That if someone came along and dislodged a
person from following the principles that godly mother
and father had given to them, they had
to be dealt with in such a horrific
fashion as this?
It offended my sensitivity.
Until just in that vestry, some minutes before,
the word came to me that I was
to turn to Matthew 18 and verse 5
and 6, and pass judgment on this.
I'll read from verse 4, Matthew 18.
In fact, I'll read from verse 2.
Jesus called a little child and had him
stand among them, and he said, I tell
you the truth, unless you change and become
like little children, you will never enter the
kingdom of heaven.
Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is
the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, and
whoever welcomes a little child like this in
my name welcomes me.
But if anyone causes one of these little
ones who believe in me to sin, it
would be better for him to have a
large millstone hung around his neck and to
be drowned in the depths of the sea.
Woe to the world because of the things
that cause people to sin.
Those words fell from the lips of the
gentle Jesus, so often thought by children as
being meek and mild.
But the mildness of Jesus was not to
be confused with weakness, and he recognized the
enormity of the crime of dislodging someone from
faith, of leading someone into sin, of leading
them away from godly principles which have been
built into their personality.
And Jesus shows none of the reticence that
I show when he looks into Deuteronomy.
And he takes up the principle, and in
stark language he spells it out.
Those who rob others of faith, it would
be better that a millstone had been placed
around their neck and they had never been
born.
One of the most terrible crimes, says the
Word of God in both testaments, is for
anyone to interfere with the carefully given instruction
of a godly mother and father to their
offspring.
I wonder if you'd ever realized that before.
You see what I mean, my friend?
I'm in no way straining me.
Stand up at this moment and object.
Tell me if I'm wrong.
I'm in no way straining language when I
say that within this book of Deuteronomy you've
got principles, you've got gold, that will help
you to live a much better life and
to control your family circles in a much
better way.
Let's conclude this catena of scriptures, a catena
being a selection of things that you bring
together that I've lifted out.
And I could have brought other scriptures to
you, but obviously there's a limit on time.
To the 21st chapter in the 18th verse,
and here you have again very strong language.
This time it's referring not directly to the
parent but to the child, the mature son
who cuts across what his father has said,
rides roughshod of the law of God.
If a man has a stubborn and rebellious
son who does not obey his father and
mother and who will not listen to them
when they discipline him, his father and mother
shall take hold of him and bring him
to the elders at the gate of his
town.
They shall say to the elders, this son
of ours is stubborn and rebellious.
He will not obey us.
He's a propagate and a drunkard.
Then all the men of his town shall
stone him to death.
You must purge the evil from among you.
All Israel will hear of it and be
afraid.
Now there is no reason to believe that
that was to be a practice which would
be frequently employed by the Israelites in the
days of yore.
But when you've done all that you can
to modify it with a sort of sophisticated
20th century approach, this principle stands out in
relief that it is a disgrace before God
for a person to break his law and
for someone to blot the testimony of a
godly family.
So you see how all these points interlock
together, even though discovered in the early book,
in an early book of the Old Testament,
to show that God is a God who
is concerned for families, for the welfare of
mother and father, for the welfare of their
offspring.
And if you take these principles that we've
lifted from Deuteronomy and you start to apply
them to some of the family situations that
I enumerated a little while ago, say that
of of Jacob, say that of, and I
didn't quote these people, Ruth and and Boaz,
say that of Eli and that of Samuel,
you can work out just where they were
successful and where they failed.
And you can go on into the New
Testament and you can apply some of these
principles, say to the family circle of John
the Baptist, or say to the family circle
of Timothy, you remember, who had these godly
parents and grandparents, Louis and and Eunice.
One of the most wonderful things about the
Word of God is that its principles remain
constant throughout the two Testaments.
And you can not only lift these pointers
and apply them to the those who seem
to be successful and those who seem to
fail in old and New Testament times, you
can apply them to your own heart.
You can apply them to your own family
circle.
We could have spent all our time probably
this Thursday, if we'd have had the Sunday
night congregation, asking for testimonies along this line.
And all the folks could perhaps have got
up and said, yes, there as a parent
I was strong.
There I was weak.
I implemented this principle.
I did it deliberately.
I saw it.
I applied it.
And this was the benefit that resulted.
And someone else perhaps feeling honest and that
they must confess their wrongfulness in front of
a congregation could have said, yes, but I
missed on this.
And I didn't apply this particular scripture, this
particular teaching in my family circle.
And maybe that's one of the reasons why
things went awry.
I tell you, these principles, they remain constant.
So what can I do in the last
six or seven minutes that I've got?
Let me try to be extremely practical, realizing
particularly some of the groups who will receive
this tape later on and who have families
to look after, parents and mothers, let's say,
mothers and fathers, let's say a word or
two to these people as well as to
ourselves here in the tabernacle.
When you look into the Old Testament and
its teaching on the Father, you are driven
to the conclusion, which is made so very
plain in Martin Lloyd-Jones's commentary on Ephesians
and the we read earlier this evening, that
in the Old Testament, it is quite clear
that the Father was a kind of priest
in his household and family.
He represented God.
He was responsible not only for the morals
and behavior, but also the religious education of
children.
Now that's not too exaggerated a statement.
In fact, it's not exaggerated one little bit.
Moses makes it quite clear that it's not
the rabbis, it's not the Levites, it's not
the priests who are responsible primarily for the
education of the Hebrew youngsters, it is their
parents.
I think that one of the great tragedies,
and here I'm going to make some eyebrows
pucker, one of the great tragedies in the
United Kingdom is the fact, though economics are
preventing this from happening so much these days,
that people pack their children off to boarding
school.
The place for a child, all other things
being equal, I know there are exceptions to
the rule and qualifications have to be made,
but in the main, on the whole, in
general, the place for a boy or a
girl to be is with their mum and
their dad.
And the most powerful educative force in the
world is not the school, is not teacher,
is not later on the lecturer or the
professor.
The person who has the greatest influence, humanly
speaking, on a youngster is the mother and
the father.
And all this rubbish that we should leave
teaching a morality and sexual behavior and religion
and what have you to the schools or
to the church, yes even the church, the
absurdity that we should leave these things completely
in the charge of someone else.
Well, what can one say?
It really is a nonsense.
We are called as gods.
Mothers, we are called before God, mother and
father, to exercise responsibility as priests before our
children.
And what does that mean?
Well, it means that we must be there
to be consulted.
So Moses postulates the picture of a Hebrew
child centuries to come.
Dad, why are we breaking this bread?
Why are we drinking this cup?
Why are we keeping this particular feast?
Dad, why are we so different from the
rest of the nations that are around Palestine?
And dad knows.
And he said, well, years ago, centuries ago,
there was a great deliverance that God effected
historically for us.
We were a slave people.
We had no land.
We had no hope.
But God came, sent as a deliverer.
Moses opened up the Red Sea, took us
out of the land of bondage, kept us
miraculously during our wilderness journeyings, gave us his
law, and brought us to his land.
And we're remembering this.
We're remembering the goodness of our God.
But dad, why have we got ten commandments?
Are we to keep them all?
Doesn't that one about the Sabbath day seem
to you to be a little old-fashioned
now, dad?
And father will say, no.
The reason why we keep the Sabbath day
is because the Lord, our God, has commanded
right at the beginning of time that there
was a day of rest, which is symbolic
of that great eternal rest that he will
give to our nation and all righteous people.
And we will obey the law, our God,
in regard to this commandment now and in
the centuries to come.
But you see, for the Hebrew father to
be able to win the confidence of his
child and answer his questions, he's got to
be available.
And as it was in the days of
yore, so it is today.
Dad, our teacher says that the whole business
of Adam and Eve is a myth.
He doesn't believe it.
Dad, what do you think?
Oh, I've got no time at the moment.
Go and ask your mom.
Go and ask the pastor.
Go and ask your Sunday school teacher.
Not a bit.
The priest, the loving father, he's had his
eye and his heart on and in the
word of God all his life.
He may not be an expert, but little
Johnny doesn't want an expert.
He wants somebody he can talk to.
Dad may not know anything about the second
law, thermodynamics, and all the problems that the
physicists sometimes bring up and relate to the
opening chapters of Genesis, but Johnny wants to
know what dad's got to say and why
dad believes it.
And Johnny's got more confidence in his dad
because he's got a love affection for him,
not just a respect that he may have
for a teacher.
He's got a deep love for his dad,
and he listens to what father says.
And it may well be in the years
to come that he'll develop a greater maturity,
a greater intellect than his father, but nonetheless
he'll still be glad that it was his
father who first of all started to answer
his questions and didn't bob him off and
push him on one side.
And those who couldn't be present, and we
just ask your blessing to be upon them.
We pray for fathers and mothers and for
their sons and daughters, and we just ask
for household salvation.
We realize, Lord, some of us who've never
had the privilege of bringing up our own
children, that maybe it's not quite as easy
as somehow, sometimes, some of us may think
and feel.
But in those vexed problems, in those compounded
issues of these complex 20th century times, we
ask that you will give fathers and mothers
a wisdom which comes from above.
We ask for that rapport which will stay
them in good, in a good situation during
all the difficult times.
We ask, O Lord, that there shall be
that honor on one side and that respect
on the other, and we pray that the
Heavenly Father himself may preside over our family
circles so that youngsters may be brought up
in the fear and admonition of the Lord,
eventually to put their wholehearted confidence in the
God and Father of their own parents.
And this we ask for Jesus' sake.
Amen.