Real change happens when our kids come to face-to-face with the depths of their sin, and learn to cast themselves on God’s rich mercy in Jesus.
Intro
The “Gospel Shaped Home” podcast is a family discipleship resource from Providence Baptist Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, that aims to equip you and your family to be on mission with God, to the end of the street and the ends of the earth.
Andy Owens
Welcome to this week’s episode of “Gospel Shaped Home.” I’m Andy Owens, pastor of Family Discipleship here at Providence. Thankful for you, our listeners. And if you joined in last week, you know that Dave Owen and I started talking about chapter 12 of Paul Tripp’s book, “Parenting,” and had a little bit of a long conversation. So we’re breaking it up over two episodes.
So the title of the chapter was “Control.” And the main principle at the beginning was that the goal of parenting is not control of behavior, but rather, heart and life change. God wants more from us than just to control what our kids do and say, but rather, he wants to use us as instruments in his hands to bring about real and lasting heart and life change through the gospel, through the grace of his son, Jesus.
And last week we talked through the first part of the chapter. We read some verses from Psalm 51, and we started diving into these six agenda-setting observations, which start on page 172. And that’s where we’re going to pick back up today. So hope that the second half of my conversation with Dave is an encouragement to you.
Okay, number two, your children need to understand the nature of sin so they don’t minimize its danger. So he actually points out the fact that David uses three different words for sin in Psalm 51 to help us kind of get a full picture of the dangers of sin and help our kids see it as well. So what’s some of the stuff he throws out here, Dave?
Dave Owen
Yeah, I think he’s using words like iniquity and transgression. And I think when I read this, I kind of thought of the idea that some of the things we’ve tried to teach our children, like it’s not the day when you’re three years old, two years old, and you tell a lie that you then become a liar. You lie because you are a liar and that’s the nature of the human heart. It’s not that you do these things and then they make you this sinner that the Bible calls us. No, it’s our very nature at the very core.
And Andy, doing college ministry for 15 years, I really saw, this was one that stood out to me that I saw that so many students came to understand and many came to faith, thought they were a Christian, but when they came to college, they had such a low view of sin, which translated into a very low view of the cross and the death, burial, resurrection of Christ and all that he accomplished that we could not accomplish. And so I saw many students in those years come to genuine faith because they had never repented of their sin. They just did, “I don’t want to go to hell.” It’s I prayed a prayer, and they’ve never grasped the sin nature, so…
Andy
No one ever made much of grace who made light of sin. I remember a brother saying that when I was in college and it struck me. Yeah.
Dave
That’s good.
Andy
So yeah, it’s we fall short. We have moral uncleanliness inside of us and we actively rebel, transgress against God’s boundaries. Number three, your children need to understand that their problem is not with their parents, but with God. What’s he getting at here?
Dave
Hmm. I love it. And I mean, it said it as you read, that every sin is vertical. Every sin is a fist in the face of God. And I think to train our children to understand it does affect and hurt the relationship with Mom and Dad, if you’re a single parent, it affects that relationship. But more than that, it affects the relationship with God himself. One, if your child is not a believer, it’s interesting in John 3, I mean, we love John 3:16, it says we know for God so loved the world, God sent his only son, but the end of John 3, it says that the wrath of God is abiding on those that don’t obey his son.
Andy
Who don’t obey the son.
Dave
And this is serious. And so I think, and if you are a Christian as I said, if your child’s a Christian and they sin, I think that’s where we try to train them in understanding that repentance is both for the non-believer to come to know Jesus, but it’s also for the believer to continue in healthy fellowship with God and with others. So I think that’s a huge truth that I think we need to instill in our children. And just as we repent, we’re made right with God. I think repentance also, it brings health to the family. It brings a sweetness to the family.
Andy
Well, I mean, in the period after these sins, these grievous sins and before he repented, I mean, the way David described it in Psalm 51 is that God had broken his bones, had crushed his spirit in a sense, and there was no joy. He wants God to restore the joy of his salvation. And that comes through, yeah, repentance, turning away from sin, turning back to God. And this one is a point that many people might stumble over that every sin is vertical essentially, but it’s good to see David, he committed adultery, he had a man killed and he says in his prayer, “Against you and you alone, I have sinned,” to God. And so obviously his sin created dramatic trauma for other people, but there’s still a primary vertical reality, too.
Dave
There’s a God-centeredness that he had that was so good.
Andy
Yeah. Number four, your children need to understand that sin is a nature problem that produces behavior problems. And you kind of got at this earlier about lying and liar and stuff. But yeah, let’s say it again. What’s he saying here?
Dave
Yeah. I mean, I think oftentimes as parents, I know for my wife and I, we often want to deal with the symptoms rather than the root. And you know the game at the state fair, I’m sure you probably love it, Whack-a-mole. You just… Right.
Andy
I’m too cheap to play things like that.
Dave
Come on. You know you love beating that dude when he pops out. Well, there’s a way to win that game. And the way you win it is you unplug it and they all go down. That’s the way you win it. And I think we deal with the symptoms of sin trying to be, and instead of killing it and I think it was a John I want say be killing sin or sin will be killing you. And so I think if we can get to the heart, which I know number five, we’ll read it in a second. But I think just so many times, we’re again, coached back to controlling the behavior, trying to manipulate or modify it in a certain direction rather than getting to the heart and getting to the root and dealing with it like that and training our children of just not the symptoms, but the heart. My kids do something, they lie, whatever, that’s a heart issue. It’s against God and gets us rather than just don’t tell lies.
Andy
Some of us, I think there’s a tendency to feel embarrassed by the reality that we are born sinners, that the Bible teaches we inherit a corrupt nature. I think people hesitate to state this truth because people in the world will kind of maybe laugh at it and scoff at this idea. And, but that’s the point that David makes in Psalm 51 is the point that Paul Tripp is making here is that we are born sinners. We came into the world this way and that we have to recognize, not that we commit sins and become sinners like you said, that we are sinners therefore we commit sins.
And I can remember this is like 14, 15 years ago. I was helping someone put together a slideshow for a wedding reception. Right. You take pictures from a person’s childhood, all the way up to when they’re about to get married. And I was helping this guy and he’s like, “Hey, do you have any suggestions for a song to put with this guy’s pictures of when he was a baby?” I said, “Oh yeah, there’s this great song by Indelible Grace called ‘God Be Merciful.’ And it’s from Psalm 51. And it starts like this. It’s really somber and slow, but it says, ‘I am evil, born in sin.'” And he just looked at me kind of smiled. And I was like, “No, no, I’m serious.”
He thought I was joking, but it is for our good and our joy to come to acknowledge this truth, to accept this truth, that we are born in sin. And you don’t have to have been a parent long to know that you don’t have to teach your children how to sin. We have this corrupt nature and until we acknowledge it and come to grips with it, we’re not going to cry out for mercy.
Dave
Right. Amen. That’s right.
Andy
Yep. All right. Number five. Your children need to understand that since sin is a heart problem, the only solution is a new heart.
Dave
That’s right. I mean, again it’s not making bad people good, it’s dead people alive. And this is John 3. You got to be born again, right? You must be born again.
Andy
Defined heart transplant, he says.
Dave
Yes, that’s it. I love that language of creating that new heart. And even David’s Psalm, I mean, create in me a clean heart. Renew in me. He’s crying that out and you won’t cry out with a depth of dependency upon the savior if you don’t understand the nature of the problem.
Andy
And again, he’s done this several times in the book, but if we could fix all of our problems by instruction, education or any other way, Jesus wouldn’t have had to come and suffer the cruelty of the cross, the shame, the pain of dying in our place. But he did because our problem was that serious. And that was the only way to rescue us.
Dave
That’s right.
Andy
All right. Last point, your children need to be taught to run to the only place of hope, the forgiving grace of God.
Dave
Yeah. What a great way to end it. I mean, this is it. And I think we’ve got to not only teach this, model this, but I think we have to let our children know that the only hope for us in parenting is the grace of God. I think we have to show them that we are leaning into this grace, and this is the grace that will rescue them, the grace of the good news that he has sent his son to do what we could not do, to live the life that is required by a holy righteous God. And by faith and trust in him, we are justified and given that righteousness. And so to be able to model that for our children, to show that our dependence is fully on him is so huge.
I remember one time, Andy, as we close, I was really mad one morning trying to get all four kids to school. And we had a minivan at that time. And minivans are V6. They don’t go that fast, but if you back up fast enough and kind of throw it in drive, you can squeal a wheel. You can actually with a minivan, because they’re front wheel drive. So the weight to the van shifts to the back, lifts it up and the wheels could actually spin. So I was so mad that I actually squealed a wheel leaving to go to school. And I felt kind of manly because a minivan, to squeal the wheel is awesome. And I just opened the door. I didn’t throw the kids out, but I just said, “Get out.” I was so mad. I got home. I was convicted. And I just, as I had to start vertically with God.
And then I went and got Josh out of class. He was in Kindergarten, I think. And I apologized to him outside of the classroom because I just wanted to make it right with him. I had really messed up. I needed grace and so do our children. So…
Andy
Amen. Very powerful testimony.
Dave
Great chapter.
Andy
It is. Yeah. He says the hopelessness is the doorway to hope. When we come to the end of ourselves, our wisdom, our ability, that’s when we really start to hope in God’s grace. And yeah, such a life-giving, hope-giving word. Thanks, brother.
Dave
Yeah. Thanks for having me, man. I’m grateful.
Andy
Thank you for joining. Yeah. Catch you on the next episode.
Dave
All right.
Outro
Thanks for listening to this episode of the “Gospel Shaped Home” podcast produced by Providence Baptist Church of Raleigh, North Carolina. For more information and resources from Providence, visit us online at pray.org. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts.