Sermon Tone Analysis

The other day, I came across a podcast entitled “Does my son know you?”

I was intrigued by the title.

I didn’t know what it mean.

“Does my son know you?”

It ended up being an interview with a guy named Jonathan Tjarks.

This guy, Jonathan Tjarks, is 33 years old.

He’s an accomplished sports writer for The Ringer.

He also has terminal cancer.

This cancer that he has is so rare that your odds of developing it are one in 25 million.

He was the one.

He’s married and has a son.

And he’s got anywhere from five months to five years to live.

The doctors just don’t know this cancer well enough to be more precise.

So the title of the article, “Does my son know you?”, comes out of his terminal cancer diagnosis.

If I’m not going to be around, he argues, I need there to be men in my son’s life who will step in for me.

Most of us have health insurance and life insurance to prepare for this kind of thing.

But there’s something else he says we need that most of us don’t have: relational insurance.

Who will be there for my wife and son when I’m gone?

Where are the men who will step in and read the Bible with my son, and talk to my son about how a Christian man treats women?

Where are the guys who will walk with my son as he grows up?

Where are the relationships that will survive my death and carry on in my place for my family?

That’s what he means when he asks “does my son know you?” [https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/gospelbound/does-my-son-know-you/, accessed July 29, 2022]

This question is worth considering, parents, even if you’re in excellent health.

Because the reality is, moms and dads, that we need the help of other Christians in raising our children.

We are called to be the primary spiritual teachers of our children.

Their discipleship and their growth in Christ is not the church’s responsibility; it is ours.

And while it is rewarding, it is also hard.

Which is why, moms and dads, we need older believers — besides our own parents — who will come around us and alongside us and encourage us.

Which is why, older believers, we need our kids to know you and for you to know our kids.

We need you to come around us and alongside us and encourage us.

There is much we need from you.

Today I’m just going to focus on six things we need you to remind us of — six things we are prone to forget as parents, seven things we need from you older saints who have raised their children.

Today’s take-away:

To disciple our kids, young parents need constant reminders of basic Christian truths.

Church, we need you to take this responsibility.

The first thing we need you to remind us of, church, is the supreme importance of discipling our kids.

#1: We need to be reminded of the supreme importance of discipling our kids

I’ve often said your checkbook tells a story about what is most important to us.

What about your schedule?

Moms and dads [LOOK], there is a never ending array of possibilities for how your kids can spend their free time.

There’s no shortage of extracurricular activities.

I’m grateful there are so many opportunities for our kids to develop themselves.

My kids have extracurricular activities.

They’ve done horseback riding and robotics and such.

But you want to know something about those activities?

Actually you already know this.

Two things:

Number one: those activities are in competition with you.

They want your money, sure, but most importantly they want your time, your attention, your allegiance, your loyalty.

Number two: None of those activities are substitutes for spiritual conversations with our kids.

None of those activities are substitutes for corporate worship on Sunday morning or Sunday School on Sunday morning, or youth group on Sunday or Wednesday nights.

We don’t want to have regrets.

We don’t want to make the mistake of waiting until our children are grown and have kids of their own, and we’re wondering why we can’t get them to make church a priority for them or for their families, only to have the realization that we didn’t make it a priority for us — they learned it from us.

And church family, we need you to remind us of this.

Remind us that there is no substitute for discipleship.

Football is great, but it won’t make your son more like Christ.

STEM group is fun, but it won’t encourage your daughter to draw near to God.

Church family, every other force in the world is conspiring together to draw our attention as parents away from what matters for our children.

You must remind us that as important as athletic ability is, as important as college readiness is, the salvation and then the spiritual growth of our children must come first.

If it has to be Jesus or football, it’s Jesus.

Church family, remind us of these things, because we are so prone to forget.

We need you.

We need you to remind us of the supreme importance of discipling our kids.

We also need you to remind us to mingle discipline with mercy in our parenting.

#2: We need to be reminded to mingle discipline with mercy in our parenting

One summer many years ago, the police department in South Windsor, CT started a new initiative.

They were going to start encourage as much as they confronted.

No more of this business of only writing tickets to punish violations of the law; they pulled people over and writing them a ticket for obeying the law.

One woman said she saw the blue light behind her and imme4diately started looking for a place to pull over, and doing what we’ve all done: what did I do?

Did I run a redlight?

Was I speeding?

Did I not come to a full stop and roll back at the stop sign?

Dad always told me roll back!

If only I had listened.

To her surprise, the officer walks up to her, hands her a ticket which was really a thank you note and $2.

The policeman said, “You didn’t do anything wrong.

You’re driving was great — and we appreciate it.”

[Larson p137]

My reaction when I heard that was, man this is weird to the point of being creepy.

Maybe it’s because I’ve never experienced a police officer thanking me for good driving.

But while we’re on the subject, let’s take a quick poll:

How many of you are quicker to criticize than to encourage?

Let’s just be honest, okay?

We’ve all got our stuff.

Maybe for you, some of you parents are quicker to criticize than to encourage.

Anybody?

How about the reverse: how many of you are quicker to encourage than to criticize?

Confrontation is not your thing.

Encouragement is.

See, we all tend to fall to one side or the other.

Now, how many of you think it’s important for a parent to be able to do both?

There’s hope for us, then.

Because God excels at both.

Is God a loving God or is a wrathful God?

The answer is yes.

He’s both.

God is love.

He is a loving, patient, tender-hearted God.

He encourages us.

Yet the same God is also holy.