Framing Life’s Values #2
Daniel 1
 
We are continuing to make progress on our Extreme Home Makeover as you can see and the framing is coming right along.  Last week we talked about framing life’s values for your children. 
 
But what about making the transition to the teenage years?  Mark Twain, who by the way, had no children, said, “As soon as children are weaned, you should put them in a barrel and feed them through a hole until they turn thirteen.  Then plug up the hole.”
 
Gallup recently surveyed 500 teenagers and asked them, "What one thing would you rate as the most important thing in your life?"  More important than a sense of accomplishment, good physical health, or good self image - the number one answer was this - 9 out of 10 teenagers said, "A good family life is most important to me." 
 
Readers Digest commissioned the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research to ask 1,022 teenagers, ages 16-18, a battery of questions.  When teenagers were asked, "What source of satisfaction is very important to you?" by a 2 -to- 1 margin, over everything else were these two answers: 94% said - Raising healthy and happy children and 91% said - Having a good marriage. 
 
In other words, teenagers are telling us they want to grow up in a good family and they want to rear a good family.
 
So how do we help that to happen?  Before I get into the specifics of the message, please allow me to make some general observations. 
 
Over the last fifty years in America, we have witnessed amazing changes in cultural norms.  And the church, in an attempt to adapt to this changing society has made some grave mistakes. 
 
I think at the top of the list of mistakes has been the creation of a brand new entity called “the youth group”.  Fifty years ago churches didn’t have youth groups.  They simply had teenagers who attended and participated. 
 
But because of the massive amount of rebellion that America was experiencing from its youth, the church attempted to address that problem by targeting specific ministries to teenagers.
 
And for the very first time in the 2,000 year history of the church we had this brand-new entity called the youth group.  And by the way it has no biblical basis whatsoever.  The Bible identifies for us childhood and adulthood.  And the teaching is very simple:
 
When a child reaches the age of 12 or thirteen, they pass from childhood to adulthood.  With that, comes the passing of responsibility.  Parents are responsible for their children and bear the responsibility for their actions.  But when a child passes to adulthood, they are responsible for their own actions.
 
During those formative first years, they are to be molded and taught, and as we discovered last week, they are then launched out into the world. 
 
And to a large degree, up until about 40 years ago, that took place. At 12 or 13, children were working in the fields beside their parents, pulling cotton, taking care of the farm chores, learning to cook and sew and clean. During World Wars 1 and 2, it was not unusually for boys to lie about their age and at 15 or 16 enlist in the military to defend their country.
 
In the church, the job of teaching the teens and provide fellowships fell to the parents and aunts and uncles and church members who loved them.
 
But then we begin to protect children from that passage into adulthood.  We created this brand new animal called the adolescent teenager, and we passed laws prohibiting children from working.  We created a juvenile court system and juvenile incarceration.  And the church followed suit with the youth group that isolated the kids away from the adults and gave them their own environment.  We tried to build youth groups on entertainment and trips.
 
We decided to hire someone to do what was the parents responsibility to begin with.
 
We tried to be hip and cool and put immature people in charge of teaching our young adults, rather than following the Biblical model of the older men and women teaching the younger. 
 
And the result of that has been devastating.  Now adolescence reaches into the twenties and even thirties. Obama’s healthcare plan would give children the right to be on their parents insurance until 26 years of age.  This week it was reported that as many as 85% of college graduates will return home to live with parents.   
 
And it’s affected the church.  It’s like pulling hen’s teeth to get a graduate to leave the “youth group”/  They want to hang around with the kids rather than being a responsible young adult. 
 
And when they do decide to leave, they often have this mentality that the world revolves around them. If we don’t like your music we’ll start our own church and have the music we want.  And the church shouldn’t expect anything from these people.  After all, the church exists to make them happy and keep them satisfied.
 
So what do we do now?  We have this mess that was created by ignoring the Biblical pattern, so it seems to me the only way to fix it is to go back to what God said to do in the first place. 
 
That’s what we’ve attempted to do in our church ministries over the past several years by placing an emphasis back on family ministry. 
 
In our youth ministry, Kevin does a wonderful job of guiding and directing that work.  But we want and need parents to be involved.  And we need church members to be involved.  And today, as we continue our Extreme Home Makeover For Families, I want to share with you how to frame values for your teenagers. 
We are going to learn today from one of the greatest teenager ever discussed in the Bible.  His name was Daniel. 
 
In Daniel 1, though we do not read about his parents, we see in Daniel the results of his parents upbringing. 
 
Here we see the influence of parents who had framed values for this young teenager that produced a young man with great integrity and purity.  I am sure every parent wants all of their children as they get into those teenage years and beyond to be young men and young women of integrity and purity and honesty.  I want to share with you today from a biblical perspective how to do it.
 
I.  What To Teach Your Teens
 
In this chapter there were four qualities that Daniel displayed that had to have come from his parents that we ought to be passing along and teaching to our own teenagers.
 
First of all, I find Conviction
 
In that same survey I just quoted, when teenagers were asked, "Are your values the same as your parents?" an amazing 76% said their values were basically the same as their parents.  You have no choice mom and dad.  Your teenager is basically going to adopt, for the most part, the values that you give to them.
 
Evidently Daniel had been given some core convictions by his parents that he could hold on to in a time of difficulty and temptation. 
From the very beginning of his time in Babylon, Daniel was tempted to compromise everything he had learned and everything he had lived from the time he was born.
       
Daniel was now in a pagan land, a land that had no room for God and no time for God.  For the first time in his life, Daniel went to a school that did not begin each day with prayer.  No longer were the Ten Commandments posted in the classroom.  The very idea of God itself was totally rejected. 
 
Every effort was being made to indoctrinate Daniel and his friends into a pagan way of thinking and a pagan way of living.
 
Daniel 1: 3-4, 6-7
 
They changed their names from names that had godly meanings to names that had pagan meanings and then put them into their educational system to do everything they could to change their minds. 
 
Yet, that really was no problem to Daniel because he knew who he was and he knew what he believed. 
 
Daniel 1:5
 
Now the king's meat and the king's wine represents the sinful pleasures of this world.  They were trying to get these young men to adopt a playboy kind of lifestyle.     
 
Daniel didn't mind going to their schools because he knew what he really believed.  He didn't mind being called by their name, because he knew who he really was. 
But he drew the line at the king's meat and the king's wine. 
 
Daniel 1:8
 
The reason why Daniel refused to eat the meat and drink the wine was this.  First of all, much of the food would have been forbidden by the dietary laws that God had given to His people in the Old Testament. 
 
Even more importantly, the meat and the wine had been dedicated to some heathen god and in Daniel's mind, to eat this food and drink this wine, would mean that he would be honoring a pagan god and pledging allegiance to that pagan god and Daniel refused to do it.
 
Parents you do understand don’t you that every day your teenager is going to be hit with the hammer of compromise.  The only thing that will stand against it is the wall of convictions that you have placed in their heart.  One of the decisions you have to make is - What convictions are you going to pass down to your children?  How are you going to guide them in making decisions when they are placed in tempting situations?
 
When these teenagers in the aforementioned survey were asked the question, "If you were unsure of what was right or wrong, which would be most important in deciding what you would do?"  The number one answer they gave was, "Doing what would be best for everyone involved." 
 
Doesn’t that sound sweet?  But that is nothing more than liberal mush.  No credence at all is given to what God would want them to do.  But I will remind you, doing what God says to do will be the best for everyone involved!
 
Make certain that your convictions and the convictions that you pass on to your children are unashamedly based on the unchanging, inerrant, absolute Word of God. 
 
Next, I see in Daniel, Character
 
You will notice there is a certain flow to these characteristics.  Once your teen decides what convictions they believe, that will determine how they behave. 
 
I love that phrase in verse 8 that says,  "Daniel purposed in his heart." (Daniel 1:8, NJKV)
 
That is referring to his character.  Character is all about heart.  The heart of your character is the character of your heart. You are the person you are today, because of the character you became yesterday. The person you will be tomorrow is determined by the character that you have today.
 
Daniel had a choice and that choice revealed his character, because choices don't make character, choices reveal character.
 
Someone once said, "There is a choice you have to make in everything you do and you must always keep in mind the choice you make, makes you."
 
Let me tell you what I mean by character.  Character is the will to do what is right as God defines what is right, regardless of the consequences or the costs.  Listen to that definition and see two things in it.
 
First character demands a commitment to do what is right no matter what it might cost you.  No matter what the consequences might be.  One of the greatest lessons you can teach teenagers is this:  The best way to handle temptation is not to make a decision when you are tempted, but to make a decision of what you will do before you face that temptation.  Character is simply doing what is right because it is the right thing to do.
 
Second, character depends upon believing in an absolute standard of right and wrong.  It is a matter of believing that certain things are right, regardless of how we may feel, what we may think or what we may want and certain things are wrong regardless and those can only be defined by God Himself.
 
-Ashley Donaldson Video
 
So Daniel was a young man of conviction, character, and thirdly,
 
He was a man of Courage
 
Daniel used one of the greatest words you can ever teach your child to say, "no."  Do you know why Daniel could say, "No?"  Evidently his parents had taught him first to say, "Yes."  He could say "no" to the world, because he had first said, "Yes" to God.
 
Even though this was a good decision,  and the right decision the best decision, it was not an easy decision.  It took tremendous courage for Daniel to say, "No."
 
Verse 8 tells us,
"So he sought permission from the commander of the officials that he might not defile himself."    (Daniel 1:8, NASB)
 
That seems simple enough, but it really wasn't.
 
Daniel 1:10
 
If what Daniel was asking for was granted, not only could the eunuch die, but Daniel could also die.
 
To refuse to eat at the king's table was an insult to the king.  Furthermore, to refuse a direct order was an act of disobedience and either rebellion or refusal carried with it the penalty of instant death.  In other words, when Daniel said, "No" he was putting his life on the line. 
 
There was an even greater pressure that Daniel faced.  It is the greatest pressure any teenagers face and that was peer pressure.  Because of the hundreds of Jewish teenagers that were there at that time, Daniel was the first and at that point, the only one to say, "No."  Can you just imagine the conversation that went on?
 
His friends were saying, "Come on Daniel, everybody is doing it."  Daniel said, "No, not everybody is doing it, because I'm not doing it."  Somebody else said, "But Daniel, nobody will know."  Daniel said, "God and I will know." 
Somebody else said, "Daniel, you've got to obey the king."  Daniel said, "No, I've got to obey the God that my parents taught me to love."
 
It takes conviction and character to say, "Yes" to God.  It takes unbelievable courage to say, "No" to this world. 
 
Parents, you have to teach your kids to say, "No", but your teenagers have to learn to say, "No."  You can't make them say, "No." 
 
I don't want you to sit there and feel guilty if you've got teenagers who haven't had the courage at the right time to say no.  You just make sure that you have modeled by your lifestyle that you have the courage to say, "no."
 
Conviction, Character, Courage, and
 
Courtesy
       
There is a little known trait here in this event that a lot of people miss and that is, Daniel even though he stood his ground, didn't do it arrogantly and he didn't do it rudely.   He did it courteously. 
 
Daniel 1: 11-13
 
Did you notice what Daniel did?  He didn't stage a protest.  He didn't firebomb the banquet hall.  He didn't threaten the king or the eunuch.  He just very quietly and graciously proposed an alternative.
 
Daniel had been taught to be respectful to authority and that may the most glaring weakness of teenagers today - the lack of proper respect for those in authority. 
 
Listen to these words:
       
Our youth love luxury.  They have bad manners.  Contempt for authority.  They show disrespect for their elders.  Youth are now tyrants, not the servants of their households.  They no longer rise when their elders enter the room. They contradict their parents.  Gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers. 
 
Do you know who wrote that?  Socrates - 400 B.C.
 
Some things have never changed.  I want to urge you parents to teach your teenagers good manners.  It may be old-fashioned, but there is nothing wrong with saying, "Yes Sir" and "No Sir".  There is nothing wrong with opening the door for a lady and letting ladies enter into a room first.  There is nothing wrong with teaching teenagers to say, "Please" and "Thank you" and there is a great need for children to be taught to be courteous. 
 
Now that’s not an exhaustive list, but those four things, Conviction, Character, Courage and Courtesy are a pretty good start on What to Teach your Teens. 
 
II. How To Reach Your Teens
 
You can't teach who you can't reach and you can't reach unless you teach.  I want to give you three words to remember that I guarantee will help you reach your teenagers.
First, Love Them
 
Above all things your teenager has to know that your love for them is unconditional.  They have to know that your love and acceptance of them is not based on good grades, athletic achievement, personal popularity, or perfect conduct. 
 
Let me let you in on a little secret.  Many of you in this room will be given the opportunity one day to prove to your teen that you love them unconditionally.  If that daughter comes in and says, "Mom and Dad, I'm pregnant."  Your love is on the line.  When the police call and tell you that your son is in jail for driving under the influence, your love is on the line.  When your teenagers make bad choices, poor decisions, and wrong moves, your love is on the line.
 
Long after their bad choices, poor decisions, and wrong moves are in the past, that teenager is going to remember one thing, when I needed my mom and dad most, did they stand by me and show me that they loved me?
 
I am not talking about condemning mistakes that your kids make.  I am not talking about sweeping them under the rug, but at the same time you condemn what a teenager does, you've got to affirm that your love for them and your loyalty to them is unconditional and that you are the first one that is willing to forgive them when they ask.
 
Next, Listen to Them
 
The reason most teens don't talk to their parents is because the parents won't listen.  A teenager was asked when he thought of his father what did he see?  He said, "A big mouth."  When asked what he would like to see, he said, "A big ear."
 
I want you to know that I am guilty here and I plead guilty.  The average parent is outstanding at lecturing, but very poor at listening.  If you will give kids your ear, they will give you their heart. 
 
Learn to listen.  Learn not to interrupt.  Learn not to jump to conclusions.  Learn to give them space and what they want to say and what they need to say.  When you learn to do that, you will be teaching your teenagers that when they need to talk to someone, they really can talk to you and they will know that when they talk to you, they are not just talking to their parents, they are talking to their best friends.
 
Finally, Limit Them
 
You primary calling when your kids become teenagers is not to be their buddy; it is still to be their parents.  There are a lot of parents who reach those teenage years and they are afraid to set standards.  They are afraid to set boundaries, because they are afraid they will offend their teenagers and they will build up walls with their teenagers.
 
But listen to this:  Psychologists working with young people discovered an interesting truth several years ago.  Contemporary thought assumed that fences on playgrounds made the children feel restricted in their recreation.  A consensus was then reached to remove the fences so children wouldn't feel confined.
 
Guess what?  The opposite effect occurred.  Researchers found that the children became more inhibited with their activities.  They tended to huddle towards the middle of the playground and exhibited signs of insecurity.  When the fences were replaced, the children played with greater enthusiasm and freedom.
 
Here is the truth.  We all need boundaries.  We all need something to define the limits of safety and security.  Boundaries don't limit freedom, boundaries give freedom.
 
As long as your teenager is in your home and under your authority, you not only have the right, you have the responsibility, to lead that teenager and to make certain that they lack the opportunity, much less the encouragement to engage in any type of behavior that would be wrong and out of bounds.
 
Is it really that important? Listen to this article by Jim Priest, an Oklahoma City attorney involved with Marriage Network Oklahoma. 
 
Ever wonder whether your life really matters?  Do you sometimes ask yourself whether the sacrifices you've made for your family will have any lasting effect? 
 
Let me assure you, your life does matter and your family sacrifices do have an impact.  I base this bold statement on two studies about how a person's actions affect the lives of their family in generations that follow.  The research centered on the lives of two men:  Max Juke and Jonathan Edwards.  Here's how the men lived and the legacy they left.
 
According to research conducted by Richard L. Dugdale in, "The Jukes: A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease and Heredity", there was a man named Max Juke who lived in American colonial times.  Juke was reportedly an atheist who believed in liberation from laws.  He allegedly advocated free sex, no formal education and hated imposed responsibilities.  Dugdale wrote that Juke was "'a hunter and fisher, a hard drinker, jolly and companionable, averse to steady toil, working hard by spurts and idling by turns. He had a numerous progeny, some of them almost certainly illegitimate."  In other words, Juke was neither principled nor industrious.
 
Some years later, a gentleman named A. E. Winship studied what happened to the descendants of colonial era evangelist, Jonathan Edwards.  Edwards was everything Juke was not:  hardworking, God-fearing and Bible believing.  Edwards "was a godly minister who was credited with igniting The Great Awakening through his sermons. He served for a brief period just before his death as president of what is now known as Princeton University. He believed in leading by example. He authored two books on the subjects of physical fitness and kindness. Mr. Edwards later became involved in teaching people to be responsible for their daily actions."
Certainly Juke and Edwards had an impact on their immediate families, but what about the generations to follow?  Here's what happened in the years after Juke and Edwards died:
 
Of 1026 descendants of Max Juke, 300 were convicts, 27 were murderers, 190 were prostitutes and 509 were either alcoholics or drug addicts.   Dugdale was able to estimate that the Jukes had cost the State of New York almost $1.4 million dollars to house, institutionalize and treat the family of deviants. 
 
By contrast, the 929 descendents of Jonathan Edwards included 13 college presidents, 86 college professors, 430 ministers, 314 war veterans, 75 authors, 100 lawyers, 30 judges, 66 physicians, and 80 holders of public office, including three U.S. Senators, seven congressman, mayors of three large cities, governors of three states, a Vice-President of the United States, and a controller of the United States Treasury.
 
Having a strong, disciplined and godly family does not guarantee success for generations to come.  But the studies of Juke and Edwards confirms what we know in our hearts.  The way we live our lives has a profound impact on people around us and on generations to come.  We must be careful, then, how we live our family lives.  Our great, great, grandchildren are watching.”
 
I want to say to all of you parents that are here today, I think we all would agree we need all the help we can get. 
 
No one can help you in this matter of raising your teenagers more than God and nothing you can ever do for your teenager will ever be greater, than both by your own life and your own teaching, help that teenager have a relationship with God. 
 
It was that relationship, that produced a hero named, Daniel, and it is that same relationship that can make a hero out of your teen.