How will you protect your child from temptation? You won’t successfully isolate him or her, or hover close enough to always protect, but wisdom is a safeguard. “When wisdom enters your heart, and knowledge is pleasant to your soul, discretion will preserve you; understanding will keep you, to deliver you from the way of evil, from the man who speaks perverse things” (Prov. 2:10–12).

Proverbs teach wisdom in short sentences. Americans once taught their children with proverbs. When I would be a worrywart, my mother would say, “Cross that bridge when you come to it, won’t you please?” When my room was getting messy, she’d say, “A stitch in time saves nine.” One of my favorite proverbs, which I heard from an Armenian source, goes, “Don’t curse a crocodile until you have crossed the river.” For a recent baptism message, I chose seven verses from the Bible’s Book of Proverbs for the parents as their son Nathaniel was being baptized.

1. “A wise son heeds his father’s instructions, but a scoffer does not listen to rebuke” (13:1).

Two kinds of people appear in Proverbs: the wise and the fool, here called “scoffer.” A wise son listens to his father. A scoffer won’t listen—not to rebukes, timeouts, spankings, or arrests.

Nathaniel, along with all children, was born a scoffer. Pride and self-deception are his natural state. He will resist learning. So God tells children: “Listen to your father and mother, and you are wise. Refuse to listen, and you will end up a scoffer, a stupid fool.” The Bible praises children for being obedient, respectful, and humble, and for listening, not for being creative or independent—two characteristics often touted by American society.

American culture will not help you much in raising Nathaniel to be wise, because this country embraces the scoffer. People put the bumper sticker “Question Authority” on their cars and think it is wisdom. Professors can’t say the word truth without gesturing scare quotes. Many teach that truth claims are mere power plays, so no wisdom is to be gotten from fathers!

How will Nathaniel learn wisdom if he is an inherent scoffer? Wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord (1:7). Only God’s Spirit can instill that fear in Nathaniel. Make constant use, therefore, of the means of grace as you raise him. Read the Bible, pray, and sing daily as a family. Then Nathaniel will know that his family obeys God’s Word. Bring him to church and don’t complain about either the preacher or the church. Teach him God’s Word as you walk the dog, eat fries at Chick-fil-A, clean up Legos before bed, and drive to the orthodontist (the day will come). “A wise son heeds his father’s instructions, but a scoffer does not listen to rebuke.”

2. “A soft word turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger” (15:1).

Nathaniel has two older brothers who will get angry with him at times. So will his two parents. What help can you give him when this happens? Teach him to use a “soft word” when faced with anger.

I learned what a harsh word could get me in seventh grade gym class. My teacher told me I had run the 100-yard dash in 10.2 seconds, in sneakers, on a cinder track, less than a second slower than the world record. I said, “You’re crazy!” He said, “What did you say, son?” I answered, “I said, ‘You’re crazy.’” He slapped my face so hard, tears started. Insulting words stir up anger.

Here’s a soft-word story. In 1970 my wife, Gretchen, and I lived in Pittsburgh without a car. When I got a temporary job teaching at Geneva College, a friend lent me his car. The first morning, I drove the wrong way down a one-way street right past the police station. The ticket came in the mail: $55, which was a week’s income. The next day, Gretchen walked to the police station to pay. The old officer at the desk remarked, “That’s an awful lot, isn’t it?” “Yes, it is,” she said, with the hint of a quaver in her voice. “Tell you what,” he said. “Let’s just call it 15,” and he crossed out the 55 and wrote 15. A soft word turns away wrath.

When Nathaniel’s brothers get angry with him, teach him to turn away that anger by answering softly. Does a soft word always defuse anger? No! David’s gracious words to King Saul several times deflected his hatred, but only temporarily. Nevertheless, the proverb’s cause and effect usually hold. To get more anger, answer harshly; to turn away wrath, answer softly.

3. “One who is righteous is a guide to his neighbor, but the way of the wicked leads them astray” (12:26).

God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Gen. 2:18). People resemble lions, which hunt together, and not tigers, which hunt alone. Because we are social, we will do almost anything to fit in, playing follow the leader by dressing like friends and liking their music. Spend time with sneering losers, and you will become a sneering loser (see scoffer). Join the snooty set, and you will become snooty. Hang out with respectful, hard-working types, and their good habits will become yours. As Proverbs often advises, choose your friends well.

Two practical questions arise when choosing a friend. Will he want me as a friend? Do I want to be like him? Tell Nathaniel not to start with the first question, because bad apples accept new friends as readily as good apples. Begin with the second question: Do I want to be like these people? The wise person in a new school or neighborhood looking for friends first asks that question. Then he asks, “How do I make friends with them?”

If you pray, “Lead me not into temptation,” you show you mean the prayer when you choose not to stand, sit, walk, or ride in the car with people who scorn God and His law, which means Nathaniel may sometimes have to choose loneliness over companionship. He should know that sad fact. One of my sons at age 11 went with a group to a friend’s house. The friend pulled a film out of his parents’ supposedly hidden pornography stash. When my son realized what he was watching, he walked out and came home. Better to be alone than to be with such friends!

That the way of the wicked leads astray is the second part of the proverb. The first part cuts the opposite way. Righteous people are good guides to their neighbors. Salt does no good in a box; it has to be added to food to give it taste or to preserve it. Believers must not keep to themselves.

Jesus ate with taxpayers and sinners, and Paul assumes we will too. He writes, “If one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience” (1 Cor. 10:27–28). He doesn’t write: “Don’t eat with your idolatrous neighbors.” Raise Nathaniel to be wise, and he will be a good guide to his friends.

4. “When you sit down to eat with a ruler, consider carefully what is before you; and put a knife to your throat if you are a man given to appetite. Do not desire his delicacies, for they are deceptive food” (23:1–3).

A few weeks ago, a longtime friend showed me a letter Francis Schaeffer wrote to him when he began his education at Swarthmore College. It was a full page, but its message was simple: “You got into an elite college. Congratulations. Now watch out what they feed you.”

The point of this proverb is not poison, or that overeating dims your wits. The warning is about the ruler! A ruler rarely invites you to dinner because he wants a friend. Most likely, he has plans for you. Rulers—the upper classes, elites, the rich of all times and places—know how to use and then discard people, if necessary. It’s what they do. Dinners (part of the whole figure of speech here) are one of the elite’s strongest weapons.

Teach Nathaniel that when a ruler invites him to dinner, he should think, “Danger.” Queen Esther lured her enemy Haman to his death with a feast. He swallowed the delicacy of Esther’s invitation, boasted to his family about the queen’s favor, and walked blindly to his death (see Esther 5–7). His naiveté is funny in its own twisted way.

In his science fiction novel That Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis explores both the heady feeling and the dangers of being invited into the inner circle. Everyone wants to hang with the popular kids in school or to be admitted to an exclusive university or exclusive business clubs. When Nathaniel gets such an invitation—admission to an Ivy League school, let’s say—especially if he is “given to appetite” (ambitious), teach him to think, “Danger.” Let him go, but tell him to be on his guard not to swallow everything.

This proverb is realistically cynical about the powerful. When the guy at the top invites you to dinner, get a solid grip on yourself (knife to throat), and beware the lure of the perks (delicacies). Being savvy is scriptural.

5. “He who is often rebuked, and hardens his neck, will suddenly be destroyed and that without remedy” (29:1).

Wise sons learn from father and mother, teachers, friends, even enemies, and, of course, from proverbs. Foolish sons, both the passively aggressive who pretend to listen but never change, and the openly defiant, refuse wisdom. This proverb describes their body language. It’s a certain way of holding one’s head that says, “I’m not listening!” Parents and teachers know the posture: head held still with stiff neck, while child calculates whether he must comply or not.

Note the “often rebuked” in the proverb. Fathers, mothers, even the legal system, rebuke the stubborn, hoping they will wise up. God often allows us to escape the deserved consequences of folly—until suddenly He doesn’t. Our legal system mostly operates similarly, offering probation and many second chances. Then suddenly, or so it seems to the incorrigible, time’s up, and disaster strikes without remedy.

At the high school where I taught, parents of an incorrigible son changed their house locks the day he graduated, put his belongings outside, and told him he did not live there anymore. Time’s up! Incredulous, their son broke in to “his” home. The parents called the police, who arrested the boy for breaking and entering. Like Humpty Dumpty, he had fallen off the wall, and his parents could not put him together again.

For whom does God intend this proverb? For stiff-necked sons, certainly, but also for their fathers and mothers. With unconscious pride, parents often take blame for the stiff-necked son, thinking, “If only I had said my rebuke better, he would have listened.” The son, naturally, may shift blame to the parents, saying, “You didn’t tell me in the right way!” “Not so,” retorts Solomon. “Some people just refuse all instruction and bring disaster on themselves.” It is the often-rebuked son who chooses to harden his neck; that’s not the fault of father or mother.

6. “A gentle tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks the spirit” (15:4).

A family of gentle speech, a church where people speak kindly, an office with benevolent conversation, is like a garden of Paradise. A gentle tongue is a tree of life. Could there be higher praise than that?

The gentle tongue comforts the sorrowful. It corrects the straying, but never out of pique. It speaks for the good of the hearer and from faithful love. It instructs with appropriate words, like apples of gold in a silver setting. The gentle tongue turns away wrath; it is merry; it is like medicine to the sick; and it does good to the hearer (Prov. 27:6; 25:11; 15:1; and 17:22). A gentle tongue is truly a tree of life!

Unlike sticks and stones, perverse words cannot break bones, but they can kill a spirit and break a heart. With our tongues we demean others—a species of murder Jesus says (Matt. 5:22). With our tongues, we destroy self-confidence, ruin reputations, and end friendships. Evil tongues make family life agony, turn churches into dens of malicious gossip and envy, and make workplaces torture chambers. Students sometimes told me things their parents had said that could break a child’s spirit. A girl ruefully told me that her mother looked at her report card with almost all As and a few Bs, shook her head sadly, and said, “Someday, I hope I can be proud of you.”

This short proverb about the tongue does not tell us how to cultivate a gentle one. James does: “But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath” (Jas. 1:19). Paul does: “Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt” (Col. 4:6). Peter does: Defend the faith “with gentleness and reverence” (1 Pet. 3:15). The psalmist prays: “Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips” (Ps. 141:3).

Is it easy to cultivate a gentle tongue? No! “If anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man” (Jas. 3:2), and only one Man has ever been perfect. Strive therefore to speak healing rather than wounding words to Nathaniel, because a gentle tongue is a tree of life.

7. “Where no oxen are, the trough is clean; but increase comes by the strength of an ox” (14:4).

When I was young, I spent summers on a dairy farm with horses and cows. Mr. Millen milked his cows twice daily, gathered hay for winter, mended fences, oversaw calving, and cleaned out manure from the barn. How much easier it would have been without animals! The eating trough could always have been clean.

But increase is by the strength of the ox. What if a farmer had no oxen? He needed their strength to pull the plow. A yoke of oxen could plow an acre in a day. Without oxen, a farmer could use a shovel, or pull the plow alone, but he’d be lucky to do an acre a week. Productive work brings dirt and mess. A delicate farmer who can’t stand dirt will have a neat, clean, sterile, and poor life.

What holds for oxen also holds for children. A house without children is easily kept neat, clean, and quiet. Children are expensive, troublesome, loud, exhausting, and so worth it!

With children, you will make trips to the emergency room! I remember my wife, Gretchen, at our local emergency room with yet another child. “Have you ever been here before?” she was asked. With a bleeding son beside her, she burst out laughing.

Support in old age comes from children—either ours or others’. No children, no social security!

But to deal with children, fathers and mothers have to get their hands dirty, offend their noses, and live with some chaos. However, a messy house shows people live there, people to love and be loved, people made in God’s image, children who will be productive.

Nothing comes free of charge. God has made you rich with a third son, Nathaniel. Thank God for the dirt he will bring. Increase comes by the strength of the ox. Your sons are the Lord’s blessing, and in the midst of dirty clothes, dirty floors, dirty diapers, and dirty faces, remember, “Where no oxen are, the trough is clean; but increase comes by the strength of an ox.”

Conclusion

There is much more to learn from Proverbs than today’s seven lessons. Solomon teaches that your children have power over their parents’ happiness (10:1; 15:20; 17:21; 17:25.) You already know that. Children should know it too. Money is power, a fact Nathaniel should understand (22:7; 14:20; 19:4; 18:23; 10:25). Let Proverbs warn him about three ordinary temptations we underestimate at our peril: wine (20:1), women (2:16), and song (10:4). (Solomon doesn’t actually write song, but he does warn against laziness, and what does the lazy man want? Entertainment, i.e., song.)

Never forget, wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord (1:7). Without it, your children will refuse wisdom, so teach them to know the Lord. As you teach them, remember that as you labor, it is God who is building your house (Ps. 127:1).

Do you fear the temptations of our society? Good. You can never fully protect Nathaniel from them, so teach him wisdom. Then he will have protection. The Book of Proverbs has the express purpose of teaching children wisdom before they have to learn it the hard way. So teach Nathaniel wisdom, asking God in fervent prayer that he will grow in favor with God and man as he matures.

Bill Edgar is a retired RPCNA minister and a recent interim president of Geneva College.