The Parent’s Role in a Child’s Gender Development
00:00:00.000 | [music]
00:00:05.000 | In our culture today, it appears that children are increasingly given the free
00:00:08.000 | choice to develop as men or women. There's an assumption that personal
00:00:12.000 | manhood or womanhood is a choice that will necessarily emerge in the child and
00:00:17.000 | in their personal choices. Pastor John, in a young girl developing towards
00:00:22.000 | biblical womanhood or in a young boy developing towards biblical manhood, how
00:00:27.000 | much of this development should be influenced by godly parents?
00:00:32.000 | All of it. All of it. Children, obey your parents in everything, in everything,
00:00:43.000 | for this pleases the Lord. Colossians 3:20. Which, if you just flip that around
00:00:49.000 | and ask, "Now what does that imply for parents?" If the Bible says to our
00:00:53.000 | children, "Obey your parents in everything." Okay, now parents, what does that
00:00:57.000 | imply for you? That implies you better know your Bible, you better know culture
00:01:03.000 | enough so that you can give in everything counsel and guidance to these children
00:01:12.000 | so that they can fulfill without sinning the biblical mandate to obey you in
00:01:18.000 | everything. Deuteronomy 11, "You shall teach all these words of mine to your
00:01:23.000 | children, talking of them when you're sitting in your house and walking by the
00:01:28.000 | way and lying down and rising up. Write them on your doorposts and put them on
00:01:35.000 | your gates." That is a description of pervasive, word-saturated guidance and
00:01:41.000 | inspiration and encouragement for our children. No thought of laissez-faire,
00:01:47.000 | let them grow up and discover what's right and wrong for themselves. They will
00:01:51.000 | be influenced by somebody, and God calls parents to love their children enough to
00:01:56.000 | shape them. And I don't know how many parents think of the Great Commission,
00:02:02.000 | the latter half of it, with regard to their children, but I have thought of it,
00:02:06.000 | where Jesus says, "Go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of
00:02:11.000 | the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." Then he adds, "Teaching them to observe
00:02:16.000 | all things." It doesn't say, "Teaching them to know all things." That's implied.
00:02:20.000 | It says, "Observe, do." "Teaching them to observe all things." Now, if that's true
00:02:26.000 | for the nations, every unbeliever we lead to Christ among the nations, we're
00:02:30.000 | supposed to help them by teaching to do all Jesus commanded. All right, Mom and
00:02:38.000 | Dad, are you doing that? All that he commanded, all that Jesus commanded, are
00:02:43.000 | you building that into your sons and daughters? And he said things like, Jesus
00:02:48.000 | said things like, when the Pharisees came and said, "Is it lawful for a man to
00:02:54.000 | divorce his wife for any cause?" He said, "Haven't you read that he who created
00:03:01.000 | them from the beginning made them male and female?" And said, "Therefore a man
00:03:08.000 | shall leave his mother and father and hold his wife, and the two shall become
00:03:12.000 | one flesh." So they're no longer two, but one, and what God has joined together,
00:03:17.000 | "Don't let man put asunder." How you doing, Dad? How you doing, Mom? Are you
00:03:22.000 | explaining male and female as Jesus meant it to your kids? Are you explaining one
00:03:29.000 | flesh in husband and wife? Are you explaining leaving and cleaving? Are you
00:03:35.000 | explaining let them not separate? Are you putting all these things into their
00:03:41.000 | hearts? So my answer, Tony, is absolutely yes. Parents are to be involved in
00:03:48.000 | shaping the sexuality of our children, and maybe the last thing I should say is
00:03:55.000 | that we all know, don't we, this is best done by modeling. What those children see
00:04:05.000 | in a mom and in a dad is, I don't know what percent, let's just say 90% of them
00:04:12.000 | becoming healthy male and healthy female. Learning how to be a man in relation to
00:04:19.000 | a woman, being a woman in relation to a man. They're watching, they're watching.
00:04:24.000 | They'll listen to your devotions and all your teachings, but they're watching all
00:04:29.000 | the time. And so the biggest challenge for a mom and a dad is to enact the
00:04:35.000 | magnificent drama of Christ and the Church in Ephesians 5:25. Wives, be
00:04:43.000 | subject, taking your cues from the Church, and husbands, love taking your cues from
00:04:50.000 | Christ, so that the children are watching Christ love the Church, and the Church
00:04:55.000 | love Christ, and seeing that beautiful drama enacted out. That's what will make
00:05:01.000 | healthy, sexually healthy kids, I think.
00:05:04.000 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. Please email
00:05:08.000 | your questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org. You will find
00:05:11.000 | thousands of other free resources online from John Piper at DesiringGod.org.
00:05:15.000 | I'm your host, Tony Ranke. Thanks for listening.
00:05:17.000 | [music]
00:05:19.000 | [music]
00:05:21.000 | [music]
00:05:23.000 | [BLANK_AUDIO]