GENEROUS
GENERATION
DR. JIM DIXON
OCTOBER 16, 2011
DEUTERONOMY 6:4-9, PROVERBS 22:6
The royal family of Ethiopia lost its rule in 1974 with the casting down of Haile Selassie. There is a legend in Ethiopia concerning the royal family, and this legend is believed by the 30 million Christians who are part of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. It’s just a legend, but according to this legend, 950 years before Jesus was born in Bethlehem the queen of Sheba made a long journey over deserts and mountaintops for 1,500 miles until she came to Israel. In Israel she met Solomon, son of David, king of Israel, and she fell in love with him. And according to the legend, Solomon and the Queen of Sheba were married. They had a son named Menelik, and that son, Menelik, ultimately left Israel and went to the land of Cush along the Nile River in Africa. And there he started the Royal House of Ethiopia.
It’s just a legend, and of course, the Bible tells us there was a queen of Sheba. Of course, scholars today are not certain who she was or even where Sheba was, but the Bible does tell us that the queen of Sheba journeyed to Israel and that she met with Solomon. The Bible tells us that she was in awe of Solomon’s wealth and Solomon’s wisdom. The Bible says nothing about a marriage between the queen of Sheba and Solomon. It says nothing about a child, nothing about a son named Menelik. All of that is just legend. And of course, in the Royal House of Ethiopia, prior to the death of Haile Selassie, the ruling royal member was always called the Lion of Judah, after David and Solomon and even Christ. There is this tradition in Ethiopia.
Of course, Solomon is a name known to all of us. Solomon is a central figure in the Bible, and obviously the third king of Israel. Solomon was known for his wisdom. And that wisdom was an endowment from God, a gift from God to him. It was supernatural wisdom. And much of the wisdom literature in the Bible was written by Solomon—inspired by God, but written by Solomon. Today we’re going to take a look at a verse that Solomon wrote, Proverbs 22 6. It’s part of a section in the book of Proverbs that goes from Proverbs 10:1 to Proverbs 22:16. This section is titled “The Proverbs of Solomon.” And there are 345 single line proverbs, and the name Solomon, the letters in the Hebrew name Solomon, when added up, come to 345. This is not a coincidence. We are to understand that Solomon is behind these proverbs. So we come to Proverbs 22:6, and the words of Solomon: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from them.” This proverb is very important for us today as we look at generous generation. In fact, I would submit to you that understanding the first word in this proverb is the key to raising kids. I would submit to you that understanding the meaning of the first word in this proverb is the key to raising up a generous generation.
The first word in this proverb is the Hebrew word “hanak.” In the actual form of Proverbs 22:6, it’s “hanok,”, but hanok comes from the Hebrew word hanak. So we need to understand what hanak means. What is it that we’re to do with our kids? What does it mean to train them up?
Well, first of all, the word hanak means to dedicate. This is a surprise to many people, but the primary meaning of hanak is “to dedicate.” In Deuteronomy chapter 20, hanak is used of the dedication of a home. If you dedicate your house to God in order to sanctify it—in order to provide protection from forces of evil, as many Jewish people did, when they dedicated their house to God—it was hanak. And then when you come to 1 Kings chapter eight and to 2 Chronicles chapter seven, you see the dedication of the temple to God. And again, the word is hanak. And of course, when you look in Ezra chapter six and you see the word hanak, it’s dedication of the rebuilt temple. Then in Nehemiah chapter 12, you see the word hanak and it’s a dedication of the rebuilt walls of the city of Jerusalem. Hanak means dedicated to God. So the message here is that you have to dedicate your kids to God.
There’s a word that you all know that comes from this word, hanak, and that’s the word Hanukkah. You’ve all heard of the Jewish Festival of Hanukkah. Of course, Hanukkah comes from hanak and it means “the Feast of Dedication.” In John chapter 10, we read how Jesus went to the temple in Jerusalem to celebrate Hanukkah. He went to the temple in Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of Dedication. What was the feast of dedication? What was Hanukkah? It is a remembrance of the dedication of the Jerusalem temple. After the desecration of Antiochus IV, Antiochus Epiphanes, in the aftermath of the Maccabean revolt, the temple was repossessed by the Jews. They cleansed it; they purified it from the desecrations of the Seleucid king. And then the purified temple was dedicated once again to God. Hanak.
So this concept is clear. We’re to dedicate our kids to God. Now, this means we’re to consecrate our kids to God. It also means we are to acknowledge God’s ownership. This is part of the meaning of hanak. Part of the meaning of dedicate is “to acknowledge ownership.” So we acknowledge that God is the owner of our kids. It’s very important that we inform our kids of this, that they’re actually owned by God. We are their parents. We love them. But we are stewards. They are owned by God. Our children need to understand that we’re going to have to give an account for how we raise them, because they belong to God. So sometimes children just need to understand that we do what we do because we’re going to have to give an account to God. He’s the owner. He owns us, and he owns them.
Of course, the concept of ownership was very complex in the biblical world. Amongst the Greeks, ownership was communal. This was the ideal. Ownership was communal. So you look at the words of Plato… let me read you a statement from Plato, the Greek philosopher: “Our men and women should be forbidden by law to live together. All women should be common to all the men. Similarly, children should be held in common. No parents should know their child. No child should know its parents.” That is strange. But that was the ideal: communal ownership. That was the Greek ideal.
Now, in the Roman world, the ideal was individualistic ownership and patriarchal. This was the Roman way. It was a patriarchal society. Dads owned everything. Men owned their wives by Roman law, and men owned their kids. It was “pater potentas”—father power. A father could discipline his child in any way he wanted. He could abandon his child. There was a place in the city of Rome where fathers could just literally abandon their children. Those children oftentimes wound up as slaves or even in prostitution. Of course, fathers in certain provinces of the Roman Empire could execute their children and nobody could say anything because of father power. I mean, dads owned everything.
Of course, today in those nations that still practice communism, the government owns everything. This is the communist ideal: governmental ownership. Years ago, Barb and I traveled with Gene and Lorna Kissinger and with some of you to China, and we went all over to China and we visited some agricultural communes. Now, the Chinese government has always claimed that they have no agricultural communes, but they do. We saw them and they have open sewers. The families and the kids that live in these agricultural communes will live there and die there. You never leave there unless the government takes some of the kids, and they’ll just take them from their parents. The government comes in and they test the children’s aptitudes. And if they have high aptitude in any particular area, the government just then seizes the kids because the government has ownership. They just seize the kids and use those kids for their governmental purposes—for whatever projects they want, for whatever use they want—because the kids belong to the government.
Now, you might be thinking, well, what’s the Christian ideal? Maybe you’re thinking, well, the Christian ideal surely is that kids are owned by their mom and dad, by their parents. But that’s not the case, as we’ve already seen. The Christian ideal is kids are owned by God. Everything is owned by God. In the Bible God says, “All souls are mine. The soul of the Father, as well as the soul of the son, is mine. The soul of the parent, as well as the soul of the child, is mine. The soul of the mother, as well as the soul of the daughter, is mine. The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.” Everything belongs to God, and if we’re going to raise our kids right, if we’re going to raise them in the faith, we need to understand that they are owned by God. Therefore we dedicate them to God, even as in 1 Samuel chapter one Hannah brought her son Samuel to the temple to dedicate him to God, acknowledging the ownership of God
We do this in Christian baptism. We do this when we baptize our babies. So we bring our children and we dedicate them to God, acknowledging that they are His. We consecrate them to God. We acknowledge His ownership, and we promise God that we will rear our children for Him and with the knowledge of Him. So this dedication is kind of the beginning, and it’s the primary meaning of the word hanak. It’s really even the key to generosity and passing it on. They’ll be generous with regard to the cause of heaven if they understand they belong to God.
Many of you have heard of Sam Houston. You know that the city of Houston, Texas, is named after Sam Houston. Sam Houston was a colorful and really incredible American. He was by training a lawyer. He was by adoption a member of the Cherokee Indian Nation and he lived amongst the Cherokees for three years. Sam Houston became the president of the Republic of Texas, and as president of the Republic of Texas Sam Houston fought to bring Texas into the union. And of course, when Texas joined the Union and became part of the United States of America, Sam Houston became a United States Senator, and then later the governor of the state of Texas. He was not a Christian for much of his life. His wife was devout, and she loved Jesus Christ, and for years, she prayed for her husband. She prayed for Sam Houston, that he would give his life to Christ. And two thirds of the way through Sam Houston’s life (he lived until he was 70), when he was 50, he gave his heart to Jesus. It was an answer to years of prayer. Sam Houston gave his heart to Jesus. He asked Jesus Christ to be his Lord and his Savior, and he was baptized in a river there in Texas.
When he was baptized, he did a strange thing. He insisted that his wallet go under the water with him. That’s what historians tell us. The minister who was doing the ceremony said, Sam, you’re going to get the wallet wet. Just leave it here on the bank. Don’t take. He said, no. He said, my whole life I’ve had a problem with money and I viewed it as my own, and I have misused it. I’m giving everything to Christ, including my wallet.
I think that’s kind of cool. I think a lot of us, when we go under, hold the wallet above the water, because we really don’t want to give it up. But if Christ owns everything, if we’re really dedicated to Him and we acknowledge that He’s the owner of all, then it’s going to affect what we do with money.
Now, there’s a second meaning of this word hanak. It not only means to dedicate. It also means to teach. Hanak also means to teach. In fact, in late Judaism, hanak became the equivalent of the Greek word catechesis, from which we get the word catechism. And so hanak referred to instruction in morality and in theology that was the meaning of the Greek equivalent catechesis, meaning instruction in morality and theology. So if we’re gonna raise our kids, right, if we’re gonna raise up the next generation properly, we must dedicate them to God and teach them morality and theology.
Now, who’s teaching your kids? Have you ever really thought about that? Where do they get their morality? Where do they get their theology? I think a lot of it comes from the entertainment industry. I think a lot of it comes from Hollywood—from movies, from television. There’s an indoctrination there. Now, I know many Hollywood movies have redemptive endings with redemptive messages, but a lot of the morality that comes out of Hollywood is tragic.
I hope you understand that when you turn to Daniel chapter seven, you see this portrait of the Antichrist, who is called the Little Horn. The Antichrist is described in this way: he will seek to change the law. The Antichrist will seek to change the law. Now, what is the law? Is it the civil law? No, it’s the moral law. The Antichrist will seek to change the moral law. Now, this is also taught in 2 Thessalonians chapter two in the New Testament, where Paul calls the Antichrist the man of lawlessness—“anomia.” The word anomia means lawless. The word anomia comes from “nomos,” which is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word Torah. So when you look in the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, whenever you come to the word Torah, the Greeks wrote nomos. But the Antichrist is “a-nomos,” anomia. He is against the Torah. He’s against the law. He’s against all the instructions of God. And of course, it also says in the 2 Thessalonians chapter two that the spirit of lawlessness, the spirit of Antichrist, the spirit of unrighteousness, is already at work in the world.
So the Bible tells us that this: the spirit of antichrist, this diabolical and evil spirit has been at work in the world from the fall of mankind and from the fall of the angelic hosts, will increase in power until finally the man of lawlessness, the Antichrist himself, arises on the stage of human history. So we see the influence of antichrist right now. We see the influence of lawlessness right now, and all of our citadels of power within our culture, from media to entertainment to academia. It’s all impacted by this spirit of Antichrist. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t good people in all these arenas, but the influence of Antichrist is at work in our world.
So who’s teaching our kids? Where are they learning morality and where are they learning theology? I downloaded yesterday on my computer an interview that was conducted by Time Magazine. And it was an interview of George Lucas by Bill Moyers. Bill Moyers is a columnist and a correspondent. He was the White House press secretary for Lyndon Johnson. He has worked for CBS and PBS. Bill Moyers has a Master of Divinity degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, but he is not a Christian, and he has said that he is not fully an atheist nor is he fully a believer. He’s somewhere in between—kind of an agnostic. But he conducts this interview with George Lucas of Star Wars fame.
Of course, the first Star Wars movie came out in 1977. There have been many Star Wars movies since then, and they’ve certainly, amongst youth in the past generation, influenced the culture and really had multi-generational impact. So Bill Moyers says to George Lucas, “What is the force? What are you communicating? George Lucas says, “The force is God.” Bill Moyers says, “Well, is it the Christian God, Buddhist God, Hindu God, or Muslim God? What God?” And Lucas says, “I don’t know.” He said, “I’m just trying to present the possibility that God exists.”
And Bill Moyers says, “Well, do you believe in God?” And George Lucas said, “Yes.” And Bill Moyers said, “Who is God?” And then George Lucas said, “I have no clue. I believe in God, but I have no clue who He is.” And then Bill Moyers said, “Well, this concept of the force seems kind of Buddhist. I mean, the idea that God has a dark side seems kind of Buddhist. God is not portrayed as holy.” George Lucas acknowledged that, but he said he really doesn’t believe in any religion. He says he believes in all religions. He said, “I even believe in organized religion. I think they’re all true. I think they’re all just containers. They’re just vessels to hold faith, and it doesn’t matter what vessel you choose, whether it’s Buddhism or Hinduism or Christianity or whatever. Pick a vessel. It doesn’t matter, and it’s just something to hold your faith.”
And of course, that’s stupid. If you desire any rational symmetry, it’s stupid because you cannot harmonize the different religious constructs, the different religious theologies. They cannot be harmonized. Christianity is diametrically opposed to the teaching of other religions. But Lucas goes on to say to Bill Moyers that he’s a pluralist. He’s a syncretist. He believes that there are many roads to God. It doesn’t matter. Just have some kind of faith. He’s a pluralist. There are many roads to God.
Syncretists just go ahead and combine religions. And is that not the faith system of our culture today? I mean, how strange that the mind behind Star Wars has prevailed in our culture. Now you look at America and most people are pluralists and syncretists and they believe God exists, but they really don’t know who He is. So who’s teaching theology to your kids, and who’s teaching morality? It needs to be you. That’s the message of Proverbs 22:6 and the meaning of hanak. You dedicate your kids to the Lord, and then you teach them. You teach them morality and you teach them theology. You teach them from Torah. You teach them from scripture.
I thank God that I had parents who did that. My mom and dad are in heaven now and they’re with Christ. But I thank God for them. I really look forward to seeing mom and dad again someday, and I know I will. I miss hearing their voices. I miss seeing their faces. They led me to Christ. They introduced me to Jesus. They prayed with me. They taught me to pray. They taught me morality from the Bible as they studied the Bible with me. They taught me theology from the Bible, and they sat down with me and went through the Apostles’ Creed, that I might understand basic Christian doctrines.
You look at most ministries out there, and they all have statements of faith. Those are cradle statements, and just a summation of core biblical truths. My parents went over those things with me, as well as my church. But I thank God for that upbringing. My parents taught me generosity as part of the plan of God and the will of God, and my parents taught me to tithe. We had those little envelopes that we had to take to church every week. My parents made sure I had them when I was very young and received an allowance. They instructed me that I should give the first 10% out of my allowance to God. He owns it all. But that’s just a minimal standard of generosity. No legalism here, just a minimal standard of generosity. It’s an expression of love for God, that I would tithe the first 10% of whatever I got. And when I got my first job and I got my first paycheck, my mom and dad were there to say, “Now, you know, it’s all Gods. What are you gonna do with that first 10%?” And so they brought me up to think of the cause of heaven and the church of Jesus Christ and to give and to give with generosity.
My parents, as time went by, became double tithers as God blessed them, because their heart and their passion was to seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness. So for my brothers and I and our wives, it’s not been hard for us to be givers because we were all taught that way by our parents.
Now we have a generation that is not generous. All the statistics show it’s a generation that does not give, and it’s because their parents didn’t give. If you want to teach catechesis, hanak, if you wanna teach your kids, you have to do it yourself. You can’t teach your kids to do what you’re not doing. You can’t teach them to believe what you don’t believe. So we teach by example, and that’s at the root of hanak.
Well there’s a third meaning and a final meaning to hanak, and that’s, “to entice.” This is interesting, but this Hebrew word hanak means to dedicate and means to teach morality and theology and then it means to entice—to entice your kids in the way of the Lord. That’s an interesting concept. This word haack was used by Hebrew midwives when they sought to nurse babies. They would entice them to accept the nursing, and they would take the sweet juice of the fig and they would spread it on the lips of the baby to entice them to begin to nurse. And in fact, the word hanak was used in the Hebrew world to describe any kind of enticement to eat. I don’t need an enticement to eat, but some people do. Certain things need an enticement.
I was growing up, there were certain fruits and vegetables that I needed an enticement to eat. So this passage is to saying, you’ve gotta entice your kids and you need to entice them with regard to the Word of God, which is what rabbis did in the Jewish schools, such as Bet Sefer, “the house of the book.” When they taught young kids the Torah and began to equip them to memorize the Torah, they would begin by giving them honey. They would say, “The Bible, the Word of God, the Torah, is sweet as honey.” It was an enticement. So we’re to be, as parents, enticers.
I just realized this morning that today is the 70th anniversary of Young Life. I think most of you have heard of a ministry called Young Life. It began on October 16th in the year 1941. So that was 70 years ago today. October 16th, 1941, Young Life began down in Texas. Then in 1947, Young Life moved its world headquarters to Colorado Springs. Today, Young Life has 3,300 full-time staff in almost every nation of the world and they have over 18,000 volunteers. They have over 1 million kids in Young Life Clubs today, and tens of millions who have been influenced by Young Life over the decades. And it all began with Jim Rayburn. Jim Rayburn was a Presbyterian minister who founded Young Life down in Texas in 1941. Now, Jim Rayburn is famous for a quote that he said, and some of you have heard it. The quote is this: “It’s a sin to bore a kid with the gospel.”
I’ve thought about that through the years, and I’m not so sure, because I think a lot of kids are easily bored. But the message I understand. You need to entice kids with the things of God. And actually even adults need enticement with regard to the things of God. I think we’re all easily bored. But you know, there’s an obligation upon us. So when you look at Proverbs 22:6, it says, “Entice your kids in the way they should go. Now, that phrase, “in the way they should go,” in the Hebrew is “al pi darko,” and it literally means “in the mouth of his way.” This is a Hebraic expression, and nobody’s sure what it means today. “In the mouth of his way.”
The question is, what is his way? Is his way the way of righteousness? “Entice them in the way of righteousness”? Is his way the way of God? “Entice them in the way of God”? Perhaps. Certainly, at least that’s gotta be part of the meaning. But some scholars have said, well, “his way,” may be according to your child’s way—your child’s individual personality, your child’s distinctiveness—and you need to entice your child understanding how your child is unique. Make sure that you’re appropriately fitting the instruction to the personality of your child. And that could be true. When our daughter Heather was born I was there at the hospital, and first thing we put the pacifier in her mouth and she just clamped down, and with all of her little might she began to pump that pacifier. When our son Drew was born, I held him in my arms. I took the pacifier, put it in his mouth, and he just let it dangle. Kids are different. Kids are different, and you rear them accordingly. So you entice them differently. This is true of the things of God.
Some people have said that “his way” refers to the way of youth, so that you’re trying to be at least a little bit cool so that your teaching and your instruction is appropriate to youth. All these things are possible. Entice your child, dedicate your child, teach your child, and do it in the way of righteousness. Do it in the way of your child’s distinctiveness, and do it in the way that young people would relate to. But this is critical.
Now, as we close, I want to share one little story out of the Bible, and it concerns Lydia. Acts chapter 16, verse 14, mentions Lydia, and Lydia is the first convert that the Apostle Paul makes in Europe. So the Apostle Paul ventures from Asia Minor into Europe, and he arrives at Philippi and his first convert is a woman named Lydia. She’s a dealer in purple, and she’s from Thyatira, which is in the province of Lydia. It was famous for its purple dyes, and those purple dyes were used with regard to clothing and different materials and objects and greatly sought after in the ancient world. Lydia was undeniably wealthy, and she had a large house, and she was not a Christian. But Lydia was, we’re told in Act 16:14 , a God-fearer. She was not a Christian but she was a God-fearer, perhaps part of what was called the “hoy phoboumenoi.” And the hoy phoboumenoi were the God-fearers that had come into Judaism. They weren’t exactly proselytes, but they were believers in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And that was her. That had happened to her when she was living in Thyatira in the province of Lydia. But she was not a Christian.
Now, she was now living in Philippi, and they called her Lydia. That might not even be her name. She came from Lydia, and it might just be that they called her that because that’s where she came from. When the Apostle Paul wrote to the Philippians where Lydia lived and he addressed the Philippian church (and Lydia ultimately became part of the Philippian church) he doesn’t mention Lydia. He mentions Euodia and Syntyche, and some people think maybe Lydia’s real name was Euodia or Syntyche. We don’t know. We do know that Lydia came down to the river to pray when the Apostle Paul came down to the river to pray.
So there’s this prayer meeting there, and in the context of this prayer meeting down by the river in the village of Philippi, Paul shared the gospel of Jesus Christ. And it says God opened Lydia’s heart and she became a Christian. She became a believer as God opened her heart. And then she became instantly generous, offering all that she had to the early church and to the use of Paul and his ministry, including the use of her home. Now, that’s because God opened her heart. I would submit to you today, as we close, that’s the key to everything: God opening their heart, God opening our heart. So for our kids, Drew and Heather, from the very beginning, we prayed that God would open their heart from the very beginning. And God has opened their hearts so that they believe in Jesus, and He’s opened their hearts so that they are generous with their time and with their talent and with their treasure.
It’s all God. If you want to entice your kids, you need God’s power. If you want to entice your kids, you need the power of the Holy Spirit. So pray that God would open their hearts. If we’re going to raise up a generation, pray that God would open their hearts. Begin, however, by praying that God would open your heart, because we can’t take our kids where we haven’t gone and where we’re not going. So pray that God would open our hearts. We want to raise up a generous generation. And so much is at stake. If they’re not generous, the cause of the kingdom of heaven will be thwarted. If they’re not generous, the church of Jesus Christ will lose strength. So much is at stake. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.