Isaiah 7:15

THE GREAT OBJECT OF CHILD-TRAINING
(A Sunday-School Anniversary Sermon.)

Isaiah 7:15. The child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good.

These words, taken above, form a complete sentence; yet they occur in the clause of a sentence which is intended to denote a space of time. Before the child which Isaiah held in his arms [820] should know the difference between right and wrong certain events would take place: in other words, before a space of four or five years at the most would elapse, certain things would occur. But it is not our intention to discuss the prophecy itself; we shall find it more in harmony with the present occasion, and perhaps more profitable, to consider what may be suggested to us by these words thus taken apart from their context.

[820] See the paper entitled THE VIRGIN’S SON.

“The child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good.” There is nothing else so important for any child to know as this (H. E. I. 1751). Seldom made the object of education; consequently the majority of lives are failures. No child knows this without training: the child’s natural tendencies are precisely the reverse of this. But, if this training is urgently needed, how immense and difficult is the task of those who undertake to give it! How difficult it often is to discern between what is good and what is evil—in all the realms of thought and activity; especially in the moral realm. The difficulty of the task is not to cause us to decline it. We have wonderful helps in it.

1. GOD’S WORD. What a wonderful help that is! What a proof that in the Bible we have God’s word is this, that for helpfulness in this task no other book can be compared with it (H. E. I., 506, 508, 509). Our text reminds us of what should be our object in the Scriptural teaching we give our children. What value is there in any so-called Scriptural instruction that does not tend to cultivate spiritual discernment—hate of what is evil, and love of what is good?
2. THE EXAMPLE OF CHRIST, “the law drawn out in living characters.” Let us not overlook or neglect to use this marvellous instrumentality and help.
3. THE HOLY SPIRIT. Always ready to co-operate with us. Christian parents, let the remembrance of these helps encourage you to resume this supremely important task with fresh vigour. Keep it ever in view, aim at the whole of it. The training which consists merely in fighting against evil is foredoomed to fail. The child must be taught, not merely to refuse the evil, but to choose the good. Do not be content in the field of your child’s heart merely to plough up the weeds; sow there the corn which, when it is full grown, shall overshadow and kill the weeds which, in spite of all your efforts, will struggle for a place there. In those who undertake to give this training, there is imperative need of seriousness, humility, hopefulness, and a wise comprehensiveness. Consider what will be the results of success in child-training such as this.
1. Our children will be spared from indescribable misery.
2. They will grow continually in all that is noble and love-worthy.
3. Learning to choose what is good, they will necessarily choose God as He has been thus revealed to us in Jesus Christ.
4. Beholding them thus allied in heart and will to the supreme source of all goodness, and daily becoming more like Him, we shall feel that all our labours and sacrifices for them are overpaid.