A Wise Son and a Foolish Son

Proverbs 10:1.

The proverbs of Solomon.
A wise son makes a glad father,
But a foolish son is the grief of his mother.

First Kings chapter 22, verses 41 through 53.

Jehoshaphat the son of Asa had become king over Judah in the fourth year of Ahab king of Israel. Jehoshaphat was thirty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned twenty-five years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Azubah the daughter of Shilhi. And he walked in all the ways of his father Asa. He did not turn aside from them, doing what was right in the eyes of the Lord. Nevertheless the high places were not taken away, for the people offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places. Also Jehoshaphat made peace with the king of Israel.

Now the rest of the acts of Jehoshaphat, the might that he showed, and how he made war, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? And the rest of the perverted persons who remained in the days of his father Asa he banished from the land. There was no king in Edom. A deputy of the king was there. Jehoshaphat made ships of Tarshish to go to Ophir for gold, but they never sailed, for the ships were wrecked at Ezion-geber. Then Ahaziah the son of Ahab said to Jehoshaphat, ‘Let my servants go with your servants in the ships,’ but Jehoshaphat would not. And Jehoshaphat rested with his fathers and was buried with his fathers in the City of David his father. Then Jehoram his son reigned in his place.

Ahaziah the son of Ahab became king over Israel in Samaria in the seventeenth year of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, and he reigned two years over Israel. He did evil in the sight of the Lord and walked in the way of his father and in the way of his mother and in the way of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who had made Israel sin. For he served Baal and worshiped him and provoked the Lord God of Israel to anger according to all that his father had done.

Earlier we read the words of King Solomon in Proverbs chapter 10 verse 1, and his words give us a little bit of a surprise. In the first part of the proverb he says, “A wise son makes a glad father,” and we can understand that part of it, because if a father is wise enough to want a wise son, if he has a wise son it will make him glad.

But we would have expected Solomon to say the reverse of that and say, “But a foolish son is the grief of his father.” But instead of that, if you noticed it, he says, “But a foolish son is the grief of his mother.” How interesting.

Now there may be more than one reason why the proverb is put that way, but I want to suggest to you that sometimes, more frequently than it ought to happen, unwise fathers who have unwise sons don’t really care that much about it. So a father may say, “Oh well, I was like that when I was young,” or “Oh well, my kid did something really stupid and he deserves what he’s getting.” And it is conceivable for a father to react rather coldly to the problems of a foolish son.

But it’s very, very much more difficult, I think you will agree, for a mother to do that. And even if the mother is not grieved by the foolish conduct itself, she may very well be grieved by the consequences into which this foolish conduct leads her son. So, “A wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is the grief of his mother.”

And it seems to me that we have a wonderful illustration of this principle in the passage that we read just a few moments ago from First Kings chapter 22. To put it very succinctly, in these verses we are confronted with a wise son and a foolish son. A wise son and a foolish son.

Before I go any further let me ask you this question. We often mention the fact around this table that we are praying for many of our children and we want to see many of them come back to the Lord and come back to church. And that’s a perfectly worthwhile objective. But I wonder if we have clearly crystallized in our minds that our objective is more than just to get our kids sitting in a seat on Sunday morning or at the Lord’s table. What we really want our children to do is to become wise, to live a wise life, to allow God to direct their life and to bless their life and to deliver them from the troubles that come from not living wisely.

And I hope that all of the Christian parents who are sitting around this table this morning have that as your long-term objective. Yes, we do want our children at church. Yes, we do want them at the Lord’s table. But we want them in these places because only by coming into the presence of the Lord and learning from God can they learn to become wise sons and daughters.

Which leads to another question, and that is, do we want for ourselves the same thing that we want for our children? If we want our sons and daughters to be wise, do we ourselves want to be wise and live wisely under the blessing and direction of God? And those are issues that I think we ought to consider for a few moments as we look at the wise son and the foolish son.

Now everybody at the table can already tell me who the wise son was. One of the men tell me, who is the wise son in this passage? Jehoshaphat. Jehoshaphat.

Now the Scripture tells us here that he was the son of Asa, of course. And we’ve already studied the reign of Asa. Asa was a godly king who reigned over the southern kingdom of Judah. What is really impressive about Asa is that he reigned for forty-one years, which was one year longer than David reigned and one year longer than Solomon reigned. He had a long reign. And by the time he had died, his son Jehoshaphat was thirty-five years old.

Now that in the ancient Middle East might have been a fairly mature age for a son to ascend the throne. Certainly it is a good age for a son to ascend the throne. We worry about a person that becomes king at the age of twenty-one or at the age of twenty-five. But at the age of thirty-five there must already have been in Jehoshaphat plenty of evidence of the wisdom with which he would conduct himself in his reign. And although we have nothing stated here about Asa’s reaction to this, I feel that it is almost certain that before Asa died he realized that his son Jehoshaphat was wise and ready to reign over the kingdom. And so I suspect that Asa died happy with the thought that “I have a wise son who will rule over my kingdom.” And that’s exactly what Jehoshaphat proved to be.

The first thing that we notice about Jehoshaphat is that he was very directly focused on pleasing the Lord. Notice in verse 43 it says, “And he walked in all the ways of his father Asa. He did not turn aside from them, doing what was right in the eyes of the Lord.” What a beautiful example of a father providing a role model for his son, isn’t that the case? Asa had walked in the ways of the Lord and his son Jehoshaphat walked in the ways of the Lord. And not only walked in the ways of the Lord but didn’t turn aside from them. He goes straight ahead to do what is right in the sight of the Lord.

I presume that’s what we want for our children, isn’t it? First of all we want them to be completely focused on the Lord so that they are determined above all other things to do what is right in the sight of the Lord. And all parents who have children growing fifteen years and beyond know that there comes a point where you can’t control what they do. They go out there and they do what they decide to do. What we want for our children is that they decide to do what is right in the eyes of the Lord.

And obviously this suggests that both husband and wife ought to be role models of what is right. You lose the ability to rear your children after they leave home, but you do not lose the opportunity to be role models. And as long as God leaves you on this earth, as long as you are here with your children, they ought to be able to look at you and see that you are living for God. And that’s what Jehoshaphat clearly saw in Asa. And when Asa was dead, Jehoshaphat walked in all the ways of his father and did what was right in the sight of the Lord.

However, Asa had a blind spot. Do you remember that we saw this when we were studying the life of Asa? Even though Asa did his very best to root out idolatry in Judah, he didn’t touch the high places. Now these high places we should not understand as being places where idols were worshipped, but apparently they were places where the Lord was worshipped. So that on various hills and on various mountains the children of Judah would build altars and they would offer sacrifices. But what we discover is that this was directly contrary to the revealed will of God in the book of the law, because God had commanded His people to do all of their sacrificing at the altar in His temple in Jerusalem.

And we don’t know why it was that Asa never touched these places. Maybe he figured, “I’ve uprooted idolatry and after all they are worshipping the Lord, so just let them go ahead and do that.” But the prophets do not think that it was a good procedure. And what is interesting here is that the blind spot which Asa had is a blind spot which Jehoshaphat had. The very same failure that was present in Asa was present also in his basically wise son Jehoshaphat.

You know, sometimes parents say, “Boy, I don’t know why my kid acts like that. I don’t know why they have that attitude. I don’t know why they behave that way.” And sometimes you can find the answer by going to the mirror and looking in the mirror. And the face that looks back out at you may be the face of the reason why the kid behaved like that. Not only do children have a long-term tendency to pick up our good habits, they also have a very strong tendency to pick up our bad habits. And the blind spots in our lives are likely to be the blind spots in their lives. What does that mean? That means that we as parents have to ask God to show us our blind spots. We have to ask God to teach us what may be wrong with us that we don’t see.

The words of the psalmist are relevant here:

Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts, and see if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.

We may look in the mirror and say, “I’m a pretty good father,” or “I’m a pretty good mother.” But what we say about ourselves may not be the same thing that God says about us. Therefore we ought to be open to God to show us the weak points in our personality and behavior as well as the strong ones.

And then we’re told that Jehoshaphat made peace with the king of Israel. Now ever since the kingdom broke up into two parts, the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom, there had been periodic wars. And I guess Jehoshaphat thinks in terms of the futility of Israelites fighting with Israelites. And so he makes peace with the king of the north. He’s a peacemaker. Remember the words of Jesus in Matthew chapter 5:

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.

A wise son or daughter will be a peacemaker.

We do not want our children to be disruptors, people who are always causing trouble in the home, people who are causing trouble on the job, people who are causing trouble in the church. We would prefer, I trust, for our children to be the kind of people that make peace and see other people at friction and try to make peace between them. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.”

But please don’t think that Jehoshaphat was a Mr. Milquetoast. He was not a royal softie. Notice verse 45: “Now the rest of the acts of Jehoshaphat, the might that he showed, and how he made war, are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the kings of Judah?” All right, Jehoshaphat made peace with his brethren in the northern kingdom, but when he had to fight a war he fought it. And there are some records of it in the book of Second Chronicles as well as in the Chronicles. And although we want our children to be peacemakers in their relationships with others, we also want them to fight the good spiritual fight of faith, do we not? You cannot live a Christian life without waging war against principalities and powers, the spiritual wickedness that is in the heavenly places. Remember in Ephesians 6 we’re told to put on the whole armor of God that we may be able to stand in the evil day and having done all to stand.

So we want our children to be peacemakers in their relationships with other people, but we also want them to fight the forces of the enemy, to resist the attacks of the devil, and to win the spiritual battle in their own lives and experience.

And then we’re told in verse 46, “And the rest of the perverted persons who remained in the days of his father Asa he banished from the land.” The reference here very probably is to homosexual activity, probably the type of activity that went on in connection with the worship of idols. And you remember that Asa had banished the perverted persons from the land of Judah, but some of them had either snuck back in or managed to elude Asa. And so Jehoshaphat takes up where Asa left off and he banishes the remainder of the perverted persons from the land. So that Jehoshaphat as a wise son was also a moral man. Is this something we also want for our children? Don’t we want our children to be moral people?

Now let’s admit that in our society and culture that is offering on eternal television story you will find more often than not the hero of the story and the heroine going to bed with each other. They’re not married and not even planning to marry. And it’s presented as something perfectly acceptable. If you watch the media culture of our day you’ll find that people who criticize homosexuality are regarded as homophobic and prejudiced. We live in a very, very immoral society. And a wise son or a wise daughter will be a person who walks in morality and will encourage morality in others. Jehoshaphat knew that his land was better off without people like this, without the homosexuals, and he banished the ones that were left from the land. He was a moral man.

And then we’re told, “There was no king in Edom; only a deputy of the king.” What does that have to do with anything? Well, remember that Edom was to the south of Judah. And what we’re being told here must be connected with what we’ve already been told about Jehoshaphat making peace with the northern kingdom. On his northern border he made peace with the king of Israel. On the south he had control of Edom so that Edom had no independence. A deputy, apparently of Jehoshaphat, ruled in Edom. What does that mean? It means that Jehoshaphat worked to secure the borders of his people. Though there was no war on the north, he had control of Edom in the south. He was eager to enhance the security of the nation over which he ruled. So he was a wise son in that he provided security for God’s people.

I hope that you want your sons and daughters to do the same thing for their family. And I’m not just talking about giving them a house to live in and putting up burglar bars if necessary, putting food on the table. I’m also talking about other forms of security that are very, very important in our day and time. I’m talking about emotional security and about psychological security.

And one of the things that the wider culture is realizing is the enormous, terrific damage that is done to children as a result of divorce. You are probably aware that the statistics today show that about one out of every two marriages ends in divorce. And the people that are always the most deeply wounded by divorce are the children in the home. There was a book that was published recently, not by a Christian person but by a secular person, who followed the children of divorced homes, a substantial number of them, over a long period. And the conclusion that she reached was that the damage done to children as a result of divorce is damage that can extend into their later years. The conventional wisdom had been, you know, after a few years they get over the divorce. But her research indicates otherwise, that way down the line children are hurt by the divorces that have occurred in the home where they have lived.

To make one very simple application, a child that has been through a divorce in the home may be unable to enter into a satisfactory marriage of their own. They may have learned to distrust marriage or distrust a partner and therefore be unable to form the kind of solid binding relationship that is all a part of marriage. And what is actually happening with children in divorces is their security structures being undermined by the fracturing of the parental bond.

So I hope that it’s true of all the parents sitting at this table that you want your children to be wise, not only wise in the fact that they marry but wise enough to make their marriage work and work hard at it so that the family is secure, so children feel security. One of the points this woman made was that it may actually be better for husbands and wives to stay in an unhappy marriage just for the sake of the children. That’s so old-fashioned, and modern therapists have been saying, you know, “We can’t get along, let’s divorce. The kids will get over it.” But this woman is suggesting maybe it would be better in terms of the future of the kids if the parents stayed together even though they’re not happy in the marriage. But we live in such an “enjoy it” culture that it’s very hard for people to make that kind of sacrifice in our day and age.

But wise sons and daughters ought to know the importance to their children of a stable home, of the emotional and psychological security that needs to be there in order for their children to grow up properly.

And finally, another and last trait of this wise son is that he learned from his mistakes. He built some ships that were intended to go to Ophir to search for gold, and the ships were wrecked. Now that’s all we’re told in the Book of Kings about it. Then that would be enough for a king to say, you know, “God must not have wanted those ships to go because he sent a storm and wrecked them.” And as a matter of fact what we learn from the Book of Chronicles is that God made sure that Jehoshaphat got the message. And the son of a prophet, a man by the name of Eliezer or something? A prophet came to him and said, “What business did you have in allying with Ahaziah in this venture? Ahaziah is a wicked king and God has destroyed your work.” What we’re told here, however, is that after those ships were broken up, Ahaziah said, “Let’s start over again. You can build the ships and my men will go with you, your men and the ships.” Verse 49: “Then Ahaziah the son of Ahab said to Jehoshaphat, ‘Let my servants go with your servants in the ships,’” but Jehoshaphat would not. He had learned from his experience and he didn’t repeat his mistake.

Be assured of this if you’re a parent, because we know ourselves and we know it’s true of us. You cannot go through life without making mistakes, okay? And we’re not talking this morning about kids that are letter perfect in every way. Even your wisest sons and daughters are going to make mistakes. But one of the fundamental issues is, do they learn anything from them? Do they learn from their mistakes? Do they learn not to do what went wrong the first time? Part of being a wise son and daughter is to learn from the things that we do wrong.

Let me summarize here what we see in Jehoshaphat as a wise son: he was focused on doing the right thing before the Lord. He was a peacemaker. He was also an effective warrior when he needed to be. He was a moral person. He provided security for his people. And he learned from his mistakes. Pretty impressive, don’t you agree? Even with that one flaw, a very impressive example of a wise son. A wise son makes a glad father.

And who do you suppose is the foolish son in our passage? Easy giveaway question: Ahaziah. Now mind you, Jehoshaphat came to the throne at the age of thirty-five and reigned twenty-five years. We’re not told how old Ahaziah was when he came to the throne. But guess how long he reigned? Two years. And guess what he did? Well you remember Jehoshaphat. He walked in the ways of his father Asa. Ahaziah did the same thing. Verse 52: “He did evil in the sight of the Lord and walked in the way of his father and in the way of his mother and in the way of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel sin.” He had all the wrong examples.

Now this is a little unusual for the Book of Kings to say that somebody walks in the way of their father and mother. But remember the father was Ahab, the mother was Jezebel. And when it comes to trying to decide which of them had the most negative influence on Ahaziah, I think it’s a draw. Ahab was a weak, ineffective king in terms of his spiritual strength and commitment, and Jezebel was a strong Baal worshiper. And they produced a son who not only walked in their ways but also in the ways of Jeroboam, the first of the kings of the divided kingdom who set up the golden calf worship.

And mind you folks, the chances are very good that Ahaziah was alive at the time that Elijah called down fire from heaven on the altar and defeated the prophets of Baal and then had the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal carried off and executed. If he wasn’t actually there on Mount Carmel, he certainly heard the story. And guess what he did? You learn anything from that? No. Verse 53: “For he served Baal and worshiped him.” How dumb can you get? These are the prophets who couldn’t get fire down. These are the prophets who got themselves executed by the prophet of God. “Well you know it’s my mother’s god. She likes it. So I’m gonna worship his third Baal and worship him and provoked the Lord God of Israel to anger according to all that his father had done.”

To put it very simply, he made God mad. What happened to Ahaziah? Well we’ll find out in the first chapter of Second Kings. So let me just give you a foretaste. Ahaziah had an accident. He fell through the lattice of the window out of his upper chamber in the palace in Samaria and he was seriously injured. He took to his bed to recover and instead of recovery he died. He died after two years. He provoked the Lord to anger, and anyone who provokes the Lord to anger is inviting trouble. And may I suggest they may even be inviting death.

And here’s an interesting fact. By the time that Ahaziah had fallen through the window and injured himself fatally, as it turned out, of course Ahab was dead. Ahaziah wouldn’t have been king if Ahab hadn’t died, because Jezebel was still alive. She had been widowed two years before in the death of her husband Ahab. And now she loses what was probably her oldest son. Jezebel is a hard, tough lady all right, but she had to go to the kid’s funeral. I call him a kid; he’s a grown man. At this I would be very, very surprised if even Jezebel didn’t shed some tears at the death of this foolish son. Just as it can come into the power of the kingdom, fallen through the lattice and injured himself basically, killed himself in a way. “A foolish son is the grief of his mother.” I think this passage shows us the contrast beautifully.

You know last year Bob and my good friend Dick and Ann were suddenly killed in an automobile accident. And they didn’t suffer very long at all. And Dick had expressed the wish some months before that if he died he would like to go with it. And God granted him that request. They left behind four kids: one daughter, three sons. Now please understand that Dick was, as far as I could tell, something of an electronics genius. He had started his company in his garage and by the time I knew him he had a multi-million dollar electronics company with a factory over in Belgium, I believe it is, or Holland, one of those places.

And something else, his goal I guess. Who’s left behind? One daughter, the business is on their shoulders now. You also will probably are aware that Dick gave with extreme liberality to the work of the Lord. And he has helped Grace Evangelical Society and he helped other things. We could never repay him for what he’s done for these organizations. One of the kids is gonna do well. My friends, all four of those kids are committed to God. All four of them were determined to carry on the business as best they could in the absence of their father. And they were determined to continue as God enabled them to give to the Lord’s work in the same way that their father gave. And that’s exactly what they have continued to do.

And almost from the beginning when they took over the company God began to bless the company. I was talking to John just last week about a trip up there. And in the conversation he mentioned the business and he said, “The sales are going up now. God is honoring those four children.” He’s meeting them as they lead the company. He’s blessing them as they give to His work. You take Ann and know about this. I don’t know if they may not know about it yet, but if they do find out about it, what a joy it’s going to be. So their kids stepped right into their shoes and had a deep commitment to God, ran the company well, and continued to support the Lord’s work. Isn’t that the kind of kids we want? Okay, we’re not going to turn over to them a multi-million dollar business. None of us are. But our life goes on through them. And hopefully they will be wise sons and daughters.