(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Now, this morning, my entire sermon is going to be taken from the book of Proverbs. So if you start right there in Proverbs chapter 1, beginning in verse number 1, where the Bible reads, The Proverbs of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel, to know wisdom and instruction, to perceive the words of understanding, to receive the instruction of wisdom, justice and judgment and equity, to give subtlety to the simple, to the young man, knowledge and discretion. What I want to preach about this morning is the subject of homeschooling. The reason why I believe that we should homeschool our children and not put them in the government school system. Now right here in this scripture and throughout the book of Proverbs, there's a lot of talk about instruction. And when we think of education today, that's really what the Bible is talking about when it says instruction. Someone's being instructed or taught something. And if we talked about how many weeks of instruction, those are the type of terms that people would use in a school setting. So the Bible is teaching us in Proverbs a lot about education, especially here in chapter number 1. And notice it says in verse number 4, to give subtlety to the simple, to the young man, knowledge and discretion. A wise man will hear and will increase learning, and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsel. So here and throughout the book of Proverbs, we see that education is a good thing. Learning is important and God is telling us over and over again, gain more knowledge, to gain more wisdom, to be instructed to learn new things. But notice in this passage, there's an emphasis on who you're learning from. He's not just saying, hey, learn anything that anybody has to teach. No, it says in the end of verse 5, a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels. To understand a proverb and the interpretation, the words of the wise and their dark sayings. Verse 6 says, to understand a proverb and the interpretation, the words of the wise and their dark sayings. Verse 7, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction. So let me ask you this, if you're getting educated down at the public school system, the government school system, are we beginning with the fear of the Lord down there? I mean, is that step one? Is, hey, let everybody, let's just, it's the first day of school, let's just make sure we're all on the same page here, that we fear the Lord. No, it starts with atheism. It starts with the denial that the Lord even exists. And the Bible says, the fool hath said in his heart, there is no God. In fact, you don't have to turn there, but in verse number, in chapter 13, I'm sorry, I got it in the wrong place in my notes here, chapter 16 verse 22 says this, understanding is a wellspring of life unto him that hath it, but the instruction of fools is folly. Okay, you hear that? The instruction of fools is folly. So if you have a fool as your teacher, they're going to teach you foolishness or folly. So it does matter what the source of our instruction is. God says that the beginning of knowledge is the fear of the Lord. God says that we should go to the wise and get their sayings and their teachings and go unto them. Now look at chapter 1 verse 20. The Bible says, wisdom crieth without. She uttereth her voice in the streets. She crieth in the chief place of concourse and the openings of the gates. In the city, she uttereth her words saying, how long ye simple ones will you love simplicity? And the scorners delight in their scorning. And fools hate knowledge. Turn you at my reproof. Behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you. I will make known my words unto you. So when we talk about getting knowledge and wisdom, these things come from the Word of God, according to the Bible. He said, I'll make known my words unto you. That's what's going to give you knowledge and wisdom. The Bible says in Psalm 19-7, the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. See a simple person is an ignorant person who doesn't know a lot. And of course we know that every child begins that way. Children are born into this world not knowing anything and then they have to learn as they go. The Bible says that the word of the Lord is what is going to make the wise out of the simple, okay? Because of the fact that God's word literally makes you smarter, okay? That's what the Bible is teaching. Now look at verse 8 of chapter 1 there in Proverbs. My son, hear the instruction of thy father and forsake not the law of thy mother. For they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head and chains about thy neck. So it's very clear from this passage that Christians should be teaching us, not the heathen. Because the Bible says we need to go to the wise. It needs to start with the fear of the Lord and so forth. And then he puts forth mother and father as being great instructors for us to teach us what we need to know. Now there are many people though that they don't want to homeschool or they think that homeschooling is not going to work for them and they raise various objections to homeschooling. And so this morning I want to go through seven common objections that people will bring up. When you say, hey don't put your kid in the heathen government school, homeschool your kid. Don't let them be taught by a bunch of atheists and people who literally hate the Lord. Say, well I have a Christian teacher. You know what? The vast majority of teachers down there are not saved. That's the true story. And even if the teacher is saved, all of the curriculum and the whole system is being run and mandated by people who are anti-God. They're not just neutral about God. They're actually anti-God. They actually have an agenda to teach atheism. They literally teach in the science class that the whole world created itself from nothing, which is stupidity and foolishness. But this is the kind of folly that comes out of the mouth of a fool. Only a stupid person would say, oh the whole world just created itself from nothing. And if you don't believe it, you're uneducated. I mean how ridiculous is it to think, oh see everything that you see here? The whole universe, guess what? It all just created itself out of nothing. There's no God. Well where did this stuff come from? Oh it exploded. What exploded? I don't know, nothing. I mean it's ridiculous. But literally, because people have such a desire to just kind of fit in and not question things, they will literally go along with it to the point of, you mean you don't believe in the Big Bang? It's like the emperor's new clothes. You remember the fable of the emperor's new clothes? Remember the emperor is naked, okay? And they tell everybody, oh he has these new clothes and they're so beautiful and everybody talks about how great they are. And you know, you can only see them if you're wise though. And of course the guy's nude but everybody pretends that they see it, even though nobody sees it because it isn't there. This is how education works today in America. It's just everybody's taught, hey listen, evolution's a fact. The Big Bang's a fact. The earth being billions of years old is a fact, just deal with it. And nobody wants to question it because then they're going to be seen as ignorant, uneducated. How can you say it's a fact that the world came from nothing? It defies all the laws of science. No law of science that's ever been tested or proven says that things come from nothing, all by themselves. It's nonsense, it's ridiculousness. And they never ask the real questions. They want to talk about evolution all day long but that only explains how one life form turned into another. Okay, where'd the first life form come from? How did it come to life? See instead of showing me a picture of an ape slowly turning into a human, you know that famous picture? I want to see a picture of nothing turning into a single-celled organism. That's what I want to see because single-celled organisms are extremely complicated. So I want you to show me a diagram of how anything turns into a single-celled organism. And we could put all of these moronic scientists, we could put the whole science department of ASU and all these science teachers from all over the school system, we could put them all in a laboratory, we could bring them all of the most high-tech instruments in the world, we could bring them every chemical, every element, every possible substance to work with, and say, create something that's alive! And guess what they couldn't do? They couldn't do it. They could not create anything that's alive. Nothing, not even the simplest thing that's alive, they can create nothing. But we're supposed to believe that it just came to life by itself. And then you also have to believe that it slowly evolved to the point where it became actually a human being, as smart as we are. Okay, but if you don't believe it, you're just an idiot, you know. You religious pumpkin. But that's what they think. But professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. You'd have to be an idiot. You'd say, well how dare you call it, the Bible says they're a fool. I'm just bringing that into 2015 vernacular. The idiot has said in his heart that there is no God. And anybody who believes that the world just came from nothing, created itself from nothing, is not a scientist. And it's funny because I had some guy confront me at the park. He confronted the wrong guy. He confronted me about homeschooling. My kids are there, they're playing. And he starts telling me how bad homeschooling is. And I gave him a piece of my mind. And he told me, well you know, but are you going to teach your kids real science? That's what they mean by real science. To them that's like the most important thing. And then you'll tell them, no I don't believe in that stupid nonsense that the whole world just exploded from nothing. It's ridiculous. Well how do you like that smartphone in your pocket? What about that car you drive? That was all invented by the scientist you despise. No evolutionary biologist did not design my smartphone. And astrophysicists did not design the car that I drive. Those are designed by engineers. Not scientists. There are some scientists that have made legitimate discoveries and things, but guess what they weren't? Evolutionary biologists. Guess what they weren't? Astrophysicists. Because those people are just philosophizing about the origins of the species. Hey here's the origin right here. It's called Genesis 1-1. So how can you send your kids to an institution that doesn't believe anything that we believe? That's going to teach them these lies and these nonsense. And look, I went to public school when I was in 6th grade and the science teacher got up, I was 11 years old, and this is what my science teacher said in elementary school in 6th grade. He said, I don't care if you're a Christian, I don't care what religion you are, I don't care what you believe, you must believe in evolution in this class. I don't care what religion you are, I don't care if you're an atheist, a Christian, a Muslim, Buddhist. He said, if you don't believe in evolution, you're an idiot. If you don't believe in the big bang, you're an idiot. You have to believe in it in this class. That's what he said. Well, you know, that's just an exception. Well, you know, maybe God put me in that class so I could get up here and scream about it 20 some years later so that you'd understand why you shouldn't put your kids in a place where the instruction of fools is folly. Okay? This is what the Bible's teaching us here. There's nothing in scripture that tells us to deliver our children under the heathen to be educated. Bring in the Philistines to educate your children. Where did that ever happen in the Old Testament? No, we're to teach our own children the word of God and bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Not to mention the bad influences that they're going to be around in the public fool system. The Bible says, he that walketh with wise men shall be wise, but a companion of fools shall be destroyed. So let's go over some of the objections, though, because it's pretty clear in scripture that God wants us to raise our own kids, to bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, to teach them the word of God. It's not hard to tell that the public school system is being run by atheists who don't believe the Bible at all, don't believe in God. But here are some of the objections that people would bring up when you try to admonish them to homeschool their children. Number one, people will bring up this objection. Well, you know, I'm just, I'm not smart enough. Sometimes people will say, you know, I was never really that good in school myself. I'm not really that educated. I'm not really an intellectual person. I just can't see myself homeschooling my children. It's not really my gift because I never did that good in school myself. Well, here's the answer to that. Look at verse five of Proverbs chapter one. It says, a wise man will hear and will increase learning and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsel. You see, the wise person will increase their knowledge and wisdom. Let me say this to you. If you're sitting there thinking, well, you know, I can't homeschool my children because I'm just not smart enough, I'm just not educated enough, then it's time for you to get smarter. It's time for you to increase learning. Now, here's the great thing about homeschooling is that, you know, ideally you're not starting when your kid is 16 or 17 years old. It's not like we're just trying to grab you and throw you into algebra two here or three. I mean, do you know that A says as an apple? You know, then you're ready to start homeschooling your four year old. I mean, think about it. The beauty of homeschooling is that it actually makes you smarter to do it. You know, obviously it's the mother that is primarily doing the homeschooling because obviously dad is at work bringing home the bacon. But this will keep women smarter. Now it's amazing how people will try to paint it that Christians don't want women to be educated. We just want to keep women uneducated, barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. Now look, I want my wife barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, but I don't want her uneducated. And the thing is actually, you know, Christianity exalts women and we actually exalt learning and instruction and knowledge. And actually by staying home and homeschooling your children, you're actually going to get smarter, believe it or not. Why? Because you go back to the very beginning and you go through it all with them. It's like going through school a second time. Think about it. You start out with kindergarten. You say, why? I'm just not that educated. Well then, that's all the more reason why you need to homeschool. Because you apparently missed some stuff the first time around, you can hit it all up on the second time around. I mean, think about it. It just makes sense. And all you have to do is stay one lesson ahead of the kids. That's it. One lesson ahead. I mean, look, look, if today B is in, you know, but as in B, bumblebee, you know, just be sure that you learn that C says cuz and cat before they do and you're ready to do the next day's instruction. And I'm joking, of course, because obviously you're not that ignorant. OK, you know how to read, hopefully, but if not, you need to learn how to read and then homeschool your child. Because honestly, you start at the beginning with them and you go through it with them and you say, oh, well, Pastor Anderson. You know, you're you're being ridiculous because, you know, how could a woman learn anything from going back through elementary school a second time? I mean, you know, we're talking about institutions of higher learning here. But honestly, when you do homeschooling, even in elementary school, there are things that you learn that could be unique. For example, in geography, in history, in science, you know, you're going to learn new things the second time around that you missed because different curriculums teach different things. Honestly, if you were to ask my wife, I'm sure that she's probably learned a lot by homeschooling. She probably has learned all kinds of things about history, all kinds of things about other countries of the world, a lot of math that maybe she forgot was refreshed and renewed in her mind. It's fresh in her mind. Look, you're going to learn something when you teach your children. And so don't use the excuse of I'm not smart enough. That just means you need to homeschool even more because you need to spend some time hitting the books and opening the book with your child and going through it all again and getting smarter and then you can become a more intellectual person. See, it's not right for us to just say, oh, I'm just not a very intellectual person. No, God says you need to increase learning. God says you need to get some knowledge and instruction in you. And we as Christians should be intelligent people and not just be content to just be idiots. No, we need to learn things and grow in knowledge. That's what the Bible teaches. So this thing of I'm not smart enough, well, you know what? This will be a great experience for you, homeschooling your children because you can learn along with them as they go. A second objection, number two, is people will say, well, you know, it's just too much work. It's going to take way too long. And sometimes you'll hear people say things like, you know, I don't have six hours to sit there. Because, you know, you send your kid to school for seven hours and six hours of that they're in the classroom, right? So they say, you know, I don't have six hours to sit there and teach my kid. Well, look what the Bible says in Proverbs 2, verse 1. My son, if thou wilt receive my words and hide my commandments with thee so that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom and apply thine heart to understanding, yea, if thou cryest after knowledge and liftest up thy voice for understanding, if thou seekest her as silver and searchest for her as for hid treasures, then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord giveth wisdom out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding. What's God telling us to do here? To incline our ear unto wisdom, to apply our heart, to cry after it, to lift up our voice for it, to seek it, to search for it as for hid treasures. Look, does God want us to put forth effort into this thing of knowledge and learning or not? He's telling us we should be begging for it, seeking it, striving for it, struggling to get knowledge and understanding. Say, ah, it's too much work. No, no, no. It's work that needs to be put in, number one. But number two, it doesn't take six hours a day. And here's why. Because everything that the government does is inefficient. And school is one of them. Honestly, to homeschool your child only takes a few hours a day. And when they're really young, they only need, you know, a half hour, an hour or something when they're really young. As they get older, it becomes two, three hours. Eventually, it becomes four or five hours. But most of that, they're working on their own. I mean, actual instruction time, they don't need a whole lot of instruction time because a lot of it is reading and studying and doing the work on their own. And it really only takes a couple hours a day to get this done. And you say, well, you know, you're just not teaching them as much. Well, here's the thing. They're smarter than the kids that are coming out of public school. Statistics don't lie. Step the statistics on homeschooled kids. See how they do on the standardized testing. See how they do when they're put up against the public school kids. And actually, they're smarter. They know more. Everybody can point to some anecdote like this, you know, long-haired, burned-out hippie that came to me in the park and told me not to homeschool my kids. You know, of, oh, well, I knew these kids that were homeschooled and they didn't know anything. Well, here's the thing. You can find anecdotes like that. Just like you could find smart kids at the public school. You could find dumb kids that are being homeschooled, but you know what? The stats don't lie that homeschooled kids are getting a better education than public school kids, period. And even if they weren't, even if the education weren't better, I still wouldn't put my kids in that moral cesspool den of iniquity of the public school. Because there's more to life than just learning facts. But even just education against education, the homeschooling is going to be better. And it doesn't take as long. So objection number one was, hey, I don't have enough education. That's all the more reason why you need to do it. Number two, oh, it's too much work, takes too long. First of all, it doesn't take as long as you think. And number two, whatever effort and work and time it does take is worth it, and that's the time that you need to put in. And God's telling us that we should put that in. But number three, people will say this, oh, it's too expensive. They'll say, you know, it's too expensive to homeschool. Look at Proverbs 3, verse 13. The Bible says in Proverbs 3, 13, happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies, and all the things that thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her. Length of days is in her right hand, and in her left hand riches and honor. What's the Bible saying here? That money has no comparison with things like knowledge, wisdom, learning, understanding. These things are greater than rubies or gold. And in fact, having more knowledge actually gives you more power to make more money. I mean, that should kind of go without saying, shouldn't it? That the smarter you are, the more knowledge you have, the more wisdom and understanding, the more potential you have to go out and make a little more money because you're smarter and you have more skills. So whatever money it costs you to homeschool, I submit that just by getting smarter and making your kids smarter, you guys are all going to be better off financially in the long run because you're not going to waste money on dumb things and you're probably going to be able to earn more money, et cetera, et cetera. But either way, even if it does cost more, we should be willing to make the financial sacrifice in order to get the wisdom, the knowledge, and understanding imparted unto our children and protect them from the evil influences. Now, you say, well, homeschooling is expensive. It's really not expensive. I'm just bringing up objections that people have brought up to me. Oh, it's too expensive. Honestly, if you go out and buy really nice curriculum for your kids and get a really nice setup, we're talking like 300 bucks a year to homeschool your kids. I mean, it's not some crazy amount of money. And you know, it could be more than that, less than that, depending on what your style is, what you're using. You know, some people do a lot with books from the library just in order to make it a little bit cheaper. And there are ways to be frugal about this, to get curriculum used and things like that. But honestly, we're looking at a few hundred bucks for the whole year. But obviously, you know, you go to public school and it's all free, right? Everything's included. And they're probably sending them home with a laptop or something these days. And then they're like, oh, you know, breakfast is $2 and lunch is $2. And if you're poor, it's 60 cents for breakfast and 60 cents for lunch. And you know, you probably couldn't feed your kids for that much at home. But first of all, the food that you're feeding them at home hopefully is better than the school food. Because a lot of times the school, the mystery meat isn't really, you know, the best food anyway. But honestly, look, yeah, okay, okay. Maybe you do save a couple bucks by sending them to public school. Maybe you do get a free laptop. It's probably not the coolest laptop ever anyway. I mean, laptops are so cheap now. You can get an el cheapo laptop now for what, 200 bucks? 150 bucks? Brand new. You get a brand new laptop and it probably does a lot more than the top of the line one from 10 years ago, right? It's I mean, the Cadillac laptop of 8 or 10 years ago, you can probably get that for 200 bucks now. That spec of processor and the gigs of the RAM and the CPU and you know, whoop whoop. So, you know, who cares though? Is that really what life's about? Just saving a few bucks? We're talking about your kids. Why did you even have kids? I mean, it's expensive to even have kids in the first place. They're eating you out of house and home. You can spend 300 bucks, you know, to buy some books and teach them yourself so that they can learn and not be caught away with the error of the wicked in the world. Number four thing that I've heard is, oh, they won't be socialized. They're going to be socially backward. Who's heard this one before? You know, if you homeschool them, they're not going to be socialized. Okay. Well, let's see the socialization that the public school offers. Look at verse 10. My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not. If they say, come with us, let us lay wait for blood. Let us lurk privily for the innocent without cause. Let us swallow them up alive as the grave and whole as those that go down to the pit. We shall find all precious substance. We shall fill our houses with spoil. Cast in thy lot among us, let us all have one purse. My son, walk not thou on the way with them, refrain thy foot from their path. For their feet run to evil and make haste to shed blood. Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird and they lay wait for their own blood. They lurk privily for their own lives. So are the ways of everyone that is greedy of gain, which taketh away the life of the owners of." Now you say, well, come on, is that, that's not what the kids are like in public school. Yeah, but some of them are. There are some, who went to school with some kids that were like this? I went to school with kids like this in public school and Christian school, okay. There are some kids out there that are like this, believe it or not, even at that young age. But honestly, you know and I know that a lot of the socialization that the kids are getting down at the public school is called losing their virginity. It's called learning about drugs. It's called being shown pornography, okay. That's a lot of the socialization. But honestly, I submit to you that kids who are homeschooled can actually be better socialized than those who are in public school. And here's part of the reason why, we were just talking about this, but you know, when you go to public school as a kid, there's a lot of peer pressure, right. And you know, it's nervous. It's nerve-wracking the first day you walk into a new school, right. And when I was a kid, I switched schools a lot. I went to a bunch of Christian schools, went to a couple of public schools. And I remember the nervousness of walking in to school. It's your first day. You're really nervous. You want people to like you. You want to make a good first impression. You want to be in the cool group. You don't want to be in the nerd herd, all right. So you know, you're nervous. And here's what often happens, and you know this is true in school. Let's say you pipe up and say something. Let's say you are outgoing and friendly to a kid. It's often rebuffed, and you're mocked and made, you know, you stand up and say something, you'll often be made fun of, mocked, and jeered in public school, right. I mean if I were to ask for a raise of hands, who got made fun of when you were in school at some point? I mean every single hand would go up, right, that everybody has gotten made fun of for something or some, you know, at some point you've been made fun of in school. Because kids in school are constantly mocking and making fun of and harassing each other. And so you know, you want to fit in and be cool. You don't want anybody to make fun of you. So here's what happens. A lot of times kids that are from a homeschooled situation are more outgoing because they're used to speaking up and talking and not having somebody just shut them down and mock them and ridicule them. So in public school you just kind of want to be cool, just kind of keep your mouth shut sometimes, don't say anything because you want to fit in and be cool. And sometimes people who come out of public school can be a little more socially backward than the homeschooled crowd. I'm sorry but you know, I've been around homeschooling functions and homeschool PE classes and I know my kids are super outgoing and I find that a lot of homeschooled kids are very outgoing, very confident in themselves and able to strike up conversations with strangers very well. Whereas a lot of public school kids, they've been shut down so many times when they tried to open their mouth or beep, you know how many times, hey you know, hey can I sit with you for lunch? It's like, it's taken. Nerd herds over there buddy. Whoa man, you know it's true. And so you know a kid whose spirit has been broken by just being shut down so many times and mocked and made fun of and ridiculed, you know sometimes that can make you more shy, more backward than being homeschooled. You know being homeschooled you actually have a chance to kind of be yourself, be around your family, blossom a little bit. You know because let's face it, if I take my kids to the playground over at the park by my house and they walk up to some stranger kids and start playing with them, which happens all the time. You know you take your kids to the park, right? They're on a playground, there's other kids there, they all start playing. They don't just start just mocking and ridiculing each other. They actually are just like, oh hey, my name sells, hey, yeah, playing. You know but there's something about school when you get in a big group where it becomes a vicious thing, right? So you know I'm not impressed by the socialization that the public school offers, okay? They're teaching them about all kinds of weird filth down there now and that you know, yeah, you want them socializing with sodomites? That's the socialization now. They're even telling little kids, hey, you might be a sodomite, you know, if you want to come dress like a girl tomorrow, go for it. And that you know this is the kind of garbage that's going on and you know what, honestly, you say well, they're not going to be socialized. Look, I'd rather have no socialization than the socialization that's going on down there, number one. But number two, the proof is in the pudding. Look at my homeschooled kids, look at other homeschooled kids. I see a lot of outgoing, well-adjusted homeschooled kids. For every backward homeschooled kid that you could point to, I could point to a bunch of well-adjusted, outgoing, happy homeschooled kids. So that doesn't hold up. Here's another objection that people will bring, and good night, does somebody know where I can get cufflinks that don't break? This is, I've broken like 10 cufflinks in the last six months and it seems like they're all, they look like they're made out of metal but it's like plastic coated in metal or something. But anyway, if somebody knows where I can get like a durable, like a metal cufflink, something that's just like made out of steel or iron or something, let me know. But anyway, that's why I'm, I'm not going for some cool new look here with this shirt. I'm not trying to look like I'm from the 17th century or something. But anyway, I'm breaking cufflinks up here. But number five, what people will bring up as an objection is they'll say, oh well, you know, people will make fun of me for homeschooling. You know, my family is going to ridicule me or I'm going to go through persecution if I try to homeschool my child. I don't want to be stigmatized or something like that. But you know what, honestly, is going to get you more made fun of when your kid grows up to be a criminal or a deadbeat or a sodomite. That's going to get you made fun of. But the honest truth is we ought to care more about what God thinks than what man thinks anyway. We shouldn't just sit around and be worried about what people are going to say about our decisions. You know, God talks about people who make bad decisions and who turn away from the fear of the Lord and God says that he'll mock them. Now I'd rather be mocked by my fellow man than to be mocked by the Lord. I mean, think about it. Who do we care about pleasing here, man or God? Number six, what people will bring up many times is they'll say, well, you know, the government is going to come after me and take my kids away if I homeschool them. Well, first of all, there's a huge number of people that homeschool. Thank God we live in Arizona, which is one of the freest states in the whole nation and which has some of the most lenient laws on pretty much everything. And so it's so easy here to homeschool. The only thing that you have to do to homeschool in Arizona, to my knowledge, is you pretty much just send them a letter, an intent to homeschool or what is it called, an affidavit. Is that what it is? The intent to homeschool. You just send it to them one time. I'm going to homeschool and they're like, okay, and then you never have to deal with them ever again. I mean, that's not that bad, is it? But the Bible says in Proverbs 29 verse 25, the fear of man bringeth a snare. Now what's a snare? A snare is a trap. The Bible says the fear of man bringeth a snare, but whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe. If we trust in the Lord, he's going to keep us safe, the Bible says. But the fear of man is a trap. It's a snare. So basically we're scared of man. Oh no, if I homeschool, somebody's going to come take my kids away. So I'm just going to give them my kids every day for seven hours to do whatever they want with them and brainwash them however they want. I'm so scared that they're going to take my kids away that I'm just going to willingly give it to them. Well, but it's only half the day. Yeah, but that's enough to poison them. The fear of man bringeth a snare, but whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe. And then number seven, another thing that I've had people bring up is, well, you know, how are they going to get a degree? You know, how are they going to get the high paying jobs and the doctor and the lawyer and all the, you know, my little girl wants to be an astronaut and, you know, and my other daughter wants to be a marine biologist and all this stuff. So and, you know, my son wants to be the president of the United States and whatever. But anyway, they say, oh, they won't be able to get a degree. Well, first of all, number one, if you look at the stats again on homeschooling, they get into college better than the public school kid. They have the higher test scores. They have a higher rate of going to college as that. That's number one. But number two, I don't want my kids to go to college anyway. Why would I want them to go to Devil State University? Why would I want them to go to ASU where the mascot is literally Satan holding a pitchfork with horns and fire and everything? Why would I want them to go there? You say, oh, but your kids are going to be failures, they're going to be poor. Right, okay. So who here does not have a college degree? Raise your hand. Let's have men, grown men that don't have a college degree. Every five year old's holding up their hand. Grown men who don't have a, look around the room. Look at all these, I'm sure they're all failures, right? You guys are all losers. Let me guess, you guys all make minimum wage, right? Ditch digger, right? No, honestly, we could go around the room and we could talk to a lot of guys that don't have a college degree that are making real good money. And then I bet we could have guys raise their hand who do have college degrees that are not making very much money. It's true. It's a fact. So this thing of just, oh, you got to go to college, you got to get that good job. First of all, there's more to life than just getting a good job and making money and being successful financially. That's not what my life's about. It's not, I'm not going to just spend my life trying to be wealthy and making money and being well off. And so, you know, if that's your priority, you have the wrong priority. I don't, you know, if my kids grow up and they're all poor, but they all love God. And when I say poor, I'm not saying that they can't provide for themselves or something. I'm saying if they provide for themselves and they are living a humble life, you know what? If they love God and serve God, then I'll be proud of them and I don't care how much money they make. That doesn't mean anything to me. And if it means something to you, then you're not right with God. Because the love of money is the root of all evil. Okay. Number one. But number two is that you can make just as much money or more money without going to college. Okay. And then also there are other options than going to a traditional college. You know, I think there are some trade schools that you could go to where you're not going to be corrupted like you'd be corrupted if you went to the state university. You can go to different trade schools and get certified in this and certified in that and you can learn different things in electronics or computers or, you know, blue collar type stuff. Whatever. There are other ways, there are other pathways to succeeding as a, you know, as a breadwinner in 2015 America than just going to college and getting that degree. And there are plenty of people that are coming out of college with a great degree and yet they can't get a good job or they don't make a lot of money. And then there are other guys who have no degree who make all kinds of good money just by doing blue collar jobs or by going into business for themselves. Because once you go into business for yourself, the sky's the limit. You're not necessarily waiting on that raise. You can just keep expanding and, you know, I mean, it's hard work, but it's possible to make money in any industry by owning your own company. You know, eventually you can work toward that. But look what the Bible says in Proverbs 27 verse 18. The Bible says in Proverbs 27 18, Whoso keepeth the fig tree shall eat the fruit thereof, so he that waiteth on his master shall be honored. So what the Bible is saying here is that if we work hard, we're going to succeed by working hard. And even if we're working for someone else, if we work hard for them, God's going to bless us and we're going to end up making money and we're eventually going to succeed. Now a lot of people today think that the only way to succeed financially is just to go to college. And they think that basically you have to have one of these white collar type jobs in order to be a respected human being or something. It's really stupid because a lot of these white collar jobs don't even pay as much as blue collar jobs. But I was reading a study where they talked to people about different jobs and people measured success not just by how much money they made but whether they were in a white collar or a blue collar job. So basically people who are in a blue collar job, even if they made lots of money, they were looked at as less successful than people who had a white collar job and made way less money. Because often the carpenter, the electrician, the plumber are actually making more money than the manager at the bank. They're probably making a lot more money than the manager down at Wells Fargo or Bank of America or whatever. Even though he's wearing a suit and cuff links and you know he's looking all fancy. You know that's not always the reality because a guy who's installing fire sprinklers, it's all blackened and dirty and working hard, is probably making way more money. It's not just about going to college and getting your little office job where you don't break a nail. You know it's okay to work in a blue collar job. What's wrong with being a carpenter? What's wrong with being an electrician? What's wrong with being a plumber? I mean Jesus Christ was born in the home of a business executive, right? He was born in the home of a lawyer, of a doctor. No, he was born in the home of a carpenter. So obviously God in his wisdom thought that was a pretty good home to grow up in with a blue collar dad, right? And honestly these blue collar jobs keep you in better shape anyway. You be healthy by being active and everything. And I'm not down on you if you have a white collar job to each his own. It's okay but the bottom line is this brainwashing that you have to go to college in order to succeed, it isn't true. So I'm not teaching my children, oh let's get you to college so you can become a lawyer and a doctor and all this stuff. You know what? I don't want that for my children. I mean my children when they turn 18 they're going to do whatever. That's up to them. It's between them and God but that's not how I'm teaching my kids to go after that. And honestly it's way more important to have the fear of the Lord, to have real knowledge, real wisdom, real understanding and this world has perverted knowledge. And they literally, it doesn't matter how smart you are, they just have a different view of education, okay? To them if you have conservative values and are a Bible believing Christian you're uneducated. It doesn't matter how much you know. It doesn't matter what you learn. It wouldn't matter how many languages you speak, how much you excel at your job. None of that matter. How many books you've read. I've read thousands of books and they'll say, oh, you're uneducated. You could travel the entire world and they'll say you're sheltered. Why? Because you're a Bible believing Christian. So just get used to that. You're going to be ridiculed for that for the rest of your life so just get over it, okay? Because to them being educated means you go sit in some classroom with some burned out hippie, okay? You smoke pot. You fornicate with 30 different women, okay? You believe in the big bang and evolution, okay? And you have Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking in your library, you know. Now you're educated. No matter how stupid you are, that's the world's view. As long as you hate God and think homosexuality is wonderful, then you're educated. It's true. But if you love the Bible, you're always going to be seen as uneducated. So just get used to it. So what? That's what the world thinks. What matters is what God thinks. Amen. Oh, I'm going to be made fun of. I'm going to be ridiculed for homeschooling. Well, kind of like they ridiculed Jesus as they were leading him to the cross. So what? That's not the point. And so we need to love our children, care about our children, protect them from the evil influence of the government school. And you can sit there and say, well, you know, you're sheltering your kids. They need to be exposed to this stuff anyway. Yeah, but do they need to be exposed to it when they're five? I mean, think about it. Are they ready to just be thrown to the wolves at five, six, seven, eight, nine? I mean, look, yeah, when they grow up, yeah, they're going to go to work and they're going to be around a bunch of heat then, but that's because they're an adult. But do we really need to take a little kid and expose them to that stuff before they're old enough to even process it or understand it so they can be scarred for life? And there's so much we could go into in this sermon that's not even in here. Just the fact that, you know, 25% of girls when they graduate from high school are going to say that they've already been molested and all that, you know, we're not even talking about that. All the other reasons why. But honestly, we need to read the book of Proverbs and take a hard look at chapters one, two, and three, and then ask ourselves, does God want us dropping our kids off at the public school system to be educated and taught there or does God want us to raise our own children and to teach them biblical truth, not the science falsely so called of the school system, but actual biblical truth and real life skills. And I'm sorry, but the average kid coming out of the public school system is not that smart, period. And yeah, there are exceptions and we could point to kids that are smart coming out of the public schools, but you could point to 90% of them that are imbeciles that are coming out of the public school system. Just look, just go drive, go drive over the public school system. Here's how judgmental I am. The world's going to call you judgmental. You preach the Bible, they're going to call you judgmental. So okay, I'm judgmental. I'll drive down to the public school system and sit there and watch the kids come out of school and I'm going to look at all those kids and decide that that's not what I want my kids to turn out like. Ah, you're so judgmental. Look, when your pants are hanging down halfway down your body, that says something about who you are. That's not an unrighteous judgment for me to look at that and say, I want my kid to pull up his pants like a big boy and not walk around looking like he has a dirty diaper or something because his pants are hanging down so far. You know that's what walks out of that school system. And a bunch of kids, and you know the sad thing is, a lot of these boys coming out of the public schools, they're probably not even sodomites but they look like one. I don't want my boy being some effeminate, queer little sissy. I don't want him walking around looking like he just pooped his diaper. I don't want him coming out of there looking like he's from some cannibalistic tribe that was just discovered somewhere on some island inbreeding and cannibalizing because they have just, you know, all these giant loops and hooks and you know, all this body mutilization. You know, I'm not into that. I want my kids to grow up and be godly Christians and here's the thing, everything brings forth after its own kind. I want my kids to be like me and I want them to be like my wife. So that's who's going to raise them. Not turn them over to the left and turn them over to the liberal godless school system to raise them because that's not what I want them to turn out like. Period. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you for the book of Proverbs, Lord. I just pray that we would be wise enough to take this advice, Lord, and to get the instruction of a mother, the instruction of a father, to get the instruction of the wise, Lord, and get some knowledge and wisdom that comes from your word and that comes from books, not from the world's system that wants to teach all these lies. Lord, please just help us to have the wisdom to bring up our children right and bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.