The land of Canaan reminds me of our world today. It was a place of giants and battles, opposition and difficulties, satanic strongholds, walled cities, and evil in abundance. Canaan was full of drunkenness, immorality, and sexual perversion of all sorts. The land was full of filth—full of filthy actions, filthy speech, filthy thoughts, and filthy desires. But that same land would be a land flowing with milk and honey. God was saying that the children of Israel would find abundant good in the land. In other words, God’s people could find the best there.

I thought I understood the concept of milk and honey, but as we already noted, Isaiah 7:15 does not say “milk and honey,” it says “butter and honey.” We know God says what He means, so why the difference in this passage? We find the answer just seven verses later, in Isaiah 7:22. “And it shall come to pass, for the abundance of milk that they shall give he shall eat butter: for butter and honey shall every one eat that is left in the land.”

There it is. Where there is an abundance of milk there can be butter. Butter is a by-product of milk. Butter and honey is a step beyond milk and honey. In other words, if we want our children to know how to refuse evil and choose good, we should not just give them the best, but the best of the best.

Romans 16:19 nails this down further. “I would have you wise unto that which is good, and simple [the word means ignorant] concerning evil.” This truth clashes with the prevailing philosophy of our day. People say, “Well, you know, you can shelter your children too much.” I want to tell you that you are not likely to shelter your children too much. You shelter them so that they get the best of the best, and then you go with them into the world to impact the world for Jesus Christ until they are strong enough to stand on their own and go out without you.

Now, let me tell you something that is very important here. A child will not automatically choose good and refuse evil. The Bible tells us that a child left to himself will bring his mother to shame. A child left to himself will automatically and naturally choose evil and refuse good—not the other way around. But if you will keep him on a simple diet of outstanding spiritual things rather than fleshly things, he will know how to choose good. He will develop such a taste for those simple, outstanding things in the developmental years of his life that the Bible says he will not walk away from that taste for the rest of his life.