Dr Greg Bahnsen - Proverbs: Proverbs 13:24 (Spared Rod, Sparse Love Part 1) (Part 52)

Turn with me in your Bibles this morning to Proverbs, the 13th chapter, where I'd like to read as our key text for the morning, verse 24, Proverbs 13:24. We consider the subject of spared rod, sparse love. Proverbs 13:24. Hear now God's word. He who spares his rod hates his son, but he who loves him seeks him early with discipline and thus far the reading of God's holy word. I have from time to time told you that in preparing sermons, it is a spiritual experience for the preacher himself. It's something that often rebukes the preacher, something that, well, often the preparation of a sermon amounts to preaching the sermon to yourself before you dare to stand behind the pulpit and preach it. And if ever I have felt that experience, it was certainly this week as I was researching and putting together my materials to say to you what I would like to say this morning. The guilty hypocrisy of the preacher becomes very evident when you get around to how you manage your family. And I admit that to you this morning, I do not live up to what I will be preaching to you today. And for that I apologize to you as a congregation. I am not the model shepherd that Christ wants me to be, nor am I the model father that I ought to be to my children. And I apologize to them for that. And above all, I apologize to the Lord. Because, you see, I need to be more than what I am. I also need to live up to my responsibility to preach the word of God boldly and faithfully and consistently and fully, regardless of my own sins and imperfections and inconsistencies. And so I'm going to dare to preach this sermon about how to be a good father and to discipline your children, even though I wouldn't say stand before you and say, if you want a role model for that, look at me. So that having been said, I would like to begin this morning by asking you what you might bring out before your guest if they were in your home to demonstrate your love for your children. I want you to think about the sorts of things you might show to someone who comes into your home as a token, the love of your children. What sorts of things come to your mind? I would think, well, we might take them into the kitchen and open up the pantry and show them that it has food and it's good food, it's quality food. Show them the meat in the refrigerator and demonstrate that they've been given a nice, warm, comfortable and safe place to live. Show them the structure of the house that shows how we love our children. You might also take out the nice clothes that you buy for your children. You might take out many of the wonderful toys that you have purchased for your children. You might show them some of the expensive gifts that you've given to them over the years. You might pull out their scrapbook and open up and show some of the family activities and vacations and so forth that you've gone on as a demonstration of your love for your children. You might show them the room that you've given to your children that they might have for their own. But I wonder if you would have ever thought to bring out the paddle and lay that on the dining room table and say, there is the proof that I love my children. Well, I tell you, if we would do that in our family, if I had brought that in as an object lesson today, you'd see a really mangled piece of wood. Now, I don't know what you use. I hope you do use something when you discipline your children. In the place of the rod. We have, you know, they have these wonderful things called oven shovels, and they're just about the right size. They have a nice handle on them. You take a couple of those and tape them together, and you got a really nice disciplinary paddle. The problem with those oven shovels is, you see, they crack and they've got to be taped back together. Well, the one we have, it looks just terrible. You probably would think we were horrible to our children if you saw the paddle. But my point is, if you saw this paddle, you should say, despite my confession of inadequacy this morning, you should say, Dr. Bronson must really love his children. Look at that paddle. Proverbs 13:24 tells us, he who spares his rod hates his son, but he who loves him seeks him early with discipline. That could be translated, chastens him earnestly. But I think the Hebrews suggest begins very early in life with discipline, seeks him very early with this kind of discipline. The one who loves his child spanks him or her. And if you don't, would you please notice, the proverb does not say, the one who loves less doesn't use the rod upon his children. It says, the one who hates his son does not discipline him. For a moment. I want you to think with me about the biblical significance of the rod. What I've called the paddle this morning. In the Bible, we read a lot about God's rod. We read of this in 2nd Samuel 7:14, where in the promise of the coming Messiah, who will sit upon David's throne. God says, I will be a father to him, and he will be a son to me. And what is it that comes to mind when God speaks of a father son relationship? He immediately says, when he commits iniquity, I will correct him with the rod of men and the strokes of the Son of men. If I will be his Father, that means I will correct him when he is wrong. In Psalm 89:32, we read, Then I will visit their transgression with the rod and their iniquity with stripes. In Isaiah the tenth chapter, verse five, we read, woe to Assyria, the rod of my anger and the staff in whose hand is my indignation. In Lamentations 3, verse 1, Jeremiah says, I am a man who has seen affliction because of the rod of his wrath. Over in the New Testament, Paul writes to the Corinthians in First Corinthians 4:21 and says, what do you desire? Shall I come to you with a rod or with love and a spirit of gentleness? So throughout the Bible we have the symbol of the rod used for wrath and indignation, standing over against gentle instruction. The rod is a disciplining tool in the hand of God or in the hand of the apostle. And so we learn two things when we just consider the words that we've already read this morning. We learn that the rod symbolizes painful correction of the rebellious. But secondly, we learn that responding with the rod to those who disobey is not contrary to the character of God. It is not contrary to godliness. It's not outside of the loving character of God to use a rod in response to those who are disobedient and rebellious. God is love. He's also justice. He's also consuming fire. But God is love, the Bible says. And this one, whose very essence is love, says, I use the rod of chastisement. I use the rod of my wrath and the staff of my indignation upon my people. And even when he speaks of the coming Messiah, he says, if he commits iniquity, I will correct him with the rod, for I will be a father to him. To be a father even if you are God, even if you're the most loving being there ever could be. To be a father means to be willing to discipline, to correct iniquity, to set things right. The Bible tells us secondly this morning that foolishness in human nature makes corporeal punishment necessary. Corporeal punishment means punishment of the corpus, which has to do with your body, that is punishment of the body Outward physical punishment is necessary because of the foolishness that is within us. We've seen this in Proverbs a number of times. Consider these Proverbs 10:13. In the lips of him that hath discernment, wisdom is found. But a rod is for the backside of him that is void of understanding. You have someone who doesn't have understanding. The rod needs to be applied to his backside. Proverbs 14:3. And the mouth of the foolish is a rod for his pride, but the lips of the wise shall preserve them. You see, proud lips. Corporeal punishment is appropriate. A rod for the pride. Proverbs 18:6 says, A fool's lips enter into contention, and his mouth calls for stripes. What the fool says with his mouth requires that lashes be applied to him, or a swat to the backside is necessary when the scoffer is punished. Proverbs 21:11 says, the simple is made wise. Even those who are simpletons in this world will gain some wisdom when scoffers are punished. It's necessary. And in Proverbs 26:3, which is one of my favorites really, a whip for the horse, a bridle for the donkey, and a rod for the backside of fools. You know, there's not even a verb provided there. Again, it's one of these things where you're supposed to line these up. Here are all the appropriate things in life. What do horses need? How do you manage a horse with a whip? How do you manage a donkey with a bridle? How do you manage a fool with a rod to his backside? They are parallel to one another. Fools need to be handled with the rod. And in Proverbs 20:30 we read stripes that wound cleanse away evil. And strokes reach the innermost parts, literally. And this is going to be important later on. I'm going to come back to this. Literally, that proverb says, strokes of bruising cleanse away evil. Strokes of bruising, a severe punishment, one that will even leave a bruise. Strokes of bruising cleanse away evil and reach to the innermost parts. You see, when a person's conscience is sluggish, when a person has a foolish nature, when a person persists in sin and makes it habitual, then their conscience needs just this kind of spur. Corporeal punishment. Strokes of bruising in order to effect an inward awareness, in order to effect an inward reformation of character. When you see rebellion in a person, that person needs in their outer body to bear the bruising of punishment, so that their conscience will be spurred to do what is right. Those who are constantly resisting what is right, the right way to live. They need the bruises and the blows of life or the bruises and the blows of some authority over them before they will learn. And so what the Bible says in so many ways is that foolishness in our nature calls for outward corporeal punishment. Now, we don't like to hear that in the Dr. Spock generation. We don't like to hear that in our society that believes that everything is relative. There are no absolutes. There's. Because if there are no absolutes, there's nothing really that you should get so upset about that you would want to punish another individual. We don't like to hear that in a society that's so indulgent, that has a live and let live attitude, an attitude that says, well, let everybody make their own decisions, and if they're wrong, well, they'll learn their own way. The Bible says we are fools. Our mouths speak foolishness, our consciences are sluggish, and we need the outward buffeting of life. And in many cases, we need an authority over us who will punish our bodies to make that foolishness leave. And so we see the significance of the rod. God uses the rod, and he is love. We see the necessity of the rod because we are foolish in our own human nature. And the Bible would assure us that when God chastens us through the buffeting of life, when God chastens us through by giving us hard times in this world, when God chastens us, it is a mark of his fatherly care and his fatherly love for us. Turn to Hebrews 12, where I'd like to read this morning verses 4 to 11 for you. Hebrews 12, 4 11. The significance of this, I think, is double, because Hebrews quotes the book of Proverbs which we have been studying, quotes Proverbs 3, 11, 12. Now listen to what the author of Hebrews says. You have not yet resisted unto blood striving against sin, and you have forgotten the exhortation which reasons with you as sons. And then the quotation from Proverbs 3. My son, regard not lightly the chastening of the Lord, Nor faint when thou art reproved of him. For whom the Lord loves, he chastens and scourges every son whom he receives. It is for chastening that you endure. God deals with you as with sons. For what son is there whom his father doesn't chasten? But if you are without chastening, whereof all have been made partakers, then are you bastards and not sons? Furthermore, we had the fathers of our flesh to chasten us, and we gave them reverence. Shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits and live? For they indeed, for a few days chastened us as seemed good to them, but he for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness. All chastening seems for the present to be not joyous, but grievous. Yet afterward it yields peaceable fruit unto them that have been exercised thereby, even the fruit of righteousness. Chastening shows love. When God chastens you for your sin, when God trips you up in your life because he says you're going the wrong way, think about it, come back, turn around. When God lays a heavy hand upon you in this world, the book of Proverbs and the book of Hebrews together will combine to tell you that means God doesn't look at you as a bastard. God doesn't consider you as a fatherless child in this world without concern, without love. God rather treats you compassionately and lovingly. Now do you see how foolish we are? Because I'll bet, as I said those very words, the thing that was springing up in your mind is, how can the tough times that God puts on me, how can the blows and the bruises of life show that he has compassion for me? I interpret those hard times as that God is angry with me. I interpret those hard times as an evidence that maybe I'm not in his favor. The Bible says no. It shows that he loves you, shows that you have not been cast off, shows that he has not renounced his fatherly care and made you a bastard in the cosmos. God cares for you, and therefore he punishes you. He chastens you. He brings you back to himself. And the Bible tells us that though this chastening is for the moment grievous, it nevertheless will yield later on righteous fruit in your life. God does this to train you up and to correct you and to make a better person of you, to make you a more godly person in his sight. God doesn't do this to alienate you, to shove you away, to put you down, or to shatter your life and give you the impression that no one's there to pick up the pieces. God disciplines you to demonstrate affection. God demonstrates that he loves you so much he wants you corrected and to be more like Him. I appreciate very much the reality, the realism of the biblical teaching, that we don't have an approach to the tough times in life that says, well, it really doesn't hurt. It really Isn't so bad. The Bible says no. All chastening is for the moment, grievous. There is sorrow, real sorrow, and you should feel that. And when you feel that you oughtn't to feel guilty that you're so sad over the way things are going in your life, when God puts a heavy hand upon you, when God puts thorns in your bed to make sure you will not become so comfortable that you slide from his very kingdom, you should feel that sorrow. But in the midst of that sorrow, you should not feel despair. In the midst of that sorrow, in the midst of that chastening, as you're feeling the wounds of bruising upon you, it may be your very body, you should have the hope that peaceable fruit and righteousness will grow up from this experience. If you're having a hard time accepting these words today, I want to suggest to you it's because the problem is, is a very long standing one in your life. My guess is that if you are having a hard time accepting what I'm telling you about God's work in your life, it's because you never really, from a Christian and wise perspective, accepted the discipline of your parents in your life. You probably still are harboring bitterness against them that they disciplined you. Granted, parents don't always discipline perfectly. I know that. Not because my parents were so imperfect though they were, but because I'm a parent and I'm so imperfect. And so bitterness sometimes arises because of the imperfection of the discipline of our parents. But the fact is, discipline in itself is a mark of love. The father who hates his son spares the rod. He brings out the oven shovel and he says, look at that. Not a mark on it, not a crack in it. Hardly ever use it. Dust gathers on our paddle, and the accumulation of dust upon the paddle is but a mounting graph of hatred toward your children. If you love your children, you discipline them because God is that way. God uses a rod to drive the foolishness out of us, to draw us back to Himself and to yield righteous fruit in our lives. You know, the Bible tells us that what we're talking about is even true of servants. Godly parents who love their children will not spare the rod. And the book of Proverbs goes so far as to say, that's true of your servants too. Look at Proverbs 29:21, or I'll read the new International Version translation. It's a very difficult passage in the Hebrew, but it says, if a man pampers his servant from youth, he will bring grief in the End even your servants, even your household slaves. Pamper them when they're children, and in the end they will bring you grief. Leniency, then, is not a sign of love. Leniency is not to be confused with tenderness. Leniency plants a seed that will later be harvested in disaster in the life of the servant or of the son toward whom you are lenient, and in your own life as well. You see, if we don't punish our children when they are at fault, then we do them a tremendous wrong. Would you remember the example of Eli? Remember godly Eli? What is the huge mistake he made in his life? He would not discipline his sons. And when Hophni and Phinehas, his sons, I quote the Bible, made themselves vile, he restrained them. Not a lot can be said for Eli. Eli raised Samuel. Samuel was the prophet of God. Samuel ordained David to be the king over Israel. Eli has a crucial place in the history of redemption from that standpoint. But Eli was a wicked man. For all of the good that he did, for all of his preaching, for all of that, he was a wicked man because when his sons were vile, he wouldn't restrain them. And in a word, he honored his sons with lukewarm warnings. He honored his sons with lukewarm reproofs more than he honored the holiness and the discipline of God. And for that, do you know what happened? His sons died in the same day in battle, because the prophet said, you have honored your sons more than you have honored God. And when that terrible, horrible word came to Eli that that had happened to his sons, he fell over backwards and died himself. Remember the example of Eli. Fathers, when your sons make themselves vile, you must restrain them. You must not be indulgent. You must not be permissive. You must not think, well, they'll love me more if I just let him get away with these things. Would you remember David, King David, the man after God's own heart? Would you feel the pain that David went through because of the history of his children? Just think about it. Amnon's incest with his own sister. Think about Absalom's murder and Absalom's rebellion. Think about Adonijah's schemes against his own father, his ambition to become king. But David was not at fault for all of the heartbreak that he went through over his children. He brought that upon himself, Scripture tells us. Because the Scripture says, in the case of Adonijah, for instance, his father had not displeased him at any time by saying, why have you done so? Can you imagine that The Scripture said David did not love Adonijah in the way that he should because he never said to Adonijah, why are you doing this? He never displeased his son. Isn't that ironic? Isn't that paradoxical? The sign of love is that you displease your son. Now, of course, the Bible will make clear, and we'll talk about this in a few moments. We are not to provoke our children to wrath. We're not to needlessly, near, rationally, unreasonably do things to our children just to exercise tyranny over them. That's not what we're talking about. But when Adonijah needed to be made uncomfortable, when he needed to be displeased because his father stood in his way and said, no, David wouldn't do it, David thought that he was showing love and compassion. He thought he was demonstrating a tenderness toward his son. And the Bible says David shared the guilt of what happened to his children thereafter. David and Eli were overindulgent fathers and eventually reaped what they had sown. Indulgence is a seed that you sow and later is reaped in disaster. Leniency, then, in the raising of children is not a sign of love. Let's get that out of our minds. It is not a sign of tenderness. It is a mark of foolish disregard for our children. Proverbs 13 is exactly right. Spare the rod and you demonstrate that you hate your child. A spare drawed, sparse love in the family. Well, how should we regard or look upon our children then? What would the Bible teach us? You know, it's a difficult task to be a parent. It's an awesome task. It's a task that never goes away. Even when your children are raised, you must continue to discipline them. You realize that when Eli was rebuked for his sons becoming vile, they were already married and living in other tents. They were already carrying out their own lives. But Eli did not discipline them for their vileness. He did not restrain them. And so throughout our lives, parents, we have a responsibility for our children. Granted, it's more intense, more consistent in those early years when they're under our roof. But throughout our lives, we will continue to be parents. How then should we look upon our children that we might perform this task of parenting properly and do it in a way that pleases God? Well, in the first place, you need to get out of your mind any idea that your children are the products of evolution, don't you? The way you look upon your children must not be determined by what the local university tells you about human nature and where we all came from. Children are not the chance products of evolution. If they were, then of course we should go right along with B.F. skinner and engage in all sorts of manipulative practices and behavioral modification techniques because they are nothing more but intelligent dogs. And you know how you may take a dog to an obedience school and you teach it in a certain way and you have a certain input and you have a certain discipline and positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement and you get the dog to sit when it's supposed to sit and to roll over and supposed to roll over. Our children are not intelligent dogs. They are not products of evolution. They are not animals. They are made in the image of God. They are God's image bearers. But secondly, we need to realize that those cuddly, cute little children that we bring home from the hospital, the image of God and not just chance products of evolution, are not innocent. Our children are not innocent from birth. And there grow up to be corrupted by civilization, grow up to be corrupted by a bad example. They are the image of God, but they are, from the very time of their conception, depraved. Genesis, the eighth chapter, verse 21, says the intent of man's heart is evil from his youth. Well, that shatters a lot of fairy tale conceptions of children, doesn't it? From the earliest days, from their youth, the intents of their hearts are evil. I think those of you who know me know that I really love children, babies in particular. I don't have a hard time feeling the kind of gooey, sentimental, humanistic feelings that our world puts out about children. I love to play with them. I find great delight in their development, that sort of thing. But we mustn't lose sight of the fact, no matter how much we adore children, that they are evil creatures. They are not animals. They are not some kind of evolutionary slime. They're not even just intelligent dogs. They are the image of God. But they are depraved. They are wicked from their youth. And they demonstrate that even in their cuddliness and so forth. You parents, you know the experience, don't you, of going to the child who is crying only to find out that the child is not dirty. Diapers don't need to be changed. Child's not hungry, there's no pen sticking in him or her. The child simply is not getting his or her way until they cry. Where does that come from? They didn't learn that from somebody. They haven't been told that they don't even know what civilization is yet they bring that into the world with them. They've got that down path. They know what it is to be self centered. They know what it is to be unloving and to be impatient and to think everything revolves around them. Children are wicked from their youth. Indeed, as Psalm 58:3 says, the wicked are estranged from the womb. They go astray as soon as they are born. Speaking lies. In Psalm 51:5, David says, Behold, I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me. They didn't learn to sin from the day they were born. They were sinners and their hearts were wrong from the moment of their conception. So says the Bible. So how should we look upon our children? We should look upon them as made in the image of God and as precious for that reason and as valuable that reason. But we should also say, just because they are so valuable, they must be corrected due to the wickedness that is in them. If we do not correct that wickedness, their true value will not shine. Their true value will not come out. Corrective discipline is absolutely necessary. Look at Proverbs 22:15. How shall we see our children? Well, the proverb says, foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction will drive it far from him. Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child. Do you believe that? Do you believe that our children are foolish? That they are conceived in sin, that go astray from the womb, that wicked intents are there from their youth, that they are foolish creatures, but the rod of correction can drive that away. That's the hope that Proverbs holds out, that that foolishness that is just bonded to their hearts can nevertheless be stripped away with the rod. What the most delicate psychological knife and technique cannot do, the rod will accomplish. Discipline your children in the biblical fashion and that foolishness will be driven out. Please believe me. Children are foolish. Some of you sitting here this morning, of course, haven't had the blessing and the privilege and the awesome responsibility of raising children yet. But those of you who have, I know you will sympathize with this. When I tell you sometimes we come to our children when they've done wrong, we say, why did you do that? They tell us, I don't know. How do you interpret that when a child says, I don't know why I did that? Well, there is one possibility that they do know very well why they did it. And they don't want to tell you because that'll make them look, all the worse that happens, it happens that they don't want to tell you what their motivation was, what they were trying to accomplish, or why they did it. But I want to stress right now, there's also the circumstance where the child says, I don't know. And they really don't. It's not because they're deceiving you. It's not because they're trying to hide something from you. It's because even when they look at their behavior, they say, I don't know why I did that. But what makes children do wicked things and evil things and rebellious things when they have no good reason for it? Because foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child. Children do not just do perfectly alright if we leave them alone. Left to their own devices, children get into trouble. They are foolish, they are wayward. That is part of their nature. And so, left to their own ways, children will bring shame to their parents and they will become hardened in sin. Look at Proverbs 29:15. The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself causes shame to his mother. If you don't step in to correct your children, if you don't manage their development from youth, then what you should count on is they're going to bring shame to you. Later on they will dishonor you and disgrace the family name. The Bible says so. Moreover, in Proverbs 22:6, we find a verse that shows us that foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child and that they are depraved from youth. However, as you're turning to it, you may be a little surprised because that's a verse that's often held out as a promise to parents. That's a verse that's often read, train up a child in the way he should go, and when he's old, he'll not depart from it. That's not what the verse says in the Hebrew. The verse is not a promise in the Hebrew, it's a threat. Let me read it to you. Literally in the Hebrew it says, train up a child according to his own way, and when he is old, he will not depart from him. You see, it has just the opposite effect. The point here is, let a child grow up according to his own direction. Give him his own way in this world, and you know what you'll find out. When he's old, he won't depart from it. You will have hardened him in his foolishness and his rebellion. Give him his way and he'll take his way. That's not a promise, that's a threat. That's saying, don't let children dictate the terms of their development. Don't let children rule the roost. Don't let children always do whatever their hearts desired. They don't always know what is right. That's so hard to tell our children, especially when they get old enough to debate this point with you. Sometimes you say to your child, this is not what's good for you. I don't believe this is wise. No. The answer must be no to your request. But dad, why? Because in my experience, with the wisdom God has given me, I think this is not what you need to do right now. But dad, why? Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child. Give a child his way whenever he wants it, and when he gets old, he'll learn to do what? Always get his way. So Proverbs teaches us that we should look upon our children as depraved, as wayward, and as bound for destruction unless we step in to correct them. And that's why correction of children is commanded to deliver them from hell. Yeah, I mean that. To deliver them from hell. Look at Proverbs 23, 13, 14. Very important passage we there read. Withhold not correction from the child. If you punish him with the rod, he will not die. You shall punish him with the rod and deliver his soul from hell. This is a matter of life and death, my friends. The world would tell you. Indeed, if you lived in Sweden, where it is a law that you may not physically punish your children, you may not spank your children. If you listen to the world and listen to such absurd humanist legislation as that, you would believe that by punishing a child you're doing them bodily damage and moving in the direction of their death. The book of Proverbs says, if you know the wisdom of God, you think just the opposite. Punish your child. He won't die. Rather, you'll keep him from dying. It's not just in spite of the punishment that he won't die. It's because of the punishment that he won't die. Punish him with the rod so that you save his soul from sliding to hell. What have we just learned? We've learned that foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child. Given his own way, he won't depart from it. He will bring you to shame. Children are bound for destruction unless their parents stand up and say no to them. And follow up that word with the rod if need be. It is a positive command from God. Withhold not Correction from your children, fathers and mothers. Do you want to go to the Day of Judgment and stand before your Redeemer and your Maker and answer for the violation of that command? And God said, I told you not to withhold correction. What is your excuse? What rationalization, what laziness, what foolishness in you lead you to think that you could have broken that command and been loving either toward me or toward your children? Don't withhold correction. Punish him and save his soul from hell. Proverbs 19:18 reiterates this. Discipline your son, since there is hope in it, and do not set your heart on his destruction. If you don't discipline your children, you have as good as conspired to see them destroyed spiritually. And so discipline your son, because in it there is hope. If you don't discipline your son, you take that human hope away. Correction of children, that is commanded to deliver them from hell. But secondly, the correction of children is needed to impart unto them wisdom, to give them wisdom. Look at Proverbs 29:15. The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself causes shame to his mother. The rod and reproof give wisdom. We not only correct our children to prevent something negative happening, to prevent their death for all eternity, to prevent them from sliding to Sheol and going to hell, we correct our children so that they will learn wisdom. That is to be a process of building them up. And if there's, I think, one major mistake made by Christian parents in the disciplining of their children, it's the forgetting of that discipline has two sides to it. It's not simply to stand in the ways of their slide to hell is stop short. It's not just the negative thing of applying the rod to drive foolishness out of them. It's also to turn them around and mold them and correct them and set them on the right path. It's to impart wisdom to them as well. And so in Ephesians 6:4, you notice how Paul speaks to fathers when he says, you, fathers, don't provoke your children to wrath, but rather nurture them in the chastening and admonition of the Lord. When you punish your children, it must be the Lord's admonition that they're hearing. It must be the Lord's molding under which they are going. Don't provoke your children to wrath. And just here I'd like to read for you the words of a very, very helpful book on the subject of disciplining children, written by Bruce Ray, entitled Withhold not correction, you parents who have not read this book. I don't ordinarily endorse books from the pulpit, but this one I'm going to do that, for this is a fine little tract. I disagree with a few minor things, but, boy, it's going to be helpful to you. And these words on Ephesians 6:4 really strike to the heart of us fathers. He says about this, fathers are not to create in their children feelings of anger or frustration caused by undue severity, by injustice in the application of discipline, or by an inconsistent or unreasonable exercise of authority. Discipline is not an opportunity for parents, especially fathers, to build up their own egos at the expense of their children. The administration of discipline is not an opportunity for us to air our wrath or to vent our own personal frustrations at the expense of our little ones. Paul says it well, fathers, don't provoke your children to wrath. Raise them in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord. Impart wisdom to them in the way that you discipline. You realize it's possible to discipline a child and stop them short in their slide toward hell, but not teach them anything positive, not mold their character, not turn them around, not give them wisdom. Well, how do we give wisdom to our children? What are we going to do to achieve that end? Since the Bible says it's so important, what standards should we use? And here I think a second major problem is found in the raising of children. Often the standard for correcting our children is gauged according to our own experience of being raised by our parents. And it's gauged in two ways. Interestingly, they're opposite of one another, but they're equally wrong. The first tendency is to say, well, this is the way my parents raised me. This is the way I'll raise my children. That's not the biblical standard for raising children. I hope your parents did a good job and that there are things to be emulated in their work, but they are not the standard of raising children. And a lot of people make that mistake. I can't tell you how often I am trying to help someone see their need to do right for their children. And the answer I get is, well, in our home, this is the way we always did things. I want to scream, that's not relevant what you did in your home. What's relevant is what the word of God teaches. But the opposite tendency is there, too. Do you know there are a lot of us who react against what happened? A lot of us say, well, I'm going to raise my children this way. Because that's the opposite of what my parents said. I hated what they did. And so I'm going to correct their abuse, or what is perceived as abuse in my life. And so I'm going to do things differently with my children. Don't you see how humanistic, how centered that is on the human, on man and his sin? That is. Our standard has nothing to do with imitating our parents or reacting negatively to our parents. Our standard must be the Word of God. Look at Deuteronomy 6:4 and following, and you'll see how you should raise your children. Here we have the Shema of Israel, the confession of faith made by the Israelites. Hear, O Israel, Jehovah, our God is one, and you shall love Jehovah, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart. And you shall teach them diligently unto your children. You shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down to sleep, and when you rise up for the day, and you shall bind them for a sign upon your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes, and you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and upon your gates. How many of us literally have written the commands of God upon the bedroom door of our children? How many of us are right there when they wake up in the morning to teach them God's Word and to talk to them at dinner about it, to make sure that they lie down, reflecting upon the truths of God's Word? Now, literally, we don't need to do all those things, the writing upon the doorpost and all the rest. But what is Deuteronomy teaching us through these illustrations? What is it trying to say to us? Scripture should permeate your house. It shouldn't be a matter of awkwardness for you to pray with your children. It shouldn't be a matter of awkwardness for you to say, you know, the Bible says this about that. And when you discipline your children, not only do you apply the rod to their backside, but you also hold them and say, this is what God's Word says. You show them when they're lying down and when they're rising up, when they're going on their way day in and day out, what God's Word says. It should be so easy, so ready, so spontaneous for you to say, Remember what we learned as we were studying the Bible last week. Remember what the preacher said at Church. Do you remember what your memory verse said? You've got to positively raise your children in God's word. Not according to what Grandpa did and not against what Grandpa did, but according to our Heavenly Father. And thereby impart wisdom to them. You see, there's got to be positive reinforcement along with that negative correction. Look at Proverbs 23, verses 15 and 16. But in order to appreciate what I'm going to tell you here, look at verses 13 and 14 that precede. In Proverbs 23, the 13th verse, we say, withhold not correction from the child. If you punish him with the rod, he will not die. You shall punish him with rod and deliver his soul from hell. You must punish, you must spank, you must paddle your children. But notice what the next two verses say. My son, if your heart is wise, my own heart will be glad. Yes, my heart will rejoice when your lips speak right things. You see how the positive side is added to the negative right away. My son, you know what will make my heart happy? When you speak the right sorts of things. When you are wise, when you start making decisions that please God that I'm going to be happy. You don't just paddle their backsides. You train their minds and their hearts and their souls to please God, to know His Word, to realize that it's for departing from His Word that you've had to correct them. And let me add this too, because I'm afraid we fall so short on it. You need to pray with your children. Don't spank your children and get them out of your sight because you're so disgusted. Disgusted. Send them to their room and then forget about it. Spank your children, hug your children, positively instruct your children and pray with your children. We take vows at the time of baptizing our children that say that we will pray with and for our children. We'll pray with them and for them. I don't doubt that many of you as parents pray for your children. I worry that not many of you pray with your children. And it's easier when they're very, very little. You go into their room every night. Let's say our prayers at night. Isn't that right? That's a tremendous time to remember. It's a very tender time to remember in their lives. But I'm afraid that as they get older, we forget we need to go into their rooms and pray with them. Maybe not when they're going to bed, but maybe it's when they get up. Maybe it's at lunchtime. Maybe it's when they're crying because they're hurt or something has upset them at school, whenever it may be, we need to be prayerful with our children and for our children. And so correction of children is commanded, I said, to deliver them from hell. But secondly, correction of children is needed to impart wisdom to them. If you understand this, then maybe I can give you a few pointers, just a few random thoughts on punishing children to help us avoid mistakes that I think often are mistakes that we make. I know I do. In what manner should you correct your children? And much of this advice I'm taking from Bruce Ray's book. And so you may want to follow it up. I'm going to be very brief. I know we're overtime already, but this is just so important that I do want to get it before you. The first place, would you remember that your correction, that your discipline is corrective in the ultimate sense? It's not punitive. We may call it punishment, but when I say punitive, I mean a way of completely casting them out. When God eternally punishes the sinner, he casts him out for his children. He chastens, he corrects. The purpose is to build them up and bring them back. Would you remember that? That's the way you treat your children. You don't discipline your children by saying, get out of the family. You don't discipline your children by giving them that impression. Even if you don't say those horrible words, discipline is corrective. It's to turn them around and mold them. Secondly, would you remember that discipline must be firm. In Hebrews 12, 11, we read the words that all discipline is for the moment grievous. It brings sorrow. And much of the problem that we have as Christian parents is that we are not severe enough in our spankings. That's right. The wounds of bruising are not left upon the backside. We tend to think, well, they won't like me if I make them really cry. And you know what you do? You develop two things in your children. One, you develop disdain and kind of a humorous approach. There have been times I promised my children I wouldn't use them as illustrations, but I'll use me as an illustration. There have been times when I have said, well, they need a swat, but I don't want to make it a really terrible one. So I give them kind of a light one and they end up laughing. They said, well, that wasn't much, dad, big deal. I didn't do right by them. A punishment that is not grievous. Is not a punishment, is it? But then there's another response that children have sometimes, and that's they get really angry because they get punished. They don't want that Swat. And Bruce Ray says in his book, and I think I have to agree with him, he says, the problem is you didn't punish him hard enough. Because you punish a child hard enough, they haven't got the willpower to be angry at you. They're broken over it. And so remember, punishment must be firm. It must achieve its end. It cannot be playtime. It cannot be something just enough to antagonize them. It must agonize them so that they get the point. Thirdly, remember that when you punish your children that the goal is to yield the peaceable fruit of righteousness. I confess to you that I often punish my children because they've crossed me, because they've done something that's irritated me and I haven't thought godly thoughts when I punish them. I was getting my own vengeance because they disrupted my life and made things unpleasant in my family. And I feel terrible about that. It isn't right. My guess is I'm not the only one who knows that sin. When we punish our children, it has one goal in mind and that's the peaceable fruit of righteousness. I must punish my children because God delegated it to me to punish them for him to achieve his ends, because they violated his standards, not because they became an irritant in my life. Thirdly, punish them with the rod. And I'm being very practical here. I think when you spank your children, you ought to use a ping pong paddle or an oven shovel or a rod, a ruler, whatever it may be. Why not the hand? Well, the Bible mentions a rod. There's a good reason. But secondly, because I don't think you can apply the kind of force and agony to a localized portion of their body which ought to be the fatty tissue on their backside. I remind you, you cannot apply the kind of force that will bring the effect you want with your hand without it doing something to you in return. After all, you're not the one being punished, they are. And so what's going to happen is you're either going to withhold the use of your hand so that it doesn't smart, in which case you're not going to apply the right kind of pressure to make it effective, or you are going to apply it correctly and you'll probably break your hand or at least smart a great deal for it. So use a Rod. But now, how long should you use a rod? Now, there's a lot of argument in Christian circles about this. And during the discussion of the sermon, I'll engage more of it, I'm sure. But I want to tell you, first of all, I agree with those who say we ought to continue spanking our children even through their teenage years. There's no reason at all why you shouldn't do that. Perfectly appropriate. I don't agree with people who say it must always be spanking and you should never ground your children or give them some deprivation of privilege or what have you. I don't think that is an appropriate application of these biblical passages. The reason that is offered for that is that what happens is you have lingering resentment in the family. The child can't watch TV all day, then all day long the child is resentment. Well, let me ask you this. When God chastens us, does he only chasten us for a few moments? Do we ever have chastening that lasts a week or a month or maybe a few years of our lives? No. You see the answer to that problem of lingering resentment because all day long the punishment is there, is all day long to reinforce the punishment with I love you, and that's why I'm doing that. You can't have this privilege because I want you to learn something from it. If the discipline is done properly, it is not a continuing factor of resentment. It ought not to be any more than the punishment with the paddle. I will say also that I think that many times when you're disciplining teenagers, it's more effective to take away privileges than it is to swap their backside. I know that's true because I won't mention any families by name, but one family that I know pretty well. I often have heard that when a privilege is going to be taken away, the preference is for a spanking. I'd rather get it over with. But, you see, it might really sink in if something that they really wanted, you see, were taken away. I think also we need to remember this. I don't want to get into a lot of detail, but your teenage daughters, I'm not so sure that they ought to continue to be spanked. Guys can take that. But I think there's a certain delicacy about the female anatomy. And probably by the time of puberty, it's not good to apply. Remember, when I talk about spanking, I'm talking about a spanking year. And that may not be good for a female after a certain point. So I'm not in the same school of thought that says it has to be the rod, only the rod, all their life, nothing else, period. I don't believe that. But I certainly believe that in most cases, and certainly throughout teenage years, for guys, the rod is not inappropriate. Remember, it must be done with reproof as well. Let me hurry on to the conclusion here. Proverbs 29:15, we read the rod and reproof give wisdom. It's not just the rod, it's the reproof that accompanies it. Parents, make sure that your discipline of your children is proportionate. Not everything they do wrong calls for five swats. And you know you're going to teach them something very distorted about life if you punish them the very same way. For no matter what they do, they fail to do their chores, or if they break a window, or if they tell a lie or they steal from somebody. Those are different kinds of offenses. And God says, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. That isn't to say we're going to take an eye or a tooth from our children. That is a way of saying punishment should be appropriate to the crime. So proportion your punishment. Some things it may be enough. Simply a verbal rebuke can take care of other things. One swat. Other things, it may take 10 swats and grounding for a year. Recognize that there are differences and have reasonable expectations of your children. In Psalm 103, remember how Psalmist says, God is a compassionate father toward us. He knows our frame. He knows our weakness. Fathers and mothers know your children. Don't expect more of them than can reasonably ask of them. Don't punish them because they didn't do a certain job in just the way you would expect someone who's 10 years older than them to do it. Don't expect them to follow out and do things properly when they have as your example, someone who doesn't ever do it that way yourself. Be reasonable toward your children. Know their limits, and then finally be consistent. That is a huge mistake that parents make. They'll have weeks where they're very disciplinarian and a couple weeks when they lay off from it. And what you teach your children there is that life is unreliable, discipline is unpredictable. Therefore, I can gamble sometimes and other times I have to be deceptive and kind of pretend I'm being good. Don't teach that to your children. Be consistent when you say this is going to be the punishment for that kind of crime in the family or that kind of misdeed or rebellion. Do it and do it and do it. And don't say to your children, if I tell you one more time, then I'm going to punish them. Don't tell them one more time, punish them. Don't say, when I count the three, you'd better be doing this, because what you'll do is you'll say, one, two, two and a half, two and three quarters. Don't teach them that you don't mean business. You say you do this, and when they don't, you punish them. Be consistent. Be persistent. I want to conclude this very, I hope, practical sermon about disciplining your children by coming back to that thought that we found in Proverbs 20:30. Strokes of bruising cleanse away evil. We have said that God uses the rod upon us. God chastens us. We need to be chastened by God. But you know, there's another part of the biblical teaching that we need to conclude with today. It's found in Isaiah 53, 5, where there the prophet Isaiah talks of the suffering servant of the Lord who is to come. And Isaiah says, he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities, and the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed. It is true that when it comes to chastisement, children need the strokes of bruising to cleanse away evil. When it comes to our eternal standing before God, whether we are his children in the first place or not, the only reason we have the right to call ourselves his children is that someone else came to take the punishment for us. Someone else took the strokes of bruising to cleanse away our evil. He was bruised for our iniquities, and the chastisement of our peace was upon him. With his stripes we are healed. If Jesus was willing to undergo that for us, then we ought to respect God's discipline. We ought to respect it first because we appreciate that he loved us so much that he would punish His Son in our place. And then he loves us so much that he chastens us throughout this life to become more like His Son and more like Him. And thirdly, we ought to love him so much that the chastisement that he has illustrated we are willing to live out in our lives as we are representatives of God to our children. It.