Today, back to the Christian family and a new topic, the correction of children. And for all parents who hope for me to solve all their problems in one class, not gonna happen. Not going to happen. But hopefully, we'll learn a little bit more about how the Lord deals with us and how we can deal with our children in the matter of correction. The correction of children. Before we do that, let's pray together. Lord our God, for all you give us, we give you thanks first, your abundant kindness, your generous provision for rest, for a new day, for the day that you have made for us to rejoice and be glad in. For that day, of all the best, we honor and praise and adore you. We think now on how you would have us learn from your word about the matter of correction, and we pray that you would help us as we seek to guide those under our care, but also submit to you as our Heavenly Father when you correct us. Lord, we ask that your word would be the lamp to our feet and the light to our path, and we pray in Jesus' name, amen. So, a couple things. Wonder of wonders, I produced a handout, which I should have been doing in the last weeks, but if you didn't get one, I printed 40, which might not be enough. Let's see, does anyone not have a handout? Anyone have a handout? Should be a few at the back. We are dealing with part three of lesson five, which is the training up of young children. And as I move through the material that I'm preparing, I've come to realize that this matter of outlining family life and my hope of through family life just chronologically is harder than I thought. So this could be the training of young children and all children in the matter of correction. not just little, little ones, but principles that could be applied to the whole family. Before we begin some scripture reading, the beginning of each new section, and I want to read some key texts on correction. of children from Proverbs, many of them, and a few more that we'll get to through the lesson. Proverbs 13, 24. He who spares his rod hates his son. So, he who spares his rod hates his son. But he who loves him disciplines him promptly. That's actually pretty clearly about corporal punishment, which is probably not the world's most popular topic in the present day, but we'll get to that in a moment. Here's another one, Proverbs 22. Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child. The rod of correction will drive it far from him. Proverbs 23. We have another one. Apply your heart to instruction and your ears to knowledge. Do not withhold correction from a child. Stronger language here, for if you beat him with a rod, he will not die. You shall beat him with a rod and deliver his soul from hell. That's a pretty plain passage. And then Proverbs 29, 15. The rod and rebuke give wisdom But a child left to himself brings shame to his mother. And so we have some clear directions for parents in the wisdom literature of the scriptures. Now let's go to a few more places. And one of those will be Ephesians chapter six, which we've gone to many times. You fathers do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord. There is a duty to bring up children in the training and admonition of the Lord. And that would include correction. And then a from Psalm 89, and this is the Lord speaking of the Davidic covenants with David and his sons. And here we read, if his sons forsake my law and do not walk in my judgments, if they break my statutes and do not keep my commandments, then I will punish their transgression with their rod and their iniquity with stripes. Nevertheless, my lovingkindness I will not utterly take from him, nor allow my faithfulness to fail. My covenant I will not break, nor alter the word that has come from my lips. The reason I'm reading these verses in this order or succession is to connect the matter of correction, which in our age is politically charged, to the fundamentals of the character and the ways of God. There we read that the Lord uses the same language. for David and David's sons. He will correct them with a rod. And then Hebrews 12. My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by him. For whom the Lord loves, he chastens and scourges every son whom he receives. If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons. For which son is there whom a father does not chasten? And we will see in a moment a little bit more from that text. So we see that the scriptures teach very simply the matter of the correction of children, including there was an emphasis on one kind of discipline, corporal punishment. But there's more than that in the scriptures. A little bit of review before we get to the topic proper. Some review. We've talked about the order of the Christian home. Fathers and mothers wield authority in order that they might teach their children. The scriptures teach the honor and obeying of parents, father and mother both. Honor your father and your mother. There's promises, and the promises are these, that God is pleased to use human instruments in the Great Commission. Abrahamic Covenant, we've looked at Genesis 18 and verse 19, where God speaks to Abraham, says, I have chosen you in order that you might instruct your children. There has never been, in all of the history of redemption, a divorce between nature and grace. And again, one of my great differences with Baptist theology is the divorce between nature and grace at this point. God originally intended that children in the garden would be obedient. that there would be a generation that would rise up and bless his name. His intention hasn't changed and his covenant purposes have not changed. They always have generational implications, which is why we have generational signs and we baptize children. This is why Paul addresses children as part of the church in Ephesians chapter 6. Promises order, promises instruction. We talked a lot about instruction the last two weeks and I want you to remember one thing about instruction where we began. We began, the first heading on instruction was to teach your children the difference between good and evil. And I had a quote from the Dutch Puritan, Jacob Kuhlman, who said, as soon as your children can begin to understand and follow, you should be thinking about, what did he say? As soon as a child can watch his mother cross the room. You need to be thinking and praying about how can I teach this child to distinguish between good and evil? Now, correction comes later, much later than that, but the idea of teaching the difference between good and evil, let me just say a few things. Satan's original temptation was to offer Adam and Eve a false wisdom, not the wisdom from above, but an earthly, sensual, and demonic wisdom, James 3. He offered a way, in his words, to distinguish between good and evil. by taking of the tree, but it was a lie, because the way for Satan began with disobedience. The first act in Satan's way required a category inversion at the outset, that is to call evil good and good evil, and to begin by disobeying God. This now is part of the human condition. In our fallen condition, we are prone to sin, to rebel against God, and to choose evil. This is important in the matter of correction. The wisdom literature in the scriptures has at its core the recovery of the ability to determine the difference between good and evil. the recovery of the ability to discern the difference between good and evil, and then the grace or power to choose that which is good, upon instruction and by correction." Did you catch that? So false demonic wisdom was to invert good and evil as categories. The wisdom literature of the scriptures, I'm jumping to particularly let's say Proverbs, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, put forth the wisdom as the ability to determine rightly the difference between good and evil and then choose the good by the grace of God by way of instruction and correction. Instruction in what is good and evil and then correction or the turn back to good. There's a major focus in the book of Proverbs, for example, on the consequences of sinful errors. For example, in Proverbs 7, the young man who chooses the adulterous woman, the Holy Spirit has no hesitation, and I say that reverently, to warn and say her footsteps lead to hell. That road leads to hell. And there's a warning, a strong warning. These warnings of consequences are often addressed to parents and the typical son at the center of the Proverbs discourses. My son, hear the instruction of your mother and your father, et cetera. The typical son in Proverbs should remind us of Adam, and then Christ, and then we in Christ. And the reminders to the typical son are like these. The way of the transgressor is hard, Proverbs 13, 14. Good understanding gains favor, but the way of the unfaithful is hard. But there's two roads, there's two paths. Psalm 1 is a wisdom psalm. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish. There's two ways. One, suffering, death, and eternal damnation. The other one, life and abundant life. It's the doctrine of the two ways. There is a way that seems right to a man, but the end of that way is the way of death. That's the natural man. He chooses the wrong way and it will end in death and destruction. And then there's the way of life. And Jesus uses this language when he talks about the broad way and the narrow way. And the broad way leads to destruction. And he's saying that's the way we naturally go, the easy road. But there's a narrow way that leads to life, the way of the gospel, the way of righteousness. Correction stands at the juncture between the two ways. And it says don't take the way of death, turn and take the way of life. Correction is the aid to repentance, which is to turn from sin to God. And correction is a mercy of God, and He corrects us because He loves us. Wisdom, the difference between the ability to determine good and evil and choose the good by the grace of God, Correction stands at the fork in the road between good and evil and it says, don't go down this road, her footsteps lead to hell, this is the way of death, repent, turn around, follow Jesus Christ, confess your sins and live for him. Correction stands at the intersection, at the Y in the road. It's also a hard task. Correction is not the most popular thing that you will do as a parent or that I do as a pastor or authorities in our nation do. When you are speeding and you get pulled over, you probably don't have the warmest feelings towards the officer as he comes walking to your window. You should be humble, but it's hard to be corrected. It's humbling, it's painful, and there's a recoil in us. It's hard. Proverbs tells us it's a hard task. Whoever corrects a scoffer himself gets abuse. You can end up being abused for correction. And he who reproves a wicked man incurs injury. Do not reprove a scoffer or he will hate you. Reprove a wise man and he will love you. It's interesting, reprove a wise man and he will love you. That already starts to tell us that there's something in the heart. The believer actually welcomes correction. The scoffer hates it and will kick hard back. And so the act of correcting often reveals the nature of the heart. What is correction? Let's get to that. It's a common term. Matter of fact, as I was thinking about this lesson last week, I was thinking, doesn't South Carolina have a Department of Corrections? It's interesting. We do, and you know what they do? They stand at the Y on the road and they say, don't go down this road. If you do, there are painful consequences. And then I thought, I wonder if it's just South Carolina. I wonder how many states have a Department of Corrections. I get on these rabbit trails in my head. 48 states, just in case you're wondering, except Texas and North Carolina. Now, Texas has a Department of Justice, under which is Corrections, and North Carolina has a Department of Public Safety. A very kind name for the same thing. They all do the same thing. Every state's trying to do the same thing. You can't have a society without correction. You will have anarchy and death. Everybody knows this. The classic Merriam-Webster, what is correction? To make something right. To restore to a standard. And related to this, discipline or punishment for failure to meet a standard with the intent of restoring to a standard. Now, we know that apart from the work of the Holy Spirit and the grace of God, bare correction has no power to restore the human soul. As a matter of fact, it can often just make it harder. Correction can be applied to moral and non-moral categories. For example, if you go to the eye doctor, what are you going to do? The eye doctor is trying to restore your sight to a standard. 20-20 vision. That would be a correction. Corrective lenses. I'm wearing them right now. We're talking about moral correction. Correction to God's standard. Turn and return to God's standard. His law. And at a basic level, correction is the act of seeking to turn someone away from evil and towards the good. The act of seeking to turn someone away from evil and towards the good. I'll already say here that is not a mere legal category. Because as Christians, we understand that turning someone from evil to good involves them repenting, seeing the emptiness of sin. The next thing you do is you run and find the mercy of God in Christ. And then with a tender heart, you go back to the standard of the word and you say, Lord, how do you want me to live? And so our correction is not just merely to apply the law negatively in order that someone would pick up the law and live a moral life. But the act of repenting has the object of turning back to Christ and then to obedience. Why is correction needed, number three? At the ultimate level, correction is needed because of the corruption of human nature, which apart from grace, would tend to spiral into self-destroying rebellion and ultimately social anarchy and death. A culture, a society, or a family where there is no correction is naive about human nature and how wicked, evil, and abusive it can be. I'll give you an example. One of the things that I will correct children for, even young children, Miriam is my regular example in these classes because she doesn't know what I'm talking about. The other children would be less in favor of being used as public examples, so I won't. If I just let her do what she wants to do, she's going to scratch, bite, and steal, because she was conceived and born in sin. And she's going to learn to manipulate people, and she's going to learn to hurt people, And it's because the fountain apart from the work of the Spirit of God, and he uses means, teaching and correction, will go astray deeper and deeper into self-destroying, other-destroying, and God-hating rebellion. The way of the transgressor, it's an ugly path towards abuse. And the reason I'm bringing this up is because in our day where the word abuse is used all the time and oppression and all these other sort of things, some of the things I'm about to say, someone would say, well, I can't believe you're gonna correct your child. No. If you don't, you will end up with this kind of world where the strongest only survive by cruelty. you will end up with the most bitter and hard kind of world because of the fallen nature of the human heart. If you empty all the prisons, if you let everyone on death row go, and you just say, do whatever you want, everyone in Greenville will have a eight foot wall with razor wire around their house, like some countries in the world, and you will live in fear. And a woman will not be able to walk down the street freely. That's the kind of world, and man as well, the dangerous, bloody, hard world. The human heart is desperately wicked. We need correction. I'm anticipating some objections to basic biblical teaching, particularly in our present egalitarian and soft age, which refuses to deal honestly with this matter of the human condition. It's not uncommon that, for example, in our marriage conference, when the Van Dyck Sorens taught on the order of marriage with headship and submission, some people perhaps thought that plain teaching to be hard to swallow. It happens when I teach on the matter of correction, the correction of children. How many of you have heard of the General Parenting Movement? General Parenting Movement, anybody? Am I the only one? General Parent. I just, I happened to see a headline yesterday about it. I started reading it, I didn't finish. I read the first paragraph. Now, the title, you have to understand that one of the strategies of our present day is to co-opt language. Who doesn't want gentle parenting? I mean, the fruit of the spirit is gentleness. It's like marketing. These people are brilliant marketers. I'm like, okay, great title, give me the content. Never say no to your child. You're gone. That's not gentle parenting. That's a nightmare. That's the first thing you do. I know what's gonna happen. I'm just gonna follow my child around, let them scream. and only out of embarrassment intervene in cases of mortal danger or the abuse of another child. But even then, you would be shocked at people who do not believe that their sin, the things they let a small child get away with in the abuse of another child, just in a peer level. Oh, they didn't mean it. I'm like, they had a piece of wood and they just hit the other child over the head. Oh, didn't mean to do that. I think my eyes told me that seemed fairly well-aimed, premeditated even, in response to the fact that the other child just stole a toy. Like, this is pretty plain. Oh no, my child would never do... We have it on video. I mean, it's unbelievable. This movement is crazy. It's never ever going to work. This movement won't correct let alone firmly correct, or the worst possible crime in this movement is to spank a child. And we'll get to that in a moment. But you see these parents just two feet behind the child, sort of a sad existence, chasing the child around and just maybe keeping them off divided highways, if that's the only sin you could commit. You know, abject danger, but no thought to the moral character and formation of the little heart. You know what will happen? One day, that child will be bigger than you. And that child will destroy you. Because foolishness isn't bound up in the heart of a child. This is a naive view of parenting. So there's a good part of gentle parenting, the word gentle, bad part, all the rest. Back to the Department of Corrections for a moment. Why is correction needed? All society can only function with correction. And I want to notice the corrections that we permit in society without even blinking. We have fines. What is a fine? So let's say I have $1,000 in my bank account. The government just says, now it's mine. You realize it's just the confiscation of property. That's what it is. You can just take something that belongs to you and say, sorry, it's not yours anymore. And we just, all of us understand that if we didn't have consequences, the whole place would fall apart. And we all agree under our legal system that this is necessary. We have jails where you can put someone in a jail for 40 years. You realize how significant that is for someone's life? I'm not entirely convinced the way we use incarceration is always just or right in our country, but it is a tool that can be used rightly by governments. What I'm getting at is it's not always the best place. It does not always have a corrective influence. But at the same time, the government has to have some way. And why is the government using a jail? Often because it's trying to right a wrong in the lightest way possible. If you lived in Singapore, a lot of things that you would go to jail for here, you know what the punishment to this day in Singapore is? Anyone know? For men 18 and older, caning, a flogging by a corrections officer with a half-inch thick piece of rattan, and the regulations say as hard as possible, in a very humiliating condition, which I will not describe, and you would all say, this is savage. Well, in South Carolina, we have the death penalty. What I'm getting at, we're wrestling with something about human nature, that something needs to be stopped. I'm not condoning this. But in a sense, we do condone it. I'm going back to Singapore, for example. $400 billion of American investment. People vacation there, and they love this place. Why? It's beautiful, clean, and well-ordered. And very wealthy people from our political class, who would? tell you that if you corrected a child in any way, you're crazy, have no problem saying, boy, I love this town. The streets are so clean and well-ordered. Again, surely there are abusive practices not warranted by scripture. I'm not talking about my view of Singapore. But in every case, in all of human history, we've understood that their pain and consequences turn behavior. We do it in America, again, by fines and jail time and even capital punishment. The arrogance of the modern, which is what I want to deal with, is the root of society's present willingness to correct wrongs and address evils. And the result of an unwillingness to correct will always be an explosion of pain and suffering far beyond the discipline meted out. Why correction is vitally necessary for the Christian? So that's broad categories of correction and social categories. We have different modes of learning. We have instruction with words. You can correct with words. You can instruct positively, you can reprove, so warn someone that that is a sin. You can encourage somebody who's weary or even struggling with a sin, you can come alongside them, that'd be another way to correct. Or you could inflict painful consequences of various types, more later. We learn from painful consequences. You learn from failing tests. You learn from speeding tickets, hopefully. The prodigal son, when did he come to his senses? What condition? Anybody? Destitute and hungry. Divine providential chasing. Mysteriously, let's go deeper. This is true even when the pain we suffer is not on account of our personal sins. Who could you think of that God used pain to disciple who was righteous? Joe, mystery. Who else can you think of God used pain to teach and he was righteous? Christ, that's who I had in mind. Listen to this verse from Hebrews 5 and verse 8. Though he was a son, yet he learned obedience by the things he suffered. There's a mystery here. There's a mystery here. We suffer because of our own sins. Christ only suffered because of our sins, but he learned through suffering. It was instructive to Christ. For Christ, For Christ, it reminded him of the way of the transgressor's heart. Even though he never sinned, and he entered into that condition for us only as the sin bearer, perfect, holy, harmless, undefiled, never sinned. It's a powerful verse from Hebrews. This helps us to understand this place of pain and suffering in God's order of things, especially in his kingdom. It always advances his purposes for his people, and for his people it's always redemptive. The key text in all the scriptures, in all of this, is Hebrews chapter 12. Hebrews chapter 12. And I want to go there with you in more detail. We read part of it at the beginning of the class, but I want to keep reading where we left off. If you endure chastening, God deals with you as sons. Verse 9. Well, let's keep reading. Verse 7, for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? What does the writer of the Hebrews just assume? Every father will chasten a son. Every father. What father is there who does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which you have all become partakers, every one of you, Listen to this, then you're illegitimate and not sons. One of the signs of God's gracious favor in your life is that when you come to those intersections in the road, or even if you start the wrong path a little ways, that he will divinely stop you and say, my son, turn around. The road to life is that way. Go to Christ. Follow my commands. This road, the bridge is out. The end is bitter. Her footsteps lead to hell. Don't go down there. This is what is a sign of our sonship. Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us. Again, the writer of the Hebrews just assumes this. Human fathers correct. We paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the father of spirits and live? For they indeed, for a few days, chastened us. Our childhood. It seemed best to them, but he for our prophet. Why? That we might be partakers of his holiness. What's the goal for Christ? For our Father? When our Heavenly Father disciplines us, He wants us to be holy like Him. He's working on purging our character of rebellion and turning us to holiness, to Christ-likeness. Now, one more verse. Now, no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful. Painful. Nevertheless, afterwards it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. And there's an implication there to those who submit to it. Submit to it. There is remaining sin left untouched in the human soul. Why this remains, actually I should have started reading earlier, but I'll summarize this. Verses three and four. There's remaining sinfulness in the human soul, verses three and four of Hebrews 12. Why is this, verses five and six? Because you have despised God's chastening. Okay? A bad view of chastening. You need to restore a biblical view of his chastening. And this section includes a divine presumption, the Holy Spirit-inspired word, of the parental chastening of children, hence the Proverbs I read earlier. The writer of the Hebrews is no different than Proverbs. So the most basic reason to the why question, prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the Lord I love. Lord Jesus, please, You know, every now and then, we as elders have this circumstance where somebody comes to us having fallen into a serious sin. And in our book of church order, if there's a very serious sin committed, we can either discipline somebody by putting together what we call charges and specifications. This is the sin we think you committed specifications are. Here's the evidence. Here's the pattern we see on this date, this date, this date, this date. And we present that to somebody and we say, we think you need to repent. And they have the option then of saying, you're right, I've sinned, I need to repent right now, I'm guilty. Some people say, forget it, prove it. And we have a way then where we have a conversation where the elders would say, this is what we've seen, and the other person could say, this is what I think about what you've seen, I wanna explain that. At the end of the day, the elders have to make a judgment. What kind of correction is needed? It might be that the elders were wrong and couldn't see everything. It might be that the person is obstinate and they just want to keep sinning. The process is to get to that answer. There's another way you can get to discipline in the church. You know how it is? In our book of Church Order, we have a somewhat esoterically titled chapter called Cases Without Full Process. Chapter five of our book of discipline. Somebody can just come to the elders and say, I sinned. I blew it so badly. Whatever church discipline you think I need, I'm willing to take it. If you think I shouldn't be at the Lord's table, If I've sinned in such a way as to discredit the name of Christ and harm the body, my life is in your hands. And we have that happen here at Covenant probably a couple times a year. You don't know about it. Someone privately comes and says, my life's a mess. I believe that God has instituted discipline to turn me back to Christ. Tell me what I need. That should be the attitude of our hearts when we think about Christ's discipline to us, and we should trust that what he's doing is turning me back to him, even with pain, to remind me of the consequences and severity of my sin that I might look to Christ and live a new life by the power of the Holy Spirit. That's the way a Christian should think about discipline. My Heavenly Father is keeping me pointed to Christ and salvation. So the most basic reason, again, why, prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Discipline is the Lord's rod and staff to keep me in Christ's fold, to bring me back to repentance, to bring me back to peace of conscience that comes by confession and forgiveness. What we should already learn is that all painful discipline, now we're going to get back to children, should aim for what? It is not the infliction of your frustrations on another human being. That's called abuse. and God forbid we abuse our children. It is not the infliction of your frustrations or your pride's been hurt. Miriam's two years old. What kind of man would I be if my pride was hurt that a two-year-old didn't listen to me? If you're tracking with me, that that would make me so angry as to strike her, then the Lord should discipline me. This is not just a battle of wills and dominance. The point of correction is to say, turn to Christ. I need it too. God corrects me. All painful discipline should aim for quick restorations of the relationship, not a simmering division. And I am well aware, as a parent now for some 24 years, that this is also dependent on the response to discipline. In other words, parents can enact discipline, and every now and then in history, there's been a teenager who believes that it's unjust. one out of a million, maybe, teenagers. Parents correct them, and they come to this strange conclusion that they're in a concentration camp somewhere, and that their suffering is unmatched in the history of the world. And the thing about teenagers, if you're a teenager here, it's not accurate. Well, it could be if you're in an abusive situation, God forbid. I have to be careful here. But if you have loving parents, it's not accurate. You're being self-deceived. And with my own children, every now and then, some of this attitude has appeared. Good thing we have a lot of children. You can never guess who it was. But the other thing about you teenagers is that you don't recognize that though I am older than you, I can remember being a teenager. And I can remember the profound temptations and my need for correction. And I can remember how I didn't understand that I needed it. This is the reality of the generations that shall never change. This is also why we need the Holy Spirit. We'll get to that later. That little note was, I understand that when you correct your children, you can do it in a way that pleases the Lord with restraint, proper combination of restraint and firmness, but we are dependent on the Lord to bless it, so we have to pray. And we're even called to be patient when the correction does not bear immediate fruit. Different forms of correction we'll get into in a moment. Sometimes it's just a word. But take heart, parents. The time horizon you should pray for is longer than your instincts would naturally recognize. Pray for longer. And pray for God to work over time. Okay, 10 after 11. And if you have a handout, now you know how disastrous shape we are in. But I knew this. I knew this. We're gonna have a part four on lesson five. But I think I'm going to just dive in onto how a little bit. And we're just going to get to where we get to, probably stop at 20 after 10. I'll take questions. And then next time I will pick up on number four and review a couple and then just keep going. So if you're in the class, hopefully this handout helps you to, we'll keep the flow. We'll use the same handout next time. If you don't bring it back, In two weeks, because I'm away next week, Mr. Mooney is teaching a special class on singleness, one kind of Christian household, and then I'll be back to this the next week, just so you know. So we dealt with what correction is. We dealt with why it's needed because of the sinfulness of the human heart and that it is needed for us. It's one of the ways God turns us in repentance to Christ. It's also needed for social order and we saw those broad categories because of the sinfulness of humanity. How to correct. I am sure that some of you parents here with young children maybe just wanted me to get right to this section. Please, Peter, give me tools. Things are falling apart. You can feel that way, and I want to give you some tools about how to correct. Number one, 4A. They're going to be manner and then practical ways. The first thing I want to remind you parents of in the great business of correction is you do not correct without self-control and prayer for yourself and your child. Self-control is a fruit of the Spirit. Parental sins, especially in correction, are the abuse of power. And I know that those two words in our present cultural Marxist age are loaded with all sorts of baggage, but it still is a real category. The abuse of power is a real category. A lack of self-control is not going to help your child. Maybe you grew up in a home where this is how it works. All sins were measured by Dad's ability to hear and see them in the length of his fuse that day. So in other words, if he didn't know about it, it wasn't a sin. If he was there, in other words, there's this point where he just blows up. Men, this is one of the great sins of men, we have it against it not to lose our self-control. We need to pray for it. It can happen to moms too. A lack of self-control is foolish, counterproductive, and harmful to a child. If the end of correction is to spur repentance, which is a turning back to the Lord, and in that turning to look to the beauty and glory of Jesus Christ, there should be remaining in your character and demeanor, in discipline, visible evidence of conformity to Christ. You turn into a monster? then you have to repent. And maybe at that point, what you need to do is not correct and get on your knees and pray for God to correct you first. And if you're a parent here, you have sinned in this way because we all sin and fall short of the glory of God. Then ask for forgiveness and pray for more grace. The end and purpose is to spur repentance, a turning to Christ. It's not going to work by the force of your will. Your will is not the secret power of repentance, it's the Holy Spirit. Prayer, look for the peaceable fruit of righteousness. The wisdom which is from above, peaceable and pure, willing to yield. You should be listening to your children even before you discipline them. A bitter yelling parent ought to repent. We pray and pray and pray that we would model Christian living before we correct to the standard of the word. All of us need to be reminded of this, and I mean all, and if there's one thing, I'll get to this a little bit later, but Christianity is the most gracious, Christian civilizations ought to be gracious civilizations. In the world, children are sworn at, cursed. If you parents curse your children, that is the moral equivalent of beating them. There should be not one curse word in your house, no profanity ever directed towards a child. It's wicked and evil. Don't lose your temper and swear at your kids. The world does this. They will swear at children, belittle children, demean children, beat children. Not so here in Christ Church. If the end is the restoration of fellowship, love, and affection, then an unhinged parent is a terrible agent of discipline and will only produce the opposite effect in the heart and life of a child. You will simply be modeling the broad road that leads to destruction, while you think you are correcting towards the narrow road that leads to life. So if you do that, and sometimes parents sin, then you should ask your children for forgiveness. You should go to the Lord and you should pray for the Holy Spirit to help you be self-controlled and always to pray, lest we become abusive parents. Number two, correct only when you have a reasonable evidence of wrongdoing. Your intuition as a parent. There's been so many times as a parent, I've walked into a room. Matter of fact, I think I have this illustration. This week, I walked into a room and one child, you know this, parent, you walk into a room and a child's like, to the other side of the room, like boom. You're like, that seems like an odd reaction. Do you have conscience issues? No, no, no, nothing, nothing, nothing at all. Then you tried tested and true, ask the other sibling, what were they just doing? And I got good information. I understood why the scurrying happened. Of course, then afterwards, behind closed doors, I can't believe you told dad what I did, et cetera. It happens in every home. But there's sometimes you walk into that door, child scurries across the room. They don't fess up. You don't know what happened. You can't discipline. You can't discipline just on your intuitions, just because you feel like something happened. You know what would be better to do? You say to your child, I'm worried about how you're acting. Don't ever lie to your parents. Let me pray with you. but I don't know what happened. I don't know what happened. So you're limited. Justice system, exactly the same way. Sometimes you have people, famously the OJ Simpson case. I still don't know, I don't know enough to know about it, but I mean, he was driving a white Bronco down the highway, running away from the cops. Didn't look good, did it? Didn't look good, we don't, again, I don't know the secret things that happened. There was a whole trial, he was found not guilty. Most people think he was guilty. Again, I have to be careful. The secret things belong to the Lord. In other words, there could be a lot of things that point to a problem. You should be concerned. But our justice system recognizes that there's the evidence for charges and evidence, even greater evidence for consequences. And as a parent, you should think about that. And if you are worried about something happening, which you sometimes will be as parents, and that's not, I'm not saying you're naive, but what I am saying is there's a danger in meeting out a discipline for a sin that didn't happen. It's a very big danger. So be slow. Your intuition, although perhaps correct, can be wrong. And the consequences of injustice, even as a society we recognize, are actually worse than slow justice. The consequences of injustice are worse than slow justice. Providence must be submitted to. You are not the Lord. You do not have the ability that only belongs to God. And let me give an example of this. Fear God, keep his commandments. This is man's all, Ecclesiastes 12. For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil. You don't know the secret things. And the second thing you don't know is the heart. Man looks on the outward appearance, the Lord looks on the heart. Now, sometimes you can see the heart because out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. And Jesus teaches all kinds of evil flow from the heart. Well, if you see it and you hear it, well, then you know what's going on in the heart at that moment. But be careful not to guess or to think that you are an infallible interpreter of what lies within. I'll give you an example. Well, I'm trying to think. The danger of this is to break the bruise read and quench the smoking flax. Or you could have someone who hasn't done something wrong, somebody else, getting framed by a sibling, probably happened in a family before. Or you are misreading something. Pray. Pray with your child. Don't jump to conclusions. Listen to your child's explanation, and then judge. Slow down. Like the other day, I walked into the room, and I was like, what's going on? The explanation was not compelling. It was rather short on words. What's going on? Nothing. Well, you're alive. Something's going on. You moved. Something's going on. I didn't see what happened. I just don't know. Then I got more evidence, as I said, eyewitness evidence. But even then, I said, okay, correct words. Turn back to God. Don't mete out some discipline beyond what I know. Okay, I'm going to have to stop there. It's kind of an awkward place to stop because I have given you only two hows and they basically can be summarized in the words, slow down. And if you're looking for answers to problems, I haven't given you when you don't slow down. how to answer those things. We'll get to that in the next section. I'll just have to stop here. We're going to get to a whole lot of practical how to correct in the next lesson. Questions? Hopefully the next two weeks your children will not present any challenges to you before you have more tools. Doesn't seem possible, but there we go. Even these are a good place to start. Marinate in this for a couple weeks and then we'll get to the positive corrections in the coming weeks. Questions? Not a single question in parenting. This is a very comprehensive class, apparently. Or no one wants to say what's really happening. Some of you have emailed me and texted me questions. You see the next section of C through J. Think about them. Bring your questions. We'll keep going in two weeks. Oh, we have questions now. Jim. Well, what the other sibling told me was what I suspected. The reason I didn't do anything is because of later on. Let the discipline be in proportion to the crime. My question goes to the testimony of one other person. Yeah. How do you know that child? You get children telling on each other, now it's one. Correct. You know what I would do? And actually, what I did in that conversation, which was yesterday, I asked the first child, is that true? And they said yes. In other words, what they were afraid to confess, they did confess. Yeah, I said, is that what happened? Is that what happened? And you know, there's one thing I do in those conversations. If there's one thing I prize very, very highly is I want them to tell me the truth. So in that case, I was very happy that So there's times when there's trust that you can't break. I want you to tell me the truth. So the bigger lesson ended up being, tell me the truth. Not the fact that your mother told you to clean your room. It still is horribly dirty. And you weren't cleaning, hence this Olympic sprint into the closet. with one small item and a look on your face that was as guilty as any look I have ever seen. Which, that evidence on its own, that evidence on its own, but even then I have to ask, what happened? The short number of words, basically, I don't think it was nothing, but the communication was intended to communicate nothing. So holding the cards very, very close, Then I go to the other child, is that what happened? Nothing, no, this is what happened, Dad. Oh, you were reading a book. Ah, okay, were you reading a book? Yes, oh. Tell me the truth. Don't ever do that again. Became the more important lesson. I'll get to this later. Not cleaning your room is not the worst moral failure of a human being. Lying will destroy all your relationships. And so there, you pick the major. Is that helpful? So that's the actual breakdown. There was another question, a hand. It's too late, that's right. Next week, I get in trouble with the Sunday school teachers. Two weeks, two weeks, that's right. Oh no, Jeremiah won't answer all questions next week. That's what's going on. Yes. He thought he was teaching a class on singleness. Oh, that will be more fun. Yes. Oh. Hopefully they will still love the pastor. Okay, let's pray. The only lesson they're gonna hear is how to correct your children, but anyway, let's pray. Father in heaven, we're thankful that you correct us, that you do it out of love to turn our eyes back to Christ, the all-sufficient sacrifice for sins, and then to walk in the path that brings you glory. We pray that as we submit to your correction, and as you give us in our various places and stations the work of correcting, that you would help us to do this diligently, wisely, carefully, or courageously, and that you would be pleased to bless our feeble efforts by your Word and Spirit to turn our children and our young people to Christ. Lord, we pray for this covenant blessing, and we ask, confessing our own sins, and so in Jesus' name, amen.