Parenting of children. Basic principles. How to parent with a biblical mindset, with biblical love, within biblical limits, and biblical discipline. First of all, parenting with a biblical mind I told you that when I became a Christian, I recognized that I just couldn't do Christian marriage automatically. I needed to rethink it and examine what the scriptures taught. In the same way, being a biblical parent just doesn't mean, well, we had this kid, and I automatically know how to parent it. But rather, we need to have a biblical mindset, a biblical understanding of what it means to parent our children. The first thing in a biblical perspective on our kids is that our children are stewards that God entrusts to us. We do not own them. Christian parents are to see themselves as stewards of their children, not their owners. A steward is someone who is entrusted with something valuable and is accountable to the true owner when the day of reckoning comes. God has entrusted our children to us for a season, but they are his creation. In other words, they're only going to live in your house until 18, 20, I hope you don't have a 28-year-old down the basement doing video games, but anyway. They're only going to be with us a certain part of our life, which is a part of the error of as a parent, if you're tempted to make your children your God, which some moms can do, then you're kind of at a loss when your children are gone. What's the why should we even be married? Because my children were my life. Your children shouldn't be your life. The Lord should be your life. And after that, your husband and the two of you under the Lord should be raising your kids. But your kids can't be your life because they're not going to be with you forever. Psalm 127 says that children are a gift of the Lord. They are entrusted to adults, usually their parents, to be raised to maturity. As you know from watching nature shows on TV, human beings have one of the longest periods of preparation before they're released by their parents. And you watch some of these creatures, and they're born one day, and six weeks later, they're let go on their own by, you know, it's fine if your dad's a turtle or an alligator or something like that, but if you're a more significant creature, it takes a long time to nurture you. And we live in a fallen world, and to raise a child is very difficult because you have to help them on so many fronts adjust to life. Training with eternity and time in view and not just time. You have friends who are raising kids but they're probably doing it with just time in view. We train our children to be effective adults in God's world. Training body, soul and mind for a life of service to God and man. Luke 2.52 says that Jesus continued in subjection to his parents and he grew in stature and wisdom and favor with God and man. Jesus grew as a human being in all these different areas. It's unbiblical thinking to value eternity, excuse me, it is biblical thinking, hello, to value eternity over time. 1 Timothy 4, 7, part B, verse 8. Paul tells Timothy that He said bodily discipline has some benefit, but spiritual discipline has benefits not just for this life, but the world to come. So you're to discipline yourself for holiness. Okay? A mature person makes decisions and choices based upon the long haul and eternal consequences. The immature person or child makes decisions and choices based upon short term or immediate fulfillment. with little or no thought of the long-term consequences. Johnny, would you like a quarter now, or would you like 100 shares of Microsoft later? I'll take the quarter now. OK. Well, that's perhaps a foolish illustration. But a mark of an immature person is they want immediate fulfillment, and they don't think of long-term. Well, if our children are immortal, they are going to live forever once they're created. They're either going to live in heaven with us and the Lord, or they're going to live in hell away from everybody. But to live without eternity in mind is just ultimate, ultimate short-term foolish view. Christian parents know their children have a physical body and will not neglect training their children with habits of physical well-being. Unhealthy people are limited in their service to God. And so that's why if our children have physical ailments that we can fix with surgery or taking them to doctors, we want to give them their best shot at living a fulfilling and God-glorifying life. If we need bee wool, we do whatever it takes. So physical fitness has some benefit. Christian parents know their children have a mind and want to see it trained and renewed according to the truth. Ignorance is not bliss. I mean, I was watching the Miller's last night, and we were watching the kids run around and play, and we were just commenting on how they were blissfully happy being kids in that home. They have no idea what's out in this big, cruel world. And the stuff that could harm them, that would harm them if we didn't guard them, stuff they're going to have to face. And while they're still young and you can protect them as much as you can, you should. But this is not a culture that you can let your children grow up to be ignorant. You have to help them to face what's out there. And you don't want them to learn by experience. You want them to learn because you taught them. because sometimes learning by experience is way too painful. Children with warped or incorrect thinking will have a trouble filled adulthood. We want our children's minds to be renewed in the truth. Paul says, you know, here's Romans 1 through 11, all these amazing doctrines from eternity past to eternity future, God's saving grace in Christ. Then Paul says, I beseech you, I beg you, I implore you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, which I've just laid out for 11 chapters, that you give yourself irrevocably to God, which is your spiritual duty of service. And He says, I don't want you to be conformed any longer to this world, but I want you to be transformed by the metamorphosis, by the renewing of your minds, that you can know what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. So, you know, this is a question I have in the front of one of my older Bibles that I still refer to. Have you ever sat down and written out a contract of your life and given your life irrevocably to God? and telling yourself, but writing it out in contract, you made me, you saved me, you own me, I want to live for you, I sign over the title deed of my life and all that I am to you. Have you ever done that? I encourage you to do that if you've never done it. And then keep it where you can refer to it. Inside the leaf of the Bible is a good place. And then commit yourself to renewing your mind. Renewing your mind means you're learning to think God's thoughts after him. You know, like I was talking to someone during break and we were discussing how over the course of your life, you saw something before you were a Christian, you looked at it later as a Christian, you go, whoa, why did I even like that? Or even you saw something as a baby Christian and thought it was fun and cool. And then 20 years later, you go back and go, I'm embarrassed that I used to like that, tell people to go watch that. Oh, man. Well, you grow in godliness and holiness. Your mind is being renewed and more and more your mind is coterminous with the Lord. You're thinking his thoughts after him and you look at things with his point of view. And renewing your mind's important because nothing's more frustrating than to make a commitment to the Lord but not renew your mind so half the time your mind's over here where it shouldn't be and you're frustrated because why am I not more over here? Because I'm not taking the time to renew my mind and learning to think God's thoughts after him. Christian parents' first priority is to see to it that their children are raised in the fear and instruction of the Lord. A child who is prepared to live on this planet only is not prepared to live for eternity. Parents have not completed their jobs with only physical fitness and a great mental education. Johnny was all state and he went to Harvard, but he was a pagan and he died and went to hell. That's not an epitaph I want to see on any of your kids' tombstones. Children must be trained in the gospel, And as Charles Spurgeon called it, the science of Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I've known Christian parents who they hadn't thought through in their parenting what they wanted their little Reginald, that's the name always used for the fictitious boy, Reginald and his sister, Regina. So what do I want in little Reginald? I want him to be an all-state quarterback, and he's going to go to this school, and he's going to make a lot of money. You start asking questions that they've not thought through hardly any of this. They're just like, they're an adult version, I mean, their view of their children is like so many of the non-Christian parents. Are my aspirations any higher for my kids? For example, as late as the 1960s, many college NCAA All-Americans chose to go play Canadian football because their games were always on Saturday. And they didn't have to violate the Lord's Day to play professional football. How many professional football players do you know today who forgo playing in the NFL to go play in the CFL, the Canadian Football League? But I can name small Americans who were big time in their day. They said, well, I can't violate the Lord's Day. I'm going to Canada. I'm going to play up there. And they played until their knees gave out or whatever. But see, they were thinking, as a Christian, they have a body to do this and a minded ability to do this. But they weren't going to violate their Lord. where I was supposed to. I don't care what my kid does. He can make a lot of money and be a pro football player or a golfer. But what's the big day for professional golf tournaments? You can't play Thursday, Friday, and Saturday and cut out Sunday and expect to win, can you? Parents who raise their children to be great students and great athletes only are fools. If I as a parent do not educate my child how to flee from the wrath to come, no matter what else I've done for that child, I have failed that child. They are unprepared for life and death. One of my heroes, John Marshall, was an English pastor who was famous for preaching in the open air for 40 years. Two degrees from Oxford, very educated, very erudite, and could really preach. And he had this message on what's the least a pastor owes to his congregation. If I do nothing else, what's the one thing I have to do to my people? And he said, if your people don't know how to flee from the wrath to come, you've utterly failed them. I don't care how good a counselor you are. I don't care how good a Bible teacher you are. I don't care how much the youth group likes you. If your people do not know how to flee from the wrath of God, you're a total failure to them. And he was right. But what about me as a parent? I taught my son to play basketball. I taught my son to play baseball. I worked on homework with them. I did these things with my kids. But if I didn't tell them how to flee from the wrath to come and pray for them and seek God's grace in their lives, then I'm a failure as a dad. What will it profit a child if he or she gains the whole world but loses his or her immortal soul? That's what a biblical parent has to have on their mind. Besides parenting with the biblical mind, we need to parent with biblical love. Biblical love is based on the character of God and the law of God, which is His revealed character. God, who is holy, holy, holy, has eternally been a loving God. The Father has always loved the Son. The Son has always loved His Father. The Spirit loving the Father, Son, et cetera. The Bible says God is love. John's gospel is my favorite, I think, because more than any other, John pulls back the curtains and says, Here's some stuff about what was going on in eternity past. And it's the interaction of the Father and the Son before time. And Jesus says, the most astounding thing that is possibly conceivable to conceive and to experience is knowing my Father. And I've come to save you so you can know my Father like I do. It's the most stupendous thing in the world. That's why I came. Not just to save your sorry candy. But I want you to know my father, that's why you're saved. And you know, in Islam, Allah is a monad. He doesn't relate to anyone or anything. He's just a self-contained being who doesn't relate to anyone. You know, you don't have Muslims going around singing, since Allah came into my heart. I mean, they don't sing songs like that. If you ask a Muslim, In fact, one day I did. I was flying to Newark, and there was a lady sitting next to me who was very wealthy. She was dressed very... lots of trappings of wealth, and she watched me reading my Bible and talking, and she came out that she was a Muslim, and she was... My kids are Muslims. My daughter has a PhD. My son has a PhD. My husband's wealthy. Good for you. So I'm saying, what can I say to her? I said, you know, probably a frontal attack and a fist fight here and 14C and B isn't going to be a good test. So I said, I know how I can get her. And I did. I read my Bible during approach. And as we're coming down, just before we landed, I looked at her and I said, you know, By the grace of God, God saved me and I came to know Jesus as my savior in 1969 and I've gotten to know him all these years and by his grace I've come to love him more and see him better and understand him better. Tell me, how is it with you and Allah? Do you love him more? Do you know him better? And she looked down and she said, well, we don't conceive of it that way in Islam. I hope I serve him better. That was it. You don't know Allah personally. Allah doesn't come into your life. He's a monad. He doesn't relate to anything else. And I was hoping that it would spark something in her heart that I had something she didn't. I'm not going to tell her that Muhammad's a pedophile, which he was. I'm not going to tell her that he's a false prophet, which he was. She'd probably just, you know, bring up her blast shields in the full frontal position. We'd go to war. But the fact that you can't know Allah. He's not personal. He's not noble. He's not loving. But our God is. He's always been loving. Love and relationships are the very heart of the Trinity. The world that exists is based upon a God who is noble, who is loving, and who is relational. 1 John 4, 7-11 can pad that out for you a little bit. Love is not primarily a feeling, which I said at the very beginning, but a disposition, a purpose of will. Remembering Jesus' teaching about the Good Samaritan, it wasn't the people who felt ooey-gooey toward the guy in the ditch. It was the people who stopped what they were doing and helped the guy in the ditch who had his best interest at heart. God's love does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth. And this is why this is important, because there's much talk of love in our culture. And this kind of love has nothing to do with righteousness or holiness or compliance with God's love. It's God's laws that has to do with doing whatever the other person wants. I want you to commit adultery for me. I want you to help me rob a bank. I want you to lie to the authorities for me. I want you to do these things. Love does not rejoice in unrighteousness. And the word here for unrighteousness means breaking God's laws. Adikia is wrongdoing, breaking God's laws. And so I can't be loving if I'm doing something sinful. Case in point, in the 1960s there was a famous book that every college student had to read called Situation Ethics by Joseph Fletcher. And the theme of this book was there is no right and wrong, you just need to do what love dictates. Sound familiar? The whole culture bought that. And one of the key episodes in the book is a woman who's in a Nazi prison, and the only way to get out is by death or somehow if you're pregnant. So she loves her wife and kids back home, so she seduces a prison guard, gets pregnant, gets released, and gets to go home and be with her family. Aw, what a loving woman. Well, love does not rejoice in unrighteousness. I'm not going to seduce someone and commit adultery because I profess to love my husband and kids back here. Yes, it's a horrible situation. I don't have an easy answer for what you should have done. But by violating God's law in order to so-called do the right thing is not how you do it. It's not loving to do something which breaks or violates God's law and then claim it was done out of Christian love. The law of God is love's eyes. What does love want me to do? What the law says. It shows us what to do. Love is the law's power source, the motivation, empowering us to obey and conform to God's law. God's law doesn't have the power to make me want to do it, but love will make me want to do God's law, and this is what I'm to do. So law and love work together. They're not enemies. They're the two legs you need to walk on, so to speak. The greatest single instructor of children is their parents. Dr. Ted Ward was head of the School of Education at Michigan State for years, transferred to, he was a Christian and transferred to my seminary where he was head of the Christian Ed Department. He wrote a book for a layman called Values Begin at Home, and you can still find it on the internet for Amazon for a buck, two bucks. And I remember we had him for a conference and he blew away our people when he taught them this. What is most determinative for the values your children will adopt is not where you send them to school, but whether you and the parents practice what the Bible teaches and your church preaches. He wasn't attacking homeschool. He wasn't attacking Christian school. He was undermining the mindset that where my kids go to school is ultimately determinative. Not true. how or whether or not you live out what you profess to believe and what your church teaches will impact your kids more than when you send them to school. Because I know a lot of parents who didn't live very holy lives, but thought, we're going to put them in this place, and we'll protect them from the sinners who go to these schools. But forgetting that they were sinners who lived with sinful parents, and they didn't really work through the theology of all that. Parents modeling biblical truth is the most powerful way of instruction. How biblical love is expressed, okay? By personal self-sacrifice for the one loved. For God so loved the world that he gave. Didn't send a committee, didn't pray about it, didn't drop leaflets from heaven on self-improvement. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. And John 4, 9 through 11, talks about these very same things, Romans 8.32. Romans 8.32 is an astounding verse if you'd meditate on it. It's talking about the question, if you're going to take the most valuable things in heaven, Romans 8.32 said, God who did not spare his own son. To spare something is, you can have everything else here, but you can't have this. I'm sparing this. And Paul says, he says, now follow me. He who did not spare his own son, which many verses will show the father-son relationship is the most precious. He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, us believing sinners. How shall I not also, along with him, now freely give us all things? He says, I want you to think, if he gave Christ to you when you were sinners deserving only of hell, now that you're his blood-bought children, do you think he's going to give you worse? Think about it. He says, no, it's just not rational. It's not logical. He didn't even spare his son. He could have given you seraphim, cherubim, all the angels of heaven, but you can't have my son. He says, no, I'll give you my most valuable thing. then won't he take care of the lesser things for us? By persistent verbal expressions of tender affection. You cannot tell your children, and probably your wife or your husband, too much that you love them. And in fact, love makes up expressions. Every family that's a loving family, you don't just call your male child, come in here, first born male child, We actually give him a name, but actually in most families he has several names because he has all these family nicknames that when he's older he doesn't want to get out his friends to hear but all these names because we love him and we have these special names that only we know. In Zechariah 317 I'd like you to turn there. Zechariah is that book that in the Old Testament that still the pages are stuck together in your Bible. Zechariah I said Zechariah, I meant Zephaniah. Sorry, that's a typo. Zephaniah. That may be still stuck together in my Bible. It's in the Minor Prophets. It's so minor you can overlook it. Okay, a couple of books before Zechariah. This is an astounding verse. If you think about it, it'll make you weep. I had my son, who's also an artist, draw a picture of boxing gloves hanging by the strings on a nail. And I had these verse calligraphy underneath it. Because a woman in our church who was raped and sexually abused as a girl needed to combat the thoughts that came to her head that she was a piece of trash and wasn't worth much. I said, you just can't give in to these thoughts when they come. You need to combat them with the truth. So here's the truth. The Lord, notice it's all capitals, that's the Hebrew word Yahweh, or God's covenant name. The covenant God, your God, is in your midst. A mighty one who will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness. I'm so glad that you're mine. I rejoice in saving you. I rejoice that you're mine. Keep reading. He will quiet you by his love. We can have anxieties, heartaches, but His love will quiet us. He will exult, exult, E-X-U-L-T. What does exult mean? It's a heightened form of praise and thanksgiving. You're so excited you can't stand still, so you're jumping up and down. He will exult over you with loud singing. Now, truth to tell, when my kids were little, I would carry them around the house and I would talk to them and I would sing to them and I would make up songs and give them their names and I would sing to my kids. Can you imagine the Lord saying, I walk around, so to speak, with you in my mind and I make up songs about you because you're so precious to me? This is in the Bible. It's not a fairy tale I made up. It's in the Bible. He says, God's a mighty one who will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you by his love. He will exult over you with loud singing. This is my beloved son. With him I am well pleased. This is my beloved daughter. With her I am well pleased. And it's true. So we need to be that way with our children. Ephesians 4.15 talks about truthing it in love. English versions say speaking the truth in love, but in Greek it's just truthing it in love. by meeting the physical needs of our children. It says in 1 Timothy 5.8, if you don't take care of the physical needs of your own family, you're worse than a pagan. It says the example of Howard Hendricks' son. Howard Hendricks was one of my mentors, so I didn't go to his seminary, but I listened to many of his lectures. He talked about how to love your family, and he gave an illustration. He said he came home from the seminary one day, And he pulled up, and he was on his way to speak at Fort Worth. He lived in Dallas, was speaking at Fort Worth at a church. And he pulls up, and there's his son's bicycle leaning against the garage. But if you've ever had a bicycle, and you hit something, and it got twisted, and now it's just like, this is not a functional bike. And he says, I got out of the car. My son's sitting on the front porch kind of. like this, you know, disconsolate because his bike's messed up. So I took off my tie, took off my sport coat, and rolled up my sleeves, and we got some things out. It's all fixed. Washed my hands, put everything back up, raced across to Fort Worth. He said, I got there a little late. They had finished the rubber chicken and the peas, and he said, I got there in time to preach. When the host said, Hendricks, you're late. He says, I know. I had to fix my son's bike. What? And he says, he gave me a portion of his mind he couldn't afford to spare. And he spoke and did a great job, went back home. But the upshot came about 10 days later. They were out fishing. He had taken his boys fishing. And he was helping his youngest son bait his hook, and they're fishing. And he was asking his boys, he says, boys, why do you love your mom and dad? Oh, I don't know. Do you love your mom? Oh, sure. Why? You always need to have a reason for why you do what you do. Okay. Five minutes later, his youngest son burst out, I love you because you fixed my bike. He said, how many rubber chickens and peas do you think that's worth? I got there and I fulfilled my obligation, but I was late for, and the guy was a little, that was the days before cell phones, you can't just call. And he said, but how would you like to have your son say, I love you because you helped me out. And he said to my son, his bike was like my car. A broken down bike is like a broken down car. By meeting the physical needs of our children, by living with your children in a faithful, dependable way, look at these verses, these are sobering verses. Proverbs 20, verses 6 and 7. Many a man proclaims his own steadfast love, but a faithful man who can find. The righteous who walks in his integrity, blessed are his children after him. If you want to go see a very educational movie or rent it, have you seen or heard of Saving Mr. Banks? Did you see it? I didn't like the movie. My son said, you need to watch it. The first two thirds of it, I go, this is a terrible movie. I hate it. If this woman, I live with her, I would strangle her. It's the story of Mary Poppins and the Australian woman who wrote Mary Poppins and Walt Disney had read it to his kids and had embellished it and made it actually better and wanted to make a movie and she wouldn't let him and he was after her for 20 years. 20 years. He would fly to London when she was there and try to get her to... Well, finally he made some concessions, okay, but then even then he had to back home and stuff. This woman was a witch. She was so ugly to him. She was ugly to everybody in her life and she would just, she just treated people terribly. And we have a sweet home and a sweet marriage and I'm not used to listening to people trashing each other all the time and she trashed everybody all the time. Well, it turns out she had a dad back in Australia who was a big talker who never came through with anything. and ended up, did he die as a drunkard? And finally, Walt Disney, when finally they were making the movie and she said, no, I changed my mind, I'm not going to do this. And she walked out and flew back to London from California. And she got back to California and Walt Disney was there the next morning at her door front. And he sat her down and he said, you know, I want you to know my dad wasn't perfect, and I had my dad run a little newspaper store, and I delivered newspapers every morning for years, and he never thanked me any one day for doing this hard work as a little kid. But I love my dad, and that's just who he was, and I did what I needed to do. And I'm sorry your father was such this terrible person, but basically you need to get over it and not trash the world because your dad was unfaithful. And you're angry at everybody because your dad was unfaithful. It's like, whoa, way to go, Walt. And the movie shifted, and it was just like someone, and she kind of woke up, and she agreed to let the movie be finished. And I told this story to a couple of people, and they said, you know, that's funny. We read the book, Mary Poppins, that she wrote, but it's not a fun book, and it's kind of sour, and it's nothing like the movie, because Walt Disney said, you took the joy of life out of that family, and you need to put it back in. And it's a sweet movie about family and forgiveness, but it's hard to take because she is such a pistol, most of the book, most of the movie. So, we need to be, you know, her whole life she was still fighting against her dad and her dad's unfaithfulness. By constant acts of love and kindness, We can't love our kids too much. Our kids should think, you know, who are my biggest cheerleaders? My mom and dad. If you're struck with the perfectionist syndrome where, why did you get 97 on that instead of 100? Well, get over it and get a life because you're not perfect. And if you'd like us to scrutinize your life real close, we'd be glad to point out any remaining errors in your life. But kids don't thrive on constant nitpicking. They thrive on encouragement. by persistent teaching and instruction in life and godliness. Deuteronomy chapter 6 is the famous Shema of the Jews. Here over Israel, the Lord our God is one. And then what does it go on to say? That we're to teach these things to our children. Night and day, when we're walking along the highway, when we're putting them to bed all day long, we need to be teaching these things to our kids. and that goes with raising our children in the fear of the admonition of the Lord, as preached in 6.4. By patient and persistent encouragement and exhortation. Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 2 that he says, like a faithful father exhorts his children, so I exhorted you Thessalonians. You are my spiritual children, and I was like a father with you, faithfully encouraging you. What does the word encourage mean? It means that a person's slacking, they're lacking courage, and you're kind of putting courage and heart back in them. Do kids ever get down? Sure. I mean, imagine, you think life is hard now, suddenly you're set back and you're eight years old. How hard would life be? And you're eight years old. Look at this world. How am I supposed to make it? I'm eight years old. And I'm supposed to do all these things and learn all these things and be all these things. And so, as I used to tell my son, you know, you may feel like your backbone is a sock, but you push a steel rod up a sock and you got something there. And so I would try to find ways of finding a steel rod when he had a drooping backbone to help him be, you know. And my hat's off to my son. He had a book that he had to read in grade school called Kind and Brave, and that's a good description of my son. He's kind, but he's also brave. He needed encouragement. By consistent and persevering discipline of disobedient, rebellious behavior, I've known kids who've worn out wooden spoons. They've worn out spatulas. I mean, their parents have worn out their backside. These kids have iron butts. I mean, these kids are incredible. And it's like, hello? Do you have any nerve endings back here? And you don't want to be beating your kids, but they don't seem to really, you know. I know one dad stood outside a church one night. I spanked my son 27 times last night because he wouldn't stay in bed, and I don't want to tie him in bed, but he wouldn't stay in bed, and I'd spank him and put him down to get back up. I'd spank him and put him down to get... 27 times! I can't take it anymore. I said, uh... Did you take the diaper out before you spanked him? I don't know if parents who... Well, that's no good. Or leaving the diaper in. Well, hey, you might as well put a pillow there. But this dad had some things to learn, and this kid was a hard case. And I said, well, spanking's not your only weapon. There's other things. If you want to torture him, make him sit in a chair. No, I repent. Don't make me sit here any longer. Wired kids do not like to sit still. I have a grandson that way. By appropriate physical expressions of love and tenderness. Holding, kissing, hugging, even giving them a noogie would be appropriate for some little boys. Kids need to be loved on. What if only one time in the Bible God says, I love you, and that was never, ever repeated, never showed in any other place in the Bible. There are hundreds of references to the love of God. There's hundreds of references to Christ's sacrificial love, and we still have a hard time getting it. Imagine how harder it is if our parents hardly ever tell us they love us. Physical expressions. Again, remember I said it's not just, come here, firstborn male child. Well, no, we have names and we have terms of endearment. We give them multiplied names. And we show expressions of love. Note, biblical love is not the blind, naive sentimentalism of the enabler. Here's OK, sonny. Here's money to go buy your drugs. Here's money to go smoke pot. Here's money to go buy cigarettes. Oh, my boy would never do anything wrong. He must be mistaken. That's love does not rejoice in unrighteousness. Love doesn't sit around and say, well, he's hanging around the wrong kids and that's why he robbed the bank. No, my son has a problem. Parenting with biblical limits and biblical discipline. Okay. Now again, most people are either leaning one way or the other. Like people find themselves, I like to tell my kids I love them, but I have a hard time spanking them. Other people, I like to spank my kids, but I have a hard time loving them. OK, well, you maybe have one problem with the other, but we all ought to be, as much as we can, have all these qualities. Not just a lover, but also a discipliner. In fact, I had as a rule of thumb in my family, who loves you? Oh, Dad, he really loves us. Who do you not want to run afoul of? Dad. He really spanks. And he really gives us a talking to. But my dad's my biggest cheerleader. I think that's perfectly balanced. Who loves me more than God? Nobody. Who do I not want to mess with? God. The fear of God means I respect him as being God. He's not the man upstairs. He's not the old man upstairs. He's not the big man. He's Almighty God. And He loved us before time. The doctrine of election means I loved you before there was a cosmos. Before there was a universe, I had set my love on you. Love before time. There's no one more loving that we can ever conceive than God the Father. The theology that says that God the Father only likes us because Christ died for us and otherwise the Father was always ticked at us is not biblical. It was the Father's love for us that set Him on the plan of the covenant and He asked Christ to come for us. It's the Father's love that initiated and ultimately brought about our salvation. You can't pit the Father against the Son. It's horrible theology. It's schizophrenic theology. Okay, biblical authority, the right to use force to compel obedience. God set and explained his ways in the Garden of Eden and enforced these limits with discipline. Okay, that discipline is, you shall not eat of it for the day that you, you know, you'll die. If you disobey me, you will die. And then when they disobeyed, there was the cherubim, which is a plural, there was these angelic creatures with giant flaming swords, and you're not going back, now get out of here. And they had to wander into the rest of the world, cursed by sin, by God's judgment on sin. Genesis 1 to 3 shows the communication of the limits and the enforcement of the discipline. Parents' authority over their children is delegated to them by God himself. The fifth commandment is the foundation of all earthly authority, and we know the fifth commandment is, you shall honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment, and it goes on to talk about the consequences of that. In fact, most reformed teaching on authority will come as teaching of the Ten Commandments. Honor your father and mother because they're the first authorities you'll ever have to deal with in this life. And your respect for all other authority flows out of learning it from your mom and dad. Apostolic command reinforces Old Testament foundational teaching. So, Ephesians 6.1, Colossians 3.20, Paul says in Ephesians 5, if you're filled with the Spirit, here's what results. Colossians 3.16, if the Word of God is richly dwelling in you, here's what's going to be the response. Children, read my lips. Obey your parents and the Lord. I had a man come to me in tears. He said his daughter was dating somebody that he thought was terrible for her and she wouldn't give him up. And there was all kinds of other extraneous things going on. But she said, name one Bible verse that says I can't date him. And his daughter said, I'm not a lawyer. But anyway, he couldn't think of one, so he was stymied. He says, do you know any Bible verses that outlawed this? I go, yeah. Children obey your parents in the Lord if the Bible had a rule for every possible thing the whole world would be covered with a giant Bible But the Bible has principles which cover many details underneath it so you're to listen to your parents and obey them while they're living under your roof or In the case of college students if you're picking up the nickel for them going to college then you still call the shots I know parents who say if you want to go to college of my nickel I Then you're going to be in church on Sunday, even though you're not converted or professing Christian, and you're not going to do drugs, and you're not going to get tattoos or piercings. Any other question? If you want to pay for your own way, fine, you can do all those things, but I'm not going to be an enabler to you. But if you want me to support you, I will, but you're going to live by my house rules, though you're away from the house. They didn't say it in a mean way, but they said it in a firm way. I'm not going to pay for your sin, but if you'd like me to help, we'd love to. We'd like to make it easier, but you're going to live according to our rules. God's word and principles taken from it are the foundation of the principles which parents are to teach their children. Rules of our home are extrapolations of biblical law and love. You know, what are called the household codes in the New Testament. I don't know why they, scholars, they have to show that they went to school. But anyway, they come up with these names. And so here's the things you're not supposed to do in Ephesians and Colossians, the things you're supposed to do. Well, what we have is rules of our home. In our family, we don't do this. Well, what gives you the right to say that, Dad? The Lord does. We're to organize our family. We're to have rules in our family. Parents are to be very clear and consistent as to the rules of the family and their enforcement. Unwritten or constantly changing rules make for a confused and at times chaotic household. When did you ever say we can't do that? Well, I'm just saying it now. That's not helpful. Rules of conduct that are not faithfully enforced are not truly expected to be obeyed. Well, your kid keeps not doing what you say, but you never do anything about it, so what's he to think? It's no big deal. He does it once, he gets popped for it when he's five years old. I think I'm going to reevaluate keeping on doing this thing. I think my dad really means it, so I'm not going to do that. Children are to be disciplined for disobedience and rebellion, not ignorance or confusion, or you might even add immaturity. You know, one of the things that can be a curveball to pastors and parents is this. Reginald became a Christian. He's 10. What's Reginald's need? Grown grace and sanctification. And he's 10. So what's sanctification looking like for a 25-year-old who's married and out in the world, having a job, and a 10-year-old who's kind of clueless about a lot of things, but still supposed to be growing as a Christian? Immaturity is a large part of his struggle, not to mention the fact he has to grow in grace. And so we need to be careful that we don't discipline at times for being immature. A friend used this illustration. I think it's very helpful. You've got three boys. You've got a 15-year-old, a 10-year-old, and a 5-year-old. And you tell them you want to work out with weights. Now the 15-year-old is going to put, let's say buys a barbell set and he's got 200 pounds and he's working out with it. The 10-year-old comes over and tries to work out and gives himself a hernia. The 5-year-old can't even pick the sucker up and do anything with it. He just kind of rolls it around on the floor and maybe picks the collars off the end and plays with the weights, but he can't do anything. And it's not that they're not all committed to working out, but the 5-year-old, no way. And the 10-year-old, he can have dreams, but his body's not there yet. Maybe the 15 can actually work out with the weights. We shouldn't expect the same from each of our children. because their maturity factor comes in. And that's why it's hard to gauge where our children are at spiritually, because they're still immature and they're growing. And sometimes it's, Reginald, he's so sweet. He's the most godly five-year-old I know. What's the point? He's only five. If he had the car and was gone, I was like, oh, I don't know if I could trust him then. Biblical parents are to faithfully exercise authority to compel obedience. Like I said, if you like combative situations, that's not good. If you have a pugnacious personality, that's not good. You need to pray for God's grace to change. If you say, I don't like this, but I'll do this to be faithful. And son, you don't want to test me because, well, I don't want to do this. If you think I won't, you're sadly deluded. The first time I spanked my son, I didn't have a house like John's. We were renting this place. I had a basement office with big old pipes and many dark spaces and large spiders and cockroaches. You didn't want to come down there. And they served to keep people out of my office, too. But my son was understood that he could not come down because there was wooden stairs leading to a concrete slab. And they're hard stairs. And if you fell, the stairs alone would maim you. And if they didn't kill you, the slab at the bottom would finish you off. So the idea was no, no stairs. One day, I was in there studying. And all of a sudden, I hear the door open. And I hear these little feet come down to the first landing. And then I hear him starting to walk down the stairs. And I said, Matt, is that you? And they stop. No, I said, I could be calculating. I can let him fall and let painful providence be his teacher, but that would be cruel, because these are hard stairs and a concrete slab. So I jumped up and went up the stairs, and he was working his way down the first couple of stairs. And I grabbed him. I said, you know. to a two-year-old or whatever. You know the rules. We don't go on these stairs. I don't want you to get hurt. I love you. But I spanked him because he knew it was wrong. And it was the first time I'd really spanked him. And he looked at me like, I thought you were my friend. I was so wrong. Mommy! And she runs off. And I went back downstairs, and I put my head on my desk, and I wept because he needed to learn about sin. He needed to learn about obedience. He needed to learn that people who loved him would hurt him in order to keep him from greater hurts. And about a week later, he did the same thing on the upstairs, from the second floor to the first floor. These were carpeted stairs to a carpeted landing, to a carpeted landing. I said, OK, we'll let Providence be his teacher. So he starts down the stairs, makes it about two falls. He's gripping the stairs like he's hanging on a cliff overlooking Mount Everest, and he's crying. OK, I can go rescue you now. Because even if he fell, he wasn't going to get hurt. So I would let Providence teach him the second time, but I was going to teach him the first time. And sin hurts, but sometimes reality is more painful. And a fractured skull would have been a lot more painful. When God makes a covenant with Abraham, he calls him to exercise authority over his children and household. Quote, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice. That Abraham was to command his children and those guys who worked in his house, that you are to do what I say, you're to follow the Lord. Parental discipline is a critical part of raising our children in the Lord. To fail to discipline your children is likened to hate in the Bible. To fail to discipline your children is to set them on a path of hardship, confusion, and misery. And all these verses in Proverbs talk about if you don't discipline your children, this is what you can expect. Passive aggressive behavior is used sparingly by God as a form of discipline to his children. For years, I put God doesn't do passive-aggressive, but as I've read my Bible, there are times when God says, okay, if you want to act this way, I'm not going to be close to you. And the children of Israel kind of go, whoops, and they want the Lord to come back to them. But it's not a constant thing, but the Lord will at times say, if you want to continue slapping me in the face and offend me, fine, I will walk away from you. But then you'll have the consequences of having this vacuum in your life. So we should use it sparingly with our children. And this verse that struck me in 1971, I was sitting on a hillside in San Bernardino, California, and the Living Bible came out. Wow, how cool was that? It's like reading the newspaper. And so I'm there reading the Living Psalms and Proverbs. Better is open rebuke than love that is concealed. It says it's better to just go out and spit it out and say it than by doing a passive-aggressive thing and say, I'm not going to talk to you. You know, no passive-aggressive behavior. I'm sure you've heard of it. You did that yesterday. I'm not speaking to you for a week. So there are limited times when it's appropriate, but it shouldn't be a regular way of relating to people because how are they in the same hell going to know what's going on? Because sometimes they're so clueless, they don't know what they did, and your quietness doesn't help them figure it out. Other forms of discipline are restitution for things taken. I've gone with teenagers, not my own thankfully, but I've gone with teenagers and this one girl was making a living as a shoplifter and she had hundreds of dollars of stuff to return but she repented and became a Christian at a conference and came to me and she said, these are all the things I've been stealing with my friends and I can't, they didn't come to the conference and they didn't want to become Christians and they didn't want to repent but she did. So we got the money to cover everything and she got the goods that she still had and we went to this pharmacy and this Target and with these stores and Noblesville, Indiana north of Indianapolis and she would go up to them and find the manager and I would stand I said excuse me so-and-so has something she wants to share with you and She would talk about how she was part of this group and she would steal things and she stole this and and she would either give them back the thing or she would give them the money and the people were uniformly astounded and thankful, didn't press charges. You go, man, this is going to so mess up our bookkeeping. We don't have any places for things returned by former thieves who have now become Christians. Give it back to us. We have no categories in our spreadsheet for this. But that girl grew like a weed, and she learned a lesson. Do you think shoplifting was ever attractive to her again after she went through all the pain of about eight hours of returning stuff? OK, other things they need to do are, let's see, where was I? Isolation from the rest of the family for a short time. If you want to be a horse's behind, then you can be in your room by yourself while the rest of us go on and have a nice family together in the evening. But you're not going to spread your bad attitude to the rest of us, and you're not going to stop us from enjoying what we're going to be doing. Removal of privileges previously enjoyed. That's always painful, depending on the age of the child. Now, it's not just when they're 16 and you won't let them have their iPhone. You may not play with your Green Army men or your Legos for a week. Oh, how long can you take my Legos from me? I mean, it just depends what age they are, right? By the way, the Green Army men were just yesterday voted into the Toy Hall of Fame. Did you hear that? Yes. Some people have discernment. Green Army men, they've been around since the 30s, but they finally made it into the Toy Hall of Fame. Pastors need to keep up on a lot of the latest, you know, cultural... My mind works in weird ways. Okay. They should be kept from the Lord's table if they're a Communicate Church member. If this 16-year-old has made a profession of faith, and this last two or three weeks have been hell in your home because of their insubordination or rebellion, say, well, you know, you profess to be a Christian, you were baptized and joined this church, and Scripture says that we shouldn't take communion if we're not dealing with our sins. The pastors aren't here to see you. I'm the on-site spiritual leader. You may not take communion this Lord's Day. And if they're a professing Christian, that should weigh a lot. Removal from involvement in special family times enjoyed by the obedient children. I can hear them out there. They're laughing and having fun and eating pizza and cake, and I'm in here in bread and water and my room. Missing of a meal. So you complained and whined and didn't like supper. Well, fine. You don't have to have supper. You can just go to bed early. And they may find the supper's rolled around for breakfast the next morning. It's still here. It's called breakfast now. It's the same. I mean, different parents do it different ways. I've known fathers that if you didn't like it for supper, you'd be surprised what it tastes like for breakfast. John MacArthur has this great story about, he doesn't understand kids today who complain about their food and stuff. He said, I had three or four brothers and he said, if I for a second hesitated about eating anything on my plate, it was gone. One of my brothers would scarf it off there. Hey, wait, I was thinking about eating that. All discipline hurts in some way, and any so-called discipline that does not hurt in some way is not effective. Children should learn that sin has painful consequences. For the moment, all discipline seems painful, amen, rather than pleasant. But later, it yields the peaceful food of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. You know, I loved my parents, and I wasn't a Christian until I was 21, but I loved my parents. I knew they loved me. They disciplined me the best they knew how. Hebrews 12 says, you know, our parents disciplined us the best they knew how. My dad didn't have a father. His dad died of influenza outbreak in the early 20th century. And he was the baby in his family, had to learn to be a father. And my mother came from a large family and she loved me in her way. And I knew right from wrong. I knew that You know, you can, a child doesn't have to be regenerate to appreciate things. But when I got to college, I thought, man, I grew up in Disney World. Because you don't know what's out there today. My kids went off to college and they went to, where John Elizabeth went to school, a nice liberal arts university that's expensive. And they came home and they said, man, we cannot believe the families that we hear about from our fellow students. My suite mate got an abortion last month. The girl who lived on the other side of the bathroom had an abortion last month. And my son, his first roommate, his dad, his first wife, his father's wife died. He married some young thing and they shipped him off to military boarding school at 13. And then he graduates from military boarding school and is taken to college and dumped. And he's a miserable kid. My son struggled to relate to him the whole year, not because my son was mean, but this poor kid was so unhappy and was doing all these different weird, wild things to try to make sense out of a world where nobody loved him and no one wanted him. And my kid said, you know, we are so appreciative that you guys loved us and disciplined us the best you knew how. You know, no parents set out to say, no, I'm going to really screw up my kids' lives. No, I mean, parents don't do that. You do the best you know how. And later on, you know, I went to hear Ted Tripp speak. He's a friend of mine. And he gave us that seminar. And I looked at my wife. I go, do you think we did anything right in the years that we trained her? I don't know. Somehow we did. We muddled through. And the best thing in the world is to sit at the kitchen table with your kids talking about the things of the Lord. It's the sweetest thing in the world. And then as your kids get older and you watch your kids teaching their children about the things of God because they want their children to come to Christ. That doesn't get any better.