The National Center for Family Integrated Churches welcomes Scott Brown with the following message entitled, God, the perfect father who disciplines sons. Open your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 12. You know, as we're moving through this course of study that we're taking, we began by Speaking of this grand plan of redemption of God and the fact that everything regarding our fatherhood, everything regarding our family life has to be seen in light of this redemptive plan of God to bring many sons to glory. God the Father and the Son and the Spirit are working together in heaven to bring many sons to glory. The Father is drawing sons and daughters to the Lord Jesus Christ And they are bringing sinners into a family.

And they're literally baptized in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In other words, to be brought into this name, the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. There's this community of love, this undivided unified community of love and delight, mercy, compassion, and submission and authority. This is where it all begins for us. And so Our pattern for our fatherhood and our family life is really in heaven.

And the design of God is that we would have households of redemption that are dedicated to one single thing, to bring many sons to glory. And that's why God has fathers preaching the gospel to his children and they sit in their house when they walk by the way, when they lie down and rise up. That was our second message out of Deuteronomy chapter 6. What God does is He, not only does He create a place of worship for His family like in Leviticus, he also creates laws for his children and he gives those to fathers to bring to their families. And then we talked about headship in the home, Numbers Chapter 30, which really places everyone on notice that there is a leader of a family.

That there is a man who stands there and says no daughter not that way. There's a man who stands says no wife not that way we're going to go this way. And he's actually able to revoke or reverse even something as serious as a vow. Something that cannot be broken. God somehow prioritizes the leadership of a husband ahead in a family even over the vow of a wife.

And it's really an astonishing fact because God desires to place heads over households. And then we engaged in this first deposit by Sam Waldron on the man as priest. And what does that mean? And you saw the compassion and the tenderness and the mercy of a high priest. His kindness, his desire, again for what?

To bring many sons to glory. And so this is what this whole matter of fatherhood is. Now, and when we move to Hebrews chapter 12, we're going to talk about another aspect of fatherhood and we see here the perfect father who chastises his children. It's required of fathers to be like their father in heaven in order to bring discipline in various ways. So Hebrews chapter 12 and I'd like to read verses 5 through 13 and you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons.

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 what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons.

Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us and 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 as seemed best to them. But He for our profit that we may be partakers of His holiness." Now, no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful. Nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

Therefore strengthen the hands which hang down and the feeble knees and make straight the paths of your feet so that what is lame may not be dislocated but rather be healed. Let's pray. Oh Lord we thank you for your beautiful testimony to us, your words of life which rescue us from our own thinking, our own ways, the ways of our culture. You're so kind to lift us up out of the mire of ourselves and show us a better way. And now Lord that you would help us to discern your words, that you would keep us from error, that you would help us, O Lord, to behold your glory in the words that you've given to us.

And I pray that you would help us to be fathers like you are a father in the ways that you desire. Amen. So Hebrews 12 opens up a discussion for a really critical element of fatherhood and that is discipline. And we're talking about really here the imitating of the father who disciplines his sons. And it's a call to remember the connection between fatherhood and discipline and love.

And We see this remarkable statement, and have you forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as sons? 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 it's a wonderful call for us to progressively become imitators of God so that we might discover things that are even foreign to our natural inclinations. You know, we live in a world where discipline, chastisement is so disfigured and messed up.

And there's so many ways that we could speak of it. But think about it in terms of the way that we punish criminals today. We think it's more humane to put a man in a prison than it and to dehumanize him by locking him up in a cage than it is to make him make restitution or to actually beat him. The Bible actually talks about the rod on the back and what you ought to do to punish an evildoer. But we think it's more humane to treat a man like an animal rather than to beat him.

There's something so messed up in the way that we understand justice and chastisement. You know, how humane is it to make a man live like an animal in a cage rather than to give him a way to work himself up? You know, something I had one of the happiest lunches of the year yesterday. There was a young man in our church who had stolen a pretty significant amount of money and He was caught. He was caught for some of it and he confessed for some of it.

And we brought him in and we said, you know, what should we do? We asked him to write us a paper on the doctrine of restitution and he did. And we asked him what he thought he should do because he could turn himself in or we could turn him in, he would be a felon immediately and probably go to prison. It was that much money. It was a pretty significant situation.

This young man decided he wanted to fulfill the requirements of restitution in Scripture and so some of some of his theft was multiplied by two, some of it by four, and it took him two years. And yesterday he paid the last penny of over $10, 000 of restitution money. He was a young man and he was the happiest, he's got to be the happiest guy in North Carolina. He was free. His name is clear and every man knows him and who knows about the situation esteems him.

Instead of becoming a felon as would have been legitimate for us to do, he became a man who has a name and he's won his name back. It's such a blessing. Well, we have such a warped view of chastisement and punishment. I know that there were people who looked at that and said how could you be so cruel to make him pay back so much money? He'll never pay it back.

Guess what? With God all things are possible. So This whole matter of chastisement is critical. The word that the writer of the book of Hebrews uses for Chasen is paideia, and it really speaks of the whole issue of a kind of punishment for the purpose of improved behavior. And it does imply a kind of harshness.

And here we find in Hebrews chapter 12 that God, the perfect Father, shows fathers one of the ways that they should exercise love toward their children. And so we want to consider this perfect father who disciplines his sons. You know there's so much in the Proverbs about discipline. Proverbs 19 18, chasing your son while there is hope and do not set your heart on his destruction. Proverbs 29 17, correct your son and he will give you rest.

Yes, he will give delight to your soul. And what we are faced with when we look at the doctrine of discipline and chastisement in Scripture is that the discipline of children is nothing less than the imitation of God. And we're imitating a perfect father who disciplines his sons. Here's something that I think that we should recognize that you can tell father, tell a father by many tests, but here's one test by whom they chastise. Sons want to know one thing from their fathers, do you really love me?

And this is a way that fathers prove their love toward their sons, that they actually chastise them. And so you use the rod on your children so that they will know one thing without any question, that they have a father and that you are their father and you are there as a as a representative of God the Father to bring loving chastisements that are appropriate for the crime. Now there's so many times I'm sure in your lives as there were in mine when I just did not discipline my children as I ought to have. But still the pattern is there for us to continue to press forward. Now, a few things that are clear to me after having been a father, my children are grown now, but a home that does not chastise cannot be a happy home.

That it becomes a wild home where there's yelling and anger and things like that. But when you have proper chastening in a home, you have a happy home. And it's a blessing. It is such a blessing to have that. You know, in my travels this year, I went to New Zealand and the parents in, the Christian parents in New Zealand are kind of running for cover because New Zealand just recently passed what they call the their anti-smacking laws.

Anti-smacking laws. It means that you can't spank your children without some kind of reprisal. Isn't it amazing how the devil takes absolutely the worst possible angle on something that is holy and speaks of it so profanely and to call it a smacking law, as if somehow the term smacking has any correlation at all with the doctrine of chastisement that you find in the Bible. That it has anything to do with the love of a father. That it has anything to do with the father of mercies who disciplines his sons for one single reason, because he loves them, because he's proving that they have a father, that he's proving that there is someone who is so connected to them in love that he would actually chastise them.

But these bankrupt leaders of our world will find every way to belittle beautiful things, even on our own nation. It was just this year I believe may have been at the end of last year Delaware outlawed spanking. You know this kind of thing thing is happening. I understand there has been a fairly harsh law in Alabama on this matter as well. But you know it's interesting if you live in New Zealand now and you even if you don't smack your children your children would be taken away from you on an anonymous tip that you smacked them.

Which means that you spanked them. So the world is waging war against this whole idea and as we live in a wicked and perverse generation We have to make sure that we understand how different the kingdom of God is. We are responsible for establishing the kingdom of heaven on earth in our families and we do it through our fatherly leadership. And as we face pressures from those around us, our friends, legislators, we have to recognize that we must be the people of God. We must maintain the ways of God in our homes.

And it's such a remarkable pressure when parents realize that they might lose their children if they spank them. This could be a real threat for many of you as the years pass. And what will you do? Well, we have to really seek the Lord and know exactly how we ought to, on the one hand, fulfill the will of God and on the other hand find ourselves at least not getting our children taken away from us. There's an outline that I'd like to give you here for Hebrews 12.

First of all, I want to identify the call to remember the connection between love and chastening. That's verses 5 through 7. And then secondly, the connection between chastening and sonship. That's verses 7 and 8. And then thirdly, the connection between earthly fatherhood and the fatherhood of God, verse 9.

Number 4, the connection between chastening and holiness, verse 10. And five, the connection between chastening and pain, verse 11. And then number six, the connection between chastening and fruit-bearing, verse 12. And then after that I'd like to leave you five thoughts reflecting on these matters. So let's first of all take this first matter in verses 5 through 7.

A call to remember the connection between love and chastening. Verse 5, and have you forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as sons. 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." So it's an act of love. I think that's the primary issue here.

There are many issues. It could take us probably a couple of hours to work through these two verses, but we're just going to focus on this one matter of love in these two verses. And what the writer of Hebrews urges is that we are not discouraged by chastening, meaning that we're not weakened or fainting or losing heart as a result of the chastisements of the Lord. And you know we can think of this on a number of levels. I think our minds, because of the way I introduced this, are really thinking in terms of the discipline of young children.

But the same is true for us. The Lord does discipline His adult sons as well in many ways and not to be discouraged by the reversals, the troubles, the hardships that have come to our lives that God has brought because He's actually chastening us. He's slowing us down. He's trying to drop us to our knees. He's trying to help us to understand our sins and to repent and to be cleansed in ways that we hadn't in the past.

And you know, it is an act of love. The Bible speaks about this in a number of different ways. Like for example, Proverbs chapter 6 verse 20 through 24 makes it clear that chastening is the way to life. My son, Keep your father's command and do not forsake the law of your mother. Bind them continually upon your heart.

Tie them upon your neck. When you roam, they will lead you. When you sleep, they will keep you. When you awake, they will speak with you. For the Commandment is a lamp and the law of light.

Reproofs of instruction are the way of life. It's a way of life for us. It's help to us. It's an act of love. It directs us in love in a particular way.

Chastisement is a way to gladness in the home. Proverbs 29 17 says, correct your son and he will give you rest. Yes, he will give delight to your soul. In other words, the chastisement become a delight to everyone around them. It's a good thing to be chastised.

It's an act of love because it increases delight. You would think, you would think that chastisement would just create sullenness. Not always. When the Lord is in the midst, then it actually brings a spirit of happiness. That's why Solomon said, a wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is a grief to his mother.

We also know that a neglect of chastening causes shame. It's very bad in so many ways but it's it causes such shamefulness. And so he who mistreats his father and chases away his mother is a son who causes shame and brings reproach. Proverbs 19 26. You can see so easily how chastisement is an act of love.

It does so many wonderful things. On the other hand, to refuse to chastise actually destroys a person. It destroys children and that's why we read in Proverbs 20 verse 20 whoever curses his father or his mother his lamp will be put out in deep darkness. The eye that mocks father and mother and scorns obedience to his mother. The ravens of the valley will pick it out and the young eagles will eat it.

This is a picture of a person who throws off all reproofs, who cannot listen to chastisement or rebukes. And it's death to them. It's so harmful to them. This is why chastisement is an act of love. That's why he said, he whom the Lord loves, he chastens.

He's trying to save young people from having the Ravens pick out their eyes and to have calamities fall upon them. It's such an act of love. In Proverbs 19 verse 18 we see that chastening is a means for fruit bearing. It's an act of love. It causes good things to happen.

Chasten your son while there is hope and do not set your heart on his destruction. So you have this comparison the chastening while there's hope but on the other hand if not there's destruction. So it's so easy to see how chastening is an act of love. And so it's so important that we understand what chastening is. And this first set of verses really explains it.

Proverbs 19 25 affirms it. Strike the scoffer and the simple will become wary. Rebuke one who has understanding and he will discern knowledge. It's such a good thing to be subjected to the chastening of the Lord. And it comes from many different ways.

You know Proverbs 20 verse 30 says, Blows that hurt cleanse away evil, as do stripes the inner depths of the heart. Stripes, you know, stripes and actual beating has a way of cleansing the heart. And it's hard for us to even think that way in the society that we live in. But it's interesting that the word in the King James Bible that's used here is the blueness of the wound. Now if there is blueness in a wound on a child today, CPS is all over you and you might lose your children.

But the Bible actually says that the blueness of a wound is actually a good thing. We live in a society that hates beautiful things. We live in a society that hates the things of God. And where most people in our society think if you cause a bruise on the rear end of your child you've done evil to him. The Bible actually has a different thing to say about that.

We have to recognize who we are aligned with in our thinking. You know it's so difficult to read the Bible because it offends our thinking. It offends our sense of justice. It offends our sense of love. God loves in different ways than we do and so we're always having to find ourselves being conformed to his love and to his ways.

Proverbs 29 15 speaks of the use of the rod. The rod and rebuke gives wisdom but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother. When the wicked are multiplied transgression increases but the righteous will see their fall. Correct your son and he will give you rest. Yes, he will give delight to your soul.

A servant will not be corrected by mere words for though he understands he will not respond." Proverbs 13 24, he who spares his rod hates his son but he who loves him disciplines him promptly. You know it's easy to hate the rod isn't it? You know when I got married I realized quickly after we had children that I ended up marrying a girl who understood discipline a lot better than I did. She really did. She understood the use of the rod better than her husband.

And I hated to use the rod. And I think in some ways it's a right response because you so desire not to have to punish like that particularly. But I'm embarrassed to say that I had to learn from my dear wife about the use of the rod and I am so glad that she understood it far far better than I and God ended up giving us children who did respond to the disciplines of the rod that were brought to them. But this text, Proverbs 13 24 says that if you spare the rod you hate your son. We just have to recognize how different God is in his thinking than we are.

Because He disciplines only those whom He loves. And those who are not disciplined, He hates. You know if we find ourselves not finding the chastisements of the Lord, it should actually terrify us. It may be that we're dull and we don't understand that God is chastising us. And we might be like the people in the days of Isaiah where Isaiah says, why should I strike you again?

You'll revolt more and more. That's a people who've just become insensible to the judgments and the chastisements. God had been bringing judgments to Israel to get them to turn around, to get them to stop. He would throw this calamity or bring in that army or this famine in order to get them to stop their evil ways but they would not fall on their faces and cry out to God. And so finally he says, why should I strike you again?

You'll revolt more and more. And you know it's so critical that we understand that the chastisement of children is an act of the imitation of the Father. Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, says Proverbs 22 15, but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him." Proverbs 23 verse 13, do not withhold correction from a child. Now get these next words, for if you beat him with a rod he will not die. You know your children won't die if they have a blue wound on their rear end.

They won't die. You shall beat him with a rod and deliver his soul from hell. My son if your heart is wise my heart will rejoice. So this whole matter of discipline connected with love is so important that we understand. You know we started this conference saying this is a time to wash our minds in Holy Scriptures so that we might think differently, that we might think biblically about these matters.

And I think this is one of the areas where our minds need a cleansing to be washed by the water of the word so that we would begin to think like God thinks about all these matters in a world that actually hates the things that God does. I was having a conversation just a couple days ago with a couple in our church that was struggling with one of their children was expressing various forms of rebellion and they were asking about uses of the rod on a child you know in their mid-teens. While the Bible does not give an age where the rod should stop, One of the things that I wanted to encourage them to consider was were they exasperating their children and then using the rod on them? That often happens. And we have to be very careful in the way that we bring discipline.

The Lord is perfect in all of his disciplines. He always does it with perfect purity, holiness, love, and justice. You know, he does glorify himself in justice and in judgment, that's true. But at the same time, all of his judgments are acts of love. He never did strike anyone except within love.

So we have to be careful for how we exercise these things. You know, one of the glorious examples of this in history is in the family of John G. Payton, that great Scottish missionary who went to the New Hebrides. You know, I had the pleasure of standing at his grave in Australia this year. It was such a remarkable thing to be there.

But Peyton speaks of the discipline that his father brought to him. And the Peyton children were disciplined. But they were humbled by it and their heart was actually warmed by it, even though it hurt when he would discipline them. And they tell stories of his going into his prayer closet when he was going to chastise them, when he was going to use the rod on them. And when that time came he would go into his prayer closet and he would cry out to God and he would weep.

They would hear him in the anguish of his soul beginning to do the judgment of the Lord, you know, upon his children. And this is what what John Paton writes about it. The very discipline through which our father passed us was a kind of religion in itself. If anything really serious required to be punished, he retired first to his closet for prayer. And we boys got to understand that he was laying the whole matter before God.

And that was the severest part of the punishment for me to bear. I could have defied any amount of penalty. But this spoke to my conscience as a message from God. And listen to these words. We loved him all the more when we saw how much it cost him to punish us.

And in truth he had never very much of that kind of work to do upon any of all the eleven. We were ruled by love far more than fear. You know that's an example of a father who's not exasperating his children and then using the rod. He's a father like our Father in heaven Who's created a kingdom of love but also a kingdom where there are consequences to evil. You know God gives the rod to constrain evil and it's necessary for that.

So the discipline of children is the imitation of the love of God. Point number two, the connection between chastening and sonship. The connection between chastening and sonship, verses seven and eight. If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons. For what son is there whom a father does not chasten?

But if you are without chastening of which we have all become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons." Isn't that remarkable that he would use such vivid language like that? You are illegitimate. You know, there are other words more profane to our thinking for that word. But you are illegitimate if you're actually proven to be illegitimate if you're not chastised by the Lord. You know, perhaps this is why this area is such a battlefield in our culture.

And there's so many in our culture who actually hate this idea of discipline. You know I remember it wasn't too long ago that Christianity Today took the position in their magazine that spanking causes mental illness. There are all these different reactions that we find the use of the rod causes abusive anger in children and things like that. You know I just actually haven't found that to be true. It actually drove away those things in my own heart and in my children's as well.

And it caused happiness instead of anger and an abusive spirit. You know we have this challenge before us now the UN rights of the child. It's been embraced by over a hundred nations today and the United States and Somalia have not accepted this quite yet. But the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child holds a number of really devilish propositions. One is the autonomy of the child.

That a child's quote-unquote best interests are at stake as defined you know by the state not by parents. And so a child becomes autonomous. That children are set up as separate independent creatures so that they can have quote freedom of thought, conscience, and religion. And so that a child becomes actually a creature of the state where parents are just caretakers they just feed them for a season but they are actually owned by the state. Well the whole doctrine of chastisement completely undermines this whole philosophy because it it makes a child dependent not independent.

I just think it's helpful for us to recognize how devilish these propositions are. When children do not want to be subservient to parents, you have the works of the devil. And when you have nations rising up to secure it, you have the double duty of the devil working in the world. And you know what do Christians do? Well first of all they ought to do their duty and second of all They ought to stand up and speak when it's appropriate.

But the discipline of children is the imitation of God because it proves that you are a son. The third issue here in this passage is in verse 9, the connection between fatherhood and the fatherhood of God. Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live. Isn't it interesting how the Lord takes these human functions like fatherhood and he compares them to greater things.

Sam just went through this matter just an hour and a half ago where you have something weighty like priesthood. And another thing that's weighty is put right beside it, Fatherhood. You find the same thing regarding the church. You have this weighty thing called the qualifications for eldership. And they must be men who know how to manage their households well.

And So you have fatherhood, one weighty thing, and church leadership, another very weighty thing. This is what God does. He puts these two weighty things together. Here, he has the correction of a father, a very weighty thing, and the correction of God the Father, another very weighty thing. And you can see, we could go on and on about this, it would be worthwhile to detail this out.

Think about this. You might come up with some other ways where God takes two weighty things. He takes fatherhood and he places another thing beside it. There are actually many things like that including priesthood, including church leadership, and here actually the punishment of fatherhood itself. God's fatherly punishment.

And so he says here that we had fathers who corrected us for a time and we paid them respect. And he's making this comparison. And the issue here before us in verse 9, in the middle of it, is the paying them of respect and also paying God respect for his own chastisements to receive them in a spirit of honor. And it's the will of God for us to honor those who chastise us. Our fathers earthly and our fathers heavenly.

This is why the Apostle says honor your father and mother repeating Moses in the law and he's identifying one piece of this picture of honor that should exist in a home. God's desire is to create cultures of honor. You know, you see the culture of honor in heaven. The Father loves the Son. The Son delights to do the will of the Father.

The Son honors the Father. The Spirit honors and glorifies the Father and the Son. This kingdom in heaven is designed to come down to earth in the creation of a culture of honor. One of the greatest duties of parents is to create a culture of honor in your family, to secure that culture. Every father knows that there are things working against a culture of honor in your family.

It never stops. There are always ten reasons to dishonor in a given week. And so fathers have to constantly wage war against the devil who's always trying to destroy honor, to arouse sullenness and rebellion and high-mindedness and pride. The devil is at work always in our families through these things, but God puts a father there in His family as the head to secure honor, to take that ground back when dishonor begins to creep over the family. And it's characteristic of His own family in heaven that the Son honors the Father and submits to Him.

You know, honor is something that God has designed to run through everything. We honor God. In marriage, the marriage bed is held in honor. The wife respects her husband. The husband loves his wife.

These are relationships of honor. They run through every single relationship in the family. And of course children are commanded to honor their father and their mother. We even are commanded to honor the king. So as we become the culture makers, the kingdom makers in our families, the cultures of honor are critical that we respect those who discipline us in that sense.

And we spoke earlier about how God is the direction maker of life. He plots out the plan and he sovereignly executes that plan all the way to the end. Fathers should also have that same kind of mentality that they're creating a future for their families. Well, they're also creating a culture of honor in their families. Fathers are designed to be the gatekeepers of every good thing in their family life.

And honor is at the core of it. Now, the question that always comes to mind when I think of the question of honor is this, is it well with you? Because the answer to that question often finds itself as something that tells about something even greater. If it's not well with you, then it's possible that it's traced to dishonor. Did you honor your father?

Do you honor your father today? If you're a son here today, is it going well with you? If it's not going well with you, You can almost conclude with certainty that it's because you've not honored your father and your mother. Because the Apostle says, honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment of promise that it might be well with you. You can look at men's lives and when things are not well, you can almost always trace it to honor.

Almost always to honor toward a father or perhaps honor to other authorities placed in that man's life. It might be the civil government. It might be his pastor. It might be his boss. But you can trace, you can trace it not going well to dishonor.

So God has established the family as the first place where that's learned. It's so tragic when you get church members who don't know how to honor authority and they don't know how to honor one another. Guess where it all happened? It happened in their home. Their fathers did not secure a culture of honor and so these were released into churches and they split churches and they hate the brethren and they dishonor their leaders and they don't listen to their elders and they basically say you have no jurisdiction in my life.

They say the church has no authority over me. These are wicked propositions. These things flow directly from the devilish plan to destroy every beautiful thing and so many beautiful things just come from honor. You know there's a sad legacy of children who cannot honor their their imperfect parents. You know it's just remarkable to me how it is that God has called His children to honor those who are lacking in their authority.

It's amazing that God has done it that way. Well it's actually fortunate that He's done it that way because every son who wishes his dad was the perfect authority is next in line to be the imperfect authority. So he ought to figure it out really early that he doesn't need a perfect father to execute discipline in his life. Well, discipline of children is the invitation of God. The fourth issue here is found in verse 10, the connection between chastening and holiness.

For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seen best of them. But he for our profit that we may be partakers in holiness. So chastisement is a means of holiness to drive us away from sin. You know There are so many ways that discipline and chastisement is critical in our homes to be exercised. There are so many ways that God uses this to bring holiness.

When your parents say, do not touch, when they issue specific commands, when you find children who are having temper tantrums in stores and in other public places like that, just recognize that chastening is a means for for the bringing about of holiness. You're in Walmart and your two-year-old asks you for gum or candy or a toy and you say no and your child says please please please and you say no. Of course these are always other people's children in Walmart who do this. The child's response escalates into a tantrum and the child starts pulling away from you and starts screaming and crying uncontrollably. What do you do?

I mean here's what we tell our parents to do in our church. First of all you call the manager and tell them there's a child at aisle 7 that's disturbing all the customers. No, that's not what we tell them. We do not say wait until you get home. We don't say wait until your father comes home and will deal with you.

You leave your shopping cart, you take the child out of the store and you take him in the car and you deal with that rebellion immediately. That's how we counsel our parents to deal with that. But obedience is honor externalized and here you have so many things that need to be confronted in family life or else you end up with a culture of terrible dishonor. Number five, verse 11, the connection between chastening and pain. Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present but painful nevertheless.

You know there are so many obstacles that stand in the way of obedience But pain, pain is one of those things that helps to remove those obstacles. And God has given us chastisement for that purpose. That there would be pain involved in it. In my experience in counseling parents, there are two issues that are at the heart of it. And there are others that would have to be discussed in my mind like exasperating your children and things like that.

But Parents often come to me and they say my child just will not obey. I just can't get to harmony with them. And most of the time it's because of one of two things. Either there's not consistency. In other words, rather than first-time obedience it's third time, fourth time, fifth time and it's inconsistent on any given day.

And children just don't, they don't know how to operate with that so they'll test the waters. So is it consistent? You know, do you chastise the very first time or do you give five different chances? My view is it should be done the first time and you'll take care of the problem. My pastor used to say, you know, there are two different ways to chop off a dog's tail.

You can just chop it off or you can just chop it off one inch at a time. And it's often like that in child raising because we are not consistent. The other is that the discipline is not hard enough. And you have these kind of microspankings that take place where there's really no pain. There should be pain, OK?

And I think the King James Bible gives us a tip off on perhaps how much pain. It might even cause a bruise, but it will not kill them. But there ought to be pain. My counsel to parents is sooner rather than later and harder rather than softer. And I think Scripture gives us direction to think in that way.

The sixth, the connection between chastening and fruit-bearing, verse 12 and 13. Afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore strengthen the hands which hang down and the feeble knees and make straight paths for your feet so that what is lame may not be dislocated but rather be healed. So there's this connection between chastening and fruit bearing. And the whole idea here is that there's blessing on the other end of the pain.

And God has placed parents in the way of fruit bearing in order to increase the bearing of fruit in children. So that hands would be strengthened and feeble knees would be strengthened and that there would be the peaceable fruit of righteousness and so that there would be strength in such a way so that the lame may not be dislocated. You know when you're strong you're much less vulnerable to getting hurt again and discipline does that. This is why God disciplines us. You might ask why has God brought a hardship or a trial in your life?

He's strengthening you. He's making you a man. He's helping you to become stronger than you ever could have been had you not been struck by the Lord. You think of the different calamities that have come into your life. What have they done to you?

Well if you're a Christian, they've been the very best thing that has ever happened to you in your life. And you thought they were so hard when you were going through them and then you look back and you say, I thank God. I thank God for his discipline. You know this young man that I had lunch with who had made restitution? He thanked God for the discipline.

He was so grateful for it. It made His heart so happy. But that's the way discipline is. And this is why we should receive it and recognize it as from the Lord. But there is a connection between chastening and fruit-bearing.

Okay I want to leave you with five thoughts quickly here. First of all, and I've been saying this over and over again but I'm going to say it as my first application point again just to drive it home. Discipline of sons is the imitation of God. The discipline of sons is the imitation of God. It's for us to imitate the perfect father Who disciplines His Son.

Secondly, the sign of sonship is discipline. You can tell a father by who he chastises. You can tell a son who knows he's loved when he's been chastised. Number three, discipline drives out sin. It constrains evil and it's so important in that way.

It's the only way you can have a happy home is to have proper discipline and have it be consistent. Number four. The means of discipline are different among the different jurisdictions. I think we have to think clearly about the use of the rod and the place of it because God has designed different kinds of chastisement tools for different jurisdictions. He uses the sword, he gives the sword to the civil government.

He doesn't give the sword to the church, rather he gives discipline, excommunication. He gives the keys and the judgments that flow from a proper use of those tools. And he hasn't given excommunication to the family, but he's given the rod. And he hasn't given the rod to the church and he hasn't given the rod to the state. So we have to think clearly about the proper use of the tools of chastisement and have an orderly way of understanding the world the way that God has designed it because he has created a kingdom that is like unto His own kingdom.

If you spare the rod, you despise the child. But if a church refuses to do church discipline, it hates its people. I don't know what kind of churches all of you come from, but just recognize if you're not doing church discipline you're just saying that you hate your people, that you do not care for their souls, and you're not willing to bring righteous judgment to them. But some of the greatest refreshments have come in disciplines that have been brought into the church. But if a father doesn't discipline his son, what he's saying to his son and to the watching world is that he hates his son.

You see how different God thinks than the rest of the world? How many people do you know out there who actually think this way? Certainly non-christians do not think this way at all. And then fifthly, the final application is this. Time is short.

It's just a few days that you have with your children. It's not long that you have. They pass so quickly. Start early, start today if you've not. The days are flying by.

You think you can wait until later, But that's an illusion. Anybody who has grown children knows that. And you can't turn the clock back. So be diligent. Do all you can to bring the chastisements of the Lord.

Well I'm praying that God would give us homes that are full of the righteous judgment of God, that that kingdom of heaven would be so reflected in our families, that we would be bringing many sons to glory and there are various ways that we do that. We preach the Word of God to them daily. We perform the work as a priest, as a compassionate and faithful and merciful high priest, having sympathy for the sins of those who are under our care. And we also discipline as we imitate our Father in heaven who disciplines. Would you pray with me?

Oh Lord that you would fill us up with the knowledge of your will that you would correct the ways that we have thought wrongly and lived wrongly. Oh God I pray that you would help all of us as men to do justly and love mercy and walk humbly and to bring about your chastisements to those who are under our care according to all the various laws and commands that you've given to us. According to all the various roles that you've given us, that we would harmonize them all and do them all simultaneously, not seeing any of them as contradictions to the other, that we would not see our compassion contradictory to our chastisement, but that we would see them as one and the same, fulfilling the same purpose. Oh Lord help us. For more messages, articles, and videos on the subject of conforming the church and the family to the word of God, and for more information about the National Center for Family Integrated Churches, where you can search our online network to find family integrated churches in your area, log on to our website ncfic.org.