In this message by Jason Dohm, we learn of the importance of cultivating a heart of obedience in our children. It is no good if our children are obedient outwardly if they are rebelling inside. We must impart to our children that sin proceeds from the heart and that simply outward submission will not suffice.

Well, I'm delighted I drew such wonderful topics. Last night I had the opportunity to talk about the power and the beauty of a father bringing the word of God to his children day after day, talking about the great stories of the faithfulness of God to his people and how that secures the transmission of the true gospel down through the generations. This morning I got to talk about this sacred reflection, which is marriage, and how beautiful that is, and how it's a glorious depiction of the gospel. And now we turn our eyes to the text that would instruct us about how we can bring the scriptures to bear in child training for the blessing of our children. Meanwhile, I get to talk about all these beautiful topics.

Meanwhile, Scott talks about church reformation. So you should know that our agreement is that when he's finally stoned to death, that I will then take up the prophet's mantle and continue on in the ministry. One of the things that we do want to say, we're very passionate about these things, and we do believe that the word of God is on the side of the things that we're instructing here today. But there is a should the Lord convict you that these things are in accord with scripture, there's a right thing to do with them, and there's a wrong thing to do with it. And It may be that you need to leave the church that you're in today, and it may be that you need to stay and be a blessing where you are today.

But for sure we know this, that God has established government in churches. He's put men in leadership in churches. And in no way would it be appropriate for any of us to go back to our respective churches with new convictions and assume that we've been placed in leadership in that church. The leadership in churches will be accountable before God for the direction that they lead. And none of us have a cart blank to go back to our churches with new convictions and blow things up.

So we just want to encourage people that If you have these convictions and you think you should engage with the leadership of your church, that it should be done in the right way. That it should be done personally, that it should be done directly, not subverting the leaders in your church, but engaging with them in a very patient way and in a very brotherly way, even though it will undoubtedly be in a passionate way as well. But there are right ways to do these things. And God has instituted government in his church. That should really be respected.

So now we turn our eyes to the necessity of reaching the heart. And this is about child training. And it's a great way to sum up the topics that I have been speaking about. Teaching the Bible to our children in our home, according to the pattern of Psalm 78, and making sure that we understand what God has established marriage for. We looked at Genesis 1 26 through 28, and we saw that God has given a man and a woman who He joins together.

It's the holy institution that He loves, right? That comes right out of Malachi. And He joins a man and woman together, and He gives them a twofold joint mission. And the first thing that they're joined together is to be fruitful and multiply and to fill the earth. And the second thing is to subdue the earth, to bring the area of our influence under the good government of God.

And then we saw last night the warning of John G. Paton, the great missionary to cannibals to the South Pacific. This was a man who was fearless. And the reason that he was fearless is that he was brought up on the knee of his father. His father instructed him faithfully every day, and his mother as well, in the great truths of the faith.

And so when he was old enough and received the call from God, when everyone around him was telling him, don't go. There was a man in his congregation that says, don't go. You'll be eaten by cannibals. And he looked the man in the eye in a very brotherly way. He said, one thing is sure.

We'll both be eaten by worms. And it matters little to me whether I'm eaten by worms after having first been eaten by cannibals or whether I live a long life in the service of the Lord, but I must be faithful." The reason he had that kind of passionate confidence in God, no matter what life would bring his way, is that his father had taught him the great truths of his faith, little by little, over the years. And it gave him the confidence in God that we would desire that our children would have. And so John Payton, when he was looking back, and he recognized that some of his friends had exactly the same training, but an opposite experience that they had experienced catechizing in their homes. But it had given them a distaste to religion, because their appearance were not sincere, and it had been task work in their home.

Whereas in John G. Paton's home, it wasn't task work at all. His father had a white hot love for the Lord, and it came through in the teaching so that it produced a very different result, and it made for a mighty, bold man for God. We know which one we want, don't we? We want to be those who would avoid hypocrisy and that our training of our children would come out of a personal love for God that we have, so that our children indeed would have confidence in God when they're no longer under our care and under our authority.

Reb Bradley says this. And by the way, I'd like to just commend to you two child training books. The first one is Shepherding a Child's Heart by Ted Tripp. And the second one is A Child Training Tips by Reb Bradley. Shepherding a Child's Heart is very widely known.

You probably have it on your bookshelf. But what I love about that book is that it starts with scripture, and then it builds the teaching from there, not the other way around. And the thing that I love so much about Child Training Tips by Red Bradley, which is much less widely distributed but still an incredibly helpful book, is the focus on the day in, day out practical, how do I work this out in my home? And they end up being wonderful companion books, one establishing the doctrine of how critical it is to reach the heart and what scripture, bringing scripture to bear, and the other talking in very practical terms about how we train our children in the training and the admonition of the Lord. Both of those are excellent books.

Red Bradley says this. Children respond best to alert, loving, consistent discipline, not to any don't mess with me kid parenting. We've all seen both of that in action. And this is what really John G. Paton was alluding to.

There were his friends who had had don't mess with me parenting, and catechizing had become a requirement that was task work in the home. Whereas he had experienced alert, loving, consistent discipline, and it produced in him the fruit of righteousness." So as always, the antidote for losing our bearings is to conform our thinking to the clear patterns of scripture, And so that we make a careful evaluation of whatever it is that the scripture says in this category, and then we conform our practices to what we see. As Ted Tripp says in the introduction to shepherding a child's heart, God's ways have not proved inadequate. They are simply untried. God's ways have not proved inadequate.

They never fail. They're simply untried, in many instances by the people of God, and this should rebuke us in our thinking. May it not be so of us. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, as we go to these texts of scripture that would tell us how we might engage the hearts of our children, first we want to acknowledge our frailty in all these things and our need for help from heaven.

We come to you as a needy people. We desire to leave pride at the door and throw ourselves upon your mercies for they're great, for they're new every morning. And to have you be our God, to have your ways be our ways, to have your thoughts be our thoughts. Conform us Lord into the image of your son the word Jesus Christ. We pray it in Jesus name, Amen.

Well our text for today we've run over briefly but now we're gonna spend a little more time in it. And it's Ephesians 6, 1 through 4, which reads, Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with you, and you may live long in the earth. And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord." Well, this is a passage like any other passage. It doesn't exist in a vacuum.

It's not on its own. It's not out there in the middle of the room with nothing surrounding it. It's in the middle of a passage. And in this case, the thought really starts in chapter 5, verse 18, where Paul says this. And do not be drunk with wine in which is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit.

And so then he starts in on this theme of being filled with the Spirit. And he talks about what it's like to be, what it means to be filled with the Spirit in worship. And he talks about what it means to be filled with the Spirit in the husband and wife relationship. And then in 6.1 through 4, he talks about what it means to be spirit-filled in the parent-child relationship. And because honor and obedience are evidence of your child being filled with the Spirit.

It's a fruit. The spirit has fruit. And that's why we have the fruits of the spirit. And honor and obedience are the fruit. It's the outworking of the spirit of God in the life of your children.

And it's a great way to take the spiritual temperature of your children. Did you hear that? Looking at the honor and obedience that you either have secured or been unable to secure in your home is a great way to take the spiritual temperature of the children and knowing if the spirit is producing fruit in the heart of that child. So we dare not attribute to phases or to boys being boys what really is an indicator of spiritual trouble in your house. Letting dishonor and disobedience run because you think it's just a phase, is really ignoring warning signs that the fruit of the Spirit isn't being produced as it should be in the hearts of our children.

And This, we see, is the first command with a promise, that it may be well with you and that you may live long on the earth. This is a promise of blessing. And we see that there's a lot riding on this. Honor and obedience is about the future welfare of our children. So it should be very, very important to us.

And there are two things that are required to receive this promise. What are those two things? Well, that's not in there, but I'll give them to you. One, it's obedience. And second, it's honor.

Obedience and honor. And they're related. They're very closely related. Obedience is the outworking of honor. You can see obedience.

Sometimes it's very difficult to see honor except in obedience. Obedience in many ways is a fruit of honor. And Paul makes this clear in 1 Timothy 3, verse 4. And again, this has to do with elder qualifications. So you can see we're cycling right back to the same old themes.

They're incredibly helpful to us. And Paul says this, talking about one who would be qualified to be an elder, he says, "...one who rules his own house well, having his children in submission with all reverence. For if a man does not know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the Church of God?" So I want to isolate on this phrase, having his children in submission with all reverence. Having his children in submission with all reverence. Having your children in submission refers to obedience.

They will obey you. They're in submission. With all reverence refers to honor. So Paul, we can bring these texts together very easily and see how honor relates to obedience. We should have our children in submission.

There should be an outward, visible obedience and submission, but it should be with all reverence. Haven't we all seen where children have been in submission without any reverence at all? And there's that great story about the child who's standing up in the backseat of the car, and his father tells him to sit down. He stands up in the backseat of his car. And finally, his father is fed up, and he says, sit down, don't get up again.

And he hears from the backseat, I'm sitting on the outside, but I'm standing on the inside. And it's very easy for our children to be like that. We can secure the sitting down in the back seat, but in their hearts, they're standing up. And that would not be in subjection with all reverence. Proverbs 23, 13, and 14 says this.

Do not withhold correction from a child. For if you beat him with a rod, he will not die. You shall beat him with a rod and deliver his soul from hell. So the rod is commended to us here in Proverbs 23. But behavior modification is not the point of the verse.

That we would secure an outward obedience is not. The writer of Proverbs here is telling this that heaven and hell are on the line. It's about delivering a soul from hell. This is the point of discipline, not that we would have something neat and tidy when we go out in public so that we're not a disgrace in the grocery store on aisle 12. This is about heaven and hell for our children.

So it's not about behavior modification techniques. It's about the eternal condition of the soul. And our objective goes way beyond external behavior. Psalm 78, we saw this last night. Read a portion of this to you again, verses 5 through 7.

For he established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers that they should make them known to their children that the generation to come might know them the children who would be born that they may arise and declare them to their children that they may set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments." Asaph talks about God's testimony and His law and how they relate to this multi-generational vision of passing down the Gospel from generation to generation. And we're to make these laws and commandments known to our children, which is the training and admonition of the Lord. And then he says in verse 7, that they may put their hope in God. Aha! Now we get to the heart of the matter and the point of the instruction that teaching the commandments and the laws of God to our children are not an end to themselves.

They have a different end and that's that our children would put their hope in God, that faith would be extended towards God. Paul said this was his message. In Acts 20 when he's addressing the elders of Ephesus on the beach of Miletus he says that he has given them the whole counsel of God and then he tells them the summary statement of what that counsel is and he says it is repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. And this should be the message of our parenting and this should be the foundation of our discipline of our children. That we are directing towards faith towards God, repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

So we come to this point, that the heart ultimately determines behavior. The heart ultimately determines behavior. The words of Proverbs 4, my son, give attention to my words. Incline your ear to my sayings. Do not let them depart from your eyes.

Keep them in the midst of your heart, for they are life to those who find them, and health to all their flesh. Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it springs the issues of life." The writer is urging his son to take his words and to keep them in the midst of his heart. And then he says this, for out of it spring the issues of life. For out of it spring the issues of life. What does He mean by that?

What are these issues of life? Well, Jesus teaches on this pretty expansively in the New Testament, so let's look at how Jesus addresses the protection of your heart because the issues of life come out of it. Jesus talks about what these issues of life are. And their actions, the issues of life that proceed from the heart, are actions. And the issues of life that proceed from the heart are thoughts.

And the issues of life that proceed from the heart are our words. Let's look at Mark chapter 7. Mark chapter 7. So he said to them, are you thus without understanding also? Do you not perceive that whatever enters a man from outside cannot defile him, because it does not enter his heart but his stomach, and is eliminated, thus purifying all foods." And he said, what comes out of a man, that defiles a man.

For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders. And then the subsequent verses just has a list of a lot of other really bad things. But this list of evil things comes out of the heart. And Jesus insists, Jesus insists that we understand that the laundry list of our transgressions that's given here in Mark 7 result not from the external pressures that we love to attribute things to. It's not from the pressing around us of external pressures that we don't like that the seeds were inside of us all along.

That it's our hearts. These things proceed from our hearts. We like to give the credit to our mom and dad who didn't raise us right, or we were too influenced by television, or our work situation isn't right. But the truth about our sin is that it proceeds from our heart. It's not our external circumstances at all.

Sometimes our external circumstances throws gas on the fire and causes flare-ups. But really, the seeds of our sin was inside us all along. Out of the heart of men proceed this, that, and the other thing. It's out of the heart that these things proceed. And we must impart this to our children.

The earlier they understand this, the sooner they'll stop blaming their little brother for their own sin. And we must put a stop to the blaming of the little brother or to not getting kool-aid on time or to whatever the excuse is. They must know that sin arises out of our own hearts. Jesus says this in Luke 6. It's a great companion passage.

For a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit, for every tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good. And an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart, his mouth speaks." It gets worse.

As if It wasn't bad enough that our sinful thoughts and our sinful actions arise from the heart. Jesus tells us here that so do our sinful and our careless words. They come out of our heart. It's not a slip of the tongue at all. It's probably the most honest that we ever are is when those evil things come out of our hearts.

And where is this taking us? Why is Jesus talking about this thing? It's taking us to the cross. It's taking us to the gospel. It's taking us to Jesus Christ.

Remember, the law is our tutor to bring us to Christ. Paul says this in Galatians 3.24, therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. And what do we find? That the law was only our tutor to bring us to Christ for salvation. And then there's no more conviction of sin in us, right?

We're done with sin then because we're saved and everything's glorious. We'll never sin again. So there's no need for conviction of sin. We have no need to be driven back to the cross again. Phooey.

Of course we do. The law is our tutor, and it does bring us to the Christ for sanctification, or for salvation, praise the Lord. But it also brings us back to the cross again and again in sanctification. It drives us there because it's a perfect standard that causes us to be conformed over time under the mighty hand of God into the image of Christ. Ted Tripp says this, and this is the heart of where we should be in child training, because it resonates right alongside scripture.

People frequently ask if I expected my children to become believers. I usually reply that the gospel is powerful and attractive. It uniquely meets the needs of fallen humanity. Therefore, I expected that God's word would be the power of God to salvation for my children. But that expectation was based on the power of the gospel and its suitability to human need, not on a correct formula for producing children who believe.

The central focus of parenting is the gospel. You need to direct not simply the behavior of your children but the attitudes of their hearts. You need to show them not just the what of their sin and failure but the why. Your children desperately need to understand not only the external what they did wrong, but also the internal why they did it. You must help them see that God works from the inside out.

Therefore, your parenting goal cannot simply be well-behaved children. Your children must also understand why they sin and how to recognize internal change. And so we're confronted with two different principles that can be difficult to distinguish at times, but we must distinguish. We must be discerning about this. The first principle is the principle of sin management.

The second principle is the principle of repentance. Sin management leads to hypocrisy. Repentance leads towards a soft heart towards God, affection for the things of God. We know this. We can put a lid on our children's sin for a while.

We can smush it down, make it not raise its ugly head, at least for a little while. And though we might not express it this way, we're saying, I know that sin's in there, but if you let it out, I will make you sorry. I parent like this sometimes. But the Bible has words to describe that and the words are hypocrisy and lip service. We're training little hypocrites and little ones who will say anything to get out of the hot water because all of our efforts is coming to just jam down the lid with as much pressure as we can apply to keep the behavior from coming out.

Meanwhile, the heart runs wild. Meanwhile, they're standing on the inside. And that approach actually has us actively training hypocrites. It encourages hypocrisy in our home, and it leaves the heart untouched. This is not repentance toward God.

This is not faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. This should not be the goal or the result of our child training. Jesus says this, words that you're very familiar with. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bonds and all uncleanness. Even so, you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. Whenever we find ourselves cleaning the outside of the cup, completely oblivious to the work that's required inside, we must force ourselves to reset, to reset, and retrench, and go back and address the heart. Don't these words condemn us?

Don't they convict us? For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. How many times have the actions of our child training addressed the outward problem but self-indulgence runs wild in the heart of our children and is unaddressed by us? So we're convinced by scripture that we must not only address the outwardness, but also address the heart. So how do we reach the heart?

Well, we just talked about the most important way, which is to relate sin to the need for Jesus, to let the cross be the tutor for our children that drives them to the cross, so that we lead our children into true repentance as much as we're able. Connect the sin of your children to the cross. If they don't understand that this is the fruit of what sinners do and that there's no hope outside of Jesus, then we'll be leaving them with a wrong impression. And they won't think rightly about the gospel. Deuteronomy 6 is also an incredibly helpful text to tell us how we get at the hearts of our children.

Let's examine this. Deuteronomy 6 4-7. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart.

You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. Deuteronomy 6 makes it abundantly clear that the starting point for our child training is our own hearts. The starting point for our child training is not our child. It's our own heart. That must be step one.

We're to love God with all our heart, soul, and strength. We are to put these words of His into our own heart. And then, and then we teach them diligently to our children. Then we talk of them when we sit in our house, when we walk by the way, when we lie down, when we rise up. But there's a prerequisite to this, and that's that we have love for God, genuine love for God in our own hearts so that we have something to impart to our children, and that we've put the words of God in our heart.

Now I'm not suggesting that we hold off on the teaching. I'm not saying because there's a prerequisite, stop what you're doing and wait until you think your act is completely together and then resume teaching your children. That's not at all. But I am suggesting that we give careful, ongoing attention to the condition of our hearts, that we give careful, ongoing attention to the condition of our own heart so that if we find something there, that we can repent and address it right away so that we're ready to instruct about hypocrisy. This is the difference between training warriors for God who will go share the gospel with cannibals, or raising children who have apathy towards God when they leave our home.

This is what the studies say, isn't it? That when evangelical children leave their home, that there's no love for God anymore, there's no love for His people, they leave the church and they never come back? Are we willing to have that be the output of our homes? That The thing that is most precious to us is despised by our children the minute they walk out the door. God forbid, may it never be.

It's the difference between training warriors for God. Children are like arrows in the hands of a warrior and sending those arrows over the hill with the gospel to wherever it might be to cannibals. Or having children who just can't wait to get out the door so that they can find something else to do other than what you do. How do we reach their hearts? By carefully tending to our own hearts.

We must cultivate a white hot love for the Lord in our own hearts. That we would love Him with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength, and that we would hide His words in our heart, that we would love them, that we would live by them, that we would honor them so that we have this to pass to our children. Hebrews 12 also has a lot of wisdom to bring to bear to the subject of how we might reach the hearts of our children. Hebrews 12 verses 3 through 11. For consider him who endured such hostility from sinners against himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.

You have not yet resisted the bloodshed striving against sin and you have 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 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 our 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." Now this passage of scripture is about giving the right lenses to our children so that they see life rightly. We all see life through lenses, don't we? We have this worldview that has us making sense of everything that we see. And this is about giving Bible lenses to our children. After the fall, the standard issue lenses don't view discipline the right way.

When you look through standard issue lenses, the ones that they come with, they view discipline all wrong. And Hebrews 12 helps us retrain and click in new lenses to our glasses so that they're seeing discipline the right way. With standard issue lenses, discipline is wearying and discouraging, according to Hebrews 12. It's not a sign of sonship, which the author of Hebrews says, discipline really is a sign of sonship. It's not wearying and discouraging.

With standard issue lenses, discipline is despised instead of being seen as for our own good. Disciplines for our own good, Hebrews 12, will take us and our children there, instead of the standard issue lenses which have us despising discipline. With the standard issue lenses, discipline is painful, not viewed as yielding the peaceable fruit of righteousness. Discipline is about yielding fruit, and it's peaceable fruit, and it's righteous fruit. But with the standard issue lenses, all we see is the pain of it.

So we must consistently work to give our children the right view of discipline. And how we discipline communicates a lot. Not just that we discipline, but how we discipline. Do we discipline because we're mad because our rules have been violated? Or do we discipline because we're trying to produce the peaceable fruit of righteousness in our children?

Let's resolve to be the most cheerful discipliners in our communities, that we're the happiest spankers on the block. Do you know what I mean by that? That we're not spanking because we're mad, but we're spanking because we're on the clock, because God has given us a duty, and we're here, And it's work time. And because we have an obligation, and we love our children, and we desire to see the peaceable fruit of righteousness established in them, that we're disciplining them for their own good, not because we've been violated by whatever external behavior. I gave this sermon, and instead of calling me Jason, now a man in our congregation calls me Chasen.

And so he calls me Chasen the Happy Spanker, which I guess is a nickname I should embrace. Because I really do. I want to be known by my children for that. They don't see me coming in anger to vent my frustration on them. That they know that dad has an obligation and a duty.

So I'm not mad at all. I'm here doing the work that God has given me to do, so they might have the peaceable fruit of righteousness established in their lives. So in summary, six points that these texts of scripture should so clearly give to us as application summary. Keep the framework in view. And the framework is what God is trying to do when he joins you together as one flesh And he gives you this joint dual mission.

He gives you this two-part mission. He joins you together for it. And this is the framework that we're seeing, not just the point that's one foot between our eyes, one foot in front of us, which is the latest transgression of our children. That we're seeing way beyond that to the fixed point on the horizon, which is the gospel being communicated faithfully into future generations. And that to get from here to there and get through the point that's in front of us, which is the latest transgression against us, to the point way out on the horizon, to get from here to there, we must address the heart of our children.

That's what this is about, is creating white hearts for God. This is discipleship. Keep the framework in view. Number two, understand the stakes. Understand the stakes.

If our mode is behavior modification, then hypocrisy and lip service await. And our children will not be able to wait till they can get out of our house and do whatever it is that they want. Understand the stakes. Blessing, the future well-being of our children is promised to us if we'll secure honor and obedience in our homes. So we'll go for that.

We'll go for the outward obedience, and we'll go for the inward addressing of the heart, which is honor. Number three, go for the heart. Psalm 78 gives the goal of our child discipline and instruction. That they may set their hope in God. That they may set their hope in God.

Did you know that discipline is more than spanking? Spanking is a small subset of discipline, but discipline really just means training and instruction and teaching. And sometimes that takes the form of spanking our children. And that should always be a tool in the tool chest. Our culture revolts at that thought.

Let God be true and every man a liar. The culture is wrong. The Bible is right. We should be spanking our children. It should always be a tool in the tool chest.

But that's not the only thing. Discipline is really about discipleship. It's about instruction. It's the full complement. So when we think about discipline, we should think more about, we should think more of just than corporal punishment.

Go for the heart. Psalm 78, that they may set their hope in God. Faith in God is what we're after. Addressing the heart so that the hearts of our children are turned towards God. Number four, keep discipline united with the gospel.

Keep discipline united with the Gospel. Sin shows the problem. Christ is the solution. Set the problem within the framework of the solution so that we're always calling our children back to Christ, to the cross, to repentance. Number five, begin with your own heart.

We saw this so clearly in Deuteronomy 6, that the starting point is our own heart, that we would love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and that we would commit His words to our hearts so that we have an abundance from which to draw upon to give to our children. And number six, give your children Bible lenses. They are programmed, they're pre-programmed because of the fall, to see discipline wrongly so that it's wearying to them, it's discouraging, it's despised, and it's painful. When really they should be viewing, if you'll give them the lenses of scripture, they'll view discipline as a sign of true sonship, as being for their own good, and as yielding the peaceable fruit of righteousness." Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we do desire to have the hearts of our children.

And we acknowledge before you how frequently it is that we take our eye off the fixed point on the horizon, which is giving you godly seed and the effective transmission of the gospel to future generations. And we're so focused on the transgression in front of us. But I pray, Lord, that you would broaden our view, broaden our view, help us to see out in time so that we might go for the heart, that our children would set their hope in you, that they would see that you're a great God, that you're faithful to your people. Even when your people are faithless, you're faithful. We pray that you would make our children's great blessings in the church and the future generation, that they would be the happiest, that they would be the most committed to the authority of your word, and that they would love you with all of their heart, soul, mind, and strength.

We do desire, Lord, that you would keep us from hypocrisy and lip service and help us to have a genuine faith in our own hearts so that our children may have a genuine faith in their hearts. We ask it in Jesus' name, amen.