In the sermon '9 Reasons for Child Discipline,' Scott Brown discusses the importance of being vigilant in raising children according to biblical principles. He emphasizes that families are foundational institutions created by God, alongside the church. Families should be distinct from worldly practices and demonstrate the gospel through love and obedience. Worship within the family is crucial, serving as preparation for worship in the church and eventually in heaven. Family life reveals the heart's true nature, providing a safe space for addressing issues. Parents are seen as figures of authority, demonstrating God's discipline and love. The sermon also highlights the importance of honor and obedience for children's success, the perpetuation of a multi-generational vision of faith, and the foundational role families play in supporting church teachings. Pastors and family leaders must work together to ensure reformation in families, which is essential for societal stability and spiritual growth.

Let's pray. Lord, we give you thanks for your sustaining hand, for how you have carried us along in every stage of our lives according to your own wisdom. Thank you, Lord, for giving us what we have needed at the moment we needed it. And I pray that you would give us things here now in this moment of our need particularly and that you would help us to walk in the wisdom of your ways. Amen.

Here we are, we're gonna give you four sessions. The first two are directed particularly to younger children and then we're going to shift gears a little bit and talk about older children and dealing with that. But I want to start this time out before the next session. I want to give you nine reasons why you must not be asleep at the wheel on this matter and and why we must reform our families according to scripture regarding the way that we raise our children. So I'm gonna give them to you in machine gun fashion.

I'm not going to belabor them very long, but I want us to document at the very beginning why this is so critical for all of us and for our culture. And really, I mean, you may be observing warning signs already. You're exasperated, maybe, and frustrated with your children. You're repeating instructions. You're making threats.

You're conditioning your children toward harshness, kind of like that dog you used to have that only responded when you yelled at him. You know, you're allowing excuses, you think the spanking is not working, you may have unity issues you know with your spouse, you're trying to figure out how to deal with rebellion and your own anger you know in response to the rebellion. So I pray that somehow we'll be able to give some biblical coordinates to deal with a lot of the issues that you're dealing with. Okay, nine reasons why you cannot go to sleep at the wheel. And the reason I say asleep at the wheel, parents usually go asleep at the wheel a few times while they're raising their kids.

I did. I didn't fall into a dead sleep, But I would get drowsy every once in a while and maybe you're in a state of drowsiness right now I hope maybe this would shake you out of it if you're there it happens, you know And it may happen again. Okay number one Why you must not go to sleep at the wheel. The family is the first institution created by God. There are two formational institutions that God created, the church and the family, and because of the importance of this institution and its formational power, you cannot go to sleep at the wheel.

Number two, the church is the place where families ought to be different. If your family is just like every other family out there in the world, beware, be fearful for your own soul and for the souls of your children. In Ephesians chapter 4 verse 17 he says, this I say therefore and testify in the Lord that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk in the futility of their mind. Walking the ways of the Gentiles is a disaster and it's a disaster for your family and if you reform your family according to scripture, guess what? You're going to look weird.

You are. You're going to be weird, you're gonna act weird, you're not going to walk like the rest of the Gentiles. And my encouragement is to you, let the Gentiles go off the cliff while you go in the ways of the Lord. In Ephesians 4, the apostle makes it very clear what happened to us in our state of gentileness before our conversion, that our understanding was darkened, We were alienated from the life of God that we were living in ignorance and blindness and lewdness and he says no put on the new man which which was created according to God in true righteousness and holiness. He says you've not learned Christ this way.

So learning Christ and putting it into practice in our families is very very critical. No longer walk according to the ways of the Gentiles. It means that you'll be a different kind of father. It means you'll be a different kind of mother. It means that you as children, you won't be like the other kids running around.

You're not walking the way of the Gentiles. You walk to a different drummer. And so you must not go to sleep at the wheel because God is demonstrating his glory through the church through a people that do not they do not walk like the Gentiles walk. Number three the third reason why you cannot go to sleep at the wheel on this is that the family is a place of worship. If you ever hope to recover the biblical mission for the family, and it's a beautiful mission, you must first restore its worship.

People often try to fix their families by making surface changes in important areas, but until they deal with with worship they'll find themselves like the men of Judah who healed the wounds of the people slightly. And a family was really designed to be a place of worship in order to prepare a generation for the next place of worship, and that is the Church of God, which prepares them for the next place of worship, which is heaven itself. And so the worship of God in a family has a grand design for many purposes but the family is a place of worship and so you cannot go to sleep at the wheel. Number four, The family is the place where the gospel is pictured. And the gospel is demonstrated in the love of a father toward his son.

It's the love of Jesus Christ for his church. Jesus Christ rescues his church. And in picturing of this, there's a father and a son, and there's the Holy Spirit involved in the rescue of the church. And that's why in a home, there's a father, and there's a mother, and there's a son, and there's a daughter. These are all pictures of the gospel.

The husband pictures the love of Jesus Christ toward his wife by caring for her, nourishing her. He washes her with the water of the word. The wife demonstrates what it's like to be an obedient glorious church by honoring her husband. Children are a picture of the gospel as they demonstrate that true children of God, they honor their father. They obey their father.

So every every part of family life is an illustration of the gospel. And really if you don't understand the gospel you really can't understand child raising. And this is just another reason why we cannot be asleep at the wheel. Because the purpose for the family is not the family. It's to declare the glory of the gospel and so its importance is elevated.

Number five, The family is the place where the matters of the heart are first revealed. Matters of the heart are revealed in family life. That's a good thing. You know, the matters of the heart are being revealed in your family life right now. God provides this sort of safe place for the selfishnesses and the lusts of the heart to be demonstrated so that they can be dealt with in this nuclear unit.

And Jesus said that out of the heart come evil thoughts. Solomon said keep your heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life. And it's so critical that the matters of the heart are revealed. Solomon said to his son, my son, give me your heart and let your eyes observe my ways. And so the family is the place where the heart is revealed and so it's so important that we do not fall asleep at the wheel for what is being revealed.

What is inside comes out. When you knock over a vase, the only thing that comes out is the stuff that's inside the vase. And that happens in family life. And God has given fathers and mothers to be sort of catch basins for sin, to identify and help their children by deleting them out of it. The sixth reason you cannot fall asleep at the wheel, the family is the theater where the authority and the discipline of God is demonstrated.

You have this marvelous mix of love and authority and submission in a family but fathers really stand in the place of God. Mothers stand in the place of God as well as they bring discipline to their children And it's so critical that fathers and mothers know God so that they know the love of God, the tenderness of God, they know the discipline of God. They understand what it means to fear God because when they do, then they can demonstrate a proper picture of God to their children and their children can see both how discipline and love how tenderness and authority are designed to work together because this is the way that God has designed his fatherly love for us. So you cannot go to sleep at the wheel because the family is a theater where the authority and discipline of God is demonstrated. Number eight, or number seven, the family is the place where the honor and obedience required for success is tested and established.

The Bible says that children that honor and obey their parents, it'll go well with them. If they don't, it won't. The greatest disaster that can happen to your children is not that they don't get into this college they want to get into, it's that they don't honor their father and their mother. It is the worst disaster that can befall a child. Because it won't go well.

They'll beat their head against the wall for the rest of their life if they don't get honor and obedience right when they're young. And if you're young right now you know I'm really glad we have a bunch of young ones here we have a bunch of young adults here we have a bunch of wannabe young adults, you know. Hey, now's the time. Get this down now and it'll save you a lot of bloody head wounds by banging yourself against the problems of this world. Honor your father and your mother.

Number eight, the family is the place where the generational vision is perpetuated. The Bible presents a picture of longevity of the passing on of faith. You, your son, and your grandson all the days of your life. This is the transgenerational or the multi-generational vision of family life that is so critical that we recover. We've kind of lost that.

We're such individuals. We think about us, our little careers, our little lives, but we're not thinking about how to invest in the future. And that's why it's a lot easier to get rich than to give your children riches from heaven. You know, the only thing that really matters that you pass on is the love of God that's in Christ Jesus and the eternal word of God. And what happens to fathers especially is they get so wrapped up in the activities of this world and they misprioritize and so their children don't get that as their primary deposit.

They might get a well-to-do family, but they don't get a well-to-do soul. And they don't have the resources of love and the Word of God to face the things that are coming at them in the future. This generational vision is so critical that it's passed on. And then number nine, pastors cannot neglect the foundational issues of a church and family because they are so formational to a church and they're foundational for everything that happens in society. Richard Baxter issues a really, really remarkable warning.

He says, you know, if pastors neglect this, he says, we'll unravel everything. That's what he says. Family life is so critical to the life of the church and life in the state. And so He says it like this, if we suffer to neglect this, and he's talking about holiness in the family, he's talking about a family set apart, a family that's worshipping, a family that's turned away from the world, and he's saying if we neglect this, we undo all. We undo all.

And then he talks about the work of a pastor and how it can be completely destroyed in the families. It can get cut off before it can get to the church. He says, what we are like to do ourselves to the reforming of a congregation, if all the work be cast on us alone, and masters of families will let fall that necessary duty of their own by which they are bound to help us if any good be begun by the ministry and any soul in a family a careless prayerless worldly family is like to stifle it or very much hinder it. Hey one of the great disappointments of every pastor I've ever known is when he preaches the word of God and he makes appeals and the families go and they totally ignore it and they go and pour worldliness in their family. You know, I'm telling you, it's the most disappointing thing that can happen to a pastor.

And Baxter is saying, hey, if the families don't support the preaching of holiness, they will undo it all. Because you can't do it all up unless somehow you have it supported in the family. He says, whereas if you could get the rulers of families to do their part and take up the work where you left it and help it, what abundance of good might be done by it. And so he says there will be no true reformation unless you have reformation in families where you have the preachers doing their job and delivering the Word of God and the families take it from there. They take it seriously, they take it home, they take it throughout the week.

So this is not a time to go to sleep at the wheel. So those are nine reasons why we can't go to sleep at the wheel. And so with that, let's move on to the next session.