The sermon focuses on child discipline, exploring the biblical foundation for raising children and the importance of aligning with Scripture. The speaker emphasizes the English Puritans' view that Jesus' discipleship is a model for fatherhood. The sermon outlines ten gifts parents can give their children, such as understanding specific biblical texts like Genesis 3:15, Genesis 18:19, Malachi 4:5-6, Proverbs, and Ephesians 6:1-4. These texts highlight the spiritual and moral responsibilities of parenting, emphasizing the warlike nature of raising children, the necessity of commanding children for future generations, and the importance of honoring parents as a reflection of the Gospel. The sermon warns against popular child-raising methods that diverge from biblical principles and stresses the need for parents to be unified, attentive, and firm in their discipline. The speaker calls for a culture of honor within the family, where obedience is promptly addressed, and the use of the rod is considered a critical tool for driving out foolishness from a child's heart. The sermon concludes with a call for parents to rely on the Holy Spirit for guidance in raising children and to ensure that the home is a testament to God's authority and love.

So we all heard about I Will Make You Fishers of Men this morning. And I forgot to tell a story in my sermon that I wanted to tell about that. You know, the disciples were ordinary men, they were working men, they were... You know, they weren't sophisticated men. They had a dangerous, dirty job that kind of diminished their image, their accent did.

And so I was gonna tell this story that I forgot to tell about how in the days of the judges, Jephthah was defending himself against the Ephraimites, because the Ephraimites were attacking them. And so Jephthah takes the fords of the Jordan River and he secures the Fords. And his troops are there and if any of the Ephraimites, were trying to sneak around, sneak through, they would say, are you an Ephraimite? And if they said no, then they would say, say shibboleth. Because Ephraimites can't say that.

They can't say their SH sound. They'd say sibboleth, right, like that, because they can't say shibboleth. You know, it's like asking Jorge to say yellow. It just doesn't work. Jello.

No, Jorge. It's yellow, not jello. So, you know, the text this morning actually was used by the English Puritans as a child-raising text. They believed that Jesus' pattern of making disciples was the pattern that every father should use. And I actually have an old book in my library where Thomas Goodwin writing about this subject, he takes all of the aspects of Jesus' discipleship And he says this is how fathers are supposed to operate This is how fathers are supposed to walk Beside their children in the same way that Jesus said follow me and I will make you know the Lord says I will make I'll show You I'll show you how to be a fisher of men And that's what that's what the English Puritans believed was a pattern for fatherhood.

So they sort of dissected Jesus' life and his relationship with his disciples and the way that he taught them, the locations that he taught them, all that kind of stuff to extrapolate how a father should also teach his children because this is how Jesus taught his children. So anyway, there you have it. Okay, so we're gonna we're going to talk about child discipline and I want to give you ten good gifts that you can give to your children. And what we're trying to do here is trying to recalibrate our congregations on this really critical matter of child raising. And what we really desire is that There's a unified vision in the church on these things, that the Word of God is what we're focused in on, that we're not coming at this thing as, well, here's how I feel, or here's how I feel.

But rather, unified around the Word of God. That's really how husbands and wives are unified. That's how churches are unified. And that's the basic principle. Now, I'm praying for three things to happen as a result of our time here.

I'd like to pray before I tell you about them. Oh Lord, You have granted children, and you have given us responsibility. You've given us such a treasure. And here, being Mother's Day with so many mothers here, and oh Lord, even my own daughter, her first Mother's Day, getting ready to have a child. I pray that you would help us all to understand your Word better, that you would protect us from misunderstanding what your Word has said.

In Jesus' name, Amen. Okay, so there are three things I'm praying for. One, when you're speaking, you should say what you're trying to do. But honestly, the first thing I want to do is I want to terrify you. I pray that there's a holy terror, in a sense, for the role that God has given you.

And secondly, to guide that you have Scripture before your eyes. Scripture is so wonderful because it exposes our flaws. And then thirdly, to comfort. To give Biblical answers. There's no greater comfort than to know, thus saith the Lord.

So those are the three things I really pray. That you'll be terrified, You'll be guided by the Word, and that you'll also be comforted by it as well. We have to ask, how important is this really? I mean, how important is the family? And it's important because of the design of the family.

The family has really been designed to bring glory to God and to display the Gospel in all of its relationships. And So really when we think about child raising, the Gospel has to be in the forefront of our minds. And my prayer really is that we have one place that we go to understand how all of that is worked out. Honestly, if you don't understand the Gospel, I don't know how you understand child raising. You cannot understand the relationship of a father and a son.

You can't understand the relationship of a wife to her husband. And all of these things are images of the Gospel. No understanding of the Gospel? You'll be clueless about training your children. And that's why the most important thing people need is to believe in the Gospel and to repent so that they can begin to understand the way that God wired the world, the way that He structured everything, and particularly for family life.

The problem is people today want a quick fix. They want to have a few rules. They want to get a hot book that will just change everything for them. And there is such a longing for that that books, I have dozens of these books. I actually have bought very crummy books on child raising because of the titles and the things that they're saying.

They're really a picture of the foolishness of man. And many of them are in our Christian bookstores. But they don't go here first. They go to some technique. They go to a principle first, rather than what's really written in Scripture.

And so we have to keep our wits about us in this whole matter. Now you might be observing different warning signs in your family right now. My guess is you are. As a father, I was regularly seeing warning signs in my family and I was having to take action against those different things that were going on. You get exasperated and frustrated with your children.

That's a warning sign of something else that needs to be addressed. You may be repeating instructions over and over and making threats because of it you you might you might you know have figured out that you've actually you know conditioned your children to harshness because you get frustrated you speak harshly and now you have this child that has been brought up in the training and the admonition of harshness. And so that's what's happening. You might find yourself bribing your children. You might think, Hey, this is not working for me.

Spanking is not working. Or it might be a systemic issue. You might have a disagreement with your spouse about how to do this, about what you're supposed to do. And disunity in the marital relationship in this matter is often the cause of other pernicious problems in child raising. And husbands and wives have to understand that their unity is really the beginning of wisdom for their child raising.

If you're disconnected, if you're doing different things, if you have a different approach, I would just suggest that you're in a danger zone and you need to get unified as a husband and wife. There are so many issues that have to be considered. What does it mean to have your children's hearts? How do I deal with rebellion? How do I identify with rebellion?

What about children that are different? Some children are naturally sweet. They're almost like born with a smile on their faces. Others seem to have been born with the disposition of a snake or something like that. And how do you deal with all this?

What popular methods should you steer away from? What about the use of threat? Should I count to three? What do I do with tantrums? What about table manners?

What do I do when my children just don't get it regarding the basic rules of the family, what's the role of role playing and rehearsing? How do you keep your children quiet in a meeting like this? I mean, everybody has these problems that has children. And so how do you grapple with those? Well, I want to give you, first of all, the first gift of these 10 gifts is I want to give you five texts.

It's really important that we focus our discussion there. But I want to give you five texts that are really critical for understanding raising your children. The first text is Genesis 3.15. And it's there you find that there's a war going on against your seed. And you have to understand that the raising of children is war.

And it's a war that has enormous consequences. And parents have to fit themselves for battle for that war. The second text is Genesis 18-19. And in Genesis 18-19 we learn about the purpose of Abraham's life and the purpose of fatherhood. Where God says, I have called him in order that he might command his children.

That actually forms the purpose of his life. Why? So that all the nations might be blessed. All the families of the earth would be blessed. It's a really critical child raising text.

If a father does not understand that the purpose of his life is to command his children for future generations, he'll just be operating according to whatever priorities are working on them, rather than having long-range, godly priorities. The next text, the third text, is Malachi 4, 5, and 6. And in this text, we learn that a mark of the Gospel, a sign of the Gospel, is that when children's hearts turn toward their parents, and that parents' hearts turn toward their children, that the kind of family life that we're talking about really is a fruit of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which means that we ought to be laboring in prayer for our children. It's easy to just let things go on and not be in the prayer closet, on your knees, crying out to God for your children very specifically, and then giving them the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which is manifested and spoken of, first of all, by your unity as husband and wife. That message is communicated in a lot of different ways in a home.

A fourth text is the importance of child discipline. And I'm just going to call this text the whole book of Proverbs. Proverbs is the premier child-raising text. It's a long testimony, and you need to know every single part of it, every part of it. My encouragement is read it your whole life long.

By the way, if you read it every day for years, if you read a chapter a day for years, You might even get as old as I am and open it up and read it again and say, I need that. I don't think you ever outgrow it. And so the book of, the entire testimony of Proverbs is a critical child raising text. The fifth child raising text is Ephesians 6, 1 through 4, where we find the necessity of securing honor and obedience in children. And the principle of honor between parents and children really, you can sum it all up by the Gospel of Christ is displayed, the authority of God is demonstrated through honor and obedience, and that a generational vision is perpetuated by what we find in Ephesians 6, 1-4.

So those are five texts that you really have to understand. That's the first gift. The first good gift that I want to give you today are just these five texts because They're very important to understand. Jesus said if a son asks for bread from his father, would you give him a stone? No.

God has given us bread. He's given us an egg instead of a scorpion. We have a responsibility to give good gifts to our children. Here's the challenge I want to offer you. Make sure you read those five texts with your children over and over again so that they're in their hearts.

Memorize them. I don't know how you're going to memorize the whole book of Proverbs, but memorize lots of chunks of it because it'll be very helpful. So that's the first gift, five texts. Here's the second gift, A revelation of God. A revelation of God.

The purpose of a home is to glorify God. Everything should point to God when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise up. You know, Isaiah says, bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth, everyone whom I have created for my glory. Everything is created for the glory of God. And if you give your children a good gift, Make sure that one of those gifts is a revelation of God.

That your home is full of the knowledge of God. That daily you're opening up Scripture and showing them who God is. A third gift, a third good gift is confession of sin. We're instructed, we're commanded, confess your sins to one another. A home in which there's a confession of sin in its culture, in its DNA, is a home that is destroying self-righteousness.

It's actually protecting children from having wrong thoughts about God and performance. It identifies poisons that are in the heart and in the life. It empties a family of sin. It makes a family happy. It centers the family around the cross.

It does so much. So fathers and mothers have to confess their sins to one another. That's where it begins. And then they have to set a pattern of the confession of genuine sin. Yes, it's true.

I know many of us have had to confess our wrongdoing to our children. Often in times of discipline, often in the ways that we speak to them, we have to confess our sins. And children also need to learn how to confess their sins as well. Confession of sin is a wonderful gift that a family needs. Here's a fourth gift.

Expressions of heartfelt affection toward your children. You know we read in scripture as a father pities his children so those who fear him. We read you know be tender-hearted forgiving one another. I mean I'm just going to give you an observation. In families that have trouble, often it's because the family is all law and no love.

There's not much tenderness. There might be actually a lot of teaching going on, but there's not a lot of affection going on. And I understand that God is sovereign over the hearts of children, but God has also given us commands for tenderness in our families. And if you read about what the Bible says about fatherhood, if you look at the biblical doctrine of the fatherhood of God, you'll really understand what tenderness is all about. And often families lack it.

I don't know if your family lacks it, but if it does, just let this be an opportunity. Let it be a warning that you're in a danger zone. Here's a fifth good gift. A vision of genuine conversion. Repent and believe in the gospel.

Bring forth deeds and keeping to your repentance. You know there's there's often a wrong vision of conversion in a house. Pray a prayer and be a nice person. That's actually a wicked vision of conversion. And we have to understand that God is calling us to repentance and then fruit bearing.

A sixth good gift is the practice of authentic believer's baptism. When we baptize, we have to understand that we should be very careful. What about rebaptism? Many children wake up in their teen years and they realize that they were never really converted when they were baptized. You know, it's easy for Baptists to rail against the Pato Baptists for baptizing their children.

But I think if you did a statistical analysis, you might find a lot of believers baptized children actually weren't believers. And so they end up getting re-baptized someday because they recognize, you know what, I wasn't really a believer. It happens all the time. It happens in our church. It has happened in our church.

And, you know, some of you are the parents of, you know, who experienced that. You, with all of your, the sincerity of your heart, did what you thought was right, you heard what your children said, but they were actually just saying words. And that happens. The practice of authentic believers baptism is a really important child raising principle. Number six, the sixth gift you can give to your children is unity in the home.

Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her. It's a father's responsibility to make sure that he's unified with his wife. If he's not, then they'll be fracturing in a number of different areas in family life. I can't tell you how often I talk to parents who are talking about a problem with their children and it has its root cause in a husband and wife that aren't loving each other like they ought to. They haven't laid down the vision together.

They haven't said, this is who we are, this is what we're doing, we're saying the same thing. They argue with one another in front of the children rather than presenting a unified vision to those children. They're not unified, but give your children a gift of unity. If you don't agree then you need to go get yourself agreed on the matter because the consequences are enormous. A seventh gift you can give is protection from worldliness.

Do not love the world. The dangers of creating love for the world in your children are significant. Here's what every parent needs to understand. What you sow, you will reap. God is not mocked.

If you still love the darkness, you like this little piece of the darkness and that piece of the darkness, guess what you're exposing your children to? Oh, you like that song, but it has darkness in it. You like that film, but it has darkness in it. You need to understand what God has commanded us. Do not love the world.

God saves us. We love so much of the world. And then He identifies one thing at a time, and he never stops showing us the things that we love that are worldly. But we ought to be very careful to understand that if we love the world, we are actually defiling our children. So, number nine, love for the church.

Sowing love for the church. Does your life revolve around the things of God or the things of this world? Is your schedule governed primarily by other things rather than the rhythms of church life, you know, we argue quite passionately for this, that church life should be the next biggest thing in your life, honestly. And do you love the Church of Jesus Christ? Let me just say, as pastors here, I mean, we are so delighted for the expressions of love for the church that are in both of these churches.

It's very helpful, it's very encouraging, and we see it, and it's just such a blessing. So I thank you for that. But love for the church is a really major gift. So I've raced through the first nine, but I'm trying to save all my guns for the last one and that's discipline okay so we're going to just camp out on discipline from now on to the end but there are lots of gifts that you need to give your children and But this one of discipline is really, really important. And I'm going to walk you through a number of places, particularly in Proverbs, to talk about this whole matter.

First of all, my first heading is the importance of obedience. If you turn to Proverbs chapter 6, 20-24, here's what you'll read. My son, keep your father's command and do not forsake the law of your mother. Bind them continually upon your heart. Tie them around your neck.

When you roam, they will lead you. When you sleep, they will keep you. When you awake, they will speak to you. For the commandment is a lamp and the law is a light. Reproofs of instruction are the way of life, to keep you from the evil woman, from the flattering tongue of a seductress." I mean, what the writer of Proverbs is saying, keep your Father's command.

Because when you roam, when you sleep, when you're awake, whatever you're doing, they inform you. A father's command is of enormous importance. It actually is the way of life. Fathers, do you understand that? God has said that your command is the way of life.

That's how serious This whole matter of child discipline is. And it will either be the way of life or the way of death for them. Here's another text. It's the way of gladness in a home, Proverbs 10.1. A wise son makes his father glad, but a foolish son is a grief of his mother.

So you have the application of wisdom and obedience and honor and either brings gladness or grief into family life. You want to be a grief to your mother? You want to be a grief to your father? Well just be dishonorable and disobedient. Just have to have them ask you two or three times to do something or you sneer at them or you roll your eyes at them.

You are a grief to your mother children. Do you understand that? The importance of obedience is really heightened here in the book of Proverbs. It also causes shame if you neglect it. If you neglect Discipline, it causes shame.

Proverbs 19, 26. He who mistreats his father and chases away his mother is a son who causes shame and brings reproach. So you can become a reproach to your parents by the way that you respond to discipline. If you're a son or a daughter, you can be the reason why your father is qualified or disqualified from leading at a church. It's that important.

It'll take your father off the table of leadership. It doesn't matter how gifted he is, it doesn't matter how good he is. Child disobedience is very significant in the life of a father. Failure and discipline destroys the child. I said at the beginning I want to terrify you.

I want to terrify you with Proverbs 20.20. Whoever curses his father or his mother, his lamp will be put out into deep darkness. His lamp will be put out into deep darkness. You know, you children who are here and can hear the sound of my voice, let me so appeal to you that this says that disobedience to your parents will cause a darkness to fall upon your life. And who knows where it possibly could lead.

Proverbs 30, 17 says, "...the eye that mocks his father and scorns obedience to his mother, the ravens of the valley will pluck it out and the young eagles will eat it. So what Solomon is saying is if you want to mock your father. Have you ever mocked your father? Have you ever turned around and walked and wiggled your rear end, acting like you were such a smart person? Well, here this says, you do that kind of thing, The ravens are going to pick out your eyeballs.

So that's not too great, is it? These are terrifying verses. Proverbs 28, 4 says, whoever robs his father or his mother and says, it's no transgression, is the companion of a destroyer. In other words, this is a child who says, who you know, who's confronted by his father and says I'm not doing anything wrong, you're a destroyer. So this proverb says if you allow that you become, you're aiding and abetting the destruction of your children.

Proverbs 22 says, listen to your father who begot you and do not despise your mother when she was old. Because failure to respond properly will destroy you. And failure to secure the response as a parent will ensure the destruction of your children. God gives responsibility to two parties here. The thing that we also learn is that discipline is fruitful.

That it really matters what you do. One of the most interesting things about the child raising commands is that they almost all breathe out this one principle, do this and this is the result. Now, I mean, we naturally want to resist a formulaic approach to life that says if this, then that. But I'll just have to tell you, the child raising commands are almost all that way. Train up a child in the way he should go, then when he's old he won't depart from it.

That's sort of the character of them. And we all ought to keep the backdrop of the sovereignty of God in that mix. But let's just be honest for a second. It really matters what you do. And if you depart and go your own way, you should be terrified at the results that may come upon your children.

Proverbs 19, 18 says, Chasing your son while there is hope, and do not set your heart on his destruction. Now, the King James says, Chasing your son while there is hope, and do not spare His crying. And let not thy soul spare His crying." What he's saying is there's a time of hope. Do it while there's a time of hope. In one way, there's always some hope.

But there's a tender season. If you let it go by, then you've lost something. If you've lost something, then you've got to go try to get it back. And often it's harder. I don't know how many parents I've spoken to who did not discipline their children when they were small, And now they've got particularly boys who are 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, and now they realize they need to reuse the rod on them.

And they realize that their mothers are not even strong enough to discipline them anymore because they don't feel it. And they're in a pickle. They're going to have to figure out what to do. Do they take the rod to the back? I know men who've done that.

I know a number of people who've been spanked at age 16, 17 years old. Some of them are actually people that you would recognize their names. So when I said that the other day, my daughter Claudia thought I was talking about her, but it wasn't. So Discipline while there's hope. That day may elude you.

So it's time to power up if you're neglecting it. Proverbs 19, 17 says, Correct your son and He will give you rest. Yes, He will give delight to your soul. Did you hear that? Correct your son, and He will give you rest.

I mean, do you believe that? So it should heighten awareness and commitment to correction. It's important that you correct, because there's a result. He will give you rest. And I mean, you think about that for yourself.

It would be really nice to get some rest around here. I don't know how many wives I know who are harried and completely unrested because their children do not obey them. And it's because their fathers are not demanding that they obey them. It's men who do not protect their wives. I don't know if you're one of those men.

If your children are popping off to your wife, you are a disobedient father. And you need to start protecting that woman that you got married to. Because correct your son and he will give you rest. If he's not giving you rest, you're not correcting him enough. Either you're not correcting him right or not hard enough or not fast enough or not consistent enough.

It's one of those things. My experience is, you know, when there's problems of disobedience, it almost always boils down to either husband or wife aren't unified. They're not doing it hard enough, and they're not demanding first time obedience. It's just kind of obedience whenever. Sometimes it's first time, sometimes it's the tenth time, whatever.

However they might feel. And it comes back down to a lazy parent. Are you a lazy parent? Do you care so much about your own schedule that you're not willing to engage in the battle? That often happens.

And parents often, out of their laziness, will not discipline their children and get off the chair and go do business with the devil who has invaded their house. Proverbs 19.20 says, Strike the scoffer and the simple will become wary. Rebuke one who has understanding, and he will discern knowledge. You see that? Strike the scoffer, and He'll wise up.

It's that same old pattern that you see in Proverbs. Rebuke the one who has understanding and He'll discern knowledge. There's a cause and effect. Verse 26 in chapter 19 says, He who mistreats his father and chases away his mother is a son who causes shame and brings reproach. Verse 27 says, cease listening to instruction, my son, and you will stray from the words of knowledge.

All this to say that discipline matters. It matters whether you do it or whether you don't do it. Proverbs 13, 1 says, A wise son heeds his father's instruction, but a scoffer does not listen to rebuke. And then one of the most controversial passages of scripture is Proverbs 20-30 that says, blows that hurt, cleans away evil, as do stripes the inner depths of the heart. The King James version translates as the blueness of the wound.

The blueness of the wound. And the idea here is that just like it says, blows that hurt cleanse away evil. If the blows don't hurt enough, the evil won't be cleansed. I understand that all children aren't made exactly the same. Some children actually need more stern discipline than others.

Some respond quickly at even a word, and they don't need the rod quite as much, or maybe hardly ever. But then there are those who they need blows. They actually need blows. And you might think, well, what happens if Child Protective Services comes around? I mean, my perspective is this.

It's better to obey God than man. Trust God and be wise. Be wary what you do in public and things like that. It's interesting, Over at Hope, the owner of the building has installed dozens of cameras. Everything that happens is being filmed by the owner of the building.

So we're instructing our people, be careful where you discipline your children. You have to be wise about that. Be flagrantly unwise about it would be, in our judgment, a mistake. So you have to be careful how you do that. But let's be really clear about what Proverbs 20-30 says.

Blows that hurt cleanse away evil. Here's a question I want to ask you mothers and your fathers. Are you one of those families that has disobedient children because the blows don't hurt enough. Are you one of those? I see them all the time.

They're all over the place. Another category, another heading is use the rod. Use the rod. Proverbs 29.15 says, the rod and rebuke gives wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother. Again, the rod and rebuke, that's two things, Rod and rebuke gives wisdom.

So it's a good thing. It actually brings wisdom out in a child. It doesn't suppress them. It doesn't damage their emotions. It doesn't make them angry, mean people.

It actually gives them wisdom. How opposite is that to the world? Have you ever done any kind of study on what people say about the use of the rod? And most of what's out there, Google it, is totally opposite to this. They say use the rod, you destroy your child.

The Bible says neglect the rod and you destroy your child. Who do you want to believe? There are a lot of counselors out there. The people in Isaiah's day were listening to mutters and sorcerers and all kinds of other people. Do you want to listen to those people or not?

Listen to the law of God. Proverbs 13, 24 says, He who spares his rod... What? He who spares the rod... What?

Hates. Almost everyone says spoils the child. No, not true. Hates the child. Spare the rod, hate the child.

That's what the Bible says. But he who loves him disciplines him promptly. Promptly. So right away. No quarter.

Any dishonor, any disobedience, any dishonesty needs to be met with quick judgment. And keep a short fuse, a really short fuse. The longer the fuse, the wicker the child and the more out of control. The longer the fuse, the tireder the mother. I don't know, I'm in my almost late 50s now.

I've been watching this for a long time. I just haven't seen anything else that confirms that. He who spares his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him promptly. Often, there's a lack of love that's at the root of this problem. There's too much love for self, too much love for one's own comfort, too much love for one's own philosophy.

And it's hatred of God, and then finally working out in hatred of a child. You know, I think these are terrifying things to read. My prayer is that there would be a sufficient holy terror as a result of reading these verses. Proverbs 22.15 says, Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction will drive it far from him. Again, the same pattern.

Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod drives it from him. Proverbs 23, 13, and 14 says, Do not withhold correction from a child, for if you beat him with the rod, he will not die. You shall beat him with the rod and deliver his soul from hell. My son, if your heart is wise, my heart will rejoice indeed." I just want to say the same thing. My heart will rejoice if in this church there are children that are delivered from hell by discipline.

My heart will rejoice if you take these things out, but I think there would be much sadness if there's a blind eye or a deaf ear to the things that are being said here from the book of Proverbs. Now you might say you know well I have a soft-hearted nature or at least that's what you call it. A soft-hearted nature. And you may say, I'm not the strong type. And in saying that, you're really saying you don't mind giving your children to the devil.

And maybe you won't mind it when you're in your old age, and you're the one that's offering up prayers of desperation for your children, who are wayward because you're not the strong type. People with a soft-hearted nature who are not kind of the strong type, they use this as an excuse to disobey. But here's one thing I want you to really understand. If you're one of those people, you have a very, very specific future that's awaiting you. That's what this text says.

And you don't want to go there. You don't want to have that kind of future. I don't know how many times I've sat with parents crying for their children. But the real issue was they didn't discipline their children. They didn't discipline them the first time, and they didn't discipline them hard enough and they weren't unified as a couple.

And if you have any one of those three going in your family, let me just urge you to repent and turn because There's a future waiting for you out there. And Scripture is telling you what it looks like. It's better to use the rod harder than softer, and it's better to be quicker rather than slower. There was a moment where Jesus is weeping over Jerusalem, and he says, Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem killing the prophets. Do you remember what he said?

He said, if you only had known the time of your visitation Now you're being visited here now. I know many of you have been visited many times on these issues But you're being visited by the Lord right now Please Please don't be those kind of people to whom Jesus says if you had only known the time of your visitation. I want to give you the tenth, and this tenth good gift is a work of the Spirit in child raising, and the text is Ephesians 6, 1-4. Ephesians 6, 1-4. I'm sorry, it's the eleventh.

Children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. Honor your father and your mother, which is the first command with a promise, that it may be well with you and that you may live long on the earth. And you fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath but bring them up in the training and the admonition of the Lord. Now, the context of Ephesians 6 reveals one of the most important secrets of home life, and that is that home life is meant to be governed by by the Spirit of God. The whole context of Ephesians 4 or 6 and what comes before it is really a picture of what it means to be filled with the Spirit.

What does it mean when a husband is filled with the Spirit? He loves his wife like Christ loved the church. What does it look like when a woman is filled with the Holy Spirit of God? She's submissive to her husband. She obeys Him and she respects Him.

What does it look like when a worker is filled with the Spirit of Almighty God? There are certain characteristics. And here, what does it look like when the Spirit of God is ruling and reigning in a home? This is what it looks like in a home. And what you find here is a perfect balance of authority and tenderness.

Children obey your parents and the Lord, for this is right, honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment of promise. That's the authority part of it. That what is sitting on the table before you is the success or the failure of your children. And that's the authority part of it. Authority has to be established in a home.

And whenever there's any kind of dishonor, it needs to be met with discipline So that children understand how critical it is. You're saving them from enormous failure later on. Often it's true, men who have problems in their work life, or with relationships, or with churches, it often goes right back to this. They never learn how to honor their father. And so they can't honor the king, they can't honor their boss, and they can't honor their friend, and they can't honor the elder and their nomads because of it.

It doesn't go well with them. You might ask, is it going well with you? Are some of the things not going well with you right now related to this issue of authority? You never learned how to honor authority? That happens actually quite regularly.

This thing was meant to be fixed in childhood so that for the rest of life, there's honor and the kind of relationships that God desires to bring in the world in all of those various authority kind of relationships. What you find here is you have both the authority part and the tenor part. Fathers do not exasperate your children. Fathers can exasperate their children in lots of ways. One of the key ways fathers exasperate their children is by not keeping their word.

And that begins with not disciplining when they said they were going to be disciplined. Or not keeping their promises. Or not walking with them. Not teaching them to be fishers of men. Just sending them out there to be on their own.

There are many, many ways. But this passage deals with the two extremes of it. So hey, the training of children is an arduous task. It takes everything that you have, which is why mothers need to be in the home, because there's a lot to do, there's a lot to watch, and daycare workers and school teachers are not enough. They don't care enough and they're not guided by the same principles that you need to be guided by.

So I want to talk just finally about the necessity for the philosophy of first-time obedience in a home. Proverbs 30, 11 says, There's a generation that curses its father and does not bless its mother. There's a generation that's pure in its own eyes and yet not washed from filthiness. Oh, how lofty are their eyes, their teeth are like swords." And so the first duty of a parent is to establish a culture of honor in the home. Honor your father and your mother.

The weaknesses that happen as a result of dishonor are, again, they're terrifying. Proverbs 25, 28 says, Like a city that's broken into and without walls is a man who has no control over his spirit. You learn control over your spirit through the discipline of the Lord in your family. And you have to learn it there, or you've blown up future cultures in families and all kinds of other places. It's well pleasing to the Lord.

The Bible says, Listen to your Father who begot you and do not despise your mother when she is old. Let her who bore you rejoice. My son, give me your heart and let your eyes observe my ways." There's the whole matter of honoring the aged. Leviticus 1932 says, "'Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head and honor the face of the old man and fear thy God, for I am the Lord. Now, we might think it strange to rise when an older person walks in the room.

I think I'm probably the oldest person in this room, but nobody stood up when I walked in. Well, you know what? I certainly wasn't expecting it, but if you lived back in the days of, if you went to Jonathan Edwards' house And you would watch the Edwards children, whenever the parents or any other adult walked through that house, the children rose in honor. That's a different culture. That's from a different era, where honor was way better understood than it is today.

We have so dismantled a culture of honor that it's very difficult for us to win it back. But think about the Edwards home and how strange it would be to have children rise when the parents walked in. But that was normal. The new normal is, oh there he is, he's walking through the house. Honor has enormous, enormous leverage in life.

And it really, it's the hinge point between success and failure in life. Many years ago, I was invited to NC State to speak to a graduating class of a Christian campus group. And they wanted me to talk about how to be successful after they got out of college. And I said, Hey, I don't know how gifted you are it doesn't really matter how gifted you are But if you if you've dishonored your father and your mother you will not be successful You need to make a beeline and get right with your parents because it will not go well with you unless you honor your father and your mother. So honor is critical.

Rebellious behavior. I'd like to talk about correction of rebellious behavior. There are different expressions of dishonor. Fuming, refusing to be quiet, rolling the eyes, big sighs, squirming out of your lap when they're really little, arching the back, running away, slumping, refusing to be still, an attitude of disdain towards siblings. So what's this all about?

So what's this all about? It's really that your family is a picture of the Gospel, and it's a launching pad for success for your children and the way that parents engage this is it matters. A father who loves and disciplines, a wife who helps and submits, children who honor and obey. All of these things are brought together really in kind of a war zone called child discipline. And so I highly commend it to you.

Now you know me, you've seen my family, and So nothing is hidden here. Everyone knows that I do not have perfect children. But here's one thing I really want to appeal to you. I'm pretty much done with the child raising enterprise in my family right now. My daughter Claudia is 16, and I'm really pretty much done with her in terms of the kinds of child discipline that I've exercised all my life with my family.

I hope that you won't think it sounding boastful to say, consider following my example. Trust in the Lord. Take these words to heart and believe them with all of your heart. Walk with your children, discipline them, secure honor and obedience. And when you see those things getting out of control, You are the one responsible before God to take care of those things.

And I pray that God would give us a mighty harvest of disciples in the coming years. But one thing I absolutely know without question in this room today, If you fail to secure honor and obedience, you just might find the eyeballs of your children getting plucked out. That's how serious it is. Let's pray. Lord, I pray that you would help us all to understand your will and your ways.

I pray, Lord, for these families that you would give them such success. I pray, Lord, that you would bless them. I pray that you would favor them. I pray, Lord, that you would help them to see their sins if there are any that need to be dealt with even today, that you would help husband and wife to love one another with such tenderness and such unity and such self-sacrifice. I pray Lord for these children that they would honor their fathers and mothers so that it might be well with them and with their children forever.

Amen. Yeah sure, if that's what you want to, I'm ready for questions if you have them. Timothy, could you give me some water? So just a comment from 1 Timothy 3. By the way, thank you.

1 Timothy 3 gives us the qualifications for an elder. And it just means that an elder, you need to be able to prove that he's a mature Christian. So there's nothing superhuman that's being called for there, just a demonstration of maturity. In 1 Timothy 3 verses 4, one of the qualifications is that an elder be one who rules his own house well, having his children in submission with all reverence. I just want to talk a minute about that phrase, in submission with all reverence.

Submission is something you either see, you can observe it or not observe it. You can see it has to do with the external. So in submission, but then with all reverence. And so what we draw from that is that a mature Christian parent doesn't focus just on the externals to the exclusion of the heart, nor does a mature Christian parent focus just on the heart to the exclusion of the externals, but they understand that the two things are linked so that we do care about external behavior. Our children need to be in submission.

It's important that they be in submission. And also with all reverence so that the externals are lined up with what's going on on the inside as well. Let me offer a word of hope. I'll never forget a moment when we were at our other church at North Wake, and we were having a Christmas pageant. One of those wonderful Christmas pageants.

And I was supposed to, and they had erected a couch up above the whole crowd. And Blair's shaking her head because I'm going to embarrass her now. And so Blair actually was going through a time at this sort of season in her life. Deborah, was she like five or six or eight or something? On the younger side?

Four or five. And she was, I mean, we were waging a war with Blair. Look at, she's such a sweet girl today. And, right, Taylor? And so, I was supposed to sit up there.

It was a Christmas pageant. It was just so Christmassy and emotional and sweet and everything. Blair and I were going to go on the couch and I was going to be reading to her, okay? And Blair is rolling her eyes. She actually did this, like this, right in front of everybody.

So, hey, I just tell you that story to say, there's hope! There's hope!