24 He that spareth his rod hateth his son, but he that loveth him chasteneth him betime. Proverbs 19.18 Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying. Proverbs 22.15 Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him. Proverbs 23 13 and 14 Withhold not correction from the child, for thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell. Proverbs 29.15 The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame. Proverbs 29.17 Correct thy son, and he shall give thee rest. Yea, he shall give the light unto thy soul. Thus ends the reading of God's holy and inspired word. Now this Lord's Day morning we come to the 47th and Lord willing the next to the last message in an extended series of sermons on marriage and the family. We looked a long time ago, over a year ago at fundamental foundational principles of marriage and the family and then we've looked at the duties of husbands and of wives and of children. And now for 19 weeks we've looked at the duty of fathers in particular and parents in general. We've seen that the duty of parents is to nurture our children in the totality of their being, or to nurture them emotionally and socially and physically and intellectually, but we're predominantly to nurture them spiritually. And we saw in Ephesians 6.4 The two primary means in which we're to nurture them spiritually are admonition and chastening. So last Lord's Day morning we began looking at chastening. We've already looked at our duty to admonish our children. Last Lord's Day morning we looked at Hebrews 12 and there we noted the pattern of God's chastening of his children as the pattern that we as parents are to carry out in the chastening of our children. And we must ever keep that central as we consider this morning and next Lord's Day morning, or actually in two Lord's Day mornings, how to chasten our children. We must ever keep central the fact that our chastening is to be patterned after the Lord's chastening and discipline of us. And we noted last Lord's Day that there were five purposes for which God chastens his own children. One is retribution. He wants us to recognize the consequences of sin, that sin has consequences. But secondly, God wants us to understand the need for obedience, that we're to submit to God and his word and be subject to his law. But he also teaches us in chastening, veneration, that we're not only to carry out his will in the outward man, but we're to delight to keep his commandments in the inner man. We're to honor him. And so we saw, children, that those two aspects are picked up by Paul in Ephesians 6, 1 and 3. That children are both to submit to their parents, obey their parents, but they're also to honor them, or to give them respect. and veneration. But God says in his word that there are two other reasons that he chastens his children. One is to instruct us. It's often not until we're chastened that we come to understand God's word as we ought. David says in Psalm 119, before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep thy law. I learned the consequences of going out of the bounds of my word, and I didn't delight in those. And then I came to submit. I came to understand in my mind, and then I sought to obey with my will the commands of God. But the fifth reason God disciplines us and we're to discipline our children is to prevent us as his people from going astray. Remember we saw in 1 Corinthians, Paul says that God actually chastened his people to keep them from being destroyed. God has ordained our salvation, and it's unchangeable, and yet He uses His chastening as the means of our preservation and perseverance in the faith. God's ordained the ends, but He's ordained the means. And He says that that's the means that He keeps us from apostasy. So let us remember God's pattern and God's purposes as we think about our chastening, chastening of our children. But this morning I want us to look and answer the question, begin to answer the question, how is the rod to be used? And I want us to look at ten directions, five directions this Lord's Day morning and five, two Lord's Day mornings from this. But first we must, before we begin to look at how the rod is to be used, we must recognize that God's Word says the rod is to be used. We've got to settle that fact. God's Word is clear on that point. The rod is to be used. Proverbs 13, 24. He that spareth his rod hateth his son, but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes, or early. There's a contrast between the father that spares his rod or doesn't use the rod. God says that that father does actually hate his child. The father that uses the rod loves his child. Just the opposite of what the world would teach us today. Proverbs 23, 13 says, withhold not correction from the child. Here we are commanded to use the rod. The Puritan John Norton said doctrine and example are insufficient. Discipline is an essential part of the nurture of the Lord. You see, Norton said doctrine or admonition, teaching, verbal instruction and example, living a godly life before your children. is insufficient. He's not saying that they aren't important. They're foundational. But he says, to have a godly example and to be the greatest instructor of your children verbally, but to neglect discipline will create a problem. There's a place, he's saying, an essential place for discipline in the nurture of the Lord. And he's just saying what Paul clearly says in Ephesians 6.4. It's through the admonition or the chastening and admonition of the Lord. And we are not free to choose what means we want to use. God has not left it up to our option as to what means we're to use in nurturing our children. He's given us all these means and we're to use all of them. And to pick and choose these means demonstrates that we think ourselves more wise than the thrice holy, infinite, eternally, and unchangeable God of wisdom. You see, we're impugning his wisdom if we think we've come up with a better way of nurturing our children than he's given us in his rule book, in his owner's manual for Christians. He's told us how things work. And the question is, do we believe him? or not. Now let's begin to answer this question, how is the rod to be used? First, we're to use the rod believingly. We're to use the rod believingly or with faith. Proverbs 22.15 says, foolishness is bound in the heart of the child, but the rod of correction shall drive it far from. The rod of correction shall Do it. Proverbs 29.15 says the rod and reproof give wisdom. The verse doesn't say rod and reproof may give wisdom on occasion. It says they give wisdom. Do we believe it? Do we take God's Word at face value and believe what He says? Regardless of whether it appears to give wisdom every time the rod is utilized. We know that quite often it doesn't appear to be giving wisdom. And yet God's Word says it does over the long haul. But we've got to trust God over the long haul. We've got to wait upon God in the use of means for God to bless those means. God doesn't always answer us in our first prayer to Him regarding something, does He? He calls us to wait upon Him. and how often we're to wait upon Him in so many things until He answers, until He gives the promise, the reward that He has promised. Remember Hebrews 11.6, but without faith it is impossible to please Him. So if we use the rod without faith, we're not pleasing God in the use of the rod. For Paul goes on to say in Hebrews 11, for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is the rewarder of them that diligently seek him. Do we believe that God rewards those that diligently seek him, and diligently seek him by obeying him? And the question is not, are we using the rod believing in the rod, but are we using the rod believing in the God who has ordained the rod? There's a world of difference between entrusting the rod and trusting God. Trusting the rod is idolatry. You see, we're not to use unlawful means in nurturing our children, but we're also not to trust in lawful means. We're to trust in the God of lawful means, means that He's ordained. Think of Jeremiah 17, verse 5 and 6. Thus saith the Lord, Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord, curses that man the trust in the arm of flesh, the trust in the means without the God of means blessing those means. That person, God says through Jeremiah, is one whose heart departs from the Lord. He contends he's doing God's will and yet God says his heart is departed from the Lord because he's trusting in the means and not trusting in God. Jeremiah goes on to say under inspiration of this man that's cursed, for he shall be like the heath in the desert and shall not see when good cometh, but shall inhabit the parched places of the wilderness in a salt land and not inhabit it. Here Jeremiah is speaking to an agriculturally literate people who know what it's like to have fertile soil and green crops. And he says, the man that doesn't trust in the Lord is like someone in the barren wilderness, in the desert. He's like a dried-up plant, a heath in the wilderness. He's like in a salt land. Have you ever seen the salt flats, children and pictures? The Bonneville Salt Flats, how dry, how deserted they are. That's what God describes the man who doesn't trust in the Lord like. He's barren, dry, no fruit, because he's trusting in means instead of trusting in God to produce those promises. And so we, if we use the rod believingly, we must explain the benefits that we expect the rod to produce in our children to our children. They need to understand that we believe the rod is going to have its work in them. We need to remind them that we spank them to deliver their souls from death, that we spank them to impart wisdom to them, that we spank them to drive foolishness from them. that we spank them so the peaceable fruits of righteousness, in Hebrews 12, might be theirs. We need to be reminding them of these things. Before and after we spank, but throughout, they're rising up and lying down. They need to know why we do what we do, and as we do it, believing in God to bless it. Not only must we use the rod believingly, secondly, we must use the rod authoritatively. God commands us to obey. Proverbs 19.18 Chasten thy son while there is hope. That's a command. Proverbs 29.17 Correct thy son. It says of Eli in 1 Samuel 2.29 that he honored his sons above God. In other words, He cared more about pleasing his sons than pleasing God, and so when it came to an issue where he couldn't please both, he chose to please his sons and not God. God goes on to say in the next verse in 1 Samuel 2.30, Them that honor me I will honor, and they that despise me shall be lightly God is giving the rationale why he took away blessing and actually placed a curse upon Eli and his family. Because Eli honours his sons more than God. He wouldn't carry out what God had told him to carry out towards his sons in restraining them from their sinfulness. And God says, if you would have honoured me, I would have honoured you. But you lightly despise me. He actually says, you despise me. Because you gave me second place regarding this issue of restraining your sons in their sin. I will lightly esteem you. I will curse your home. So we're to use the rod authoritatively. We're to make sure that our children understand that it's our duty to spank them. They have to understand why we're spanking them. Not that we're spanking them in anger, Because we're used to getting what we want, and they haven't given us what we want, so we're going to let them have it. Is that what our kids are learning while we spank? Or do they know that we're doing it because God told us to do it? And we're doing it in submission to our God. And therefore, we're doing it authoritatively. Because we're doing it under God's authority. We're submitting to His authority, And now they must submit to our authority, and by submitting to our authority, children, as you submit to your parents' authority, you're submitting to God, who's placed your parents in that place. Charles Bridges, in his commentary on Proverbs, and I'm going to quote him quite a bit. I think a number of our families have his commentary, and it's very helpful. He says this, at whatever cost, establish your authority. Let there be but one will in the house, and let it be felt that this will is to be the law. The child will readily discover whether the parent is disposed to yield or resolved to rule." Children know if they can get away with something or not. And if they do, they'll continue to push it, and push it and push it and push it. a little bit further, and a little bit further. He says, however trifling the requirement, let obedience be in small, as in great matters, the indispensable point. You see, obedience is obedience, and failure to obey is failure to obey. He that's faithful in little is faithful in much. Oftentimes it's in the little things that we see whether someone's honest, and whether they're really made up of faithfulness, whether they really want to be an obeyer. He goes on to say, the awe of parental authority is perfectly consistent with the utmost freedom of childlike confidence, nay, it is the very foundation of it. What he's saying there is that asserting your parental authority is not inconsistent with a warm and intimate relationship with your children. He's saying it's really the foundation of it. You see, if you don't assert your God-given biblical authority, you can't really have a warm and close relationship. Your children will not have confidence in you because they will know that you're not carrying out the duties that you've been called to do. Our children are most secure when they know that we're carrying out the duties that God has called us to. That's when they're secure and confident in our home. We must use the rod believingly, we must use it authoritatively. Thirdly, we must use the rod early. Proverbs 19.18 says, Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying. Chasten thy son while there is hope. God is clearly saying that there is a window of opportunity. There's a period in our children's lives when there's hope. They seem to suggest that if we fail to use that period of their life when they're most pliable, it's unlikely that they'll be turned. Or it's certainly not going to be through the rod. It may be through a miraculous work of God's grace that they're changed. But when they mature into adulthood, it's too late to begin to thank them If we let the patterns of sinfulness begin in the early years and we wait to use the rod, we may be missing that window of opportunity. Proverbs 13.24 says, He that spareth his rod hateth his son, but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes, or early. Many of the Puritans believed that if parents waited to discipline their children corporally until after two years old, they probably waited too long. They weren't necessarily saying that a rod to the backside had to be used, but it might be a slap to the hand, no, or other methods, but beginning to train the child's will very early on. being disposed to rule rather than disposed to yield even in the early years. If a child is used to being able to grab something on the table at 18 months and get away with it when mom and dad said no and nothing happens, well is it any wonder that they think they can get away with things at 5 and at 10 and at 15? We must use the rod early. The Puritan Richard Adams said, if it be not too soon for children to sin, it should not be thought too soon for parents to correct. And that seasonably, before the sin grows strong, get head and sprout forth. In other words, sins grow, he's saying, like a plant. A seed is a small sin, but it's not nipped, it keeps growing. The twig may be bent while it is young, and sin mortified is nipped in the bud. You see, a twig when it's young can be bent, but after it grows up, it's going to break when it's pulled. When it's bent, it's going to break, it's going to snap. And if there's a sin, like a flower bud, you can nip the bud, you can trim the bud off, but if you wait, That bud may give forth other branches and more buds, and if you wait, you have a whole bush to deal with. But nip it early. God's Word says we should nip it early. Charles Bridges, speaking about this verse, Proverbs 13, 24, says, Every vice commences in the nursery. Every vice commences in the nursery. He goes on to say, the lesson of obedience should be learned at the first dawn. One decided struggle and victory in very early life may, under God, do much towards settling the point at once and to the end. What he's saying is that sometimes very early in life, in a child's life, there's a decisive issue where they will test the will of Dad and Mom. And they will not easily budge from it. And the question is, will we continue to spank until they obey? Or will we just throw up our hands and say, we can't do it. They won't do it. We have an expectation of what they're to do. And they won't do it. And so they win. Bridges is saying oftentimes it comes down to that, and oftentimes it comes down to that very early in life. When they recognize that parents are resolved to rule, then quite often the will is bent very early on in the life. Use the rod, use it believingly, authoritatively, use it early. We're also called to use the rod effectually. And I want us to be careful, fathers, to take this in light of another principle that I'll speak of in two weeks, and that's also use the rod wisely. Use it in a controlled manner, but use it effectually. Make sure that it has the effects it's supposed to have. It should be firm enough to have the effects that God says the rod is to have. Proverbs 19.18 says, Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying. God knows that the crying of our children will be hard for us to accept. And there will be a temptation when our children are crying, either prior to receiving chastening, because of fear of it, or during the chastening that will tend to lighten up. We will either not give it, or we'll lighten up in giving it. and it'll tend not to have the effect that it ought to have. Discipline must produce the following five things. It must produce an understanding of the sin committed. That's that aspect of instruction that we spoke of last Thursday. It must produce a recognition of the consequences of sin and that there are degrees of sinfulness Some sins are more sinful than others. So they see the attitude of retribution. But thirdly, they're to see and understand repentance. They're to repent from their sin, they're to turn from it, and they're also to do restitution as required for any wrong committed to an individual. They're to confess to God and repent. but they're also to give restitution towards any that they've sinned against, whether it's confession to them, whether it's returning to them what's been stolen or what have you, or broken. So it is to produce obedience. But fourthly, it's to produce a compliance with the parents' will. It's to produce an honor and veneration for the parent and for God and for their law. And then fifthly, it's to produce an aversion to commit the wrong again. It's to prevent them from committing the same sin. You see, if the rod is not applied with sufficient firmness, the child might be likely to say, well, I can do that again. I get away with it one out of two times anyway. And the time that I do get caught, it really doesn't hurt very much for very long. It might be worthwhile to attempt to commit it again. And quite often, isn't this true, that our children may, after a spanking, begin to comply externally with what we've asked them to do? They may now go and clean up their room like we had commanded them half an hour before, but the question is, are they cleaning up their room, or washing the dishes, or whatever else we asked them to do? Or are they doing it with a spirit of submission to us? Are they doing it with an attitude of grumbling and murmuring in their own heart? Are they doing it with ill will towards us? It reminds me of something Pastor Al Martin has said regarding his mother. He said a number of times he remembers coming out of the bathroom being spanked by his father and prepared to do what he'd been asked to do, but not really prepared to do it with a sweet, submissive will." And he says, so often his mother would see through that attitude of his, and she would say to his father, Dad, spank him more. He's not sweet yet. He's not sweet. He may externally do what you've asked him to do, but he's not honoring you and honoring us in the doing of it. It wasn't hard enough. It had some effects, but it didn't have all the effects. And so our spankings must be sufficient to have all those effects. Proverbs 20 verse 30 says, and this is a tough one, in one of the tougher scriptures, "...the blueness of the wound cleanseth away evil, so do stripes the inward parts of the belly." Now, I'm not telling you that we need to beat our children or spank them. Beat kind of has a negative connotation, doesn't it? That we should spank them until they're black and blue. No, that's not what I'm saying. But it suggests here in Proverbs that there's occasionally sin that's so heinous that it might require a spanking that produces a welt, a bruise. God says that won't kill. It'll cleanse the inward parts. It'll cleanse away evil. Now, this passage may be specifically referring to the family. I think it's probably more generally referring to discipline in the civil sphere. But it has its implications in the family. What I'm saying is just because your child gotten a bruise from your spanking doesn't mean that you spanked too hard, necessarily. I'm not saying that you might not have. I'm not saying that you might not have done it out of anger, but I'm saying because there's a bruise on one of your children's backsides for their sin doesn't mean that you've gone too far. Now, a judge in this land might not think so, but I think God's Word says that you have not necessarily gone too far. Regardless of what our court system may say, God says you haven't necessarily gone too far in all cases. And let us honor God first. Charles Bridges says, either the child's will or the parent's heart must be broken. Either the child's will or the parent's heart One or the other is going to be broken. If God's pleased to give you the gift of children, God is either going to break their will through your admonition and chastening, or eventually they're going to break your heart. One or the other is going to happen. Bridges goes on to say, there is much more mercy in what seems to be harshness than in false tenderness. Let the child see that we are resolved, that we are not to be diverted from our duty by the cry of weakness or passion. Far better that the child should cry under helpful correction than that the parent should afterwards cry under the bitter fruit to themselves and children of neglected discipline. You see, we live in a day where love is a saccharine, weak, wimpy type of thing. It's all emotion and no intellect or will. But biblical love is thoughtful. It sees the good of its object and it's willing to do what has to be done for the good of the object of that love. even at great personal cost to the one that loves, and even to the short-term pain of the object of that love. God chastens His people for our good. And so we're to chasten our children for their good. That they be delivered from hell. That they imbibe biblical wisdom. We're to use it, we're to use it believingly, we're to use it authoritatively, we're to use it early, we're to use it effectually. Fifthly, we're to use the rod verbally. Proverbs 29, 15 says, the rod and reproof give wisdom. But a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame. And it's interesting, it says the mother to shame. He obviously will bring his father to shame as well, but it's his mother that has borne that child. And there is a unique relationship between mother and child, I think, because of the fact that the mother bears the child and feeds the child from her breast if God grants to her that gift. And she's the one that usually spends more time with the child. When the child rises up and lies down and walks in the way, her nurture is affected. And her honor will be related in a Christian community, in a godly community, to how well she's done that. If we refuse to chastise, God will make scourges for us of our children. God will chastise us with our children if we don't chastise them and discipline them It's really the same as what we've been looking at in Ephesians 6.4 for these many weeks. And ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath. Don't stir them up by unreasonable standards. Don't stir them up by being angry towards them. But bring them up or nurture them in the chastening and admonition of the Lord. God puts chastening and admonition together. They're not separate things. We don't spank one time and admonish another. Any time we spank, we better be admonishing. We're not behaviorists. We don't view our children as the evolutionists do and believe that just pain or desire to stay away from pain will keep them from doing what we don't want them to do. No, we've got to get to their conscience. And we recognize that God has ordained it that one of the means we get to their conscience is not only through their ears, but it's through their backside. I don't understand it completely, but God says that it's true. We get to their conscience through their ears and through their backside. And so we must use both in the appropriate measures at the right time. If we're to use the rod verbally, if we're to use it with admonition, We must be prepared to take the extra time that it will take when we discipline our children. We've got to ask our children, what did they do? We've got to understand what they did, and then we've got to help them to understand what commandment of Scripture they broke. They need to understand that they sinned, and we know that sin is a violation of God's law. Where in God's law, what law, what requirement have they broken? And by this we admonish them, we must also seek to convince them that the rod is deserved. Because they've sinned, because they've broken this commandment, therefore what must Daddy, what must Mommy do? What has God told us that we must do? And the child must understand that we spank them because we're submitting to God's authority, because God's called us and commanded us to do this. So that's why we do it. The English Puritan Richard Baxter said and recommended to fathers and mothers, make their children read those texts of Scripture which condemn their sin, and then those which command you to correct them. Again, I've suggested The place to start with the commands is the Ten Commandments because every sin that we commit can be subsumed under one of those commandments. So that's the benefit of us and our children memorizing the commandments because we can begin right there. And then we can begin particularly to use the book of Proverbs especially to help our children understand what God's will is for them and for us. And then these Proverbs that I've read this morning, they need to be common currency in our discussions with them and in our homes. We need to be familiar with them. We need to regularly be repeating them to them that they understand that the context of our homes and our nurture of them is based upon God's will. We're doing what God has told us to do. We've not made this up. We're doing what God has commanded us to do in submission to his will, and we've only begun to answer this question of how we're to use the rod. Two Lord's Day mornings, Lord willing, we'll look at five more ways in which we're to use the rod, so that we'll see that we're to use it joyfully, we're to use it prayerfully, we're to use it wisely, we're to use it compassionately, so that we might use the rod consistent with the way that our Father uses the rod of chastening us, his people, that we might be God-like. God calls us to be like him. And so we're to be like him in our homes in the chastening of our children. That we might glorify him. That we as his people might be a city set on a hill. That we might be a light shining in this wicked and perverse generation. as we display God's truth, not only in our lives, but with our lips. That we might be prepared to give an answer for the hope that's in us. That we might be prepared to defend our practice to the ungodly, if necessary. We've got to use wisdom in disciplining our children in this wicked and perverse generation, don't we? We don't have to go on the offensive in seeking to make sure that all our neighbors know what we do. But if it ever becomes obvious, if we ever have to defend our practice, are we willing to defend it? Are we willing to stand on God's Word and God's Word alone? And to take our lumps in the civil sphere for carrying out what God's told us to do. These things that I'm preaching are not preached in every pulpit in this land, because many men know that their tapes will eventually get around. And there have been ministers that have been brought into serious trouble with the law for teaching these things in the last 20 years. But this is God's Word, and I must preach God's whole counsel, and we must submit to God's whole We can't pick and choose what we like in God's Word. And so this is one particular, very specific aspect of what God's Word has to say. This is not what is preached every Lord's Day morning or evening here, but it's God's Word and it will not be neglected, but it will be taught. And we must, by God's grace, seek to live it and live it properly. We must discipline believingly, authoritatively, We must discipline prayerfully and compassionately, firmly, affectionately, but compassionately and lovingly to God's glory. Let us pray.