Our Father in heaven, we pray, O Lord, that you would give us understanding of your word. Open our minds and our hearts that we might comprehend and receive and apply all that you would have us learn. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. All right, this is the second sermon of two on baptism and child rearing. Do any of you remember the first one? It was November the 4th, 12 weeks ago. So I'm going to assume that you'll remember everything from that first sermon, of course. But the issue that we were looking at is how do I transmit my faith to my children in light of our understanding of the covenant and the role of baptism in initiating our children into that covenant. And the answer that we gave was, first of all, we're going to rear them as Christians. Your children are holy. 1 Corinthians 7.14, the Apostle Paul says. So they'll be brought up to call upon God as their Father. And yet we're also going to rear them as sinners. And you put those two things together, we're not going to demand a crisis conversion of them, but we will rear them in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. So we're going to use means. We're not going to assume, as in the way of presumptive regeneration, we're not going to presume that they are saved, we're going to pray to that end, we're going to rear them, teaching them that God is their Father, but we're going to utilize the means. And what the Apostle Paul says in Ephesians 6-4 is that you are to bring them up, and that is a single Greek word meaning to nourish. We're going to nourish them. What is the nourishment of their souls that our children need, the nourishment that will make them thrive and grow, well, that is the nurture and admonition, in the old language, the discipline and instruction of the Lord. One of the commentators says that discipline, you have the, you know, the means The means are the discipline and instruction. The rule is in the Lord. It's the Lord's discipline and instruction that is that which nourishes the souls of our children. Discipline being the negative side, as it were, the correction. Instruction being the positive teaching and instruction that we give to our children. So we've just really begun. We're just looking at discipline at this point, by which we understand timely correction, including the utilizing of corporal punishment. Proverbs 22.6, train up a child in the way he should go. Even when he is old, he will not depart from it. There's a promise to which parents can claim, that if we train them up in the way that they should go, that as they age, as they grow old, They will be faithful to that way that they have been trained. Proverbs 22, 15, folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him. See, folly, foolishness, is not only found in the heart of a child, it is bound up in there. It's a part of their nature, and it's the rod of discipline that drives out the folly. Again, it's discipline and instruction. It's not discipline alone, but discipline has a vital role to play. Proverbs 13, 24, whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him. So the discipline includes the utilizing of the rod. And if you fail to use the rod, the book of Proverbs is saying, then it's a sign of not love, but an absence of love. If you spare the rod, you're not loving your child, you're depriving the child, which is likened to a hatred of that child, to deprive them of that which he or she needs and is necessary for their spiritual and eternal well-being. Proverbs 23 14, if you strike him with the rod, you will save his soul from Sheol. There, the connection is even more overt between discipline and salvation. So that connection is made. That's how necessary and important proper discipline is according to the Scriptures. So we began to look at what inhibits parental discipline. And the first thing that we talked about was weariness. We just get to be too tired to deal with it. They wear us down. And we just get to the point that we can't be bothered anymore. And so we let them get away with it. And when we let them get away with it, then they learn where the weakness is and they, being smart little beings that they are, how to exploit that and get away with what they want rather than what their parents want. I think the younger children in particular get the short end of the stick. The older children think that just the opposite, that little Johnny gets away with everything and you never let me do that. But it's really the short end of the stick because they're not getting the proper discipline. Because the parents are now older and because they're worn out and they're too tired to be as consistent and thorough in the disciplining. of the younger children as they were with the older children. So that was point number one. Point number two, then, is a closely associated one, and that is the problem of inconsistency. Look back at our text, Ephesians 6.1. Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and your mother. This is the first commandment with a promise that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land. Children are required to obey and to honor their parents. God demands it of them. God requires it of them. It's too bad there's so many panicked parents tonight and there's not enough children here because you're going to get a lot of support tonight in this sermon. Children are obligated. God requires it of you that you obey your parents and that you honor your parents. You are being addressed. Isn't it interesting? Who was present in the churches of Ephesus when the scriptures were read for the first time? The very first time Paul's epistles were read in the church at Ephesus, Who was there? Who was present? Who was in the congregation? The children were, as were their parents. And so the Apostle Paul speaks directly to them in the context of the public assembly of the church. And he says to the children, children, you must obey and honor your parents. And parents then are obligated not to allow them to get away with not obeying. If children are obligated to obey, then parents are required to not allow them to disobey and dishonor their parents. They are to enforce the God-given requirement that they honor and obey their parents. Genesis 18 and verse 19, there Abraham is commended. 18, 19. I have chosen him, God says, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that by doing righteousness and justice the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him. Abraham is to command his children to keep the way of the Lord. He's to enforce the command that his children, his household and children after him, to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice. 2 Timothy 3, 2, it is a sign of the latter days that children will be disobedient to parents. Romans 1.30, in the Apostle Paul's catalog of the most horrendous of evils, he includes disobedience to parents. In the qualifications for officers, as in 1 Timothy 3.4, again verse 12, and Titus 1, it includes the requirement that the children of officers be submissive to their parents. A barrier to the obedience of children is parental inconsistency. And so, what are we saying? We're saying, be consistent. How do you be consistent? Well, here's some ways. Require first-time obedience. You need to break them of their wills, not merely bend them, but break them of their own will. Expect, as Richard Baxter says, exact obedience to yourself. Baxter, in particular, emphasizes the importance of children learning that their wills are to be surrendered to those who are in authority. I mean, as Americans, we even just sort of draw back from that sort of thing. No, it's not your will. Foolishness is bound up in your will. You need to be doing what your parents say. That's the path of safety. That's the path approved by God. the path of prosperity for you. That's the way that you should go, so that it will be well with you in the land, as he says in Ephesians 6, 1 to 3. So that you will live long. This is the right path, is that your will is submissive to the parental will, and you are following that will. You are obeying that will. Expect first-time obedience, as opposed to teaching them disobedience by allowing obedience to be postponed. As we mentioned before, children are not little animals. They're very, very intelligent. I mean, I think our Jack Russell terriers are very, very smart little animals. They really are. They're clever. There's absolutely no comparison between So a smart little dog and a child, they are very, very intelligent. They learn how to work the angles and they start working them from the day you bring them home. From the day you bring them home, you will be wrestling with them for control of the house. And they will want everything to revolve around them. They're clever. They're going to discern their limits. They're going to... They're going to figure out to what extent and when compliance is required. They're going to discern when you really mean it. And that might be when your voice reaches a certain decibel level. It might be when you turn a certain color because of the rage. It might be signaled when bodily movement begins in their direction. They'll figure it out, and they'll learn that they can press their own will against the parental will right up to that point, and then they'll be smart enough to back off. In the meantime, chaos. I mean, the worst strategy of all, really, this is just me personally speaking, the worst strategy of all is to start counting to 10. I'm warning you, if you don't put that toy down by the time I count to 10, One, two, what are we doing? What are we doing? Prolonging the misery is what we're doing, and teaching them, I can be disobedient and get away with it all the way up to number nine, and it's my will, not thy will, up to that point. So why torment yourself? Why torment the child? Why torment everyone within listening distance of you? And try the simpler route, of just require first-time obedience. Well, why should we require that? Because the Bible says, children, obey your parents. Children, honor your father and your mother, because they're required to do it. Because Abraham is required to command his children to walk in the way of the Lord. Because obedience to parents is a sign of spiritual maturity on the part of the parents, such as even is listed as a qualification for an office in the church. They learn defiance through parental indulgence and parental inconsistency. Teach them instead to trust the voice of their parents. Everything doesn't need to be explained to them. They need to just do what they're told. J.C. Ryle. You'll recall we quoted extensively from Ryle last time, 12 weeks ago. In the beginning of November, we were quoting quite a bit, quite extensively from J.C. Ryle and from John Piper. Ryle says, it is an unsound and rotten principle that everything which parents require must be explained, that a reason must be given, that they must know why. Train them, Ryle insists, in the habit of implicit faith, that is, faith in their parents' word, confidence that what their parents say must be right. He advises, let there be no questioning and reasoning and delaying and answering again. Parents, he asks. Do you wish to see your children happy? Take care, then, that you train them to obey when they are spoken to, to do as they are bid. Teach them that, and then the hope is that when they get older, they will transfer this habit of surrendering their will to the will of their parents upon instruction, upon command, to their heavenly Father, surrendering their will to him when he voices his word." So, the will is surrendered to the parents upon their word, and when they're older, they will surrender their will to their heavenly Father's word. That's the point at which we are aiming as parents. Require immediate compliance. Elizabeth Eliot, I think, is the origination of the expression, slow obedience is no obedience. We used that one plenty when we were bringing up our children. Slow obedience? No, that's, well, in the book Huguenot Gardens, which was one of the favorite books, Douglas Jones' book, Huguenot Garden, I think is the title of it, slow obedience is disobedience. He's more direct than the way the principle is expressed by Elizabeth Elliot. But you get the point. Slow obedience is just plain old disobedience. You're not doing what you're told. Look, when little Johnny is darting out into the street and a car is coming and you yell, stop, you want him at that point to have learned he's to do what he's told. You don't want a negotiation at that point, right? You don't want him as he's running out into the street to say, why do I need to stop now? As he continues over the curb and in the middle of the road, you want there to be this habit already established. It's for his wellbeing. It's for his safety. It's for his. health that he learned to submit his will to his parents will until he is of age and is able to discern these things for himself. Begin with small things. John Piper says one explanation why children are out of control in public is they have not been taught to obey at home. One reason for this is that many things at home don't seem worth the battle. OK, that's just a little thing. But you begin to add up all these little things, and little things become a lot. And they become a habit. They become a way of life. They become a pattern. He goes on. It is easier to do it ourselves than to take the time and effort to deal with a child's unwillingness to do it. Johnny, clean up your room. Johnny, clean up your room. Johnny, clean up your room. He picks up two or three things. You're not through yet. Go back and do it again. He picks up a few more things. Go back. You know, you just finally get tired of it. It's just easier. There's less energy expended if I just go in there and pick it all up myself. Well, with what consequence? With the consequence, he's gotten away with it. His will, not your will. He's disobeyed. He's been defiant. It's now going uncorrected. He won. You lost. That's what Piper's referring to. But this simply trains children that obedience anywhere is optional. What does? When you say, it's just easier to do it myself than to require that they do what they should do. It's just easier. But in the meantime, they're learning that obedience is optional. I don't have to obey. I can do what I want and I'll get away with it. And I can eventually be, well, they don't quite think all this way, but being young and strong and having lots of energy, I could just wear them down. And then I don't have to pick up my toys because they're going to eventually to do it for me. Consistency and requiring obedience at home will help your children be enjoyable as opposed to a tormenting presence in public. You know, I wrote months and months and months ago about the plane ride home from Taipei, Taiwan, and I was next to two- to three-year-old who screamed the entire way. Not because he was in pain or uncomfortable, but because he wanted this, and then he wanted that, and then he wanted this, and then he wanted that, and then he wanted to go here, then he wanted to go there, the entire time. He didn't suddenly become... He didn't begin then to indulge bad behavior. It was very clear. He was just completely undisciplined. He got whatever he wanted. He never knew what he wanted. You know what I mean? A child who gets everything he wants, consequently, he doesn't know what he wants. So he's going from option A to option B to option C to option D, and none of it satisfies, none of it brings contentment. And so in the meantime, he's miserable, the parents are miserable, I'm miserable. Thankfully, I borrowed a set of those headsets where you can drown out the external noise. Once I figured out how to operate that, not being the high-techy sort, as you know, once I figured that out, clicked the thing on, muffled my ears, it was a little bit better. But in the meantime, the rest of the whole plane is being tormented by the child. Why? Because he'd never been taught to obey at home. His will. He's the center of the universe. Everything revolves around him. He gets what he wants. Everyone must serve him. All of the inclinations of fallen human nature are being indulged and reinforced and compounded by what? By parental inconsistency. Back in the 1980s when, I think it was the 1980s, maybe the beginning of the 1990s, Mary Giuliani took office and he with his with his police chief began a new policy that they described as broken window policing. And the idea was the streets of New York had all these broken windows and that that sent a message to all the bad guys. What the message was, was The streets are out of control and we can get away with whatever we want. And the broken windows, you can throw a rock through a window and nothing's going to happen to you. So in other words, the wrong message was being sent. The message was the streets have been surrendered to the criminals. So Giuliani and his police chief said, we're going to arrest people and we're going to put them in jail if they break a window. So much as spit on the sidewalk, we're hauling them in and putting them in jail. Well, what they found was that when they did this, that the incidents of big crimes plunged because they were taking care of the little crimes. Taking care of the little crimes sent the signal that the good guys, the police, the authorities, are back in charge of the streets, and we are enforcing the law. And so because people weren't getting away with the little things, they weren't going on and doing the big things to nearly the same extent as they had been doing. Well, I think that that works at home. You know, we were always pretty careful about language. We didn't allow bad language, and we didn't allow even what came close to bad language. So if a word started with the same letter as the bad word, we didn't allow that. So no S words, no G words, and you know the rest of them. Well, because they couldn't use the euphemism for the bad word, we never had to deal with the bad words. In other words, we were doing broken window parenting. The bad word, they were a whole step removed from the bad word because they weren't even, we didn't allow them to use that which approximated the bad word. That wasn't even the bad word. So this is the kind of thing, that signals that the parents are in charge. And what happens is that the need to discipline begins to disappear. I'd have to double check with Emily to get exactly the years down. But somewhere between their third and fifth year, discipline stops. There's almost none after that. Lots of it when they're young. And by discipline, I mean little flicks on the hand. I'm not talking about taking a baseball bat to them. I'm talking about that's all. That's all you needed, really. A little flick on the hand. Oh, it just breaks their hearts. They're crying. It doesn't hurt. It's just they know you are displeased with them. So little flick on the finger, little flick on the hand. At lots and lots of that, lots of discipline, lots of punishment those first three years. And then they get the message, and they comply, and they obey. And the need to discipline all but vanishes until they're teenagers, and then it starts all over again. But you have about a 10-year hiatus where things are pretty calm and pretty peaceful in the house. They've gotten the message. You've gotten control of the family. And so rather than the home being an oppressive place because of parental discipline, it becomes a very happy place. It becomes a place where the children want to be. where they enjoy the family, where they enjoy their parents. And when they get older, they want to come back. They like being home. They want to come back to home because home was a secure and happy place. So when they don't associate home with getting beaten all the time, all the little punishments, that all ended years before. They don't even hardly remember that. Maybe one or two examples they'll remember that were especially severe in their minds for one reason or another. But the home, rather, was a happy place for them because there wasn't any discipline from three years old till 13 years old or something like that. Again, using very general approximations, Because if you're consistent, and this is really the plea, be consistent. If you're consistent when they are young. And you follow through and they get the message that obedience is required, that the reference point is God. God requires that you obey and you honor your parents, that you obey when you're told what to do, that you not delay, that you not be slow about the obedience, that you not defy the obedience, that you obey immediately and do what you're told to do. If you're told to wash your hands, go wash your hands. If you're told to pick up your plate and wash it off, you pick up your plate and you wash it off and you put it in the dishwasher or put it up to dry. You do what you're told to do when you're told to do it. The home becomes a very peaceful, calm, happy place. There's not a bunch of argumentation going on. There's not wrestling for the control of the house. It's not your will against their will. All that's been settled. This just all seems so logical to me. In one sense, it is so simple. Now, you're dealing with human beings, and so there's all kinds of subtleties and nuances and complexities. There isn't a formula. There isn't one way that works for every child. You've got to be sensitive to the difference between the children and their temperaments and the ones that need just a glare from you for punishment and the ones that need something more than that. So granted all that. Nevertheless, it is so simple. Just require that they obey. And then your home will be a happy, joyful, calm, peaceful place. You'll get a free decade. And then they turn into teenagers, and the misery starts all over again. Not exactly. No, really, I'm really exaggerating that. You know, when they turn teens, the dynamic does change and some significant adjustments are required, but the background to those adjustments is a foundation of parental authority that has been actively driving out the foolishness that is bound up in the heart of the child, training him and her in the way that they should go in the confidence that when they are old, they will not depart from it. Habits, disciplines being established in the home that will last for a lifetime as we pray together. Our Father in heaven, we pray, O Lord, that as parents that we would be consistent in the handling of our children. And we pray, O Lord, that we might be diligent to rear them in your discipline and in your admonition. And we pray that you would guide us to that and that we would be wise as parents and that that our children would grow up to love you and serve you all the days of their lives. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.