Turn in your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 6, where we will read together verses 1 through 4. Bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. We're still in the midst of the series on Texts that Transform, though I'm pausing for a while over baptism and child-rearing. I want to congratulate you on being here Sunday night. This is not an evening in which a lot of people are going to be in church. For us, this is still the Lord's Day, and so the gathering of the church Sunday morning and Sunday night takes priority over anything else that happens to be going on. in the world, and the fact of the matter is that your ministers put as much effort into organizing the service, and the choir puts as much effort into the music of the service, and the preachers put as much effort into the sermons in the service, and so the right thing to do is to be in church on Sunday night, whatever else is going on out there, so that you made that decision. affirm you, I congratulate you, and indeed thank you for being here. When we baptize our children, we're putting the mark of Christ on them. We are saying of them that they belong to Christ, and we are claiming the covenant promises that he will be our God and the God of our children. And so we bring them up both as Christians So we teach them to pray our Father, we teach them the Bible, we teach them to call upon God, and also we rear them as children, not presuming that they're going to come to faith. Indeed, we rear them in the nurture and admonition, what we just read, the discipline and instruction of the Lord that they might own Christ as their Savior and Lord, so that they might affirm their covenant with God in Christ. And so we've been looking at, for a couple of weeks, at the discipline side. And we still have a ways to go in the discipline side of what it means to rear children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. And we've been looking at barriers to discipline. And so we've looked at weariness. I'm too tired to really deal with them anymore. We've looked at inconsistency. and not requiring first-time obedience or arguing that failure to obey first time is, in fact, disobedience and should be treated as such. And obedience should be insisted upon first time every time. And there should be consequences when our children from very, very young do not obey what they're told to do. So I want to move on from weariness and inconsistency to the problem of blinding affection. George Swinnick, one of our many Puritans, says, some parents kill their children with kindness. Dodderidge says, some mothers smother their children with fondness. J.C. Ryle warns us saying, take heed that excess of affection for your children does not make you blind to your children's faults and deaf to all advice about them." So what the authors are warning us about, and which anecdotally we should be aware of, is the problem of parental overindulgence. In the Old Testament, there's the the example of the priest Eli and his sons Hophni and Phineas. Hophni and Phineas were blaspheming God, and indeed they were fornicating in the temple with the young women who came with their sacrifices. And in 1 Samuel 3.13, God rejects Eli and his sons as serving as priests, rejects that family and its descendants forever, saying about their blasphemy to Eli that he did not restrain them. That was the fault. He failed to restrain his children. It was in his power to do so, and he failed to do it. He indulged the bad behavior of his children. He let them get away with that in a realm over which he had authority. He was the priest. He was the guardian of the temple, and he allowed them to get away with it. He indulged their evil. He indulged their bad behavior. Over fondness of our children can be damaging to them when it blinds us to their faults. We should be restraining our children when they're disrespectful to their teachers. We should be restraining them when they are defiant toward other adults. We should be restraining them when they are disobedient to us as parents. When they get older, We should be restraining their carnal impulses, their desire to watch sensual programming or to dress in a sensual manner. We should be restraining them from the temptations of drugs and alcohol. We should be monitoring their relationships with the opposite sex. We should be monitoring their choice of company. David repeatedly indulged his children. So there's going to be ways in which we're going to be able to point to David as a good example, but one of the things he failed to do is he failed to restrain his children. So Amnon's incest with Tamar went unpunished. Absalom's murder of Amnon and then rebellion was indulged by David and not properly dealt with. And then his son Adonijah's conspiracy against Solomon was likewise indulged. And 1 Kings 1.6 says of David's relationship to Adonijah, which I think that you could extend over all of his children, It says there, his father had never at any time displeased him by asking, why have you done thus and so? In other words, he never brought up the subject. Why didn't he bring it up? Well, you know, you can try to read between the lines. Was he fearful of Adonijah? Absalom's and Amnon's, their bad behavior? Was he afraid of emotional blackmail, that they would distance themselves from their parents, leaving them, from David himself, and leaving him, you know, emotionally hurt by the withdrawal of their presence or their affection? Whatever exactly was going on there, David was not properly dealing with his children. He was not restraining their bad behavior. He was not inflicting the proper punishment upon Amnon and Absalom and Adonijah, and the whole kingdom of Israel paid a terrible price for doing it. And by the way, you know, the Bible's full of advice about child-rearing. I mean, it's loaded with advice. The book of Proverbs, You know, when I was in college, somebody challenged me to read through the book of Proverbs, the proverb that is the number of the day of the month. So, January 1st, read Proverbs 1. January 2nd, read Proverbs 2. And do that, and then read Proverbs thematically. So I would go through and what it has to say about wisdom, what it has to say about being elderly, what it has to say about being young. Well, I went through and looked at what it had to say about child rearing. I mean, there's two pages of Proverbs just on child rearing. The Bible is loaded with this. You know, the question is, are we going to listen to what it says? Are we going to be informed by it? Is the rearing of our children going to be shaped by what the Bible says? Are we going to take seriously these bad examples that we're being given of parents who indulge their children? Don't make the mistake that I think some parents make of thinking that their children's misbehavior is cute. You may think it's cute, and probably granddaddy and grandmommy think it is cute, but everybody else in the vicinity is unlikely to think it's very cute when your children misbehave. Don't make the mistake of being unreceptive to criticism about your children. Some parents respond to anything critical said about their children by shooting the messenger. siding with their children and doing so over against what would have been the wisdom of the generations from time immemorial. You don't have to go back very far. You can go back to my childhood. And then you can go all the way back to Adam, where adults always sided with the adults over against their children. And nowadays, you you reach out with criticism in the direction of someone else's child, you're liable to pull back a nub, right? Look out! There's very little that can be said anymore. We had a situation in our church a few years ago where there were a number of parents who were observing alarming behavior in one of the daughters of the church. What were the clues? Well, part of it was the way she was dressing. Part of it was the company she was keeping. Part of it was the subject matter of her conversations that she was bringing up. And the response of the parents was, our daughter has a target on her back. In other words, she's innocent as the pure driven snow. And it's just that everybody is after her. For some reason, everybody is hostile to our daughter. She has a target on her back and everybody is shooting arrows at our daughter. It didn't end well. It ended very, very poorly because the parents did not restrain her. They did not take seriously what other people were observing. They did not honor the observations of other godly parents in covenant with those parents here in this church. They did not heed the warnings that were being issued by other parents in the church. They shot the messengers. I think it's a very, very foolish thing to do. I think the right thing to do is assume your children are wrong. I think that's the right way to do things. I mean, they've got to prove that they are not guilty. Sometimes they're not going to be guilty, and you need to hear what they have to say. You need to hear their defense. But more times than not, especially when you're dealing with people in authority, teachers and your fellow church members or your ministers or your youth directors or whatever, more times than not, they're not going to go out of their way to harm your child. So it's a mistake to be unreceptive to the criticism of other adults. in the direction of your children. Don't be naive about your own children. Don't intimidate other adults into silence. Have an open door, a safe open door, through which other adults can go when they see that which to them is of concern, that alarms them about your own children. All right, there is something to The statement, it takes a village. It does. It takes all of us watching out for each other's children. And there's a lot of truth that, all right, you gotta sort through it. There's a lot of truth that circulates amongst the kids that comes back to the adults, though not the parents. Have an open door. Let it be a safe place for other adults to come. when it comes to the behavior of your own children. Here's another mistake, where affection can be blinding. That is dividing one parent against the other parent. Children get very good at this very early. I remember when our oldest and our second, that would be Drew and Sam, were just little, little fellas. Drew may have been two, and his mother was going at him in a not in a cool manner. It was a heated disciplinary situation, and I walked into the room, and Drew, a little two-year-old self, said, Daddy, talk to Mommy. Okay, so I thought, uh-oh. See what he's picking up? He's picking up that when mom is going at it, when dad comes in the room, he talks her down. He talks her down. He relieves the pressure that's coming from mama's discipline. Already at, what, two years old, pitting the one parent against the other, seeing me as a soft touch, whereas his mother was the disciplinary. That had to be corrected, right? And I'm talking about the correction taking place as the parents needed to correct the perception that we were projecting onto a little two-year-old mind. And then a little bit later, when Drew's about two, Sam, Drew's three, Sam's about two, just little, little guys, right? I overhear Sam saying, You belong to Daddy, and Mommy belongs to me. And I thought again, oops, we've gotten something out of balance here. Sam sees himself with Mom, and Drew is with me. We're not dealing with things in an even-handed manner. And so Sam thinks he gets all the sympathy and attention out of his mother, and Drew thinks he gets all the sympathy and attention out of his father. Something here is not even-handed, and we need to correct it. Philip Donneridge cautions that the arms of one parent are not a refuge to children from the resentment of the other. Watch it. They're very clever. They're very smart from a very early age. They will learn. They will learn who to ask what. Where are they going to get a sympathetic hearing? They will learn to pit the one against the other. He says again, both should appear to act in concert, or the authority of the one will be despised, and probably the indulgence of the other will be abused. and the mutual affection of both endangered. All right, the fourth inhibition of proper discipline that I want to identify for us is fear. A lot of parents today, again I think in a distinctive characteristic of the day in which we are living, are afraid of being too strict. So there's the problem of weariness, there's the problem of inconsistency, there's a problem of blinding affection, and then there's the problem of fear. I'm going to be too strict. I'm going to provoke rebellion. There's going to be a backlash against my discipline if I'm if I don't back off, if I don't indulge them. So this is a fear that many parents have. It's not a groundless fear, and so the Apostle says, Fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, so that there is discipline that is too harsh, that is extreme. So it's not a groundless fear, but it should not become a controlling fear. Don't exasperate your children by being overly picky. The pendulum seems to swing from generation to generation, from severity to indulgence, and rarely does it stop in the balanced middle. All right, so severe discipline then swings over into indulgence, and then a generation or two of that, and then it swings back over to severe discipline, though I don't think we've had severe discipline for quite some time in our civilization. So don't exasperate your children. What would be an example of exasperation? You don't expect your one-year-old to behave well in the pew. You don't expect your three-year-old to keep up with the family at the theme park. We went to one of these theme parks when Sam was three and I think Sally was two, somewhere in that vicinity. So we got a little, we got one of those strollers, you know, you rent a stroller. We got a little stroller for Sally. We shouldn't expect her to keep up. You know, when we're spending hours walking around a theme park, and if she gets whiny and fussy, we should expect that. We should expect a two-year-old to be able to handle that kind of an extended physical exertion over many, many hours. Now, as it turned out, Sally refused to get into the stroller. There was no way. She was going to keep up with her brothers no matter what. Sam, on the other hand, was happy to climb in and have a ride for the rest of the day. So that's the way that worked out. I shouldn't expect my child to catch the ball every time I throw it to him, especially if he lacks the coordination to catch it. I shouldn't expect him to make baskets every time he throws one up at the hoop. We're not talking about physical weakness or lack of ability in one area or another. What should be corrected is defiance and willfulness and rebelliousness, not weakness, not fatigue, not ignorance, not immaturity. I wouldn't punish a child for touching the burner the first time he reaches for it, especially if he hasn't ever been instructed and he doesn't know any better. Second time, yes, that would be punished. First time, just ignorance. You can't expect a child to know everything. But once they then are informed and once they know, then that is subject properly to parental instruction. Go back to J.C. Ryle. He says to parents, it is your first duty to consult their real interests and not their fanciest likings, to train them not to humor them, to profit them, not merely to please them. He says, depend on it, there is no sure road to unhappiness than a child always having his own way. To be indulged perpetually is the way to be made selfish, and selfish people and spoiled children, believe me, seldom happy. The balance that we're looking for is well expressed by George Swinnick. He urges us not to suffer our children to sin lest they be destroyed, yet also not to provoke them to wrath lest they be discouraged. Parental discipline is aimed not to destroy them and not to discourage them, but to correct them, to keep them on the path that we would have them travel. So that is discipline. The Apostle says we are to bring up our children, to nourish our children on the Lord's discipline and instruction. That's number two. and we'll look at this next week, probably take us a couple weeks. We are to then give positive instruction. Negative is discipline, that's correction. Positive is instruction, teaching them right from wrong, truth from error, good from evil, the beautiful from the ugly. John Trapp, another of these Puritans, say that we are to labor to correct that by education what you've marred by propagation, saying that Look, we have some responsibility. We have imparted to our children a sin nature. David says he was a sinner from the time his mother conceived him. That is to say that we imparted to our children a sin nature. We made them sinners through the natural means of propagation. Having done so, do we not have the responsibility? than to bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Do we not then have the responsibility to guide their souls in the paths of righteousness? to lead them to the green pastures and still waters that their Father in heaven has prepared for them? To not lead them to a saving knowledge of Christ and the life that He would have them live? Having imparted a sinful nature that brings them under condemnation, do we not then have the responsibility to instruct them in the true knowledge of God in Christ and in the way of salvation? That, indeed, would be the point, and we'll look at that in succeeding weeks as we pray together. Our Father in Heaven, we pray, O Lord, that we would be wise parents, that we would be balanced parents, that we would be consistent parents, that we would not give in to weariness, and that we would not be blinded by our natural affection for our children. But we pray, O Lord, that we would be faithful to correct them, to discipline them, and to give them the instruction that they need, that their souls might be saved. Hear us, O Lord, as we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. We turn our attention now to the Lord's table. We make a distinction in our church between non-communing and communing membership. Non-communing membership begins when a child is baptized into the church. They're brought into covenant with God. We claim the promises of God. Genesis 17, 7, I will be a God to you and to your children. We claim the promise that Peter repeated at Pentecost, that this gospel promise is for you and for your children. by that, on the basis of those promises, we bring them into the covenant community. We don't leave them outside on the steps of the church. We bring them in. They become members of the church, non-community members, but they don't take communion. Why? Because there's a fundamental difference between baptism, the right of admission, and the sustaining meal, which with the Apostle Paul's warnings that we'll read here in a moment, require a capacity to discern the body, to eat and drink with understanding. And that's a capacity that we come to of age, not any definitive age, like there is one age at which that happens. It will happen in a whole spectrum of ages, from the young to the older. But it's when they have the capacity to understand the meaning of the bread and the meaning of the cup, and partake with understanding, and partake in a worthy manner, that they then are admitted to the table. This is not a magical meal. It's a spiritual meal. It's a symbolic meal. We proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. It is in remembrance of him, so it is a visible word, a proclamation of the meaning of the cross through the symbols of the bread, which represents his body, and the cup, which represents his blood. We take small portions because they are symbolic meals, and symbolic because it is a spiritual meal. It is spiritual food and spiritual drink, as the Apostle calls it. It is nourishment for the soul that we receive in the Lord's Supper. It is a means of grace, and we only identify three of those—the Word, sacraments, and prayer. Just those three. So this is one of the pillars upon which the Church, the Christian life, is built. It is a necessary component of Christian nurturing, Christian growth. that we regularly partake with understanding by faith of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. So it's for all those who are members in good standing in our church or in an evangelical church, one that preaches the gospel. The ones who should refrain are the non-communing children. It would be those who have never been baptized that should refrain. It would be those who have never publicly professed their faith in Christ and been received into the membership of the church, of any church, who should refrain. It would be those who are in rebellion against God and against Christ and not walking with Him and have no intention of walking with Him. But it is for those who are accountable to the governing body of an evangelical church. It's for those who are sincere, not perfect sinners. We already confessed our sin. We've acknowledged that. We did that earlier in the service, so it is for sinners. It's for those who are sincere. It is for those who are endeavoring, however imperfectly, but endeavoring to walk with Christ. We should read the warning. The Apostle Paul says, whoever eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner. What would be unworthy? Well, if you were ignorant or if you were in rebellion and defiant. If you don't understand what we're doing, or you understand it, but you disdain it, that would be unworthy partaking. And such, he says, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, so self-examination is necessary. Again, this is why you're admitted by baptism, but you only come to the table with a profession of faith. A level of self-examination is necessary, accurate, mature self-examination, that I truly am a believer. And I do understand what's taking place here, and I'm able to evaluate that I am sincere. And so, he says, let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself. We would spare those who are not penitent. We would spare those who are ignorant. We would spare those who are defiant, lest they eat and drink judgment to themselves. If he does not judge the body rightly, for this reason, many among you are weak and sick and a number sleep. So if you are sincere, if you understand the meaning of the supper, and you're accountable to the leadership in an evangelical church, we invite you to come and partake. Come, find ease, refreshment, and strength for your weak and wearied souls. Let's sing together now hymn number 482, Come Unto Me, Ye Weary, as we further prepare for the table. I'm sorry.