If you will, turn with me again to Ephesians chapter 6. Ephesians chapter 6, reading in verse 4, the Apostle Paul reminds us that, and you fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord. Let me turn over to Deuteronomy 6 and just remind you of that passage as well. They should all be familiar to you by now. But in Deuteronomy chapter 6, starting in verse 4, Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. And you shall teach them diligently to your children, and talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be frontlets between your eyes, and you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates." We're going to continue our study, but just real quickly by way of review, as we've argued that this is going to be a study that requires you, if you're going to apply these principles, you're going to have to know the Word of God. And so, I've asked these questions and I'm going to continue to ask them to try to provoke you to start thinking through how well do you handle the Word of God? For example, how well do you know the Scriptures? Do you make yourself available if you're not familiar with the Scriptures, right, at all? Now, we can sit here and debate, well, nobody can know everything exhaustively, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about, do you know it at all? Are there certain books of the Bible, you have no clue what they're talking about, and are you okay not knowing? Is there wisdom there that you think, well, in my walk, I'm alright not knowing it? And I would encourage you, don't think like that. One of the problems I think we can all agree on and what we see within the church today is this I'm going to wing it mentality or it's really irrelevant that I'm just going to do my own thing. And that's what I think we see in the church. Next, how often do you refer to the scriptures in the course of a normal conversation with your children? And I'm talking to you as parents. Next, how adept. And as I'm talking to the parents, you young kids, one day, Lord willing, you're going to be parents. This is your training ground. I don't know if you ever thought about what's the beauty of being single right now. You ever give that any consideration? What is heaven going to be like? In heaven, they're neither given in what? Marriage. Singleness right now for you is a picture of heaven in the sense that you have all the opportunities to focus your efforts and your time in preparation for the next phase of your life. How are you preparing yourself? Are you ready? Okay. How adept are you at teaching and relating scriptures to your children in everyday life? And I want to encourage you to think differently. It's more than just family worship. You should be doing family worship. But one of the things I want to encourage you on is just do you find teaching opportunities, opportunities to instruct and discipline throughout the course of a day? I know they're there. I've got the same problem. The problem is not that the opportunities aren't there within my home. The problem is maybe I'm not seasoned upon them. I'm not being in tune to what's going on around me. How effectively do you use the Scriptures to convict your children of their sins? And what we're going to deal with tonight is, what are some unbiblical methods? And so, not so much a lot of teaching from the Scriptures, because by definition, what I'm dealing with is unbiblical, so they're not found there. But I'm going to give you some examples and make you think through some things, some things that, hopefully, they're extreme and they're odd to you, but the principles that lead to those odd and extreme examples I'm going to work with you tonight through. You may have some of those principles going on within your home. You may be bringing unbiblical methods into your home and not either realize it or maybe you do realize it, you're just not willing to change, but I'm going to plead with you to pay attention. Do you reprove in such a way that it causes your children to revere God's Word or to disdain it? How consistently do you use the Bible when you correct them? And then finally, how do you use the Bible to train your children in righteousness to help them understand the nature of their sin, the nature of themselves and what leads them to sin? In some of the unbiblical methods, the reason why they're unbiblical is that they don't deal with this. They're not dealing with the heart of the problem. Alright, and we've talked about the authority. The authority of raising our children starts with the Word of God. So I'm going to continue to take you back that you must know the foundation. The authority that you've been given as parents to parent is given to you from God's Word, and He is not silent. He is not without a testimony within this area, okay? So He's given you all you need to know. The challenge on our part is to submit ourselves to His teaching and try to spend time understanding and being prepared. We've talked about the authority of the Scriptures. We've talked about how the Scriptures have commanded you to shepherd your children. You're called to be authorities. Okay? It's not that you're asking for your children to let you be authorities. You are authority. The nature of your role as a father and mother is authoritative in nature. Okay? And so last week what we did, I believe it was last week, no, two weeks ago, we spent some time on what are influences that impact your children. I ask you to consider some things in your home that could be aggravating the sinful nature. And I guess the other thing that we covered, just by way of review, we went through the scriptures pretty exhaustively, and it kind of parallels real nicely with what we're doing in our study of Romans, about the sin nature of your children and how fallen mankind is naturally constituted, okay? And so, the question is, are there things in your home that are aggravating the sinful nature of your children? This also goes back to some of the things that we talked about with respect to gender roles from last Sunday, right? Where I encouraged you as fathers and mothers to get together to make sure you're in alignment with respect to the mission that God has given you. Let's go back and review that for a moment. Where does the conflict come in in your home? Now, I'm not talking about people who are confused over gender roles. Most of you at least accept and agree that there are responsibilities. There are roles given to women and there's roles given to men. But yet, even within our group, we probably still have struggles within our home, if you're honest. And a lot of the struggle is, once again it goes back to, are you focusing on 1 Corinthians? You know, typically the man likes to focus on 1 Corinthians 11, where he likes to remind the women, I'm the head. Right? But where does the conflict come in? He forgets to go back to the mission that God gave him at creation. What's the mission? To be fruitful and multiply and to take dominion over the earth. And you start by taking dominion within your own home. And when you see a father emphasizing the responsibility or his role and at the same time denying the mission, then we begin to see the conflict. So fathers, I hope you guys spent some time and spent times with your wife to make sure that you're on the same page and starting to get on the same page. But as you think about your home, you need to make sure you don't let your own deficiencies Maybe you're not where you need to be with respect to the scriptures. Maybe you're not where you need to be in how to handle the scriptures and minister them correctly. But you need to make sure your own deficiencies are not causing you to act out, to lash out in frustration, and that frustration being taken out on your children. And what typically happens is that the father or mother who hasn't spent time preparing themselves for the different types of sin that your children are going to manifest at different stages of their life, I mean, once again, a two-year-old can demonstrate rebellion just as well as the older one. The problem is that the older one is more destructive, and he can be a little bit more clever in his rebellion. Probably what's going on is that as fathers and mothers, we haven't prepared ourselves for the next stage of your child's life and the types of sins that you're going to be confronted with as they get older. And what tends to happen is probably you get exasperated and you lash out rather than disciplined and trained. And there's a big difference. So let me be clear, unless there be any confusion on what I'm saying. Uncontrolled outburst of anger on your part is not training and it's not biblical discipline at all. Let me just say this. If you haven't, as a husband and wife, start sitting down, making sure you understand the things that are going on within your own home, and you're not taking into account an inventory of the things that you're allowing to influence your children, these things that might aggravate the sin nature of your children, you just got to go back and look at your notes or go back and get the recording from that last session. If you're not doing that, I'm just going to tell you, you're being neglectful. You need to make sure you don't have things in your home that are aggravating the nature of your children. Next, we discussed the issues. Well, what happens when you do everything correct? I use that in quotes, right? If you do everything correct, but still your child rebels. Well, remember what we argued. First of all, why do you do the things correct? first and foremost, because it brings honor to God. But when you do these things, right? When you do these things that are, quote, correct into your house, you deal with these influences, you get these influences out that aggravate the sin nature. Remember, your child may still rebel. Why? Well, because your child has a relationship or lack of relationship with God, and how they respond to your training is a good indicator of their relationship to God. Does that make sense? They're not neutral in all this. And so their heart has an acclimation towards something. It's going to be drawn towards something, either towards sin or towards wanting to please their Father in Heaven. And so your job is to understand. Your job is to understand that the heart is not neutral. Your job is to begin to determine the state of your child's heart. And for some of you, this is going to be easy for the younger children that you have. However, for your older children that tend to get more sophisticated with the way they can deceive, the way they can sin, then your job becomes a little bit more difficult, doesn't it? Understand that an unregenerate heart is bent towards idolatry. And you keep in mind, when the Bible talks about idols, it's not talking about these little statues that you bow down to. When the Bible describes idols, it talks about things such as the fear of man, evil desires, lust, pride. And so the idols would include any conformity to the world and being earthly-minded. You might think of it as setting their affections on things below. So as a parent, what you need to learn to do is try to understand what's motivating your child, what desires does your child have, what do they want, and what governs what they want. What are their goals? Are their goals biblically aligned? Have they set down and taken an account of their life? What is it that God has gifted them with, and then how can they use those for His glory? I think as you start thinking through this, this becomes a little bit more exciting within your home when you start looking at the gifts of your children and start help fostering those and how you can encourage them to expand them and utilize them for the glory of God. So when your children interact with you as a parent or with the siblings or others that they're around, what they're doing is they're giving you the signs of where their allegiance is, right? And within those interactions, they're either revealing to you that they know, love, and serve Jehovah, or they're responding as children of foolishness and unbelief who do not know God and serve Him. And so I want you to keep all of this in mind because the unbiblical methods are not going to deal with any of that. They're going to mask the problem. They're not going to deal with them, okay? And so this evening, I want to spend some time looking at biblical and unbiblical means of disciplining. And I want to give an example from Tripp's book on this. And some of you are going to think, well, that's ridiculous. That never happened. But I just want you to look at it and the principles that underlie this extreme example. Tripp gives this example. He says, a little girl caught my eye. He was in the airport. She was a beautiful child. Every detail of her clothing and grooming spoke of wealth. She and her mother, like me, were waiting for a flight. This child's beauty was external, though, for she was a demanding and petulant little child. Her mother tried to settle her. The child was implacable. Then it happened. Exasperated, her mother finally turned to her and said, I'm sick of you. I hate you. Go away. Find someone else to yell at. I don't want you. I can't stand you. Get out of my sight. This is the mother speaking to the child. And with that, she picked up her things and she moves away from the daughter. Now they're in an airport, right? You get the scene, right? The little girl might have been able to hold out against this powerful play in normal circumstances, according to Tripp, but here in a strange airport, she felt frightened. The little girl's now scared, right? She moved toward her mom and said, I'm sorry, mom. I love you, mom. The mom responds, go away. I don't know you. I'm sorry, mom, this time in desperation. The mom responds, go away. I hate you. And at that point, Tripp says his flight, he was called to get on board, and he doesn't really know what ultimately happened. As he was getting on the plane, he looked back, and they're still there arguing. Now, some of you are sitting there saying, well, that sounds like a pretty extreme situation. And for your family, maybe this wouldn't happen in public, but maybe something close to this happens within your home. Does that describe what happens in your home? Now, maybe you're a little bit more sophisticated in such a way that you would never say, I mean, you would never say it, I hate you. but maybe some of the methods found in here may be a little too close to home. Some might argue from one perspective that the mother was successful because the mother confronted an unreasonable and demanding child and she was able within minutes to change that child's behavior. However, I would argue she was able to change the child's behavior, but I think at a huge cost. In other words, the cure is worse than the disease. Let's think about that scenario for a moment. What leads to such public displays of outbursts of wrath by a child that then causes the mom an exasperation? And we don't know the state of the mom, whether she's a believer or not, but that's not really the point. What do you think this leads to? When you have that level of disobedience in public, what is definitely not going on? Right. Yeah, it's got to be worse, but there's obviously no discipline. Now when I say there's no discipline, I'm saying there's no biblical discipline. The mama has a way to get her child's attention, right? But it's threatening to abandon her, right? So what I want to challenge us on tonight, this evening, this short time that we're going to think through this, are your methods, I mean, in what way is the mom not addressing the root of the problem? What is the root of the problem with this little girl? It's rebellion, right? There's definitely some anger issues with the little girl. She's definitely selfish. she's prideful, she's used to getting her way, it's obvious no one's really spent that time with her. What I would say is that she is the result of a bunch of unbiblical parenting within the home. I would encourage some of you guys to consider when you're struggling with your child in public, if you do, if you struggle with your child in public, is that because you're not disciplining at home, or as we go through some of these examples tonight, you're biblically disciplining them in the home, and then you don't know what to do with them when you get out in public, right? Okay, so let's continue to dig a little bit deeper on this. Next week we're going to deal with more of the biblical methods, but I want to lay out a foundation of what it shouldn't look like so that we can better understand what it should look like next week. Okay? And my point here is that we cannot be indifferent to the methodologies of any discipline. Biblically speaking, the method is just as important as the objectives. God's not only concerned with the what we do, but how we do it. Okay? You definitely can get your child to conform. You definitely can get your child to behave. But if you use results similar to this mother, what do you think is going to happen when this girl is now 15? Right? Because you may be able to control this attitude with these types of tactics when they're young, but when they get older and they think they become more self-reliant, more bold in their rebellion, then it really gets difficult. And so our desire is to start spending some time looking at these unbiblical approaches to make sure you're not adopting them in your home. They're not being adopted in my home as well. And what we need to understand is that when we begin to bring biblical methods into our home, first and foremost, we bring glory to God. And so, I'm just curious before we get into this, and I'm not looking for a show of hands, I just want you to consider, I want you to think through it. How many of you start with God's Word to determine if your methods are in alignment with His Scriptures? Now go back and think about it. You say, I don't know why you keep reading Ephesians 6 and Deuteronomy 6, because embedded in Ephesians 6 and embedded in Deuteronomy 6 is the method. which excludes all these other things that we're about to talk about. So let's talk about unbiblical methods. First understand that unbiblical methods come to us in many ways. They come to you through books, they come to you in magazines, conferences maybe some of you guys go to. And when I talk about conferences, I'm not necessarily saying what is being taught is wrong. But let's be honest, we've been dealing with this topic now for what, four or five weeks? And we didn't even scratch the surface yet. You can't go sit and listen to a 50-minute talk on child discipline and think you got it. You're getting foundational principles at best, but very little application of how to apply those principles. So be careful with that in the way that you receive methods of training your children. You might get some advice from friends, right? You might get methods from your parents. Maybe you sat under them. What about your church? You guys dialogue quite a bit. You're listening, you're sitting, listening to biblical training thought. I want you to start taking inventory. Is what we're teaching here biblical? It's up to you to go study the Word of God, right? But I think probably most of us, most of you here, when it comes to child training, most of you probably, if you're not diligent in the word, you're probably going back to familiar patterns in the way that you were raised. A lot of times that's what happens. So if your mom or father shouted at you, you might be prone to think, well, I turned out all right, I'm gonna do a little shouting in here. Be careful of bringing familiar patterns into your home. you've got to make sure you're bringing the scriptures into your home, okay? And the thing I want you to understand is that the one thing that all these faulty methods have is that they're derived from the human mind, and the human mind then becomes the standard, not God's Word. And so when we look at ourselves and we say, well, I didn't turn out so bad, here's the problem with that. It just really depends on how you define in bad, right? If you think bad is relative to Dahmer's parents or something like that, okay, well, maybe we grant that one to you. Here's the problem. The standard is God's Word. And so if you find yourself struggling to keep your composure and to bring biblical, sound biblical instruction and training to your child in the discipline process, it's probably because you're too comfortable with methods that are unbiblical. So let's talk about this one. I didn't turn out so bad. Here's the problem. Many of you, when you say this, you're just not really thinking ahead to your methodology. I mean, if you're one of those who just gets mad, you yell. If you're one who says, I've had it up to here. Anybody guilty of saying that one? I've had it up to here. And then you threaten, you holler, you hit, you become frustrated, whatever it is you do. Understand that you've adopted a methodology. And the concern is, well, I don't want to be a permissive parent with undisciplined children. You know, I've heard my fathers tell me, my dad yelled at me, and he used to knock me around once in a while, and look how I turned out. Really? That's where we're going? We're going to start using you as the standard and how you turned out, right? But you hear this quite often, right? Just understand that you're not to accept, and I'm talking about you as adults, you're not just to accept everything you hear, but you're to verify everything against God's Word. And so what I would encourage you is to test your methods against God's Word. On the flip side, some of you have adopted maybe a, I didn't turn out so bad philosophy, and maybe you're a little bit more permissive than you need to be. Maybe your parents were easily manipulated and they caved in and the point here is that, well, we don't want to live in extremes, right? I'm not talking about being overbearing and unreasonable. acting out in anger and outbursts of frustration, right? And I'm also not saying, well, don't just be permissive and try to be your child's buddy either, right? There is a middle ground that the Scriptures will bring us to. All right, so let's go through some examples here. Some people have this, well, I'm going to go back to what I'm familiar with. I didn't turn out so bad mentality, and so I'm just going to continue to incorporate these. Now here's a method that some people use, and maybe you do it. You may not use this word, but maybe there's something very similar, and it's called bribery. Some adopt an unbiblical method that looks something like bribery. And let's be clear, the Bible doesn't say anywhere to encourage righteous behavior through personal gain. Some of you may have this idea that, well, I'll get my child to obey me, to clean their room, for example, by paying them. or just give them a toy. I'm going to reward them to be obedient. I've read where some parents even make contracts that spell out the commitments for your sons and daughters. But here's the problem, they're all superficial in their approaches. At the heart of bribing is an appeal to what? Self-interest. The child is not being taught to look out for the interests of others, and so in this scenario of bribery, the child learns nothing about being under God's authority, and that you're God's agent, and that they should just do what you ask them to do, because this is what God requires. Right? Isn't that the beauty of Ephesians 6? Children obey your parents. Why? In the Lord, why? Right? What's that? For this is right. You don't need any other reason than that. It's right to obey your parents. And as parents, you don't have to bring anything else to the table to persuade your children to obey. And when you're bringing something to the table to bribe them to do what is right, you are training them. But you need to be careful what you're training them to. The child's not looking out for the interests of others. And so the child is not learning biblical reasons for responsibility. So that's one. Some of you may adopt some form of bribery just to get your kids to obey. And I'm going to try to pull all this together at the end here. But just understand how that's not dealing with the heart of the child. You know, when we talk about the sinful nature of your children, it's not bribery that's going to break that. Understand that. Okay? Next. Actually, it's a cop-out if you're doing it. Right? It's easy for me, if I've got money in my pocket, to say, alright, if you'll clean your room, I'll give you ten bucks. That's not training in righteousness. That's not instructing in righteousness. That takes work. Give them some money to go make them do what I need them to do. That's easy. Next, behavior modification. Those who have brought into this idea of behavior modification, and this is the idea where you reward good behavior in some way and some people either ignore bad behavior or others may just punish bad behavior. Let me just say this, there's nothing wrong with praising and encouraging a child for what it's doing right, but we need to reject the idea that the child should be rewarded for just fulfilling normal responsibilities. I mean, how many of you as adults, and this is the problem with the guys that work for me, right? I got a lot of guys that work for me, and if I don't come by and tell them every day, I'm just so thankful you shut up on time. Right? Think about the generation, my generation and below me, that people are being incentivized just to get up and come to work. Think about how horrible a testimony that is for Christians. But it's the Christians that are setting the bad standard, or at least those who profess to be. Think about this reward mentality and what you're training and encouraging your child to do. We shouldn't be rewarding them just to get up each morning, brush their hair, brush their teeth, clean their room up, and come down and be ready for whatever it is you guys need them to be ready for each morning. If your child training revolves around your child getting something, let's say, whatever it is, what are your kids like? What do y'all like? Y'all like anything? Give me something. What do you like? Books. Well, that one, okay. Something else? Huh? Alright, so it's Legos. Let's go with that. I'm not sure about guns, but let's say Legos. Alright, so, you know, every time you behave, I'm going to get you a Lego set, right? Think about what's going on there. If you just ask your child to do something, and if he does it, he gets the Legos. If he doesn't, then he doesn't get the Legos. Then, you know, what is the child really responding to? What is he responding to at that moment? The reward, right? And what's not being dealt with? The heart. When you give a Lego set to your child for doing just what is expected, the heart is not being dealt with, right? And since the heart and behavior go hand-in-hand, then whatever modifies behavior, that's what's training the child. That's what's training the heart. And in this scheme, you're training the child to greed and to selfish interest. And you're appealing to the child's greed, sense of greed, to want something. You're appealing to their lust. Listen to this one example I read as I came across this. One family I know developed a very clever application of behaviorism. Each time their child responded to anything good in a good way, they would put the child's name on a piece of paper and put it in a jar. If the child brushed their teeth, helped with the dishes, cleaned their room, set the table, or did anything commendable, the name went in the jar. If the child did something wrong, the name came out of the jar. And at the end of the week, a name was drawn from the jar, and the winning child got some kind of present, right? And the children quickly learned the point of the game. Get your name in the jar as many times as you can, right? So how do you think it worked out? It worked out great, right? It taught the children a lot, didn't it? It taught them to be selfish. It taught them to only work for gain rather than learn to be obedient and learn to serve. It taught them to do things with an improper motive. It taught them how to be manipulators of the system. They learned that if mom wasn't around, it didn't really matter if you brushed your teeth or not because you weren't going to get your name in the jar. Think about all the things that kind of system teaches. Now maybe you're not guilty of the name-in-the-jar routine, but if you've got something similar to it, once again, it's unbiblical, and you are training the heart, but you've got to be asking yourself, what are you training the heart to with these systems that you have going on within your home? Next, how about emotionalism? Emotionalism can manifest itself in a lot of ways, and some of you probably are thinking of the obvious, you know, outbursts of wrath when the parent has had enough, right? I mean, we see that one a lot. But some use a different kind of emotional approach. It's just where you're just, it's more of a kind approach. And maybe you've heard it or even you've said it yourself when you say, you know, after they do something wrong, it really makes me feel bad when you talk like that to me. Right? Katie, I bet you don't hear that much, do you? They don't hear it much in my house either. You know, Katie, it hurts my feelings when you disobey me like you do. I mean, think about what you're doing. What is this? The problem with this approach is that it appeals to your emotional well-being. But that's not what the Scriptures have called you to. Another emotional appeal is to shame the child. For example, you try to correct the child's behavior by reminding them of what it will do to your reputation as the parent. In this scenario, the appeal is not only to obey because it honors God, but rather there's an emotional shaming by putting the parent's reputation at risk. Once again, that's not a biblical method, and it's not a biblical motive for training and instructing your child. It's an unbiblical motive, okay? In that example, what do you think you're training the child to do? I want you to think about how each one of these examples, every one of these examples we're going to go through, is training the heart of the child. The question is, what do you think it's training the heart to do? If I want my children to behave because I don't want them to ruin my reputation, what am I training them to do? pleasures of men, rather than being pleasures of God. That's not the right motivation at all. Other parents reject spanking a child because in their mind it's too cruel. You've met them, right? And they replace spanking with something else. Maybe they replace spanking with just putting the misbehaving child in a room by themselves for a period of time. And typically the point of the punishment of that is as long as they're there and they're set aside and no one is to have any contact with that child. Now why is this approach in and of itself unbiblical? Because you're not communicating with them. You're not instructing them. You're only depriving them in this scenario. A child who only experiences this kind of punishment is not learning to discern the issues of the heart. And really when you think about it, it's another cop-out method on the parent's part. And in this situation, the child is just being trained just not how to, just in this sense, how are they being trained to know and love God when you just say, go to your room, you're grounded for two weeks, and no one can have any interaction with you. And we're not going to even deal with you. Where's that method found, right, in the scriptures? Do you begin to see how easily influenced you might be in the training of your children? The problem with this approach is that the child is being trained to respond in fear of emotional separation, not a fear of God. Also, this approach does not draw the heart of the child any closer to the parent. What it actually does is it drives them away. Next, the next approach is more of a punitive type correction. In this approach, the parent uses the threat of punishment to control their children. And there's a lot of different forms of this approach, you know, from hitting to yelling, right? The approach here is that you're going to control the child through some negative experience. And let me just say this, I'm going to deal with the biblical use of the rod. Don't take what I'm about to tell you is against what the Bible says about the rod, okay? I'm trying to talk about these extremes here where this is all you're doing, right? Remember, I'm dealing with this issue of those who only impose negative correction without positive instruction, because we'll deal with this when we deal with the rod, but the rod doesn't impart knowledge. And so, I'm going to keep emphasizing the rod is appropriate, but never out of frustration, never out of uncontrolled rage. And also, I want you to make sure that your punishment is not just doing something against your child, but rather, you need to make sure your punishment is doing something for them. I mean, you think about grounding. Let's talk about that one again. Grounding is never corrective. It's always punitive. Grounding doesn't biblically address the issues of the heart that was reflected when a wrong behavior was manifest. Typically, in grounding, the character flaws are not being addressed. The child is not learning of the deceitfulness of their heart. They're just being pushed away. Within punishment, the child should always be taken back to Christ. And so if all you're doing is just sending them away, separating them, how are you drawing them to Christ in that scenario, in that situation? Let me ask this question, too. You ever think about why grounding is so universally popular with parents? It's because it's easy. Right? It doesn't require any interaction on the parent's part. It doesn't require the parent to deal with the issues of the heart. It doesn't require instruction on the part of the parent. You don't have to go to God's Word and instruct them. It doesn't cause you to have to interact with your child, does it? What it does is it actually encourages biblical laziness on your part. In the words of one, grounding is quick, incisive, simple. You are grounded for a month, the parent says, go to your room, right? And so, in my opinion, this is what we as parents, who don't have anything more constructive to do, that's what we do. Typically, when you ground your child, it's because you feel frustrated, you realize something is wrong, something has to be done, right? Something's got to be done. And really, that's just the best you can come up with. Now, when you think about it, what's the difference between grounding and a criminal who's been put under house arrest? Some of us sit there and think that's incredible that they would just put somebody under house arrest. What good does it do? I would ask the same question. When we ground our children in and of itself without any positive instruction whatsoever, what good does it do? It definitely punished the child. I'll give you that. It just doesn't correct anything. Next, some of you may be guilty of erratic discipline. And the reason why this is unbiblical is that there's just no consistency in the discipline, in the disciplining process. The parent, depending on the mood or how tired they are, they may use all or some of these approaches depending on, you know, what they feel like. Early in the morning, you might get something good out of them, but as the day wanes on and as you get tired and more, you know, as you just wore out, right, then you become inconsistent and you start going to some of these shortcut, what I'm gonna call some of these unbiblical methods. And once again, I'm calling them unbiblical because they're not dealing with the heart. Can we agree on that? If this is all you do, the type of things we've dealt with so far, you really haven't dealt with the heart of the problem in that approach. You hear about the parents who's tried this method or maybe you hear about a parent that tries another method and you think, well those kids are so well behaved, I might try one of these methods. It seems to be working out. The issue here is not that these methods don't impact a change. I think a lot of the methods do impact a change. They're just not effective long-term, right? They're not biblical. Maybe someone goes to one of these Bible conferences and gets a 50-minute sermonette on a child discipline and you incorporate someone else's convictions without really even studying the totality of the Scriptures on the subject. I see that a lot. or you know someone who's very opinionated, right? You know how these parents are. They've got, you know, they think they've got it figured out. They have all these good ideas. Maybe they're biblically illiterate, but you take on their convictions and you let their convictions be sufficient enough. You know, when you think about some of these parents' convictions who are very opinionated, they think they've got it all figured out, but make sure you understand what their position is and make sure their position is not just raising up little Pharisees in their homes. This is why you gotta be careful about taking on someone else's convictions. You gotta make sure you're going back to the Word of God and going back to the source of truth. Let me just give you a little advice on a side note. Be leery of any person who's overly critical or overly judgmental about everyone else's children, but completely blind to the sins of their own. But let's go back to this erratic discipline. In this erratic approach, if you find that you're jumping from method to method or from one method to another, just understanding you're not bringing clarity to your children, you're not bringing healthy instruction to your children, you're bringing confusion. Your child will never know what to expect in a home like this. They will never be sure in what systems are about to be played out right now if you're erratic in your disciplining process. There's other unbiblical approaches we could discuss, but these are just some of the obvious ones that come to mind. There may be some other things, and like I said, you may not be guilty of the specific things we just talked about, but maybe you're guilty within your home of some of the principles. You've brought something unbiblical into your home, and it's not going to deal with the heart of the issue. So the one-on-one type, your unique situation within your home, you got questions, just sit down. I'll be happy to sit down with you guys, and let's just start looking, what does the Bible have to say about in this situation, in this scenario, right? So let me just leave you some thoughts tonight. When you incorporate unbiblical methods, let me just ask you, where do they take you? When you incorporate unbiblical methods, where do they take you? What kind of fruit do they bear? And let me just get you to understand, they will bear fruit. Just understand, when you bring unbiblical methods into your home, they all lead to the same place, and the place they take you is superficial in nature. They don't deal with the heart of the issues. The things we've been talking about don't shepherd the heart of your child. In almost everything we've covered this evening, you can impact the behavior of your child, but I hope you're beginning to see that none of these really address the heart of your child. Biblical discipline, rather, addresses the behavior through addressing the heart. If you address the heart biblically, you will positively impact behaviors. but you're going to be impacting them with right motives. Alright, let's go through an example. Y'all seem to like these, I like them. Let's say you've got a child in your home, a child yelling at another child, right? So you hear a child upstairs and they're yelling at one another, and then you yell out across the house, stop that yelling! What's the problem with this? Right? Yeah. Can you say that louder? What's the problem with that? First of all, I think it's hypocritical, right? You know, what is the issue when we want our kids to be quiet and gentle, right, all the things, and then there's just complete, just, you know, it's just loud. And I'm not talking about people that naturally have a loud voice. I'm just talking about, you know, you ain't got anything else to do other than scream out. Just be quiet, right? We understand that. First, I think it's hypocritical. Number two, I think the response ignores the issue of the heart and only deals with the outward experience. Your job is to figure out what's behind the yelling. And typically, what you'll find is that there's either anger, there's bitterness that's causing that child to yell at another child within the home. And if you only constrain the behavior here, then you're missing an opportunity to deal with the heart. Next, like I said, when I fall into this trap myself, I just have to be reminded that it's just superficial parenting. Superficial parenting just never dresses the heart. Superficial parenting only produces superficial children who never are instructed as to why they are sinning. And if you don't provide this kind of training, they're going to go through the rest of their life not really knowing how to deal with sin. And also, if it's not dealt with biblically, then you never really lead your child to the cross, do you? If you deal with the heart of the child at that moment, take time. And I know it's difficult when you've got a thousand things going on. But that's a great opportunity to once again bring the gospel to bear into their lives, right? Our job should be trying to lead them back to the cross and help them understand what Christ actually accomplished there. Remember, the gospel is not about doing new things in your home. It's about being a new creature. And so when you scream out like that, when you bring one of these bribery... What are some of the other biblical methods we covered? Emotionalism, shaming your child. None of those things have the power to break the sinful nature of your child. Do you understand that? Do you understand why this is so important? Remember, the gospel speaks to fallen people who are in need of a new heart. And in the words of one, God does a heart transplant, not just plastic surgery. And these superficial type approaches, they're really just doing plastic surgery on your child. And what you need is the great physician to come in and transplant the old heart out and give them a new one. God accepts those who cry out for mercy. And so you need to help your child understand that they are a sinner before God and that they need to learn to cry out for mercy. You need to help your child understand that they need mercy. Alright, that's one example. Let me give you another example. Imagine your child refuses to do his work in your home school. Anybody ever have any problems with that? Well, let's look at some of these unbiblical approaches. Let's say you have a child that refuses to do his work, right? And it's work that you would expect them to be able to handle. You say, okay, I need you to do these math problems or do this reading exercise or whatever it is you got them to do. And they refuse to do it. Well, what happens when you bribe them? You could bribe them, right? And you could probably get a result out of them. You do your work all week. Erin? I'll get you ice cream, right? So that's the bribery approach, and you know, well, I don't know, I've never tried it. Yeah, he hadn't had ice cream in a long time. What about the emotional approach? Please do your work, Aaron. I just get so upset when you don't. It makes me feel like crying. I just wonder where I went wrong, Aaron. I've invested a lot of time in your education, and you make me feel like I've wasted my time. So what does that really accomplish? How about the punitive approach? You say, well, since you didn't do your work, then you know what? You don't get to do something that you like to do, right? If you fail again tomorrow, then I'm going to take something else away from you for two weeks. You see, the problem with that approach is not instructing him in righteousness. It's not interacting with him. It's easy to do this, right? It's easy to take things away from him. But it takes work to instruct him in righteousness. How about the behavior modification approach, where every day you do work, I'll do something positive for you. Remember the put the paper in the jar example, right? Or maybe I sit there and say, you know what, I didn't turn out so bad. You know, because I didn't always do my work. And I turned out all right. I mean, I didn't always do my work and my parents smacked me upside the head. And so maybe if I smack him upside the head, maybe, you know, You see the problems with all these different approaches, the way we rationalize things. Each approach may get the child to do the work, but none of these approaches has the power of the gospel to change the heart, which leads to sinful behavior. The above approaches don't lead the child to the gospel, and character development is ignored. The emphasis is getting the homework done. Children are not being trained to make ethical choices through these other approaches. They're not taught how to make choices that would bring glory to God because they're responsible to God. And what they're learning is to jump through hoops and to avoid your immediate displeasure. And like I said, the older your children get, the more sophisticated they are in learning how to jump through your hoops just to get you off their back. But remember, that's not training in righteousness. Another thing this does is it begins to produce distance between the parent and the child. Children start seeing through the manipulation. Your child will become to resent any attempts that you have to manipulate their behavior, and they're going to start playing games with you to just get you off their back. And what's not happening, there's no real communication between the child and the parent. And what you begin to see is that the older they get, the more independent they become, and they become more resistant, more rebellious. And once again, rebellion can manifest itself in a lot of ways, but the rebellion can manifest itself through manipulation and deceit. I want to leave you with this quote. And when the experts tell you, you must find what works with each child, what they're teaching you, and what they're saying is you must find the idols of the heart that will motivate your child to do what you want them to do. Once again, we're not here to promote the idols of their heart. We're to bring them to the law of God and use that to drive them to Christ where they would cry out for mercy. Okay? And Lord willing, what we're gonna do next week is we'll start tackling and start dealing with some more of the biblical methods of how we begin to communicate with our children, start bringing the Word to bear within their lives. But I wanted to deal this evening with you about some of these unbiblical methods. And like I said, you may can come up with some other ones that we haven't thought of. But just make sure those are not, some of the things, the ideas that we've talked about, they're not prevalent within your home. And if you need to repent over these issues and start working through this in your own home, and I think there's probably a lot of work in every one of our homes in this area, We need to start dealing and going after the heart of our children and try to start or we need to begin to abandon these other approaches that we've talked about this evening.