He will turn me to Ephesians 6. Ephesians 6. Children obey your parents and the Lord for this is right. Honor your father and mother which is the first commandment with a promise that it may be well with you that you may live long on the earth. And you fathers do not provoke your children to wrath but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord. So we're going to continue our study of shepherding the hearts of our children. If you recall in the fifth commandment we saw children are supposed to honor their father and mother. And so one of the things that teaches us is that the home is the place where God intends for children to be trained. And so let me just review real quickly what we've been covering up to this point in our study. The bulk of this is going to be grounded in the Scriptures. It's going to be grounded in the Word of God. So we have to challenge ourselves. And I want you to think about this. We started this, at least we've had two teachings so far. Have any changes taken place in your household? Or is it just business as usual? Because you've got to ask yourself and challenge yourself, how well do you know the Scriptures? Like, if you're being introduced to just brand new concepts, and what you did is, well, this is how my parents raised and trained me, and so I'm just going to bring that into my household, you might be missing out on the means of grace that God would use to shepherd the hearts of your children. So how well do you know the Scriptures? How often do you refer to the Scriptures throughout the normal conversation with your children? And, you know, you could say this, husbands, it doesn't just apply to your children, but how much do you use the Scriptures in just conversation with your wife? This doesn't just apply to us and children. It deals with the hearts of sinners and how the Word of God is used to soften those hearts. So how adept are you at teaching and relating scriptures to your children in your everyday life? How effectively do you use the scriptures to reprove, in other words, convict your children of their sins? Any of y'all ever read the scriptures? Any of y'all ever heard a good sermon? and you just were convicted at, I had no idea I was sinning that much against the Holy God. See, if that works with you, you don't think it will work with your children? If God uses his word to bring conviction in your life, don't you think the same word that convicts you will not convict them? Here's another one. Do you reprove in such a way that causes your children to revere God's word or to hate it? Think about that. Have y'all ever heard those raving pastors who just stand and scream from the pulpit at their congregation? They do it to the point where they're sweating and they're even frothing at the mouth towards the end of drool run. I mean, you've seen guys like that? How effective was that for you? Did that kind of preaching help you love God more? Love His Word more? Or did it cause you to just have... If that's what Christianity is, I don't want anything of it. Well, if that's the way you train your children, right? The only time your children get some discipline out of you is when they push the button to your last nerve, so to speak, and you just froth at the mouth that's going off on them. You're causing them to disdain the Word of God and hate it. How consistently do you use the Bible when you correct them? Do you use it at all? And if not, have you started changing your patterns in your home? Has this series started causing you to actually sit down with your spouse and say, you know, he's right. The Word of God's been absent. Maybe the rod's been absent. And we're going to talk today about unbiblical methods that parents use to discipline their children. We'll deal with that and get it out of the way so we can think about biblical things. But if you're not using it consistently with them, did that cause you to go back to your spouse and say we need a new game plan here. We need a new battle strategy. We're dealing with a heart that is dead and it sends in heart trespasses. If we only keep working on the externals of the child and never address the heart, we're going to turn a rebel out in the culture. Here's another one. How do you use the Bible to train your children in righteousness to help them do better? In other words, the Word of God tells them why they're sinning. It's not just telling them that they sinned, it tells them why they sinned. And they need to understand that because that's preparing the heart of that child for the grace and forgiveness of God. See, it's not simply, it's just not possible to bring up your children, as Paul tells us to do here, in the fear and admonition of the Lord, without continuous use of God's Word. Remember Proverbs 29, 15, we looked at. It's the rod and reproof that give wisdom. And so we need to understand, as parents, it's our job to know and use the Scriptures as God intended. I mean, think about this. God gives you the sword and the spear. He gives you His word so that you might know how to use it to deal with the heart of your child. And think about how arrogant, prideful, how insulting it would be to God for you to say, no thanks, I just read this book over here that's got a much better way of training children. I mean, think about the insult to God who is infinitely wise. In fact, He created your children. He knows best how to raise and train that child. And over the 30 years that I've been walking as a Christian, I've been introduced, at least in the 30 years, to multiple cycles of ridiculous child training methods that come, not in just the secular world, but it bombards the Christian. And so, none of that's worked. We can at least agree on that. You may not be convinced this is going to work, but we can at least say that hasn't been worked. But I think we need to go back to God's word. We need to understand that it's our job as parents to know and use the scriptures as God intended. Next, we talked about biblical authority. We talked about the fact that our culture doesn't like authority. Not only does our culture not want to submit to authority, it doesn't even want to exercise authority. You have a bunch of pastors in a lot of churches who don't understand their authoritative position to deal with sin. within their church, and so they abandon their flock, and if that's the example you have, then guess what happens? You go and you abandon your child and they're sinned. We have been called to submit to authority, but we've also been called to be the authority that God has put us in our respective places. The Word of God calls us to live under authority. God is our authority and God as our authority has vested authority in the different institutions he established, the church, the state, the family. And each institution has been delegated responsibilities. And one of the greatest responsibilities that He has given to us as families is to train our children. You must see that. You must see that's your job. You must see that that's your role. That's the authoritative position that God has placed you in. Because if you don't start there, it doesn't matter what else I say. None of the rest of it will matter. We also learn that God has given us His Word, which is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness. And that's not just in the church. That helps you understand the use of the Word of God for your children. God intends for you and me to instruct our children, train our children with this Word. Now think about how the Word of God convicts you again. Think about that analogy. It convicts you and it will convict them. And so if you desire to see your child saved, if you desire to see your child sanctified, it's not going to happen separate from the Word of God. And then we looked at the nature of parenting. I asked you, before you walked in here, if I told you, what's the definition of parent? What's your role? What would be the best word to describe it? Someone would say, well, provider. Nurturer. Somebody would come in here and say, well, friend. Counselor. There's all kind of odd things we put in our mind about what a parent must be. But I would say the best word to describe the duty of a parent is that of a shepherd. A shepherd does feed. A shepherd does provide. It does nurture. But the shepherd also leads. Leads to what? Green pastures. You see, you need to be leading your child's heart to something great, grand, glorious. Jesus. You think about the splendor and the beauty of Christ. Listen, if you're not convinced that Christ is glorious, you're not going to lead him there. So first, you must be convicted in your own heart and mind that he is worthy of all. And once you've come to that place, why wouldn't you lead and guide him there? And so as a shepherd, we must learn the skills of shepherding the hearts of our children. And so when it comes to disciplining our children, the point of discipline is always this, don't forget this. You're always trying to prepare the heart of that child to receive the grace and forgiveness of God. Because ultimately that's who they're sinning against. And so our approach should be pointing them to Christ always, not hating Jesus. The goal should be to point them to the reality. You know what? You ultimately, child, will submit and confess Jesus as Lord. We need to teach you to do it now. We're going to look this afternoon at a passage where Jesus is there giving a parable about, you know, if someone takes you to the magistrate, try to deal with them and settle it up there before you get to the judge. Don't wait for the judge. Why? What is he talking about? Well, he's telling you that once you stand before the judge, a true just judge, there is no mercy there. There's only that application of justly applying the law that's set before him. Today's the day for our children to understand that they must get things right with this judge and receive His mercy today through the provision that was in Christ Jesus. Because when they stand before Him as judge, there is no mercy there. It's just the application of God's law and His just condemnation of guilty sinners. Turn to Hebrews 12. This is an important passage here. You're probably familiar with it, even before we looked at it last week. But now, notice in verse 10, this is the section that God chastises, He disciplines those that are His children. And then He says in verse 10, for they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them. But He ain't talking about God for our profit. Why? Why does God discipline his children, that we might be partakers of his holiness. And then he goes on to say, no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, painful nevertheless. Afterwards, that painful process, that disciplining process from our Heavenly Father yields something, it produces something. What? The peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. The point of God's disciplining His chastising hand is to produce something in us. Fruit. What kind of fruit? The fruit of righteousness. And that righteousness, that fruit brings peace. And this means there's no place for you and me as parents to have personal rage or vindictiveness when it comes to disciplining our children. James tells us our anger does not produce the righteousness of God. Consider other authorities you might have to sit under. Elders, government, boss. Let me ask you this. If they came to you in personal raw rage or vindictiveness, how would that affect you? Would it produce the peaceable fruits of righteousness in your life? If an elder came, rebuked you for sin, but he did it out of revenge, vindictiveness, would that produce righteousness in you? Well, it's not going to do it with our children either. Our children have not been given to us so that we might vent out our frustrations, that we might vent out our vindictiveness upon them. Now let me just say this, your anger and your venting and your vindictiveness will make a change in the child. But it will only be temporary. And it will not point them to Christ, but it will do the very opposite thing that Paul's warning you of. It will provoke them to wrath. And that's not our job. Our job as parents is not to provoke them to wrath. Furthermore, it will teach your child to fear men and not Reverend Scott. The last time we were here we talked about influences that impact your child. We looked at the fact that they have a sinful heart. They're born in sins and trespasses. But there are things that you can do that will aggravate that sin nature. Factors that will influence your children are friends. Don't underestimate friends. Paul says, don't be deceived, evil company corrupts good habits. We need to make sure that friendships within our children are directed toward the pursuit of holiness, not silliness, not the promotion of worldliness, not the promotion of rebellion. You have a child that is in your child's life, and they're promoting them, they're encouraging them to rebel against your authority, or teasing them with the worldliness, the things that will pull their hearts and affection away from Christ. You'd be in your rights to cut that off. Now, let me just say this. I'm not saying your children can't have friends. But the kind of friends that they have matter. And either the friends they have are in alignment because of the families they're with, with what you're doing, in terms of shepherding that heart, or they're in opposition pulling them away. There are no neutral friends. They're either strengthening your relationship with Christ, or they're not. Also, we need to train our children to be that kind of friend. See, I don't want my kids to be the kind of friends that godly parents would say, I don't want your influence on my children. They're always pulling my child's heart away from Christ. Those friends are kind of rare, but that's why they're precious. And pray that God would bring you such friends. How about entertainment? We tend to think entertainment's neutral, but it's not. A lot of royalty is within a lot of the entertainment that will pull their hearts away from God, so be careful. Also, be careful of what we call Christian entertainment. Because much of what Christian entertainment is, is cloaked in worldliness. It just has a Christian vernacular. And it presents God as weak and permissive. And so what does that do? Why does that matter? Well, it produces an idol in your child's mind. Oh yeah, that God's a lot nicer and a lot more permissive than the one my pastor talks about. Because it's an idol. We don't want to make our, listen, our children don't need help being little idol makers. So let's not aggravate that within them by bringing them Christian entertainment that makes a mockery of who Christ is. Other things that will influence your children is your family structure, your family values. The things you as fathers and mothers value are going to impact your children. If you value the spiritual disciplines, your children will begin to pick up on that. But here's another one. If you look for ways to miss church, not read the Bible, not pray, that will impact your children. If you ever just study out church history, how is it that such a few number of people in the Reformation made such an impact on a continent, a country? You read about the Scottish covenants. You read about the Puritans there, the English Puritans, the English Reformed Baptists. You read about these different groups, these pockets of people who had a huge impact, not just in their church, but in their culture. And even their children and their children's children did. They took these spiritual disciplines seriously. Listen, we're not talking about people who had a long day and so they didn't prepare themselves to worship God on the Lord's day. We're talking about people that they went to worship, they might not make it home. But yet they still went. Why? Because it was important to them and it became important to their children. Our lives must be, as parents, organized around knowing and loving the true God. Then that's going to have an impact on your children. If the father has a low view of the things of God, the mother has a low view of the things of God, it's going to impact that child. But think about this. If your child sees a humble father or a humble mother who loves Christ with all of his heart, if they see a humble father loving his wife as Christ loved the church, It's going to have a huge impact on that child. The examples of that would be limitless. But the question is this. When you look at the values within your home, the non-negotiables, you're not going to compromise. These are things we're going to do, right? Because we now are bringing everything under the dominion of Christ. That will have an impact on that child. One writer put it this way, see to it that no one takes you captive through the hollow and deceptive philosophies which depends on human traditions and basic principles of the world rather than Christ. He goes on to say, the question you must ask is this, are the values of your home based on human traditions, the basic principles of the world, or on Christ? Another one that will impact your child is conflict resolution. That won't have a great impact on your child. So how do you resolve conflicts within the home? Through outbursts of wrath? Passive aggressiveness? Ignoring the problem? Or do you try to seek to resolve these things biblically? So if you see your child ever storming out slamming a door, where do they learn that? Right? Mom, you ever see a child smart back talking to the husband, the father? Where'd they learn that level of disrespect? There again, that heart doesn't have to be trained to do that. But if you're doing that, you're teaching that child it's okay to rebel against authority. That has a huge impact on your child. All right. This morning I want to pick up our child's relationship to God. Let's say You and I do everything we've taught. We've purged out all these influences on them that pull their hearts away from Christ. You have the ideal home. Right? Is that enough? What if you do everything correct but yet your child still rebels? So we need to make sure that the influences in your child's life or within your home are God because God commands you and this will bring honor to God. But understand that your child's response to these influences is really a response to God. So turn to Proverbs 9. Proverbs 9, I believe verse 7. He who corrects a scoffer gets shame for himself. He who rebukes a wicked man only harms himself. Do not correct a scoffer, lest he hate you. Rebuke a wise man, and he will love you. Give instruction to a wise man, and he will still be wiser. Teach a just man, and he will increase in learning. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. And so this proverb contrasts the response of a mocker and a wise man to rebuke and instruction. But verse 10 is so instructive to us. Notice, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. This helps us understand how a child will respond either as a mocker or as a wise person. You see, it's always the fear of God that makes one wise. And it's this wisdom that determines how a person, a child for example, will respond to correction. And just remember this, since we're created in the image of God, we all have a disposition to worship. The question is, who does your child worship? Does he worship the true God or idols that he's erected in his mind? And keep in mind, your child's never neutral in this regard. They're either obeying God's truth or they're suppressing it. So here's the question, how do you know? To answer this question, you've got to know whether your child is serving and wanting to know God better So don't be deceived simply by the fact that they clean up well. Right? Are they actively pursuing a relationship with God and seeking to serve Him? How does your child respond to instruction and reproof? Do they disobey? That's certainly an indication. But let's say you have a child that obeys but they roll their eyes and grumble and complain the entire time. Right? You see, they may do what you say because maybe you're bigger than they are. But that's not the same of doing it because there's fear of God in their life. They're not responding to the wisdom that God has imparted to you. And so my point here is that some of you may be deceived into thinking it's okay, everything's okay with your child because you can get them to obey you. But we need to start discerning why they're obeying. Now since we know that the heart is not neutral, our job is to begin to determine the state of that child's heart. For those of you who are young children, pretty easy. Right? They don't lie well. It's written all over their face when they lie. You can see it. But what happens is if you don't deal with that, the older they get, they become more sophisticated in their deception. And it makes it a little bit more challenging for us to understand when they're deceiving us. I understand that an unregenerate heart is bent towards idolatry. And so keep in mind when the Bible talks about idols, it's not just these little statues that you bow down to. The Bible describes idols as such thing as the fear of man, evil desires, lust, pride, covetousness. You see a child coveting what someone else wants and they're beginning to fight and argue over these things. That's idolatry, according to Paul in Colossians. You see, the idols would also include things like conforming to the world, being earthly minded, setting affections on things below. And so as parents, we need to learn the skill of, well, understand what motivates your child. What desires does your child have? That means you're talking to them, you're communicating with them. Or what do they want and what governs what they want? What goals do they have? What are the exceptions Or, I'm sorry, the expectations that rule that heart. What are they like, here's a good one, what are they like when you're not around? I mean, we've seen them come through here. They're little Eddie Haskells. Remember Eddie Haskell? Always nice in front of Mr. and Miss Cleaver. But the moment they're away, he's always tempting, what's his name, Beaver and Wally, to get into trouble, right? You don't want little Eddie Haskell as a child. That's a hypocrite and a deceiver, okay? So when your children interact with you, when your children interact with their siblings, what they're doing is they're revealing their allegiance, who they're committed to. And with those interactions, they're either revealing to you how they know, love, and serve Jehovah, or they're responding as a child with foolishness and unbelief who don't know God, and they don't care to serve Him. And so, the point of all this is as a parent, You're not just here to make sure they have good influences. Although God has definitely commanded us to do that. You know what? You can have a child with a wicked heart even though you take all the R-rated movies out and you take all the... I mean you could just shut them in a room and cut off all influence and still cultivate a wicked heart. Okay? They're either worshiping God And we need to make sure our children understand they are always interacting with the living God. They're either worshiping and serving Him in terms of rebellion, Are they worshiping and trying to serve Him, understanding that relationship with their God? Or are they trying to coast throughout life without any kind of relationship with God? So your job is always to assess where your child is, where his heart is at any point, and begin to take the Word of God and point them in the right direction. Help them understand why it would be unacceptable to just do things. I mean, wouldn't you agree that the Pharisees cleaned up pretty well? But inwardly, their heart was dead. And so dead that these cleaned up, nice, well-respected men in the community were preventing Christ and His kingdom from being expanded. They were trying to, right? Help them understand why they're like this. So that they might know who they can go to to get help. You see, we need to understand that our children are worshipers. Even if he's a fool who says in his heart there is no God, he doesn't cease to be a worshipper. He just simply worships something that's not God, his Creator. Our task is then to shepherd that child as creatures who worship and point them to the One alone who is worthy to be worshipped. See, this is why it matters about what you do with your time, who you worship. This attitude of a low view of God and His church and His bride, His body. When you have such low views, you're teaching that child that the worship of God really doesn't matter. And if you believe that the worship of God doesn't matter, then you are an idolater. Because it does matter to Him. So we need to do more than just provide a constructive place to live. The role of the parent is to shepherd that child's heart. Remember we learned last week in Proverbs 4.23, keep your heart with all diligence. Why? For out of it are the issues of life. As a parent, you can not only be concerned with the external influences in your home. You've got to learn to shepherd the heart. And so that's going to require you and me to stay in the presence of God in prayer for those children. Have the ability to bring God's Word to bear in their lives. And so this is why it's so important. Get this please. This is why it's important for you and me to know how to take God's Word and minister it to ourselves. If you can't minister the Word of God to yourself, how are you going to do it with a child? If you're struggling with how to minister to your children, Then I bet you're struggling with how to minister the word of God to yourself. And you've been negligent in doing it. Now if you've been here for any length of time, you know how to do it. The question is, are you doing it? And if you're not, you're not possessing the skills. It'd be like, yeah, I've seen some videos on how to weld. It would be pretty bad the first time I go out there and actually start doing it. I haven't gained the skills of welding. I know that's a simplistic example, but you get the point. I can't say I know how to shepherd the heart of a child when all I do is hear, but I don't do. I don't shepherd my own heart. I don't even leave my own heart to stoke the flames of love and keep my love towards Christ hot and warm. But yet again, I'm going to try to discipline my child and present the fear of God and reverence of God to that child. Seriously, if you're not able to minister to the child, go ask for help. If you're not able to minister the Word of God to yourself, ask for help. So let me ask you this. If you're struggling with your own sin, what do you do? I'll give you an example. You struggle with anger. For example, do you take the Word of God and minister it to yourself? Do you go to God in prayer, confessing and asking for His help? Do you go to God with the scriptures and apply it to yourself? I'm sinning at this scripture. I'm breaking your law here. I'm sinning against you. I'm confessing it. I'm no longer making excuses for it. I need your grace and mercy. I need the forgiveness of sins. That will teach a child so much. You see, we can't train what we don't know. And you need to see the soul of that child as a battlefield. Right? You're not at war with them, you're at war for them. And the thing I want you to understand in the verse 1, parents engage in hand-to-hand combat with the world's smallest battlefield, the child's heart. Think through what the Word of God has to say about the spiritual nature of this warfare. The only offensive weapon that you have is the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. So what you want to do is, yes, you want to provide a stable, calm environment. No doubt about it. You want a stable home structure, one that doesn't aggravate the sin nature of your child. You want quality relationships that reflect the grace of God. You want to have a home where punishment is equitable to the disobedience that's there. You want to be able to control the things that influence your children. But understand, that's not the end all. Your child will only respond to these positive influences based on the nature of their heart. And so keep in mind, the heart of your child determines how he responds. And so never conclude that disobedience is just a lack of maturity. I think that's a big error we make as parents. Well, they're just immature, but they'll get out of lying and rebelling. They won't. Selfishness, for example. Your child won't share with anybody. Simple example, right? Your child won't share with anybody. That kind of selfishness is not outgrown. Rebellion against authority is not outgrown. So don't ever fall into this false idea of, it's just immaturity. That kind of sin and rebellion is always the result of the idolatry of their heart. I want to give you a biblical case study to think about. We all know the story of Joseph, right? And here's another encouragement for you. Maybe you went through that list of influences in your children and you're like, I failed this one, I failed this one, I failed this one, I failed this one. But you're not without hope. Let me just say this. Think of Joseph. His experience was far from ideal, right? His mother died when he was young. He was his father's favorite, which provoked envy in his brothers. His visions that God gave him infuriated his brothers to hatred. He was further alienated from his brothers because of a gift that his daddy gave him. He was then thrown into a pit. He was sold to slave traders. He was double-crossed by his master's wife. He was in prison. Then, while in prison, he was forsaken. I mean, here's a man you would think, I mean, if anybody was like from a humanistic standpoint should ever be bitter, cynical, resentful, and angry, I think Joseph would be the guy that you could use. But remember, if we're just a result of influences in our life, that's what we would expect. But what did we find with Joseph? We found a man who feared God and learned to serve Him despite all that. And when he had the chance to show retribution to his brothers, what did he do? He showed them mercy. How do you explain all that? How do you explain that level of forgiveness in this man? His attitude, his refusal to murmur and complain. Well, he was a recipient of God's grace. In the midst of all these difficult situations, Joseph manifested that he feared God. Joseph is a man who responded out of a living relationship with his God. And so my point of bringing this example to you is to encourage you. Don't despair. God's grace is truly greater than our sin. If you're here this morning and you realize your home is not an ideal place, biblically speaking, your home is not established on biblical principles, then what do you do? You repent. We're not here to tempt our children. God didn't put us here to tempt our children, but I would say this. Repent and don't lose hope. Because God can salvage your situation. For those who think you have all the right influences with your home, don't rest on that. Because you are still dependent upon the grace of God. You need to pray that He would give your children the grace to respond in wisdom and learn to fear and reverence His Word. So let's try to give an example. Let's say you have a deceitful child that sneaks around behind your back. This child lies, even when it's not even advantageous for them to lie. Children like this will end up stealing. So how do you interpret what's going on with this child? He's lying, stealing. He does deceitful things around your back. Some will say that's immaturity. But what leads to this kind of sinful behavior? He's a sinner. Right? It's not really more complicated than that. And so this child is an idolater as well. Why? Well because the God that he has erected in his own mind says it's okay to steal, it's okay to be deceptive and sneaky, it's okay to do all these different sins and there will be no recourse. And that will happen with children even in the best of homes. The question is how should you respond? It was an open-ended question on purpose. How will you respond if you have a child like this? So I'm going to leave you with that one to think about. Now maybe your child is not demonstrating being sneaky. But maybe it's anger. Maybe it's pride. Maybe they're just a nuisance to their siblings. You pick the sin, right? Here's some things you need to start working on. You need to start spending time this week with your spouse addressing the issue. Begin to work together. So ask yourself, are there things within our homes that are aggravating this particular sin within your child? Is it my influence in their life? Because I'm being the sneak. You know, when I'm there, I see my dad or my mom when they're at that church. They act totally different than when they're outside that church. But that's being a sneak, isn't it? Where did they learn that? Where did they learn that level of hypocrisy? You need to be honest with yourself. Where are they learning these particular sins? Are there influences that are aggravating the sin? And you might be the influence. Are your approaches to discipline aggravating the issue because you're disciplining in a way that provokes wrath in them, not pointing them towards Christ and preparing their heart to receive the grace and forgiveness of God? Are you using the Word of God to even address this sin? My point here in saying this is spend time with your spouse, addressing the heart of your child, and start looking how we would bring the biblical discipline to this child. Yeah, you may have to purge some things out of your house, but here's the one great flaw in just purging everything out of your household. Just because you purge things out, you gotta fill it with something. All right, no more godly, no more wicked entertainment. I'm gonna take all that out. Okay, now you just freed up three hours a day. What are you gonna fill it up with? You gonna put a child upstairs at the wall for three hours because you ain't thought about it? Take the wickedness out of the house, but then refill it with something that would train that heart. Go back to the teachings. You all know Deuteronomy 6. When you lie down, when you wake up, when you eat, when you walk, you're training that child. You may have to really think differently about your own time management. You know that me time that you think you need? It needs to be them time. Because you need to be poured into that life. Now maybe some of the me time you do when they're taking a nap is preparing yourself for when they wake up. And they start their habitual sinning again. And you want to take that heart and guide it towards the dear Savior. So it's an open-ended question to try to provoke you to think through, are we taking these teachings seriously? Am I actually sitting down with my spouse and preparing a battle plan to deal with that heart? The enemy has waged war on the soul of your child. Are you going to fight against him? The point of all these teachings today is that there are two issues that feed into your child. You have the influences and the nature of the heart. As parents, we need to make sure we control the things that influence our children. But we also need to make sure we're actively shepherding the hearts of our children towards their Creator. You've got to pray that God will work through your efforts to save them and give them a heart of flesh. And in all this, we need to discard, now I want to transition a little bit, in this approach to shepherding their heart and getting rid of things that aggravate the sin nature within your child, We need to discard all forms of unbiblical methods of discipline. Ted Tripp in his book gave this example. I thought it was pretty interesting. He said this, a little girl caught my eye. She was a beautiful child. Every detail of her clothing and grooming spoke of wealth and influence. She and her mother, like him, were waiting for a flight to their airport. This child's beauty was external, but inwardly she was wicked because she was demanding and petulant. Her mother tried to settle her. The child was implacable. Then it happened. Exasperated, her mother finally turned on 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. With that, she picked her things up and moved away from the daughter. Now the little girl, he says, might have been able to hold out against this power play in a normal circumstance. But here in a strange airport, the little girl begins to feel frightened. The little girl then begins to move towards her mother. I'm sorry, Mommy. I love you, Mommy. The mom responds, go away. I don't know you. I'm sorry, Mommy. This time in desperation. Go away. I hate you. That's what the mom said. At that point, Tripp, He said he had to get on a plane. He doesn't really know what happened there. And you like me when you hear that example you think, oh that is extreme. How could she actually say that and do that to her daughter? But maybe we do this more than we like to admit to in our own homes. Because we let our children push our buttons and take us to the breaking point where we lash out at them and say something. Maybe you don't say you hate them, but you push them away. Now let me just say this. You could argue, from one perspective, that the mother was successful. The child was unreasonable. The child was demanding. But this mom was within minutes to change the child's behavior and get her to apologize. I mean, after all, she said, I love you, Mommy. Right? And that's how many parents I see that are struggling when I counsel and they're struggling with their children. Yeah, but they said they loved them. But why? Why did they say it? Did you push them in the corner where that's all they could say to get you off their back? I would argue she was able to change the child's behavior, but it was a change at a huge cost. In other words, the cure was worse than the disease. And my point here is that we cannot be indifferent to the methodologies that we use to train and discipline our children. God is not only concerned with what we do, but how we do it. And so what you and I need to understand is our culture, despite all the money that's being poured in to understand why children do what they do, all the psychological studies that are out there. Our culture does not provide us with a biblical model at all that will actually change the heart of that child. And so our desire is to start spending some time looking at some unbiblical approaches that maybe we've adopted and we didn't realize. There again, you may not have gotten to the point in your own training with your children to where this woman was in an airport in public. but maybe you've embraced certain elements of it. That is pushing that child of the heart away from God and not drawing them towards God. And so we need to understand that before we bring in biblical methods that bring glory to God, ask yourself this before we get into these unbiblical methods. Ask the question at the very beginning. How many of you start with God's word to determine if what you're doing is even biblical? Because if not, You maybe have embraced some of these things I'm going to talk about that your parents just did it to you, and you just took it and brought it into your family, but there's no merit for it in the Bible at all. So let's look at these unbiblical methods. Now these unbiblical methods come to us in many ways. They come to us through books, magazines, conferences, friends, your parents, the church, entertainments. Growing up, I saw on TV how different children on different TV shows were disciplined. Whether you like it or not, that has an influence on you. And some of it sounds good. That parent on TV just had a two minute little conversation and everything about that child just changed and then the happy ending at the end. But it doesn't work like that, does it, in reality. So let's think about some of these. All of these methods we're going to deal with have the human mind as the standard. And so, first of all, here's the I didn't turn out so bad method. Here's the problem. Many of you are not thinking ahead of your methodology or to your methodology. If you're one of those who, for example, let's just say you're one of those and you get mad, you yell, maybe you're one of those who the child's been sitting for 30 straight minutes and now you finally decide to intervene and your intervention is one of lost control, you're yelling, I've had it up to here, you threaten, you holler, you hit, you become frustrated, right? Understand you've adopted a methodology at that point. And the concern is, well, a lot of times when I challenge parents in this area who just can't control their temper and they lose, well, I don't want to, what's their excuse? Their excuse is, I just don't want to be one of those permissive parents that their children just run all over them or they just do whatever they want. I've heard fathers tell me. My dad yelled at me. He used to knock me around once in a while. I didn't like it, but hey, I turned out all right. But did you? Did you really? When you say you turned out alright, was his method, did it actually draw you to Christ? When your dad got through yelling at you and losing it on you, and your dad whacked you around a little bit, were you thinking, oh Jesus is so great? No, you didn't turn out alright. Because that method provoked you to wrath and it pushed you. The fact that you're using it as an excuse is a demonstration. It wasn't effective. It didn't change your heart. In fact, it made your heart harden and hate God even more. And just understand, we're not just to accept anything, but we always verify from God's Word. Now on the flip side, some of you may have adopted a I didn't turn out so bad philosophy on the permissive side. Maybe your parents were easily manipulated and caved in. Because a lot of times parents when they measure success of their children, what do they use? Well, my kid graduated pretty high in their high school. Then they went to a college, did pretty well. And you know what? They got a pretty good living at the job. They landed a nice job. Is that really the definition of success? Is that the standard by which God is going to hold them accountable? Maybe your parents were permissive, easily manipulated, and they caved in. And the point I want to try to make is we're not to live at either one of those extremes. We're not to parent that way. We want to understand what God's word has to say about addressing our children and then take those methods and apply them consistently within their lives. Well, the I don't turn out so bad method I don't think is a good way to do it. In other words, you've allowed the way your parents treated you to be the standard. And now you've allowed your life to be the standard like I can at least get my child to behave like me if I just apply that standard. That's not the standard. The Bible's always the standard. Here's another one. We've seen this. Some form of bribery. Let's be clear, it's unbiblical. Because nowhere can I find in the Bible that says I need to bribe my child to behave righteously. In other words, I don't want to encourage my child to be righteous in their behavior through personal gain. Now, some of you may have this idea that I'll get my child to obey me, I'll get them to clean their room by paying them or giving them a new toy. I've even read where some parents have made contracts that spell out the commitment for the son and daughter. But these are all superficial approaches. Because what's at the heart of robbery is self-interest, right? The child is not being taught to look out for the interests of others. In other words, in this scenario, the child learns nothing about being under God's authority, There's nothing that you are God's agent and that you are to be respected because God has put you there. The child is not learning biblical reasons for integrity and responsibility. In fact, years ago we had someone here attending and we used to do catechism with the children as a tool to help fathers and mothers work with their children, teaching about the things of God. But this man said, well hey, because some of the kids weren't doing it and weren't memorizing and really it had nothing to do with the child. It was really the parents who weren't spending time with them. So this man came to me and says, you know, maybe when you get better response on the catechism if we just pay them for every catechism question they get right and the scriptures they memorize. In other words, more catechism questions, more Bible verses they memorize, well it could be kind of lucrative for them. Now this individual is rather wealthy so his child training always gravitated towards compensation. Can I point out the error and the flaw here with that approach and why we didn't adopt it? We didn't adopt that approach. You shouldn't be compensating your children to reverence and respect and obey you. You're God's agent. And so when you try to reward a child, you're training someone else that says, oh, I'm going to obey God only when it gets me something. I mean, how else has the faith and prosperity gospel gotten so popular in this country? You just have a bunch of spoiled children that says, look I want some goodies out of God. Well, how about behavior modification? The idea is reward good behavior in some way. Some people either ignore the bad behaviors. Others may punish the bad behavior. And there's nothing wrong with praising or encouraging a child for doing what's right. But we need to reject this idea that a child should be rewarded just for fulfilling and being obedient to their God. If your child training revolves around you Your child, for example, getting something, let's say ice cream, for doing some assigned task, or it's withheld because he does not do what's requested. Then the child is just responding to the reward, and the heart's never really dealt with. Since the heart and the behavior go hand in hand, whenever behavior modification is taking place, this is what's training the heart. And so in this scheme, you're training the child towards greed and selfish interests. you're appealing to their lust. Tripp gave this example. One family I know developed a very clever application of behaviorism. Each time their children responded to anything in a good way, they put the child's name on a piece of paper and then put it in a jar. So if the child brushed their teeth, helped with the dishes, cleaned the room, set the table, or did anything commendable, their name went in the jar. If they did something wrong, their name would come out of the jar. By the end of the week, a name was drawn from the jar and the winning child got a present. Now what did you just train the child to do? The children quickly learned the point of the game. Get your name in the jar as much as you can. How did it work out? Well it actually worked out pretty good. Because it taught the children a lot. It taught them to be selfish. It taught them to only work for gain rather than learning to be obedient. And it didn't teach them anything about serving. You know what it also taught them? It gave them a improper motive. Because they didn't learn how to be manipulators of the system. Because what did they learn? Well, they learned that when mom was not around, well, there's really no need to do anything right because you don't get credit for it. Right? How about emotionalism? Emotionalism can manifest itself in a lot of ways. And some of you may be sitting there thinking, well, I get it. You're going to go into that whole outburst of wrath. And you've already hammered that one to death. So don't tell me about wrath again. Well, yeah, that one's wrong. I agree with you. But have you ever heard yourself saying when your child is sinning, you know, it really hurts my feelings when you don't behave right. You know, when you talk back to mommy or daddy like that, you just really hurt my feelings. What are you doing there? You're manipulating them. You're shaming them. An emotional pill here to shame the child. For example, trying to correct a child's behavior by reminding them of what it does to your reputation. In this scenario, the appeal is not to obey God because it honors God. Rather, it's an emotional shaming by putting the parent's reputation at risk. You know, you've been not embarrassing me when I go to church this morning. Now, after we leave church, I'm going to let you do whatever you want to do because you run the house and it's a child-centered home. But in this one instance, don't embarrass Mom and Daddy. You're going to regret it. Typically, the point of the punishment is that as long as they're set aside, you know, when you think about this, well, let's back up, let's back up. When you go through this kind of emotionalism, right, a lot of times that kind of parent rejects spanking a child. Why? Why is it that a parent refuses to spank their child? Well, they think they're more merciful than God and their mind is too cruel. Well, where did you get the idea it's too cruel? With the world. The world told you it was too cruel. And so you believe them before you believe God. And here's another thing. If you think that spanking the child is too cruel, just understand you've been influenced by the culture and not the scriptures. But let's say, for example, you're more merciful than God in your view. And you refuse to spank them. But what you do is, well, some discipline has to happen. So what I'm going to do is that what I'm going to do is I'm going to take this misbehaving child and I'm going to put them in a room by themselves for a long period of time and shut the door. Now, typically the point of that kind of punishment is that as long as they are set aside, no one will have contact with that child. Does anybody else see this as unbiblical and a problem or is it just me? The approach is unbiblical in the sense that you're not communicating, you're not instructing the child, you're only depriving them. How is that shepherding the heart of that child? A child who only experiences this kind of punishment is not learning to discern the issues of their own heart. It's not preparing their heart to seek the forgiveness of God, the grace of God. And really, when you think about it, it is a cop-out on the parent's part. Because in this situation, the child is being trained. They're just not being trained to know the love and the grace of God. The child is being trained to respond in fear of an emotional separation. Also, the approach does not draw the heart of the child closer to the parent. but it begins to drive that heart away from them. Let me just say this when it comes to emotions. I'm not suggesting you're a robot and that you're without emotions. What I am saying, when it comes to disciplining your children, your emotions can't dictate your response. If you're a little soft and sympathetic towards things, you can't allow that to withhold what God tells you you should give them. If you're prone towards anger, I've met fathers who, because of their anger, says, well, if I spank them, I'm probably going to lose control. Then repent. Because their Heavenly Father is going to discipline them. They need to understand this is what a loving Father does. And if you've got a problem with your anger, then you need to minister to yourself the Word of God and don't use that as an excuse to rebel against God. Because you're training your child that if you are sinning, it's okay to sin further. So I've got the sin of anger in my heart, therefore I'm going to withhold biblical discipline from my child. What are you training the child to do then? You become the negative influence in that child's life at that moment. Get your anger under control by going to God and confessing it. Going to God and saying, I need to get my anger under control so that I'm not reacting out of anger. What you actually are doing when you do that, by getting your emotions under control, bringing your emotions under the authority of God's word, you're training your child that even their emotions must come under the dominion of Christ. Think about how you respond to chastisement for a moment. Let's talk about your emotions for a minute. How do you respond to chastisement? Let's say an elder brings something to your attention. Our spouse brings something to your attention. Our friend or fellow Christian brings sin to your attention. How do you respond? Do you let your emotions dictate how you respond? And if you do, just know that your children are watching your response. You're training them how to respond to discipline. As a pastor, as an elder, are in a church, in other churches that have been called in as a witness to watch when someone is confronting someone who's in blatant sin and refuses to repent. How many times I've heard people say, you can't tell me what to do. How dare them? You're teaching your kids to rebel. See, what you need to do is teach your children how to respond in humility. That'll go a long way with them. So, here's another one. Another example, emotional manipulation. Don't bring your spousal conflicts into the middle of the child training. As a spouse, you have a problem, you have a conflict between one another. You have one parent that might be more permissive and the other parent a little bit more stricter and y'all have this conflict. It may not even have anything to do with that, but you have a conflict within your marriage and now you start manipulating the children to turn on the spouse. Don't go down that pathway. There's a lot of emotional manipulation that can happen with this child that does not prepare their heart to receive the grace and forgiveness of God. How about punitive correction? In this approach, parents use the threat of punishment to control their children's behaviors. A lot of different forms of that, from hitting to yelling. The approach here is to control the child through some kind of negative experience. I'm going to deal next time with the biblical use of the rod. But what I'm talking about here is if you only use and impose the negative correction without the positive instruction, you're doing a lot of damage to that child. See, always remember this, the rod does not impart wisdom. Also, I'm going to keep emphasizing that the rod appropriately used, not out of frustration or uncontrolled rage. It must be used. But make sure that your punishment is not doing something against the child, but rather your punishment is doing something for them. So let's go back. Let's use grounding as an example. Grounding is never corrective. It's always punitive. Grounding doesn't biblically address the issues of the heart, does it? Typically in grounding, the character flaws are not being addressed. The child's just, you know, sitting alone by himself. You've just taken all this stuff away from him, but you didn't replace it with anything. Within the punishment, the child should always be taken back to Christ. You ever think about why grounding is so universally popular? You ever thought about that? Well, it's easy. It doesn't really require you to interact with the child at all. It doesn't require you to be a shepherd at all. It doesn't require a parent to deal with the issues of the heart. It doesn't require instruction on part of the parent. In other words, you don't have to stop and go to God's Word and say, well, now how do I got to deal with this deception? How do I got to deal with this sin in my child's life? I'll just throw them and say, well, you can't do a bunch of things you like to do. Actually, what it's doing, grounding encourages biblical laziness on your part. So in my opinion, this is what we as parents who don't have anything more constructive to do with the child, that's what we do. Well, another one, another unbiblical method is erratic discipline. In this unbiblical approach, there's no consistency in the discipline. The parent, depending on the mood or how tired they are, may use all of these approaches we just talked about above. You hear about a parent that's tried this method or tried another method to incorporate it for a while. And I see this in our circles. I've seen it over the last 30 years. Someone will go to one of these biblical conferences, get a 50-minute sermon on child discipline, then incorporate someone else's convictions without really studying it out. Or maybe you know, maybe you've got a parent in your life, another parent in your life, very opinionated about their good ideas. But they're biblically illiterate. And you take on their convictions, because it sounds good. Because you were too lazy to go read the Bible and say, well, what did God say I should do? What do you do when you take on someone else's convictions? Well, most of these approaches just raise little Pharisees in your home. Let me give you a little advice. Be leery of any person who's overly critical, judgmental about everyone else's children, your children, but completely blind to the sins of their own children. I just don't take advice from people whose kids are rebels. Right? Or if they're bringing something to me that I've never heard before without first consulting the Word of God. But in this erratic approach, if you find yourself jumping from one method to another, just understand you're not bringing clarity and healthy instruction to the child. You're actually bringing confusion. Because here's what's happening if you're erratic with it. They never know what to say. They never know what to expect. One day the child gets to disrespect mom and the next day they don't. And they don't ever know when it's appropriate. They're never sure what system is in play. Let me try to bring a couple things here. Let me just leave you with some thoughts. When you incorporate unbiblical methods, where do they take you? When you incorporate unbiblical methods, what kind of fruit do you think they're going to bear? And just understand, they all lead to the same place. Some superficial external change of behaviors for a short period of time, but they never deal with the heart of the child. And the Bible, it seems to me, is so emphatic about this issue of dealing with our children's heart. In almost everything we've covered, you can impact the behavior of your child. But you leave their heart steeped in sin, dead in sins and trespasses. Biblical discipline will address the behavior by addressing the heart. If you address the heart biblically, you will positively impact behaviors, but with the right motives. Let me give you an example. I don't want to hear you do this, but let's just say you did. You got a child yelling at another child. And then you yell at the child to stop yelling. What's the problem? Alright, write it down. Hip cripple. That's what it is. Next. When you start yelling at the child for yelling, 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. Typically what you see is anger, bitterness, as a result, that's resulted in this yelling. And so if you just yell at them, you could probably get them to stop yelling, but you missed an opportunity to deal with the heart of that child who's yelling. See, superficial parenting never addresses the heart. Superficial parenting only produces superficial children who are never instructed on why they sin and the remedy for that sin. And so if your child, let me think about it. If your child lived with you for 18 years and you never did this for them, They're going to walk out not knowing how to deal with the sin in their life and they are rendered powerless in their own flesh. If you don't do this, what we're talking about, instructing and preparing the heart, they're never going to be ready to be led to the cross. So remember this, the gospel is not about doing new things. The gospel is about being a new creature in Christ. The gospel speaks to fallen people who need a new heart. In the words of one, God does a heart transplant, not a plastic surgery. And so superficial parenting just deals with the externals, plastic surgery. But it doesn't deal with the inward heart. See, that child needs to understand God accepts those who cry out for mercy. So we need to help our children understand their need for mercy. So imagine Let's say we're doing a homeschool example here. Here's an example. Your child is refusing to do the work in your homeschool. So let's look at some unbiblical approaches. The unbiblical approach would say, well, you know, if you do your work all week, I'll take you out and do something fun. That's bribery. Or another one would be the emotional approach. Oh, little Johnny, please do your work. It just upsets mom or dad when you don't do it. You know, when you behave this way and refuse to do your work, you almost make me want to cry. You make me feel like I'm wasting my time here with you. But that doesn't change the heart. How about the punitive approach? You didn't do your work, so no TV for a week. And if you fail tomorrow, I'll take something away from you for two weeks. Behavior modification. Every day you do your work, I'll do something positive for you. Remember the paper in the jar example? There it is. But you know, I didn't turn out so bad. I was kind of a bad student. You know, I turned out alright. No, no, no, no. It's not about being a bad student and not doing the work. It's that you're rebelling to do what the authority told you to do and now you bring that baggage to you everywhere you go because you think that's how God is and it doesn't really matter whether you obey Him or not. You don't want to teach that child ever that it's okay to disobey God. And here's the thing, every one of those approaches would get the child to do their work. But none of those approaches have the power of the gospel to change the heart of that child. The above approaches don't lead the child to the gospel. All of those approaches ignore the character of the child. It's just the emphasis on getting the work done. Children, your child in that situation, if you take the unbiblical approaches, They're not learning how to make ethical choices that please God. And we need to teach them that. That's part of training. It's what it means to disciple them. Really what they're learning to do, to be honest, is they're learning how to jump through hoops and avoid your immediate displeasure. Another thing it does is it produces distance between the parent and the child. Because children can see through that kind of manipulation. Your child will become to resent your attempts to manipulate their behavior. They'll play games with you to keep you off their back, but there's no real communication between the child and the parent. And the older they get, if you keep embracing these unbiblical methods, if you start at a young age with your child, the older they get, the more independent they become. The more resistant and the more rebellious, the more hardened they will become. Let me just end with this comment here. Parenting that focuses only on behavior that does not address the heart. The problem is that the heart is addressed wrongly. Changing behavior without changing the heart trains the heart towards whatever you use as your means. If it is reward, the heart is trained to respond to reward. If approbation, the heart is trained to strive for approval or to fear disapproval. When the experts tell you that you must find what works with each child, they're saying you must find the idols of the heart that will motivate this child. Avoid idolatry in your biblical or in your disciplines. Now, next we want to talk about biblical methods of training your children. And I know that's what you wanted to hear. But you've got to wait one more week. Come back next week, or we'll pick this up. But I hope this has encouraged you to think differently about, you know, I hope, I mean, because we've been through this in the past, and even looking at this, going and putting my notes together and updating some of them, I look back and think, golly, I did that. I did that. It's a humbling thing when your children are sitting in front of you, and some of them are probably watching this today, to say, yeah, you know you did that. So all I can tell you as a father who didn't grow up in knowing how to biblically be trained, to take these principles and trust that God would use them to change the heart of that child. Because all I can tell you is I wish I would have spent more time shepherding the hearts of the children that God put into my care. And so I would just say, look at this as a starting point. If there's things that need to be purged out, yes, those things will influence the heart of a child. But it won't change the heart. Bringing good influences into your home won't change the heart. The word of God will. Prayer, the spirit of God, the grace of God. And so I just want to encourage you to think differently about how you approach training your child. So like last week, think about an example. Your child sinned at some point. How did you handle it? You content with that? Did you address the heart of that child? Let's start incorporating that and watch how the Lord changes them and raises them up for His glory. So Lord, we'll start looking at biblical methods next week. Father, thank you for your word, your reminders, your encouragement from this word that we, you know, John tells us, if we confess our sins, you're faithful to forgive. And Lord, as we want to lay all these unbiblical methods at the altar and have them destroyed, We don't want to produce idols in the hearts of our children. We want our children to know the true King. So Lord, help each parent here. Help us to point our kids towards Him. Help us to get rid of these biblical models and methods that don't work. And help us to bring biblical methods that will change and deal with the heart of the child. Lord, we thank You for these children that are here. We thank You for the high privilege that You've given us. But Lord, may we understand the responsibility that You've given with respect to these children. Help us to train them. May they learn to fear and reverence you and you alone. May they not learn the fear of man, but may they know just the beauty of Christ. May their hearts be prepared to receive your grace and your forgiveness. And it's in Christ's name we pray. Amen. So let us close. If you've got a white hymn book,