Introduction:
Proverbs 23:13 - Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you strike him with a rod, he will not die.
Hebrews 12:11 - For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
A "ROD" of Discipline - Some DO's and DON'Ts (Ephesians 6:1-4; Proverbs 23:13)
Rebuke the Heart , not just Behavior. (Prov 4:23)Proverbs 4:23 - Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.
- DO pick the Right Battles .
- DON'T hang Apples on the tree .
- DO discuss heart matters at times of Non-conflict .
- DON'T miss the Gospel Opportunity .
Proverbs 3:11-12 - My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline or be weary of His reproof, for the Lord reproves him whom He loves, as a father the son in whom he delights.
- DO point them to God's Authority in Discipline .
- DON'T forget that they are God's Children First .
- DO seek Forgiveness from your kids When you Fail .
- DON'T Undermine other authorities.
Proverbs 13:24 - Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.
- DO keep Love Primary .
- DON'T Give Up in the process.
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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00:38-00:43
So good morning, you can turn in your Bibles to Ephesians 6, that's where we'll spend our time.
00:44-00:49
It is a great privilege to stand here, and responsibility to stand here and bring God's Word.
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But it's especially humbling to be in a sermon series like this with three other really amazing speakers who brought some pretty heavy messages, and this message is no less heavy.
01:01-01:08
But I can assure you that if you're not willing to pay attention today, then we can just turn this whole church around and you can go straight to your room without lunch or a Steeler game.
01:10-01:11
But let's get started with prayer.
01:13-01:16
Father God, you are an amazing heavenly father.
01:17-01:21
Lord, and you do discipline us as your children and you do it for our best, Lord.
01:22-01:28
Help us to learn from your example and from your word the way that we are supposed to discipline our kids.
01:29-01:33
God, you're so patient and loving and yet you deal with the matters directly.
01:33-01:34
Help us to do that.
01:35-01:39
Please today, God, would you speak through me and may your words be remembered and not mine.
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All this we ask in Jesus' name, amen.
01:45-01:54
So my beautiful wife, Alicia, and I welcomed our first daughter into the world about 10 years ago, very early in the morning on the last day of summer.
01:55-02:01
Now, like with any momentous occasion, there's lots of stories and memories from that time.
02:01-02:10
But one thing I wanna share with you today that while we were in the hospital, before we were allowed to leave the hospital, we were required to watch a set of parenting videos.
02:10-02:20
And these parenting videos helped to educate a new parent on their newborn, things like how a baby develops, the basics of breastfeeding, the vaccination schedule.
02:21-02:26
And even though I've watched these videos, I think multiple times now, I really only can remember one of them.
02:26-02:31
And maybe I'll blame that on the stupor of being, adjusting to waking up every couple of hours.
02:32-02:35
But the one that I remember is the shaken baby syndrome.
02:35-02:44
Now I don't wanna make light of a serious subject like that, but in my ignorance or my euphoria as a new parent, this video made no sense to me.
02:45-02:46
Who would wanna hurt their child?
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Who, what kind of a monster would rage against the baby?
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And what does it say against our society that we need to train everybody about this?
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Well, it was probably several weeks later when this video kind of clicked for me.
02:59-03:05
So night after night of insanity inducing sleep disruptions will erode even your best qualities.
03:06-03:09
And no, I did not end up shaking my daughter, don't call the police.
03:10-03:12
But it was the first time I understood the impulse.
03:13-03:19
For reasons that I was not aware of, 'cause Ellie could not communicate it to me other than shrieking, she could not be consoled.
03:20-03:24
And normally when you have a baby that's crying at you, it elicits some kind of sympathy.
03:24-03:25
Well, not in this case.
03:25-03:29
This child was shrieking her frustrations directly at me.
03:29-03:32
And I thought, huh, that's the feeling.
03:32-03:37
And so I did what the video said, and I set the child down and I walked away.
03:37-03:39
And Ellie was the easy baby.
03:40-03:47
So when I think back to these very, very basic parenting videos, there's a common thread in them that I wanna talk a little bit about today.
03:48-03:53
These videos taught that the most fundamental goal of being a parent is to not let your child die.
03:54-04:02
Now that seems like a pretty low bar for parenting, but the Bible actually agrees with this as at least one of our goals as parents.
04:02-04:08
So if you look on the screen, Proverbs 23, 13 says, do not withhold discipline from your child.
04:09-04:12
If you strike him with a rod, he will not die.
04:17-04:20
So if you strike him with a rod, he will not die.
04:20-04:22
So it is part of our job as parents to keep our kids from dying.
04:23-04:29
And now we can't guarantee that that won't happen, but there are definitely ways of sending our children into more or less danger.
04:30-04:36
And what this says here in Proverbs is if we withhold discipline from them, then we leave them at risk in this world.
04:37-04:41
And now we obviously as parents want better for our children than just not death.
04:41-04:48
So as we continue looking at parenting from Ephesians, what can we learn about how discipline must work?
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So let me jump back to the beginning of Ephesians 6.
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Children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right.
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Honor your father and mother.
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This is the first commandment with a promise that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.
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Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
05:12-05:16
You can stay on Ephesians 'cause this is where we'll stick for the lesson.
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But this last verse is what Pastor Taylor read last week.
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And it kind of summarizes these two sermons on parenting, the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
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But if you go back to the beginning of what chapter six talks about it, it recalls the fourth commandment.
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When God provided this fourth commandment, he included a promise.
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The promise is that when children are obeying and honoring their parents, it may go well with them and that they may have long life in the land.
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So there it is again, life.
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Parenting is keeping our kids alive.
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But this promise is tied to obedience and honor toward their parents.
05:56-06:14
Now, in putting this message together, I benefited greatly from a recent parenting conference that Alicia and I accidentally, by God's grace, attended that was presented by Dr. Ted Tripp, who's the author of "Shepherding a Child's Heart." And Dr. Tripp calls this promise in the fourth commandment the circle of blessing.
06:14-06:23
When children are within the circle of blessing as they honor and obey their parents, they have access to things going well for them and to long life.
06:24-06:28
But as they stray outside of that circle, this is where discipline comes in.
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Discipline is the process of redirecting children back into that circle of blessing under the authority of their parents.
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Now, discipline is not the same as punishment.
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Punishment is when you make somebody pay for the wrong that they have done.
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Now, as parents, our primary goal isn't to make kids pay for their mistakes.
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We want them to be redirected back into God's design, which is under the authority of their parents.
06:52-06:59
Now, Pastor Taylor ended his sermon last week by saying that we need to have God's expectations as our house rules.
06:59-07:04
And when we do that, there are going to be times when our children rebel against those rules.
07:05-07:07
But discipline is how we deal with that rebellion.
07:08-07:14
But it always has to be aimed at restoring right relationships under the proper authority.
07:15-07:23
This does not mean that discipline is some soft, warm, fuzzy manipulation of our kids, as it sometimes occurs in us.
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But discipline is actually usually painful.
07:26-07:48
Hebrews 12, 11 says, "For the moment, "all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, "but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness "to those who have been trained by it." So whether you're farming a field, training for a marathon, or trying to earn your PhD, or raising a child, discipline is the hard, unpleasant work that must be done to yield the desired fruit.
07:49-07:52
If you're not gonna do the hard work, then you're not gonna get the desired fruit.
07:53-07:59
And without the proper discipline for our kids, we won't have kids who experience things going well or living long in the land.
08:01-08:06
Now, the verse back in Proverbs and other places in the Bible talks about a rod of discipline.
08:07-08:09
And the rod is exactly what it sounds like.
08:09-08:12
It is a physical instrument of providing discipline to our children.
08:13-08:19
Now, in our day and age, a rod of discipline may provoke as visceral a response as saying that wives should submit to their husbands.
08:20-08:35
As a society, we reject the idea of using a physical means for punishment, either because we've seen totally unjustifiable abuse of that, or because we arrogantly think that as a society, we've progressed past the need for that outdated practice.
08:35-08:45
But like Pastor Jeff talked about with marriage in Ephesians 5, we need to decide whose wisdom are we going to heed, the world's or God's?
08:46-08:54
So I'll come back to the actual rod later, But for the purpose of presenting this message, I organized the points into the acrostic R-O-D.
08:55-08:56
I'm an engineer, I can't help it.
08:57-09:07
Now, make no mistake, the rod of discipline is not a metaphor, but this is a topical sermon and it helped me to have some kind of organizational structure, so that's what I thought of.
09:08-09:17
Now, one other note, I know this is a sermon specifically on parenting, but all of us are God's children, and so all of us are subject to his discipline.
09:18-09:25
Therefore, let me encourage each one of us that we all can benefit from understanding how God disciplines us, whether or not we are a parent.
09:26-09:31
So let's begin by looking at the rod of discipline, some do's and don'ts.
09:32-09:37
The R of rod is rebuke the heart, not just behavior.
09:38-09:40
Rebuke the heart, not just behavior.
09:40-09:44
Now, with each one of these points, I grab a proverb that helps to draw out the point.
09:45-09:50
And with this one, I chose Proverbs 4.23, which is one we had made the youth group memorize.
09:51-10:06
"Above all else, guard your heart, "for it is the wellspring of life." As Pastor Taylor talked about last week, discipling our children is about instilling good teaching into them so that they can operate in accordance with God's design.
10:07-10:09
Discipling is about putting good into them.
10:10-10:12
Discipline is kind of the opposite side of that coin.
10:12-10:19
It is driving the bad out of them in order that they stay on that better path of discipleship.
10:20-10:23
So what are we after with discipline for our children?
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What are the dangers that we want them to avoid in this world?
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Well, the primary one is what the gospel of Jesus Christ talks about, that each one of us has a terminal sin disease, which is at the core of what is leading us to death.
10:38-10:39
The same is true of our children.
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They have a sinful and corrupt heart dealt with will lead them to death eternally.
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Now, when the Bible talks about our heart, I think we all understand it's not talking about that blood pumping organ inside of our chest.
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So what does it mean by the heart?
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If we were to take the definition from the world or maybe the Hallmark channel, we might think of the heart as the place where all of our emotions live.
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Now in the Bible, that's true, but it's also way more than that.
11:08-11:12
The Bible, the heart is the core of our being.
11:12-11:15
It is the wellspring of life.
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The Bible mentions the heart over a thousand times.
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I'll put up on the screen here some examples of verbs that our hearts do.
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Now you don't need to copy this whole list down.
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That's why there's a QR code at the bottom.
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There's a blog that has all this information.
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I didn't want you spending time writing everything, but we can look at a few examples to understand what the Bible talks about the heart.
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So the heart can store things.
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Psalm 119 says, "I have stored up your word in my heart "that I might not sin against you." The heart can hate.
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Leviticus 19 says, "You shall not hate your brother "in your heart." Our heart can turn us away or to other things.
11:57-12:08
1 Kings says, "You shall not enter into marriage with them," these unbelievers, "for they will turn away your heart "to their gods." And a heart is actually how we come to a saving faith.
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It's how we believe.
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Romans 10, nine says, "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." So the heart is pretty complex.
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It does a lot of things, but not only does it do some things, but there are some things inside of our heart.
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And the Bible talks about some of these things.
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You can put that on the screen.
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Things that we expect like sadness and joy.
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But then there's other things that the Bible talks about that are maybe not what we think about in the heart.
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Secrets and plans and stubbornness and anguish.
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And then those sinful things like evil thoughts and lusts and motives.
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And some other good things like the peace of God that dwells within our hearts.
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So the heart is way more complex than we typically think about it.
12:59-13:01
The heart is the core of our being.
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And if that is the case, then it is the right place to direct the discipline of our children.
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The trouble is, we don't normally discipline with that in mind.
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Let's say two of your kids are fighting over something, and one of them comes and says, she took this from me.
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And the other says, no, I had it first.
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Well, how do we typically adjudicate that?
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All right, who had it first?
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Now, is that a problem?
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No.
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Happiness is an okay way to parent, but what is the real issue going on?
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The real issue is that you have two selfish monsters that say, "I want to be happy more than I want you to be happy." And if we want to deal with that, we have to deal with the heart issue.
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The bad behavior is only an indicator.
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It is not the main problem.
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Behavior is only a symptom.
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It's not the disease.
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We want to treat the disease, and in order to do that, we have to get to the heart.
13:55-14:01
Unfortunately, when we rebuke the behavior only, we create some unintended consequences.
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First of all, we miss the opportunity entirely to talk about the real issue.
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So if you resolve this conflict by returning the item to the child who had it first, even if everybody's okay with that, you've missed the opportunity to talk about selfishness, which is what motivated the conflict in the first place.
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And further, we've actually set up a false basis for ethics.
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In this example, if we resolve the conflict by giving the item back to the child who had it first, what are we saying is important?
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Speed.
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You better be fast if you want to survive in this life, and you definitely better be faster than your siblings.
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We're training our children to go after the wrong things.
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We're actually teaching their heart toward the wrong goals.
14:43-14:58
Now, I can remember being woken up early on a Saturday morning by my noisy children, and before I went back to bed, I remember saying, "I don't care if you fight, just be quiet about it." Great lesson, Dad, right? Anybody been there? Right?
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I'm teaching them that peace and quiet is actually a higher priority to me than their kindness.
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When we are only concerned about our children's behavior, we actually reveal the idols in our own heart.
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Because when we need to discipline them, are we doing so because we care about their hearts, or because we just want to control things our way?
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Why?
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When their behavior in public embarrasses us, is our primary motivation their heart or our pride?
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Do we send them to their room for our own convenience because the hard work of discipline might interrupt whatever other thing I'm trying to do?
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Do we try to cover up our teen sin because we don't want other people in the community to judge us?
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Do I lose my temper in the car because my idol of comfort has been assaulted?
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So we need to rebuke the heart, not just behavior.
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And to do this, I've listed some practical do's and don'ts with each one of these points.
15:57-16:01
And the first do here is do pick the right battles.
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Look, there are different degrees of missing the mark with kids.
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There's a dramatic difference between childish foolishness and willful rebellion.
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Immaturity is not as destructive as disobedience.
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We all want wise and mature children.
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I get it, but that takes time.
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And we need to discipline them differently if we're rebuking sinful heart attitudes as opposed to correcting ignorant failures.
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There's a difference.
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And we must look for the heart issues and pick the right approach based upon how deep that issue is.
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So as a recent example from this past Sunday, Amaya, my youngest, was eating her dinner.
16:45-16:50
And as part of her dinner, she was required to eat some carrots, which is normally not a problem for her.
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And in the middle of the meal, we noticed that Amaya went to the bathroom and came back very quickly.
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In fact, way too quickly to have actually used the bathroom.
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So I asked her, Amaya, what's going on?
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She said, I'm done.
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I'm already done.
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I said, Amaya, did you just throw something away in the bathroom?
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Did you throw your carrots in there?
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No, no, no, no.
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I used the bathroom.
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I'm done.
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And sure enough, when you check the garbage can, the carrots were in there.
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So what's the issue here?
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She's four and a half years old.
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You know, it really wasn't a matter of willful rebellion.
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She wasn't trying to undermine my authority as a parent.
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She just didn't want to eat her carrots, which I get, I don't always want to eat my vegetables either but she wanted to make sure that she still got the dessert that she was after.
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So the problem was in the deception And then worse was the lying about it when she got caught.
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So when we were disciplining her, we had to talk to her about that.
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The trouble was she didn't even understand the terminology.
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Lying was a foreign concept to her, not how to do it.
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She knew how to do that without any training whatsoever.
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But the concept of what lying is and why it's not okay to do so, we had to talk through that in order to explain why she can't do it.
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So when we are disciplining our kids, it's important to take the time to ensure we're fighting the right battles.
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And this only gets more complicated the older that they get.
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So that's the first do.
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Before I give you the first don't, let me tell you a hypothetical story.
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Suppose that I have a large apple tree in my backyard and I plant this apple tree because my family eats a lot of apples and I want to make sure that this tree grows all the apples I'll ever need.
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Problem is that tree won't grow any apples on its own, but that's okay.
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I'm a resourceful person, so I have a solution.
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I go to the store and I buy a ton of apples and I meticulously hang them on the tree.
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And when I'm done hanging all the apples on the tree, it looks fantastic.
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Instagram photo perfection.
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Now, have I solved the problem?
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No, my solution is idiotic.
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Why?
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Because this hanging apples on the tree actually make that tree grow apples?
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No, it actually cost me more money than if I did nothing.
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And what's gonna eventually happen to those trees that are hanging on the apple?
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Or hanging, what the, flip that.
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A little Willy Wonka moment there.
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What's gonna happen to those apples that are hanging on the tree?
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They're gonna rot because they're not connected to anything that's providing them life.
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So the don't here is don't hang apples on the tree.
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So this is what we do as parents when we are only concerned with the outward behavior.
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So how do we hang apples on the tree?
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Well, if there's a particular good behavior that we want, maybe we bribe them with a treat in the hope of seeing that good behavior come out.
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Or maybe when the bad behavior comes out, we shame them and say, "You're really better than that." Or maybe we go so far as to guilt them into saying, "You're gonna disappoint Jesus, or this time of year, that elf on the shelf." Or maybe, my personal favorite, we like to frighten our children with threats that may or may not be followed through on.
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Now look, these discipline approaches might work fine for a time, and they can work fine if we're directing them at the right attitudes.
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But if we're only directing them at the behavior, they're no better than hanging apples on the tree because they don't connect to the root issue.
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And the problem is we're gonna have to keep providing these incentives, whether they're positive or negative, anytime we wanna see that behavior.
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We're gonna have to keep buying more apples to hang on the tree.
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We need to change what is in their heart to produce the natural behavior that we wanna see.
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We want the apples to actually grow for themselves.
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So don't hang apples on the tree.
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And the last do for this section in the R is do discuss heart matters at times of non-conflict.
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Now I'm kinda stealing 'cause this is Pastor Taylor's territory on the discipleship, But the best way to enable heart depth conversations is to talk about heart matters when you're not in conflict.
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Because when you're in conflict as a parent, we don't have the patience to always get to the heart matter.
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We have to deal with problems as they come up, sometimes efficiently and quickly.
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And our children are not likely to be as willing to listen to a lesson on matters of the heart when the conflict arises.
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So if we want to open their eyes and our own to how the heart dramatically affects our behavior, we need to be studying with them what God's word says about our heart.
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You could take the list of the heart verbs that I provided or the things that are in the heart as a starting point.
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Or when we're teaching about Cain killing Abel, yeah, it's important to talk about murder being wrong, but maybe it's more important to focus on how to control bitterness and envy from taking over your heart.
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Or when you're explaining the story of David and Bathsheba, be sure to point out how David's discontentment and his lack of trust in God played into his bad decision-making.
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When we are instructing our kids in God's word, no matter what age they are, adult or children or otherwise, we need to take time to point out the heart motivations that are going on, good or evil.
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In our house, we've started this heart journal that the girls use and they write in the different heart things that come up whenever we're reading through a Bible passage.
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There's a lot of different ways that you can do this, but when you have these kinds of discussions, you equip yourself and you equip our children to be able to have heart level discussions at the time of discipline.
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All right, the last don't of the R is don't miss the gospel opportunity.
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Look, every failure, whether ours or our kids, is an opportunity to share how much God loves us and how much he has forgiven us of.
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If we are only focused on the behavior, our kids can walk away thinking they are bad kids or at inconvenient disruptions in our lives.
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Instead, we need to take the time to talk about how even in our failures, God shows his faithfulness to continue loving us, just like we are gonna do as their parents in loving them.
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We need to show our kids that while they need to repent of their sin, their position with us and with God is never gonna change.
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There is nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord, and there should be nothing that can separate our children from the love of their parents.
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Our kids need to know this.
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So when we discipline them, we must not miss the opportunity to share the gospel with them in a real tangible way.
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All right, that's the heart.
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Move on to the O, which is operate in God's authority, not just your own.
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And the proverb here comes from Proverbs 3, 11 and 12.
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"My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline "or be weary of his reproof, "for the Lord reproves him whom he loves "as a father, the son in whom he delights." All authority comes from God.
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And our authority with our children comes directly from God.
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The discipline that we bring must be the Lord's discipline, not our discipline.
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Now, authority has a tough time these days because as a society, we pretty much reject authority of any kind.
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But establishing authority structure with your children has to be one of the earliest goals in disciplining, from the youngest age.
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So when we go back to Ephesians 6, remember it's when children are obeying their parents that they have access to that blessing.
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But when they're not obeying or honoring the authority of their parents, they are outside of that circle of blessing, of things going well, and of living long in the land.
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When authority operates correctly, everyone inside that authority remains in that place of blessing.
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But when authority operates incorrectly, everyone is at risk of danger.
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God's authority for us as parents must operate in two balanced ideas.
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On the one hand, we must be responsible to execute the authority of discipline that he has given to us.
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But on the other hand, we cannot exceed the authority that he has handed over to us.
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As parents, we are the primary authority responsible for the discipline of our children.
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Discipline though is something that is cumulative and inevitable.
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If we fail to do our job as parents and don't provide discipline for our children, they will eventually receive discipline from some other authority from God, whether that's the church or the government or even God himself.
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And when that discipline comes, you can be sure it will be worse than if it had been done in the home because the heart issues will have grown unchecked and will require a more dramatic response.
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So we cannot abdicate this responsibility.
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It is our job to do this.
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And even if we think that the school or the church or grandma might do a better job in disciplining our kids, that does not eliminate our responsibility.
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We need to be the ones that make sure that this happens.
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And we cannot blame our kids for our failure to take responsibility, even if our kid can be particularly difficult and require a lot of discipline.
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Because in the immortal words of the Oompa Loompas to Veruca Salt, you know exactly who's to blame, the mother and the father.
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So we need to understand that God has given us this job to do, so what are some do's and don'ts that we can do here?
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First, do point them to God's authority in discipline.
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Anytime that we execute discipline, we must do so with the recognition that it is because God commanded us to do it.
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It should be more important for us to impress upon them that they have violated God's role, not just our role.
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We need to remind them and us that our authority comes from God.
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Now, this should give us confidence when we understand this to execute discipline in the best way.
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With my middle daughter, Evie, we had an exchange that we would go back and forth sometimes where I would say, "Who is the king?" And she would point to God.
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And then I would say, "Who's in charge?" And she would point to me.
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And then I would end it with saying, "And who's gonna listen?" And she would point to herself like this.
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And with my youngest, Amaya, I had to do this this morning with her, I regularly am asking her, "Are you in charge or am I?" And she'll say, "You are." Now, there are a lot of ways to do this, but our kids need to know that God is on the throne and that he has left them in our care.
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So this brings me to my first don't.
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Don't forget that they are God's children first.
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We need to recognize that there is a limit to our authority.
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We represent God when we discipline.
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And this is a really high calling 'cause he loves them way more than we do, even on our best days.
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So let me try to put this into perspective.
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Think back on maybe some of your biggest parenting failures.
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Think back on maybe like the worst thing you ever did or said to your kids.
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Now with that thought in mind, imagine if you left a babysitter in charge of your kids and they did that.
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You would never let a babysitter talk to your daughter that way.
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You would never let somebody do that to your son.
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Now in an oversimplified way, we are God's babysitters, raising the children that he has left in our care.
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This can be a really scary and convicting thought, but it should also provide us some comfort because just like you would never leave a babysitter without all the support that they would need, God isn't gonna leave us as caretakers of his children without equipping us to do the job like we're talking about today.
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So the next do is do seek forgiveness from your kids when you fail.
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Parenting can be overwhelming because of how often we screw it up.
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We are not God.
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In our flesh, we do not have his patience or his love or his perfect balance of mercy and justice.
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So when we fail as parents, and we will often, we must ask for forgiveness from our children.
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Now this can be incredibly difficult and humbling, especially if this was never modeled for you.
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When seeking forgiveness from your kids, it provides a critical reminder to us and our children that our authority comes from God.
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We are not kings or queens.
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We do not rule by our edicts.
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We are stewards of the King of Kings, and we rule by His word and His law.
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So we need to ask forgiveness when we fail to use authority either because we've shrunk back and refused to take our responsibility, or when we've tried to usurp control over our kids and abuse His authority.
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Now, most people don't know how to ask for forgiveness well.
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Don't try to mansplain yourself.
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Don't try to explain why you're asking for forgiveness.
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Simply say, "Honey, it was wrong for daddy to talk to you that harshly.
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Will you please forgive me?" Or, "Son, I should have never given you that opportunity to make that mistake.
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Will you please forgive me?" So please seek forgiveness from your kids.
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I'm saying this message as much to myself as to any of you.
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Please seek forgiveness from your kids.
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The last don't here is don't undermine other authorities.
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The surest way to teach our kids that they don't need to respect our authority from God is to undermine other authorities God has put over us.
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If we show our kids that undermining the authority of the church or the government or the school is okay, then we should not be surprised if they challenge our authority.
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And this would certainly apply to what Pastor Taylor touched on last week about undermining your spouse.
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Do not undermine your spouse's authority.
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In our discipleship and in our growing of our family, we must elevate our marriage above our children.
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And part of that is keeping a unified parenting front when we are on the discipleship battle.
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And this takes work and communication 'cause kids are masters at exploiting our weakness here.
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Dad, mom is being really unfair.
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Mom, dad said I could go out with my friends even though you told me no earlier.
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We cannot undermine each other as a marriage unit.
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And we can't undermine any of these other authorities because all it does is call into question God's authority structure.
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We must honor God's authorities.
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One final thought here is this don't is also a word for grandparents.
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Grandparents, please do not undermine your children's authority with your grandparents because this only adds more fuel to the fire.
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Rather, lovingly point your grandchildren to God's authority structure and teach them how to honor it.
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All right, that's it on authority.
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Last point is the D, deliver in love, not just in reaction.
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And the proverb here is a convicting one.
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Proverbs 13, 24, "Whoever spares the rod hates his son, "but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him." This verse is often misremembered as spare the rod and spoil the child, but in reality the Bible says that if you don't discipline, it's like you hate your child.
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Wow, that is a strong statement.
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And it seems counterintuitive because in today's world we can get sucked into parenting wisdom, so called, of the world.
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Wisdom that might say, you know, you really just need to be friends with your kids and you really want them to like you as the highest goal.
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So you really should shun anything that would make them dislike you, like discipline or something like that.
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Or if you don't like that model, maybe you could try the helicopter parent.
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Whether it's the helicopter parent, you are in the captain's chair of your child's life, and you are gonna be there to ensure that they never make a mistake or ever put themselves at any risk.
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Or maybe in reaction against the helicopter parent, you could be the laid back parent that says, "You know what, let's let the kids run the show.
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"The kids need to learn life on their own.
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and they need to figure out what works best for them.
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The trouble with all these approaches and any others that you might find is that they ignore God's wisdom.
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God created children to thrive under the authority of their parents.
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Parents who love them enough to discipline them diligently, to keep them on God's path of discipleship.
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And discipline actually provides a sense of security for our children, because as we allow them to grow in responsibility, which we should do, We have to establish boundaries such that when they fail, the consequences will not be so catastrophic that they will not recover from it.
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So the do here is do keep love primary.
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We need to remind our kids God's authority and the gospel message.
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We need to also remind them of our love for them, especially when we discipline them.
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We need them to see that, yes, they must eat their vegetables, but not because we want to torture them, because we want them to grow up healthy and strong because we love them.
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We need them to know that we love them enough that they need to be people of their word.
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So there must be consequences when they stay out later than we had agreed upon.
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We love them enough to teach them this lesson now while the consequences are minor.
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So we must keep our love for them as central to these conversations about discipline.
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Because there can be a tendency to spend all of our effort in parenting on enacting discipline, doling out consequences.
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And in that process, we can forget to remind them of our love for them.
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Our kids can become embittered by the barrage of dad's always on my case about every little thing, or mom's just gonna criticize me no matter what I do.
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We need to keep love primary in our discipline.
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So let me interject here about the actual rod of discipline.
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Spanking has been distorted and demonized in many ways, but the Bible is pretty clear about the wisdom of applying a physical consequence to disobedience.
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There are at least six direct references to the rod of discipline in Proverbs.
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Now, when done correctly, spanking can be one of the most loving ways to quickly redirect your children back into that circle of blessing.
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For those of you with younger children, I would encourage you to study this topic on your own and evaluate your method of using this or choosing not to.
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But we don't wanna cut ourselves off from God's wisdom simply because the world doesn't like it or even because we've had a poor experience with this ourselves.
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We would never want to withhold something from our kids that by doing so would show hatred toward them, which is exactly what it says here in Proverbs.
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The reality is that spanking is one of many tools in our discipline toolbox, and it really has limits both in when you should use it and for what ages.
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Like, do we really need to be spanking a kid that can do long division?
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I just don't think so.
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So that's all I'm gonna say about this, but the QR code at the bottom has some additional resources in the blog post that you can review for yourself.
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If you have any questions, feel free to reach out.
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The last don't for today is don't give up in the process.
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Like there are so many competing things for our time and energy.
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There's so many different parenting challenges that come up with each child.
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It is way too easy to check out of this process of discipline.
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You could, we could do so 'cause we're ignorant of the need to discipline.
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Hopefully nobody has that excuse now after this message.
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We could give up because we've screwed up in the past and it's like, I don't know what I'm doing.
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How can I fix this going forward?
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Or we can give up because we simply don't have the energy to do this day in, day out.
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Some of us have children where discipline is a full-time job and this can exhaust us into just quitting.
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We need to continue loving our children by applying godly wisdom to keep them on the best path of following God.
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Through these messages on personal family business, we have shown that our primary mission field on this earth, our highest calling in ministry, is to be a home that is following God.
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To do this, we must first ensure that we individually are following after God.
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Then, if we're married, we must ensure that our marriage is strong and that as a loving unit, husband and wife are spurring each other on to follow God.
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And then, if we have children, Out of the overflow of these commitments to pursue our glorious Father, we must lovingly teach our children to follow His ways as well.
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So if you're struggling with any area of parenting or marriage, don't do this on your own.
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Seek wisdom from God who promises to provide it.
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Be transparent with your spouse about whatever the struggle is and find solutions together.
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Share your struggles with your small group.
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The body of Christ can learn from each other I encourage you to keep after this, or sit down with one of your pastors or elders for counsel and prayer when you just feel overwhelmed.
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Don't give up in this process.
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Now at this point in the message, I can imagine someone sitting there saying, "Dan, I get what you're after.
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"My kids are too old now.
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"I didn't do these things, "or at least I didn't do them well when they were younger.
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"What can I do about this now?" Well, let me leave you with an encouragement God's word from Joel 2, verse 25, which says, "I will restore to you the years of the swarming," I'm sorry, "I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten." Look, God can restore years of destruction, whether that's destruction of your own making or otherwise.
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So let God do his restorative work by being obedient now to what he has called you to do.
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as with all of these messages on personal family business, these commands from God's word should be followed no matter what point you are in your relationship.
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And God's word needs to be followed for as long as we have those relationships, which are hopefully for a lifetime.
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Parenting doesn't stop when our kids leave the house, but it does change, just as it changes through each phase of our kids' growth.
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But no matter what phase of life you find yourself in as a parent, seek what is best for your children.
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Seek for them the blessings of things going well and of living long in the land.
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Seek for them what God desires, and when they stray, lovingly redirect them back into God's design.
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Do not withhold the discipline from your child.
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Strike them with the rod so they will not die.
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Let's pray.
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Heavenly Father, you are so patient.
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God, you use our life's experiences, Lord, to teach us how to follow you, whether that's to teach us the discipleship that we need, the good that you want us to do, or when you discipline us, Lord, and we need to be redirected with physical or emotional consequences for our disobedience toward you, Lord.
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I pray that you would help each one of us here to understand the way that you lovingly discipline.
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God, I pray that we would, as parents, put that into practice, into our own lives with our children.
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God, help us to slow down and to take time to do this the right way, not to react, not to overexert our authority, not to reject our authority, but God, that we would get to the heart of the matter of loving our kids to lead them to you.
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Lord, I pray that you would go in front of us, Lord, and help us to be just your witnesses in this world, This world that needs to know this message, this world that is frustrated by the consequences of sin.
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And God, I pray that we would just be your examples of light, of the truth of your word.
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All these things we ask in Jesus' name, amen.
Small Group Discussion
Read Ephesians 6:1-4
What was your big take-away from this passage/message?
Where do you struggle with getting to the heart issues? How can you grow in this?
How can you better operate in God’s authority in the area of discipline?
Why is delivering discipline in love so important? What do you need to do better here?
Discuss any other parenting DO’s and DON’T’s for disciplining.
Breakout
Pray for one another!
