The Most Important Job in the World - Part B

Whom the Lord loves, He chastens and He scourges every son He receives. Corrective discipline expresses love. Also, corrective discipline is fruitful. It bears fruit.

It produces fruit. When it's done rightly, righteously, and fairly, it produces fruit. Though some parents feel ill-equipped or uneasy about disciplining their children, the truth is that godly parenting must be marked by discipline.

And in his message today, Pastor Skip examines why discipline is indispensable for raising fruitful children. Before we begin today, here's Skip and Lenya to tell you about a trip they're planning to Israel. Well, if you've ever dreamed about visiting Israel, let's make that happen. Lenya and I are leading a tour group to Israel next summer in 2024. We'll start up north visiting Nazareth, the Sea of Galilee, and the Jordan River. We'll spend several days in Jerusalem, see the Temple Mount, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Upper Room, and more. Now, visiting the places where the scriptures unfolded, where Jesus lived out his earthly ministry, it never gets old.

That's why I keep going back. Join Skip and I and our friend Jeremy Camp next summer in Israel. See the itinerary and book this Israel tour with Pastor Skip Heitzig at inspirationcruises.com slash c-a-b-q.

That's inspirationcruises.com slash c-a-b-q. Okay, let's turn to Ephesians 6 and hear what Skip has for us today. Kids study us, and if they see us being over committed so that our job, our occupation, our activities, our hobbies take precedent over them so that they feel like they're an intrusion into your life whenever they try to get your attention, you'll provoke them to wrath.

They feel unwanted. Now, kids will understand if you're busy, but they won't understand if they're neglected. Charles Francis Adams, that probably doesn't ring a bell. He was a politician in our country in the 1800s, Charles Francis Adams. You probably do know his grandfather or you know of him, President John Adams was his grandfather, and you know his father, John Quincy Adams. So when grandpa and dad are presidents of the United States, that's a hard act to follow. Well, he became a politician. He wasn't a president. He was a diplomat, a statesman involved in several different kind of campaigns.

Very, very, very over committed. So much so that on one particular day when he went fishing with his son, Henry, both of them kept diaries. In little Henry's diary, the entry said, went fishing with my dad today, the most wonderful day of my life.

But in dad's diary it read, went fishing with my boy today, a day wasted. You got to know that Henry grew up feeling that over commitment of his father to politics and to business so that he felt like an intrusion. That'll provoke a child to wrath. Let me give you a sixth, domineering. Domineering parents either by controlling them, the kids, or smothering the kids, or over protecting the kids. When a child feels like you are just like hovering and you won't let them out, you won't let them make their own choices, they feel like, well, you don't trust them. You don't trust them to make their own choices or to feel the consequences of their own choices. And that will build up over time resentment. They will grow to be angry. You provoke them to wrath. Another way, this is way number seven, not to parent, minimizing what your kids feel or say or what opinion they have.

If they share something, they share an idea or an opinion and you just marginalize it, minimize it. It builds up resentment in them. If her doll breaks or his toy is missing and you go, oh, come on, it's just a toy. Without realizing that toy to that child is like your car or your occupation, your business.

It's everything to him. If you minimize those kind of feelings and opinions over time, it builds up resentment. I read a report on child welfare. It stated the primary reason why kids go to foster homes is not because of the divorce of parents, not because of financial issues, but disinterested parents. They just lose an interest in the kids.

Finally, here's the eighth way not to parent, eighth way not to parent, overloading. I don't mean your life, I mean their life. If your expectations of those girls or boys are so high so that you don't give them approval until they reach a certain goal, a certain grade, a certain cheerleader status or athletic status, you're provoking them to wrath. They feel like they will never please you.

They'll grow up frustrated. Why does he have to get the best grades? Why does he have to be number one on the team?

Why? Did you know that Napoleon Bonaparte was number 42 in his class? He became a ruler of a nation. Did you also know that Isaac Newton was next to the lowest in his class? Wow, great scientist. Or what about the six-year-old kid that came home from school with a note by the teacher that said, too stupid to learn? That was Thomas Edison. Too stupid to learn what?

Great American inventor. So parenting can be done negatively. Fathers, including all parents, both parents, mom and dad, do not provoke your children to wrath.

Now we turn a corner. The second phrase of verse four, but there's the positive. Bring them up in the training and the admonition of the Lord. The word bring up means to nourish your children or better yet move them toward maturity. Bring them up. Don't hold them down. Don't push them back.

Don't keep them home. Bring them up. How are we to bring them up? Notice two words are given right after that.

Bring them up. What's the first? In the training. Training. Teaching.

I read something this week that it was sort of an astonishing revelation. The word for parents, plural, in Hebrew is the word horem. It's related to the word in Hebrew that I already knew, moray. That word means teacher. So parents and teacher come from the same root word. And here's the reason why. In Judaism, parents were the first teachers.

And I don't mean that figuratively. I mean literally, the first three years of a Hebrew boy or girl's life, the mother was in charge of the educational process until that child was weaned. Once the child was weaned, if it was a boy, the father would supervise the teaching of the law to the male child and give that boy a trade to follow throughout life. If it was a girl, the mother would disciple that young daughter in the domestic affairs and activities of the home. So parents were the first trainers, teachers.

Why is that? Because they believed literally in the command of Deuteronomy 6. Let me read it to you. The words which I, the Lord, command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise up. In other words, moms and dads, the training of your children should be as natural as the activities of your day, a part of everyday life. When I was first reading this series of texts in Deuteronomy as a young father, wondering how I could implement that, knowing that my son loved to play dress-up all the time, anytime there's a new figure, a new movie, he'd become that character, we invented a little game at home called Say, Play, and Pray.

I've told you about this over the years, but it was something he looked forward to like every day. Say, Play, Pray. We would say it first. We would play it second. We would pray about it third. First of all, we would say it. We would read in a simplified version of the Bible a story out of the Bible.

Say, David and Goliath. After we would say it or read it, we would then play it. We would role-play it. We would act it out. I would be Goliath. He was always the hero.

If it was the New Testament, he was always Jesus. And we would actually dress up in clothing of the time and put on our own little play. So we would say it, reinforce it by playing it. Then afterwards, we would pray about the lesson that that story taught us. So every time I came home, Nate would say, let's do Say, Play, and Pray.

Never got tired of it. There's lots of creative ways to train them. So parenting can be done negatively.

It could be done positively. And Paul says you're to bring them up, move them toward maturity by first being their teacher, their trainer. But notice the second word, the training and the admonition of the Lord. Now, there's a Bible word, right? Admonition.

What does that mean exactly? I'm going to tell you the word in Greek because some of you who have a counseling background or you've been trained in counselors will recognize the word. Nuthassia.

Nuthassia is the word. If you have a counseling background, you may know that noothetic counseling espoused by Dr. J. Adams especially comes from this word admonition or nuthassia. It actually means to place something before one's mind. And it has the idea of correcting, rebuking or warning by even contending with a person like saying, now, wait a minute, I want to correct your path, change your behavior, warn you to stay away from this and instruct you in a different way.

So it's a little firmer idea. There's training, but then there's admonition. Proverbs 29 says a child left to himself brings shame. Admonition brings up the subject of discipline, a word some parents try to avoid, a practice many parents try to avoid, discipline. And there's two kinds of discipline. There's corrective discipline, that's corporal punishment, and there's preventative discipline.

Let me just make a few remarks and base them on the scripture. Number one, corrective discipline, that means spanking. Corrective discipline expresses love.

Corrective discipline expresses, demonstrates love. Now, not everybody agrees. Some think it's the most hateful thing in the world. You know who thinks that mostly?

Kids. You don't love me. No, it's because I love you I'm going to do this. You hate me or I hate you. So a parent thinks, they just said they hate me. That seven-year-old must hate me. I better not do it. What your seven-year-old thinks about you today really is unimportant.

What your 18-year-old will think about you after the process is over is all important. It's loving. It's not hateful, it's loving.

In fact, listen to what God says, Hebrews, the book of Hebrews, whom the Lord loves, He chastens and He scourges every son He receives. Corrective discipline expresses love. Discipline expresses love. Also, corrective discipline is fruitful. It bears fruit. It produces fruit. When it's done rightly, righteously, and fairly, it produces fruit. Listen to Proverbs 23 verses 13 and 14. This is right out of the New Living translation.

I selected it on purpose. Don't fail to correct your children. They won't die if you spank them. Physical discipline may well save them from death.

It's fruitful when administered righteously. Ever since my era of being raised, there were anti-spanking experts all the way from Dr. Spock, not from Star Trek, a different one, all the way through to modern times. And spanking was decried. Corporal punishment was decried as being wrong and unproductive, and it will cause your kids to be anti-social. So said all the experts, and so say some of these experts.

I read an interesting article in US News and World Report that say that such experts base all of their findings, quote, on a body of research that is at best inconclusive and at worst badly flawed. The same article that dealt with this cites more recent studies indicating that spanking will make children less likely to fight with others and more likely to obey their parents. Something else about corrective discipline. It must be timely. You can't start when they're 17. You can't say, okay, they're 13, find a barrel.

It has to be timely. Proverbs 19, verse 18, chasing your son while there's hope and don't be a willing party to his death. You do not show love by overlooking willing disobedience and neglecting discipline. I heard about two kids that were growing up, and they said, do your parents ever spank you? And they said, do my parents ever spank me?

My mom has a little whip down by her kitchen sink with the words of the hymn next to it, I need thee every hour. Let me give you one final point about corrective discipline. Corrective discipline requires tools.

And what is the most frequent tool the book of Proverbs talks about when it comes to discipline? The rod, right? The rod.

Now, some of your eyes are widening right now. The word in Hebrew for rod is the Hebrew word shebet, which means a staff, a branch, or an offshoot. In other words, something that is separate from the human body. Don't use your hand to discipline your child. Don't use your fist to discipline a child. Don't use your foot or a headbutt.

I'm just trying to cover all my bases here. I believe that a parent's hands should be reserved for an embrace, a stroke, and an affirmation. So when they look at those hands, they don't say those are the things that hit me, but those are the hands that embrace me.

There should be an extension, and that is in the term of some kind of implement that will get their attention. Well, that's corrective discipline. The other side of the coin is preventative discipline.

You know, any good doctor will practice preventative medicine as well as corrective medicine. A good parent will do the same. Do you play with your child? That's preventative discipline.

Do you pray with your child? That's preventative discipline. It's the time spent, it's the hours that you sow into their life, because the corrective discipline only reinforces the preventative discipline.

If it's all corrective and not preventative, it won't work. As Josh McDowell is fond of saying, rules without relationship will produce rebellion. A Gallup poll, a Gallup survey of 1,000 teenagers over a 24-hour period found that 42 percent of them received no words of praise during a 24-hour period tested.

One half had gotten no hug or kiss, and 44 percent of these kids never heard the words, I love you, one time. That shows me that the preventative discipline has not been a part of that family picture. So back to the text. Parenting can be done negatively, could be done positively.

Here's the third. Parenting should be done ultimately. There's a goal that you as a Christian parent ought to live with when you look at those kids. And here it is in verse 4. And you fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and the admonition.

What's the last three words? Of the Lord. It doesn't say just bring them up in training and admonition period, but of the Lord. That is, your goal isn't just to positively train them and if need be admonish them and correct them, but to do so with the intention of seeing they become mature spiritually. It's a spiritual goal. Lead your children to Christ, disciple your children in Christ, teach them to love Christ.

In fact, I believe the best definition of a parent, biblical definition of a parent, putting the principles together, is the parent is a partner with God in making disciples of their children. You are the instrument God wants to use to disciple those children and ready them for the future. And you gotta begin young. Charles Haddon Spurgeon used to say, before a child reaches seven, teach him all the way to heaven. And better still, the work will thrive if he learns before he's five. Dr. Martin DeHaan, a medical doctor who became a pastor, came out with these statistics that after the age of 35, only one person in 50,000 will receive Christ.

After the age of 45, only one person in 300,000 will receive Christ. And the reason he gave an ongoing set of statistics was to show that you begin really young when they're impressionable and they're forging choices for the future. They might step away from a while, but let them make that choice when they're young. What is perhaps the most common verse you hear when it comes to raising kids, whether parents come to dedicate their babies, or you talk about child rearing, or what is the most common verse you hear? Train up a child. Proverbs 22, train up a child in the way that he should go, and when he is old, he won't depart from it. I think a lot of parents hear that and they think, what that means is drag him to church, make him sing hymns, say prayers at meal and before bedtime, and they might sow their wild oats, but when they're old and gray, they'll finally come back.

Now, let me put a different spin on it. Here's what I think it means. Here's the role of the parent.

That Proverb, Proverbs 22, says train up a child in the way that he should go. The word there in Hebrew, train, it's a crazy word. It's the word hanak, which speaks of a practice when a baby was born and the baby was given to the midwife. The midwife would do something.

She would take her index finger, dip it in some date mixture like date honey, and touch the gums, massage the gums, the soft palate, and the roof of the mouth of that infant to stimulate the sucking reflex, to get that child ready for breastfeeding, feeding. That's where the word hanak, train, comes from is to stimulate the taste. And so here's what I believe the verse means. Stimulate the taste for godliness in the life of your child.

And you stimulate that taste by not only what you say in training, but by what you do in giving an example. One of our great presidents, President Abraham Lincoln, commenting on that verse of scripture said, to train up a child in the way that he should go, for a man to do that, he must walk that way himself. So here's the deal. A hundred years from now, it won't matter if you drive a cool car today or not. A hundred years from now, it won't matter if you got the iPhone 5, or the newest computer, or if you were a fashionista and you really looked cool in your clothing.

But a hundred years from now, the world might be a better place because you invested. In the life of a child or two or three or a quiver full. That's the goal. Fathers and mothers, don't provoke your children to wrath. Don't do it negatively. Can be done positively, train them, admonish them, but always ultimately with that goal in the Lord. That concludes Skip Heitzig's message from the series, Keep Calm and Marry On. Find the full message, as well as books, booklets, and full teaching series at connectwithskip.com. Right now, we want to share about a resource that will connect you with God's design and purpose for fatherhood. America is reaping the whirlwind of bad fruit from a generation of young men who lack the influence of a father.

The Bible tells us that the world is the world's only place to live. We desperately need to educate men of all ages and stages of life to begin to turn this destructive social trend. Listen to Skip Heitzig. Where's dad? That's a crucial question in our world today. When fathers abandon their children, a series of dominoes begin to fall with devastating results. We see young men rampaging through streets destroyed by drugs, then continuing the vicious cycle by creating fatherless homes. We need to educate boys and men of all ages about how dads make a difference. And that's the theme of our current resource package that includes my full hour video documentary called Where's Dad? Plus seven of my most important messages to men. I hope you'll order your copy now. Dads Make a Difference.

That's the title of a critical issues package you can order now. The Dads Make a Difference package includes seven of Skip's most important messages to men and the full hour video documentary Where's Dad? hosted by Skip. I think it's pretty easy to see from just a reading through of scripture that it is dad's responsibility to set the moral spiritual tone in the home.

Remember it was Joshua who said as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Get this package in either digital download or CD and DVD when you support Connect with Skip with your gift of $50 or more. You'll be joining us as we take Skip's Bible teachings into more major cities.

Request the Dads Make a Difference package online at connectwithskip.com or by calling 1-800-922-1888. And we're excited to give you more content from Pastor Skip and this ministry right to your mobile device. Be on the lookout for our first text message welcoming you to the group. That's coming your way if we've connected with you through prayer or monthly resource.

And in the weeks ahead, we'll let all our listeners know how to join in. Be sure to come back tomorrow as Pastor Skip dives into one of the most complex issues in any marriage, the in-laws. Jay Adams in his book, Solving Marriage Problems writes, perhaps the most difficult of all relationships to deal with is the in-law relationship. It's true that you marry the family. Unlike other situations, you simply can't avoid your in-laws. Connect with Skip Hyten is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.