Teach Your Children Well (Part 2 of 4)

The use of discipline or parental authority.

Raising children is increasingly countercultural and yet we need in our world today. Parents were committed to teaching their children well so what should we do today on Truth for Life. Alister Ben continue the study from the book of Proverbs teaches us how to handle this dilemma by nature. We love our children dearly, but we need the Scriptures to learn how to love them wisely, and the only way that we can love them wisely is by right understanding of what we've been given here in this trial diverse which is before us as a launching pad for our study is to train a child in the way he should go on the way she should go so and raising our children, it is important when we asked the question what do we have here, what are we dealing with that.

We answer that question on the basis of the faithful consideration of that with which represent. We are given a child and this loving God who is Stan this child in his image also recognizes that this child's image of God is marred by the imprint of sin.

I spent a lot of time in the catechism the shorter catechism and in going through this.

I recognized again just how crucial it is for us as parents to be instilling in our children.

The. The basic essential truths concerning who they are in order that they might understand their identity because a worldview that can answer for our children, who they are and where they came from is an insufficient worldview and our friends and neighbors. I do not have answers to the question, who am I where I come from where my going doesn't matter in a Christian. Responsibility is so to instruct their children to be able to answer those four questions they'll be able to give the answers to them before they fully appreciate the significance of the answers but it is important that we give them answers so for example, in the catechism it goes along like this and you can teach this to your children, chat and question 24, who was the first man God made Adam, what in God made Adam from the dust of the ground who was the first woman God made Eve what God made Eve from one of Adam's ribs.

What did God give to Adam and Eve as well as bodies to give them souls that would never die. Do you have a soul as well as a body yes I have a soul that will never die, how you know that you have a soul because God tells me so in the Bible where Adam and Eve good when God made them. Yes, very good.

All that God made was good. What is sin. Sin is this a bid on not keeping God's law. What is not keeping God's law is not being or doing what God requires.

Did Adam and Eve continue to be good.

No, they sinned by disobeying God.

How did Adam and Eve sin by eating through the guard it said not delete what happened to Adam and Eve when they sinned, they were separated from God unless it is Adam's sin affect us. Yes, we are all Adam's children. He acted for us all, and as a result, we are all born in a sinful condition.

Question 39. What name do you give to the sinful condition answer.

Original Sin, what other sin, are we guilty all as well as Original Sin answer actual sin in what we do say and think what is every sin deserve God's anger and punishment.

Can anyone go to get to heaven with the sinful condition know our hearts must be changed before we can be fit for half note the reason that many of us as parents are not given us to our kids because we don't understand it ourselves. And when we think in terms of children. Our minds are flavored by a lot of sentimental nonsense that flushes through the literature and airwaves of our time and our minds are influenced also by an emotional instinct which obviously clearly wants to believe the best about our children. But what the Bible actually says when we take this bundle in our hands and ask the question what do I have here a child and what is our child. The Bible says that the intentions of the heart of a man are evil from their youth from their inception. Genesis 821 from the first dawn of choice are children who are by nature on the road to destruction. Choose the road of destruction, the evil one begins to tackle the issue when we still have our infants in our arms and son 58 have this amazing statement with our quality I don't want to tire you with cross-references but 758 even from birth, the wicked go astray from the womb. They are wayward and speak lies their venom is like the venom of a snake like that of a cornbread that is stop the tears that will not heed the chewing of the charmer.

However, skillfully enchanter may be. So you see you see why it is that the moms are in the grocery store singing songs and offering gifts nine and the Little League here, let me get you one of these no. Did you want one of the well. I'll get your big book you want a big Google please leave my personal don't for the car is through the credit cards on the guard what am I going to do, bring the enchanter send in the clowns nothing works.

Why, because what you there with kids, your precious little bundle is a potential juvenile delinquents, no matter how cute she lives in her pink no matter how wonderfully loose in his blue, no matter how angelic his eyes, and if you is his mom and dad don't understand that you will exercise a training program that is flawed from its very inception. You see, the real key to raising children is theology is not a book about child raising. It's the Bible so that we might have a doctrine of man and our doctrine of man, then determines how we deal with men in the Bible says that man is born in sin. Any shape and in iniquity.

Therefore, he is like in a bowl and crown bowling on an English green which it is heat it is impossible for him to roll straight.

He is put together in such a way that he deviates either to one side or to the other and any attempt to say that this is going straight is a perversion and in Isaiah 48 eight you have the same principle you have neither heard me not understood from of old, your ear has not been open well, though I know how treacherous you are. You were called a rebel from birth's and the world says I never heard such nonsense in all of my life.

I understand I'm at Jerry's on the longer we go into the 21st century, the more clear it is going to become in these fair shores that a commitment to Christian truth in the matters of the most essential elements of our existence, man, woman, heterosexual marriage, the raising of children. The establishing of guidelines in these most essential element is going to get clearer and clearer and clearer the separation between light and darkness falling in wisdom and this is going to be no journey for the fearful. This is going be no trip for the faint and heart is going to take everything by God's enabling in us to stand up and say yes I actually believe that I have today taken home from the hospital, a rebel, a lovely little girl, but she's a rebel, and unless the grace of God reaches in and cuts the umbilical cord of her rebellious heart. Then all that is endemic in her will come to fruition in later life, and that same grace which grants to us the wisdom to exercise parenting responsibilities provides for as the principles of parenting so that God in his grace gives to his this training and instruction in order that we might be able to take these wayward children who naturally choose where they would go and we tell them where they should go and orders are clear this train a child in the way he should go. Not in the way he would go in the way she would go and tell me where I should go.

Don't tell me who I should spend time with. Don't tell me what I should do with my own body. I want to do what I want to do. Note listen, my dear friends, it is imperative if were to have any hope whatsoever that we establish authority in the dawn of life that we seek to ban the tender twig before the branches 4 feet wide.

That's a trunk. The earlier the training, the easier the work, the more encouraging the results. And you better do it sooner than later.

You know that with potty training on your immune is embarrassing going on a plane with a five-year-old is not a huge great thing hanging out the back of his trousers and that's ridiculous. That's got nothing to do with a boy that's get everything to do with her mother animatedly got to be 14 and he still had it going into junior high. You have behind you all will. My parents didn't want to influence me gnawing on on on their they didn't want to you not interfere in my progress and in my development so they just let me just say this, let me go you know and I just go and is its freedom yet is going to be a lot of freedom here and spend a lot of time by yourself actually give him a surprise at how freeing this is bye-bye you get at it as quickly as you can.

Why because it's crucial. The same is true to leave children without principles is not to make them three but it is to render them helpless. I remember years ago and are traveling on a train in England and as I was making my journey south I was sitting by myself and for seat area with a table in front of it and across from me, a young mother and two daughters, and in the course of a journey which was Longley began to tour guide to the mother and then to the girls and the girls were drawing and one of them came over and we started to draw together and she drawing I draw we passed back and forth and in the course of conversation. I said to the little girl I said whatever her name was Sarah Carr and Sarah do you go to Sunday school at that her mother said Sarah coming back here just like that. She grabbed her. She pulled her back over the other side of the compartment.

If you consider me but she said to Sarah. She said Sarah I think we're just going to wait until you're a big girl and you can choose for yourself whether you want to go to Sunday school or not. All sounded so high-minded and smart, except that the biggest deprivation of freedom.

We grant to our children is the freedom to make a choice and they cannot make a choice without information and this lady thought that her daughter was about to choose the path of righteousness and life. When she got to the age of 10 or 11.

It was going to have parents that like biblical principles are ignorant of their children's moral and spiritual state there clueless as to their propensity towards doing wrong there therefore ineffective in applying discipline and to reject biblical principles for child rearing is ruinous. Look at verse 15 of 22 folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him.

Folly is bound up in the heart of a child. Children are rational creatures. Therefore, they need instruction, not blind submission children are individuals in each has their own individual traits and temperament meant to give them their identity and part of the skill and parenting isn't distinguishing between our children is this girl is this fellow timid or confident. She withdrawn her gregarious and she fearful or carefree, is she suspicious or trusting issue. By nature, aggressive or considerate is she, amiable, or is she argumentative and you take all of that information is apparent, and then you filter the training instruction of the Bible in relationship to them so that you may redefine their will without breaking their spirit so that you learn to distinguish between childhood irresponsibility and willful defiance, and in the process of that says the Bible words are not enough really needs child.

According to their own distinct identity to their own peculiar nature to their own stage in life we are to discipline them.

Nobody in their right mind.

Nobody understands the Bible or the love of the Lord Jesus or of God has any interest in abusing and hurting and harming children by the Bible says that all need the rod, some need it more than others. That is exercise says God from the heart of compassion because the raw that is exercise without affection is a revolting tyranny. Discipline your children while they're young enough to learn if you don't, you're helping them to destroy themselves. That's a living Bible, 1980.

If you don't punish your son. You don't love him.

If you love him will correct him.

My friends are probably no area in which the wisdom of God stands and more forceful contrast to the views of men and in this area, so let me just draw this to a close, I just went on the Internet and punched up the European commission on spanking and discipline.

It is staggering to read this information.

It covers my own Scotland. It covers the nations of Western Europe and goes into Africa. Let me just give you a flavor of what contemporary culture has to say concerning this. This was the Supreme Court of Italy that the cassation in Rome judgment states that the very expression quotes correction of children" which expresses a view of child rearing that is both culturally anachronistic and historically outdated, should in fact be redefine abolishing any connotation of hierarchy or authoritarianism, and introducing the ideas of social and responsible commitment. We should characterize the position of the educator in this case, namely the peer. So now I have no jurisdiction of my son as his father.

He is equal rights to everything that I have. I must treat him. According to the European commission in a way that acknowledges that he has as much right to his opinion as I do, as his father Israel, the nation, to whom God gave the Shema written right into their loss Israel from Jerusalem, the convention on the rights of the child describe corporal punishment of children as entirely impermissible and quotes a remnant of a societal educational outlook that has lost its validity.

This is Israel, the remnant of a societal educational outlook that has lost its validity. One of the students asked me the other day said, you know, do you think you think it's possible that we would ever be persecuted. The United States, the answer is yes and perhaps a little quicker than we realize.

So what are we to do while people say what we we spare the rod, because we love the children will listen.

God doesn't spare the rod and he loves us to love your kids more than God loves us and fight God argues in Hebrews 12 from the correction of a father with his children to the correction of God the father with his children and he says the reason I do this for you is because I love you and the undisciplined child is actually an illegitimate child therefore is young people and his young parents, particularly, I want to urge you to take this seriously, I want to urge you to stand against the tides of contemporary culture. I know the educational theory says you don't learn things off by heart anymore. That's not the way you learn. You don't learn to spell that way you don't go CAT cat CAT cat DoD dog DoD dog's gold ribbon did the duty do and it fires up on the wall and suddenly you know it. Teach your children well who said that Crosby stills Nash and Young, their parents, hell will slowly go by and feed them on your dreams. The one they pick is that one day go by.

She lies important that Christians listen to the culture rather than sing in half-baked Christian songs all the time. BB Warfield and with this I finish Warfield a great theologian at Princeton and an article defending the Westminster confession of faith in the shorter Scottish catechism tells a wonderful story and I read and I'm done. We have he says the following bit of experience from a general officer of the United States Army. He was in a great Western city at a time of intense excitement and violent rioting. The streets were overrun daily by a dangerous crime. One day he observed approaching him a man of singularly combined calmness and firmness of man of bearing whose very demeanor inspired confidence. So impressed was the man with his bearing amid the surrounding uproar that when he had passed, he turned to look back at him, only to find that the stranger had done the same on observing his turning the stranger once came back to him and touching his chest with his forefinger demanded without preface what is the chief end of man on receiving the countersign man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever said he I knew you were the shorter catechism boy by your new's why that is just what I was thinking of you came the men's reply. I'm going to tell you something when you meet a kid now they can look you in the eye and talk to you a boy who can shake your hand and you don't feel it. You got a hold of a pound and 1/2 of a wet caught somebody who stands up in a room when a woman enters who moves in order to have a lady sit on the seat who knows that a greeting is to be met with a greeting.

You're starting to look at somebody who may just be shorter catechism boy think our culture needs them to think. A new generation demands. If you're the parents get at. If you're the grandparents step up and if were on route plan accordingly, we will come back to this topic of parenting tomorrow. Part three of message titled, teach your children will. This is Truth for Life with Alastair beg just a minute Alastair will return to close today's program with prayer. If you're a regular listener to Truth for Life. You know you can depend on us to invite you to open your Bible each day. Because our mission is simple and straightforward to teach the Bible were committed to clearly reading and explaining the text without adding to it, or taking away from. So if you been tracking with our study wise words you probably noticed how the Scripture is God, the teaching if you'd like to dive even deeper into what the Bible has to say in the book of Proverbs, you can request a copy of the book, living will, it unpacks much of the wisdom God gives us for everyday life and offers practical examples on how we can apply it. This book is a great companion volume to Alistair's series.

The book living well explores God's guidance on subjects like interpersonal relationships, handling finances, marriage, parenting. You also learn what God has to say about more challenging matters like how we control our anger or keeping pride in check request a copy of the book today.

When you donate to Truth for Life. Simply The book image you see on the mobile app or visit Truth for Life.org/donate. You can also call 888-588-7884. Now let's join Alastair in prayer. Father, thank you that the Bible is such a wise book touches every area of our life's help us with our kids. We pray and with our grandchildren to that we don't make a hash of and where we have been neglecting to order the direction of the twin give us courage, grant us grace I was not to be hard handed heavy-handed. Help us to recognize the interest and nature and traits and temperament of our individual children broaden Brenda's wisdom. We pray and raise up for as we pray in this generation whole army of young people who are not driven by an external code but are motivated by an internal principle, love for Christ issues in the life of respect from Judy to his law that are accepted by their lives are framed by how puzzled God.

We pray and may the grace of the Lord Jesus and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit rest upon and remain with each of us now and forevermore about 1 PM. Thanks for joining us again tomorrow as Alastair points out some of the pitfalls Bible teaching of Alastair beg is furnished by Creek for life learning is