Christ Church

Biblical Child Discipline in an Age of Therapeutic Goo #1

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INTRODUCTION

Over the years I have preached on marriage, and family, and child-rearing any number of times. Seeing that I am about to do it again, I need to begin by noting the way this series will overlap with the others, but also to point out a significant way that it will differ. Some of the basic principles remain constant, of course, and to refresh your thinking concerning those principles, there are a number of our books available, and recordings of previous series. 

But this series of messages is going to be dwelling on biblical child rearing as a profoundly countercultural thing. What does it mean to bring up children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord in a generation that is profoundly hostile to any such endeavor? That worldly hostility is expressed in countless ways—from overt persecution to surreptitious lying, and from surreptitious lying to online seduction and subversion. 

THE TEXT

“Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; But the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.” (Proverbs 22:15). 

“Withhold not correction from the child: For if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell” (Proverbs 23:13–14). 

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

We have two texts before us. The first says that folly is intrinsic to the heart of a child, but the situation is not irremediable (Prov. 22:15). The folly that is closely bound there in the heart of the child can be driven far away from him by means of the rod. This is a rod of correction, meaning that there are things there that must be put right. This does not mean that “beating your kid” is equivalent to gospel. The rod must be applied in context, within the framework of everything Scripture teaches us. 

This leads to the second text. Because this is the case, because folly is inborn, a father should make sure not to withhold correction from his child (Prov. 23:15). The word there refers to a lad, or boy. If the father uses the rod judiciously, his son will not die, sound effects notwithstanding. If the son is beaten with the rod, he will be thereby delivered from Sheol (Prov. 23:14). This short-term pain is a long term kindness.  

ROOT ASSUMPTIONS

Our first glance at these passages is informative, as far as it goes. We can see that the Scriptures are fully supportive of corporal punishment in child rearing. Those who object to every form of spanking “as abusive” are plainly at variance with the Word of God. We will see later that “gentle parenting” is anything but. But my interest here is not to parse the passages with a pro-spanking/anti-spanking debate in mind. What we need to look at first is the apparent callused toughness behind what the passages are saying. There is a different world there, and that is what we must get back to first. 

Children do not begin at a neutral place, and they do not start out their days from some innocent space. As my father used to say, with great affection, babies are “little bundles of sin.” All that is necessary for the sinning to start is the requisite muscle strength and intelligence. Once they have that, their career in sinning starts. The apostle Paul tells us that all of us are “by nature” objects of wrath (Eph. 2:3). We are, all of us, sinners by nature. Is a child in the cradle a walker? Yes, in that he belongs to a race of walkers, but no, in that he has not yet taken his first step. Is the child in the bucket a talker? Yes, in that he is a talker by nature, but no, in that he has not yet spoken his first word. In an analogous way, we are all participants in Adam’s rebellion from the very first instant of our conception. By nature, we are sinners—bad to the bone. And the fact that the parents have not yet seen their sweet baby smoking cigarettes or pounding shots in the crib does not signify anything.

Biblical child rearing begins with answering one question accurately. That question is what is man? The answer is that we were created in the image of God (Gen. 1:27), male and female, and that subsequent to that creation we were estranged from our Creator through the rebellion of our first parents (Gen. 3:6). As a result, we are all entailed in Adam’s sin. The task of child rearing is therefore the same as the task of presenting the gospel to an unbeliever. What is that task? It is that of finding our way back.

Now someone is going to say that our children are baptized, are they not? They are being treated as members of the new covenant community, are they not? Yes, of course. But what do we ask parents when we baptize an infant? What is the first question? “Do you acknowledge your children’s need of the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ, and the renewing grace of the Holy Spirit?” The promise to bring children up in the covenant surely includes the need to instruct children in the terms of the covenant. Remember that Romans 1 teaches us that pagans outside the covenant are big fat sinners, Romans 2 teaches us that the Jews inside the covenant are big fat sinners, and Romans 3 teaches us that they are both the same kind of big fat sinners. Your children must therefore be taught the central covenantal duty of looking to Christ.  

NO NEED FOR SIN LESSONS

So what does all of this mean? Even assuming genuine love for Christ, when the world and the devil come after your kid, they will find that your child’s flesh still wants to serve as a welcoming committee. We are accustomed to speak of childhood innocence, but we must be careful to define our terms. A child is innocent, in the sense that he is immature and inexperienced in sin, as well as in everything else. But this is a relative innocence, not the innocence of an unfallen angel. It is not necessary for you to bring in any tutors to make sure your kids learn how to sin. They have all of that down already. You must have piano lessons, or driving lessons, or cooking lessons, yes. But sin lessons are never needed. There are degrees of corruption that require instruction, but the baseline for all of it is a given.

HARD TRUTH, SOFT HEARTS

It all comes down to our fundamental assumptions about human nature. Do you believe in innate human goodness? Then in that case, you are a Pelagian, and this is going to skew everything about your child rearing. Such soft, flattering words will result in hard hearts. The sinful heart needs a jack hammer, not a feather duster. One of the results of such an assumption is that your home will be a place without gospel, without forgiveness, without grace. 

But do you believe in human depravity? Then you are living in a world where the good news of the gospel will make some sort of sense. Is your home a collection of sinners, saved by real grace? Or is there a tendency to just say that because it is orthodox?

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Stand Still and See His Salvation

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INTRODUCTION

One of the things that happened in the medieval period was that the church calendar began to get cluttered up with numerous saints’ days and celebrations, like so many barnacles on the ark that was the church. There were many blessings that resulted from the great Reformation, and one of them was that the number of Christian holidays was pared down to what came to be known as the “five evangelical feast days.” All of them were geared to the life of Christ—Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost. It is our practice here at Christ Church to have all of our celebrations of these days land on Sunday, with two exceptions. In addition to our 52 Lord’s Day celebrations, we also have a service on Christmas Eve, and one on Good Friday. On Palm Sunday, the week before Easter, we also have a sermon that is geared to that theme, and so here we are.

THE TEXT

“And Moses said unto the people, Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will shew to you to day: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen to day, ye shall see them again no more for ever” (Exodus 14:13).

“Ye shall not need to fight in this battle: set yourselves, stand ye still, and see the salvation of the Lord with you, O Judah and Jerusalem: fear not, nor be dismayed; to morrow go out against them: for the Lord will be with you” (2 Chronicles 20:17).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

Theses texts are not directly about Palm Sunday, obviously, but there is a principle here that we need to grasp and remember. Whenever God undertakes on behalf of His people to deliver and save them, He does so on the basis of His grace. But because it is His grace, He determines when and how He is going to manifest that grace. In the meantime, we are in the midst of the trouble that we need to be delivered from, and it is not uncommon for us to become more than a little antsy about the trouble we are in.

Moses has led the people of Israel out of Egypt, and more than this, they had left Egypt as a smoking ruin behind them (Ex. 10:7). The Bible says there were 600,000 men, plus women and children, plus the mixed multitude (Ex. 12:37-38). We are probably talking about a couple million people, on the banks of an uncrossable body of water, and the Egyptian army coming up behind them. In this context, Moses tells them, “Fear not.” In this context, he says stand still. He says wait and see. See what? See the salvation of the Lord.

The same language is used by the prophet Jahaziel when he reassured Jehoshaphat. “Stand ye still, and see the salvation of the Lord.” That is why, in great faith, Jehoshaphat sent the choir out first. The short form is that believing that salvation is by grace is a stance that commits you to waiting, standing still.

On the mount of the Lord, it will be provided (Gen. 22:14). You have heard me say this a number of times before, and we need to get the principle down into our bones. God loves cliffhangers.

PALM SUNDAY?

So what does this have to do with the context of Palm Sunday? Although God revealed Himself throughout the times of the Old Testament, we sometimes forget how much history was there. From beginning to end, the book of Genesis encompasses more than 2,000 years. The entire rest of Old Testament history is less than that. If you took the span of Genesis, and added it to the end of Genesis again, like two box cars, it would take you down to the time of King Arthur. In other words, Joseph was as close to King Arthur as he was to Adam and Eve. That is a lot of time.

And throughout the Old Testament, prophecies that God would send could ebb and flow. For ex- ample, in the time of Eli, what was it like? “Now the boy Samuel ministered to the Lord before Eli. And the word of the Lord was rare in those days; there was no widespread revelation.” (1 Samuel 3:1, NKJV ). So it is very clear that one of the purposes of history is to teach the faithful how to wait.

And then we get to the end of the Old Testament, and between Malachi and Matthew there are four centuries of silence. God goes quiet. They still had the Scriptures, and the promises of the Messiah that Scripture contained, and so we need to realize that by the time of the Triumphal Entry, the faithful had been waiting in silence for four hundred years. That would extend from our day back to 1624—a century and a half before the founding of our nation. So the faithful by this point are wound tight. If they keep silent, the stones themselves would start singing. There were also numerous other people involved in what might be called Jesus mobs—also wound tight, but with a very blurry understanding (Luke 20:5-6; 20:19; 22:2; Mark 11:18,32;12:12; Acts 5:26). Lots of people were wound tight. Then there were the corrupt elites sitting on top of the whole thing, trying to maintain control.

It was in that context that Jesus entered Jerusalem, to wild acclaim, in order to go up to the economic center of the city, so that he might start flipping over tables. This was not exactly an “oil on troubled waters” approach. There was a reason Jesus was arrested and crucified.

Now this is the thing we must remember. After waiting for centuries, the faithful finally saw their long-expected king enter Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, just as the prophet had said, and then . . . He went and got Himself killed. The lesson is “stand still and see the salvation of the Lord,” certainly, but the lesson should also be “that the salvation might not be the thing you were anticipating.”

WHY ALL THIS SOUNDS FAMILIAR

They had glorious stories to inspire them, centuries in the past. We have that as well. They had experi- enced a long stretch of spiritual lethargy, with nothing happening, and no prophetic word from God. We have that. They had corrupt managers and handlers of their spiritual establishment, and no appar- ent way to be rid of them. We have that. We have it all, meaning that we have the same kind of mess that requires an intervention from God.

And so what we are to do? The answer is found in our text. Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. And this will not come if we are just looking around listlessly. No, look to the expected Christ. And expect Him to do the unexpected.

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A Postmillenial Primer #2 (Survey of Isaiah #21) (Troy)

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THE TEXT

Isaiah 11 KJV

1 And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots:

2 And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord;

3 And shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord: and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears:

4 But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and he shall smite the earth: with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked.

5 And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins.

6 The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.

7 And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

8 And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den.

9 They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.

10 And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious.

11 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea.

12 And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.

13 The envy also of Ephraim shall depart, and the adversaries of Judah shall be cut off: Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim.

14 But they shall fly upon the shoulders of the Philistines toward the west; they shall spoil them of the east together: they shall lay their hand upon Edom and Moab; and the children of Ammon shall obey them.

15 And the Lord shall utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea; and with his mighty wind shall he shake his hand over the river, and shall smite it in the seven streams, and make men go over dryshod.

16 And there shall be an highway for the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria; like as it was to Israel in the day that he came up out of the land of Egypt.

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Psalm 150: Crescendo and Conclusion

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INTRODUCTION

This is a short psalm, but it is densely packed with hallelujahs. There are twelve of them here, and one hallelu-el. Together they praise Jah, the covenant God of Israel—Yahweh or Jehovah, and El, the great God Almighty. The longest stretch of words here between any two hallelujahs is four words, with all the rest of the bridges being two words. This conclusion to the Psalter is a great crescendo of praise.  

THE TEXT

“Praise ye the Lord. Praise God in his sanctuary: Praise him in the firmament of his power. Praise him for his mighty acts: Praise him according to his excellent greatness. Praise him with the sound of the trumpet: Praise him with the psaltery and harp. Praise him with the timbrel and dance: Praise him with stringed instruments and organs. Praise him upon the loud cymbals: Praise him upon the high sounding cymbals. Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord. Praise ye the Lord” (Psalm 150). 

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

We have yet another hallelujah psalm, concluding the psalter in a great crescendo. The psalm begins with hallelujah (v. 1), and it concludes with the same word (v. 6). At the very first, we should notice where Jehovah is to be praised in this way. We are to praise Him in the sanctuary first, and in the heavenlies also. Inside the sanctuary and far above the sanctuary—inside and outside. The second thing we do is praise Him for His great deeds down through history. We serve and praise the God of history. He created history in Genesis 1, and He called Abraham in that history, and He delivered Israel through the Red Sea in that history. He took out Sisera in that history, as Deborah sang. Praise Him for His mighty acts (v. 2). These acts of His proceed from His very nature and being, and so we also praise Him for His excellent greatness (v. 2). As the human voice is not strong enough to get the effect we need, we bring in various means of amplification—the trumpet, psaltery and harp (v. 3), with the timbrel, dance, stringed instruments, and organs (v. 4), with loud cymbals and with the high hat (or finger cymbals?) (v. 5). At the end of the psalm, we turn away from loud but inanimate instruments and turn again to the singers. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord (v. 6). Hallelujah.  

THE REGULATIVE PRINCIPLE

As we look around at what we offer God in our weekly worship, we can recognize a number of the things mentioned in this psalm. We have singers. We have stringed instruments. We have brass. We have percussion. We have a psalter. Okay, you might be muttering, but where are the dancers? Some of you might be anticipating the point with gladness . . . dancers? Others might be quite worried about it, with furrowed brow. Nobody needs dancing Presbyterians. 

One of the principles that arose out of the Protestant Reformation came to be called the regulative principle, which states that if something is not commanded of us in worship, then it is prohibited. This, in distinction from the opposing principle, which is that if it is not prohibited, then it is allowed. “And nobody said that we couldn’t set up a statue of the Virgin Mary in the foyer.” Now I want to argue that all Reformed Christians must be regulativists of some stripe. We say this while rejecting the restrictions of what might be called the strict regulativists—their standard excludes far too much, even for them. They want to exclude any accompanying instruments because pianos aren’t in the New Testament, but they would also have exclude singing out loud—Paul says to sing and make melody in your heart (Eph. 5:19). We would also have to ban women from the Lord’s Supper, along with a number of other oddities and novelties.  

Now in this debate there is obviously an interpretive hermeneutical principle involved, because stringed instruments are in the Old Testament. So exactly how does God require certain worship practices of us, and what do we get to bring across from the Old Testament? And if we bring over the stringed instruments, then on what principle do we exclude the dancers? Obviously excluded would be animal sacrifices (as we see through the entire book of Hebrews) and things directly associated with animal sacrifices (burning altars and incense). Remember that the Temple was a slaughterhouse, and the incense dealt with the smell.   

TABERNACLE, TEMPLE, STREETS, SYNAGOGUES, CHURCHES

Remember that this is a psalm of cosmic praise. It begins with praise in the sanctuary, but it extends to praise outside the sanctuary—praise Him in the firmament of His power (v. 1). The appropriateness of what you are doing depends upon where you are, along with the nature of your culture. There is no indication of any musical instruments in the Mosaic tabernacle. The Tabernacle of David was dedicated to music, and there were various instruments everywhere (1 Chron. 25:1-8). We know that the Temple of Jesus’ day did have a great organ. David danced before the Lord in a religious procession that was not contained within any sacred space (2 Sam. 6:14), and remember that Miriam led the women of Israel to dance beside the sea (Ex. 15). Some of you have gotten close to that spirit at some of our block parties. Synagogues had the shofar (trumpet), but apparently not as a means of accompaniment.

Now the institution of the Christian church brings together elements of all of these—the Temple, the synagogues, but I think centrally the Tabernacle of David. The prophet Amos prophesied the Gentile church under the figure of that tabernacle (Amos 9:11), and at the Jerusalem Council, the Lord’s brother James applied this prophesy to the inclusion of the Gentiles: “After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down; and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up” (Acts 15:16). And here we are. “By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name” (Hebrews 13:15).

So is dancing excluded then? Not in principle, although other principles must always be remembered. “Let all things be done decently and in order” (1 Corinthians 14:40). In cultures where dancing is woven into everything, there is obviously an easy way to incorporate it into worship fittingly. But even in a place like west Africa, say in Anglican worship, the worshipers dance their way to church, and away from it, but not in the service—although there is still a lot of moving in place. And don’t leave out processionals, whether of a choir, or elders serving the Supper.   

PRAISE HIM

But let us return to the theme of true praise. The great acts of Jehovah are not glorified through pious muttering. We need to be loud about it. “Sing unto him a new song; Play skilfully with a loud noise” (Psalm 33:3). “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth: Make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise” (Psalm 98:4). We engage with the enemy of our souls through this potent weapon of praise. All evangelism is recruiting for the choir. Our choir members are in the regular army, and all the congregational singing is conducted by the militia. But everyone is in the choir somehow. So praise Him.

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