Appropriate Physical Affection

The point: Plead with God that the Lord will carry on the work of dealing with our sins, bringing healing grace, and that our homes may be free from cooperation with the devil in destroying our children.

A man's testimony that his home transformed from difficult to 'heaven on earth' in three weeks, illustrating the series' positive impact on families.

As we return this morning to our studies, which originally began under the title of a Biblical Perspective on Child Abuse, but has now been changed to the subject How Not to Foul Up the Training of Your Children, I must confess that I have been something a little less than amazed and overwhelmed at how many of you have conveyed to me in person or by notes and letters how much God has been using this series in your lives. For some of you, it has been a time of despair, devastating surgery as God has reached in and helped you to see why you are what you are in terms of the failure of your own pa...

0:18 - 1:40 Read in full sermon

The point: Embrace the standard for a warm, close, accepting, and goodwill climate as right, reasonable, and attainable in your relationship to God.

Negative influences in the home are likened to toxic 'radon' and 'asbestos' particles, emphasizing their devastating effect on children's spiritual and emotional health.

Now in the last several lessons in this series on how not to foul up the training of our children, we have been concentrating, our attention on what I have called the spiritual, emotional, and physical climate of our homes, that within the framework of our homes and our family life, there is an atmosphere, a climate, which is being produced by the relationship, so that we don't show any wrong kind of preference, we'll put the woman over here today, the relationship between the husband and the wife, between the parents and the children, and also the children and the parents and the children one...

3:57 - 5:24 Read in full sermon

The point: Determine not to grieve the Spirit by the toleration of ungodlike attitudes in your hearts towards your children.

Comparing backsliding in the workplace (where one fears a 'pink slip') to backsliding at home (where security allows sin to vent), illustrating how intimate relationships often reveal spiritual decline first.

intimate relationships, backsliding has its first manifestations. Long before you would dare to show your backsliding by being careless at your place of work, or talking in a nasty way to your boss, you'll start being nasty to your wife and to your kids. Because you know they won't fire you. And that's why, many of you have asked me on different occasions, why is my mean, most aggravated to my wife and to my kids? Well, there are a number of reasons, but the fundamental one is, we take advantage of the security of that relationship to give vent to our sin. And even when we are in a state of pa...

10:56 - 12:05 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin provides extensive biblical evidence from the Gospels, detailing how Jesus physically embraced children, received physical affection from a penitent woman, and allowed John…

Jesus taking a child in His arms rather than just pointing, illustrating His sensitivity to the child's potential fear and His use of physical touch to reassure and protect.

But He didn't do that. For a child to be pointed at by an adult in the midst of a group of adults is to be a, a traumatically emotional experience. So when the Lord Jesus would use the child as an illustration, by the very physical contact with the child, He neutralizes what would otherwise been intimidating, may have sent out false signals to the child. May I say it reverently?

20:00 - 20:31 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin provides extensive biblical evidence from the Gospels, detailing how Jesus physically embraced children, received physical affection from a penitent woman, and allowed John…

Jesus physically washing His disciples' feet, demonstrating His humility and affection sacramentally, serving as an example for believers.

The Lord didn't tell the mothers and fathers, You hold them and I'll reach out and bless them. He took them in His arms and He laid His hand upon them and pronounced a blessing over them or perhaps prayed and authoritatively blessed them as God's great and final priest. But whatever the particulars are, the point for our study is the physical nature of our Lord's affection demonstrated to these children. Likewise, when He would show to His disciples His disposition to take the place of a servant in the pursuit of their redemption, He did not merely say, The Son of Man has not come to be served...

23:55 - 25:22 Read in full sermon

Driving home: It is one of the best preventives to anyone being vulnerable to erotic attraction to another man is to establish non-erotic physical closeness with his own Father.

Martin recounts his daughter snuggling with him a week before her wedding, illustrating wholesome, non-erotic physical intimacy between a father and his adult daughter, established through years of appropriate contact.

If wholesome, normal, healthy physical contact is established with your daughters and then the nature of that contact is altered by their gender, by their temperament, by the stage at which they are in, rather than an erotic relationship. And I speak as a father who has that kind of physical intimacy with my two married daughters. The thought of anything erotic is abhorrent. One week before one of my daughters was married, I came down fully clothed from my study at 10 o'clock at night after a counseling session and lay on the top of my bed, fully made, just to relax for a few minutes before I ...

33:10 - 34:18 Read in full sermon

The point: Do not force physical affection on a child if their temperament does not readily accept it, as this can create resentment.

Categorizing children as 'drapers' or 'clingers' (those who enjoy extended physical affection) versus those who prefer brief contact, illustrating the need for sensitivity to individual temperaments.

You've got another one that if you don't give him a five-minute, let him drape all over you, spread-eagled, arms around your neck, legs either side of you, and just sink into your chest. They feel cheated. And that's very rewarding as a parent when you've got one of those drapers, one of those clingers. And you say, Oh, that's so nice.

35:35 - 35:58 Read in full sermon

The point: Use discretion in physical affection, taking into account the child's stage of development, especially as they approach and go through puberty.

Comparing a boy's transition to a young man to emerging from a 'cocoon,' illustrating the sensitivity needed in showing affection during puberty, especially in public.

Let not your own be the one who's going to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one ...

37:06 - 38:26 Read in full sermon

The point: Be like God, lavishing love and physical affection upon your children, as the Father did with the prodigal son.

Martin imagines how some would 'rewrite' the Prodigal Son's return, with the father merely shaking hands, contrasting it with the biblical account of the father's lavish embrace to highlight God's physical demonstration of love.

allowed my mind to ruminate a bit how some of you would rewrite the story of the returning prodigal. While he was yet a great way off, his father saw him and ran to him and struck out his right hand and said, Son, good to see you. That's the way some of you'd rewrite it. That isn't the way God took this sinner back. He didn't stick his hand out. He threw his arms around me. He lavished his love upon me. Be like God. Be like God. And of course, some of you are already saying, hey, how come you haven't used the big guns, the five imperatives? Greet one another with a holy kiss. I thought I'd

45:07 - 45:59 Read in full sermon

The point: Teach your kids grace by sometimes giving them a gift when they expect punishment, demonstrating God's favor to the ill-deserving.

Giving a child a gift when they expect punishment after breaking rules, illustrating how parents can teach the doctrine of grace as God's favor to the ill-deserving.

kid, come here, come to daddy. And they come, wondering what they're going to get. Tongue-lashing, spanking, and you throw your arms around them and hold them. You know how you teach grace to your kids? You've got to teach them both grace and law. You teach them law, when they break the rules, they get punished. But there are some times when they break the rules and when they're expecting to get punished, you give them a gift. I saw it with my own kids and I looked at them and said, Dad, there's something wrong. What are you doing this? I said, I want you to understand what grace is. Grace is ...

47:37 - 48:18 Read in full sermon