The Biblical Training of Our Children, Part 3

Recap: The Task Assigned and Defined

0:03 This sermon was preached on July 20th, 1988, at the Southeastern Reformed Baptist Family Conference.

0:17 Now may I urge you once again to turn with me to Paul's letter to the Ephesians, Ephesians chapter 6, and follow as I read the first four verses of this chapter, Ephesians chapter 6, verses 1 through 4. Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise,

1:00 that it may be well with you and that you may live long on the earth. And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but nurture them in the chastening and admonition. of the Lord.

1:21 The subject before us in these evening sessions of our conference is the biblical training of our children. The text which is serving as both the foundation and the framework of our consideration of this crucial subject is Ephesians 6 and verse 4. In our initial study, we noted what I called, task assigned, and you, fathers. And we answered the three very simple questions,

2:01 who is addressed in assigning this task of providing godly training. And the text answers very clearly that fathers, in a very unique and explicit way, are assigned the task, the task of administering the godly training of their children. Then we asked the question, why are fathers in particular and fathers explicitly addressed in the text? And then we concluded by asking the question,

2:40 what kind of fathers are competent by the grace of God to fulfill this task? And our answer is, the answer was, Ephesian fathers. That is, fathers who know something of the spiritual perspectives and experience outlined in the epistle to the Ephesians. Then we began to consider last night the second major division of the text, namely, the task defined.

3:17 Once the apostle assigns the task, once the apostle assigns the task, to fathers, he then defines the task in these words, do not provoke your children to wrath, but nurture them in the chastening and admonition of the Lord. And we began by considering first of all, what is first in the text, the negative injunction, do not be provoking your children to anger. And in the text, it says, and in the parallel passage of Colossians 3.21, a little different nuance,

3:59 do not be provoking them to lose heart. And then we began to consider the second subdivision of the task defined, not only the negative injunction, but the positive direction. But in direct contrast to the negative, do not provoke them to wrath, but nurture them in the chastening and admonition of the Lord. And in direct contrast to the negative, but not provoke them to wrath, is this positive direction, but nurture them in the chastening and admonition of the Lord.

4:32 And in that positive direction, we have the objects of this training, them and the essence of that training, nurture. And we only had time to consider last night, the objects of the training, And I made the assertion that if we are to fulfill this divine mandate as fathers, with the whole-souled intelligent cooperation of our wives, then we must understand who and what our children are biblically.

5:12 We must not view them in terms of the pompous pronouncements of modern psychology. We must not view them in terms of the quasi-Christian categories of much of so-called Christian psychology and Christian psychologists, but we must view them biblically and therefore theologically.

5:42 And I set before you five things that our children are, by biblical definition, all five of which must be given due consideration in our godly training of them. We saw from the scriptures that they are creatures made in the image of God. They are creatures made with divinely planned individuality. Thirdly, they are creatures fallen in Adam, with both a generic and a specific sinnerhood.

6:21 Then we saw that they are fourthly, moldable and undeveloped when they come to us. And last of all, we noted that they are susceptible to the influences of common and of special grace. So under the task defined, having considered the negative injunction, do not provoke them to anger, do not provoke them to lose heart, we have now considered under the positive direction the objects of the training.

6:57 We are to nurture them in terms of that five-fold description of what they really are. Now we pick up our study at this point, and proceed from the objects of the training to consider the essence of the training. If the objects of the training are our children in the total complex of their creaturehood, sinnerhood, with their moldability and susceptibility, then the essence of their training is the essence of the training.

The Essence of Training: Nurture (Ectrefo)

7:40 We have kunul and flesh, respondents to spiritualNice we do find as much gentlicker to the bottom food, and the world is an as fun simmering choose the some . Lately I were taken back me a 32 cities, ail and bath sono meteori is all packed into one word, nurture the whole essence of the task is packed into this word, nurture. Therefore, of necessity we must seek to understand the mind of the spirit, bound up in this word. One of the surest gauges of the safety of any ministry is to be found in the pains to which preachers will go

8:22 to convince your judgment from the Word of God that the meaning they assign to any given Word of God is indeed the God-intended meaning. And the day you grow weary in the week-by-week expository ministry of your churches of this element of word studies, you've grown weary of knowing the mind of God and are susceptible to heresy.

8:55 If God has chosen to pack the entire essence of the task of godly training in the one word et trefo, nerdism, nurture them, given to us in a present imperative, then we better spare no pains to understand what it means to nurture them. Now the word rendered in the 1901 edition, nurture, is surprisingly rendered precisely the same in the old authorized version, commonly called the King James Version, the new,

9:39 international version, and the revised standard version, it is rendered, bring them up. And we shall see that there is good reason for that translation. The word itself is found only one other place in the New Testament, and we only need to look up a few verses to find it. We find it in verse 29 of Ephesians 5.

10:06 For no man ever hated his own God, his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ also the church.

10:21 When it is said that no man ever hates his own flesh, but he nourishes it, that's the one other use of the word in the New Testament. And it is indeed helpful in seeking to grasp the essence of the task, of godly training. When it is said that a man nourishes his flesh, what does it mean? Paul is appealing to something that is there in general revelation, something that is open to common observation when men act consistent with their manhood.

11:03 Now people in a state of madness like the demoniac, who constantly cut himself, certainly didn't fit this description. He is describing the ordinary condition when men are acting consistent with their identity as sane men. And a man who nourishes his flesh, provides his flesh, that is his physical constitution, with all that is necessary for its comfort, its protection, its wealth, well-being, and its development. And we do that naturally.

11:46 No man ever hates his own flesh. That is, no man in an ordinary sane condition conducts himself in such a way with regard to his own physical organism that you would get the impression that he hated it. He was chopping off a knuckle a day, or chopping off a hand every other week. No.

12:09 He nourishes and cherishes his own flesh, now notice what it says, even as Christ also the church. How does Christ nourish the church? Well, in grace, and in power, and in the marvelous interpenetration of his own ongoing high priestly work, coalescing with the ministry of the indwelling Spirit, and all in the context of a sovereign providence, Christ nourishes his church, that is,

12:53 he imparts to it all that is necessary for its protection, its maturation, its well-being, and its ultimate consummate salvation. Isn't that what it obviously means? Christ nourishes the church. So we begin to get a feel for what this word means by its one other usage in the New Testament.

Illustrating Nurture: The Ewe Lamb and Jesus' Growth

13:21 But I'd like to add a little more richness and comprehensiveness to its significance, because this word is also found several times, more than several times, as I recall, I think 24 times in the Septuagint, that Greek translation of the Old Testament scriptures. And I'm going to direct your attention to only one usage which beautifully illustrates and expands our understanding of the significance of the word. Turn to the familiar passage, please, in 2 Samuel, in which God sends the prophet Nathan to minister to his erring child David.

14:04 2 Samuel, chapter 12. Now remember what we're trying to do. We're only trying to understand the meaning of that word into which is packed the essence of the duty of providing godly training. 2 Samuel, chapter 12.

14:26 You'll remember that David has sinned a horrible, intricate web of iniquity, lust leading to adultery, leading to murder, and then to the cover-up. But God is determined to bring his child back into the way of repentance and spiritual health and vigor. And so he sends his prophet Nathan to David. And the prophet comes and begins to probe his conscience with a parable.

15:03 And we read in 2 Samuel, chapter 12, beginning with verse 1. And the Lord sent Nathan unto David. And he came unto him and said unto him, There were two men in one city, the one rich and the other poor. And the rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds.

15:29 And remember that was a day when a man's wealth was measured in great part, not by how many money market accounts he had or how many CDs he had, but by the number of his cattle. And here was a wealthy man who had many flocks and herds. But verse 3, But the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb. This man was poor, poor.

16:04 He didn't have a pocket full of food stamps. He had none of the benefits of a welfare system. He had no backup system apparently with compassionate relatives or neighbors. The Scripture says the poor man had nothing except all of his capital investment, all of his true wealth was bound up in one commodity.

16:31 And that commodity was one little ewe lamb. A little female lamb. One that he anticipated would one day be able to provide milk for his household. One that would eventually, when she got too old to produce milk, would provide some good strong tasting mutton for the bellies of his needy hungry family.

17:02 He had nothing except one little ewe lamb. Now look at the text. Which he had bought. Apparently every last shekel he could get together he plumped it down to purchase this little ewe lamb.

17:21 And having bought it, now notice it says, and here's our verb, ectrefo, nourished up. He nourished that little ewe lamb. Now notice what he did as some of the details of his nourishing it. It grew up together with him.

17:44 He made it his personal companion. And with his children it became his household companion. And now one of the most touching things in all of Scripture, it did eat of his own morsel and drank of his own cup and lay in his bosom and was unto him as a daughter. I tell you that man and his little lamb had some relationship.

18:16 I mean some of you got a dog and you love your dog, but I mean at the point that you and your dog are going to drink out of the same cup, no way, Jose. No way, Jose. I mean affection for a sweet little brown-eyed puppy has its limits. But he had this one little ewe lamb and he so loved it and so identified with it and sought to, as it were, infect his whole family with that spirit that apparently no one barfed at the table when he shared his own cup with it.

18:53 For a good father wouldn't have expressed his affection for his lamb at the expense of everybody puking at every meal. You see, he so nourished that lamb and his own spirit in dealing with it, so pervaded the household that he could share his own food with it, have it drink from his own cup, and it even apparently slept next to him. Now he must have had a good strong nose. If you've ever been in an area where sheep are raised, they may look lovely dotting a hillside, but you get up good and close and they ain't quite as smelly as pigs, but they're sure not going to win any kind of sniffing contest.

19:35 But it lay in his bosom, and he treated it with all the gentleness of a daughter. And the Scripture describes that as nourishing his little ewe lamb. Now have you got a feel for the word? And you fathers, do not create an adversarial relationship with your children.

20:00 Do not create a climate in which they lose heart and there is no motivation to press ahead and to please you and to seek to pursue the goals and the standards and the disciplines which you set for them, but this strong adversity particle, nurture them. As a man nurtures his own flesh, providing it with all the protection and nourishment and care for its own development and its own well-being, as Christ nourishes the church

20:42 in free sovereign love, providing through His own intercession and the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the context of a sovereignly ordered providence, all that is essential for the church's protection and maturation and ultimate glorification. And you fathers, do that unto them. In that five-fold dimension of what they really are, nurture them. Well, then you see the sense of the essence of the training is clear.

21:27 We are to commit ourselves to the total development of the whole child in preparation for that child assuming the full orbit of adult responsibilities and privileges. That child has a soul to be taught the great and ultimate issues of reality. It has a soul that needs to be taught its identity, its destiny in an everlasting heaven or an everlasting burning hell.

22:09 It needs to be taught how to die far more than it needs to be taught social graces, far more than it needs to be taught all of the many things that will make that son or daughter a noble citizen of any society. It has a never-dying soul that needs to be taught the great ultimate issues of its identity, its true condition, its only way of deliverance and its ultimate destiny in heaven or in hell. It has a mind that needs to be trained

22:53 to think clearly and accurately and with discrimination. We are told in Proverbs the simple believeth every word but the wise looks well to his going and particularly in the age of mass manipulation through the TV media we need to nurture our children not only their souls with the great ultimate issues I've already addressed but we need to nurture their minds. We need to surround their mental development with those influences that will enable them to think

23:36 hard and think clearly and to think perceptively to see through specious reasoning to be able to see clean through mere verbal puff that has no substance. And that's not only true of our sons it's true of our daughters. If they are to be wives answering to their husbands needs they need to be girls who are wise enough to see through a man's reasoning that is inconclusive and fallacious when their own husbands one day will be justifying their actions by such reasoning and if that girl has not been trained

24:21 to see through it and respectfully and lovingly from her posture of godly submission to be able to say Dear, I hear what you're saying but you're not carrying my conscience. I'm not carrying your conscience? Why not? Well, I see a flaw in your reasoning.

24:39 You've reasoned from 1 to 2 to 79 and you've skipped 3 to 78 in the process. Oh, I have? Yes, you have, dear. Where have I?

24:53 And then she begins to lay bare his fallacious reasoning and if he's a man of God he'll take her in his arms and say Your price is above Ruby. And he'll find that mother and dad when he can and say thank you for training the mind of your daughter to think analytically and clearly so she can blast away at my stupidity when I need it. Training the minds of our children male and female. Training their emotional constitution.

25:32 This whole concept that we are the passive victims of our emotions is not taught in scripture. The emotions are a human factor. The emotions are a human faculty that need to be trained. They need to be trained in this nurture.

25:46 They need to be trained to have proper expressions. How are our children going to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice if they've not been taught the discipline in the very expression of their emotions? They need to be taught when to be angry and how righteously to express their anger for the scripture says be angry and sin not. In a recent counseling session I sat with a couple and the man involved has some serious emotional hangups.

26:24 Serious problems of being open and communicative. Lives with a veil. This is his own acknowledgement. I'm not telling tales out of school and I have his permission to use his example wherever it will help without naming names.

26:41 He sat in my study a few weeks ago with his wife there and said we've been married seven years and I've never once raised my voice at my wife. I looked in astonishment. I said, woman, is he telling the truth? She said, absolutely.

26:55 Then I said, were you ever mad enough to want to kick her in the shins? He said, oh yes, many a time. I said, then something's wrong. That the anger in your heart didn't affect your vocal cords.

27:10 You are short-circuiting me. I'm in the normal relationship and I'm not advocating that a man blow his cork at his wife. No, but what I was advocating was a commensurate relationship between the look on his face and the amount of air being forced by the diaphragm over the vocal cords and the larynx and the true state of the mind. He had been emotionally twisted in his upbringing.

27:40 His emotions were not nurtured. Scripture says the man who does not control his spirit is like a city with its walls broken down. We've got to nurture our children. Teach them when it's appropriate to cry.

27:54 I've seen parents give spankings that would make an Indian cry. In the days when Indians would go to death and would not show any emotion. And I've seen parents think that that was developing a noble trait. No, it was developing emotional hardness.

28:13 When the spanking hurts enough to cry, the child must be taught that there is an appropriate cry of pain. But then when the cry goes over into the realm of self-indulgence and petulance and anger, we must train them that that is verbatim. Nurture them. Their emotions are part of them and we must nurture and train not only the soul, not only the mind, but the emotions and then their spirits.

28:50 They must learn how to have a governed spirit or they will never have a governed tongue. They must learn to have a spirit that is regulated by principle. And then they have bodies that must be nurtured. Left to himself, every child would be a junk food addict.

29:12 He must be nurtured in the realization that this body is a gift from God. And there is a stewardship in the care of that body. And the basic elements of nutrition must be imparted and structured into the diet and into the shopping list. They must have a proper view on the one hand of the idolatry and body worship of our day.

29:39 And on the other hand, that view that would demean the body as essentially unimportant. Listen, mom. You with dad must nurture your daughter and their physical well-being that they will be able to fulfill their God-given role as a wife who is a means of grace to keep their husbands from immorality. For in Proverbs chapter 5, the great antidote to immorality is a husband delighting in the wife of his youth, her breasts satisfying him at all times, and he always being literate, literally intoxicated,

30:24 staggering with her love is the language of the Hebrew text. Go astray with her love. Be ravished with her love. And you mothers, in cooperation with your fathers, you are to nurture your daughters to have a proper view of their bodies that they might be such as any man could continue to delight in them.

30:50 That they don't have the attitude some of you have. Well, if my husband's going to be unfaithful, that's his problem. Some of you make it awful difficult for your husband to delight in your breasts because they hang on a body covered over with the blubber that is the fruit of gorging food down your gullet. With no discipline, no self-control, you're so spiritual that you're setting up your own husband to look in other fields and you're teaching your daughters by your example.

31:27 It doesn't make any difference. I know some of you are going to be offended by that. You know why? Because it's true.

31:37 You can't genetically program yourself to have thin ankles if God gave you ankles like that of a Belgian workhorse. You've just got to accept it. You can't genetically reprogram yourself if God genetically programmed you to have broad shoulders like a working man. I understand that.

31:59 And that's the folly of the whole pornographic and slick girly magazine glut. And that's the whole folly of kinky-haired Cher saying, if you want to look like me, come to Jack LaLanne's. No, I have no sympathy for that unrealistic deification of the body. I'm talking biblically.

32:27 And you have an obligation, woman, to do the best with what God gave you. And in our day, one must not only touch upon the matter of obesity that is self-induced through lack of self-control and through lack of an appreciation of the biblical doctrine that the body is the temple of the Holy Ghost. And in the case of a woman, the God-ordained means to keep a man from impurity. We need that emphasis desperately in our day.

33:01 And you mothers need to impart it in the nurture of your daughters. Now, you see where you fathers come in? That means if your mother can't teach your daughter because she's a bad example, ultimately, man, the fault lies with you. You let her continue those habits of pouring too much down her throat.

33:26 And you've not taken the necessary steps in the nurture of your wife to see to it that she can be an example to your daughters. You say, oh boy, I was discouraged when I found out I got the main job of nurturing my kids. Now I've got to take on my wife too? Ephesians 5 already settled that.

33:53 It said, You husbands are to nourish and cherish your wives as Christ does the church. I didn't write it. The Bible already said it. That's the task.

34:04 To nurture them. Prepare your wives to be what God intends they should be. Prepare, I'm sorry, your daughters to be the wives they should be. To prepare them for the trauma and the demands of gestation when that little life within them is drawing from all of the trace minerals and the sustenance that it's deriving from that mother.

34:29 Then to have the care of little ones. They need bodies that are strong. Bodies that have a sense of the foods from which nutrition is derived. And it's our task as parents to nurture them.

34:47 This is where we bring in our warnings against gluttony and drunkenness which in the Bible are put parallel. The drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty. I asked you, man, head of your home, would you tolerate your wife becoming a domestic alcoholic? Then don't tolerate her becoming a domestic glutton.

35:13 Have the kind of godly manhood we heard about this morning. That dares to plant the flag and say, not in my...

35:23 Nurture your sons that they would have bodies that would serve the living God. We're praying the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers. We're praying that God will raise up men who bear in their very step and in the ethos of their entire humanity that sense of God. We're praying for the dignity of Christian manhood.

35:58 They are not disembodied spirits. You can't go back again and genetically restructure them. They may have been given small bones and narrow shoulders, but you can very early tell them they can help the situation. You can put them on a regimen of harder work and of exercise that will help to bulk up the narrow parts.

36:23 And if they're naturally endomorphs, and they're genetically programmed to turn out like pears, and some poor men are, you don't fatalistically accept that any more than you fatalistically accept the cavities in your teeth. Pastor, you're stretching it a bit, aren't you? I ask you, if you are to nurture them, is part of them no little part their bodies? What will they serve God in all their days?

36:56 Their bodies, as well as their souls, their minds, their emotions, their spirits? And the essence of the task of training is to nurture them. And if this man could have such affection to a precious little beast, God have mercy on us if we don't have an affection equal to and exceeding for the never-dying souls of our children. Perhaps there is no more beautiful example of what godly nurture is in its essence than that which is given to us

37:40 in Luke chapter 2. I only alluded to it last night, but I want us to look at it tonight in greater detail. In Luke chapter 2, it is said of the incarnate God, the one whom the theologians call, and all of you ought to understand the meaning of this word, the theanthropic person, taking the Greek words theos for God, anthropos for man, and making a compound word, theanthropic person. He is the God-man, as much God as though he never took manhood to himself,

38:25 as much man as though that manhood were never joined to godhood. And of this one person, it is said in Luke 2.51, he went down with them, that is his parents, and came to Nazareth, and he was subject unto them, and his mother kept all these sayings in her heart. Now notice this close conjunction between Jesus' subjection to his parents, the very thing he calls you children to in Ephesians 6 and in the fifth commandment.

39:10 In the context of loving submission to Mary and Joseph, verse 52 says, and Jesus advanced, and there is an imperfect verb which speaks of action in the past that is continuous. He was continually advancing in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man. He was being nurtured not only by his heavenly Father, but his heavenly Father was nurturing him

39:52 through the nurture of Mary and Joseph in the humble home in a town with a rotten reputation. Can any good thing come out of Nazareth unless then what we would call favorable surroundings in a less than ideal environment? There Mary and Joseph became instruments in the hands of God to see the incarnate God in the person of Jesus of Nazareth growing, advancing, being nurtured in wisdom.

40:37 Wisdom. What is wisdom? Wisdom is the acquisition of knowledge with an understanding of its practical application to the real world. That's wisdom.

40:56 There are things you must know and without them you cannot have wisdom. But you can know a lot and be a fool. Wisdom is the ability to take what you know and to bring it to bear upon the real world in which you live. And there I must resist the imaginative element.

41:17 Let your own imagination work. How was he taught the wisdom that as a full-grown man it says they marveled. They marveled at the words of grace that proceeded from his mouth. In the temple they sent forward their champions to show him up publicly and often with one sentence he shut their mouths and sent them slinking away with their tail between their legs.

41:45 Much of that wisdom was learned in the godly nurture of that home in Nazareth from a carpenter and a housewife. Blessed be God. From a carpenter and from a housewife. He grew in wisdom.

42:09 It says he grew in stature and though there is some debate about the precise meaning of the word it does most likely refer to his physical development. Have you ever taken seriously the measure of our Lord's physical labors in his three and a half years of ministry? When I read the gospels and for several years I've been preaching through the gospel of Mark I've been astounded at the sheer energy of the Son of God. And for the most part that was not an energy that came in any other way than in which energy for the work of God comes to any other man.

42:49 For you remember when he exceeded the ordinary bounds of it with his temptation for forty days and nights in a context of fasting it doesn't say and the Father filled him with a burst of his own divine life. No, it says an angel came and strengthened him. And when his physical energies were utterly depleted in Gethsemane in that horrible baptism of agony in what Hugh Martin calls the shadow of Calvary when something as it were of the flames of the hell he would bear leaped as it were out of the pit and found their way into the cup

43:34 and he saw the flames in the cup and said oh my Father if it be possible let it pass. And there was such intensity and intense physical exertion it says before he could go forth to the baptism and to the drinking of the cup itself an angel came and strengthened him. What do we learn from that? When we read that at noonday being weary with his journey he sat upon a well I tell you you've got to be tired it'd be like you sitting on the hood of one of these cars one of these hot days at noonday.

44:13 to get rest. I tell you there's no way to get rest I'd at least find a tree with a little shade. Remember the picture at one time he was so weary he fell asleep in the stern of the ship and the waves were beating so fiercely the disciples came and shook him said Master don't you care we'll perish the boat's going to capsize. I mean you have got to be bone tired to fall asleep in any ship.

44:41 To fall asleep in a ship with ordinary waves to fall asleep in the midst of a storm with a boat already taking water and about to sink. My friends why does God record all of that? To tell us that under ordinary circumstances the strength and the energy of our Lord for ministry was not supplied in anything other than the ordinary means. You say Pastor why are you laboring the point?

45:11 For this reason he grew in stature. Mary was pondering something of his uniqueness. She reasoned from that wisdom that astounded the doctors of the law in the temple to something of his identity. She remembered the words of Gabriel.

45:34 She could not forget those announcements that she bore no ordinary child and as something of her own consciousness of his messianic identity was revealed it was dawning upon her soaked in the scripture as she was for you read the Magnificat and you see she was soaked in the scriptures. She knew that Messiah would do an arduous task and Mary and Joseph were concerned that he would grow in stature. That his body would not be ruined for adult productivity by being filled with junk food and his muscles flaccid by sitting in front of a TV

46:18 five hours a day. He was out in the carpenter shop beginning to develop sinewy strong arms. He was there in that setting growing in stature. If I may just give a personal anecdote and you who know my ministry know I seldom do this.

46:40 The best compliment I think I ever had paid or one of the best most encouraging someone came to me frustrated and said I've listened to three or four hundred of your tapes but I know so little about you. You don't talk about yourself. But I thank God for a mother who understood this. Unknown to me till after I was converted.

47:00 She used to weep in secret when she saw me making an idol of a piece of pig skin sewed together in four places. When she'd see me as a lazy teenager who would drag myself to do the meanest chores around the house but I still had to do them. I had three floors to wash. This was before the days of Armstrong, Solarian, no care.

47:22 You had to scrub and I mean scrub with the old brush. No mop in my house. The old scrub brush down on your hands and knees and wax the floors. And there were tasks that had to be done but then when she'd see me belt off to football practice in hot August weather up in Connecticut when we'd have eighty-five degree weather eighty degree humidity and see me for three or four hours at an end beat my head out.

47:48 And like it, it pained her. But she reasoned this way. I found out later she said, Oh God, I don't know what you have for that boy but whatever you have for him he needs a strong body and he needs a disciplined will. If he's going to serve you as he ought he needs to be trained into those disciplines of manhood and though his football is his God it'll take him to hell if he dies in that state.

48:14 Lord, I'd rather he be learning those disciplines and developing a body if one day you're pleased to save him he'll have a body made strong through those disciplines to serve you. He will have learned lessons of discipline and doing things that are unpleasant pushing himself out there under the burning August sun. So Lord, use those things even though they're of God that will damn him. Take that God and use it for his good.

48:42 And I thank God for that. I had no idea the kinds of burdens God would lay upon me. I had no idea that God knew and I had a mother who was committed to nurture me. A father who in some measure shared the same vision though his vision for my football he's later confessed was much living out his own unfulfilled longings.

49:10 He lost his dad when he was 13 and had to go to work in a shoe factory in Manchester, New Hampshire to help support the family and he subsequently confessed son, I saw the football was your God and I was worshipping the God with you. Will you forgive me? Fathers, do you have a realistic view of how to give your sons and your daughters an appreciation of what Mary and Joseph gave to the theanthropic person? He grew in stature and when we find him preaching through all the day healing until nightfall

49:54 and then a great wall before day out in a desert place praying, the physical demands were being met by the nurture of that humble home in Nazareth and then it says he grew in favor with God. Does that shock you? That God gains the favor of God? God's not at all shocked to say such things as that.

50:24 I never, never cease to be amazed at how unfastidious God is about shocking our neat little categories. God grows in favor with God. And what is it saying? It is saying in terms of perfect manhood, Jesus grew in the development of those spiritual disciplines that make a man well pleasing to God.

50:57 Though his conscience was never violated even as a little boy, its understanding of the law of God grew and his responses grew commensurately. And with each new expansion of understanding and its commensurate response of obedience, may I say it reverently, the father's smile as he looked upon his son grew a little broader and a little broader and a little broader until at age thirty when it was time to leave home and to go out on his ministry. And he stands in the waters of Jordan and is anointed with the Spirit. The father's grin goes

51:41 from ear to ear and he can be silent no more and he says, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. Well pleased. He grew in favor with God. That's the nurture you see of the spiritual dimension of our children.

52:01 Their consciences must be honed by the moral law of God. Yes, they show the work of the law written in their hearts as we heard from Pastor Hufstetler this morning. The first lie they tell, their consciences smite them. They know that they've sinned.

52:18 But that conscience needs to be honed so that they know what a lie is with ever increasing accuracy. Yes, the first time they disobey as a conscious act of disobedience, they know they are doing wrong. But their conscience must be honed as to the precise meaning of the fifth commandment. Know the little Quaker boy?

52:43 Quaker meeting has begun. Everyone must be silent. And the mother said to the little Quaker boy, Son, thou must be silent. And he looked over at his mother and said, Me, or I, am still on the outside, but me speaketh on the inside.

53:08 You see what he was saying? I'm obeying externally, but internally I'm blabbering away. Well, you see, if someone's to grow in favor with God, the conscience must be honed to understand that God's law pitches not merely the external attitude but the internal disposition. You see, Saul of Tarsus didn't know that.

53:30 And it's when he came to understand it, or I should say he didn't know it, with sufficient weight upon him to make him own his sinnerhood. But when the Holy Ghost took the tenth commandment and brought it home to his heart and he realized the law of God in all of its demands touched the heart, then he said, I, who was a living Pharisee, thinking I had life by the law, I was slain by that which I thought gave me life. Growing in favor with God. And then he grew in favor with man.

54:09 Know what that means? He learned what is a lost commodity in our day. He learned social graces. Jesus was taught by Mary and Joseph how to pull back a chair for his sisters and seat them like young ladies.

54:29 That stuff out of the Prince Albert days. Is it? Who says so? He grew in favor with man.

54:39 He was taught those symbols and signals of respect between the sexes. He was taught the symbols of social decorum. He knew them well. And furthermore, listen, he was upset when he was not given them.

54:56 He went into the house of Simon and he said, Simon, when I came in, you had no one wash my feet. He knew it was a proper social custom that was due him and when he didn't get it, he took note of it. And furthermore, he told his host about it. Oh, what pressure is upon this rising generation to despise social decorum.

55:24 Not with our Lord Jesus. That's what's so beautiful in his relationship to women. He knew to have women as his intimate companions but never once, though he was called a winebibber and a glutton because at feasts he drank the wine and ate all nine courses with moderation, never once did they even dare accuse him of being an adulterer. Isn't that significant?

55:56 And yet it says there were women who followed him throughout all of Galilee. He made them feel the nobility and the dignity of their womanhood but never once was the holy veil ever pierced in the look of his own eyes as he beheld them. And our Lord, I say it reverently, was a whole man in every respect. And I believe we can argue from analogy if a man who was a eunuch or had his stones crushed could not serve in the old Levitical system, Jesus completely fulfilled the law,

56:39 I believe we can reason from analogy that he was wholly a man with every normal, natural, sexual function and appetite but never once was there a thought of lust, a leering glance. He grew in favor with men. What a fruitful field for parental meditation. What a fruitful field for you precious young men and women to get on your knees and say, what's it mean for me as a young man or woman to be like Christ?

57:17 Pray through this passage. Say, Lord Jesus, may I grow in true wisdom. Go to mom and dad and ask the kind of questions you need to ask. You girls talk to your moms if they're godly moms and say to the mom, what do I look for in a man?

57:37 How do I see beyond his pretty eyes and his wavy hair and his hunky shoulders? How do I see the real man? Mom, give me wisdom. Impart wisdom.

57:49 And then you search the scriptures, because wisdom does not yield itself to a passing glance. You read Proverbs 2. If your search for it is for hid treasure, hunt for it is for gold, cry out for it then. Thou shalt have wisdom and understand the fear of the Lord.

58:09 That's our task, moms and dads. We're to nurture them. We're to nurture them. We are to ectrefo them.

Framework 1: Deep, Principled, Manifested Love

58:20 We are to surround them with every influence at our disposal to see the totality of their God-given humanity brought to its full potential in Jesus Christ for as long as we have that influence over them in the home. And then I want to close. I don't know, it's already almost time to quit. We've looked at the negative injunction.

58:51 Don't provoke them to anger. The positive direction, the objects of the task, them, and all that they are in their five-fold identity, the essence of the task, nurture them. Now let me close by touching very briefly on what I'll call thirdly the assumed framework for the task. Now this is not explicit in the text, but I say it is the assumed framework of the text.

59:25 What is the framework God assumes we'll obtain where there is this kind of God-lineature? Well, first of all, it'll be a framework of deep, personal, manifested love to the children we're seeking to train. A framework of deep, personal, perhaps I should add the word principled, manifested love to the children we're seeking to train. Now the Bible says there is such a thing as natural affection.

60:01 And it condemns people in Romans 1 as being without natural affection. But I tell you, whatever natural affection you've got for your kids will long soon be expended if you're committed to this kind of nurture. It's like that infatuation that may have led you to start dating the woman who's now your wife. Whatever that stuff was, it soon used itself up when you began to get down to the business of learning how to live with one another.

60:29 And you discovered all those things about one another. You said, man, if I knew that, I'm not quite sure. And then you've got to learn to love your wife. And so God says, husbands, love.

60:40 Wives, you've got to learn to love your husbands. Well, in the same way, Titus chapter 2 says the older women are to train the younger women to love their husbands, to love their children. The framework assumed is that of deep, personal, principled, manifested love to the children we are seeking to train. And here I turn you to again, again to Paul's example as a pastoral father.

61:09 He reasons from the domestic to the ecclesiastical relationship. And it's because the domestic is valid and is the ideal that he can reason from the one to the other. Notice, his words, verse 5, for neither at any time, 1 Thessalonians, I'm sorry, 2.5, for neither at any time were we found using words of flattery as you know.

61:37 Here was principled love. He did not stroke them with the strokes of a fawning, insincere, unrealistic, dishonest, carnal flattery. He says, you know, we talk straight to you. But does that mean he was harsh?

61:55 That he was insensitive? That he was tyrannical? No, look at verse 7. We were gentle in the midst of you as when a nurse cherishes her own children.

62:07 And that's the second word used in Ephesians 5. Christ nourishes and cherishes the church. It's the word you would have used if you lived in the Greek speaking world to say what a mother bird does when she snuggles up close to and puts her little ones under her wing. She is cherishing, warming them.

62:30 He says, we were gentle among you as when a nurse cherishes, warms with her own body and breasts her own children. Even so, being affectionately desirous of you, we were well pleased to impart unto you not the gospel only, but our own souls because you were become very dear to us. Very dear to us. You say, oh that's gushy language.

62:57 Isn't that gushy? Affectionately desirous? Like a nursing mother? Very dear to us?

63:06 This is a man's man writing. Because he then goes on to say in verse 11, and you know how we dealt with each one of you as a father with his own children. Absorbing and testifying and encouraging. It's amazing what you can get away with with your kids in the way of stern and at times almost what would appear to an outsider.

63:35 Something that borders, borders on cruelty. When they know you really love them. And that's exactly what Paul is talking about here. The framework of our nurture must be a deep, personal, principled, manifested love to our children.

63:59 We'll have occasion, God willing, to look at it in greater detail tomorrow night, but it's beautiful in Proverbs. Solomon said, I was a son, an only son, and well loved of my father. And he said to me, you see it was in the context of known, manifested, felt love that the admonitions came. And I tell you what is true in the home is true in the church.

64:26 I've said to my wife more than once, people that only listen to Trinity Pulpit tapes, they don't know who I am. They hear me thundering and whomping on our people and wonder, man, they must be an oppressed, beat up bunch. But a lot of that oppressed, beat up bunch is here. You see, there's a context in which I whomp on them.

64:51 And that's the context of embracing them at the door every Lord's Day, hugging their kids, calling them on the phone, praying for them. And they know if push comes to shove, the blood that's in these veins would be poured out and spilt at their feet. One of them sat there and said, Amen. And I tell you, when your kids know you love them, it's amazing what you can do.

65:18 Isn't it, kids, when you know mom and dad really love you? Even when they tighten the thumb screws and it hurts. See, they're shaking their heads, dads. You hear it?

65:30 They're shaking their heads. Their consciences are on my side because that's what the book says. That's the context. And if you don't have that context, where are you going to get it?

65:43 Start getting it tonight. Skip the volleyball game. Go back to your room, sit your kids down, and say, look, I want you to be judgment day honest with me. Do you believe that the context of our home is one of deep, personal, principled, manifested love to you?

66:01 And charge them to answer you with judgment day honesty. And if you aren't man enough to do that, then you don't mean business with God. Now, I'm not saying don't go to the boat. See, people will take something you say.

66:17 All I'm saying is, if you're under conviction tonight and you really have a serious question whether or not this is true, none of us has it to perfection. But we ought to know that we have it in principle. And if you're not sure, what I'm saying is, get sure and take the straightest route to it. Otherwise, by tomorrow morning the impressions of tonight will be gone and you'll be right back where you were like the man in James who looked in the mirrors and man, what an ugly picture.

Framework 2: Conscious Recourse to God's Authority and Wisdom

66:45 Walked away from the mirror, walked down the street thinking he was Robert Redford and before long you forget what an ugly duckling he was. And that's exactly what will happen to you. Second thing that must constitute the framework is that of conscious, conscious referral and recourse to the authority and wisdom of God in all of your nurture. It must be a framework of conscious, conscious, conscious recourse to the authority and wisdom of God in all things.

67:23 Proverbs 1.6, Joshua 24.15, Deuteronomy chapter 6. We'll see it more fully tomorrow night.

67:31 It is the Paideia and Nuthesia Kuril of the Lord. Constant reference to His authority. You start in those first spankings as soon as you can verbally communicate long before the kids can verbally communicate back. And you tell them, Daddy must spank.

67:52 Mommy must spank. Because God says, Mommy must spank. Daddy must spank. And when they get old enough to talk and you say, Now, did you know that you should not do this?

68:05 Yes, Daddy. Why did you do it? I don't know. Yes, you do.

68:09 Why did you do it? I don't know. Yes, you do. Why did you do it?

68:13 Because I wanted to. Then your wanter was more important than Daddy's rules? Yes. What must Daddy do?

68:20 No, Daddy don't. What must Daddy do? Daddy must spank. Why must Daddy spank?

68:27 Because God says so. And they know that when that hand or that switch comes upon their bodies it is done under the authority of the God of heaven. And when you sit your daughters down and they've begun to talk and they've begun to come into their womanhood and develop breasts and have their periods and go through all the feelings of that emerging womanhood and you begin to tell the men what a horny, filthy bunch men are and you tell them that they must keep those breasts untouched by any hands till their wedding night.

69:11 You tell them why. And you tell them that those lips should kiss no man but the one who will be God's gift to them. And you bring the Word of God to bear upon the entire work of nurture. It must be a framework of conscious recourse to the authority and to the wisdom of God in all things.

69:38 That's why I love the little children's catechism. Who made you? God made me. What else did God make?

69:46 God made all things. Why did God make you and all things? For His own glory. And then when you come to that question Do you have a soul as well as a body?

69:58 Yes. I have a soul that can never die. How do you know you have a soul that can never die? Because the Bible tells me so.

70:08 You say, well, Pastor, if that's so then I've got to know my Bible. Yeah, that's right. That may mean you may have to cancel your newspaper. Some of us are so carnal we can't have a regular newspaper come in the house because we know we'd be reading the sports page instead of being up in our studies having devotions.

70:28 You say, you're that carnal? Yes, I am. I don't have a regular newspaper because I'm spiritual. It's because I'm so carnal that I know I'd be more interested in what the Mets did last night than in what God is telling me through Paul and Isaiah and Solomon.

70:47 That's what a rotten creature is. That's what a rotten creature I am. But if I'm going to be the father I ought to be I'd better know more about Isaiah and Solomon and Paul and Peter and my own heart than I know about the Mets or about the stock market or about the feature article in Newsweek. Third part of the framework is it must be a framework and oh, fathers and mothers, hear me here.

Framework 3: Increasing Parental Blamelessness

71:18 I know the hour is late. But I want to deliver my soul on this point and I'm done. It must be a framework of increasing respect and conscience-gripping blamelessness before your children. It must be a context or framework of increasing respect and conscience-gripping blamelessness.

71:46 Now follow me. When the children are younger establish your God-given authority and when they have little moral discernment and their observation faculties or faculties of observation are limited there can be great gaps of disparity between what you tell them to do and be and what you do and what you are. But your very training in the honing of their consciences by the Word of God will be developing an increasing accurate moral consciousness by which they're going to judge you and your wife.

72:28 And they do not expect perfection but they expect reality and blamelessness. That means that when you've blown your temper you confess it to them and to your wife or to your husband. It means when you've been lazy and sat on your duff when you should have been out cutting the grass and yours is the shabbiest looking house in the neighborhood for two weeks and you know it's a poor testimony you're not commending the gospel you gather your kids together and say I'm sorry kids you've got to be embarrassed our house is the messiest looking one on the block Dad was too stinkin' lazy to get off his duff last Saturday and cut the lawn.

73:13 Will you forgive me? Now you're blameless again. You're not perfect but you're blameless. And the older your children grow the older they grow.

73:25 Bro, if you don't have a conscience gripping blamelessness as the context of your nurture you know what you're going to do? You're either going to create a cynicism that will neutralize all the preaching they hear from the most godly passionate preachers available and they'll become cynics because they reason he's just saying the same things dad and mom say he says them a little more cleverly a little more loudly with a little more structure and a little more bible but he's probably the same fake and the same hypocrite that mom and dad are. And I'm convinced that the single greatest hindrance

74:07 to the conversion of the young people in our reformed Baptist churches lies right here. They're sitting under preaching the likes of which some of us never heard in our formative years. I heard but one man who approached preaching and it shook me up for weeks and haunted me for months. You better not neutralize the ministry you put your kids under by your own lack of conscience gripping inconsistency.

74:48 May I again for the sake of some of you who've got a broken heart the dagger is there and the wound bleeds may I share the personal experience of having my son's permission to do so when he spent several years in the far country and we lived with that open wound with which some of you live after the Lord turned him around and he was stable enough and healed enough to be able to start talking about things and that was a long time. I asked him the question one day

75:32 and I said son I know you were under the power of the devil I know you were blinded by the God of this world but from the human side can you tell me why you sinned with such abandonment you even had your sinful companions afraid for you you even had your sinful companions telling you you were a fool to abandon yourself so to your sin son do you know why can you help me to understand was there something I did is there something I can learn to help others he said dad the truth is this the reality I saw in you and mom

76:17 and in the reality I saw in the vast majority of the church people so fastened itself on my conscience that I could never doubt the truth of everything I had been taught I knew there was a God I knew I was accountable I knew there was a heaven I knew there was a hell I knew Christ was the only way of life and to live by the law of God was the only way to noble dignified humanity and I knew the only way to live that way was to be a child of God with a new heart but he said while I was slave to my sin and wanting my own way he said I was so convinced of those realities

76:59 and I would go back over the pattern of your life and mom's life looking for any chinks to try to convince myself it's not real and then it would come back to me the times when you came to me with tears confessing that you disciplined me in anger and asking me to forgive you when all the while I was deceiving you and lying to you and I wasn't confessing my sins to you he said dad those are the things that came back to me the times when you spent a whole day praying and fasting before you disciplined me the first time you caught me using pot and you spent the day on your face with your bible and touched no food that you might know how to deal with me it all came back to me and I had no alternative

77:44 I either had to be a Christian or put a gun to my head and blow my head off and then I knew I'd go to hell so he said all I had left was to keep myself strung out on dope or booze because when I was straight and sober the reality the reality the reality I don't say that to praise myself I say that to underscore the great principle my friend if God should bring you through the trauma of a wayward child you better not carry on your back

78:27 in the midst of that trauma the legitimate accusation of your own conscience that you were shoddy and double standard and inconsistent without repentance and confession if you're to nurture them it must not only be in a climate of love and a climate where the authority and wisdom of God is patent and pervasive a climate in which there is increasing respect and conscience gripping blamelessness before your children

Framework 4: Dependence on Christ's Grace and Concluding Exhortation

79:11 and if that's so then I don't need to tell you friends it better be a climate in which you know something of how to feed upon the grace and strength of Christ I can do all things through him who strengthens me without me ye can do nothing but if ye abide in me and my word abide in you ask what you will and it shall be given and done unto you it must be a climate in which we are crying to God for wisdom crying to God for grace crying to God for patience pouring over 1 Corinthians 13

79:56 and saying Lord if I'm going to love my kids like that you've got to put it in me I don't have it Lord and God will drive us to his Son and we will find an infinite fullness and plenitude of grace in Jesus that we never knew was there don't cop out and say ah that's Pastor Martin perfectionist setting up my friends listen to me you come and show me and I plead with you if my exegesis has been inaccurate or forced you've got an obligation to come with the word of God and show me lest I lead others astray and I'll tell Bill put a hold on the tapes

80:38 I don't want inaccurate exegesis going out but if the exegesis has been accurate and the deductions have been fair and in keeping with the analogy of scripture then don't you try to squirm out by saying oh that's Pastor Martin's high standards that's the standard of the God you say you love and you better go to him and say God if you made the standard you're prepared to give me the grace what is the task defined do not provoke them to anger do not provoke them to lose heart but nurture them God willing tomorrow night

81:23 we'll look at the major means God has given us to accomplish the task the paideia and the nuthesia the discipline and the admonition of the Lord and for you kids who've got that kind of nurture but you're bucking against it you better go home and read Deuteronomy 21 tonight and see what God thinks about your bucking when a godly parent in Israel tried to nurture his kid biblically and the kid said I don't want it and that became the settled attitude of his heart you know what God said to do with him take him out in the city and stone him to death you're messing around with that kind of God young man or woman if you're bucking this kind of nurture

82:08 your parents have no choice but to impose it upon you they have no choice God help you to bless God if he surrounded you with that kind of nurture let's pray oh our Father we thank you we bless you that the prayer that we corporately offered at the threshold of this meeting that you would come and that you would be with your people and be with your servant we believe you have answered our cry now Lord seed sown is as seed lost unless you cause it to germinate

82:51 and bring forth fruit fulfill your promise to Jeremiah I will watch over my word to perform it Lord for men who ought to go back to their rooms with their families and have dealings with you and with them give them the moral courage to do it for women who ought to go home to their rooms and confess to their husbands their sins of not standing with them in the Godly nurture give them the grace to humble themselves before their husbands for children who have been bucking this kind of nurture not realizing it is next to the gift of your son the greatest gift they will ever have Lord bring them to repentance

83:35 God do a thousand things we could never even think to pray about because you are the God who does exceeding abundantly above all we could ask or think hear our prayer and answer us we pray for Jesus sake Amen