Cultivating Warmth & Intimacy

Review: The Problem of Child Abuse and the Home Climate

0:02 How not to foul up the training of your children. This is cassette number four in a series given by Pastor Albert N. Martin in the adult Sunday school class of the Trinity Baptist Church on January 27, 1991. Now as we begin this morning, I trust you will forgive my preoccupation with my paper for the first four or five minutes because I have sought to write out a condensed, succinct review and I want to keep that review as brief as possible and the best way I know to do that is to keep my eyes glued to my paper.

0:42 For those of you who may be visiting with us, and we do extend a welcome to such, we have been studying for several weeks a subject entitled Child Abuse or perhaps the series should be more appropriately entitled How to Foul Up the Training of Your Children. Not that anyone wants to. Not that anyone wants to do that, but hopefully seeing the ways in which it can be done and has been done, we might avoid those pitfalls. And the entire series of studies rests down upon two fundamental presuppositions or biblical foundations.

1:25 Everything that we consider about child abuse in the terms in which we are considering it rests down upon presuppositions. Presupposition number one, which is that Colossians chapter 3 and verse 21 in Ephesians chapter 6 and verse 4 give us an outline of the fundamental duties of Christian parents towards their children. And I will not take the time to read those verses. We have read them and commented upon them many times in the course of this series of studies.

2:02 And then the second presupposition, everything that we consider is built upon this biblical foundation that the duties outlined in Colossians 3 and Ephesians 6 require the righteous use of spanking and authoritative verbal instruction and correction. In other words, it is impossible to do the duties outlined in Colossians 3 and Ephesians 6 without righteousness. Without spanking and authoritative verbal instruction and correction

2:39 because God says our children are to be nurtured in the sphere of chastening and admonition. And chastening in that context is the righteous use of spanking and authoritative verbal instruction and correction. Then of equal importance has been our working definition of child abuse. And we have defined it as follows.

3:05 Sustained pattern of exasperating or provoking a child to anger. Sustained neglect of those means ordained of God for the child's nurture. Or an aggravated act of inflicting permanent damage to the body or the spirit of a child. That is our working definition of child abuse or perhaps more accurately, child abuse as in child abuse as an writ.

3:38 How we can foul up the training of our children. We can foul it up by a sustained pattern of exasperating them, provoking them to anger or, by a sustained neglect of the means ordained of God for their nurture or by a single aggravated act of inflicting permanent damage upon the body or spirit of a child. take up the first category of such child abuse, and I have described it as the overall emotional, spiritual, and then I added the word, physical climate of the home.

4:21 This home within which, assuming now it is the home after God's normal pattern and that sin has not disrupted that pattern, and assuming it's a home where God has blessed with the presence of at least two children, so that we can speak of children in the plural, of crucial importance in the training of those children, in the non-abuse of those children, is the spiritual atmosphere or climate which marks that home in which father and mother and children are all continually breathing.

5:01 And using the analogy of the deadly influence of radon and of suspended particles of asbestos, we have continually carried on that analogy with reference to those things in the overall emotional, spiritual, and physical climate of the home which can have a spiritually, psychological, and emotional noxious effect upon our children. And the first of those is what we described as a home characterized by hypocrisy and sham as opposed to sincerity and reality.

5:43 One of the surest ways to provoke children to wrath, one of the surest ways to cause them to be dispirited, to become cynical, to become indifferent, to draw back from wholesome relationships with father and mother, and, the wholesome relationship, the spiritual reality, is if they rightly perceive hypocrisy and sham in father and mother. And then we looked into Matthew chapter 23, perhaps the most condensed section in all of the Bible, describing the dominant characteristics of hypocrisy as they came to light in the religious leaders of Israel,

6:25 and, alas, as they can come to light in the experience, even, of Christian people. And then we moved into a second area, last Lord's Day, and said that as to the overall climate of the home, it can be detrimental to our children if the sustained pattern is characterized by coldness,

6:52 tension, and ill will, as opposed to warmth, closeness, harmony, and goodwill. And those horrible, horrible elements of radon and asbestos can be present in the three sets of relationships in the family. The husband-wife relationship, the parent-child relationship, and in the child-to-child or the sibling relationship. And if a home is to be purged of the radon of coldness, distance, tension, and ill will, and,

7:35 and be characterized by the wholesome spiritual atmosphere of warmth, closeness, harmony, and goodwill, it must begin in this primary of the three relationships, namely, the husband-wife relationship. And so we began to consider, then, this relationship between husband and wife, and saw from the Scriptures that God does not, through the apostles, give directions to parents and children in Ephesians, chapter 6, 1-4, until, first of all, he gives directions to husbands and wives in chapter 5, verses 22-33.

8:19 The assumption being that it's only when a husband and wife, by the grace of God, are manifesting as the basic climate of their relationship, the love wherewith Christ loves the church, the trust, the gospel submission with which the church submits to Christ, that it's only in this context of a warm, open, intimate relationship marked by goodwill that these parents can properly nurture their children in the chastening and admonition of the Lord. And to state it bluntly, any mother and father who tolerate an atmosphere between them

9:03 marked by, tension, marked by coldness and distance and ill-will, are guilty of inflicting abuse upon their children. And some of you ought to repent and sack cloth and ashes, because your pride and your stubbornness and your unwillingness to come to grips with the things that perpetuate the radon and the asbestos of tension and distance and ill-will between you as husband and wife continue to exert an influence upon your children the extent of which will not be known until they're married and have children

9:46 and someone else reaps the windfall of your horrible refusal to deal with your own marital relationship. Now that's stating it bluntly, but that's not stating it theoretically. That is born out of almost forty years of pastoral dealings with people. That's reality.

The Parent-Child Relationship: Avoiding Exasperation

10:03 Now then, coming back then to having completed our review, coming back then to the matter of the climate of the home, we want to take up the second area of relationship, and that is the parent-child relationship. Having urged you to seek under God to attain and maintain and continue to increase a climate between husband and wife marked by warmth, closeness, harmony, and goodwill, we now move into that second relationship, namely the relationship of parent to child.

10:47 And in that relationship, we must also be concerned that the home not be characterized by high levels of the radon of distance, tension, coldness, and ill-will. Now someone said, surely no Christian parent has that problem with his children. Well if not, why in the two key passages does the Apostle Paul assume that they would? What are the two key passages that outline our duty?

11:21 Colossians 3 and Ephesians 6. And how do they begin? Colossians 3 says, Fathers, do not exasperate your children that they be not dispirited or disheartened. Assuming that Christian parents can allow a relationship to exist and to develop in which they are exasperating and dispiriting their children.

11:51 Or Ephesians 6.4, Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath. Well if it's not possible, why does the Holy Ghost place that dominant emphasis? It's because God is a realist.

12:06 And He knows that whatever you dads feel when you look through the glass at the nursery and the hospital or in the birthing room at the birthing clinic, you first hold that little one in your arms after it's been washed and cleaned, after delivery, whatever you feel in those moments and whatever a mother feels when she first places that fruit of the womb to her breast, it isn't long before you realize that that bushy, overwhelming, marvelous, existential experience of the moments after birth sure get put in a different context before long. Say about the third night when you ain't slept for longer than two hours at a stretch,

12:51 you begin to realize there's other feelings in your heart other than gush. Alright, every parent snickers, you say, yeah, that's right. And God is a realist. And so God is saying to us that by His grace, we as parents must seek to create, a climate in our relationship to the children that will not exasperate and dispirit them, will not provoke them to anger, but rather one that is conducive to nurture.

God as the Perfect Pattern for Parent-Child Relationships: Universal Holiness

13:25 And it cannot be a climate conducive to nurture if the radon of our relationship to our kids is that horrible radon of distance, tension, ill will, etc. Alright? Now then, in opening up this aspect of our concern, I want to do two things this morning as time permits, and I will seek your help in accomplishing these goals. First of all, I want to establish the fact that God Himself is the perfect pattern for proper parent-child relationships.

14:01 Having done that from the scriptures, then I want to demonstrate that coldness, distance, tension, and ill will are foreign to God's fatherly relationships and dealings with His children. But the things that characterize God's relationship to His children are warmth, closeness, harmony, and good will. And if He's the perfect pattern of fathering and mothering, then we must be like Him by His grace in our relationship to our children. So first of all, we want to establish from the scriptures that God is the perfect pattern for proper parent-child relationships.

14:44 And I want to do this along two lines, and here's where I want your help and input. I want to establish, first of all, that in the pursuit of universal holiness, that God is our perfect pattern, and particularly God as our Father in Heaven. Can you think of a verse which clearly teaches that our Heavenly Father is our perfect pattern, our perfect paradigm of universal holiness as the children of God? And you think of a passage which clearly teaches that.

15:23 Barb? Right, that passage teaches certainly that God is not a capricious God, but does it teach that He is our pattern for the way we are to relate to our children? Does it explicitly teach that? All right, it does not.

15:52 It's an ancillary passage, but I want a passage that explicitly states that our Father in Heaven is our perfect pattern for moral perfection. All right, is that there, Karen? Yes. Be ye holy, for I am holy.

16:12 Is the word Father mentioned there? Now listen to my question. A passage in which it is particularly said that God as our Heavenly Father we're dealing with the family now, is our perfect pattern of moral perfection. All right, Cliff?

16:32 All right, say it out loud, and then he's got it. All right. All right. All right, here in the Sermon on the Mount is our Lord Jesus is bringing this section of His instruction to a close in which He's been correcting inadequate views of the law of God and teaching the true intention of the law of God.

17:01 He is saying to His followers, notice verse 44, love your enemies, pray for them that persecute you, that you may be the sons of your Father who is in heaven. You must do this so that it may be manifest that you are bearing the likeness of your Heavenly Father, that you may be sons. This is not telling you how to become a son, but that you may be manifestly, declaratively, the sons of your Father. That is, those who bear the likeness of their heavenly parent.

17:38 Why? Because this heavenly Father makes His Son to rise on the evil and the good, sendeth rain on the just and the unjust. If you love them that love you, what reward have you? Do not even publicans the same?

17:53 Do not even those who know not God as their heavenly Father, who do not have stamped upon them the likeness of their heavenly Father? They greet their friends. And if you salute your brethren only, what do you more than others? Do not even the Gentiles the same?

18:10 You therefore shall be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. So here is a text in which God is peculiarly identified as our heavenly Father, and where the moral standard of His children is His own character and action as our heavenly Father. Do you see that in the text? Over your ears, nod your head.

18:43 Do you see that in the text? I have not imported it into it. It is lying on the surface of it. All right.

God as the Perfect Pattern for Parent-Child Relationships: Godly Parenting

18:50 Having established then from this passage that God as our heavenly Father is the perfect pattern of universal holiness or moral perfection towards which we are described, I want you to give me in the second place a passage where in the pursuit of godly parenting God is our perfect pattern. A passage in which God's parenting and our parenting in a specific parenting activity are brought into the closest relationship, each one reflecting upon the other.

19:32 All right, Doug? You hit it first time around. Is that the one you had in mind as well, Sens? All right.

19:42 Hebrews chapter 12. That's the passage. Now notice in this passage we're moving from what we've seen in the Matthew 5 passage where God as Father is the pattern of our universal holiness. Now we're taking out one aspect of our duty as the people of God and focusing upon it, and we're going to see that God is the perfect pattern of parenting.

20:13 Hebrews chapter 12 verses 4 through 11. Hebrews 12 verses 4 through 11. You have not resisted unto blood striving against sin and you have forgotten the exhortation which reasons with you as with not servants, not as heirs, but as sons. Notice the emphasis now.

20:38 It reasons with you in your peculiar capacity as the sons, the daughters of God. My son, regard not lightly the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved of him. God spanks, God authoritatively instructs and corrects. You see how those two things are brought together?

20:59 My son, regard not lightly the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art reproved of him. For whom the Lord loves, he chastens and scourges every son whom he receives. It is for chastening that you endure. God deals with you as with sons.

21:20 Now notice how he moves to the human analogy. For what son is there whom his father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, whereof all have been made partakers, then are you illegitimate children and not sons. If in the earthly realm there's a kid running loose and no daddy cares for him and identifies with him as the fruit of his loins and is committed to his nurture and development so that he surrounds him with loving, fair, consistent discipline, he may as well be a bastard child, the scripture says.

21:55 He may as well be an illegitimate child and nobody wants. That's what the scripture says. He said in the earthly realm, according to natural affection and human relationships. And he said so likewise.

22:09 Your heavenly father is not chastening you. Then you're not really one of his children. Because he's committed to a goal in all of his sons. He wants to make them like the firstborn in the family.

22:20 And so by chastening and admonition, he's working on us to nurture us into the likeness of his son. And if there is no fatherly chastening from God, then you're not his true sons. For though among earthly fathers there may not be a compliance with the impulses of natural affection or a submission to the data of special revelation, though there may be earthly fathers who never chasten, our perfect heavenly father never drops the stick and is never silent when he ought to admonish or reprove us. He is the perfect parent.

23:00 And therefore, if you're without the parental influence of chastening, you're not one of his true children, is the teaching of the passage. Now we read on. Verse 9. Furthermore, now we're back to the earthly relationship.

23:11 We had the fathers of our flesh to chasten us. We gave them reverence. Now notice, we move to the heavenly relationship. Shall we not much more be in subjection unto the father of spirits and live?

23:25 For they, earthly, they, our earthly parents, for a few days chastened us, as seemed good to them. But he, our heavenly father, for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness. All chastening seems for the present not to be joyous but grievous. The chastening's done the work when the kid's crying, not when he's in the corner laughing at his siblings and saying, I had a book in my britches, didn't feel a thing.

23:53 When he's laughing, you ain't chastening. All chastening for the present, seeing it not joyous but grievous. That's what the text says. Everybody can observe that.

24:01 Yet afterward, it yields peaceable fruit unto them that have been exercised thereby even the fruit of righteousness. So do you see in this passage, as clearly as the Matthew 4 and 5 passage establishes the general truth that God as our heavenly father is the perfect pattern of moral perfection. And we are to be perfect as our heavenly father is perfect in terms of that towards which we strive. So in a particular way, God is the perfect parent in the training and nurture of his children.

Theological Principles as the Foundation for Parenting

24:43 Now do you see that in the Hebrews 12 passage, how God's parenting and human parenting are brought into such close proximity that we have divine warrants for drawing the parallels between the climate of God's home and God's family as God nurtures us and the climate we should establish with our children in our homes as we seek to nurture them. Now do you see those two passages? Now you ask, Pastor, why did you take that time, almost half the class, to establish that and you didn't give us an answer? How should we do that?

25:23 For the simple reason, listen carefully, rather than start with the obviously practical and the patently specific, I pointed you to theological principles. We're starting with theology. And that must always be our approach. Long after all of the how-to books have been read and made dark with the oil from our fingers looking for answers to this problem and that problem and discarded because they didn't address it,

26:04 and long after all the how-to seminars have been held and emptied your pockets at $150 a click, and long after all the $49.95 videos on how to be the perfect parent have been watched until your eyeballs are hanging on your cheeks, you don't get this theological principle, you will be left without answers to many, many questions. But if you can get hold of this fundamental theological perspective, you will carry with you a manual of infinite issues addressed.

26:47 And as you come into specifics, if you go back beyond the how-to books and tapes and seminars and remember this fundamental issue, I am not only to be like my Heavenly Father in my general pursuit of holiness, but in the pursuit of being the parent I ought to be particularly in the climate that I establish in my relationship to my children, I am to be like God is in the climate He has established and sustains in relationship to His children. You will have an answer to many, many specifics without having to call an elder,

27:30 without having to spend your money for a seminar, a book, or a tape. Now, I'm not despising the helps that are there, and I'm not despising calling a pastor, but what I want you to do is to grow up spiritually, and become strong men and women who armed with this perspective can wrestle through and pray through and as husbands and wives talk through many of the issues and only when you've hit the stone wall then call us and we may be able, simply because we've had more exposure from many such calls and having to wrestle with it, to be of help to you. But the best help I can be to you is to start here. And I'm not doing this to just take time.

God's Fatherly Relationships are Marked by Warmth, Closeness, Harmony, and Goodwill

28:14 And I'm not doing this because someone else did it. As I wrestled with how to present the material, the more I studied the biblical data, the more I became convinced that unless we got to this bedrock theological perspective, we would only, at best, be scratching the surface. Alright? Now, having established that God is the perfect pattern for proper parent-child relationships, and we've done it along two biblical lines, He is our perfect pattern for general holiness.

28:46 He is our perfect pattern for parental relationships and activities. Now then, secondly, I want to demonstrate that coldness and ill will are foreign to God's fatherly relationships and dealings with His children. Rather, the opposites mark God, our Heavenly Father's dealings with all of His children. Warmth, closeness, harmony, and goodwill.

29:22 And it's very interesting that in some of these, God is so determined to teach it that He not only uses images from the father's role, but He even likens Himself to a mother. Now, the feminists love this. They try to come up then with their so-called androgynous God, who's neither male nor female. He's just God, our Heavenly Father, not God, our Father.

29:51 Well, that's nonsense. But the Bible is not at all ashamed to take images of God from mothering to get across to us that the climate of our Heavenly Father's household as He relates to His children, the climate of warmth, of closeness, of harmony, and of goodwill. Well, let's take the first one, warmth. Turn to Isaiah 63, please.

God's Warmth Illustrated: Isaiah 63 & 66

30:19 Would you be a good parent? This is the climate, then, that must mark your home, the emotional, spiritual, and physical climate of your home. Isaiah 63, verses 8 and 9. Start verse 7.

30:40 I will make mention of the lovingkindness of Jehovah and the praises of Jehovah according to all that Jehovah bestowed on us and the great goodness toward the house of Israel, which He hath bestowed on them according to His mercies and according to the multitude of His lovingkindnesses. For He said...

31:05 Now, why was God's attitude to His people one of lovingkindness, great mercy, multitude of lovingkindnesses? For He said, Surely they are My people, children that will not deal falsely. So He was their Savior. In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the angel of His presence saved them.

31:40 In His love and in His pity He redeemed them, and He bare them and carried them all the days of old. Now, the next paragraph shows that He was not the only one who had to do for their sins. He had to chastise them. But here where God is set forth as the parent of His people, saying, They are My people, what are the characteristics of God's fatherly relationship to His people?

32:15 They are My children. Well, look at the language, the characteristics, the attributes, the traits of lovingkindness, goodness, mercy, multitude of lovingkindnesses, and then the manifestations of it are an intimate, warm, caring, identifying relationship with His people, so that when they are afflicted, He doesn't say, I am the great God of heaven and earth. I am Jehovah the Great, Eternal One. When I have got to be afflicted, and stress and need and opposition

32:59 and disappointment, those are creaturely things. How can I identify with those things? There is too much beneath me. Not that God of intimate, warm relationships with His children.

33:12 In their afflictions, He is afflicted. And when they need to be picked up and have their knees rubbed off, bumped head have a piece of ice put on it he is there in all their affliction he is afflicted and the angel of his presence saved them in his love and in his pity what is pity pity is a warm deep emotional movement towards someone in need that's what pity is it's seeing need and not being indifferent to it or seeing need and coldly and calculatingly and dutifully fulfilling it

33:56 pity is a felt emotion born of empathy with the person in need so in his love and in his pity he redeemed them and when they are likened to little children and need to be carried over a turbulent stream or be picked up and carried in the midst of danger you God is likened to a strong father who carries them backs them says in essence if there's danger from this direction I'll place my own body and life between me and my children do you see the

34:35 whole ethos of this paragraph God as a father to his ancient people was marked by warmth in that relationship look at verses 15 and 16 though he says in verses 10 to 14 that you he must chastise them for their sins now verse 15 look down from heaven and behold from the habitation of thy holiness and of thy glory he's conscious that God is the father in heaven he dwells in a place of infinite burning holiness of stunning overwhelming glory and majesty

35:14 where of thy zeal and thy mighty acts the yearning of thy heart and thy compassion are restrained toward me now the disciplined child says God you're acting contrary to what I know you to be the God of warm tender intimate loving relations to your children you are now restraining the yearnings of your heart and your compassions verse 16 for thou art our father though Abraham knows us not and Israel does not acknowledge us he does not acknowledge us for whom we are with grace he does not acknowledge us nor thejat too in their flocks." verse 16 know you a father though Abraham knows us not and Israel does not acknowledge us though Abraham does not acknowledge us non Thrill does not acknowledge. Thou, O Jehovah, art our Father.

35:57 What a wonderful thing to be able to be confident of the Father's heart of pity and warmth and love, even when His chastening hand seems to veil the manifestation of His love and His pity.

36:16 Do you see that in the passage? Do you see that in the passage? God, this doesn't concur with what I know you to be. And even though Abraham would disown us, we have so departed from your ways and come under your just chastening hand, so that Abraham would be ashamed to be identified as the father of this nation, though Abraham would disown us.

36:45 Though Israel, Jacob, does not acknowledge us, Thou, O Lord, art our Father.

36:55 The Lord says, Even when... Even when in your righteousness and holiness you must bring the chastening rod upon us and appear indifferent to us so that your zeal and your mighty acts that would vindicate and deliver your people are restrained.

37:16 We come back now to the text that Barb quoted. They were confident that God was no capricious God. That as a father, the baseline of his heart was love. And warmth, and pity, and tenderness.

37:33 As opposed to coldness,

37:38 fickleness, arbitrariness, a smiling father one day, a frowning the next, and no explanation.

37:56 But God the Father, his position toward his people, is one of warmth, of intimacy, of compassion. That's why in chapter 66, turn over, he even incorporates the image of a mother. Isaiah 66 and verse 13. As one whom his mother comforted, so will I comfort you, and you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.

38:32 And you shall see it in your heart, shall rejoice, and your bones shall flourish like the tender grass, and the hand of the Lord shall be known toward his servants, and he will have indignation against his enemies. As one...

38:45 As one whom his mother comforts, so will I comfort you. Now you can relate to that, can't you? The little toddler comes running in, tears coming down his face like two little rivers.

39:02 He didn't look just to go at it. Mommy just strokes his head and says, Now son, my sweetheart, good little daughter, just quiet down now. Just quiet down. Pats his back.

39:11 Tell Mommy what it is.

39:15 And out he comes again. And then the mother just quietly, tenderly, she gets him all quieted down. And then he tells his story. What happened and how it was that the altercation with the neighbor's kid ended up and he got bumped in the back of the head with a baseball bat and all the rest.

39:32 Well, God is condescending to tell us something. Mother comforts the very fruit of her womb. You know what that is, you mothers. You've seen it.

39:46 You who are not mothers, God says, I am not embarrassed to be brought down to the level of the warmth, the almost maudlin sentiment, almost maudlin sentimental bond of a mother to her distressed child. God says, that's my relationship to my children. That's my relationship to my children. One, you fathers, you mothers, you're to be like God.

40:28 To cultivate by the grace and power of the Holy Spirit a relationship, that is dominant in this characteristic.

40:40 As opposed to,

40:44 you may meet all of the child's needs according to the book. You may make all the provisions for his belly and his back and the roof over his head.

40:57 What a horrible thing when you don't create a climate of emotional and spiritual and psychological warmth.

41:07 A horrible thing.

41:12 Ungodly.

41:14 You're not being.

41:19 Would you like God to be the kind of, parent to you, that you are to your children?

41:27 Would you like your children to conceive of God's heart in the way they read your heart in the presence or absence of a climate of warmth? And I've deliberately chosen these words and not chosen such standard words as love. Because they just don't, we heard them so much we put our own meaning on them. But you cannot, you cannot avoid the whole connotation and denotation and associations, and everything that grabs on to the word warmth as opposed to cold.

God's Closeness Illustrated: The Prodigal Son & Isaiah 49

42:00 Stays in on. God's relationship is not only one of warmth to his children, it's one of closeness.

42:10 Intimacy. God is not content just to have a birth record in the court of heaven saying, he's mine.

42:18 He's not content to fill out the adoption papers and have them sealed in the blood of Christ. Legally binding in heaven so you have to go to heaven as a son because your adoption papers are signed in the blood of Christ by the court judge. God's not content to just have the adoption papers. He wants you in warm, intimate, loving, closeness.

42:49 Can you tell me a passage in the New Testament where this is beautifully illustrated in the manner in which God receives sinners. That he does not simply juggle the records in heaven, but he delights to enter into intimate, fatherly closeness to them. It's a parable.

43:11 All right, Jerry? Ah, that's it. The prodigal son. Where's he found, Jerry?

43:17 Ah, good. It's in Luke. Now where about? First half, last half.

43:21 Just over the hill in the last half. Luke 15. All right? Remember Luke 15, you've got the parable of the lost coin, the sheep, and the lost son.

43:39 And you see, the whole issue at stake was that Jesus was the father, acting perfectly the father. He that hath seen me hath seen the father. And the fact that he is not behind doors in a calculating way with a bunch of legal papers receiving sinners, but he is entering into close relationship with sinners. He's receiving sinners.

44:04 Verse 1 of chapter 15. The publicans and sinners were drawing near. That's a word of spatial relationship. They were drawing near, close to him, to hear him.

44:17 And the Pharisees and their scribes, mermaids say, this man receives sinners and eats, eats with them. And remember in the Eastern concept, to eat with a man was to enter into an unwritten covenant of closeness and intimacy and friendship. If any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and eat, suck, dine with him and he with me. That's the crowning expression of the intimacy that the Lord Jesus promises to those who welcome him with the whole heart.

44:53 So it's in that setting, you see, and it has tremendous significance for the parable of the prodigal son. We ought to call it the prodigal of the warm-hearted father who receives sinners in the person of his son. And when that wayward son comes to himself, verse 20, what happens? He arose and came to his father.

45:19 But while he was yet far off, his father saw him and was moved with compassion and ran and fell and kissed. All of this activity is described not of the son, but of the father. What did the son do? He arose and came in the direction of his father.

45:44 But when he got close enough for the father to see that he was coming home, all of the verbs now apply to the father. It's the father who sees and is moved with compassion and runs and falls upon his neck and literally kissed him much, profusely smothered him with gifts. What does he say? He said, son, in coming home, you're not just coming home, under the roof to take your legal rights and position and the rest.

46:21 No, no. You're coming back into a close, intimate, interpersonal relationship with me, your father. He didn't simply say, well, I'm glad you came to your senses, you no good rebel.

46:41 You wasted my inheritance.

46:45 That I don't want to be ashamed. Come on back in. No such thing. God didn't teach you that way.

46:53 And you deserve to be roasting in hell, cut off while the husks were still in your mouth and in my mouth and sent from the hog pens of this world into the horrors of eternal burning. God, by his spirit, worked in us and made us vomit out the things we thought once were our babies. And by the spirit's enablement, we turned and we ran. And what did we find God to be?

47:20 Not a distant lost fear, God, but a loving father. Who would not be content with anything less than intimate interpersonal relationship. Closeness. He said, then the son, I've sinned.

47:40 I'm no worthy, no longer worthy to be called your son. He's filled with a sense of unworthiness. He doesn't come tripping up and saying, hey, pop, I've decided to turn over a new leaf. Ain't you glad to see me?

47:52 No, he's filled with the self-loathing, a true conviction of sin. But the father lavishes the initial indications of his determination to have closeness. And then he says, if this is hard for you to believe, my son, let me seal it in every possible way available to me. And from embracing him and kissing him, he then dresses him in the fine garment, places the ring, has a banquet, has a celebration.

48:20 And he says, this, my son, was as good as dead. But now he's alive, he's lost, and now he's found. But now the point is this, alive from his spiritual death to what kind of life? A life of intimate closeness with the father.

48:39 Lost and now found. Found for what? Came room to be in the most intimate closeness of interpersonal relationship with the father. There's the illustration of it in the New Testament.

God's Closeness Illustrated: Mother Imagery & The Spirit of Adoption

48:57 Very quickly, an Old Testament illustration, Isaiah 49, 14 and 15. And here's where the mother imagery comes in. And God's not ashamed to use it.

49:09 God is not at all fastidious to liken himself to a mother, even a nursing mother. Verse 14 of Isaiah 49. Zion says, the Lord has forsaken me. The Lord has forgotten me.

49:28 Zion has seen God's chastening hand for her sins and says, I'm put out from God's heart. I'm put away from any cause. Most relationship to God from here on in, I've blown it.

49:43 I've so abused my privileges, so utterly forfeited any claim to covenant intimacy with God. I've had it. Notice what God says. Can a woman forget her sucking child?

49:59 Can a woman ever forget the child that she held to her breast and that drew its very life from her life? The answer is obviously no. Can a woman forget her sucking child that she would not have compassion on the son of her womb? Can she forget that life that nourished, was nourished at her breast and previously developed in her womb?

50:25 He says, yea, these may forget. There may be instances where devoid of natural affection, they may be able to forget, but God says, yet will I not forget thee. I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands. God's relationship as a heavenly parent is not only like the father in the parable of the prodigal, it's like the mother who carried the child, gave birth to it and nursed it.

50:57 And God says it even goes beyond that in terms of closeness. So close.

51:05 And may God, the Holy Spirit, drive this home to us at the spiritual level and then give us grace to see its application to the domestic. God was determined that the crowning act of redemptive privilege would not merely be to sign the adoption papers in the court of heaven in the blood of his son, but then to put the spirit of adoption into our hearts that we could enjoy the privileges of what was signed in the court of heaven. That's why Galatians 4, 6 says, because you are that's a legal term, adoption.

51:45 And forth the spirit is sung into our enabling us to cry daddy Abba. In the Aramaic, if a little kid was running into his daddy, he wouldn't say daddy. He wouldn't say father. I mean, he wouldn't say those words that are English.

52:09 He would say Abba, Abba. And what has God done? He sent the Holy Spirit into our hearts to enable us in our feloniousness to be to enjoy the reality of the privileges of the closeness which God's legal adoption in Christ warrants us to have. Otherwise, it would be too much for us to believe with these hearts that had felt the sting and the shame of conviction.

52:43 How can we come to this great God against whom we've sinned who ought to have us roasting in hell and come tripping into the living room? Hop up on his holy lap and look up into his holy face and say, Daddy, you can't do it unless the Holy Spirit is given as the spirit of adoption enabling me to cry. Abba, Father, so determined is God to validate his closeness, the crowning blessing of redemptive privilege,

53:19 the spirit of adoption.

Application: Cultivating Warmth and Closeness in Parenting

53:24 How determined are you to attain and maintain the closest possible protection of the Holy Spirit in your children? How determined are you to attain eternal intimacy, maternal intimacy with your children? Be the abuse when children really have grounds to wonder, am I loved? Am I truly the delight of my mother and my father?

53:52 Where this and coldness mark the relationship as opposed to warmth and cultivated closeness. Get on my nerves. Don't you think you get on God's nerves? You're not going to get on God's nerves.

54:17 My friend, don't you think it takes, I say it reverently, gracious, patient acts of God to figure out what wayward, unpredictable, mixed up creatures we are? If the great God of heaven can do all he must do to maintain closeness to the likes of you and me, what in God's name are we doing backing off from the price we have to pay to attain and maintain closeness to our children that our parenting might be like God's parenting?

54:58 Jesus has maintained closeness when they're just a little bundle of fat and goo-goos and gurgles. But when it begins to be evident they have a will of their own and old Adam's done his work on it. And they've got taste of their own that aren't like yours. And you knew if you ever had a son he was just going to love to go out and work with you and he was going to love to pick up a song, lo and behold, every spare minute he runs to the piano.

55:32 And he's going to be a kissy little piano player and you were going to raise a nice burly bearded mechanic. And here he wants to be a soft-handed piano player. You mean I've got to be that fruity little kid? Yeah, you've got to be close to him and learn to love the piano.

55:50 And wash off your greasy hands before you sit there and touch those nice white ivory keys. And my girl, oh, she was going to be one who was just all frilly and feminine before she could have any pressure from her peers. She was born with an affinity for blue jeans and dirt and mess. And she doesn't seem to have an ounce of frilly feminism, femininity in her.

56:17 And you've got to get close to her and love her. Even though she's dashed all your relatives if you sleep with her. You say you sound like maybe you've gone through some of that. Mm-hmm.

56:34 But you and I have got to be like God. You see it? And be determined to say, if you committed yourself to a relationship of warmth to me when the only warmth I should know is the fires of hell, then surely I can be committed to a relationship of warmth to my children no matter what it costs me. And Lord, if you are committed to a relationship of closeness to me and it costs the death of your son and the gift of your spirit, then surely in the strength of his grace and in the virtue of his blood and the power of that spirit, I can maintain peace to my children.

57:15 Well, God willing, next week we'll pick up the words harmony and goodwill and let me give you a little homework assignment. See what you can find in the scriptures where God as Father now, God as Father, expresses his commitment to harmony with his children and goodwill to his children, where the fatherhood of God in the Old and New Testament is mentioned in conjunction with things that could be described as harmony and goodwill. Well, may the Lord be pleased to convince us, dear parents, of the theological framework within which we're working. Once you get hold of that, I say, you have a manual of infinite numbers of instances where you'll have an answer

57:58 to your question. May God help us. I'm sorry I didn't realize I had gone six minutes over the time. I'll be more careful the next time.

58:08 I do apologize. I simply did not look at my watch. Let's pray. Oh, our Father, we stand before your fatherly heart, amazed and overwhelmed at how you've treated us who deserve to be in the pit.

58:27 And we pray that you would help us as parents. Oh, God, help us that we'll accept no lesser standard than what you are as our Father. By the grace of your Spirit and the power of the Spirit, and out of gratitude to you, for your love and pity to us, help us to maintain a climate in our homes and relationship to our children marked by warmth and closeness, no matter what the cost to us may be. Hear our prayer and bless our meditations to our prophet and to your prayers in Jesus' name.

Closing Remarks and Homework

59:10 Amen. You have been listening to How Not to Foul Up the Training of Your Children with Dr. Martin. These cassettes are distributed by the Trinity Book Service.

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