Ephesians
6:4
"And
ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in
the nurture and admonition of the Lord."
When
it comes to fathers disciplining their children (Proverbs 22:6, 15) one word always comes
to mind, and do you know what it is? Temperance. We think it’s in
Corinthians where Paul is describing the Olympic runners as they are
training and preparing their bodies for the race. And he admonishes
that we are to be temperate in everything. In other words we can’t
go clear off to the right or to the left. And it is the same way
with disciplining children. Some families are so strict, those young
children are in a straight jacket, and they cannot wait until they
can get out from under dad’s roof and in rare occasions the pastors foot and do whatever they want to.
That is not being temperate in discipline, that is doing the
extreme. And on the other hand we have parents who do not
discipline at all. They just let their kids run wild, or worse yet treat them as friends and often spend spend buying them what they do not need, so what must we
do? We become temperate and bring discipline into the middle. We have
to discipline children, and they do want discipline, they want rules
to live by, they need training and even hunger for it and so you can’t just give them total license or a
free-head to do as they chose. But on the other hand you have to
respect the fact that they are a person, they have their certain
demands for a bit of freedom, and all the time as we discipline
children, it has to be prompted by love. We cannot over emphasize
the word love. We discipline our children because we love them!
Just for a moment let’s go to Hebrews. The Scripture says it all if
you look for it. Even James tells us to love with works or do works
of love and not the self promoting kind, which are dead works of Religion.
Hebrews
12:6-7
"For
whom the Lord loveth*
he chasteneth,
and scourgeth
(spanks, disciplines) every
son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you
as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?"
*the
Lord is always seeking our highest good. So that person that God
loves.
That
is part and parcel of our Christ-like living. If God has indeed received us as a son, He then has full right of privilege. One to bring us out of darkness, by removing the blockage from our thinking and the way we perceive things. And second to disciple us as our need arises in His way and in His time to perfect His Salvation within us. We have to be disciplined. But if
we are not then who's son are we? We remain Satan's child, dead to God and His activities bond by sins Religion of the flesh.
Hebrews
12:9-11
"Furthermore
we have had fathers of our flesh
(in this worldly experience) which
corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be
in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?
(then verse 10 coming back to earthly fathers) For
they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but He for our profit, that we might be partakers of his (God's)
holiness. Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but
grievous*:
nevertheless
afterward
(discipline) it
yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are
exercised thereby."
*we
don’t care what the child psychologists say, the Scripture is more
true than they ever hope to be, this is also the cup of the Lord.
Can we make it any plainer that that? When we have gone through the Holy
Spirit's school of training we reach the second level or what we have
called the second blessing and Paul states it as the "Better" here in Hebrews. And Paul asks the question, who
can turn his back on so great a salvation, only the fool will so, NO
God!
We
trust that as we continue, that you will take your Bible and study
along with us. We hope that you do not depend on a Sunday School
quarterly, or what I or anyone else says, but learn to search and
research the Scriptures and see what the Word of God really says and
in many cases what it does not say. So I hope we are learning how to
read, study, and understand your own Bible. I do not want anyone to
sit and be as bewildered as I was for 55 or so years. Even after what
He told me back in mid 1971 sometime after I returned from Southeast
Asia which is found in 2Timothy 4:2 which is in the middle of Paul's
instructions to Timothy:
2Timothy
4:1-4
“I
charge therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall
judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove,
rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will
come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own
lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;
And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be
turned unto fables.”
The
Lord said, to be instant in season and out of season, and then added, take no
thought what to say as He would give me the words or put the words in
my mouth (Deuteronomy 18:18, Exodus 4:15, Isaiah 59:21, Jeremiah 1:9), when and where He needed me to speak. With this assignment He did not tell me to build a church or give me any one location to work. So we have been as faithful as possible to our charge, when ever and where ever and to whom ever the Spirit moves. I know that the Spirit is subject to me but the reverse is also true I am in subjection to Him.
You
know children are the most important part of the next generation
because we are just one generation away from paganism. If
parents do not teach their children the Word of God, their children
are not very likely to ever come back to them, and say, "Hey I
want to pick up with Spiritual things that you failed to teach me."
Most
generally they will continue on in that same lifestyle, of corruption
and violence and of course we are seeing it all across America where
our younger generations have absolutely no knowledge of God or of
the Scriptures. We can talk about a "Damascus experience"
and they look at us with a blank look. We can talk about other things
that a generation ago everybody knew what you were talking about,
even though some of them weren’t believers, at least they knew that
it was in the Bible. But you see now that is not deferentially not
the case, because we are afraid our younger generation is so close to
paganism. When we say paganism, we do not mean they are out there
bowing their knees in front of idols, but they just have no concept
of Spiritual things. We always have to look at the masses wherever we
are, how many of them ever stop to think about eternity. Not many
because it just never crosses their mind. They just sort of move
through life with NO understanding, let alone knowledge of the
spiritual world all around them. Well here again it all boils down to
how these children are being raised. Are they being raised as Paul
says here in verse 4?
Ephesians
6:4b
"...but
bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord."
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