The Rod and Reproof Give Wisdom

Over the last month, I've been preaching on the proactive work of raising children. What does it look like? We as parents are supposed to be in front of our children, shepherding their hearts and their minds to love God's law, to love Jesus Christ, and to obey. We want our children to love God's law, not simply to obey it. And so our aim has been not simply, did you do what you're told, want to do what you're told. We want them to want to obey. Over the past few weeks, we've learned that our children have wills that flow out of their hearts. And the way we've learned that primarily is by looking at ourselves and seeing that we have wills, that adults have wills, that we have desires, and we pursue them. And if it's true of us, it's true of our children. And so we've learned that there's a lot of work to be done. If we're going to faithfully train up our children, then our goal isn't simply outward obedience, but rather it's sincere obedience from a heart that seeks to honor God. And so over these last three or four weeks, I've been talking about what does formative instruction look like? What's it look like to be in front of your kids teaching them what they should do and why and how and all of those things? And the thing that we haven't talked about is corporal punishment, corporal discipline rather. What do you do when they sin?

Because to this point, I haven't talked about what's godly parenting look like when your children sin? I've just been talking about, well, here's what we want to do to help them understand sin, fight against sin. We've talked around this issue, but now we're meeting it head on. And what I want to make crystal clear from the very beginning of this sermon is I'm not changing gears. We've been talking about the heart and the will and obedience. we are not leaving those things behind now to talk about corporal discipline, spanking. When your child disobeys, when you disobey, you have a heart problem. You have something wrong inside of you that's bearing itself out in what you do. And so, as I've spoken already on the reality of us having to deal with our children's hearts when we teach them, we have to deal with their hearts.

When we discipline them, you have to get in your minds that corporal discipline is not something that you do just, I just do it because you did something wrong and I need to address the thing you did wrong. And that that by itself is going to fix the problem. When you discipline a child in whatever manner you're doing, whether you're teaching them, whether you're encouraging them, whether you're rebuking them or exhorting them or spanking them, You're dealing with their heart. All of this is aimed at dealing with their heart. What we have when our children sin is we have a window. We have an avenue into their heart. And we don't simply want to stop up at the window, black it out so that we can't see what's inside. We want to look down in there. And as we look down in there and we see what's in their hearts, we want to show them what's in their hearts. If you can imagine...

Standing up and looking out a window and seeing something and say, come here, you've got to see this. Come here, I want to show you something. And so then the kid comes and they look through the window and they're going, I don't know what I'm looking at. And you're saying, well, do you see that over there? And do you see this? And do you see this other thing? Let me tell you about what's in this landscape. But it's their heart that we're talking about. We're using their disobedience that they do to show them and to teach them about their heart. So would you please stand for the reading of God's word from Proverbs 29, verse 15. This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child who gets his own way brings shame to his mother. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. And so from this verse, it's pretty straightforward, but I want to state it in our own words. To understand this verse, what's it say?

It teaches us that the point of corporal discipline, of spanking, is to impart wisdom to our child. It's one of the tools that God commands us as parents to use as we train our children. And so spanking is both formative and it's corrective. It's meant to teach and to rebuke, to correct. So as we jump into this, there's going to be this week and next week I'm going to talk about spanking. And just by way of broadening your understanding or your knowledge of what the Bible has to say about it, I want to read you a couple of other texts that have to do with spanking, but that I'm not preaching from this morning. The first set of verses that I want to read to you have to do with withholding discipline, withholding spanking, and its fruit. Proverbs 23.13 tells us, do not hold back discipline from a child. And with that, we're okay. We say, okay, I won't hold back discipline. But then it's specific, and it says, although you strike him with a rod, he will not die. And so we learn what discipline they're talking about. They're not talking about the discipline of timeouts, and they're not talking about the discipline of yelling, or the discipline of manipulation. They're talking about corporal discipline, their bottom, to use the rod.

Although you strike him with the rod, he will not die. And I think that that verse has a lot to do with moms. They think, oh, what will happen to poor Johnny if we paddle his bottom? He might get really bad things happen to him. And the Bible tells us that your son won't die. But instead, the exact opposite is true, that actually disciplining your children and spanking them leads them toward life and away from death. Proverbs 13.24 says, He who withholds his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him diligently. And Proverbs 19.18 says, Discipline your son while there is hope, and do not desire his death. Which says that if you don't discipline your son, your child, if you don't spank them, you don't love them. Now how does that sit with you in our society? Does that sound right? It doesn't sound right. You go to the doctor and the doctor will tell you, Don't spank your kids. It doesn't work. We've done studies, and we've realized that spanking kids doesn't work. And what works better is this or that or the other thing. This is my house this last week to the doctor, and that's what the doctor has to say. Because they ask, how do you discipline your children? Not having thought about it ahead of time, Vanessa said, spank them. Oh, well, did you know that that's not actually the most effective way to handle children's problems?

You guys should try timeouts. This is what they tell us. We're going to talk more about that later. Discipline your son. Spank them while there is hope. Do not desire their death. And contrary to what our society is telling us, I want to read you some verses now about the fruit of disciplining your children. Proverbs 29.17 says, Correct your son, and he will give you comfort. He will also delight your soul. Proverbs 22.15 says, Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child. The rod of discipline will remove it far from him. Hebrews 12, 11 says, all discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful. Yet to those who have been trained by it afterwards, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. And so I want you to know where, I want to start by saying where we're going to land. And I do want to, the question I intend to answer at the end of the sermon is, how should we discipline our children? Which is what we all want. We just say, well, just tell me what to do.

Just tell me how to do it. Just give me the formula. Tell me how, you know, give me the steps of, if you tell me I have to spank my kids, okay, well, just tell me this and this and that and the other, and then we're done. And we're going to get to answering the question, how should we discipline our children? But I want you to realize that the reason that we have hard work to do, because parents, if you're a parent, you don't want to discipline your child. That's the reality. You don't want to do it. Because everything that I just read to you that the scripture has to say about discipline, you say, oh, okay, okay, okay. But then when you think of your own child, all of a sudden you're going, well, I don't know if that's going to be the best way to handle it. Or I've done that and it didn't work. And so I need to do something else. And so first, before we get to how we actually discipline children, we have to talk about what is it, we need to open up why we need to do it. Not just that we need to do it.

but why we need to do it. And so I want to begin by asking you a question. I actually want you to answer the first of this question. Why ought you discipline your child? Why? What reasons? What rises to the level of this child needs to be disciplined? Come on now, not all at once. Okay, running in the street. Okay. We could have those kind of things forever. So let me think in terms of categories. Yeah, right? This is the most obvious thing. Why do you need to spank your kids? Well, because they disobey. When my child disobeys in whatever that looks like, they need to be disciplined. Yeah, yep, yep. And so if they're disobeying, meaning they're not doing what you've told them to do, or they're in imminent danger, they're about to run out in the street, so you grab them by the arm and paddle their bottom and say, don't you dare run out in the street.

What happens is we see their behavior and we're compelled to act. Whether that behavior is looking at you and screaming, or looking at you and spitting the food out of their mouth, or them looking at you and grabbing their car keys and saying, I'm going anyway, or anything in between. We see their behavior and we go, you need to be disciplined because you're not doing whatever you're told. You're doing something dangerous. And that's a good reason to discipline a child. That's a good category. When children disobey, they should be disciplined. But it's not so simple as saying, if you disobey, you have to get a spanking. It's not that simple and straightforward. Because what you have to realize is when a child disobeys you, what have they done? What they've done is they've offended you. And why are you offended as a parent? You're offended.

personally because they're rejecting you. You tell them to do something and they go, I'm not going to do it. And what do you feel as a parent? You feel, well, they don't love me. They don't honor me. They don't care about me. You take it personally. And here's the thing. Some of you are sitting there going, no, I don't do that with my kids. And I say, well, do you do it with other people? How about when other people sin against you? Do you take it personally? Oh, yeah, you do. Oh yeah, I do. People say something. People do something. And it may not even have to do with you. But in our minds, we create this environment in which whatever they did was because of us. And they were communicating to us. And they were communicating about us. They were sticking their thumb in our eye, so to speak. And we get offended. And we haven't done anything with them. We haven't spoken to them. We haven't addressed it in any way. But we are offended.

And the same thing is true with your children. When they disobey, you take it personally. And so the reason we need to talk about this question, reasons for disciplining children, is because saying, well, when they disobey, they need to be disciplined, that's true, and on the surface it's fine, but what's going on underneath that, the subtext, is you want to discipline them because you're frustrated and you're angry because they sinned against you. And you will not discipline your children well if you don't address that. And so yes, the disobedience of a child is grounds for discipline. But it doesn't mean that you as a parent, because you're bigger and stronger and louder, have the ability to just exert your will however you feel on the child. And so if we're honest, and I ask you again, change the question a little bit and say, what leads you to discipline your children most often? You say disobedience. And I say, okay, yeah, disobedience. But what's going on inside of you? Because do you discipline them every time they sin?

No, you don't. Should you? Probably not. What's going on inside of you when you are compelled to act? Anger, pride, frustration? Nothing else worked? I've been telling you, I've been talking to you, I've been speaking louder and getting more intense, and they're not listening, so now you need a spanking. And what I want you to realize is when you talk about spanking children, you have not been educated by what Scripture has to say. You have been educated by our society. When your doctor says to you, have you tried timeouts, you're completely left exposed going, well, maybe that is what we should do. No, we haven't tried. Maybe that would work better. These are the thoughts that Christians have because they haven't been trained and informed by Scripture.

Excuse me. And so answer me this. Why are you told to give the child time out instead of spanking them? The reason is because we don't have any self-control as parents. Because you're angry and you're offended and you haven't disciplined yourself, but now you're going to discipline this child. And so what's gotten rid of is the action. If we say, don't spank the children, somehow the children will be protected. And I want you to know that's not true. It's not true that children are protected when their parents refuse to discipline them. God is very clear to us that our work is to discipline our children, to spank their bottoms. And we are not to do it in anger or frustration. We're not to unburden ourselves. When you discipline your child, you ought to be under control.

You ought to be seeking to do what? What's our text tell us? The rod and reproof give wisdom. Are you trying to give your child wisdom, godly wisdom when you spank them? Or are you simply trying to teach them, don't you ever do that again? And if you do, you know what's going to happen? That's not necessarily wisdom for your child. Which isn't to say that your children shouldn't fear sinning. They should. And they shouldn't look forward to discipline or they shouldn't take it lightly. But if your goal, and you have to know your heart, I could talk for hours and hours and not be able to articulate every one of the inner workings of your heart, but you have to know what are you trying to communicate to this child when you discipline them. Are you trying to communicate that you are displeased with them and you're angry and you're frustrated and they better learn never to do that again because you don't appreciate it? Or are you trying to impart wisdom to them? Are you trying to save their soul from hell?

Are you trying to teach them something? Are you trying to win their heart to love God as you're spanking their bottom? The way to avoid child abuse is not to refuse to do what God says. The way to avoid abusing your child is to deal with your own sin. I did some research just in a few minutes when I was preparing yesterday, and I thought, what is the consensus in America of the population? What's the disposition towards spanking? And if you take the nationwide picture, not taking into account age or race or religion or region of the country or any of that stuff, the number is 70% still think that spanking is appropriate in America. They still do it. 70% of children still get spanked. And so my question is, are these children gaining wisdom as a result of it?

And when I look at our society, I say, nope, they're not. They're not becoming wise. And so we have a problem. And I want it clear in your minds that the answer to the problem is not to refuse to discipline them. Children need to be disciplined. It's a demonstration of your love to them. And the sweetest time that you'll have with your children is after you discipline them and they're sitting on their lap hugging you and holding you and looking in your eyes in a way that they don't at any other time. If you do well. If they're squirming and wrestling and trying to get away and won't meet your eyes for $10, then you're not done. There's still a problem. But disciplining your children is a very sweet and intimate time that you have with them. If you understand what you're doing when you're with them. And so our society understands something about the problem. That parents don't have self-control and they're harming their children and that that's not a good thing. And something needs to be done about it. And so they've got the diagnosis.

Pretty good. But the solution is not godly. And we need to move towards a godly solution. Have you guys seen this, I don't know how long or where it's been, this video of these police officers being called to a house and the mom answers the door and goes, I didn't call the police. And the son pops up and says, I did. She hit me on the button with her belt. And so you're all sitting there thinking, what? They're about to take the child away. That's what you think is going to happen. And the mom's going, I didn't call the police. And so the video, it's a curveball. Because what happens is the cop says, well, come here, son, I want to talk to you. And he pulls the child over and he says, why did your mom spank you? Why did she discipline you? Well, because she found out I was skipping class. Okay. What did she hit you with? A belt? Where did she hit you? On my bottom? How many times did she hit you? Three? Did she hit you anywhere else? No?

And this kid's convinced, absolutely convinced, that his mom did something wrong. And that cop, and this is just a video, and we wish we could rely more uniformly on officers to say things like this cop says. He says, listen here, your mother did not beat you. She loved you. And if I ever have to come to your house again because you were skipping class, you're going to have something worse to deal with than your mother. So in that picture, Did mom do a good job? Yeah. I mean, it's staged, right? This is a staged interaction. But mom didn't abuse that child. She taught the child something, and she had the police reinforcing it. And I can tell you from my own personal experience, I've been that kid, not calling my mom, but having police interacting with me, saying, you had better listen to your mom because you don't want to have to deal with me. And it was a blessing to me.

to have police officers do that with me when I was young. I want you to be very wary of how our world and our culture deal with sin. You know, I was telling Vanessa earlier this week, there's these videos or these interactions that I see that drive me absolutely crazy. And they happen in my life, and I see videos of them as well. And what it is, is with regard to daughters, you guys all know that... The fruit of feminism in our society is that women are just completely exploited and taken advantage of. They're not protected. They're told, go, go, go, do, do, do. You saw this video of Hillary Clinton not being able to walk and having to be carried. And I don't know the details of it. I didn't read about it. But when I saw that video, I thought, this is the fruit of feminism. This woman is 70 years old, and she can't even stand up. And she's being forced into things that are not good for her.

Politics and everything else aside, I felt sorry for her. I thought the poor woman should be able to lay down and get better. But feminism won't let her. It's going to ride her until she dies. And then it's going to spit her out and pick someone else up and do the same thing to her. What a shame. And so women in our society aren't protected. And I see Hillary Clinton. unable to stand. I have compassion for her. Think about our daughters. Think about your teenage daughters. What are you afraid of? If you have teenage daughters, what do you not want them to do? More than anything, you don't want them to be impure. You don't want someone taking advantage of them. You want them protected. And our society pays lip service to them being protected. And how does it pay lip service to being protected? Well, there's one of two ways. One, is a video I saw of this girl saying, again, a staged thing, where the girl says, Dad, I want you to meet my boyfriend. And Dad says, You're what? He goes, My boyfriend. And he pulls up a gun and he cocks it and he says, You're what? My friend. And everyone likes this video. And I'm telling you, this video is awful. That is not godly parenting. That father has no interest in protecting his child. And do you know why? Because he won't shoot the guy.

That's why he is lying. And I'm telling you that there's not a man in this room that would shoot the man that took advantage of their daughter. You wouldn't do it. And you are lying to say that you would. And to make light of it is to leave your daughters completely unprotected. Think when you were young and you were threatened by dad, by a girl's father. Were you afraid of him? I mean, if he said, I'm going to shoot you if you mess over my daughter, did you believe him? Okay, you believed him. Were you pure with his daughter? If you weren't, you didn't believe him. You understand me? That father's not doing his work with his daughter. But he makes a show of it. Because he knows, I'm supposed to protect my daughter. And so he gets, I'm going to protect my daughter. But he doesn't really protect his daughter. How else does it happen? You know, we've got six boys, right? And we've got a little girl. And so you know the things that people say to us when we're out in public. And she goes, boy, she has a lot of brothers to protect her.

And I always say to them, no, she has a father to protect her. And the boys will protect her too, but they are not the ones that will be primarily protecting Karis. I will be. Because she's my daughter. And I'm not going to just leave that work to them. And so we need to be able to see, our culture sees problems and the way they address it is never through biblical means. We make a joke of protecting our daughters from being taken advantage of. Or we look to the brothers and expect them to do it. What happens if one of them is the one that's hurting her? Who's going to protect her? Who ought to protect her? First, her father ought to. And so when I see these videos online, they make me crazy. Because I think we've all believed a lie. We see a problem, but we don't address it biblically. You see a child's disobedience, and we don't address it biblically. What are you supposed to do when a kid disobeys? We're not supposed to spank him.

And I say, no, no, no, that's not true. You are supposed to spank them. You are supposed to discipline them. But you're not free to do it however you want. You may not make light of it. You may not joke about it. I want to talk about timeouts for a minute. Because this is the thing that we're supposed to, this is the thing that's helpful. And I want to compare timeouts to spanking. Spanking done well is quick. And the child is restored to fellowship with the people they've sinned against. and the family, it happens quickly. What happens when you give a child a timeout is you cement their separation from the family. They are not allowed to participate with the fellowship and the life of the family. Do I think that timeouts should ever, ever, ever have a place? Sure. I wouldn't call them timeouts, but yeah, I would. I'd say that parents, if you've got a child that's caught in sin in their teenage years and their adult? Should there be some sort of a severing of their fellowship with the family? Maybe. Maybe there should be. You think, that's monstrous. You couldn't do that. Family is important. And I say, no. We have to deal with sin as it is. If children, you know, we have the ability to say, so long as you do that, you will not do that in my house. You need to go find another place to live.

And so is there a place for things like timeouts, breaking fellowship in a more permanent way between the offender and the offended? Yeah, sure there is. But if this is how you address your child's behavior whenever they sin, is you need to go sit down and think about what you said, Tommy, or what you did. For one, little kids don't sit there and think about what you think they're thinking about. Just honestly, they're not sitting there thinking about... oh man, what I did was so wrong and I shouldn't have done that and I do know better and mom was right to yell at me and all this other stuff. That's not what they're sitting there thinking. And so it separates the child from those that they should be loving. It's also manipulative. It tells the child, because you've removed them from you, from the parent, from their siblings, You've told them that their ability to participate in the family is always hanging by a thread. And if they don't do just what they're supposed to do, they'll get cut off. And the fruit of that is you push their sin underground. That's actually what happens. Because if they want to have fellowship with the family, they learn, well, if I do this, I can't be with the family, but I want to do this, and I want to be with the family, so I've got to hide this. And so you say, they don't sin anymore. And I say, no, you just don't see it anymore.

Or at least not regularly. Timeouts also, how do timeouts affect the parent? Timeouts create an unrealistic expectation in parents. Because you think they're sitting over there thinking about what they should be doing. If they're not doing that, then you have a wrong expectation for when they re-engage with the family. Didn't you think about what you did? The child says, no. But you think they should have. Timeouts will not help children. Simply removing a child from a situation and putting them away by themselves, will not deal with their sin. If you're going to discipline your children faithfully, you have to be trying to impart wisdom to them. What wisdom does a timeout impart? What does it teach them about God? Does it teach, what? He's cold, he's distant. Their relationship to him is contingent upon their obedience. He'll withhold his love when they cross the line, he withdraws.

That's antithetical to the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is not what God does. If that's what he did, then all of us would be here in our sin with no hope because he wouldn't have sent his son. When there's sin and there's a problem, God enters into it and deals with it. That's what he does with us. That's what parents do with their children. When people are struggling, you go towards them and help them, discipline them, rebuke them, correct them. You help them. You love them. And so when your children are struggling and they're in sin, you go towards them and you help them. You don't withdraw from them or push them away from you. So I asked the question, under what circumstances do we discipline a child? And we said, well, when they disobey. And that's right. And we talked a little bit about what the effects of their disobedience, what that has on us. We get offended, we get upset, and we're conflicted about how to engage with them.

There's another thing I want to talk about regarding disciplining children. When is it appropriate to discipline a child? One of the things you have to learn to distinguish as a parent is the difference between childishness and sinfulness. You know, the paper that they gave Vanessa at the doctor said, six-year-olds don't always make the best decisions. Right. That's right. My six-year-olds lack wisdom. So they don't always make decisions. wise decisions. And so when we discipline them, we want to give them wisdom. We want to help them to make better decisions as they get older. And so the question, if you're going to give them wisdom through discipline, is you have to figure out what don't they know? What's going on here? Is this a lack of knowledge? Is this just a six-year-old being a six-year-old? Or is this a six-year-old being sinful?

In childishness, a six-year-old being a six-year-old isn't necessarily sinful. Is a kid playing with an outlet necessarily sinful? No, it's dangerous, right? Not necessarily sinful, it's dangerous. And because you love them, you don't want them in danger, right? Now, when does it become sinful? After you've told them and instructed them. And they're old enough to understand. You can't take your eight-month-old over to the thing and point, you may not touch this outlet. Don't put your toys or your fingers or anything else in there. You're wasting your time with your eight-month-old. They don't get it. They don't know what you're talking about. And so you can't teach them that way. But if you take your three-year-old over and you say, you may not touch this. Don't play with it. Don't unplug cords. Don't plug cords in unless mommy or daddy tells you to. And then later, you're watching the child and they're over near the thing and it catches their eye and you see them looking at you and looking at the thing and back and forth.

And you're looking at them and you say, don't touch that. And then they look at you and they go, and they touch it. Well, now we're dealing with sin. Now we're dealing with, they know, they know. And they just said, I'm not going to do it. I'm going to do this. Well, you have to deal with that. But you can't deal with it while you're offended. You don't love me because I told you not to do that. And because you did it, you were in effect saying, look, I don't love you. Childishness can be confused for sinfulness an awful lot of the time. And as your kids get older and as you learn more about children, you start to learn to distinguish these things. What is childishness? And childishness needs to be taught. You need to be trained out of it. Paul said, when I was a child, I what? I thought like a child. I acted like a child. But then when I matured, I stopped doing those things. And so when we're dealing with childishness, we want to impart wisdom. The rod and the reproof give wisdom.

proactively dealing with our kids and helping them, trying to get them wisdom. How do you know if you're dealing with childishness or sinfulness? Here's a test. And the test is for you, not for the child. Here's the test. Would you do the same? If you had to wait five minutes to spank them, would you still do it? Meaning, is what's going on inside of you a sin of passion? Or is it premeditated? Premeditated actions, criminal actions that are premeditated get far worse consequences than sins of passion. And so the question to you as a parent is, are you flying off the handle because you're angry and offended or are you deciding this child, what they're doing is wrong and sinful and I want to address it and I want to teach them something. The parent who is responding that way will wait five minutes and they'll be glad to still do it.

But the parent who's not, the parent who's angry and who's just barking at their children, they're going to spend the next five minutes trying to justify what they're going to do. Well, I said I was going to do it, so I've got to do it. They should know better, because I've taught them to know better. And they're setting a bad example for their siblings. And my wife gets mad at me when they do that. And they sit and you have all this stuff running in your head in those five minutes, and you're just trying to justify your anger. So what should you do if you find yourself angry and having told your child, you wait till we get home. Well, if they need to be disciplined, then wait till you get home and discipline them. But if you find that you said that in anger and that they actually were just being childish, what should you do? Should you spank them when you get home? No, what should you do? Honey, I'm sorry. Daddy lost his temper and Daddy said something that was inappropriate. I don't want you doing that, that thing, because it is distracting while I drive or obnoxious or whatever it is.

But do you understand me? I don't want you doing this sort of stuff. And the child says, yeah, okay, I get it. You've dealt with it. You don't have to spank them. It's real work to know the difference between childishness and sinfulness. Both of them require wisdom, but they don't both require spanking. Not all the time. Spanking a child, it's like an art. It really is. Because kids are different and parents are different and moms are different than dads. There's just no formula for it. And yet God tells us that it imparts wisdom to our children. And so the work that parents have in front of them is as you spank your children, if you want to address their heart, remember I said at the beginning, spanking a child is addressing their heart. If you want to address their heart, then the thing that absolutely must be present is your heart.

Our societies produce this sort of guilt that you feel if you spank your child. You're always worried that CPS is going to come knock down your door and take your kids away from you without any anything. And you're just scared. And so you live in this angst. And so you think, we have to do it in private, and we have to do it in the corner, and we don't want anyone to know about it. And what I say is, we live in a society that when the doctor asks, How do you discipline your child? They write it down. Somebody knows now that in that house, kids get spanked. And it may or may not be good for you. And what I wish, you know, Vanessa and I are talking about this interaction. I say, you know, honey, I would have said the same thing you did, and I'm glad you were honest. I'm glad you didn't lie. Because what would that have taught the children? It would have taught them to lie, right? And so I'm glad you were honest. Having had time to think about it now, what I wish you would have said is,

Why are you asking me that? What does that have to do with my... You're their doctor. What does whether I spank them, how they're disciplined, have to do with you being their doctor? Well, they just want what's best for our children. And I would have said, we do too. As the parents, we want what's best for our children too. I would have had a conversation with her, with the doctor. I wouldn't have been nasty to her. I just would have said, I don't understand why as a doctor, what's that have to do with his weight and height and whatever else? So how do you impart wisdom to a child during discipline? I'm going to give you a couple of bullet points and we're going to be done. The first thing about imparting wisdom to a child is that they're out to be an actual exchange. They're out to hurt. Spanking should hurt. It's really, really simple to say, but you moms especially need to hear spanking should hurt. And I'm not telling you that you have to get angry to make it hurt because that's what moms will do. If they don't want to discipline their kids, then the only time they actually spank them is when they get angry with them.

And then it hurts. And it hurts in all kinds of ways. It hurts their bottoms and it hurts, it manipulates them and there's all this other kind of stuff. You dads, do you know how much bigger you are than your children? You're not going to have any trouble. You don't ever need to question, does it hurt? It should hurt. And you as a father won't have any trouble making it hurt. And it shouldn't hurt in like a way that like they're limping for a week. It should hurt in like, it stings for a minute or two. That's how it should hurt. A minute of sting on their bottom is far better than the other consequences that they'll face. And so discipline should hurt. Second, discipline should be swift. It shouldn't be long and dry. If you're going to spank the child, just please, if they've disobeyed, just spank them. Don't yell at them and berate them and all this other hooping and hollering. If they've done something wrong, spank them.

Don't yell at them until they're completely hardened and going, whatever, because you've been yelling at them for five minutes and then spank them. Control yourself. Think, this child's caught in sin and I want to help them out of it because I love them. What I'm going to do is I'm going to spank them to create this connection between when I do foolish things, it hurts. Hurt their bottom for a few seconds, for a few minutes. And it's far better than you yelling and manipulating and pressuring and all this other stuff you do. We do. I do. Just spank them. Don't avoid it. Remember I said at the beginning, why do we actually spank our children? We spank them because nothing else works. Well, what else doesn't work? Yelling at them and screaming at them and taking things away from them and threatening them and counting to them. You know, discipline's not meant to teach your kids how to count to ten. It's meant to restore them.

To fellowship. And so just spank them. If they're doing something that's like, if you say, Johnny, don't touch the cord, and Johnny looks at you and he touches the cord, walk over to him, smack his hand, and say, I told you not to touch the cord. Don't yell at him the whole way over to the cord. Didn't I tell you? Don't you suppose to? Just go over and spank him. It should be swift. That's the blessing of spankings, is it's over and done with. There's not this lingering sort of relational gunk. You tell them to do something. They don't do it. You discipline them for it. And then you hug them and you kiss them and you pray for them. And you tell them about God and why we discipline them. And then they're happy and they bounce out of the room happy to go back and play with their Legos or whatever. So this leads into the next point. The goal of discipline is to impart wisdom. It's also to restore the child. When you're done disciplining your children,

there shouldn't be any relational rift between you and them. They ought to be happy. They shouldn't be all stiff in your lap. They should be cuddly. They should be glad to be on your lap. Now having said that, I want to tell you, it's real easy to say, the pastor said that my kids are supposed to be tender and I've got to keep spanking them until they get tender. I say, no, you have to know your child's frame. And what you want really is you want to see them moving towards tenderness. There are times that your children will struggle. They'll kind of be down in a valley.

And you're not going to just yank them up out of that valley and have them be tender. They'll struggle for a season. And what you're looking for is, are they moving towards tenderness? Because you can't sit and spank and spank and spank and spank and spank for two hours. You just can't. So pray with it. If you find that you're disciplining your child, it's like hot potato in my house. There will be one or maybe two kids always in my house that are struggling with just loving their brothers. doing their schoolwork, you know, whatever. And they just kind of pass it around. Is it? And we're looking for the trajectory in the home, like, is this child on the mend? And so if they're not, what should you do? You should pray for them that they would soften. You should tell them that you want them to soften their heart toward you.

You should tell them that it grieves you. You're not going to tell an 18-month-old this, but you're going to tell a 4-year-old, Honey, I don't like seeing you sin. It's dangerous for you. And I'm not always going to be here to protect you the way I am right now. And it's really important that you're soft toward me and that you listen to me. Because I have your best interests in mind, and I know better than you do what's good for you. I want to see you obey me. And then you pray for them that they'd soften. And it may take a week or two. Or it may take longer. I don't have kids that are older.

into their teenage years and stuff. But this is how you deal with kids. You have to be tender with them, even as you're disciplining them. The goal is to impart wisdom to them. It's to restore them to fellowship. The final thing I'll say about it is discipline should not, spanking should not be a constant thing in your house. So what do I mean by constant thing? Well, what I mean is that if you spend your whole day spanking your children for not doing what you said, you have a bigger problem. Okay? Think of it this way. If you have a car and it has a low tire, and so before you go to work in the morning, you've got to put air in the tire. And you have to have one of those little battery-powered generators because before you go to lunch, your tire is flat again, and you've got to get the little thing out and put more air in it. And then you've got to do the same thing before you come home. Here's the thing.

You have a bigger problem, right? There's a hole in this tire, and until you address the hole, you haven't addressed the problem. And so if you find that you're having to spank the same child five, six times a day, every single day, for weeks, you're missing something, mom and dad. There's something going on. Because the tire's got a hole in it, and you're not finding it. Get the soapy water out and start spraying it on the tire and look for bubbles. Find the problem. This is the work of parenting. I spanked them. I put air in the tire. It shouldn't leak. Well, it does. And you put all the air in it you want until you patch the hole. You're not addressing the problem with the right tool. Holes and tires don't need air. They need patches.

And so there should be some threshold, and I can't give you an exact. I said five to seven times a day for weeks, and that's what you guys are going to hear. You're going to say, the pastor said five to seven times for weeks, and so if it's only four times and it's only been ten days, I must not have reached the threshold. No, I'm not saying that. You can't latch on to these little things and go, well, that's what he said, and so that's what it is. It's your job as parents to know your children. you find that your child is struggling and you find that they're acting up and that they won't meet your eyes and that they're just becoming calloused, then you need to think, maybe there's a hole, maybe there's something else I'm missing here. And you need to figure out what it is. Final thing. Parents, you do not, may not reinvent the wheel when it comes to spanking. You need to get help. You need other people to talk to you and to teach you. Not just,

The mechanics of spanking. And what implement to use. Or not use. Whatever. You need help. You need help discerning, is this childishness? Is this sinfulness? Am I being severe? Am I being too lenient? Am I seeing progress? You need other people to be able to speak into your life about that stuff. And it's very uncomfortable. That's why none of us do it. You don't want people saying, you know, That boy's got a strong will. But if he does have a strong will, you want help knowing how to address his strong will. This is the reason the women are having this talk on Friday. It's even harder for moms to talk about the discipline of their children than for dads. Because moms are joined to their kids in a way that dads aren't. And there's this direct line between disciplining, like the behavior of the child, and whether mom's doing a good job.

And so moms feel this. Men, you need to know this about your wives. They feel this constant pressure like when the kids are acting up that they have failed. And the last thing they want to do is take their failure to someone else and talk about it. And you know what? They don't want you to do it either. But you need help. And so we're lowering the bar and so the ladies can all get together and we can all talk theoretically about the things that moms struggle with. Vanessa doesn't have to sit and talk to you about your particular child. But I wouldn't put it past her to do it. You need help raising your kids. You need to know what's going on. And don't assume that you know, especially as they get older, especially as they get into their teenage years. I had an older, wiser pastor say recently, he said, you know, Especially as your children get older, you need to learn to defer to the judgment of other people about your kids because they'll actually know your kids better than you. And that's a hard pill for a parent to swallow. That there be something going on with their kids that the youth leader knows more about than they do. Don't despise the help, parents. Don't despise the help of nursery workers or Sunday school teachers or other parents or single men. God bless John Hensel for barking at our kids. I'm thankful for it. I love being in a small group for that reason.

He tries. And then he goes, did I do it right? Well, kind of. You tried. And you know what? The fact that you tried puts you in the top 10% of the class. Because most people won't try. And you know what? He'll learn. And so we're thankful for his help. When I've got a single guy, he doesn't have any kids, saying, that kid of yours got a problem. Dad, do something about it. What a blessing. And so if I need John Hensel's help, then you guys all need each other's help. And I want you women to go to this thing, and I want you to listen. Not just to Vanessa, but I want you to talk to one another. You should know. None of you women want to say, I scream and yell at my kids, but we all know you do. Do you want help with it? I don't believe for a second that you don't. Some of you women are quieter than others, but the quietest one of you, I know you yell at your kids.

Because I've heard them talk about it. So don't put on airs. Get help. You want your children to get wisdom. And you want older, wiser parents to be helping you learn how to do that. How to love them and discipline them with a loving heart in you. Father, we thank you for the gift of children. And we pray that you would teach us through your word and by your spirit. Teach us how to discipline them. How to love them. As you've loved us, Father, when we were... dead in our sins and trespasses and being rebellious against you. You didn't leave us to ourselves, but you condescended to us and sent us your son. And we ask, Father, that you would help us to have that same heart toward our children. And that even as we discipline them, we pray that you would help us to give them wisdom and help us to teach them about your character. And we pray that they would grow up in the fear and the knowledge of God.

and that they would spend their lives serving you cheerfully. We pray that you bless them. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.