This sermon was preached on July
20th, 1988 at the Southeastern Reformed Baptist Family Conference. Now may I urge you once again
to turn with me to Paul's letter to the Ephesians, Ephesians chapter
6, and follow as I read the first
four verses of this chapter, Ephesians chapter 6 verses 1
through 4. Children, obey your parents in
the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother,
which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be
well with you, and that you may live long on the earth. And you,
fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but nurture
them in the chastening and admonition of the Lord." The subject before
us in these evening sessions of our conference is the biblical
training of our children. The text which is serving as
both the foundation and the framework of our consideration of this
crucial subject is Ephesians 6 and verse 4. In our initial
study we noted what I call the task assigned. And you fathers, And we answered
the three very simple questions, who is addressed in assigning
this task of providing godly training? And the text answers
very clearly that fathers, in a very unique and explicit way,
are assigned the task of administering the godly training of their children. Then we asked the question, why
are fathers in particular and fathers explicitly addressed
in the text? And then we concluded by asking
the question, what kind of fathers are competent by the grace of
God to fulfill this task? And our answer was Ephesian fathers,
that is, fathers who know something of the spiritual perspectives
and experience outlined in the epistle to the Ephesians. Then we began to consider last
night the second major division of the text, namely, the task
defined. Once the apostle assigns the
task to fathers, He then defines the task in these words, do not
provoke your children to wrath, but nurture them in the chastening
and admonition of the Lord. And we began by considering first
of all what is first in the text, the negative injunction. Do not
be provoking your children to anger. and in the parallel passage
of Colossians 3.21, a little different nuance, do not be provoking
them to lose heart. And then we began to consider
the second subdivision of the task defined, not only the negative
injunction, but the positive direction. But in direct contrast
to the negative, do not provoke them to wrath, is this positive
direction, but nurture them in the chastening and admonition
of the Lord. And in that positive direction
we have the objects of this training, them, and the essence of that
training, nurture. And we only had time to consider
last night the objects of the training. And I made the assertion
that if we are to fulfill this divine mandate as fathers, with
the whole-souled, intelligent cooperation of our wives, then
we must understand who and what our children are biblically. We must not view them in terms
of the pompous pronouncements of modern psychology. We must not view them in terms
of the quasi-Christian categories of much of so-called Christian
psychology and Christian psychologists, but we must view them biblically
and therefore theologically. And I set before you five things
that our children are, by biblical definition, all five of which
must be given due consideration in our godly training of them. We saw from the Scriptures that
they are creatures made in the image of God. They are creatures
made with divinely planned individuality. Thirdly, they are creatures fallen
in Adam with both a generic and a specific sinnerhood. Then we saw that they are, fourthly,
moldable and undeveloped when they come to us. And last of
all, we noted that they are susceptible to the influences of common and
of special grace. So under the task defined, having
considered the negative injunction, do not provoke them to anger,
do not provoke them to lose heart, we have now considered under
the positive direction the objects of the training. We are to nurture
them in terms of that five-fold description of what they really
are. Now we pick up our study at this
point and proceed from the objects of the training to consider the
essence of the training. If the objects of the training
are our children in the total complex of their creaturehood,
sinnerhood, with their moldability and susceptibility, then the
essence of their training is all packed into one word, nurture
them. The whole essence of the task
is packed into this word, nurture. Therefore, of necessity, we must
seek to understand the mind of the Spirit bound up in this word,
And may I say to you young people and adults as well, one of the
surest gauges of the safety of any ministry is to be found in
the pains to which preachers will go to convince your judgment
from the Word of God that the meaning they assign to any given
Word of God is indeed the God-intended meaning. And the day you grow
weary in the week-by-week expository ministry of your churches, of
this element of word studies, you've grown weary of knowing
the mind of God and are susceptible to heresy. If God has chosen to pack the
entire essence of the task of godly training in the one word,
et trefo, nurture them, given to us in a present imperative,
then we better spare no pains to understand what it means to
nurture them." Now the word rendered in the 1901 edition, nurture,
is surprisingly rendered precisely the same in the old authorized
version, commonly called the King James Version, the New International
Version and the Revised Standard Version, it is rendered, bring
them up. And we shall see that there is
good reason for that translation. The word itself is found only
one other place in the New Testament, and we only need to look up a
few verses to find it. We find it in verse 29 of Ephesians
5. For no man ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and
cherishes it, even as Christ also the church. When it is said
that no man ever hates his own flesh, but he nourishes it, That's
the one other use of the word in the New Testament, and it
is indeed helpful in seeking to grasp the essence of the task
of godly training. When it is said that a man nourishes
his flesh, what does it mean? Paul is appealing to something
that is there in general revelation, something that is open to common
observation when men act consistent with their manhood. Now, people
in a state of madness like the demoniac who constantly cut himself
certainly didn't fit this description. He is describing the ordinary
condition when men are acting consistent with their identity
as sane men. And a man who nourishes his flesh
provides his flesh, that is, his physical constitution, with
all that is necessary for its comfort, its protection, its
well-being, and its development. And we do that naturally. No man ever hates his own flesh,
that is, no man in an ordinary sane condition conducts himself
in such a way with regard to his own physical organism that
you would get the impression that he hated it. He was chopping
off a knuckle a day, or chopping off a hand every other week.
No, he nourishes and cherishes his own flesh, now notice what
it says, even as Christ also the Church. How does Christ nourish
the Church? Well, in grace, and in power,
and in the marvelous interpenetration of His own ongoing high priestly
work, coalescing with the ministry of the indwelling Spirit, and
all in the context of a sovereign providence, Christ nourishes
His Church. He imparts to it all that is
necessary for its protection, its maturation, its well-being,
and its ultimate consummate salvation. Isn't that what it obviously
means? Christ nourishes the church. So we begin to get a feel for
what this word means by its one other usage in the New Testament. But I'd like to add a little
more richness and comprehensiveness to its significance, because
this word is also found several times, more than several times.
As I recall, I think 24 times in the Septuagint, that Greek
translation of the Old Testament Scriptures. And I'm going to
direct your attention to only one usage which beautifully illustrates
and expands our understanding of the significance of the word.
Turn to the familiar passage, please, in 2 Samuel, in which
God sends the prophet Nathan to minister to his erring child,
David. 2 Samuel 12. Now remember what we're trying
to do. We're only trying to understand the meaning of that word into
which is packed the essence of the duty of providing godly training. 2 Samuel chapter 12. You'll remember that David has
sinned a horrible, intricate web of iniquity. thus leading
to adultery, leading to murder, and then to the cover-up. But
God is determined to bring His child back into the way of repentance
and spiritual health and vigor, and so He sends His prophet Nathan
to David. And the prophet comes and begins
to probe his conscience with a parable. And we read in 2 Samuel
12, beginning with verse 1. And the Lord sent Nathan unto
David. And he came unto him, and said
unto him, There were two men in one city, the one rich and
the other poor. And the rich man had exceeding
many flocks and herds. And remember that was a day when
a man's wealth was measured in great part, not by how many money
market accounts he had or how many CDs he had, but by the number
of his cattle. And here was a wealthy man who
had many flocks and herds. But verse 3, but the poor man
had nothing except one little ewe lamb. This man was poor,
poor. He didn't have a pocket full
of food stamps. He had none of the benefits of
a welfare system. He had no backup system, apparently,
with compassionate relatives or neighbors. The Scripture says
the poor man had nothing except all of his capital investments,
all of his true wealth was bound up in one commodity, and that
commodity was one little euland. a little female lamb, one that
he anticipated would one day be able to provide milk for his
household, one that would eventually, when she got too old to produce
milk, would provide some good strong-tasting mutton for the
bellies of his needy, hungry family, He had nothing except
one little ewe lamb, now look at the text, which he had bought,
apparently every last shekel he could get together, he plumped
it down to purchase this little ewe lamb, and having bought it,
now notice it says, and here's our verb, ectrepho, nourished
up. He nourished. that little ewe
lamb. Now notice what he did as some
of the details of his nourishing it. It grew up together with
him. He made it his personal companion
And with his children it became his household companion, and
now one of the most touching things in all of Scripture, it
did eat of his own morsel, and drank of his own cup, and lay
in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter. I tell you, that
man and his little lamb had some relationship. I mean, some of
you got a dog and you love your dog, but I mean, at the point
that you and your dog are going to drink out of the same cup,
no way, José. No way, José. I mean, affection
for a sweet little brown-eyed puppy has its limits. But he
had this one little ewe lamb, and he so loved it, and so identified
with it, and sought to, as it were, infect his whole family
with that spirit, that apparently no one barfed at the table when
he shared his own cup with it. For a good father wouldn't have
expressed his affection for his lamb at the expense of everybody
puking at every meal. You see, he so nourished that
lamb and his own spirit in dealing with it, so pervaded the household
that he could share his own food with it, have it drink from his
own cup, and it even apparently slept next to him. Now he must
have had a good strong nose. If you've ever been in an area
where sheep are raised, they may look lovely dotting a hillside,
but you get up good and close and they ain't quite as smelly
as pigs. But they're sure not going to win any kind of sniffing
contest. But it lay in his bosom, and
he treated it with all the gentleness of a daughter. And the Scripture
describes that as nourishing his little ewe lamb. Now have
you got a feel for the Word? And you fathers, do not create
an adversarial relationship with your children. Do not create
a climate in which they lose heart and there is no motivation
to press ahead and to please you and to seek to pursue the
goals and the standards and the disciplines which you set for
them. But this strong adversity particle,
nurture them as a man nurtures his own flesh. providing it with
all the protection and nourishment and care for its own development
and its own well-being as Christ nourishes the church. in free,
sovereign love, providing through His own intercession and the
ministry of the Holy Spirit in the context of a sovereignly
ordered providence, all that is essential for the church's
protection and maturation and ultimate glorification. And you
fathers do that unto them. in that five-fold dimension of
what they really are, nurture them. Well, then you see the
sense of the essence of the training is clear. We are to commit ourselves
to the total development of the whole child in preparation for
that child assuming the full orbit of adult responsibilities
and privileges. That child has a soul to be taught
the great and ultimate issues of reality. It has a soul that
needs to be taught its identity, its destiny in an everlasting
heaven or an everlasting burning hell. It needs to be taught how
to die far more than it needs to be taught social graces. far more than it needs to be
taught, all of the many things that will make that son or daughter
a noble citizen of any society. It has a never-dying soul that
needs to be taught the great, ultimate issues of its identity,
its true condition, its only way of deliverance, and its ultimate
destiny in heaven or in hell. It has a mind that needs to be
trained to think clearly and accurately and with discrimination. We are told in Proverbs, the
simple believeth every word, but the wise looks well to his
going. And particularly in the age of
mass manipulation through the TV media, we need to nurture
our children, not only their souls with the great ultimate
issues I've already addressed, but we need to nurture their
minds. We need to surround their mental
development with those influences that will enable them to think
hard and think clearly and to think perceptively, to see through
specious reasoning, to be able to see clean through mere verbal
puff that has no substance. And that's not only true of our
sons, it's true of our daughters. If they are to be wives answering
to their husbands' needs, they need to be girls who are wise
enough to see through a man's reasoning that is inconclusive
and fallacious. when their own husbands one day
will be justifying their actions by such reasoning, and if that
girl has not been trained to see through it and respectfully
and lovingly from her posture of godly submission to be able
to say, Dear, I hear what you're saying, but you're not carrying
my conscience. I'm not carrying your conscience?
Why not? Well, I see a flaw in your reasoning. You've reasoned from 1 to 2 to
79, and you've skipped 3 to 78 in the process. Oh, I have? Yes, you have, dear. Where have
I? And then she begins to lay bare
his fallacious reasoning, and if he's a man of God, he'll take
her in his arms and say, your price is above rule. And he'll
find that mother and dad when he can and say, thank you for
training the mind of your daughter to think analytically and clearly
so she can blast away at my stupidity when I need it. Training the minds of our children,
male and female, training their emotional constitution This whole
concept that we are the passive victims of our emotions is not
taught in Scripture. The emotions are a human faculty
that need to be trained. They need to be trained in this
nurture. They need to be trained to have
proper expressions. How are our children going to
weep with those who weep? Rejoice with those who rejoice
if they have not been taught the discipline in the very expression
of their emotions. They need to be taught when to
be angry and how, righteously, to express their anger. For the
Scripture says, Be angry and sin not. In a recent counseling
session I sat with a couple, and the man involved has some
serious emotional hang-ups. serious problems of being open
and communicative, lives with a veil. This is his own acknowledgement. I'm not telling tales out of
school and I have his permission to use his example wherever it
will help without naming names. He sat in my study a few weeks
ago with his wife there and said, we've been married seven years
and I've never once raised my voice at my wife. I looked in
astonishment. I said, woman, is he telling
the truth? He said, absolutely. Then I said,
were you ever mad enough to want to kick her in the shins? He
said, oh yes, many a time. I said, then something's wrong.
That the anger in your heart didn't affect your vocal cords.
You are short-circuiting the normal relationship. And I'm
not advocating that a man blow his cork at his wife. No, but
what I was advocating was a commensurate relationship between the look
on his face and the amount of air being forced by the diaphragm
over the vocal cords and the larynx and the true state of
the mind. He had been emotionally twisted
in his upbringing. His emotions were not nurtured.
The scripture says, the man who does not control his spirit is
like a city with its walls broken down. We've got to nurture our
children, teach them when it's appropriate to cry. I've seen
parents give spankings that would make an Indian cry. In the days
when Indians would go to death and would not show any emotion,
and I've seen parents think that that was developing a noble trait. No, it was developing emotional
hardness. And when the spanking hurts enough
to cry, the child must be taught that there is an appropriate
cry of pain. But then when the cry goes over
into the realm of self-indulgence and petulance and anger, we must
train them that that is verboten. Nurture them Their emotions are
part of them, and we must nurture and train not only the soul,
not only the mind, but the emotions, and then their spirits. They
must learn how to have a governed spirit, or they will never have
a governed tongue. They must learn to have a spirit
that is regulated by principle, and then they have bodies that
must be nurtured. Left to himself, every child
would be a junk food addict. He must be nurtured in the realization
that this body is a gift from God, and there is a stewardship
in the care of that body, and the basic elements of nutrition
must be imparted and structured into the diet and into the shopping
list. They must have a proper view,
on the one hand, of the idolatry and body worship of our day,
and on the other hand, that view that would demean the body as
essentially unimportant. Listen, Mom, you with Dad must
nurture your daughters and their physical well-being, that they
will be able to fulfill their God-given role as a wife, who
is a means of grace to keep their husbands from immorality. For
in Proverbs chapter 5, the great antidote to immorality is a husband
delighting in the wife of his youth, her breasts satisfying
him at all times, and he always being literally intoxicated,
staggering with her love, is the language of the Hebrew text. Go astray with her love. Be ravished
with her love. And you mothers, in cooperation
with your fathers, are to nurture your daughters to have a proper
view of their bodies, that they might be such as any man could
continue to delight in them, that they don't have the attitude
that some of you have. Well, if my husband's going to
be unfaithful, that's his problem. Some of you make it awful difficult
for your husband to delight in your breasts. because they hang
on a body covered over with the blubber that is the fruit of
gorging food down your gullet with no discipline, no self-control. You're so spiritual that you're
setting up your own husband to look in other fields and you're
teaching your daughters by your example. It doesn't make any I know some of you are going
to be offended by that. You know why? Because it's true. You can't genetically program
yourself to have thin ankles. If God gave you ankles like that
of a Belgian workhorse, you've just got to accept it. You can't
genetically reprogram yourself if God genetically programmed
you to have broad shoulders like a working man? I understand that. And that's the folly of the whole
pornographic and slick girly magazine glut. And that's the
whole folly of kinky-haired Cher saying, if you want to look like
me, come to Jack LaLange's. No, I have no sympathy for that
unrealistic deification of the body. I'm talking biblically. And you have an obligation, woman,
to do the best with what God gave you. And in our day, one must not
only touch upon the matter of obesity that is self-induced
through lack of self-control and through lack of an appreciation
of the biblical doctrine that the body is the temple of the
Holy Ghost, and in the case of a woman, that God-ordained means
to keep a man from impurity. We need that emphasis desperately
in our day. And you mothers need to impart
it in the nurture of your daughters. Now you see where you fathers
come in? That means if your mother can't teach your daughter because
she's a bad example, ultimately, man, the fault lies with you. You let her continue those habits
of pouring too much down her throat. And you've not taken
the necessary steps in the nurture of your wife to see to it that
she can be an example to your daughters. You say, oh boy, I
was discouraged when I found out I got the main job of nurturing
my kids. Now I've got to take on my wife
too? Ephesians 5 already settled that. It said, you husbands are
to nourish and cherish your wives as Christ does the church. I
didn't write it. The Bible already said it. That's the task. To nurture them. Prepare your wives to be what
God intends they should be. Prepare, I'm sorry, your daughters
to be the wives they should be. To prepare them for the trauma
and the demands of gestation. when that little life within
them is drawing from all of the trace minerals and the sustenance
that it's deriving from that mother? And then to have the
care of little ones, they need bodies that are strong, bodies
that have a sense of the foods from which nutrition is derived,
and it's our task as parents to nurture that. This is where
we bring in our warnings against gluttony and drunkenness, which
in the Bible are put parallel. The drunkard and the glutton
shall come to poverty. I ask you, man, head of your
home, would you tolerate your wife becoming a domestic alcoholic? Then don't tolerate her becoming
a domestic glutton. Have the kind of godly manhood
we heard about this morning. that dares to plant the flag
and say, not in my house. Nurture your sons that they would
have bodies that would serve the living God. We're praying
the Lord of the harvest to send forth labors. We're praying that
God will raise up men who bear in their very step and in the
ethos of their entire humanity, that sense of the dignity of
Christian manhood. They are not disembodied spirits.
You can't go back again and genetically restructure them. They may have
been given small bones and narrow shoulders, but you can very early
tell them they can help the situation. You can put them on a regimen
of harder work and of exercise that will help to bulk up the
narrow parts. And if they're naturally endomorphs
and they're genetically programmed to turn out like pears, and some
poor men are, you don't fatalistically accept that any more than you
fatalistically accept the cavities in your teeth. And you say, Pastor,
you're stretching it a bit, aren't you? I asked you. If you are
to nurture them, is part of them, no little part, their bodies?
What will they serve God in all their days? Their bodies, as well as their
souls, their minds, their emotions, their spirits, and the essence
of the task of training is to nurture them. And if this man
could have such affection to a precious little beast, God
have mercy on us if we don't have an affection equal to and
exceeding for the never-dying souls of our children. Perhaps
there is no more beautiful example of what godly nurture is in its
essence than that which is given to us in Luke chapter 2. I only
alluded to it last night, but I want us to look at it tonight
in greater detail. In Luke chapter 2, it is said
of the incarnate God, the one whom the theologians call, and
all of you ought to understand the meaning of this word, the
theanthropic person, taking the Greek words theos, for God, and
anthropos, for man, and making a compound word, theanthropic
person. He is the God-man, as much God
as though he never took manhood to himself, as much man as though
that manhood were never joined to Godhood. And of this one person,
it is said in Luke 2.51, And he went down with them, that
is his parents, and came to Nazareth, and he was subject unto them. And his mother kept all these
sayings in her heart. Now notice this close conjunction
between Jesus subjection to his parents, the very thing he calls
you children to in Ephesians 6 and in the fifth commandment,
in the context of loving submission to Mary and Joseph, verse 52
says, and Jesus advanced. And there is an imperfect verb
which speaks of action in the past that is continuous. He was continually advancing
in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man. He was being nurtured not only
by his heavenly Father, but his heavenly Father was nurturing
him through the nurture of Mary and Joseph in the humble home
in a town with a rotten reputation. Can any good thing come out of
Nazareth? In less than what we would call
favorable surroundings, in a less than ideal environment, There,
Mary and Joseph became instruments in the hands of God to see the
incarnate God in the person of Jesus of Nazareth growing, advancing,
being nurtured in wisdom. Wisdom. What is wisdom? Wisdom is the acquisition of
knowledge with an understanding of its practical application
to the real world. That's wisdom. There are things
you must know, and without them you cannot have wisdom. But you
can know a lot and be a fool. Wisdom is the ability to take
what you know and to bring it to bear upon the real world in
which you live. And there I must resist the imaginative
element. Let your own imagination work.
How was he taught the wisdom that, as a full-grown man, it
says, they marveled They marveled at the words of grace that proceeded
from his mouth. In the temple they sent forward
their champions to show him up publicly, and often with one
sentence he shut their mouths and sent them slinking away with
their tail between their legs. Much of that wisdom was learned
in the godly nurture of that home in Nazareth from a carpenter
and a housewife. Blessed be God, from a carpenter
and from a housewife. He grew in wisdom. It says he grew in stature. And
though there is some debate as to the precise meaning of the
word, it does most likely refer to his physical development.
Have you ever taken seriously the measure of our Lord's physical
labors in his three and a half years of ministry? When I read
the Gospels, and for several years I've been preaching through
the Gospel of Mark, I've been astounded at the sheer energy
of the Son of God. And for the most part, that was
not an energy that came in any other way than in which energy
for the work of God comes to any other man. For you remember,
when He exceeded the ordinary bounds of it, With his temptation
for forty days and nights in a context of fasting, it doesn't
say, and the Father filled him with a burst of his own divine
life. No, it says an angel came and
strengthened him. And when his physical energies
were utterly depleted in Gethsemane, in that horrible baptism of agony,
in what Hugh Martin calls the shadow of Calvary, when something,
as it were, of the flames of the hell he would bear leaped,
as it were, out of the pit, and found their way into the cup,
and he saw the flames in the cup, and said, Oh, my father,
if it be possible, let it pass. And there was such intense physical
exertion, it says, before he could go forth to the baptism
and to the drinking of the cup itself, an angel came and strengthened
him. What do we learn from that? When
we read that at noonday, being weary with his journey, he sat
upon a well, I tell you, you've got to be tired. It'd be like
you sitting on the hood of one of these cars, one of these hot
days at noonday to get rest. I tell you, if there's no way
to get rest, I'd at least find a tree with a little shade. Remember
the picture at one time, he was so weary, he fell asleep in the
stern of the ship. And the waves were beating so
fiercely, the disciples came and shook him and said, Master,
don't you care? We'll perish. The boat's going
to capsize. I mean, you have got to be bone
tired to fall asleep in any ship. To fall asleep in a ship with
ordinary waves, to fall asleep in the midst of a storm with
a boat already taking water and about to sink. My friends, why
does God record all of that? to tell us that under ordinary
circumstances the strength and the energy of our Lord for ministry
was not supplied in anything other than the ordinary means. You say, Pastor, why are you
laboring the point? For this reason He grew in stature. Mary was pondering something
of His uniqueness. She reasoned from that wisdom
that astounded the doctors of the law in the temple to something
of His identity. She remembered the words of Gabriel. She could not forget those announcements
that she bore no ordinary child. And as something of her own consciousness,
of His messianic identity was dawning upon her, soaked in the
Scripture as she was, for you read the Magnificat and you see
she was soaked in the Scriptures. She knew that Messiah would do
an arduous task, and Mary and Joseph were concerned that he
would grow in stature, that his body would not be ruined for
adult productivity by being filled with junk food. and his muscles
flaccid by sitting in front of a TV five hours a day. He was out in the carpenter's
shop, beginning to develop sinewy, strong arms. He was there in
that setting, growing in stature. If I may just give a personal
anecdote, and you who know my ministry know I seldom do this.
The best compliment I think I ever had paid or one of the best Most
encouraging, someone came to me frustrated and said, I've
listened to three or four hundred of your tapes, but I know so
little about you. You don't talk about yourself. But I thank God for a mother
who understood this. Unknown to me until after I was
converted, she used to weep in secret when she saw me making
an idol of a piece of pigskin sewed together in four places.
when she'd see me as a lazy teenager who would drag myself to do the
meanest chores around the house, but I still had to do them. I
had three floors to wash. This was before the days of Armstrong,
Solari, and no care. You had to scrub, and I mean
scrub with the old brush, no mop in my house. The old scrub
brush down on your hands and knees and wax the floors. And there were tasks that had
to be done, but then when she'd see me belt off to football practice
in hot August weather up in Connecticut, when we'd have 85 degree weather,
80 degree humidity, and see me for three or four hours at an
end, beat my head out, and like it, it pained her. But she reasoned
this way. I found out later she said, Oh
God, I don't know what you have for that boy, but whatever you
have for him, he needs a strong body and he needs a disciplined
will. If he's going to serve you as
he ought, he needs to be trained into those disciplines of manhood.
And though his football is his God, it will take him to hell
if he dies in that state, Lord. I'd rather he be learning those
disciplines and developing his body. If one day you're pleased
to save him, he'll have a body made strong through those disciplines
to serve you. He will have learned lessons
of discipline and doing things that are unpleasant, pushing
himself out there under the burning August sun. So, Lord, use those
things, even though there are God that will damn him. Take
that God and use it for his good. And I thank God for that. I had
no idea the kinds of burdens God would lay upon me, but God
knew, and I had a mother who was committed to nurture me. A father who in some measure
shared the same vision, though his vision for my football he's
later confessed. was much living out his own unfulfilled
longings. He lost his dad when he was 13
and had to go to work in a shoe factory in Manchester, New Hampshire
to help support the family. And he subsequently confessed,
Son, I saw the football was your God and I was worshipping the
God with you. Will you forgive me? Fathers Do you have a realistic
view of how to give your sons and your daughters an appreciation
of what Marian Joseph gave to the theanthropic person? He grew
in stature, and when we find him preaching through all the
day, healing until nightfall, and then a great wall before
day, out in a desert place praying, the physical demands were being
met. by the nurture of that humble
home in Nazareth. And then it says, he grew in
favor with God. Does that shock you? That God
gains the favor of God? God's not at all shocked to say
such things as that. I never, never cease to be amazed
at how unfastidious God is about shocking our neat little categories. God grows in favor with God. And what is it saying? It is
saying in terms of perfect manhood, Jesus grew in the development
of those spiritual disciplines that make a man well-pleasing
to God. Though his conscience was never
violated even as a little boy, Its understanding of the law
of God grew and His responses grew commensurately. And with
each new expansion of understanding and its commensurate response
of obedience, may I say it reverently, the Father's smile as He looked
upon His Son grew a little broader and a little broader and a little
broader. until at age thirty when it was
time to leave home and to go out on his ministry. And he stands
in the waters of Jordan and is anointed with the Spirit. The
Father's grin goes from ear to ear, and he can be silent no
more, and he says, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well
pleased. He grew in favor with God. That's the nurture, you see,
of the spiritual dimension of our children. Their consciences
must be honed by the moral law of God. Yes, they show the work
of the law written in their hearts, as we heard from Pastor Hofstadter
this morning. The first lie they tell, their
consciences smite them. They know that they've sinned.
But that conscience needs to be honed so that they know what
a lie is with ever-increasing accuracy. Yes, the first time
they disobey as a conscious act of disobedience, they know they
are doing wrong, but their conscience must be honed as to the precise
meaning of the fifth commandment. You know the little Quaker boy? Quaker meeting has begun. Everyone
must be silent. And the mother said to the little
Quaker boy, Son, thou must be silent. And he looked over at his mother
and said, me or I am still on the outside,
but me speaketh on the inside. You see what he was saying? I'm
obeying externally, but internally I'm blabbering away. You see,
if someone's to grow in favor with God, the conscience must
be honed to understand that God's law pitches not merely the external
attitude, but the internal disposition. You see, Saul of Tarsus didn't
know that. And it's when he came to understand
it, or I should say he didn't know it, with sufficient weight
upon him to make him own his sinnerhood, but when the Holy
Ghost took the tenth commandment and brought it home to his heart,
and he realized the law of God in all of its demands touched
the heart, then he said, I, who was a living Pharisee, thinking
I had life by the law, I was slain by that which I thought
gave me life. growing in favor with God. And then he grew in favor with
man. Know what that means? He learned what is a lost commodity
in our day. He learned social graces. Jesus was taught by Mary and
Joseph how to pull back a chair for his sisters and seat them
like young ladies. That's stuff out of the Prince
Albert days, is it? Who says so? He grew in favor
with man. He was taught those symbols and
signals of respect between the sexes. He was taught the symbols
of social decorum. He knew them well, and furthermore,
listen, he was upset when he was not given them. He went into
the house of Simon, and he said, Simon, when I came in, you had
no one wash my feet. He knew it was a proper social
custom that was due him, and when he didn't get it, he took
note of it, and furthermore, he told his host about it. Oh, what pressure is upon this
rising generation to despise social decorum. not with our Lord Jesus. That's
what's so beautiful in his relationship to women. He knew to have women
as his intimate companions, but never once, though he was called
a wine-bibber and a glutton because at feasts he drank the wine and
ate all nine courses with moderation, never once did they even dare
accuse him of being an adulterer. Isn't that significant? And yet
it says there were women who followed him throughout all of
Galilee. He made them feel the nobility
and the dignity of their womanhood, but never once was the holy veil
ever pierced in the look of his own eyes as he beheld them. And our Lord, I say it reverently,
was a whole man in every respect. And I believe we can argue from
analogy if a man who was a eunuch or had his stones crushed could
not serve in the old Levitical system. Jesus completely fulfilled
the law. I believe we can reason from
analogy that he was wholly a man with every normal, natural sexual
function and appetite, but never once was there a thought of lust
a leering glance, he grew in favor with men. What a fruitful
field for parental meditation. What a fruitful field for you
precious young men and women to get on your knees and say,
what's it mean for me as a young man or woman to be like Christ?
Pray through this passage. Say, O Lord Jesus, may I grow
in true wisdom. Go to mom and dad and ask the
kind of questions you need to ask. You girls talk to your moms
if they're godly moms and say to the mom, what do I look for
in a man? How do I see beyond his pretty
eyes and his wavy hair and his hunky shoulders? How do I see
the real man? Mom, give me wisdom, impart wisdom. And then you search the scriptures
because wisdom does not yield itself to a passing glance. You
read Proverbs 2. If you search for it, it is for
hid treasure. Hunt for it, it is for gold.
Cry out for it, then thou shalt have wisdom and understand the
fear of the Lord. That's our task, moms and dads.
We're to nurture them. We're to nurture them. We are
to ectrepho them. We are to surround them with
every influence at our disposal to see the totality of their
God-given humanity brought to its full potential in Jesus Christ
for as long as we have that influence over them in the home. And then
I want to close. I don't know how, but it's already...
It's almost time to quit. We've looked at the negative
injunction. Don't provoke them to anger. The positive direction, the objects
of the task, them and all that they are in their five-fold identity,
the essence of the task, nurture them. Now let me close by touching
very briefly on what I'll call, thirdly, the assumed framework
for the task. Now this is not explicit in the
text, but I say it is the assumed framework of the text. What is the framework God assumes
will obtain where there is this kind of God-linerture? Well,
first of all, it will be a framework of deep personal, manifested
love to the children we are seeking to train. A framework of deep,
personal, perhaps I should add the word, principled, manifested
love to the children we are seeking to train. Now the Bible says
there is such a thing as natural affection, and it condemns people
in Romans 1 as being without natural affection, But I tell
you, whatever natural affection you've got for your kids will
long soon be expended if you're committed to this kind of nurture.
It's like that infatuation that may have led you to start dating
the woman who's now your wife. Whatever that stuff was, it soon
used itself up when you began to get down to the business of
learning how to live with one another. And you discovered all
those things about one another. You said, man, if I knew that,
I'm not quite sure. And then you've got to learn
to love your wife. And so God says husbands love. Wives, you've
got to learn to love your husbands. Well, in the same way, Titus
chapter 2 says the older women are to train the younger women
to love their husbands, to love their children. The framework
assumed is that of deep, personal, principled, manifested love to
the children we are seeking to train. And here I turn you again
to Paul's example as a pastoral father. He reasons from the domestic
to the ecclesiastical relationship, and it is because the domestic
is valid and is the ideal that he can reason from the one to
the other. Notice his words, verse 5, For
neither at any time were we found using words of flattery as you
know. Here was principled love. He
did not stroke them with the strokes of a fawning, insincere,
unrealistic, dishonest, carnal flattery. He says, you know,
we talk straight to you. But does that mean he was harsh?
That he was insensitive? That he was tyrannical? No, look
at verse 7. We were gentle in the midst of
you as when a nurse cherishes her own children. And that's
the second word used in Ephesians 5. Christ nourishes and cherishes
the church. It's the word you would have
used if you lived in the Greek-speaking world to say what a mother bird
does when she snuggles up close to and puts her little ones under
her wing. She is cherishing, warming them. He says, we were gentle among
you as when a nurse cherishes, warms with her own body and breast
her own children. Even so, being affectionately
desirous of you, we were well pleased to impart unto you not
the gospel only, but our own souls, because you were become
very dear to us. You say, oh, that's gushy language. Isn't that gushy? Affectionately
desirous? Like a nursing mother? Very dear
to us? This is a man's man, writing. Because he then goes on to say
in verse 11, and you know how we dealt with each one of you
as a father with his own children, absorbing and testifying and
encouraging It's amazing what you can get away with with your
kids in the way of stern and at times almost what would appear
to an outsider something that borders, borders on cruelty when
they know you really love them. And that's exactly what Paul
is talking about here. The framework of our nurture
must be a deep, personal, principled, manifested love to our children. We'll have occasion, God willing,
to look at it in greater detail tomorrow night, but it's beautiful
in Proverbs. Solomon said, I was a son, an
only son, and well loved of my father. And he said to me, you
see, it was in the context of known, manifested, felt love
that the admonitions came. And I tell you, what is true
in the home is true in the church. I've said to my wife more than
once, people that only listen to Trinity Pulpit tapes, they
don't know who I am. They hear me thundering and whomping
on our people and wonder, man, they must be an oppressed, beat-up
bunch. But a lot of that oppressed,
beat-up bunch is here You see, there's a context in which I
wamp on them. And that's the context of embracing
them at the door every Lord's Day, hugging their kids, calling
them on the phone, praying for them. And they know if push comes
to shove, the blood that's in these veins would be poured out
and spilt at their feet. One of them sat there and said,
Amen. And I tell you, when your kids know you love them, it's
amazing what you can do. Isn't it, kids, when you know
mom and dad really love you? Even when they tighten the thumbscrews
and it hurts. See, they're shaking their heads,
dads. You hear it? They're shaking their heads.
Their consciences are on my side. Because that's what the book
says. That's the context. And if you don't have that context,
where are you going to get it? Start getting it tonight. Skip
the volleyball game. Go back to your room, sit your
kids down, and say, look, I want you to be judgment day honest
with me. Do you believe that the context of our home is one
of deep, personal, principled, manifested love to you? And charge them to answer you
with judgment day honesty. And if you aren't man enough
to do that, then you don't mean business with God. Now, I'm not
saying don't go to the bus. People will take something you
say. All I'm saying is if you're under conviction tonight and
you really have a serious question whether or not this is true,
none of us has it to perfection, but we ought to know that we
have it in principle. And if you're not sure, what
I'm saying is get sure and take the straightest route to it.
Otherwise, by tomorrow morning, the impressions of tonight will
be gone, and you'll be right back where you were, like the
man in James, who looked in the mirror and said, man, what an
ugly picture. Walked away from the mirror, walked down the street,
thinking he was Robert Redford, and before long you forget what
an ugly duckling he was. And that's exactly what will
happen to you. The second thing that must constitute the framework
is that of conscious, conscious referral and recourse to the
authority and wisdom of God in all of your nurture. It must
be a framework of conscious, conscious recourse to the authority
and wisdom of God in all things. Proverbs 1.6, Joshua 24.15, Deuteronomy
chapter 6, We'll see it more fully tomorrow
night. It is the paideia annufecia curiae of the Lord. Constant reference to His authority. You start in those first spankings
as soon as you can verbally communicate, long before the kids can verbally
communicate back. And you tell them, Daddy must
spank. Mommy must spank. Because God
says, Mommy must spank. Daddy must spank. And when they
get old enough to talk and you say, now, did you know that you
should not do this? Yes, Daddy. Why did you do it? I don't know. Yes, you do. Why
did you do it? I don't know. Yes, you do. Why
did you do it? Because I wanted to. Then your
wander was more important than Daddy's rules? Yes. What must
Daddy do? No, Daddy don't. What must Daddy
do? Daddy must spank. Why must Daddy
spank? Because God says so. And they
know that when that hand or that switch comes upon their buttocks,
it is done under the authority of the God of heaven. And when you sit your daughters
down, And they've begun to come into their womanhood and develop
breasts and have their periods and go through all the feelings
of that emerging womanhood. And you begin to tell the men
what a horny, filthy bunch men are. And you tell them that they
must keep those breasts untouched by any hands till their wedding
night. You tell them why. And you tell
them that those lips should kiss no man but the one who will be
God's gift to them. And you bring the Word of God
to bear upon the entire work of nurture. It must be a framework
of conscious recourse to the authority and to the wisdom of
God in all things. That's why I love the little
children's catechism. Who made you? God made me. What else did God make? God made
all things. Why did God make you and all
things? For His own glory. And then when you come to that
question, do you have a soul as well as a body? Yes. I have
a soul that can never die. How do you know you have a soul
that can never die? Because the Bible tells me so. You say, well, Pastor, if that's
so, then I gotta know my Bible. Yeah, that's right. That may
mean you may have to cancel your newspaper. Some of us are so
carnal, we can't have a regular newspaper come in the house.
Because we know we'd be reading the sports page instead of being
up in our studies having devotions. You say, you're that carnal?
Yes, I am. I don't have a regular newspaper
because I'm spiritual. It's because I'm so carnal that
I know I'd be more interested in what the Mets did last night
than in what God is telling me through Paul and Isaiah and Solomon. That's what a rotten creature
I am. But if I'm going to be the father I ought to be, I better
know more about Isaiah and Solomon and Paul and Peter and my own
heart than I know about the Mets or about the stock market. or
about the feature article in Newsweek. The third part of the
framework is, it must be a framework of increasing respect and conscience-gripping
blamelessness before your children. It must be a context or framework
of increasing respect and conscience-gripping blamelessness. Now follow me.
When the children are younger, establish your God-given authority,
and when they have little moral discernment and their observation
faculties or faculties of observation are limited, there can be great
gaps of disparity between what you tell them to do and be and
what you do and what you are. But your very training in the
honing of their consciences by the word of God will be developing
an increasing accurate moral consciousness by which they're
going to judge you and your wife. And they do not expect perfection,
but they expect reality and blamelessness. That means that when you've blown
your temper, you confess it to them and to your wife or to your
husband. It means when you've been lazy
and sat on your duff, when you should have been out cutting
the grass, and yours is the shabbiest looking house in the neighborhood
for two weeks, and you know it's a poor testimony, you're not
commending the gospel, you gather your kids together and say, I'm
sorry kids, you've got to be embarrassed, our house is the
messiest looking one on the block, dad was too stinking lazy to
get off his duff last Saturday and cut the lawn, will you forgive
me? Now you're blameless again. You're not perfect, but you're
blameless. And the older your children grow, if you don't have
a conscience-gripping blamelessness as the context of your nurture,
you know what you're going to do? You're either going to create
a cynicism that will neutralize all the preaching they hear from
the most godly, passionate preachers available, and they'll become
cynics because they reason. He's just saying the same things
Dad and Mom say. He says them a little more cleverly,
a little more loudly, with a little more structure and a little more
Bible, but he's probably the same fake and the same hypocrite
that Mom and Dad are. And I'm convinced that the single
greatest hindrance to the conversion of the young people in our Reformed
Baptist churches lies right here. They're sitting under preaching, the likes of which some of us
never heard in our formative years. I heard but one man who
approached preaching, and it shook me up for weeks and haunted me for months. You
better not neutralize the ministry you put your kids under by your
own lack of conscience gripping inconsistency. May I again, for
the sake of some of you who've got a broken heart, the dagger
is there and the wound bleeds. May I share the personal experience?
I have my son's permission to do so. When he spent several years in
the far country and we lived with that open wound with which
some of you live, After the Lord turned him around
and he was stable enough, healed enough to be able to start talking
about things, and that was a long time, I asked him the question
one day. I said, Son, I know you were
under the power of the devil. I know you were blinded by the
God of this world, but from the human side, can you tell me why
you sinned with such abandon? You even had your sinful companions
afraid for you. You even had your sinful companions
telling you you were a fool to abandon yourself so to your sin. Son, do you know why? Can you
help me to understand? Was there something I did? Is
there something I can learn to help others? He said, Dad, the
truth is this. Reality I saw in you and mom
And the reality I saw in the vast majority of the church people
so fastened itself on my conscience that I could never doubt the
truth of everything I had been taught. I knew there was a God. I knew I was accountable. I knew
there was a heaven. I knew there was a hell. I knew
Christ was the only way of life. And to live by the law of God
was the only way to noble, dignified humanity. And I knew the only
way to live that way was to be a child of God with a new heart.
But he said, while I was slave to my sin and wanting my own
way, He said, I was so convinced of those realities and I would
go back over the pattern of your life and mom's life looking for
any chinks to try to convince myself it's not real and then
it would come back to me. The times when you came to me
with tears, confessing that you disciplined me in anger and asking
me to forgive you when all the while I was deceiving you and
lying to you and I wasn't confessing my sins to you. He said, Dad,
those are the things that came back to me. The times when you
spent a whole day praying and fasting before you disciplined
me. The first time you caught me
using pot and you spent the day on your face with your Bible
and touched no food that you might know how to deal with me.
It all came back to me and I had no alternative. I either had
to be a Christian or put a gun to my head and blow my head off
and then I knew I'd go to hell. So he said all I had left was
to keep myself strung out on dope or booze, because when I
was straight and sober, the reality, the reality, the reality pressed
me, haunted me, drove me. I don't say that to praise myself. I say that to underscore the
great principle, my friend. If God should bring you through
the trauma of a wayward child, you better not carry on your
back in the midst of that trauma the legitimate accusation of
your own conscience that you were shoddy and double-standard
and inconsistent without repentance and confession. If you are to
nurture them, it must not only be in a climate of love and a
climate where the authority and wisdom of God is patent and pervasive,
a climate in which there is increasing respect and conscience-gripping
blamelessness before your children. And if that's so, then I don't
need to tell you, friends. It better be a climate in which
you know something of how to feed upon the grace and strength
of Christ. I can do all things through him
who strengthens me. Without me ye can do nothing,
but if ye abide in me, and my word abide in you, ask what you
will, and it shall be given and done unto you. It must be a climate
in which we are crying to God for wisdom, crying to God for
grace, crying to God for patience. pouring over 1 Corinthians 13
and saying, Lord, if I'm going to love my kids like that, you've
got to put it in me. I don't have it, Lord. And God
will drive us to His Son, and we will find an infinite fullness
and plenitude of grace in Jesus that we never knew was there.
Don't cop out and say, ah, that's Pastor Martin, perfectionist.
Setting up, my friends, listen to me, you come and show me and
I plead with you. If my exegesis has been inaccurate
or forced, you've got an obligation to come with the Word of God
and show me, lest I lead others astray. And I'll tell Bill, put
a hold on the tapes, I don't want inaccurate exegesis going
out. But if the exegesis has been
accurate, and the deductions have been fair and in keeping
with the analogy of Scripture, then don't you try to squirm
out by saying, oh, that's Pastor Martin's high standards. That's
the standard of the God you say you love. And you better go to
him and say, God, if you made the standard, you're prepared
to give me the grace. What is the task defined? Do
not provoke them to anger. Do not provoke them to lose heart,
but nurture them. God willing, tomorrow night we'll
look at the major means God has given us to accomplish the task,
the paideia and the nuthesia, the discipline and the admonition
of the Lord. And for you kids who've got that
kind of nurture but you're bucking against it, You better go home
and read Deuteronomy 21 tonight and see what God thinks about
your bucking. When a godly parent in Israel tried to nurture his
kid biblically and the kid said, I don't want it, and that became
the settled attitude of his heart, you know what God said to do
with him? Take him out in the city and stone him to death. You're messing around with that
kind of God, young man or woman, if you're bucking this kind of
nurture. Your parents have no choice but to impose it upon
you. They have no choice. God help you to bless God if
he surrounded you with that kind of nurture. Let's pray. Oh, our Father, we thank you,
we bless you, that the prayer that we corporately offered at
the threshold of this meeting, that you would come and that
you would be with your people and be with your servant. We
believe you have answered our cry. Now, Lord, seed sown is
as seed lost unless you cause it to germinate and bring forth
fruit. Fulfill your promise to Jeremiah.
I will watch over my word to perform it. Lord, for men who
ought to go back to their rooms with their families and have
dealings with you and with them, give them the moral courage to
do it. For women who ought to go home to their rooms and confess
to their husbands their sins of not standing with them in
the godly nurture, give them the grace to humble themselves
before their husbands. For children who've been bucking
this kind of nurture, not realizing it is next to the gift of your
Son, the greatest gift they will ever have. Lord, bring them to
repentance. God, do a thousand things we
could never even think to pray about, because you're the God
who does exceeding abundantly above all we could ask or think. Hear our prayer and answer us,
we pray, for Jesus' sake. Amen.