Colossians 3:19-21 - Biblical Childrearing, Pt. 2

Lord, thank you for this day to come together and for this wonderful church family, where we can be in a place where there's no dissension, where there's unity, where we love each other and we're a family.

And we just ask you to bless your word. We know you'll do it, but we ask you to bind the enemy and allow your Holy Spirit to move freely among us and teach us what you want us to know today so that we can be better salt and better light in the world, amen.

Verse-by-Verse in Colossians and the Coming Topic of Slavery

All right.

I wanna welcome Becky, by the way, visiting with us today. And Robert is back with us. You don't get introduced as a visitor after today, but you can visit for years and years and then join or never join.

You're welcome anyway. That's how we do it here. But good to have you guys with us and our home folks as well. And our folks out across the country, good to have you with us. We've made our way going verse by verse through the book of Colossians.

And we're on verse 21. We actually worked on verse 20 a little bit last Sunday and then just barely started talking about verse 21. Actually, we talked about verse 21 quite a bit, but I wanna pick it up there.

And I don't know if we'll have time to go beyond that. We might, we'll see. But I wanna make sure we finish up verse 21. I had thought about just moving on beyond it, but Lord led me while I was sitting back there to not do that.

And so I'm gonna finish up verse 21 pretty well. We may go into the next passage. I mean, the next passage is, you know, probably not the doctrinal passage that you wanna preach on on Sunday morning. If you weren't going verse by verse, you would never preach on it because it's the topic of slavery.

But I don't think we'll get on it today, but we'll talk about it. And there are some important issues to talk about on that subject. If you look at world history, it's had a profound effect on the world.

And still to this day, there are probably 50 million slaves in the world right now. So it's still an important topic, not our favorite doctrinal thing to discuss, but the Lord put it there. So we shall touch on it probably starting next Sunday, the Lord willing.

I don't know, we may get to it some today. But let's read verse 21 together. You silently, me out loud, Colossians 3, 21. Fathers, provoke not your children to anger lest they be discouraged. Now that comes right after verse 20.

To the children, obey your parents in all things for this is well-pleasing unto the Lord. It's interesting that those two go together. An exhortation to the children from God, the creator of the universe says that children are to obey their parents and honor them.

And then an exhortation to the fathers, you know, who are primarily responsible for bringing discipline to the home and telling them something you might not expect right there. You might expect the Lord to say, give them a good whooping when they deserve it, right?

Or something like that. Well, the Lord does say that, but elsewhere, not in this verse. This verse really talks about how, if you were gonna, and I'm not just only gonna talk about spanking, but let's just say you were gonna spank if you felt like that's what the Lord led you to do with your particular child at a particular time, there is a right way and a wrong way to do that.

And you need to be well-instructed on the right way, which you can go back in the archives two or three Sundays ago, I pretty much covered the right way to do that. But as long as you do it the right way, you will not provoke the child to anger, as this says.

You won't do it if you do it the right way. If you do it the wrong way, you would, and you would be then disobeying the Lord. You see that, and that's what this talks about. And the reason you don't wanna provoke them to anger is because the main thing you don't wanna do is discourage the child.

But what if the child's a leader, and so you had a couple of other kids, and the other ones never get spankings because they don't need them. And then you got one that's gonna be a leader someday, and he questions everything, and he gets a bunch of spankings, right?

You don't want to discourage that leader, right? So you have to do it properly and pray about it and ask the Lord to guide you as you're doing it and do it properly. So that's what it says. But let me look at this word with you here to provoke, not the child to anger, because there's really some important meaning in the Greek word there for provoke.

Erethidzo, it means to stimulate. Don't stimulate the child to anger, but it comes from a smaller Greek word, eris, which means a quarrel. It can mean wrangling, that's an old English word, we don't use it much, but it means like to have a verbal debate.

So don't provoke them to quarreling or wrangling. It has been translated in the Bible into the word contention, debate, strife, and variance.

Those words.

Variance means the fact or state of being in disagreement, dissension, or disrupting the family, those meanings. So I want to get you to think with me for a moment. If the word itself in the Greek for provoke means to not create a situation where you're going to have quarreling or wrangling or debate about something, or variance where you're just gonna have a disagreement, does that sound like maybe we're talking about verbal stuff?

We're not talking about a spanking here, we're talking about verbal stuff. Don't verbally do things or say things to your child to cause him or stimulate him to be angry and be discouraged. It has to be verbal.

So this isn't talking about a spanking yet, this is talking about something verbally as a parent.

That you could do wrong,.

And then the Lord someday straighten you out at the judgment seat of Christ for that if you didn't confess of it sooner before you met him, hopefully you would figure it out and stop doing it and confess the sin.

Because if you use your mouth and you verbally do things that bring your child to anger and to discouragement, you sinned as a parent. But it's verbal. I can prove that with the Greek, it's verbal. So that's the starting place is to understand that about the verbal, about the warning about verbally doing things that could discourage the child.

Proverbs on Spanking, Reproof, and the Failure of Self-Discipline

Now, last Sunday, if you were here, I quoted Dr. Danny Huerta, who is Vice President of Parenting and Youth with Focus on the Family. Focus on the Family was founded by James Dobson, who was well known for thinking that the family in the US was under attack.

His whole life ministry was about that, although if you weren't here, go back and listen to the sermon because I gave his resume, it is incredible. Incredible man. So he wasn't always just a radio host.

That's what he did later in midlife to the time he died, radio host, talking about saving the family. So he was a medical doctor, among other things, and just an amazing man, but he devoted his life to try to save the American family.

And this would have been starting, what, in the 70s, you think, Char? So that long ago, he was worried about this country, about the situation of families in America, and how that would affect the nation, the churches, of course, but also the nation, and so he devoted his life to it.

He then gave up control of his company, and this man named Dr. Huerta is now a VP, but not under Dobson. He had long since given up control. Huerta says the opposite about child rearing than Dobson said.

Exact, diametrically opposed advice to parents by this man. I feel that this man owes, owed, some of this is in the book I just wrote, by the way, because Dr. Dobson was still alive when I wrote that chapter.

He's gone to be with the Lord now, since that, just a few months ago. But at the time, in my book, I said, I'm calling you out to apologize to James Dobson and to focus on the family, and maybe he'll read it someday and give me a call.

That would be awesome. We'll have a nice talk. But right now, I'm just gonna talk behind his back, but not really, because we're online. He can go see this if he wants to. But last week, I've already done it, so today, I'm not really gonna talk about him so much, but I will review some of the scripture that refutes everything this man has said.

I quoted him a lot last Sunday, and for example, the most ridiculous things, two things he said. Number one is, if you're gonna put spanking in your disciplinary arsenal, it should be the least used. Now, the Bible says the exact opposite.

Okay, then he said, the goal is to talk to the child, not to hit the child, but to speak to the child and cause him, through this method of child rearing, that no one has ever believed in through the discipline.

You'll see, no one spoke to children about that. When they misbehaved or they were rebellious, they got a spanking. They didn't get talked to. They might've gotten talked to. If it was done correctly, they got talked with while it was happening and prayed with and hugged and loved and all that, but it wasn't just verbal.

Never was it, till now. Now, what's interesting about this is that he said the goal is to get the child to learn to self-discipline. Now, this church, I'm not preaching to you. I'm just hoping someone will hear this online or go listen to the archives that might need to hear this.

You know this. You understand what the Bible teaches about the depravity of man and that we are born in sin with a sin nature and that we come forth from the womb speaking lies and all of these things the Bible says about the nature of humans as we come into the world.

So I will promise you that a little child with a sin nature, and if yours doesn't have one, then you're in a fictional book or something because in the real world, yours has one too. And a little human with a little small human with a sin nature is not going to self-discipline because the last thing the sin nature wants to do is to change any of the sin.

He likes the sin and she likes the sin even as a little child. And it shows itself as rebellion to the parents, disobedience, or what I call slow obedience, which is the number thing Huerta said. Number one, spank less.

Number two, teach them to self-discipline. It'll never happen. It's impossible. If he would consult the creator of the universe who made babies and children, he would know that God says that won't work.

So let's look at Proverbs 13, 24.

Listen to this.

This addresses Huerta's idea that you should spank little. Let that be the least thing you do. God said this, he that spares the rod. Now we looked at the word spare in the Greek last time. What it means is if you decide you're gonna spank a little bit, a little, you know, don't spank much, spare it.

Spank little, don't spank much. He that spares the rod, and by the way, the rod means a twig off of a bush. That's what it means. And many of your grandparents got spankings with, how many in here ever got a spanking with a twig?

Yeah, only Dave Senior that figures. No, I'm kidding, Dave.

There's more than you.

All right, so you don't have to go very far back when it would be called a twig or something, but in the Bible, Hebrew, it means a twig. But he that spareth the spanking, I'm just gonna paraphrase for you, hates the sun.

Now, that's not the God that Americans believe in, because the God American believes in loves everybody, and would never say anything like caustic like that. God wouldn't, or a prophet would never say anything caustic that would hurt your feelings.

And in most mega churches today, no one would say anything that would hurt your feelings. But I'm gonna tell you this. If you spare the spanking, if you take Dr. Huerta's advice and you spank little, then you hate your child, God says.

But he that loves his child chastens him betimes, which is an old English word that means early, which means you do it about the time they get in the high chair and they can eat in their high chair and sit up.

They might get a little swat on the arm or the thigh. And not many months after that, they might start getting a spanking with an appropriately wide paddle that will make a louder noise than it hurts, but it needs to hurt too.

Needs to sting. And they'll start getting those. That's what it means by early, when they're little. Because if you do it properly when they're little, you won't have to do it much after they're about four or five.

I know that by times five. I have five grown kids in here and every one of them sitting here in church, pretty good kids. And there's one at home listening right now, I have a feeling, because he couldn't be here.

They turned out really well. And I've got 15 grandkids and those kids can walk in your house and you will be glad they're there. You will enjoy them because they're well-disciplined. Isn't that something?

Now, how many people at Walmart do you see like that though? Where you would enjoy, or in a restaurant when you go with your wife or with a friend and you want to have a nice meal and they're running around circles around the table and the parent just sits there looking at his phone.

Right?

Isn't that America? Well, if you spank sparingly, that's what you get because God said so. And it says you hate the child. You know why you're hating him? Because you're allowing him to grow up and not be liked by anybody.

Your child, adults don't like your child. They don't want to be around your child. Is that kind to do that to your child? And God says, you're the one that did it because you read a book by a secular humanist psychologist that said, just reason with the child, don't spank.

Or spank sparingly. Teach the child to self-discipline. Try that one. See how well that works out. You know, if you want to raise a serial killer, do that one. All right, so now the Bible didn't say that.

That was my opinion. All right, I'll be clear. Most of what I'm going to say is in the Bible, not that one. All right, so he that spares the spanking hates his son, but he that loves the child chastens him early.

Now, by the way, the Hebrew word means with blows. So it's not talking about a verbal spanking. It's talking about a rod, which also means a spanking. Now, so to spare the rod means to refrain from using the rod of correction or to spank sparingly.

So God says the parent who does not spank as often as necessary hates the son, but he that loves his child spanks often, which is the opposite of sparingly and the opposite of early. So it's diametrically opposed to the creator of the universe who did all babies and children.

So who are you going to listen to? There's plenty of books I've read parts of. I don't read them much anymore. Back in Spock's day, I read that book and he was one of the first who advocated just reasoning with a child.

No one had ever said that before his book. I'm so glad my parents did. They did read it, but they didn't agree with it. I told people last week, my dad had a board, a paddle hanging on the wall at the breakfast table that had my name on it.

David, it's called the David board. So that in itself made him have to use it a little more sparingly, cause I just looked at that and it was a threat and I was pretty good kid at least at the table, right?

So he says the goal of parenting is about influence, not control. So the goal is not to control your child. That's why Walmart looks like it does and the restaurant looks like it does because they listen to Huerta and they don't have a child that's under control.

But what does God say about it? Proverbs 22, 15, foolishness is bound in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction will drive it far from him. That's what the Bible says about it. It says you want him under control.

You want to drive the self-will out of him, the rebellious part of his self-will. You want to drive that away from the child and the way to do it is with a rod. So God says the child needs help. He doesn't self-discipline.

That was so funny last Sunday, I thought. I thought last Sunday was a great message because it was humorous. I mean, it was one of the funniest sermons I've ever preached. Proverbs 29, 15, thanks to Dr. Huerta, says the rod and reproof gives wisdom.

I think this was the one we ended on last week. Listen, it's got the word and and it means you need both. So I am not preaching against speaking with the child or reasoning with the child. You need to be, listen, I pray for you because I've already been there and done that.

The child is smarter than you are when it comes to psychology. He can split the parents and get them mad at each other, whichever one does the spanking. The other one's over there pouting and the kid sees it.

So he goes to that one next time. They are smarter than you are when they're that way. Luckily, they grow up and get really stupid as they get closer to being a teenager, right? All right, so luckily.

But I mean, when they're little, they are smart. So if you really think you're gonna outsmart them with your reasoning, go ahead and go for it, but don't leave out the paddle because let me tell you what speaks to the heart of a child more than anything in the world when they're rebellious, disobedient, or lying.

Those are the three things you spank for. Is you don't spank them for mistakes like they accidentally hurt a brother. That would be, see, that's where parents do foolish things. And we're gonna, listen, let me say this.

We're gonna make mistakes and mess up on those too. What do you do when that happens though? You apologize to your child. I shouldn't have spanked you. I found out that your brother said it was an accident.

I didn't know that and I spanked you and I shouldn't have. Apologize and it'll fix it. Kids respect that so much, you wouldn't believe it. Or what if you hadn't been spanking enough? Because you just now heard this sermon, you say, ooh, God's talking to me.

You sit down with your child today and you say, look, Mom and Dad need to tell you something. We have been doing some things wrong and God has shown us that and I apologize. We're gonna start spanking more and the kid'll love that.

And listen, when you spank, blame it on the Lord. Because there's not a loving parent that likes spanking anywhere. In fact, you have to make yourself do it. You hate that. The kid don't believe you when you say, oh, it hurts me worse than you.

He'll never believe that. But it does and that's why we don't like doing it. We'll put it off, we'll be inconsistent. All of those things hurt the child. So we have to be spirit-filled in order to spank.

We have to obey the Lord and be walking with him or we won't do it right because they're smarter than we are. But I mean, they'll outsmart us every time. But notice the rod and reproof give wisdom to the child.

That's two things. That's the spanking and wise speaking, wise reasoning with the child, both at the same time. But the child left to himself. Now, here's the one where the parent read Huerta's writings.

He's not even one of the big guys, but he is a focus on the family. So he has influence, unfortunately. But they listened to him and they're just reasoning with the child. And they bought into this thing about teaching to self-correct.

So just put him over in the room, he'll figure it out on his own. Well, look at what it says. The rod and reasoning, both together, will give wisdom to the child. But listen to this. But a child left to himself brings his mother shame.

You can't let them self-correct. That's why last week's sermon was so funny because he was saying that again and again. God says the child requires a spanking and reproof. Reproof is verbal correction from his parents because he cannot self-control or self-correct.

Ephesians 6:4, Nurture and Admonition, and the Harm of Timeouts

The very sin nature for which he or she is receiving the spanking will not desire to self-correct, especially at a young age. Things are different at focus on the family without Dr. Dobson. Now, let me speak to one more issue before we leave this subject.

And this is very, very important. And I'm gonna give you a parallel passage on our Colossians verse that we're studying today. In Ephesians chapter six, verse four, it says this. And fathers provoke not children to wrath.

Kind of saying exactly the same thing, isn't it? Maybe a little stronger in the area of be careful with your verbiage. Careful when you shout at a child. Like, you know, I never ever, ever heard my mother raise her voice to me.

She did not have to. All she had to do is when my dad, who'd been an FBI 17 years, came home from work, she said, Fred, David needs your attention. She never raised her voice at me. I don't think she ever spanked me, which is that's not good, she should have.

But my dad was so strong that I probably only got five my whole life. I did not want another one. The first time I got one, I vividly remember it. I'm gonna say I was about Ada's age. She's sleeping, so I can talk about her behind her back.

I was about her age. And my mom wanted me to eat a sandwich, which I was not interested in, so I just slapped her in the face. Now, y 'all knew my dad, right? What do you think happened? I started hearing this, and I'm Ada's age.

When he went out to the farthest reaches of the house to get away from my mom, because he didn't, he knew, you know, she didn't want to see this, and he spanked me so hard. Before he was finished, I was trying to hug him and tell him I love him, and stop.

I love you, I love you, thank you.

And then, you know, and then he hugged me back and finally said he loved me, and he looked at me and said, don't you ever strike your mother again. Never got another spanking, let alone hit her, right?

Neither one of us got hit again after that. So if you do it right, it works. Now, but let me deal specifically with this idea of not provoking your child to wrath, but bring them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

Now, that last part shows, obviously, we're not preaching against verbal reasoning with a child. We should reason with the child with biblical wisdom. That's better than just what the secular humanists, they're all wanting you to reason, but the stuff they tell you to say is totally from hell.

Oh, he'll self-correct, you know, just tell him how good he is all the time. All that stuff is just total nonsense. I mean, listen, I was pre-med for two years, wanted to be a doctor. I studied a lot of psychology in the pre-med program just because I chose to, because I was interested in it.

And so I studied general psychology, and then I took a whole course in abnormal psychology. You wouldn't believe the stuff that goes on today that's considered normal that was in that book, by the way, chapters on it.

But the basis for psychological teaching on how to create obedience in a child was called operant conditioning. And the man who, the PhD that came up with it and wrote about it said that, in a nutshell, that it works best if you have positive and negative reinforcement.

That's what they call it, reinforcement. What it means is positive reinforcement is when the child does well, praise the child. You don't know how many men I've met and some counseled with whose dad never thought they ever got it right.

You know what I mean?

Like the young man growing up, he's a young teenager, go out and do, you know, go stack the hay in the barn. And the kid comes in, he's worked all day in the August, Texas weather, and the dad says, you didn't do it right.

Should have been stacked this way. And every time he does anything, the dad never does it quite right, according to the dad. That is horrifying. And those guys end up with problems the rest of their lives sometimes, unless when they get born again and get in the word, it can be totally fixed, of course.

But that is a, that's a hindrance to a child. So how we talk is very important. Provoke not your children to wrath. Now, let me talk about something that is extremely popular. And in my book, I've actually written, and there's a chapter in my book on the justice of God.

I think it's the next to last chapter, but it's so many pages long, I don't remember what I wrote. I think it's the next to last chapter on the justice of God, which is talking about hell, you know, and different things like that.

And there is a subsection in that chapter, and I tried to be catchy with the little heading. It says, how not to send your child to hell. And it talks about, I mean, I didn't even read that. There's one of the verses in Proverbs says, if you spare the rod, you will send your child to hell.

It says that. I read that probably last Sunday, but I didn't read it today. But it said, the Bible says that. So that's what that part's about. And I said, look, I don't have the space in this book to talk about raising older children like teenagers.

And I joked with you guys last week. I said, I don't know how to do that anyway. But so this is like for zero to five years old. And there's a section in there that covers some of this. In that section, I talk a little bit about something that is extremely popular.

Over the course of my lifetime, I've witnessed that one of the humanists, and I'm talking about people that are not born again, people that are psychologists, secular psychologists. And by the way, I already told you, I've studied secular psychologists.

I know the roots of it and where it comes from. It comes from Freud. I don't care what they say. They don't quote him as much, but they're students of Freud. And he was most likely an atheist. And they just pull stuff out of their mind and say, try this.

And someone, who was I talking to yesterday? Was that you, Ben? That has read something about him that his children wrote. He had children and they wrote and said, you know, he said this stuff about children.

I'm not gonna say what it was about because it's too grotesque to even talk about here. He said, do this to young children and make sure they do this and know this. And his own kids said, but he never talked to us about that.

So he told the whole world to raise children in a certain way that would be hellish that he didn't do to his kids. But these are the same people that write books today. The modern books, if they're written by a PhD psychologist who is not a born again Christian, and even some of the born again ones are so misled because they don't focus on the scripture or the family, no focus on the family, but they just get it wrong.

Listen, this is the highest authority on child psychology in the world. Anything down here has to be kept down here. It can't be put up here. Be very careful when you read something and it sounds logical, but you're not real well-versed with this book yet.

Think about that because they'll lead you astray. A slay, that was a good slip. And you won't know it. So let me talk with you about this. So during my lifetime, what in the world?

That Dave's?

Oh, it's that speaker right there. Oh, nice.

Is it trying to tell us I'm plugged on and I need to be off?

I really don't know, I've never taken it.

No, it's the opposite of Jenny Taylor.

You'll get that, Dave.

Turn me off, someone turn me off. That's a family joke. I can't go into that one with you guys, but anyway. So over the course of my lifetime, I've witnessed that one of the humanist's most prized creations is the idea of timeouts when children misbehave.

Now don't get mad at me, just hear me through. In my book, I spend some time giving my opinion of that. And that part could make some people angry and I'm not gonna do that much this morning for the sake of time.

But I don't believe, if you follow their advice, I don't believe it will be helpful. I believe it will harm and I believe that the exhortation not to spur your children to be angry is disobeyed when you put them in a room by themselves and you shut the door and you don't let them out.

You are making them angry. Now they're not gonna tell you they're angry, you know why? Because then they'll get to spend another 10 minutes in there. And they know it. They'll never tell you it's making them angry, but it's making them angry and it's making them disrespect you as a parent.

They are less likely to honor you than if you just used a good old-fashioned biblical spanking in the right way. Now, I did tell you a little bit of my opinion so that was it. But let me read to you something written by Dr. Justin Coulson of the Institute of Family Studies.

A PhD who's well-schooled in secular child-rearing psychology and it's what he does for a living and he does not agree with me. He believes you should just reason with the child. But one thing he does agree with me is he thinks that timeouts are not the way to go.

And he bases this on the same kind of studies that all of them do and research has been done on this. So let me share with you his thoughts on timeouts. Because I'm gonna get him to convince you you shouldn't do it because I know I cannot convince you if you believe it's a good thing.

But I can't change your mind. But he might can because he has the credentials, okay? All I have is the Bible, right? Anyway, provoke not children to anger is what I have. So here's what he says. Timeouts are a polite term for solitary confinement.

Now, how does that sound? Well, at least you didn't do this banking. You just put them in solitary confinement. Now, that is the worst thing that happens to criminals. When they go into solitary confinements because they were bad in prison, am I right?

Everybody just watched too many movies. You know, that's what I see in the movies. I actually have been in a prison with a friend of mine that preaches in prisons and they do have solitary confinement in there.

It's the worst of the worst. And this psychologist says that's what you just did to your child. So it's a polite term for solitary confinement. What are our children learning when we place them in a timeout, he says.

So here's his answer. Number one, when you do something, speaking to the child, it's telling the child that when you do something that the parent does not like, I will reject you and put you in a room by yourself.

Number two, it teaches children that when they struggle, when they're struggling with their what? Their sin nature, right? We do not want to be around them when they're struggling. We don't want to be around them until they can behave in a way that's pleasing to us.

Now, psychologists actually have a name for this. It's called conditional positive regard. Conditional positive regard. It means that as a parent, you think the only time you should give them anything positive is if they deserve it.

Does God treat us that way? What if he did? We would never get anything good. We're supposed to be like our Lord. Substantial research describes how humans and particularly children cope with distress and difficulty best when they have support of those around them.

Not when they're put in a room by themselves, but they have support of the parents when they're struggling. You have to be with them in order to provide that support. You can't put them in a room and leave them in there.

Then he goes on. With the development of MRI technology, scientists have discovered that the experience of rejection causes blood flow to increase in the same areas of the brain. Oh, so God may know what he's talking about.

It causes blood flow to increase in the same areas of the brain that light up when physical pain is experienced. So you're trying to avoid hurting the child by spanking and you put them in a room and lock them in there and they're feeling the same pain by themselves instead of being with you to hug them and put them on your lap and pray with them.

They're in that room experiencing the same pain, but you didn't know it because you didn't do the studies. You just read some psychological book on child rearing that didn't even put this study in it because they don't want you to see this study.

It's amazing. So that area lights up. So they're feeling pain in their little heart.

And in their mind.

It's making our children feel isolated and rejected causes the brain to respond the same way as it would if we were to physically hurt the child. The emotional pain is just as real to the brain as physical pain studies show.

Furthermore, a timeout, and he continues, next point is it makes the child angrier. What did the Lord tell us not to do, fathers? Do not provoke them to anger. This PhD says I've done studies and I've talked with enough children in counseling to tell you when you use timeouts, it makes the child angry.