The Heart of Discipline

Introduction

We are in the home stretch of this series we’ve been doing on parenting, and I’ve appreciated Jonathan’s good work in the that he did last week and the previous sermons. And I want to build a little bit on that this week and some of what I want to talk about in terms of discipline. I want to begin in Proverbs chapter 29 and read a few verses there. And we’re going to do a lot of scripture this morning. I want to point to a lot of different passages. Some of these things I’ve said before here, and I want to reintroduce them. Some of them need to be said every once in a while in terms of what discipline is and how important it is, and that we focus on doing things God’s way.

So read with me beginning in Proverbs chapter 29 and verse 15. Proverbs 29, verse 15. It says, The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother. When the wicked increase, transgression increases, but the righteous will look upon their downfall. Discipline your son, and he will give you rest.

By mere words, a servant is not disciplined. For though he understands, he will not respond. A lot of good insights there from the wise man. Just about discipline in general. He has a lot to say, not just about raising children, but how to deal with various other circumstances. What happens, for example, to a fool when they don’t act the right way, they get a rod to their back. Bad things happen, they get stripes. These are the kinds of things that are said in the book of Proverbs. These are the consequences or the results that we wish to keep our children from. So the way that we raise them and the things we’re trying to do or trying to help them avoid those ends, acting in folly or acting in foolishness, and getting much worse consequences than the small punishments and corrections that come from a parent.

We’ve already spent quite a bit of time working through things like communication and in different philosophies about parenting and discipline, and so I don’t want to belabor those points, but I do want to spend some time this morning talking about an aspect of discipline that relates to the rod itself. This essentially are there’s two elements to this. There is the communication side, which we’ve already talked about, but then there is also what scripture calls the rod. It is correction, it is rebuke, it is dealing with rebellion of the heart. And remember, what we’re getting at in all of this is trying to shape a child’s heart. I’m trying to turn them to the Lord and the things that we’re doing. This is not about it’s what I want, and you didn’t do what I want, and so I’m punishing you.

1. What Do We Trust?

This is not about retribution. These are not the direction we’re aiming at when it comes to discipline. It is more that we are trying to point people to the Lord. And I want us to start with this concept. What do we trust? Jonathan had some things to say about this last week in his sermon, but I want to begin with reinforcing this idea. This is what scripture says. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding, be not wise in your own eyes. Proverbs chapter 3. And there’s more in that as well that we could look at that would be helpful in reality, but we’ve got to, there’s so much to talk about in terms of discipline. We’ve got to hone in and narrow the focus this morning, and maybe some other time we can go talk about some other aspects of this.

But the principle I want us to get here is where are we putting our faith? Are we putting our faith in the things of men and the philosophies of men? Or are we going to put our faith in what scripture says? And my proposal to you this morning is that we should be trusting the God of all the universe, the one who created us, that his knowledge is infinite, that he is the one who knows what’s best for me, and he knows what’s best for you, and he knows what’s best for our children. And we should be following the things that he says, not the ideas and the philosophies of the world. So the rod is not the only method of discipline. in fact, we’ve talked some about other methods, but I want us to understand as well that discipline just goes beyond punishment.

Discipline is not just about correction or punishment, it is really about instruction. And the goal in all of this is ultimately, though there’s going to be difficult days, and there’s going to be days that everybody’s upset and things didn’t go well and we’re frustrated, and their child is frustrated, those things are going to happen. That’s part of life. The ultimate end is what we just talked about in Proverbs 29, is that if we discipline, if we go about this the way that God has said, generally speaking, everyone makes their own decisions. Our children will make their own choices. We can’t force them to be a certain way. But the concept here is from a general standpoint, and we do things God’s way, our children are going to bring delight to our hearts.

Now that may be hard to imagine when you’re up at three in the morning and the baby’s crying and things are difficult and hard. But this is kind of a long-term perspective. That going about this the way that Scripture prescribes and tells us is going to bring us to a point where we have joy when we think of our children. If we don’t have joy when we think of our children, then there is plenty of work to do. And we’re talking this morning about the work on the parents’ end of this. There certainly is some things we could say to children about how they are just to respond. But really, again, the prerogative is on us as parents to be working through this and demonstrating it and helping them see what our goals and our aims are, not just for them, but for our entire family.

2. Discipline in Its Pure Essence Is Training

And so discipline is not just another way to say punishment. Although this morning we will talk a lot about that. We will talk about correction or rebuke, reproving those kinds of things. But ultimately, what I want us to understand about discipline, given the limited time we have to talk about this, is first of all, the idea of discipline in its pure essence is training. Everything that we’re doing, whether it’s through communication or whether it is through the rod, is the aim of this is to train and to instruct. It’s not to show who’s stronger, it’s not to enforce my will over my child and let them know I’m the boss and they better do things my way or else. These are not the goals. The goals is to teach them something and for them to learn and to gain something from this process, which is pointing them toward the heart of God.

That’s what we want to accomplish in all of this. And I’ll say whether it’s in communication or whether it’s through the rod, some of the bad experiences that maybe some of us had as children or that we’ve inflicted on our own children because we’ve done it the wrong way, or because we’ve not pointed toward that aim and that goal. We’ve allowed something else, or our parents allowed something else to enter in, whether it’s through pride or through their kind of their own desires, and so it is done incorrectly. And sometimes those experiences then lead us to say, Well, I’m not going to do that. That’s what was done to me, and so I’m not going to do that. And what I want us to understand is what is important is that we do things the way the Lord has told us to do them.

And when they’re done incorrectly, they’re not being done the way Lord the Lord told us to do them. And that’s part of this whole process. And of course, none of us are perfect, and we have to be working on this constantly as parents to think about how do I need to raise my child in a way that is guiding and leading their heart toward the things of God to the best of my ability. As we think about the rod this morning, I will say the rod can be metaphorical. It’s not always literal, but the metaphor comes from literal meaning. The way you get metaphor is that you understand what is literal and what is actually being talked about, and then sometimes that is applied in figurative ways.

So we’ll come back to that here a little bit later. Godly discipline, though, requires sacrifice, and it requires it on every front. Whether it’s through communication, as we talked about a couple weeks ago, sometimes in those scenarios, parents, we are well aware of this. I mentioned this a couple weeks ago. Sometimes we have to end a conversation to go take care of our child, to make sure we’re paying attention to what our child is doing, that they’re being trained and instructed the right way, and that’s a sacrifice that as parents we must make. Because our obligation is to instruct and to lead and to parent our child, and sometimes we have to stop the thing that we’re doing to make sure that happens. That’s inconvenient, that’s frustrating sometimes, but it’s part of what we’re supposed to do.

Sometimes it means doing what is not enjoyable. I don’t think anyone really enjoys the rod. It’s making our children. It’s not like we get some kind of satisfaction out of this. But if we believe the wisdom of God, as we’re going to see in scripture, we believe that He knows what’s best, and that there are good reasons for going about discipline the various ways that He has told us to do this. And so, what I want us to understand in all of this is that we need to be investing in our child’s future. The decisions that we’re making along the way, whether it is that stopped conversation to go chase after our child and make sure they’re not doing things they’re not supposed to do, or whether it is having to correct them, sometimes through a tactile means, right?

With corporal punishment, things that involve the body. There’s an end, there’s a goal in this that is pointing them toward the things of God. And I want to talk as we work through this about how that works. But part of this is valuing wisdom over happiness, over the happenings of the moment. Being willing for your child to be upset about what’s happening because you know it’s best for them. Not merely trying to appease them and make them happy in the moment to just get along to the next moment. That is not really the goal. And so when the wise man says the rod and reproof give wisdom, he’s saying sometimes things are uncomfortable in the moment, but it’s going to produce this fruit of righteousness. This is exactly what’s said in Hebrews chapter 12, by the way.

This is the end goal. No discipline is pleasant in the moment. No one says, Man, I really appreciate that you criticized me and told me I did something wrong. Now we may, after a few minutes, come back and realize that was much needed and it was helpful. No one is super excited as a child that they got spanked, that they may realize later that it’s because they were rebellious and they didn’t do the right thing. And this is why their parent was trying to train them and teach them. It’s not comfortable. It’s not enjoyable in the moment, but it brings this fruit of righteousness and peace. It brings things that are important to our life. And so the rod and the reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother, Proverbs 29 15.

3. The Rod Is a God-Given Tool for Instruction

That verse alone speaks against much of modern philosophy. The idea that children know what’s best, just listen to them, follow their lead. You know, they it’s kind of child-led parenting sort of mindset. No, a child left to himself brings shame. It brings problems. And it’s not the child’s fault. It’s what the child was allowed to do by the parent who is supposed to be parenting them. And so this is the process by which shame happens. But actually, it’s even deeper than that. Because in Proverbs 29, I think it goes on to expose that this grows. It’s not just in the home, it goes to society as well. Right? So, verse 15, where we just finished, a child left to himself brings shame to his mother. Verse 16, when the wicked increase, transgression increases.

Why is wickedness increasing? Children are being left to themselves to do what’s right in their own eyes. Not everything in the Proverbs necessarily flows together, but it is interesting that we find this kind of series of verses that seem to connect on this level, not just in the home, but also broader than that. Where there is no prophetic vision, verse 18, the people cast off restraint. When people aren’t listening to the word of God, when there is no prophetic vision, that’s the word of God. When we ignore that, when we go off and decide we’re going to do things our own way, and we cast off restraint, bad things happen, not just in homes, but in culture. And this is the sort of thing the wise man is saying here.

The casting off of restraint is a problem we see in other places in scripture. For example, we’ve mentioned Eli the prophet, whose entire home is condemned. The priesthood is removed from him, and the reason for that is it says you did not restrain your sons. Now he talked to them. You can go look at 1 Samuel, and you see he has the boys sit down and he tells him, Why are you doing this? Why are you doing all these evil things? And then after this, despite this conversation he has with them, where nothing stops and nothing changes, God says, You did not restrain them. Sometimes it takes more than words. By mere words, a servant is not disciplined, verse 19. For though he understands, he will not respond.

Sometimes that little talk doesn’t do a whole lot.

There may be a variety of ways to do that. And I’m not here this morning to tell you exactly how to do that and how much to do it and in what situations to do it. Those are things that as parents we have to decide because our children are who they are, and all of our children are different, as we’ve already talked about. And they may need different things at different times, and that’s part of being a parent. But we do have a tool belt of things that we can use as parents that are divinely given to us to help us in this process. And what I want us to fully understand this morning is that the rod is a God-given tool for instruction. And to ignore that and to neglect that is foolish.

It is very foolish. This is a means by which God has told us we can guide and direct. It needs to be done carefully. It needs to be done in the right spirit and with the right goals and the right aims in mind, but it is certainly something God has told us needs to be happening. In God’s wisdom, he says this whoever spares the rod hates his son. But he who loves him is diligent to discipline him. Discipline, as I said before, goes beyond something like spanking. But the point here is you will do what needs to be done. You will find ways to instruct your child. If you love him, you will do this. Proverbs 3 talks about that in terms of the Lord Himself.

He disciplines us because He loves us, He cares. Proverbs 23 tells us, do not withhold discipline from a child. If you strike him with a rod, he will not die. If you strike him with a rod, you will save his soul from Sheol. One of the things I want us to understand and grasp about this, whether it is through communication or whether it’s through something like the rod, is that it is restorative in nature. It is not retributive. It is not you did this and now you must pay for it. It is helping save. It is helping restore the rebellious heart to one that is pointed and reoriented toward the things of God. And so what I want us to see is we cannot remove the significance of the rod from Scripture.

4. Objection One: Studies Show Spanking Is Harmful

So what I want to do for a few minutes now is just talk about some of the objections to this. because unfortunately in our culture, people will find, and not just on this topic, it kind of happens on all sorts of things, they will find all sorts of ways to object to what Scripture actually says. And so I want to spend some time talking about this, and this sort of connects to what Jonathan talked about last week. The first objection is, and you can find this very easily. it’s all over the place in our society. Studies show that spanking is harmful. Objection one. Well, let’s talk about that a little bit. Jonathan did a great job last time of talking about all the acronyms and what they have to say about everything.

And how really you can’t trust a lot of that. it’s been proven to be a flawed system. I’m not saying that every study is like that, but we it is not beyond question. it is not studies show, and then now we know that’s just the absolute truth. We need to be very careful about that. In particular, studies like this. So, what I’m gonna show you is not Brent’s thoughts. this is not the thought from some other preacher or some other Christian somewhere, these are not thoughts from those kinds of people. What we’re looking at here in this study from 2016 is a meta-analysis of other meta-analyses, actually. In the end, you have over 1,500 studies in some form or in some way being digested by all these people and run through to come to some conclusions.

And part of what they’re doing, and I appreciate that they’re willing to do this, is they’re honestly looking at the things that have done before and saying, some of this wasn’t done very well. We need to consider that, and we need to kind of thwart out the things that weren’t great, and we need to look for the studies that have some things to offer and then work through those, right? So that was their aim in this study, this meta-analyses of some things going on here. Okay, so they talk about some of the things that happened before, like some of the weaknesses of previous studies like this. Right. So, one of them is that it says they confound abuse with spanking, and even the researchers know the difference, and yet in the study itself, there’s not much of a good way to show a distinction here.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been a part of a study like this. Katie, since the time she was in kindergarten or even earlier, I’m not even sure exactly when she started this because I wasn’t around then, but I know it was at least kindergarten. She was part of a Duke University longitudinal study of childhood development. Once we got married, the study then was broadened to include me in the process. And so every so many years, it’s been a while at this point. We answered questions, you know. And I’ll tell you, the questions are very tricky. It’s hard to answer these questions sometimes, and you know, they’re looking for things like abuse in relationships or abuse in how you treat your children, or not doing that.

And you’re as you’re answering the questions, you’re thinking, what are they gonna think about this answer I’m giving? There are limitations in what studies can actually reveal, and particularly studies like this. And so I appreciate these researchers saying, hey, there’s still some questions we have about this. We’ve looked through all of this, and we’re not so sure about the findings and what they say about these findings. So they have two major questions they’re worried about. The first is that what I already mentioned, that spanking is just kind of grouped together with just abuse in general. And then what they found as they dug through all these studies, they focused mostly, they whittled down from 1500 to about 88. What they found is when you separate actual abuse from spanking, you see huge differences in the results.

Right? The results are night and day. Now, some of these still show actually very minor effects. All of these, I’m not gonna try to interpret this or go through what all of this means. But the effects themselves, if you want to talk about it later, I’m glad to do that. And there’s probably other people who understand this way better than me in this congregation who can talk about what some of these numbers mean. But essentially, if it’s like 0.2 to 0.5, it’s rather insignificant. And the points they’re making is well, this is so widespread in the world that the effect is tremendous, even though the effects are really small. Okay, so studies show it’s really like these really small effects they believe they’re finding. However, one of the other aspects of this is that in certain types of studies, they have really bad design flaws.

Now, it’s not anybody’s fault. I’m not saying it’s the researcher’s fault or anything like that, but you do studies in certain ways, and so they’re recognizing here’s the other thing that they’re questioning, they’re working through. Spanking has only been linked with negative child outcomes and cross-sectional or methodologically weak studies. This is the researcher saying this, not me. So whenever you see on, I love Jonathan’s references last week to the InstaDads, right? The TikTok moms, when they’re telling you studies show this and studies show that, I want you to understand, go read those studies. Read the interpretations, read the data, because just taking a few data points and putting that on a post doesn’t really prove a whole lot. To anybody who actually reads studies and works through interpretations and understands how this process works, they know the emptiness of that concept.

You can put data up about all kinds of things and say it means something. All of these studies, all 1,500 of these studies, they do the study and then they give interpretations of what that data means. Right? And what these people are doing is they’re going back and they’re doing this big analysis of all the different studies and reinterpreting that data. It was not set in stone. What they thought this meant, now we’re going back and saying, eh, that’s not really what that meant. And now we’re exposing some of the problems of this. Cross-sectional studies, for example, it’s just it’s a it’s a moment in time. We’re looking at something, and the main thing in a cross-sectional study is it doesn’t show cause and effect. And so if we’re saying, oh, well, this is this outcome is happening because there’s a whole lot of assumptions going on there.

Because there’s so many variables we don’t know, and we can’t possibly know about why something became something else, why you have this effect. So there’s also a bit of this that is challenging because of the nature of the study itself. Again, this is through no fault, some of it of any of the researchers, but there is just by nature of this kind of study, a sampling bias. You cannot possibly do a randomized study of parents who spank their children and parents who don’t spank their children. It’s not possible. Not ethically, at least. So what that would mean is that if we just randomly took and said, okay, we want to study you, but and you think spanking’s fine, but we don’t want you to spank your kids for this study.

How does that work? Or someone who says, I don’t want to spank my kids. Well, we selected you to be a spanker. So you need to go now and spank your kids. It’s a little bit like we don’t study pregnant women. You know, we don’t like inject them with things and give them pills to test stuff because that would not be ethical. There are limitations to what studies can show. And so I want us to understand when we’re talking about this group says this about this study and that study and all the data. What does that actually reveal? What are the limitations of those? These are the deeper questions we should be asking rather than just saying studies show and then giving some kind of blanket data that we think proves something.

I’ll throw a little bit of my own interpretation or opinion. This is Brent’s opinion, okay. More than half of the data comes from studies that involve children from six to fifteen years old. I’m just gonna say right now, if there is a lot of heavy spanking going on from six to fifteen, you’ve already lost the battle. this should be happening from the time they’re zero to five. And it should be very minimal. It doesn’t really take a whole lot. I mean, it’s like this a little flick here, a little flick there. And as they get a little older, there may need to be a little bit more, so they get that tactile response, which we’ll talk about in a minute. So I admit that. But this is when they are a little, before they can even walk.

They should be learning boundaries and they should be learning that no is uncomfortable. And sometimes that comes through very innocent, never gonna harm anybody kind of flicks and bumps and things like that. When your child, man, I and I completely understand the findings are like, oh, you know, if you’ve got an 11-year-old child and you’re having to spank them all the time, yeah, they’re gonna resent you, and there’s gonna be bitterness and there’s gonna be problems here. Because that should have been taken care of a long time ago. And that should be a very infrequent happening at that point. And so when you have studies where almost all of them involve an age group that’s well beyond the age where kids are absorbing boundary data and information in their life, you’re gonna have some issues there, particularly with that’s what I think is probably accurate, but they recognize that parents struggle with when they have a child that needs more spanking, they troll they struggle with being angry, with frustration.

So these things build, and of course, from a biblical standpoint, none of that’s okay. We’ve already talked about that. It’s very easy to get into a mode that is not godly when we become frustrated and we’ve lost our patience. I would suggest to you that is much easier when the child is nine months old and they’re making noises during a time you want them to not make noises, and you can just bump their leg and tell them no, and gently over time they learn this. That is way easier than when they get a lot older. Now, parenting is complex and things change over time, so I will admit that. But just from a pure standpoint of we’re talking about this issue alone, yeah, I mean, the sampling data is skewed in a way that isn’t gonna make a lot of sense, and I would fully agree.

You got a 13 or 14 year old kid and you feel the need to spank them a lot, there’s some other things going on there of some sort. The researchers themselves reach this conclusion. Conclusion. The primary limitation of these meta-analyses is their inability to casually link, causally link, sorry, spanking with child outcomes. This is problematic because there is a selection bias in who gets spanked. Children with more behavior problems elicit more discipline generally, and spanking in particular. As noted above, randomized experiments of spanking are difficult, if not ethically impossible to conduct, and thus this shortcoming of the literature will be difficult to correct through future studies. Now you’re probably able to understand what I just read to you, but I’m going to translate it for you.

They don’t know. Do you understand that? They don’t know. Through all of the studies and the research and the things they say they know, they don’t know. This is in the words of the researchers themselves. But I’ll tell you who does know, and that is God. God knows. God knows what’s best for me and you and our children. And while studies can be helpful and they may illuminate us on some things that might be good to know, particularly what happens if we do things with anger, or we lash out emotionally, or those are, I think can be helpful things to learn through studies. Ultimately, we’re just learning that when you do things the wrong way, bad things happen. But the real question is: am I actually going to trust what God has told me?

5. Objection Two: The Rod Isn't Really About Spanking

Or am I going to trust researchers who themselves say, even if we keep doing more studies, it’s not going to fix the problem. Because that’s the reality. I’m talking about meta-analyses of hundreds and hundreds of studies, the same studies you see people say, studies show, and then try to tell you what you should think. This is their result. Objection number two. Now we’re getting a little bit more to scripture. The rod and striking in the Bible aren’t really about spanking, it’s a gentle form of accountability. Sometimes they can be gentle, as I’ve just described with younger children. Unfortunately, this has become very popular in modern times. A guy named Thomas Holler wrote an article, which I can no longer find online, by the way. His website no longer exists.

I can only find it through citations. I’m kind of glad about that, actually, because most of what he says is complete garbage. It’s not accurate at all, and I’m about to show you why. Through a closer examination of the Hebrew word for rod, one can see that a Hebrew dictionary, it has various meanings. Well, that’s what dictionaries do. They tell you the different meanings of words. The word chemet is most frequently used when referring to shepherds who are tending their flock. That is not true. The shepherds use the stick to fight off prey and to gently guide wandering sheep. That can be true, not to beat them. Confounding abuse with spanking. That’s what he’s doing at the end there. Okay? So I want to take just a minute to look at these words.

This is going to be a little bit convoluted and crazy, so sorry about that. But if you just want to listen, that’s okay. And I know word studies aren’t always everybody’s favorite thing. Many word studies are completely bogus, like the one he’s doing here, but I want to expose that. This is the translation he gives. So fortunately, I saved some of the things he said, even though I couldn’t find the article anymore. This is how he translates some of these verses. The culture of accountability imparts wisdom, but a child left to itself disgraces his mother. That is Holler’s translation of this verse. The problem with everything he says is it has absolutely no lexical support whatsoever. you can go to Brown Driver Briggs, the recognized lexicon on the Hebrew language.

You can go to TWOT, which is another recognized lexicon. You can go to the NASB dictionary, which we’re gonna do with the next term, and nothing he said is found anywhere. You can’t find it. I don’t find any reference to the idea of accountability. His translation does not represent scholarly work on these terms. And these terms have meaning.

It can mean tribe. So if you have the ability to go look this up, you’ll see a bunch of times where this word is used for various tribes. You know, the sons of Jacob and all their different tribes. It can be a scepter. So kingly imagery often involves shepherd imagery. But when it does so, it often involves them crushing their enemy with their rod. So, you know, there’s that. Proverbs 23 14, if you strike him with a rod, you will save his soul from Sheol. It talks about a rod for the back of fools, Proverbs 26. I will punish their transgression with a rod, Psalm 89 32, and their iniquity with stripes. That doesn’t sound like gentle guiding to me. And in fact, I would say pretty much none of these do.

Certainly, sometimes a shepherd did use his rod and his staff to guide and to lead and to direct, but also to protect. So the comfort also comes from the stability that the shepherd provides. And so let me say discipline that invests in our children offers them stability as well. And the fear of the Lord, Proverbs 14, 26 says, in the fear of the Lord, one has strong confidence and his children will have refuge. When I was growing up, I dated a girl in high school. She came to church with me, some. And she had absolutely no rules in her house. She had been around some people from church and she saw sort of how we do things. And one day we were doing something, I think we were out eating dinner somewhere or something, and she told me, I wish my parents love me as much as your parents love you.

Which shocked me. You know, when you’re a teenager and I knew that her parents really had no rules for her. I was thinking, well, that’s kind of nice. You can, the rules are oppressive, you know. I can’t do the things I want to do. But she understood. She understood Proverbs 3. Even though she probably never read it. She knew that if her parents loved her the way they should, they wouldn’t let her just do whatever she wants and pay no attention to when she gets home at night. I mean, she could come home at three in the morning and they wouldn’t hear. We were probably 16 or 17 at the time. I was driving, so I know we were about that age. There is no stability in her life.

There were no boundaries for her to work within. And she could feel that. And although, as a parent, I will discipline my children.

Where do they go when they’re upset? And why? Why do they run to us when something’s wrong? Well, it’s because a home in which there is discipline provides stability. It gives them confidence. They know that mom and dad want what’s best for them. And sometimes that is helping them understand in a tactile way that things are not going the way they’re supposed to. Is it really unloving for our child to run into the street and then we pick them up and we say, you know, you’re not supposed to go in the street. Don’t go in the street anymore. You’re really not supposed to be there. And then we put them back down, and what do they do? They run back in the street because they don’t reason on that level when they’re 12 months old, 14 months old.

They have to be taught, they have to learn through tactile means that some things are off limits, that there are boundaries, and that is truly loving to do so. Same thing with the discipline of the Lord, that it’s loving. He’s not out to injure us or make us unhappy in the end. He’s wanting us to learn what is best in our life and the right direction to go. So we talked about the word rod. The word strike is even more starkly against what Holler has to say. this word he translates in Proverbs 23, in other text we’ve already read. Do not withhold discipline from a child. If you create a culture of accountability, he will not die. Create accountability and save his soul from death.

So I can say pretty confidently, I’ve got a 31-page PDF I can send you if you really want to look through it. That there is never one time that the word is used that way. Not even once.

And again, I can tell you that’s true of DBL, Hebrew Bible dictionary, of TWO2, DOT, brown driver briggs. None of them give anything remotely close to what Holler’s saying. But Holler’s stuff is all over social media. And a bunch of parents have been deceived by the idea he’s given that this is just shepherding imagery and it’s gentle, and you can’t ever do this. And I’ll tell you what, the results show for themselves the foolishness of this in our culture.

6. Why Use the Rod?

A culture that has caught cast off prophetic vision and has allowed their children to live without restraint. We see the results of it. And so I want us to be armed with the reality of what God says here is what he means. We can’t just take words and twist them and turn them in what we want them to be. And I want us to realize we need to trust the Lord and not the philosophies of men and what he tells us we should be doing. Okay. So I want to get to this question. Why? Why use the rod? We can communicate. Why not just communicate? Well, some of that’s pretty simple, I would say. Your 14-month-old can’t reason with you. Now, they may begin learning that process, and I have no problem with explaining some things to them and talking to them and explaining you can’t go in the road, and that’s why I smacked your leg.

That’s fine. We can begin talking with them and explaining, but from a from a pure logic standpoint, they’re not at a point where they’re gonna say, okay, thanks, Dad. I appreciate that. I won’t go on the road anymore. But if they repeatedly get this little flick on their leg and are told no, they can process that very little bit of information that is done, honestly, pretty gently, and realize that’s a bad idea. The same thing happens, by the way, when they actually have the direct consequences of an action, right? Like we know they touch a stove and it’s hot. Oh, not gonna do that again because that’s an unpleasant, tactile feeling. So we understand that process happens even naturally with the things that take place.

But the rod, the point of this is that it is an immediate, safe reminder that I can’t do and I shouldn’t do whatever I want to do in the moment. This goes back to our main goal that we are all under authority. We’re all under God’s authority. I, as a parent, I’m under God’s authority. My child as a child is under God’s authority. I don’t rule myself. I need to look to scripture to see what God says about how I should parent, even. It’s not really up to me. I should be doing the things God says to do when it comes to parenting, and my child needs to be doing the things God says to do as a child to respect and to honor parents. So we all have things we’re supposed to be doing under God’s authority, and what we’re doing even from the youngest age is we’re helping them understand that self-rule is folly.

When I just do things my own way and I don’t listen to what other people tell me, and I don’t have any regard for boundaries, that is foolishness. And the wise man says it this way folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him. These small little tactile moments where you get a little flick or a little smack, it’s helping give wisdom. It’s an immediate response. Just as there’s an immediate impulse to do the thing that I want to do, or my kid do the thing that he or she wants to do, there’s then an immediate tactile response to that says, that is foolish. Don’t do that. It is not something that’s done because you’re angry.

It’s not done with vengeance. You know, you embarrassed our family, so now I’m going to spank you. It’s not done to demonstrate you’re stronger and bigger. These are all the ways that people come out of a home and say, I’m never going to do this because that’s what was done to me. But that’s not what scripture says to do about this. The scriptural perspective on this is that the rod gives wisdom. It is meant to redirect and to reorient toward the things of God. It is to drive impulse and craving from the heart of a child who hasn’t learned to do that yet. It is done carefully. It’s done with respect for the fact that we are under God’s authority just as our child is under God’s authority.

And so all of this factors in to how we go about this process, just like it does when we use communication. It’s just as wrong to scream and yell and berate a child with verbal abuse. That’s not any better. But we’re still going to communicate to our kids, even if that happened to us, I would hope. And see the value and the importance of, particularly as our children age, working more and more toward that end. Self-rule is about following impulses and desires. It is in essence selfishness. It is defiance to authority. A child doesn’t really understand that. But any of us who’ve had a child, and you grab that child and you’re going to put them in a high chair or in a seat, and they wiggle and they squirm, and they don’t want to be there down.

They don’t want to sit down. They don’t want to do what you’re wanting them to do. They have to learn that they aren’t always the one who gets to decide what happens. That’s part of the process, and it’s important for them to learn that so they respect the authority of God. All of these things are connected. And the children need reasonable boundaries, reinforced for their own benefit and for the benefit of those around them. Sometimes the things they want to do in the moment are actually very dangerous for them. When Titus was younger, all of our kids did this to some degree, but he did it probably the most.

Katie usually took care of that very quickly with saying no, spanking or flicking. That’s not what we’re gonna do. You know why? Not because she was mad or angry or didn’t love her child. It’s because actually it’s pretty dangerous. In fact, one time Titus was big and strong as a baby. He kind of still is. Not a baby, but big and strong. We were at this pizza place, Katie goes to put him into a high chair, and he throws his head back, and he just flies right out of the high chair and hits his head on a cement floor. This is why we do discipline. That was dangerous. He was very little at the time. We were still working on that process, but that is why they need boundaries.

It’s why they need to be taught this is not the way to act. Don’t throw your head back. You can hurt somebody else. How many parents or siblings have had a child throw their head into their nose? Right? This is this is not about being mean or ugly. It’s about teaching them necessary boundaries and important things in their life to help them learn that they can’t just do what they want to do. All impulse is not the way to live. And when children begin to get older, the rod is even more restorative, accompanied with explanation. It’s meant to orient them toward proper authority. Why I’m doing this is because God wants me to teach you. He wants me to instruct you. This is to drive out any kind of sense of rebellion in your heart.

Conclusion

It is meant to save you from that. This is what the wise man says. And so before I close, let me just give some suggestions. These are essentially my opinions, but they’re shared by many who have raised children. I will just say, I think the suggested way to think of the rod is that from younger ages, it is the primary source. When you can’t communicate with a child with logic and reason, you’re going to set boundaries and use gentle prodding to help them understand things they should and shouldn’t be doing. As they begin to age, that should be filtering out more and more. There should be less need for the rod and more need for communication and reasoning and thinking through why we would do what we do.

And of course, when they get to be your size, this gets a little bit more difficult. If your primary method of discipline is the rod, and you have a 14-year-old child, you’re in for some difficulties. I hope that is not the case. And so the idea here is not that we just need to spank all the time, and that’s the only method. No, that is not how this works. But it is a tool. It is a God-given tool to help direct and to lead our children in a way that’s going to shape them to understand authority, to love their parents, to love God. But I want us to ask this. I have a couple questions I want us to think through, whether it’s communication or the rod or any means of discipline.

I want us to think about this. What lesson is my child learning from this discipline? Discipline that teaches nothing is worthless. If my discipline is just go sit in your room and we’re not going to talk about anything, but you’re just restricted to your room and you can’t go anywhere. Maybe that’s a lesson somewhere. I don’t know, but we better figure out what that lesson is.

Regardless, the question is, what lesson is being learned? What is my child learning from the ways I’m disciplining them? Sometimes it may be, I think we’ve probably many of us experience this. We’re trying to lecture. That sometimes becomes very on the when I when I look at my kids’ eyes are glazed over and they’re not really paying attention anymore. I’ve probably less lost the effectivity. And so as a parent, I’ve got to think about what is effective. Are the things I’m doing actually working? Are they learning things about God and who he is and about his authority? Or is this just me trying to bring my own ways into this, make sure they know I’m in control, let them see my anger and frustration being played on them.

None of that is beneficial. What kind of father is our God? Another question. He’s kind.

Sometimes he chastises us because we’ve done wrong. Because he loves us. And all of this is the bottom line of all of it’s all built so that we have a relationship with him. He wants us to be with him forever. And more than that, he wants us to share, as the Hebrew writer says, he wants us to share in his holiness. I hope that one day that my children will share in the joy that we have as parents. We can look back at our home and we can see, yes, there were things that happened that weren’t great. We made mistakes, we did things wrong, both parent and child, but we can share together in the joy of our family and the relationship that we have together.

And ultimately, that’s what God wants for you as a child of his.

We’ve got a lot of young parents. You’re doing great. I know it’s not fun to have a sermon like this while you’re wrestling a child in the pew. But you guys did great this morning. And we all understand sometimes you’ve got to take a kid out. Sometimes a child is loud, they cry, they make noise. It’s all a part of the process. You don’t worry about that. You direct your child’s heart toward God. And you keep thinking about what’s best for them and what they need to both honor you, but ultimately honor you because they need to be honoring our Father who’s in heaven. You might need to do that this morning by giving yourself to him, giving your life to him, dying with Christ in baptism, be resurrected in newness of life.

And we want to offer that opportunity this morning if you need that. That is the ultimate selfless act. You’re giving up yourself, which is what we want to teach our children to do. We want to give up ourselves and give our life to God. And we want to help you do that this morning if you know you need that. Why don’t you come now as we stand and we sing?